The Widow and the King (6 page)

‘It isn't any use anyway!’ he yelled at her.

‘The letters don't
do
anything.’

‘That's enough! I'll dress you in goatskin if I must, but letters are a thing I
can
give you and I will
not
leave the job half-done!’

‘But there's only the prayers to read, and I know them already!’

‘Amba, that's enough!’

They glared at each other for a moment. He was nearly as tall as she was now. But he still couldn't meet her eye when she was angry. He sat down, fuming, and looked at his slate again. He knew quite well what strokes she expected to see, but his fingers didn't want to do them. Neither did he.

‘I'm never going to use them though, am I?’ he grumbled.

‘
Ambrose!
’

Now she was angrier than ever.

‘You have
so
many things to learn still! One of them
is that if you do something you should always do it properly. So you can write it out now, or start again tomorrow on an empty stomach. It's up to you!’

He mumbled and hung his head. But the moment her back was turned he stalked out of the room and banged the door behind him. He hurried across the throne-court to the archway. Here his way was blocked by the hurdles that kept the goats from straying inwards during the night. He dragged them aside, passed through and replaced them firmly, as if he could wall his mother in with them. Then he strode, furious, into the outer yard.

Running out on her was happening quite often now. She kept saying that he was twelve and should be able to do more, and he kept thinking that he wasn't going to put up with it. And yes, it usually cost him his supper, but at this time of year he could wander the hillside while the light lasted and find berries to fill himself up a little. The trouble was that it never got him out of doing what he didn't want to do. Later that day, or maybe the next, he would have to get down to it – or miss another supper. So she always won.

She wasn't going to this time, if he could help it. This time he was going to do something – something so bad she'd think twice before ordering him around again.

The goats, which he had brought in from the hillside an hour before, were gathered in a small flock against the low wall. They lifted their heads and looked at him with their misshapen eyes.

He thought of opening the outer gate and driving them all out onto the hillside again.

But that would be stupid. Either he'd have to go and
get them all back later or, if he didn't, they might both starve that winter. No use.

He wanted to break something – a door, maybe. Or perhaps start a fire.

Start a fire? The tinder was back with her in the kitchen. He wasn't going back there.

No use, again.

He thought of going to the Heron Man.

He could do it. She would be furious, but he could do it any time he liked.

He thought about it again. The Heron Man, and his Things. He never saw them. But sometimes he thought he could feel that they were up there. They were up there all the time, day and night, like a cloud hanging beyond the ridge.

Never approach him, never speak with him.

Ambrose shuddered.

No use again, he thought.

But why not? The Heron Man couldn't get out. It ought to be safe. Ambrose could go up there whenever he wanted – whenever she upset him. He could talk to him as much as he wanted, from behind the ring of stones. And it was a man up there – a man like Uncle Adam, away at Chatterfall. Not someone like Mother. Maybe he was someone Ambrose could really talk to.

What was it like, to be as old as all the stories – three hundred years or more?

Never speak with him.

No father! Nothing! It just wasn't fair!

‘It's only
you
that says he's evil!' he said aloud.

She was not there to hear him, so he could say it. He
might say other things, too. It was only
she
who had said that his father was wicked! It was only
she
who had said that his father had wanted to kill him! Why
didn't
she want him to talk to the man by the pool?
What
was it she was afraid he would say?

It wouldn't matter, so long as he stayed back from the stones. Nothing could reach him from inside the ring. He could talk, or taunt if he wanted to. She had done, the last time. Why couldn't he?

And if the Things appeared he'd just – just throw stones at them!

At once he turned and walked briskly towards the outer gate.

The goats crowded in under the archway after him, as they did whenever he took them to pasture. The gatetunnel echoed with the sounds of their hooves, magnified to a great cavalcade. He pulled one leaf of the door inwards, meaning to step through and shut it quickly behind him. Then he stopped. The goats stopped, too.

There was a man on the path outside.

