Beyond the Burning Lands (3 page)

“It offends your dignity?”

“I have been trained to fight,” I said, “to face wounding or death, even death by execution. But not to endure the mockery of curs. I saw polymufs grinning at me.”

“Your dignity is not important. That is something you have to learn.”

“But the dignity of the High Seers is?”

Murphy shook his head. “No. What is important is the restoration of human order and human knowledge. Everything must serve that.”

I looked at him angrily, in silence. He said:

“Remember that we made your father Prince and made you Prince in Waiting. We brought you from Winchester when there was a score of men eager to cut you down, confident that the new Prince, your brother, would thank them for it, and glad anyway to see one Perry the less. We have kept you in the Sanctuary and may yet restore you to this dignity which you prize so much.”

“Yet! In what time? Five years? Ten? Fifty, perhaps?”

“Sooner, I hope.” He relaxed and smiled. “How would you like to leave the Sanctuary and go back to Winchester, Luke?”

I shook my head. “Do not mock me, sir.”

“No mocking. I have a Christmas gift for you. Your brother seeks your return and pledges his word to your safety.”

I said, scarcely trusting myself to believe it: “This is not a joke?”

“News came this morning while you were in the stocks. Your brother is married to a Christian, as you know. The man they say was a god was born, they also say, on this day more than twenty-two centuries ago. Perhaps she asked it of your brother; the Christians' ways are strange.”

I thought of the Christians putting themselves between me and the mob. I wondered if they were still in the stocks, and still chanting.

I said: “It is really true? When do I leave?”

“You are eager to be rid of us,” Murphy said. “We return to the Sanctuary tomorrow and you will leave a few days after that.”

I believed it now and forgot my anger and my bruises. I forgot even the filth with which I was smeared. It was Murphy who reminded me of it. Sniffing, he said:

“A more urgent need is that you have a bath and change into clean linen. Our somber black for a while still. But because of your disgrace you will not appear at any ceremonies, nor sit solemn at the banquet. That is another good thing you get from today's misfortunes.”

E
ZZARD ACCOMPANIED ME ON MY
return to Winchester. It was accepted by Peter that my life had been in danger in the days following our father's murder and his own accession, and that the Seer had been right to take me away. That was the official story, but I imagined there was more to it. Though he had married a Christian Peter himself was a Spiritist, as far as he was anything, and so also were his Captains. It was not easy even for a strong Prince to defy the Seers for long.

We went on horseback, openly, Ezzard in Seer's robes and I in clothes befitting my rank. I wore also a sword, a parting gift from the High Seers: the Sword of the Spirits which had been promised to me when they came to Winchester after the taking of Petersfield. Handing it to me, Murphy said:

“Steel, case-hardened in an induction furnace. You will find no metal to come near it, and no blade that will match it in strength and cutting edge. Look after it and it will serve you well.”

We called at various towns on our way. Everywhere Ezzard let it be known that I was returning on my brother's invitation, thus binding his honor more firmly to my safety. The precaution, as he said, was probably unnecessary, but it was best to take no chances. So despite my impatience we did not hurry on the journey.

But at last, having spent the night as guests of its Prince, we left Andover in the morning and I had high hopes of reaching Winchester by night. The weather dashed these: a light fall of snow before midday turned, in the afternoon, into a driving blizzard. We had passed Headbourne Worthy, the nearest village north of the city, and had not much more than a mile to go. The distance was tantalizingly short but as the wind howled and the blinding snow drove into our faces, even I was forced to agree that we must seek shelter. We found it in a farm, where we were respectfully received and well looked after. They gave us tidings of the city, to which I listened greedily. The farmer and his wife had a son, a boy of twelve. He told me he had seen me win the Sword of Honor in the Contest, and recited a full account of it. His dream was to be a warrior, and I told him to come to me when he was of age and I would enlist him in my troop. He was deeply grateful for the promise, which I thought was likely to profit me also. He was a strong, capable lad, with the makings of a soldier. His mother was less pleased, since he was her only son, but she would reconcile herself to losing him: she must have known he was not the sort of boy to stay on a farm once he was grown.

