The Widow and the King (7 page)

‘What does he want it for?’

Splashing sounds were already coming from the courtyard where the man, stripped to the waist, was washing himself from a pail that Ambrose had carried to him from the rain cistern.

‘He wants to shave. Now, Amba. You've not seen a man shave before, have you? So you can help him. You'll need to get him some of the fat, and a sharpening stone, and as soon as the water is ready you can take them all out to him. I'll finish in here …’

She was happy, excited. She seemed to have forgotten their quarrel in her pleasure at the man's arrival. She went on talking while he rummaged for the sharpening stone.

‘… Also, we'll need to make a bed for him by the hearth. So you'll have to move our pallets into the next room …’

‘What has he got to do with my father?’ Ambrose asked.

She looked surprised.

‘Nothing that I know of, although his father had. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’

He still resented the way she had taken all the stranger's attention from the moment she had appeared. He was willing to bet she would do the same over supper, too.

‘So what did his father have to do with mine, then?’ he asked a moment later.

‘His father is Aun, Baron of Lackmere, and he was one of your father's enemies. But he was also a great friend to me. Without him, and without people like Adam and Evalia, neither you nor I would be alive today. The King owes him much, too. After your father died, the King sent him to take charge …’

She stopped.

A frown crossed her face, as though some smell had drifted into the room, and she could not tell what it was.

Her hand had stopped, too. She had been in the act of laying a knife on the table. The short, metal thing hung in her fingers, a few inches above the boards.

Slowly, she set it in its place.

‘What is it?’ Ambrose asked.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I remembered something, that's all.’

She looked at the table, as if she had forgotten what she was doing.

‘Why,’ she said aloud. ‘Why does a man come riding a week into the mountains by himself ? What sort of a whim is that?’

‘Maybe he's bored at home.’ Ambrose nearly added,
Like me
; but he managed to stop himself. She would know he was thinking it anyway – if she was paying attention.

‘Riding his horse until it drops? I'd like to know …’ She cleared her throat. ‘What did he say to you when he first arrived?’

‘Not much. He wanted water.’

‘Water?’ she said sharply.

Ambrose nodded out to the courtyard. ‘To drink, and then wash in.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, of course he would. All the same …’

She was still thinking; staring at the table and thinking. Her mood had changed. She was looking the way she sometimes did when she was worrying about stores and whether there would be enough to get them both through the winter.

‘Amba?’

‘Yes?’

‘You say nothing to him of the pool, please. This
young wolf has a right to our hospitality, but not to our secrets …’

Wolf ? Why did she call him a wolf ?

‘And you must be careful what you do say. The less the better. Talk about shaving if you like. Let me do the rest, until we know more.’

‘What do you think he'll do?’ he asked.

‘He'll have supper with us and go to bed and go on his way when he's rested.’

‘But …’

‘Never you mind what else he
might
do,’ she said sharply. ‘I don't doubt he is honourable enough …

‘He'll tell us when he's ready, I expect,’ she added. Ambrose clamped his mouth shut. It was exactly as he had thought. She was going to enjoy the man's company, but he wasn't allowed to. It was
Take Care
again: don't go near the stream when it's high; don't burn yourself at the pot; don't talk to the only man ever to have come to the house.

She was bending over the pot in which the water was warming.

‘That will do,’ she said. ‘It mustn't be too hot. You can take this out to him now. And help me put the broth back on the hearth. And when you've done out there you can come back with your bowl. I don't forget bad manners, Amba; but just for tonight I think you had better have a full belly despite them. And … yes, after you've done those other things, I want you to make sure you have all your white pebbles.’

Ambrose sighed inwardly. Those wretched pebbles again!

‘They're all there,’ he said.

‘Don't argue, Amba. I want you to make sure. Now take this and hurry. I think he's waiting for you.’

Released at last, Ambrose took the water and carried it out, eager at least to see the mystery of a man shaving away his beard.

