The Widow and the King (51 page)

‘They're not friends! That's the Fifteen there. I saw them come …’

‘I don't care. I'm not staying out here. And I'm not going down. Ever.’

‘Sophia – trust me! You're not in danger down there. Not yet. Trust me. It will be all right. I've just got to do something, and it will be all right.’

‘Then do it! For all the Angels …’

She saw his head turn towards the fire. The light glinted on his eyes, but she could not read his face.

‘I can't. Not now. There's too many … I'd need a bow. There'll have to be another chance.’

Do not stop
, the woman's voice had said.

‘Then I'm going over.’

‘Sophia!’

‘No!

I'm
not
waiting. I'm going. If Ambrose needs help, we can give it. They didn't kill us last time, these Fifteen, did they? Come on!’

‘No!’

‘I'm not staying out here! Come on!’

Without waiting for an answer, she got to her feet and strode across the top of the hill. She willed him to follow, but did not look back to see if he did. Her eyes were fixed upon the men and the fire. Brigands, cutthroats, swords – she marched towards them as firmly as if they were a pack of children playing in a courtyard at home. Horror of the darkness propelled her into the light.

She heard them talking as she approached. She could
see there was an argument going on – why, at this time of the night, she did not bother to think. She could see Ambrose in the middle of the crowd. He was looking and talking, she thought, like a man among men. The others were around them in a tight ring. She saw the weathered faces, tattered cloaks and pale badges. These were the same company that had ridden up to Develin the day she had gone to spy on the fishing. Their leader, a white-haired old warrior, was speaking to Ambrose. She heard his words. Some part of her mind, unclouded by horror, understood them.

They were brigands, but they were men. They had armour, cloaks against the cold, bellies that needed filling and purses that were empty. Now, in the light of the fire, she was back within her own world. And the words of the leader showed her at once what she could do. If Ambrose had not the means to buy them, she did. She stepped to the fireside and told them so.

Everyone was looking at her.

‘What is your name, sir?’ she asked the white-haired leader.

‘Orcrim will do,’ he said. ‘What do you want here?’

‘I am a friend of – of the Lord of Tarceny, there,’ she said, nodding towards Ambrose. She almost said
the King
. Something in her wanted to say it. But she had learned enough politics to know that she must not make a claim like that until they were all sure of it.

Ambrose was watching her, too. There was something wary in his look, as if he was not sure he could trust her. No matter. Whatever he thought, he was going to have to wait.

‘And, er – what was it you said a moment ago?’ said the knight called Orcrim.

‘That I can reward service, if service is given.’

‘How?’

‘That depends upon the service. But my family has never offered less than other houses. For a knight of long service, we would give …’ She looked around her at the ring of faces. ‘A manor. A manor for every knight here.’

‘Manors!’ said someone. ‘Hah!’

‘This is horse-droppings, Orcrim,’ said another, angrily. ‘What family dresses in rags and has manors to offer at a moment?’

The leader was watching her.

‘It is a fair question, if ungently put,’ he said. ‘What family is this?’

‘My name is Develin, sir,’ she said levelly. ‘Since my mother's death I have all the rights and dues of the lands of the house. At my last count, twenty-nine manors were held by the house direct, and many others are in our gift. Nine, altogether, are vacant, or in dispute …’

All those people and estates, leaderless after her mother's murder, looking to the reeking shell of her house! She had turned her back upon them. And yet they were still there, in the secret drawer of her memory. Once she had gone over these numbers imagining the day that she would see land given to Chawlin, to make him a man of standing. She had almost forgotten it. Now she felt them like a weight settling on her shoulders again.

‘And if you doubt me, sir, I may tell you that I saw you and your fellows all on the road at Develin's gate, the day you came there not six months since. And there was
a sixteenth man with you, who became counsellor to the Lord of Velis.’

‘So. This is not proof, although I shall accept it for the moment. But it is in my mind that sad things have happened at Develin. So it does not surprise me much that you are here. But I doubt whether you are still in a position to dispose of these manors you speak of.’