He was a complete stranger, who had stopped dead in the act of reaching for the door. He wasn't a hillman. He was taller than they were – about as tall as Mother. He had long brown hair, a brown and stained cloak, and heavy, dusty leather boots. And his cheeks and chin were concealed in a thick mat of brown beard, which looked very strange to Ambrose. None of the hillmen had hair on their face like that, nor, so far as he could remember, did Uncle Adam.

And his eyebrows slanted darkly, even when they were lifted in surprise.

‘Ho! Someone does live here after all,’ said the man.

His accent was strange. Where had he come from?

His clothes were good – much better than the goatwool tunics or rough mantles Ambrose was used to – yet they were stained and needed mending. He carried a pack over one shoulder. His staff was freshly cut. Ambrose knew there was no tree in this valley the man could have got it from. He must have walked a long way. Altogether he had a wild, mysterious air. Ambrose was impressed.

‘… I live here,’ he said, recovering. ‘So does my mother.’

‘Your mother? Anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘Anyone come here – in the last month, say?’

‘No one ever comes. Not for as long as I can remember,’ Ambrose said.

The man dropped his pack heavily to the ground and looked at him sideways. Ambrose gaped back. Behind him, in the gate-tunnel, the crowd of goats waited.

‘And how long is that?’ asked the man.

Ambrose could not answer.

‘How old are you then?’ said the man.

‘I'll be thirteen this winter. Um. Do you – do you want some water?’

‘Thirteen?’ The man raised his brows again. ‘Good. Well, you're tall for your age, anyway. But then I was born to a line of runts. And, yes thank you – it's been a thirsty climb.’

Ambrose remembered that all the bowls and pails would be in the kitchen, and that Mother would be in the kitchen, too. He didn't want to have to go in to her again.
But the man reached into his pack and drew out a leather bottle, which he held out to Ambrose. Ambrose took it. It was empty.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and ducked hastily back inside the doorway. The goats were still there, looking at him expectantly. He tried to pull the door shut behind him, to block them from going out, but it stuck on the stones as it always did. He was about to try again when he realized that the stranger would probably think it rude to have the door slammed in his face. Maybe he thought Ambrose had been rude already. But there was no time to think about that. The man wanted water.

He scattered the goats back into the yard, slipped past the inner goat-barrier and walked softly over to the fountain. The door to the kitchen was open, but Mother did not call from within. He did not call either. Nothing like this sudden arrival had ever happened before. He wanted to keep it to himself for as long as he could. He waited anxiously while the thin stream of water filled the bottle, and then hurried back to the gate, thrilled by the chance of being able to talk to the man again.
You're tall for your age
. True, Mother sometimes said the same. But it had never sounded so rich with praise before.

The door was still ajar. He could see the light cracking from top to bottom of the outer arch. A couple of goats were back at the tunnel, looking interestedly at the opening. If he had left it another few moments they would already have made their way outside. He slipped past them and squeezed noiselessly through the gap.

The man had sat down with his back to the arch, intent on something in his hands. For a moment he did
not seem to realize Ambrose had returned. Then he looked up.

The thing in his hands was a book. The man closed it with a snap.

A book!

‘Can I see that?’ said Ambrose, eager for anything new.

‘It's mine,’ said the man, thrusting it back into his sack. As it disappeared Ambrose glimpsed a shape upon its cover: a blank disc with a mark upon the left-hand side.

‘Is that a moon on it?’ he said. ‘My father's sign?’

‘What? Your father?’ The man looked hard at him. Slowly, his hands drew the cords on his pack closed and knotted them firmly. ‘Who is your father then?’

‘He died when I was a baby.’

The man's mouth drew into a wry grin.

‘Lucky, aren't you? Wish mine had. Is that my water? Thanks.’ He took the bottle, and drank.

Ambrose waited, puzzled but pleased at the same time. He wasn't sure why the man had put away the book, or what he had meant about fathers. But the man was glad to get the water, and didn't seem to mind that Ambrose had inadvertently half-shut the door on him.

The brown face of a goat peered through the doorway. Ambrose shooed it back inside. In a moment he would invite the man in anyway.

