The Widow and the King (17 page)

‘Sir, your house is not in order. The blood of one son has been shed. The doings of the other are not to be spoken of, and yet may bring us all grief. This lies at
your
door, sir, and it is for
you
to put it right!’

Once more the two locked eyes across the room.

‘I shall do – what is necessary.’

‘With wisdom, sir. With wisdom. Act without it and worse may yet fall.’

Wastelands was about to answer when the monk broke in.

‘My lady, if I may, and before the baron departs, I have a question for him.’

‘Ask it, Martin,’ said the Widow.

‘What of the boy's mother?’

Wastelands drew breath. Ambrose could see that he
was angry – more angry than he had ever known him, because of what the Widow had said about his son.

‘He speaks not of her, save to say that she is dead,’ he said slowly. ‘Yet I myself met with her after he had left her, in a place in the mountains. I did not see her come. I did not see her go. But I saw her breath frosting on the air, and she spoke with me. This was no ghost. I will swear it on the Flame of Heaven!’

He bowed and left the room. His mailed heels clattered spitefully in the corridor outside. At a nod from the Widow, a guard followed him. Ambrose stood on his own, among all those strange people. His legs were trembling. He felt weak. He felt ill.

The Widow was still looking at the door through which Wastelands had disappeared. Suddenly, she chuckled. The men around her stirred, and some of them smiled.

‘In truth,’ said the Widow. ‘We must bite a coin to know whether it is good or not. What shall we say of this penny that has turned up again?’

‘That he was indeed bitten, my lady, and felt so when he left your presence.’

‘But the taste in my mouth, Hervan. Is it good or not, do you think?’

The counsellor, a dapper man in a red doublet and gold chain, pulled a face.

‘Any man who arrives suddenly with a pretender to two great houses, and possibly the throne, deserves suspicion. I would have laid money that he wished to enlist us in some plot, or at least to ransom or use the boy for some end of his. Your offer of haven for one tested him, as no doubt you intended …’

‘Flatter me not, man, but I did.’

‘Yet he asked nothing for himself, and so, for my judgement, did he prove his purpose honest. From what he said of the boy's mother, I judge that he very much desires that she should yet be alive, whatever the truth may be. Perhaps it is some feeling for her that has led him to act as he has done.

‘More, he said that he would now ride to aid Septimus against the rising of Velis. If he is honest in this as well, we may judge that a plot for the crown was never part of his thinking.’

‘Padry?’ said the Widow.

‘I would say so,’ said a fat man in a green gown, whose round face bore a fringe of clipped beard. ‘Though I would also say that his resolve to join with Septimus came upon him when he learned that his son followed Velis, and not before.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Widow. ‘How far is the Kingdom fallen, that for the son to take one side is cause for the father to take the other!’

‘Yet I thought also that he meant to test
you
, my lady,’ said the counsellor in red. ‘With his talk of riding to Septimus.’

There was a subtle change in the stance of the men, as though this was something they knew the Widow did not want to discuss.

‘Did he, or do you?’ said the Widow, eyeing him sourly.

The red counsellor bowed. Ambrose wondered if the man was about to get into trouble.

‘Septimus will send for your help, my lady. He has lost much. You will have to make some sort of answer.’

‘Have I not enough weary business that I must make war as well?’ cried the Widow.

‘War, yet again? Will it never end?’

The men were silent, waiting for her.

‘Septimus is poorly placed now,’ she said at length. ‘What Lackmere can throw into the scales will not save him. We all know that. Even what we here could do might not be enough, and yet would cost us everything for a king who has never paid heed to his support in the Kingdom. No, I will not stir for Septimus.’

There was a slight murmur among the men. Ambrose had only half-understood what they were saying, but he could tell that not all of the counsellors were happy with that answer. The Widow must have felt it, too, but she was ignoring it. She was looking at him.

‘It is a bad time to be a pretender without friends.’

Answer fairly, Mother had always told him. Tell the truth, fairly, and least harm will come – although that had mostly been about when she caught him stealing honey from the store.

‘I don't pretend to anything,’ he said, and his voice was hoarse.