He had jumped straight to the weakness in her offer. If she let him stay there, she would deserve his contempt. Keeping her voice level, she answered him, and put her argument together in her mind even as she spoke it.

‘My mother is dead, and many of her people, by the treachery of Velis. No doubt that one thought to hand over our house to some lick-spittle, if he thought at all beyond the point of his sword. But Velis too is dead, now. And all the people in the manors and lands of my house know my right and my claim. If I approach boldly, and with a little strength …’ Here she looked around the ring of men.

‘… I think I will swiftly be restored.’

‘So that's it,’ said one of the men in the ring. ‘Fight first, paid later.’

‘Velis is dead, is he?’ said the leader.

‘It's true,’ said Ambrose. ‘I have also heard it.’

The leader looked at him. Perhaps he was remembering that Ambrose's father had once taken the crown. If he was ready to think like that, then he would be ready to listen to her offer. But they must not be diverted into fantasies that were beyond reach. This man would need help with his men, in any case. It was time to lay some hard foundations.

‘I was talking of a reward for life-service,’ she said.
‘For a lesser service – say a year, for it may be that long before I am home again – my house might offer the value of a year's harvest – the first harvest from your manors.’ (
Your
manors. Now that they knew what she was offering, it was time to say it clearly.) ‘I do not know the exact value of all of them. But my family has never counted pennies.’ From her belt she drew a cloth, and unrolled it so that they could see. Men were crowding around her. She held up the pearls of Velis in the palm of her left hand. ‘Here. Your first harvests.’

Someone drew a long breath.

‘A knife?’ She held out her right hand, carelessly. Someone fumbled at a belt, and gave her a knife. Carefully, so that nothing spilled into the darkness, she cut the chain. She held up the pearls, loose now.

‘Here,’ she said.

‘Stand back a little,’ the leader said to his followers. He drew his hand from his gauntlet and picked one pearl from Sophia's palm. He examined it, then turned away from the fire to hold it out at arm's length.

Far away to the west the clouds that had shrouded the sky were breaking. The moon, a three-quarter disc of light, hung low over the mountain-rim.

The man appeared to be trying to measure the size of the pearl against the disc of the distant moon.

‘This,’ he said, ‘was what I was not expecting.’

For a moment more he weighed the pearl in his fingers. Then he dropped it back into Sophia's hand.

‘You had better all sit,’ he said. ‘My friends and I will need to talk. Cradey, Endor – stay with them. They can keep their blades for the time being.’

Sophia sat, carefully gathering the pearls into her cloth again. Ambrose and the knight who was with him crouched by her, gathering their swords onto their knees. Two of the Fifteen stood nearby, wild-eyed men with weapons in their hands. The rest retired to the other side of the fire, where they sat in a circle and talked in low voices.

Sophia felt exhausted.

‘Where is Chawlin?’ Ambrose asked her softly.

Not
How did you get here?
Not
Why are you doing this?
But
Where is Chawlin?
The question turned a huge stone in her heart, and under it was emptiness.

He had not come out of the night with her. She had imagined, as she had walked to the fireside, that he would follow a pace or maybe ten paces behind her. She had believed, as she bargained with the old brigand chief, that he might be somewhere close, watching, and she had taken strength from the thought. But he had not come. He had been afraid to come.

She was safe, for the moment, from the horror that had followed her up the hill. At least, she was as safe as she knew how to make herself. And she had done what she could to help Ambrose when he needed it. But she was alone, and tired, and she had changed her course altogether. She and Chawlin had been travelling, she had thought, to a life of love and plain living in exile. Now, if she was to make good her promises to these men, she must return to Develin, where she would be the mistress. And what of Chawlin?

‘Chawlin?’ said Ambrose's companion. ‘A man named Chawlin campaigned with me in this March, once. He became one of Baldwin's people.’

‘And then one of ours,’ said Sophia, dully. ‘But I do not know where he is.’

Until she understood more clearly what Chawlin had been afraid of, she would not say anything that might give him away.

Ambrose had folded a white pebble into a cloth and was knotting it onto the hilt of his sword.

‘They've found us, Aun,’ he said quietly.

