The Widow and the King (9 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Watch all the time, Ambrose. It's important.’

‘Yes – I know – yes.’ He didn't want to think about it. He had watched, or tried to watch, all the long journey.
He thought he had barely slept. Now he was here. He wanted to rest, and eat, and rest. And she wasn't letting him. He covered his face with his hands.

Aunt Evalia put her arms around him and gave him a squeeze.

‘Maybe we should not say any more until you're stronger,’ she said. ‘You're here, and we can help you. Remember that. And we'll be having supper soon. See if you can sleep a little now.’

He drew a long, shaky breath, and nodded. Then he bent down in his chair and began to rearrange the stones around him. He moved one a few inches to the left, adjusted another, looked at them, and put the first one back almost where it had been. So he went on around the ring. When he got back to the first one he started again. This time he did not finish. He shifted in the big wooden chair and pillowed his head on his arm. It was all so much more warm and comfortable than the rocks on which he had lain for a fortnight. The wine was stealing on his brain, and he was feeling sleepy.

He slept all that night, and most of the next day, lying huddled among his stones on a makeshift pallet by the fire. They roused him to eat, and murmured to him, and he fed and lay down again without ever having woken properly. Someone came and bandaged his feet, which brought back the pain. He protested sleepily, and people murmured to him again. When they had finished they went away. The fire was warm, and his pillow soft, and he lay for hours, feeling as weak as a sack of bones, and did not stir.

Once, when he lifted his head from his pillow, he saw
Aunt Evalia standing on the far side of the room, before the wooden chest that the house used as an altar. On the wall above the chest was a hanging cloth, with four great faces embroidered in it, like people, but with flaming hair, halos and staring eyes that pierced into the room to see everything that happened in the house. They were the Angels: Michael the Warrior, Raphael and Gabriel, and Umbriel with the book in which all things were written. Aunt Evalia's hands were open as she stood before them. She seemed to be praying. Watching her reminded him of his mother, and the way she had prayed at home.

They had not asked what had happened to Mother, yet. When he got up, he supposed they would. He hoped they would not ask too many questions about it.

He dozed again, and again people came and spoke beside him. This time they were not speaking to him, but to each other. It was Aunt Evalia and a man, sitting together by the fire. They spoke in low tones, as if they did not want too many people to hear. The man had a soft, wheezy voice that Ambrose remembered. He sounded gloomy. Aunt Evalia sounded worried.

‘There's other news,’ the man said. ‘Velis and his rebels are at the gates of Watermane.’

‘Will they come this way?’ asked Aunt Evalia.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said the man. ‘Watermane is strongly held. But certainly it is too close for comfort.’

‘This will be his doing, I suppose.’

‘His?’

‘The Prince Under the Sky.’

‘It's too soon, surely,’ the man protested. ‘The rising started weeks ago!’

Ambrose realized that the man must be Uncle Adam. He wanted to lift his head and look, but for the moment it was too heavy.

‘One way or another he will have a hand in it now,’ said Aunt Evalia. ‘I know him. Chaos is what he loves. He will bring grief all across the Kingdom – the worst that he can, because the Angels have told him his time is short.’

Neither of them said anything for a while. Ambrose thought that he should get up, because Uncle Adam was there. Uncle Adam had always been important to him. There was something very fine about the fat, balding man, Ambrose thought. He still remembered and treasured the few words that had passed between them on his last visit. But his head and limbs and shoulders all felt very tired, so instead he shifted on the pallet and let his body rest again.

‘He's waking up,’ he heard Aunt Evalia say.

‘Will that – Prince – know he's here? He'd have come by now if he did, wouldn't he?’

‘The stones may be hiding Ambrose from him. But the Prince knows our house. He may come here anyway. Or send – others.’

‘Hmm,’ said Uncle Adam, sounding gloomier than ever.

‘I had thought we would repair the riverbank tomorrow,’ he said after a moment.

‘No one must go out of call of the house.’

‘Hmm.’

‘There is still fruit to pick in the clearing, if you wish to be busy.’

‘Me? Pick fruit? What will the men say?’