‘Call me “My Lady” or “Your Grace” when you speak with me. Do you pretend to be hungry, boy?’

His mouth was open to answer at once, when a thought came to him.

It came to him suddenly and clearly, like a whisper in his head.

It is a trick
, it said.

It was a trick.

He swallowed, and looked into the eyes of the Widow.

‘I'm not pretending about that, my lady,’ he said.

Someone grunted. Surprise? Laughter? He did not know this place.

The Widow leaned back in her chair. ‘So. We will have food brought up to you.’ She looked at the man in the green gown. He nodded and, still smiling, made his way out of the room.

‘Can you read?’ she asked.

‘Yes – my lady.’

‘Read this.’

In her hand – it seemed to have come from nowhere – was a small book. She held it out to him with her finger marking a page. He had to take three steps towards her before he could focus on the tiny, beautiful writing.

‘There is no treasure but Truth,’ he began slowly.

‘There is no Truth but Wisdom. There is no Wisdom, but from Learning, and Learning is won by the devotion of hours, years, days and nights to the works of Nature and the Treasures of Truth that others have gathered.’ The page ended there. He looked up at her, wondering if this was another trick. But it seemed not.

‘Good. Someone has made you not altogether worthless. Do you know it?’

‘No – my lady. Is it a prayer?’

‘Of a sort, yet it is addressed to no angel. Nevertheless I see that you read fairly; and that, hungry or not, you can think as well.’ She jerked her chin to the low stool by the fire in the room. He made his way over and sat in the warmth, conscious of his damp and ragged clothes, and the aching famine inside him.

They were still watching him. He shifted on the
stool, but there was nowhere else he could go.

‘Your cut-throat friend would have me make you a page,’ the Widow said at length. ‘To learn gentle manners and how to empty a man's skull of his brains with a sword. I will do better for you. In my house I keep places for fortynine scholars. Their family is no matter to me. The poorer the better, so long as they have the wit to study with my wise men, and carry out into the world what they have learned. You will join them. And for your safety, and my peace, I think we shall not speak to any of your line. You are an orphan, found by a traveller, and brought to my charity. That is a story common enough in this cold time. We shall choose a new name for you …’ She paused, and looked around at the men.

‘His mother's father was of Trant. Trant's badge was the oak-leaf, if I remember. Shall we call him Acorn? Wisgrave, what do you think? Acorn?’

‘Is it not a little obvious, my lady? Better a name with no reference to his family, no meaning at all.’

‘All names have a meaning in my house, sir. Hervan – what is your thought?’

‘That it might be both more true and more safe to make a name of the signs of both houses, the Moon and the Oak. So I say
Monak,
which will mean little to those who do not understand.’

‘Except that you all but call him
Monarch
, and I would have no whisper of that.’

‘Perhaps
Monk
, then …’

It was a game, Ambrose thought. The moon was for his father and the oak-leaf for his mother. The men were tossing them and his name between them, and the winner
would be the one who could make his name disappear. His name was almost the last thing he had.

‘Since you have called the Monk, we should let our Monk speak. Martin, help us …’

The bald monk smiled.

‘Let us use my friend Hervan's idea, my lady, and yet change it just a little. If we mix the words for Oak and Moon in the old speech, we reach the name
Luquercunas
, which …’

‘Which stretches the mouth too far …’

‘Which, as I was about to say, my lady, we may shorten swiftly to
Luke
.’

‘A point to you, sir,’ said the Widow. ‘I think you have it.’

‘Luke,’ said the red counsellor eagerly, ‘recalls a heathen god of the sun, as I think my friend Martin will allow. The sun stands for royalty, and therefore …’ He let the end of his sentence dangle in the air.