She had told him about great houses, where the boys of knights and nobles waited on their elders at table. She had played games with him, pretending to be a strict and stern lord, and making him carry her cup and bowl to her with his back stiff and his head high. So that evening he did as he had been shown, carrying the water, the dried fish and the weak root-broth in turn, first to her, and then to the guest. He stepped slowly and kept his face solemn, lingering each time to make sure the man had what he wanted, and to steal another close look at him.

He was still fascinated by the way the man's face had slowly changed as his beard had come away under the knife. It had become leaner and more pointed. The cheeks were hollow, and now they glowed an angry red. They must be sore, he thought. But the man had never complained. He had talked all the while in an easy, friendly way, asking questions about Ambrose and his mother, and the mountains, all of which Ambrose had thought harmless enough. And he had explained about shaving, and how to make knives sharp enough to do it. It had taken a long while, and yet it had all been over too quickly for Ambrose. He wanted the man to talk to him again. He wanted the man to look up from the table and speak to him now. She couldn't stop him answering if that happened.

The man was hungry. He took a large cut of the precious cheese that Ambrose brought to him. He took most of the dried fruits from the bowl that was to serve the three of them. He did not look up. Instead all his attention was on her, as he talked about happenings in the Kingdom. Most of hers was on him, except now and again when she gave Ambrose a sign to bring something to the table.

A nod of her head sent Ambrose scurrying for more dried fruits. As he ducked out into the courtyard with the bowl in his hands he heard her laughing lightly at something the man had told her.

Did she trust him now? Or was she just pretending? Ambrose had never known her pretend at anything. He didn't know whether she was any good at it. But she always seemed to know when Ambrose was pretending, so maybe she was very good at it indeed.

In the storeroom he took a moment to steal some of the dried fruit and stuff it into his mouth. He might as well reward himself for doing this chore. And if they weren't even going to look at him, they wouldn't see how his cheeks were bulging. Then he filled the bowl and hurried back.

‘There is war coming in the Kingdom,’ the man was saying as Ambrose came back into the room. ‘It is the same thing again: the house of Baldwin rising against Septimus. This time it is the Lord of Velis who makes the challenge.’

‘As though there had not already been enough,’ she sighed. ‘It was Baldwin's misfortune that the best of them were slain ten years ago.’

The man did not agree. ‘Velis may yet prove a match for Septimus. A stronger king may be a good thing indeed.’

‘At each rising men say the same, and the land suffers for it. I had believed your house was loyal to Septimus?’

The man looked at her, lazily across the table. Suddenly Ambrose thought he understood why she had called him a ‘young wolf ‘. Ambrose had seen a wolf not long before, while guarding his goats at pasture. It had been standing still in the cover of some thorns, with a careless slope to its head and shoulders as though it were not thinking of doing anything; and piercing eyes that gave out the lie.

You always had to watch for the wolf.

‘Sometimes, sometimes not,’ the man said. ‘Everyone makes their choice, don't they?’

‘And they are judged for it.’

‘Judged?’

‘By men while we live, and after by the Angels,’ she said.

‘Hmm.’

The talk had stopped for a moment. There was something else here that the two of them did not agree on. Ambrose wasn't sure whether it was about kings or angels or both.

She looked up at him.

‘Ambrose, you may go to bed.’

He bowed, saying nothing in case she realized that his mouth had fruit in it.

‘Goodnight,’ called the man over his shoulder.

In the musty-smelly chamber that he had made into a temporary bedroom for himself and his mother, Ambrose unrolled his blanket and lay down. He could hear their voices, muffled by the wall. He wanted to hear if they
were still talking about kings and rebellions and exciting things like that, but he could no longer pick out the words. So he sulked, and his fingers played with the small pile of white pebbles he had made by his pallet, and he wondered why she had felt they might be needed all of a sudden.

Then, because he was tired, he slept. He did not hear his mother bid their guest a good night and come to lie down in the room beside him.

