Unexpected Magic (52 page)

A
lex was woken by Everard exclaiming. He rolled over to find that the Prince had crawled out of the straw, leaving a cold prickly space. Alex began to shiver before he was properly awake. The dungeon was full of mist from the half-frozen moat outside and cut in two by a bright line of sunlight from the grating. Everard was in the sunlight and the mist, like an angel in a church window, looking up at the grating.

“Come here and look,” he said.

Alex crawled out of the straw and went over to him. The first thing he noticed was a long cascade of icicles hanging between the bars, which made him shiver more. Then he realized that what had made Everard exclaim were the bars of the grating themselves. They were new. They could not have been more than a week old. The iron was still dull gray and where there was rust it was in red-brown trickles.

Under the clustered ice Alex could see the fresh chisel-marks, where the old bars had been hacked away to make room for the new.

“Seven days old,” said Everard. “Not more.”

“Newer than that, surely,” said Alex. “Think how damp it is in here. They might rust like that in a day, or even overnight.”

“Yesterday,” said Everard, “I would have said you were condemned out of your own mouth and that Towerwood gave orders for these bars after talking to you on the road to Falleyfell. Today I am not so sure. Tell me truthfully, Alex. Are you in league with Towerwood?”

“No,” said Alex. “Of course I am not. I hate him as much as you do. The first time I saw his face I hated him more than anyone I had ever met.” He looked drearily up at the grating and saw another day of arguing and fighting ahead. They would probably go on like this until they were too weak with hunger to argue any more. Not that he blamed Everard for his suspicions. Anyone in his shoes must feel that they would never trust anyone again. “Oh!” he said. “Let us not spend the rest of our lives quarreling—er—Your Highness. It is not worth it.”

“I agree,” Everard answered. “It is not worth it. I had made up my mind that I would not, once I had asked you that. And, in fact, I think the order for these bars was given before Towerwood set eyes on you. It is a good day's work to fix them in solid stone. He had planned to confine me here, I am sure, before ever you arrived. Your presence is a refinement, but I wished to know if you had consented to it or not.”

“I never did,” Alex said. He was so relieved at Everard's peacemaking that he let his jaw loose and his teeth began to chatter.

“Come back to the straw,” said Everard. “There is some chance that we will die of cold before ever we starve.”

They sat face to face in the straw, both shivering. Alex saw that the Prince's black eye was going away. It was only pale yellow now. Yesterday must have been its last most colorful day. He told Everard so. Everard laughed.

“An eye for an eye,” he said. “Except yours is a bump the size of a pigeon's egg on your forehead.”

Alex felt his forehead indignantly and had to admit that Everard had got his own back. “I am sure,” he told Everard, “that this is what would please Towerwood—to come back at the end of the week to find us both with two fresh black eyes. We should call it off and spite him.”

Everard nodded and held up one hand with two fingers crossed. “Barley,” he said.

Alex was pleased to find they had this custom in common. “Barley,” he said. “I am glad you know that too.”

“As well as Humpty-Dumpty. But I had rather be called Everard.” Everard smiled and held out his hand. They shook hands and then Everard asked: “By the way, what did you mean by Habeas Corpus? Is it some kind of legal term?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” said Alex. “From Magna Carta—but I suppose you will not have heard of that either.” He explained about it, as far as he could, and about the barons and King John. “So now,” he said, “even the most obvious criminal is given a trial. No one can be locked up simply on suspicion or because someone wants them out of the way.”

“Like you and me?” said Everard. “I see that the Outsiders have a point there. Alex, I promise you that if we ever get free from here I shall institute Habeas Corpus in this Principality. I come to see that there is a crying need for it.” Alex laughed. “I am not joking,” Everard said haughtily. Then he laughed too, but not very happily. “What a castle in the air!”

As if to point out to Everard how hopeless it was to discuss Habeas Corpus, someone rattled the bolts and chains on the door. The two of them sat where they were and watched their jailer slide a hatch aside at the bottom of the door and push another cup and plate through onto the doorstep inside the dungeon. Alex longed for his knife as he watched. One could have stabbed the jailer through the hatchway and there was room for a boy to wriggle through the opening. As the hatch slammed shut, he shrugged his shoulders and got up to go for the food. Everard had stood up first, though, and it was he who collected their breakfast and brought it to the jailbird's nest with a very gloomy face.

“Last night was generous compared to this,” he said. “Alex, I do not want to make another argument, but I feel you should eat it.”

“No,” said Alex. “We share as long as we possibly can.”

“That will not be long,” Everard answered. “Look.” There was rather less than half a slice of dry brown bread and the water in the cup scarcely covered the bottom.

“We can suck those icicles for water,” Alex said, and firmly broke the bread into two. He was very hungry by now, and the thought of losing this bread in another fight was almost unbearable. Everard, to his relief, took his half without saying any more. They lay in the straw beside the plate eating the bread crumb by crumb to make it last. Alex foresaw a time when they would quarrel about crumbs, but he hoped it was still a long way off.

Everard was picking up crumbs with the end of one finger and licking them first before he ate them. “Castles in the air are very comforting,” he said. “I shall build some more, if you will help by telling me that they are unreal. I rely on you for that, Alex. This crumb is a partridge. I shall have that when we are free. And this crumb is bigger. It is a boar's head—no, a whole side of venison. We will have that too.”

Alex did not think Everard was being wise. It seemed to him the way to drive oneself mad. He said so.

“Thank you,” said Everard. “Say that every five minutes. Oh, Alex, I thought last night I would be mad by the morning. Everything seemed a castle in the air. I was going to be a good Prince, as good as my father, if not better. I was going to be able to live on the island—we say here that it is the mark of a truly good Prince if he can be on the island and the Principality Over the Water is still safely at peace. Now see what I have come to, caught up in my own wise edicts, and all my dreams are down to taking Endwait from Towerwood again so that I can have this wretched dungeon filled in.”

