The Widow and the King (45 page)

But Ambrose – a boy she had ignored and despised – he had been part of Develin, too. He had been one of those she had failed – and failed because she had not listened to him. And he was still living. If only he would hear her, she thought, it would be easier for her afterwards to bear what she had done.

I didn't know you.
That would be part of it.

Not
I didn't know whose son you were
, but
I didn't know who you are
.

‘We should try to find him, if we can,’ she said.

Something like a hiss escaped from Chawlin.

‘I wonder if we can get away with it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Not much. The light's going. Are you cold?’

She put her arm around him and snuggled into his shoulder again.

‘No,’ she said simply. ‘Husband.’

‘We can't stay up here all night, after all.’

‘Yes we can. It's beautiful.’

The light, however, was dimming. The gold had gone from the lake. The last orange streaks were slipping from the clouds. The western sky was still bright in the afterglow of the sun, but the mountains were black and all the land was in shadow. The stars would be coming out, soon. She sat where she was, feeling her ribs and his lift against one another with their breathing.

Chawlin did not seem to be in the mood for embraces. He seemed to be looking about him at the hillside, as though he feared some interruption. And he was sipping quickly at the wine. After a while she heard him curse softly.

‘Finished it?’ she said; and then, teasing: ‘I wanted some!’

He shook his head. ‘No. There's some left. You have it. I'm drinking too much.’

‘What's the matter?’

He did not answer.

‘Sweetheart, what is the matter?’

‘It's – it's difficult. And bad. Everything I do seems to be bad.’

‘No! You're doing wonderfully, my darling! I wish I could be more help.’

‘It's not that. It's two hundred people that I've … Two hundred and one, now. You said all that happens
when you die is that things stop happening. I wish I could believe that – and that if you're miserable, or mad, then it's even a relief when things stop …' He shook his head again, and ran his hand through his hair. ‘I've drunk too much.’

‘They weren't mad,’ said Sophia. ‘Some of the masters were strange. But none of them were mad.’

He gave a short, hopeless laugh, as if she had completely failed to understand.

What Sophia could understand was that the man she thought of as her husband was drunk, and she did not like it. She had seen drunkenness – rowdy drunkenness – at Develin. Someone or other would go bawling round the courtyards one evening, and next morning they would be sitting with their legs firmly clamped in the Widow's stocks. But Sophia had never seen sad drunkenness, like this, where the things that made the man what he was seemed to loosen and fall one by one to the ground. She did not like to think of Chawlin drunk. It was not his nature. It was as if he was being unmade.

‘Tell me a story, then.’

‘I've no stories at the moment.’

‘Oh, sweetheart …’

She rocked gently against him with her arm around his shoulders. This night was not going to be beautiful after all, not with Chawlin like this. The shadows of the evening were growing, like groping memories come from the hiding places to which they had been banished during the day. They prowled at the edge of her mind, watching her. They wanted to tell her that whatever she did, she was theirs, even though she thought she had escaped them. She would
go back to them. Chawlin was already going back to them. They would drown together in tears that stank of dark water.

‘My darling,’ she murmured.

Something moved among the grasses on the hillside, and he started.

‘What was that?’ she said.

‘Fox,’ he muttered. ‘Fox.’

Sophia got slowly to her feet, looking around her. Suddenly, a crowded lodging house seemed a better place to sleep after all. She no longer wanted to spend the night out here where strange things lurked and slipped among the grasses where she could not see them.

She had a feeling that the thing had not been a fox. But she had no idea what it might have been.

t was bright mid-morning when Ambrose topped a rise and looked down onto the lake. He checked his mule and leaned in his saddle. Beside him, Aun halted also.

The water was immense, and blue today. From the ridgetop they could see far out over a broad bay to the flat plain of water beyond, running on and on to the east until it was lost in mists. Ambrose remembered the glimpses he had had of the lake on his last journey with Aun – on the farther shore, between the lights of Bay and the ruins of Trant. In his memory, everything had seemed brown or grey then. Now the sun had reduced the clouds to just a few large masses, with shadows that idled over hillsides and water like dull fish in a sea of light.

At their feet the ground dropped to a river valley that ran into the bay. Opposite them to the north was a great round-shouldered hill covered with grass, with woods clinging to its landward side. The top of the hill was broad and flat, and up there someone had built what looked like a beacon. The place must have a good view
both of the lake and of the ways into the west and north of the March.

Aun pointed down the slope.

‘Aclete,’ he said.

Crouched between the bay and the foot of the great hill was a village or small town of about a hundred roofs, circled in a weathered palisade of old logs. It was a surprise to Ambrose. After days of travelling without seeing more than three huts together, he had begun to believe that the March was almost empty. He wondered how many people lived here. Some of the roofs had fallen or showed holes – not from burning, but from neglect. Of the two larger buildings that stood on either side of the bay itself, one at least was derelict. The nearer, however, was built of stone, and seemed to have banners outside it. Two or three small boats lay at anchor in the bay. Ambrose could see people moving among the huts. There also appeared to be a line of men standing along the road outside the palisade.

Had he seen this before?

He knew he had not seen this before. He had never stood here or looked down upon these huts in his life. The dream-like trick of memory he felt meant something else. He had felt it the day they had crossed into the March. Now he had it again – faintly, elusively, like a scent in a room that might be decay.

The enemy.

He wondered how close they were, on this bright day. He could not tell.

‘They're not gallows, if that's what you are thinking,’ said Aun.

‘What?’

‘Those men by the road.’

