The Fatal Child (10 page)

Outside her window there was a big green hill rising to the sky. That was all she could see. On the other side of the house, she knew, there was much more. There were huts and houses, lots and lots of them, covering an area bigger even than the whole of the clearing at home. And round them was a great wooden fence, taller than the red knight’s head. And beyond that was the water – a huge, sparkling lake of water, running on and on to the horizon. She had not known that it was possible to have so much water in one place.

The woman who kept the house brought broth in to her. She did not let Melissa have very much but said there would be more tomorrow. It tasted very good and Melissa wanted more of it. She lifted her head so that her eyes could follow the pot. The pot was still in the room, because the woman who held it had stopped in the doorway, waiting for someone in the corridor to pass.

It was two of the other women of the house. They were carrying an older woman who seemed to be sick. Behind them walked a girl about Melissa’s age.

At once Melissa’s eyes left the pot and followed the
girl, for the instant that she was framed in the doorway. Her face was pale and her dark gown was in tatters, but she walked (Melissa thought) like a proud buck deer. She was not helping the others or saying anything to them. She was letting them lead the way for her. Melissa remembered her long after they had all gone.

She remembered the girl’s face clearly, smooth and pale and … well, it had made itself noticed, the way that a forest flower did peeping through the ragged ferns with its bright colours and shaped petals exactly in place. Mam had once told her that when people died and went to Heaven they all had beautiful faces and were never hungry again. Melissa, who had seen so few people her own age in her life, wondered quietly if somehow she had just glimpsed herself in Heaven, and if so, how close to dying and going there she was now.

Knocks and noises and voices sounded all the time. The house was full. And outside, in the other buildings, there were yet more people. Some of them lived here. They farmed the fields, herded the animals and went out onto the lake in boats. And then there were even more people, who like Melissa and the red knight and everyone else in the house did not live here but had come to the town to wait. They were all waiting.

They were waiting for the King.

‘Now Michael guard us,’ said Lex in the cool air of the dawn.

‘And Raphael guide our way,’ agreed Padry. ‘For we are far from home.’

They left the stable, where their men-at-arms were preparing in silence for a return to Tuscolo, and led their horses across the courtyard to the gateway of Lackmere castle. Raymonde was waiting for them. He ran his eye over the mounts.

‘You must lead them today,’ he said. ‘It is not good ground for horses. They will be happier if you are at their heads.’

Lex and Padry exchanged looks. What – walk, leading a beast, the day long? What kind of ground was this?

‘Highness?’ said Raymonde.

‘I am here.’

The gaunt shape of Talifer emerged from the darkness of the gate-tunnel, which Padry could have sworn had been empty a moment before. He was again wearing his helmet. But the cloak hung loosely about him and in the early daylight Padry could see for sure how long his limbs truly were – long, and thin like a spider’s. No man had arms and legs like that. Padry guessed that for all their frail look they might be very strong.

‘These are the land-dues for my father,’ Raymonde said, handing the ancient prince a purse. ‘And say to him also that his house and his son still wait on his homecoming.’

Talifer nodded silently.

So, thought Padry. The Baron Lackmere was at the side of the ‘Hidden King’. What did that signify? A holding like Lackmere’s would not tip the scales of
power in the Kingdom. But it was not nothing, either.

Raymonde looked at Padry. Words did not come easily to either of them. An air of embarrassment hung between them.

‘I bid you fare well, Master Chancellor,’ said Raymonde eventually.

‘I – am grateful to you for our night’s lodging,’ Padry managed.

‘Are you? I am glad to hear it. Maybe one day you will yet be grateful that I breathe and walk the earth.’

There was nothing Padry could say to that. He took his horse’s reins.

‘Follow me,’ said Talifer.

Raymonde himself lifted the bar on the gate and pulled the great door inwards. They started forward. Lex, leading, stopped with an exclamation.

The land had changed.