‘I am behind with my tasks, because of Ambrose and
other things. I have thrown myself on your mercy. As ever, you have gallantly accepted and will come to my aid.’

‘We will have to tell them soon.’

‘I know. But I have not yet thought what to say. If any of our people take fright and run off we shall be worse placed than ever.’

They were silent again. Someone else had entered the room and come up to the fireplace. Ambrose heard a stirring stick moving in a pot, so probably it was Vinney, who had come in to check on the supper. Perhaps that was why Uncle Adam and Aunt Evalia had stopped speaking.

There was a cry from outside.

‘See what that is, would you, Vinney?’ said Aunt Evalia. Vinney mumbled something. Her footsteps receded across the floor. After a moment Aunt Evalia spoke again. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

‘Adam. If the Prince has been loosed, it will be because the one who loosed him felled or moved at least one of the stones around his pool.’

‘And so?’ said Adam.

‘So if the stones can be raised, his powers may be trapped again.’

‘You mean us? Go into the mountains? All that way?’

All that way, thought Ambrose.

‘Phaedra did,’ Aunt Evalia said.

‘Hmm. We'd need horses, chains, pulleys – what's the ground like?’

‘I don't know.’

I do, thought Ambrose.

‘A week's journey? Ten days? Winter comes early in the mountains. Do you know the way?’

‘Ambrose does. But he needs to get stronger.’

‘Will the Prince allow it? Or whoever released him?’

‘Someone must do it, Adam.’

She's right, thought Ambrose. That was what they had to do. And together they could go back and shut the Heron Man away again. And then they could be safe. He would get up and tell them she was right, in a moment.

The cry came again, closer this time. It sounded as though someone was running. And now Vinney was calling inward from the doorway. Aunt Evalia and Uncle Adam got quickly to their feet. Someone else had joined Vinney in the doorway – the runner, Ambrose thought. A boy's voice was calling ‘Maister! Maister!’

And then everyone seemed to be talking at once.

Ambrose opened his eyes. He looked up at the rafters and battens and straw of the roof of Chatterfall. From the dimness he guessed that it was evening again. Rushes had been lit around the room, casting their dull yellow glow on patches of wall and on a trestle table that had been set for supper. He must have slept the whole day away.

After a moment he managed to lever himself to a sitting position and look about him. He looked first for Uncle Adam.

Uncle Adam was at the doorway. He was fatter and more bald than Ambrose remembered, but still the same. At that moment he was talking to a boy of about Ambrose's age, who was dressed in a woollen jerkin and carrying a herding crook in his hand. The boy was telling him about something he had seen in the woods. The boy's voice kept rising, and Uncle Adam kept shushing him and making him talk more quietly. The boy was pointing out
of the door at the woods beyond the manor yard. His arm made a circling motion, as if he meant that whatever it was he had seen was moving around the house.

Ambrose watched Uncle Adam nodding and at the same time calming the boy at the door. He longed for Uncle Adam to come and talk to him instead. He had a story to tell, too. He wanted to tell it to Uncle Adam, and to see him nod like that and maybe grunt with surprise as he spoke of his journey out of the mountains, and the way that they could go back to shut the Heron Man in. He waited for Uncle Adam to look towards him.

Aunt Evalia passed, talking urgently with Vinney. ‘A cloak for Ambrose …’ she was saying. ‘And – will we have any shoes that would fit him? No matter. He could not walk anyway. He must ride with me.’

Ambrose looked round. Ride? Tonight? ‘Quiet!’ Uncle Adam said.

‘Quiet, all!’

Something had changed, Ambrose realized. Everyone seemed to be hurrying about, talking in undertones, getting things ready. Whatever attention they were giving him seemed to be about getting him ready, too. He did not know what he was supposed to be ready for. Maybe it had something to do with what the shepherd boy had seen.

Across the room the old groom came to help Uncle Adam put on a thick coat of padded leather that dropped to his knees. It strapped together at the back and bulged in rings around his body, making him look like a big, squat caterpillar standing on end. Adam was grumbling under his breath. Aunt Evalia passed Ambrose again, and gave him a quick smile.

‘It will be all right,’ she whispered.

They're worried about something, he thought. What is it?