I had feared, when we retired to bed with the blizzard still howling, that we might be immured in the farmhouse for days. The morning dawned clear, however, the sky gray but no longer threatening, and when the servants had cut a path through drifted snow to the stable we were able to leave. Our horses floundered at times where the snow was loosely packed but we made fair progress. I saw, even in this landscape blanketed in white, landmarks I knew: Wherry's mill, a clump of fir trees that leaned in toward each other like conspirators, a rusty crumbling shaft that came from the ancient times and was shunned by children, being thought to harbor ghosts. And beyond these, so familiar and so dear, the walls of my native city. I was home again. Turning my head so that Ezzard would not see, I put up my sleeve and brushed the dampness from my eyes.

•  •  •

If I had any doubts of my welcome they were dispelled by the shout of joy from the guard on the North Gate. Its Sergeant, who had been in my father's troop when he was still a Captain and whom I could remember, when I was five or six, fencing with me with wooden sticks for swords, gave me the ceremonial salute, and his men yelled their heads off in acclamation. The ordinary people took up the cry and followed us through the streets as we rode to the palace. And the news must have gone ahead because when we reached the palace yard many of the Captains were assembled. I saw Greene and Meredith and Nicoll, small watchful Harding who had hoped to he Prince after my father's death, and blustering Blaine who had cuffed me into a corner when I urged them to ride against our own walls to avenge him. I saw Edmund's brother, Charles, whose father had been Prince until my father, with Ezzard's help, unseated him. And last I saw my brother, who held that title which the Spirits, through Ezzard's trickery, had promised to me: Prince of Winchester.

I dismounted and let a soldier take my horse. I walked toward Peter, my feet sinking into snow which the polymufs had not yet had time to clear away. I bowed my head and said:

“Greetings, sire.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. He said, smiling:

“No ceremony between brothers! Come in, Luke, and we will drink your health.”

•  •  •

The day of my return had been proclaimed a feast, and in the evening there was to be a banquet in celebration. Meanwhile there was the confusion of people greeting me. Some were sincere; others, I very well knew, were not. Blaine, who fulsomely gave thanks to the Spirits for protecting me, would have liked to slip a dagger between my ribs. Harding, a more wily man, would have preferred to watch him, or any other, do it. But there were those like Sergeant Burke, who looked after me on my first campaign, and Wilson, my father's most trusted comrade, whose gladness was real and unmistakable. There was also Ann, the Prince's Lady.

I had seen little of her in the old days. The estrangement between Peter and me had kept me from visiting the house in the River Road where they lived; and of course she was a Christian and so of no importance in the city.

I had known her as a quiet, perhaps simple woman, without beauty or indeed much else to explain my brother's choosing her. When I paid my respects I found she had only one woman in attendance—my mother had never had less than half a dozen. This one she dismissed, if dismissal is the right term to use of what was no more than a request, modestly put, that we might be left alone together. She said:

“Let me look at you. Have they been taking proper care of you, your High Seers? You are paler than you were. And taller. And they have shaved your head, but that will soon grow. We shall see that mop of fierce black hair again before spring.”

I was surprised that she paid me such attention, or remembered me so well. And her smile surprised me with its warmth, and the way it changed a face which I had thought plain and insignificant. I made some sort of reply and she said:

“I cannot express how glad I am to see you, Luke. Not only for your sake but for Peter's. He could not be happy, knowing you were in exile and from fear of him. He would never have harmed you, and this reconciliation gladdens his heart. He has been so much happier since he asked the Seers to send you back and they agreed.”