They were not looking down on the thorn forest through which they had ridden the previous day. They were looking across a plain of dry brown boulders under a colourless sky. In the distance, in all directions, the ground rose and rose into what seemed to be a great wall of mountains, so that the horizon was far above their heads. The air was thick and heavy, a perpetual twilight. There was a strange humming in the air, so low that Padry could not so much hear it as feel it rising through his bones.

Their strange guide had walked ten paces into the rocks and turned, waiting for them. Padry looked around helplessly.

‘That is your way,’ said Raymonde, grinning at him.

With a dry clatter of hooves Lex led his mount forward. The sounds were distorted, as if the air through which they travelled were as thick as water.

‘What is this place?’ Padry heard him say.

‘It is the world as its mother sees it,’ said Talifer. He looked back at Padry. ‘Come.’

‘Those lights …’

There were two lights, burning close together like low stars on what seemed to be a distant mountain ridge. One was a little brighter than the other.

‘Oh, that’s the dragon,’ said Raymonde, grinning more broadly. ‘But don’t worry. He doesn’t eat travellers. He’s too busy holding the world together.’

A
dragon?
Padry took a step back. His eyes searched the dimness. He could see nothing – nothing that might not have been mountain wall, and the two lights that burned on the very rim like huge and distant fires.

Dragons were an idea, a myth! They were an image for meditation. A dragon carved from walnut dangled at his own belt. They should not be a
thing-
a thing so vast that it could circle the whole world! What was this? It must be some trickery! It must be …

Witchcraft.

Panic rose in him as he dithered in the gateway. He gripped his horse’s reins. Lex and the monstrous guide were waiting.

‘Come,’ said Talifer again.

With a jerk of will Padry stepped forward. His mount followed. The gate of Lackmere clattered shut behind him and disappeared. He stood in the middle
of a brown waste that ran in all directions. There was no Path before his feet.

She could not lie down for ever. She was not made that way.

Melissa crawled from her pallet. The floor was smooth, but dusty and stained. For the first time she looked properly at the boards. Someone had cut those things from wood, she thought. They must have cut a whole tree to do it, and then cut the trunk into flat bits. How had they done that? You couldn’t do that with just an axe. And
then
they had somehow smoothed the flat bits down so that when she ran her finger over them, drawing a pattern in the dust, they were silky and splinterless to touch. She had not seen wood like this before.

Last night she had wondered if she were near Heaven. But this wasn’t Heaven, was it? It wasn’t Heaven just because there were things she had not seen before.

Her palms pushed the boards away beneath her. One hand went to the wall to steady herself. She got her feet together under her. She could not have said why she was doing this, when really there was no longer any reason to do anything any more. But she had spent every waking moment of her life doing things. Her body felt wrong, lying down when it was not sick. Besides, she had heard noises.

In that strange day in a strange house, she stood on her own two feet.

She was still wearing her smock – the same smock
in which she had run from her home when the raiders came. The red knight had said that she stank. She supposed she must stink even more now. But there was no stream to wash in. She pushed the hair back from her eyes. She had nothing to tie it with. She listened.

It was mid-morning. Daylight had come hours ago and she had gone on sleeping, just like the day before. The house was not quite still but she could tell that most people were out. This was the time when everyone was busy.

Not everyone. She heard it again – the noise that had made her get up. It sounded like a harsh giggle, coming from one of the rooms nearby. But it wasn’t a laugh. It was something else.

The giggle broke into coughing, and then became a thin whimpering that wavered and faded but would not die away.

Melissa did not cry much herself. Until a few days ago she would have said that no matter how bad things were, they always got better after a bit. And when she did weep – with pain after a beating, or something – she would do it silently, because if she had made too much noise when Mam or Dadda were angry, she might have been beaten again. ‘
What’s the use of crying? Crying never fed anyone.’
And that was true, so she would always stop as soon as she could.

She did not like this sound. It was so weepy and so … so …

She just did not like it.

