The Widow and the King (35 page)

Sophia stared out over the parapet. Everything was suddenly difficult, and complex. The threat of marriage bore down upon her like a galloping knight. And now there was the threat of discovery, too. What would Luke do? She had no idea. The boy was gone. The stone angles of her home were empty. She had stolen the cup from her mother's chest. And she must stay here for at least two more days.

‘What shall we do with that thing?’ she asked, nodding towards it.

‘Does your mother open the chest often?’

‘I don't think so.’

‘Then I'll hold it for now. It is safer than putting it back and getting it out again.’

He was going to keep it.

‘I must go,’ she said.

They embraced. She put her ear to his chest. She heard the warm heart thudding within it. Then she let him go. He pulled up the trapdoor for her. Even as he bade
her goodnight his eyes were going back to the cup, as if he wanted to peer into it again. But the water was vanished from it, without either of them seeing where it had gone. With a deep depression in her spirit, she began to pick her way down the stairs.

He had not even said that he loved her.

The hours that followed were long. She could do nothing except give promises that she knew she would betray if she possibly could. She stood in the Widow's chamber, answering her mother shortly and hanging her head, but swearing, when it came to it, that she did indeed understand her duty and would do as she was bid. The Widow did not seem to be reassured.

‘Remember,’ she said at least twice, ‘you have not been out of Develin before, except to my other manors. There will be many things in Tuscolo and Velis for you that you have not seen. At your age you should rejoice at that.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ Sophia replied, thinking that the Widow did not sound very convinced herself. She was acutely conscious, as she stood there, of the secret drawer in the writing desk that she had rifled for the key, and of the emptiness in the bowels of the chest next door, where the cup had been. She did not think the chest had been opened in months. But what if someone did so now?

What if Chawlin was found with the cup?

Many times that evening she thought that she should not have taken the cup to him. She had known it was precious. She had known that it meant much to Chawlin. She had barely thought of the terrible reputation of Tarceny, and of what his thing might hold within it. It was
dangerous, Chawlin had said. And yet he had taken it. She should have thought, harder and longer, instead of acting on the strange impulse that had crept into her head as she had passed down the living-quarter corridor and found the council chamber empty.

And yet the impulse had been right. Until he had seen the cup he had been ready to accept defeat and live apart. Somehow – she was not quite sure how – she had known that; and she had known, too, what might jolt him into seeing the world a different way.

At least he was thinking again. At least they had a chance.

She wanted to see him, and talk to him, and be sure that he would not try to persuade her to accept Velis. But that was impossible. For the next two days she must stay away from him altogether. So after her mother dismissed her, she wandered the house until it was time to lie down, and in the morning, after a sleepless night, she ignored her lessons and sought out unused rooms in the upper levels of the living quarters where she could be alone.

She tried to imagine what life would be like with Chawlin, if indeed they made their escape. He seemed to want to go back to his old keep near the mountains. That made sense – they should be as far away as possible from Velis (
she
could not call him ‘the King’) for as long as that man lived. In the shell of the keep they would build – she had no idea how – a cottage, perhaps, and live upon the milk of goats and bees' honey. And she would greet him when he came home from fishing the mountain streams and remind him of what he had been doing – and she had been doing – on the day they first met.

It was hard to believe in, but she tried, just as she tried firmly to believe that Velis was not so mad a lord as to take revenge on Develin when she disappeared. The Widow would be humiliated. She would be furious, too. Sophia could not help that. In a way, she thought, it was at least partly her mother's fault. She should have sent Velis's messenger away. She should not even be accepting Velis as King. She should have fought him from the beginning. Instead, she was just expecting that Sophia would do what was good for Develin.

At last she left her refuge and began to descend the stair to the main living-quarter corridor. She had, she thought, less than half an hour of liberty left. After that she must dress to meet the ambassador of Velis, who was expected shortly before noon.

And after
that
, if she could, she must slip away and let the boy Luke have his say at her. As if she didn't have enough to worry about already!

Bright sunshine slanted through the windows of the living-quarter corridor. The walls were barred with black shadow. A new thought came to her, almost naturally, just as the plan about the cup had come the day before.

The thought was of her father.

Father had always been a rule to live by when the world was stupid and unreasonable. Ever since her childhood she had been able to imagine him understanding, even encouraging her, when she ventured into things of which the Widow disapproved. Father wouldn't have allowed this dreadful offer of marriage. She tried to imagine him now, speaking calmly in the halls of Develin, while the messengers of Velis trembled at the softness in his voice.

It was difficult. The voice was wrong. And she could not stop herself from thinking that he might turn his eyes on her and ask: why is it like this?

It's because you're leaving Develin
, the thought told her.
You're leaving him, too.

She stood at the door of the council chamber, just as she had stood the day before. She was thinking: Father had lived here. All her thoughts and memories of him were set in Develin, their home. Now she was going to have to remember him from far away. She found that her image of him (peering from within the visor of his helmet, smiling, understanding) was already weaker than she had ever known it. She did not want to forget him.

His letters are in the chest
, the thought said.
You saw them
. The latch of the council chamber clacked in her hand. The chamber was empty. The Widow was with the butler, hopelessly trying to decide how to take a week's supply of food and drink for a king's retinue (of unknown size) out of the cellars, and yet see the household through the spring without going to short commons. Sophia stood in the middle of the room, wrestling with the image of her father in her mind. Under the Widow's chair was the chest of secrets, apparently undisturbed. Letters from Father lay within it. She had seen them yesterday. She knew how easy it was to open the chest. The secret drawer was in the writing desk in the next room.

She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She opened it. The Widow's antechamber, too, was as empty as it had been yesterday. She crossed to the writing desk, finding and pressing firmly upon the hidden catches – just as Father had shown her, smiling at the joke of the
springing drawer when she had sat upon his knee all those years ago.