Why wasn't anyone talking to him?

With a long clinking of metal Uncle Adam struggled into another garment. This seemed to be a shirt of bright links, which fitted over his leather coat. It had a hood of the same metal weave that he drew up around his head. Then he stooped for something that stood propped against the door-frame. Ambrose knew what it was. A sword.

‘Vinney, Ambrose will need a pouch for the stones,’ said Aunt Evalia. ‘Please bring me the large drawstring purse. Quickly. And my cloak …’

The serving woman muttered and began to pull things out of a chest. Aunt Evalia went over and spoke in whispers with her husband. Ambrose saw her lay her hand suddenly on his arm. It ended with them both looking silently out of the window at the coming night. When Vinney scurried back across the hall with things in her arms, they shushed her and went on listening.

What were they trying to hear, beyond the endless sound of the falls?

Vinney scuttled over to him and laid a pale canvas pouch on his knees.

‘What's happening?’ he hissed to her.

She looked hard at him, as though whatever it was must be his fault. Then she was away, hurrying after something else she had been told to get. He watched her go, and saw that she was frightened. That frightened him, too. He gulped, and remembered that he was supposed to gather up the stones from around him. One, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight. The big purse held them easily. It had a long drawstring that he could pull tight, knot, and then loop over his head and shoulder. He found that his hands were shaking.

‘Ambrose!’

Aunt Evalia, now wearing a thick, brown cloak over her dress, was beckoning him to where she stood with Uncle Adam at the door.

His feet were still bare, apart from their bandages. He picked himself up and hobbled over to Aunt Evalia. She gave him a quick squeeze of the arm.

‘Ambrose,’ she whispered again. ‘We must leave the house, and you must come with us. Be brave and do as we say. It will be all right.’

Ambrose looked to Uncle Adam, standing in full mail and holding his sword at the scabbard, and waited for him to say something. But Uncle Adam did not speak. His eyes stared unseeing at some point on the rush-strewn floor, as if he were trying to solve a puzzle that was too clever for him.

‘Can I have the letter back?’ Ambrose asked suddenly.

He could see it where it lay, among other papers on a little writing table against the wall. Now, if he was going to have to leave again, he wanted to take it with him.

Her eyes followed his, and saw it. ‘Why … ?’

‘She wrote it.’

‘Oh.’ Aunt Evalia looked at him, with a little frown. He could see that she had been wanting to ask what had happened, but there had been so many other things to worry about that she hadn't. He stood there thinking:
Not now. I don't want them to ask about her now
. But perhaps she
guessed something, for she said: ‘Of course, of course,’ and went over to bring it to him. Then she put her arms round his shoulders and gave him a hug. He had not asked for that.

The letter was a narrow strip of paper. On the inside was the short message that she had written, in that hurried dawn when they had woken to find that the ‘young wolf ‘ from the Kingdom had slipped away and gone up the hillside.

It was her writing. He had left so many things behind. He did not want to leave this, too. He put it carefully into the drawstring purse.

With a finger on her lips Aunt Evalia led him out of the door. It was night outside. The moon had not yet risen. He could barely see across the yard to the stockade, the outbuildings, and the wooden fence-gate through which they had staggered together just the day before. A big shape loomed out of the night beside him. It blew heavily. It was a horse.

Arms caught him and swung him upwards.

‘Up you go, sir,’ whispered the old groom in his ear.

The horse snorted and sidled away from him. There was a stirrup, and he managed to get his foot into it. His raw soles screamed at once, but as soon as his knee took his weight he was flung upwards like a sack, and was able to struggle into some sort of perch in front of the saddle.
Someone was climbing smoothly up behind him. That was Aunt Evalia. The groom moved to the horse's head. Ambrose clutched at the animal's mane and perched there, swaying. He was sitting on a rolled blanket that must have been put there for him. Behind, he felt Aunt Evalia settling herself into her seat. Her arms reached past him in the darkness and found the reins.

‘Quiet now, my dear,’ she whispered.

He thought her voice had a tremble in it.

Suddenly the horse began to move under them. The groom was leading it over to stand in the shadow of the stable by the gate. There they waited.