The press of the floorboards felt strange beneath
her bare soles. Her knees shook but they held her. She stepped out into the corridor. The noises came from an open door a few paces away. She tiptoed unsteadily to it and peered in.

It was a long room in which many people had spent the night. Their things were all over the floor. But only two people were in it now. One was a woman, still lying in a pallet bed. A hillwoman. Melissa knew the look. And she could tell, too, that the woman was sick. The thin little face was even thinner than it should be. It turned restlessly this way and that on the rough bundle that pillowed its head. The eyes were screwed tight. The mouth was open, and from it came the thin wails that had brought Melissa limping down the corridor.

The woman was sick. She was in fever. One hand was fumbling uselessly at the rough blankets that were drawn over her. Was she too hot or too cold? Too hot, probably. But she could not push her coverings away. Maybe she couldn’t even hear the noise she was making.

On a low stool beside the bed sat another figure, wearing a brown habit and hood. It was sitting very still with its back very straight. At first sight it seemed smaller than a person should be, so that Melissa wondered if it was not some strange object cut out of wood.

Then the head turned. The Face looked at her.

It was the girl she had seen in the corridor the day before. She knew it because of the Face. Those strong brows, those eyes – they jumped at once in her mind.

She was the same age as Melissa, or maybe a little older. But she was also smaller. Melissa had always thought that the less you got to eat in your life the smaller you were. This girl looked as though she had always had enough to eat. Her skin was good and what Melissa could see of her hair and nails was good. Her clothes were plain but there was no roughness on her hands. She was just small and that was that. She was pale, too. And – when you looked closely – her mouth was pulled down just a little at the corners and there were marks below her eyes, as if she had not been sleeping so well. Immediately Melissa wanted to know her and also to comfort her. She hobbled forward, ignoring the woman in the bed, for she was drawn to the girl like a moth to flame.

‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘Do you need help?’

The girl did not reply. She turned her head away and sat just as she had been sitting when Melissa had first looked in.

Melissa crouched down beside her. She found it easier to kneel on the floor than to stand on trembling legs. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

There was no answer.

‘Is that your – your friend?’ Melissa asked, nodding at the figure in the bed. She had been going to ask,
Is that your mother?
But the girl beside her did not look like one of the hill people.

‘It’s my servant,’ said the girl. Her voice was empty.

Melissa looked at the still figure in the pallet. She had heard about servants – people who dressed and looked after other, very rich people, and were able to
live in big houses, eat well and wear wonderful clothes because of it. She had thought that servants must be very lucky.

And the girl must be one of the very rich people herself – one of the people whom Melissa had always thought must be very happy, because of all the luck they had had and because they would never ever be cold or tired or hungry. And instead of being happy she was sad. What could make a person with so much luck so unhappy?

The hillwoman had stopped her noise. Her breath was coming in short, uneven gasps. Her face was so thin that Melissa could see the shape of the skull within it. She seemed neither to see nor hear what went on in the room. One hand still plucked at the blanket. And a corner of Melissa’s mind wondered why, if the woman was too hot, the beautiful girl beside her had not just reached out and turned the blanket back.

‘She’s dying,’ said the girl.

She said it crossly, as if she thought the woman was stupid for dying and Melissa was stupid for having to be told.

Melissa hesitated. Then she put an arm around the girl, meaning to hold her as she and Mam had held one another when poor baby Clara had at last gone still between them. But the girl’s shoulders were lumpy and hard. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she said.

And then: ‘You must go away.’

Melissa felt helpless. ‘Do the people here know—?’ she began.

‘It’s horrible here,’ said the girl.

Meaning
No, they didn’t
, Melissa supposed. Maybe the girl had tried to tell them and they hadn’t understood. Or maybe she thought they, too, ought to know without being told.

‘Shall I go down for you?’ she asked.

She remembered that the red knight might be down below. He might be angry if he saw she had left the room where he had put her. But she wanted to do something for these people – for the sick woman, and above all for the girl beside her. Red knight or not, she had offered to go down. She had meant it.