The Widow smiled wryly. ‘In truth,’ she said, ‘the boy's calling shines through all effort to obscure it. No, sirs, “Luke” is plain, and yet speaks to those of us who have understanding. Enough. But I want no talk that the son of Tarceny is in my house – not even to those close friends and counsellors of ours who chance not to be here this morning – or men will say that I am plotting to put him on the throne. Hervan, you will instruct the guard who left with Baron Lackmere in this as soon as we are finished. And you, boy. Understand that it is a risk for me and all my house that you are here. It pleases me to take this risk, and to forgive you the wrong your house has done me, because I hold you innocent. But from now on your name is Luke,
and you do not know your father. Be faithful to me in this, and study well, and I shall consider myself repaid.’

Ambrose nodded, supposing that he could not disagree.

‘Here is food for you, then.’

The man Padry had been standing at the door for the past few minutes, with a small tray in his hand. He placed it on the ground in front of Ambrose's stool – nervously, as if Ambrose were a stray dog that might bite. Ambrose looked at the tray, and his mouth tickled at once with juices. There was a loaf, and legs of cold, small meat of a kind he had never seen before. He gave up trying to follow the talk, and wolfed at the food. There was wine, too, of a rich pungency that swam in his head as he drank his way cautiously toward the bottom of the bowl.

He understood that the Widow had tested him, swiftly and ruthlessly – not only with the reading, but also in the question:
Do you pretend to be hungry?
It had indeed been a trick. If he had just said ‘yes’ or even ‘no’ – which, under her stern look, he might have done – he would have got nothing. But somehow his brain had picked it up. It almost made him shiver to think how close he had been to going wrong. But he had got it right. He could be pleased about that. And now he was being fed.

And with food moving into his belly he could look at the world differently. He could see, through a square window behind the Widow's chair, the brown lines of hills that he had travelled to come here. Out there were the comfortless places where barns stood ruined and fields all run to seed. That was where he had seen his mother fall, crumpling under the blow at the clifftop. That was where Wastelands was going, where enemies still roamed with
steel in their hands. The walls between there and here were deep, hard stone. He could measure the casement of the window with his eye. The depth of it was longer than his arm's reach – maybe twice as long. And now these people had taken his name, and put it beyond the walls with all the rest. They had made him into someone else. He could still feel his sadness, but it had moved a little further from him. Here inside there was fire and food. He was beginning to feel warm, and braver about being left on his own.

And he was beginning for the first time to feel sorry for Wastelands. He wished, now, that they had liked one another better. He felt that they should have done. Perhaps it had been his fault that they had failed.

The bald monk had passed Mother's letter to the Widow.

‘She writes
He is loose
,’ he was saying.

‘I think I can guess who she meant by
He
. Pity that she has told us so little.’ The Widow looked at the writing.

‘So what has she told us, Martin?’

‘Enough to support our fears about the fall of Watermane. Velis, or one close to him, may be following the same road that Tarceny did ten years ago.’

‘Then Velis is in great peril.’

The monk seemed surprised.

‘Indeed, my lady. Although I own that I thought more of Septimus, who for all his faults is a man of honour and must contend against this thing.’

The Widow sighed. ‘Septimus is finished. I can do nothing for him. I say that to you now, sir. If I must fight
the ghost of Tarceny, then fight I will. But I will do it in my own way – in wisdom, not war.’

They were standing around her, waiting for her.

‘Martin, I would that you go to Velis.’

‘I? And say what?’

‘Not as an ambassador, but as a counsellor. I shall write a letter for you to carry. You are my gift to him. I release you from my service, that you may serve him as you have served me. Watch for witchcraft, for untruth, for wanton cruelty. When you see them, speak against them. Velis is a pup, suckled on war. If he achieves the throne, he will need your help to bring peace.’

‘As – as I am commanded, my lady.’

‘Good, then. It remains therefore that we prepare our answer for Septimus when he should send … What is it, Martin?’

‘My lady – if I am to accept this charge, I beg leave to withdraw.’

‘What, to put your head in a bucket, sir? In faith, but I thought you stronger of stomach!’

Ambrose saw that the Widow wanted the monk to laugh with her, and also that the monk was not in a mood for laughing. He smiled, tightly.

‘I would speak again with the Baron Lackmere before he departs. He may tell me more of his son's doings than could confirm our guesses. Also I would speak with him of the mother of – of our Luke here. She was friend to me, too.’