‘Thanks,’ said the man again. He seemed to have drunk the bottle dry. But he was in no hurry to get up. ‘So … you've lived here all your life, have you? Seems to me I've been travelling for half of mine. Tell me now. Is there anywhere around here I might bathe?’

Ambrose thought. ‘I could draw a pail …’

‘All over, I meant,’ the man said.

Ambrose stared at him. The man grinned again.

‘I'm just a
bit
dusty, you see,’ he said.

‘There's the stream back down at the bottom of the valley,’ Ambrose said. ‘You must have crossed it. On your way here …’

He hesitated. He could tell from the man's look that that was not what was wanted.

‘Or …’

‘Or?’

Ambrose hesitated again. You
couldn't
go up to the pool. Not to bathe, surely. That would be …

On the other hand, he had been about to go there himself, hadn't he?

Why shouldn't they go – the two of them? It would be a real adventure.

But that would mean going
inside
the ring … ‘Or?’ said the man again.

‘I think …’ said Ambrose.

‘Aun!’ cried Mother. ‘Is it really you?’

They both started at the sound of her voice. The man scrambled to his feet. She was standing in the gateway. For a moment she was smiling with delight. Then, as the man stood, her smile faded. She frowned.

‘Your pardon, sir. I mistook you for an old friend.’

‘I … grieve to disappoint you, madam. I am not he.’

The man finished with a movement that bent his body at the waist. Ambrose knew what it was, because she had taught him how to do it himself. It was a bow. It had always seemed silly to have to practise it when there was no one to bow to. This was the first proper bow he had ever seen anyone do.

‘You must come in, sir,’ she said. ‘Ambrose, the goats …’

‘I was keeping an eye on them,’ said Ambrose, surly because he was being rebuked in front of the stranger.

They entered the gate-tunnel together, and Ambrose closed the gate firmly behind him. She led them across the outer yard to the second arch and unfastened the goatbarrier there. Again Ambrose fastened it behind them.

In the inner yard the stranger stared curiously around him – at the throne, the buildings, the fountain. Mother looked at him closely.

‘Do you know the house of the Baron Lackmere, sir?’ she asked.

‘Your face recalls him to me.’

The man hesitated. Then he said, ‘Your eyes do not deceive you, madam. My name is Raymonde diLackmere.’ He bowed once more. Ambrose bowed, too.

She smiled again, broadly.

‘Then sir, you are most welcome, for your father's sake and your own. And I give thanks to Michael, that he has guarded you on your journey, and to Raphael, for you are safe come.’

‘Thank them indeed,’ said the man. ‘If I may know … ?’

‘Your father knew me first as Phaedra, daughter of the Warden of Trant, and later as the Countess of Tarceny.’

‘O-oh,’ said the man slowly, as if he had suddenly understood something. He bowed again. Ambrose bowed again, too, and wondered when either of them would notice. At the moment they seemed to have eyes only for each other. Now the man was looking at her narrowly. Maybe he was trying to decide what sort of woman she was – what she knew, why she was here. And she was
smiling again, smiling broadly, as if she had just been given a wonderful and unexpected present.

‘Is your father well?’ she asked. ‘Has he sent you to me?’

‘He is in good health,’ the man said. ‘And no, I am here by chance. My horse died and I was lost. I followed a path, not knowing where it would lead.’

‘A strange chance! What brought you to the mountains at all, sir?’

‘A whim, my lady, I assure you. If my father knows of this place, he has not told me.’

He was asking a question, Ambrose realized.
Did
his father know of this place? He had said he wished his father had died. Ambrose wondered what kind of father it was that the man had.

‘To my knowledge he does not,’ she said. ‘We have not heard from one another in ten years. It was only the chance of your coming that let me think he might have had news of me. But now you are come, and welcome. Rest with us, and eat with us. Ambrose shall wait upon us both. It will be good practice for him.’

Ambrose bowed again.

‘Is his water ready yet? she asked, coming into the kitchen where Ambrose was setting the table. She tested the small pot on the hearth with her finger. ‘It should be warmer than this. A little longer, maybe,’ she said.