Alex changed his mind about Everard's castles in the air. Perhaps reality was worse. “Yes, by all means fill in this dungeon. But I hope you will do something more to Towerwood than take Endwait away from him. These crumbs have made me thirsty.” He got up and tried jumping for the icicles at the grating. It was no good. He was not tall enough to reach.

Everard came and jumped for icicles too. He managed to break them off one each and they sucked them. They tasted vile, of dust and rust and pond-weed. Everard shuddered. “These will give us some disease, I imagine. Yes, I will do worse to Towerwood, never fear, but he must be properly arraigned for High Treason. It will not do to be spiteful. And yet, now I think about it, this is what everyone has said of Towerwood. ‘Let us not be spiteful.' So we have been too fair and kind and he has thrived out of all proportion.”

“So you did know he was nasty?” Alex said. “I have been wondering why he came to be so powerful, when no one can look at him without thinking: Here is a brutal monster out for what he can make.”

“What could we do?” asked Everard. “He has never done wrong before, for all his faults.”

“Really? To look at him you would say he has done nothing else all his life. Surely, Everard, there must have been something. For instance, how did he come to be Count of Gairne? Did he have any claim to be that?”

Everard put his head down and his hands in his hair and nodded. Alex could see that his question had brought up the Prince's saddest thoughts, and he could have kicked himself for asking it. “Yes,” said Everard. “He has every claim. He had the lands and title in compensation for the death of his son.”

“I am sorry. I did not realize he had a son. How did this son die?”

Alex hoped that Towerwood's son would have nothing to do with Everard's sadness, but when Everard answered, he could have kicked himself again. “His son was my father's squire. They were both killed together in the garden here.” Everard looked angrily up at Alex with tears in his eyes and Alex would have done anything to stop this line of talk, but Everard said: “I know you have met Robert. I know that you like him. I was very fond of him and he is my cousin. But I came into the garden as Robert was coming out and Robert was carrying the squire's dagger all covered in blood. Not only was my father his Prince and his uncle, but Bertram of Towerwood was Robert's foster brother. It could not be worse, Alex. And I suppose Robert thought, since I was not of age, that he was likely to be the next Prince. Towerwood was right to insist I—” Everard stopped suddenly. Alex guessed he was crying. He was very glad not to hear any more for the moment. It was all too horrible. He wanted not to think about the way they had entertained a strange weary outlaw who had confessed to murdering one uncle and not to the other. He was angry not to have known of this. Robert had seemed noble and sad, when they had got over his strangeness—and he had been extremely kind to Alex when he saw how frightened he was. But then he would if he had needed a night's lodging. Then suddenly, Alex had a complete change of feeling. Robert had been nice. Towerwood was nasty and he had been even more horrible to Everard than to Alex. It seemed to Alex that if one worked backward from that, then there was a chance that Towerwood had been the villain of the piece all along.

“Look here—” he said.

“Do you know—” Everard said at the same moment.

“Go on,” said Alex.

“I was going to say that Towerwood had insisted that all the nobles took the oath of loyalty to me. They were most of them at Endwait, you see, with my father. But then I realized that there had been no question of anyone's loyalty. Robert never claimed the coronet then or later. He had his heralds proclaim his innocence all over the realm, but he never said he was Prince, although I am sure the people would have accepted him if he had. It is Towerwood who is to marry my mother and claim the coronet.”

“So it looks as if—Everard, what kind of person was Towerwood's son?”

“It seems terrible to say it, but he was terrified of his father. When Towerwood was not there he was very likeable, though somewhat of a weak character. My father used to try to keep Bertram apart from Towerwood, because of the way he terrified him. Robert would take Bertram hunting whenever Towerwood was at court. Bertram admired Robert tremendously.”

“Did Robert like Bertram?”

“Yes. As I said, they were foster brothers. They were brought up together in Gairne. Bertram's mother was Robert's nurse. The Towerwoods are a fairly humble family, you see.”

“You have not really told me what Robert thought of Bertram. I think that is very important, Everard, because you said Robert was carrying Bertram's dagger.”

Everard threw two handfuls of straw in the air in irritation. “But I
have
—Do you not know what it means, to be someone's foster brother? Do you not have such ties Outside? It is far closer than if they had been truly brothers. It is held sacred here.”

“Then—” said Alex.

“Yes, yes,” said Everard. “I am there before you. I saw what a fool I was the moment I realized that Robert had not wished to be Prince. And it was Towerwood who suggested that I outlaw Robert forthwith. If he had been arraigned for High Treason in Council, as he should have been, the whole realm would have seen the truth. But I could not bring myself to have Robert meet a traitor's end—he would have been cut into portions, Alex—or now, I see, Bertram would have been, even though he had killed himself.”

Alex began throwing straw about now. “Stop, Everard! I cannot understand yet. You think Towerwood made his son kill your father. Do you think he really relied on the poor lad to kill himself afterward?”

Everard said: “Towerwood despised Bertram. I am sure he knew that was what he would do. Just as I imagine he hopes I am now going mad in your company. I think he likes using people—as he is using you. And I imagine that if he made sure that Bertram killed my father when Robert was by, he knew that if Bertram did not kill himself, then Robert might well take the blame himself. And I think he might have done.”

“No,” said Alex, “that does not sound at all likely. You are just letting your ideas run away with you, Everard. I think you are right that the whole thing was Towerwood's doing—it seems as if it
must
be, but he could not have relied on Robert to take the blame.
Did
Robert take the blame? Did you ask him before you outlawed him?”