And also, I guessed, since he had done that which was pleasing to his wife's strange Christian conscience. Nor had I any doubt that the main urging for my recall had come from her. Her influence over him was plainly great and this was something to be remembered. I could not see why it should be so—why a man should let any woman dominate his mind—but the fact that one did not understand a thing was no reason for not weighing its effects. There would not be many things in which Peter would run counter to her wishes.

I said: “I am glad to be back, my Lady.”

She shook her head. “Call me Ann, as your sister. My Lady is not a title I like, in any case. There is only one who merits it—the mother of our Lord.”

The Lord being, as Murphy had explained, the Christian god. It was puzzling to think of a god with a mother but I thought it best to ask no questions. I was not, in any case, interested in the oddities of their religion. We talked together for a time and kissed as brother and sister when we parted.

•  •  •

I had sent messages to Edmund and Martin, saying I would be at our usual meeting place at four of the afternoon. I got to the Ruins a little before that. I went down the stairs and, lighting my way with a candle, through the secret way to the hidden door and our den behind it. Inside I found an oil lamp which I lit. It was still strange not to command the bright steady light of electricity at the flick of a switch; the illumination from the lamp was dim and patchy, leaving shadows in the corners. But even by its feeble glow I could see that the place had fallen into disuse. Dust was thick on every surface. The chessboard was set out with pieces and a spider had stretched its web across them. That probably meant that Martin had been here last. It was he who was keen on chess problems and Edmund, in any case, would have tidied up before leaving: he could not bear disorder.

I heard footsteps. The door was pushed open and Edmund came in. He said:

“You are here before me, Luke.”

We looked at each other for a moment before I put out my hand and he took it in a firm grip. I remembered that he had offered to go with me into exile, and that when I escaped instead with Ezzard I had sent him no word. But the constraint between us came from my side, not his. I had looked forward so much to seeing him but did not know what to say. I said awkwardly:

“You do not come here now?”

“Not since you left.” He looked round the room. “Nor Martin, either, it would seem.”

“You have not been seeing Martin?”

He shrugged. “Now and then, by chance. He is busy with his studies and I have had my own concerns.”

We talked, but the awkwardness remained. I think we were both glad to hear Martin approaching. He came to me and shook hands also. Edmund began to shake with laughter. I asked him:

“What is it? A good joke?”

It took him a moment to control himself sufficiently to speak. He said, gasping:

“It was the sight of the pair of you—those two shaved heads . . .”

Martin stared at him owlishly: he had taken to wearing spectacles since I last saw him and the effect, together with the long black robe of an Acolyte, was slightly comic. I realized I must look nearly as odd, if not odder, in warrior's leather but with a naked skull, and laughed as well. Martin joined in. We stood there, the small chamber echoing with our laughter, and the feeling of strangeness and uncertainty dissolved in it.

“Thank the Great yours is only temporary,” Edmund said to me, still laughing. “I would have felt truly forsaken had you both turned Acolyte. And one could not rule out the possibility, Luke, since you were living in the Sanctuary with the High Seers. They might well have talked you into it!”

“It would need a great deal of talking,” I said. “And there is such a thing as aptitude. I do not think the High Seers ever fancied me as a recruit to the Order.”

“They cropped your head.”

“There was a reason for that.”

I was on the point of saying that they had cropped their own as well before I remembered to guard my tongue. Edmund, flinging himself onto one of the chairs and sitting backward astride it, said:

“But what is it like there? Is it true that you get to the Sanctuary by climbing up a rainbow? And that you eat clouds and drink butterfly milk? What have you been doing all the time you have been away?”

Martin said quickly: “He cannot tell us about it. It is forbidden for him to tell or for us to listen.”

In this same place Edmund had asked Martin, newly made an Acolyte, about the secrets he had learned and I, on his behalf, had said much the same as he was saying now. I had not guessed what secrets there might be, nor how soon I would be made privy to them. I wondered how much Martin himself knew; even with him I dared not speak freely of what I had seen.

I said: “It is all dull stuff, anyway. Tell me what has been happening here in Winchester since I've been gone.”