He did not hear the man rise and leave the house stealthily just before dawn. He knew nothing until his mother's hand was shaking him, urgently, frantically, in the grey of the morning that saw the end of his world.

‘You must not follow me, Amba,’ she said, in the last few moments by the hearth while she waited for ink to dry on a piece of paper before her.

Ambrose was still struggling to dress. He understood, with a sense of loss and bewilderment, that their guest was gone. He had no idea where or why.

She seemed to know.

‘You must go across to the village and wait for me,’ she said, as she knotted the paper into a little roll with twine. ‘If I do not come today, you must go to Chatterfall and give this to them there. Here is coin for a boat at the lake …’

To Chatterfall? By himself ?

‘Quickly, now. Tie the purse to your belt. And you must take the pebbles.’

His fingers fumbled with the string. By the time he had tied the knot, she had already left the room.

The pebbles. He scooped them up from the windowsill,
piling them in his hands because he had no other way to carry them.

She was outside under the archway, pulling aside the goat-hurdle. He followed her. Because he was clutching the pebbles against his chest he could not pull it shut behind him.

‘Quickly, Ambrose,’ she called from the darkness of the gateway opposite.

He hurried after her. She had the gate open. The path along the ridgeback was a pale thread, leading away in the darkness of dawn.

She looked at him.

‘Untuck your shirt and carry them in the fold in front of you. Try not to lose them. And whenever you are still, place them around you. Now, Amba,’ she said, embracing him. ‘I love you. Go quickly. Do not come back to follow me.’

So of course he followed her. Once he had gone a little way down the hillside and was out of sight, he doubled back. He saw her hurrying away along the faint path that ran below the house. He tracked her, moving swiftly, around the end of the ridge and uphill on the far side. She never looked behind her. He saw that she was heading for the pool. So he guessed that the man must have gone to the pool before them.

And still he did not understand.

So he was there to see her, scrambling uphill around the pool, calling to the man who was standing at the clifftop; to the man who levered and strained with his staff against a sentry-stone.

From the cover of a patch of thorns Ambrose stared up in disbelief. Didn't the man know what he was doing? Didn't he realize how dangerous it was, even to be there?

The poolside was empty. The Heron Man was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was hiding somewhere – in that dream that she had spoken of. Maybe their visitor did not know about the Heron Man. They had to get up to the man and warn him – make him stop before it was too late! They should have warned him the night before, only she had thought the pool and everything must be kept secret.

He was felling the stones!

How could he be doing this?

He heard the man shout something, angrily. The point of the staff had broken under the stone. The man drew it out and looked at it. He paid no attention to Mother, who came running and calling along the clifftop towards him. Ambrose saw her reach him, and clutch at his wrists. He heard her shouting at the man, begging him to stop. He saw the man wrestle one-armed with her, and push her away.

Then the man's other hand came up, swinging the broken staff into the side of her head with sickening force.

She fell.

Unbelieving, Ambrose saw her tumbling in the air. Her body bounced once among the rocks, outwards, like any pebble that tumbled down a hillside. Then she hit the water in a white splash, and disappeared.

Slowly the surface of the pool stilled. She did not reappear. On the skyline the man had bent to his work again, prodding and levering with the longer piece of his staff, as if nothing had happened.

And from his hiding place in the thorns Ambrose stared and stared at the pool, waiting for her to rise and struggle to the shore. But she did not.

Only when the first stone tumbled in a roar of rocks to the cliff-foot did he start, gather himself and run – run as though all the Things in the pit were already after him.

His feet carried him, slipping and skidding, back around the end of the ridge, under the walls of the house that had been his home. The goats were already out, spreading down and along the hillside from the open gate. They scattered before him, and bleated at him as he passed. He ignored them. White pebbles jumped from the fold in his shirt as he stumbled, and rolled away down the hillside. He ignored them, too, and ran on.

hen Ambrose came down a looping track through pinewoods a fortnight later, he had just eight white pebbles in his hands.