It hadn't been what he was thinking. But now that he looked more closely at the line of figures outside the gate, he realized that they were not moving in the way he would expect people to move. In fact, they were not moving at all.

He kicked his mule into a slow walk. Behind him, he heard Stefan begin to follow.

His feeling grew as they made their way down towards the town. He glanced left and right at patches of cover as he passed. He looked round to be sure that Aun was still there, and to check that there was no one else behind them on the road. Something of the enemy was here – or would come here, or had been here and was gone. But whether it was the Heron Man himself, he did not know.

He could see the line of men more clearly. They were standing at posts and bending forward. His mind made a jump. They were in stocks: not ankle stocks, like the ones in Develin, where the victim could at least sit during his long humiliation; but standing stocks that fitted around the necks and wrists of the man they held, at a height that made him bend forward. Looking at the posture of the nearest man, Ambrose saw that his back must be in agony. The pain was forcing his knees to give, in a desperate effort to straighten the spine, and his body was sagging, supported heavily on his neck and wrists, pinned in their close-cut boards. The victim was beginning to choke. He could not hold himself like that for more than a few seconds. He would have to will his legs and back into their tortured positions again – for as long as they could bear.

There! The man two along had almost fallen. A
woman was at his side, begging him to stand upright. The man's face was sunburned and twisted in its prison of boards. He was gasping. Ambrose could hear the urgent murmur of the woman's voice. There were nine men in the line, some with people standing by them, some fighting their battle with the cruel boards alone.

No one, Ambrose noticed, was jeering or throwing rotten vegetables at these people.

‘What have they done?’ he asked from his saddle.

‘What have all these people done?’

A woman looked up, angry.

‘And why should they have done anything?’

Ambrose flinched. He could not help feeling she was angry with him.

One prisoner was trying to look up at him from his bent position, but the board would not let him lift his head. By raising his eyes to the limit he must just be able to glimpse Ambrose's stirrups. The man in the next set of stocks had twisted round to get his head on one side, so that he could look down along his nose at Ambrose.

‘How long must they stay like this?’ Ambrose asked.

‘To noon, perhaps,’ said Aun beside him.

‘To sundown, more likely. Come on. It's not our business.’ To sundown. They were fading already, with the heat of the day yet to come.

Always and everywhere, the enemy was before him, claiming the land for his own. And when Ambrose came he was gone, leaving his work behind him.

‘Come on,’ said Aun.

As Ambrose dithered, the knees of the man in the stocks nearest to him gave way again. He half-fell, and his
neck and head clumped against the boards that held him. He cried out. So did the woman, now struggling to hold him upright. Ambrose was down from the saddle with the oak-pommel sword in hand.

‘What the devil are you doing?’ said Aun sharply.

The boards were wedged into place with simple wooden pegs. By keeping a hand on the blade of the sword, a few inches down from the point, he was able to lever them out, one after the other. The upper stock-board lifted. The man tumbled free, groaning. The woman bent over him. Ambrose heard Aun curse, but he ignored it.

He stood over them, waiting to be thanked, but they were both too concerned with the man's hurts to think of him. After a moment he turned away, and saw the line of other stocked men still pinned. He made a further decision, and started to work his way down the row, freeing one man after another.

You see?
he told the Heron Man in his mind.
I've come. It's not your land any more
.

Clunk, went another board.

I'm here!

It was so easy. Just a few moments of two-handed poking with his sword made the difference between torture and relief for these men. Any friend or wife could have done it, if they had had the will. It was not these wooden pegs that kept them off, but something else.

He looked about him. There was no sign of a guard over the stocks, although Ambrose realized that there must have been one. He turned to ask Aun if he had seen anybody, but to his surprise he saw that Aun was forty yards down the road, leading Stefan and the mule away from the
huts. Ambrose supposed that he must be looking for somewhere to tether them. The men he had released were sitting or lying where they had fallen. Those that had friends or family with them were being helped to their feet. To his left three still remained pinned in their stocks. His makeshift banner had fallen from his shoulder when he had tumbled out of the saddle, and was now flat in the dust.

And beside it was a folded blanket. And by the blanket was a flask of drink, and an apple. Someone had been sitting there. They had been sitting there only a few moments ago, because the blanket still bore the print of someone's seat. And whoever-it-was had gone in a hurry, because the apple was half-eaten. They must have gone as Ambrose rode up. He had not noticed them, and had not seen them go.

So there had been a guard, or a watchman. And where had he gone to?

He picked up his banner and brushed it off with his hand. Inside the stockade, a horse had begun to whinny.

You can't frighten me
, he told the Heron Man in his mind.

He propped the banner against one of the empty stocks and went to release the next man. The pegs were pale in the weather-stained wood. They were newly made, he thought, to replace some other pegs that had held these boards before now. They had swollen, too, and wanted to stick in their places. But they shifted one by one under the point of the sword. There! The board lifted, and the man sank to the ground, groaning. Hoofbeats sounded behind him, moving at a heavy canter. He turned. Three horsemen had spurred out of the town gate. They were armoured and had helmets on their heads. Ambrose
waited. He wondered if the Heron Man would glide softly out of the gates of the town after them. The horsemen thundered up to him and heaved their mounts to a halt in a cloud of yellow road dust.

‘Right, Durbey!’ cried a voice muffled in its iron helm. ‘Grab that one and make sure he doesn't run.’ They were flinging themselves down from their mounts in a clatter of iron. ‘One poxy little squire in leather breeches and you think you can turn my town upside down. I'll have your ears for my doorpost!’