Did he smile now? Perhaps he did.

The key was a little-barrelled black thing. She took it, as she had taken it yesterday, and retraced her steps swiftly into the council chamber. She remembered Chawlin's warning about the risk of discovery and closed the outer door. Only the Widow would enter without knocking, and she was busy elsewhere.

She knelt before her mother's seat, and opened the chest.

The cup was gone from the middle of it. Around the space where it had lain yesterday was piled paper upon paper, small, folded, bound and addressed in her father's hand. She reached in for one.

Then, at last, she wondered at what she was doing. She had wanted something of Father's. Each one of the papers was written in her father's hand. But the names on the direction were not hers.

These words did not belong to her. They were for her mother – his wife, his love. Sophia could see that. She understood about love, now. Father was with the Angels, and
whatever was left of him on earth must rest here. All she could take with her would be wisps of memories. And for the first time she thought she understood the loss that the Widow had endured when he had vanished from the world.

Suddenly, somewhere, a trumpet sounded. She jumped.

The gate-horn! They would have seen the King's messenger from the gate-towers. She must go to her chambers to be dressed, quickly, and then down to greet the arrivals at her mother's side. She must go on playing the part she had set for herself.

She put her hand on the lid of the chest, thinking, Goodbye, Father. She was about to close it. Then another paper caught her eye. There was no direction. Instead, in writing Sophia knew as well as her own, her mother had scrawled: LUQUERCUNAS – LUKE.

Luke. She was due to meet with him soon. He knew she had met with Chawlin. What was it that the Widow kept in this chest about him?

Now the impulse that had lured her here, coaxing and wheedling, for the second time in two days, spoke. Clear as the voice of a man in her head, she felt the thought.

Take it. Read it. If he wants to use what he knows against you, then you should know about him, too.

And then, because she could, she picked the letter from among the others. It was crumpled. She straightened it. There was writing on it, in a hand she did not know. It read:

That was all.

Footsteps passed in the corridor, moving swiftly. Men murmured in hurried voices as they went by outside. There were calls from the courtyard. Ignoring the sounds, Sophia stared at the paper and read it again.

Luke – Ambrose.

Tarceny!

‘Martin,’ said the Widow, as the King's ambassador swung himself down from the saddle in the upper courtyard. ’Fore all the Angels, I had not dared hope it would be you.’

‘I begged His Majesty that it might be, my lady,’ said the priest. ‘Since I knew his house and yours, and might serve both at once today. And I have been eager to see your courts again.’

He looked around him as he spoke, at the roof-lines, the towers, the faces that crowded into the courtyard for a sight of the royal messenger.

Eager? thought Sophia sourly. She sidled into her place beside her mother, trying to control her breathing after her run through the corridors. If Brother Martin had been eager to return, then he did not know this house as she did. It had become an evil place, all riddled with lies. She saw that clearly, now. It was almost surprising that Brother Martin did not. He was smiling broadly and nodding to the familiar faces he saw around him. Beyond him, his escort was dismounting – a valet, a bannerman and a dozen men-at-arms, all wearing on their chests the Eagle and Ship badge that Velis had adopted for his device.

Sophia looked at them suspiciously. They seemed ordinary enough.

‘Come, let me embrace you,’ said the Widow, and wrapped the monk in a brief and strong hug. ‘We have much to speak of. I will not hide from you, Martin, that we are in some anxiety over this – proposal – of the King. And not least that it is so sudden. In faith,’ she forced a laugh, ‘I think my poor cellarmen will hang themselves in a row if they must feed his full retinue from tomorrow!’

‘From tonight, my lady. This is the first thing that I have to tell you. For the King presses his pace. You must look for his banners before nightfall.’

‘Tonight! How? Is he so eager to carry away my poor daughter?’

‘He is such a man, my lady, that when he is set on a thing, it must be done at once,’ said Martin as they began to mount the steps into the hall together. ‘As for your poor daughter, I must confess to her and to you that I am responsible for this. For I have long been at pains to show him that he needs allies, not enemies, if he is to rule.’

‘Do not mistake me. I would do much to spare my house the fate of Bay.’

‘I swear to you, my lady, that what happened at Bay was an evil I could not prevent. But if the lives of Bay were precious, it seemed to me that the lives and learning in Develin were ten times more so, for their own sake and for all our wretched Kingdom. Therefore I have been the most eager of all Velis's people to persuade him to this course.’

‘I do not fault you. But tonight! Angels have pity on us …’

The counsellors were crowding up the stair after them, eager to hear more. Sophia hung back to let them pass. She had no wish to be noticed.

The house was full of snakes, she thought bitterly. Brother Martin should have been a friend. Now she knew it was he who had hatched this plot to marry her to Velis. To save the school, of all things! And the Widow agreed with him!

And across the courtyard a figure was sitting on the chapel steps. It was noon, and the boy she had known as Luke was waiting for her there. He was sitting quietly, and all alone, looking her way. She could sense the appeal in his eyes even from where she stood.

You
can wait, she thought, as she followed the others up into the hall. Ambrose of Tarceny? Child of the Whore! You can wait! I know who you are, now.

Your father killed my father, you viper. And you've lived in my house all these months, pretending to be a boy from nowhere. The Widow knew. Chawlin guessed. They did not tell me. They knew me too well. No one
dared
to tell me!

You can wait there for
ever
!

Ambrose sat on the chapel steps. He had watched the party of riders come up from the inner gatehouse, carrying strange banners, which he assumed were the King's. Was this the ‘other way’ that the Wolf had spoken of last night, already unfolding? Surely it was too soon. But if the King was coming here, then time must be running out. He needed to speak to the Widow's daughter – to the girl he still thought of as the Lynx.