‘Eh? Who?’

‘The enemy – his creatures.’

‘There was something on the hill,’ Sophia said. ‘It followed me.’

‘Did you see it?’

‘No.’

Ambrose looked at her, and she realized what he must be thinking.

‘I'm sorry,’ she said.

She was sorry for leading them to him. Sorry for never having believed him. Sorry that she had called it a cat in the shadows of Ferroux.

‘I think they want me, too, now,’ she said.

‘Yes, they do,’ said Ambrose.

‘They were going to find us sooner or later,’ growled the man whom Ambrose had called Aun. He was watching the gathering on the far side of the fire. ‘At the moment I'd say we have bigger problems.’

Two men rose from the group and came over to change places with the guards.

‘What are they going to do?’ said Ambrose.

‘Who knows? They want those pretty stones she's brought with her. One way or another, they'll have them.
They could try ransoming us, if they could find someone to ransom us all to. But they'll want the manors as well. So if they think they can trust your friend here, and if they think that there's a real chance they can get her back …' He was rubbing his chin with his knuckle, thinking aloud as he watched the Company of the Moon. ‘Fifteen fighters, arriving suddenly at a lording that's in chaos … Friends everywhere – doors that will open. It's not impossible. And if life out here is as thin as he said it was … Hah, well, I for one would like to see the manor that could yield the value of one of those little stones in a harvest.’

‘Faith,’ murmured Sophia. ‘What appeal was ever without poetry?’

The man stared at her. She raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Angels blight me, if I didn't think you were your mother for an instant,’ he said.

After that no one said anything for a while.

‘All the same,’ said Aun in a low voice, ‘if they call me aside, or rise in a group, you run. Don't wait to find out what they want. Run for the night. And don't come back for anything.’

‘I am staying here,’ said Sophia firmly.

Almost as she spoke, the group on the far side of the fire broke up. Three men got to their feet and came towards them. The white-haired leader, Orcrim, was one of them. The second was a small, round-faced man. The last was another ageing knight with a circular cut of greywhite hair and a face like flint.

‘We'll sit with you,’ said Orcrim affably. ‘If we may.’

The men settled themselves without waiting for an answer. There was a moment of silence.

‘We have not made a good start tonight,’ said Orcrim slowly, speaking to Ambrose. ‘I suggest we begin again. And I'll begin roundabout, by doing something I've not done for a long time. I'm going to tell you a story.

‘This story is about three knights who served their lord. They served him very well, and very closely, and were rewarded with high offices. One,’ he nodded at the roundfaced knight, ‘even became the lord's chamberlain. One was his war-captain.’ He tapped himself on the chest. ‘And one was his seneschal.’

Sophia looked under lowered eyes at the third man, and wondered what kind of lord would gladly leave his home in the charge of that gaunt face.

‘There is not much that even the most secret of men can hide from his closest servants. They knew that their lord obtained – powers – from one who seemed to be an old man in a priest's coat. Let us call that one the Prince. Since the powers given by the Prince brought success, there was little they thought wrong with that. Perhaps you would fault them. Others in the Kingdom might have slain them, lord and servants and all, or had them burned, if they could. But it did not happen, then at any rate.

‘Yet it did not escape our knights that there was a price for power. One day the chamberlain understood that the lord would go to the Prince with his young son, then just a few weeks old. If he had gone, the son would not have returned. Yet our chamberlain warned his friends, the warcaptain and the seneschal, that this thing might happen. And before a crowd of people, including the boy's own mother, they spoke such words to their lord that he did not ride, and the son lived – and no one knew what they had
done. Such was their loyalty to their lord – and to his line.

‘Nevertheless my story has a sad ending, as you may guess. In less than two years the lord was dead, in a manner that you may know. And his servants were landless, and remained so from that day to this.’

‘So,’ said Ambrose slowly. ‘If you saved my life then – were you really hunting us for revenge last season? Is that what you are saying now?’

Sophia closed her eyes. Couldn't he see that this man was offering a truce? How like Ambrose to speak bluntly when others needed to talk in hints!