The Children of the King (17 page)

“Ha ha!” The Queen pounced. “The dodo isn’t dead yet, dummy!”

The girls stared at each other, stunned by this uncharacteristic brilliance on Cecily’s part. “Well, the King isn’t here,” said May lamely, “and now I’m going to — to — send in the bear!” She waved the sword at Byron. “Fetch her, loyal bear! Grab the hag by the hair!”

But Byron was sniffing an arena of grass where fox cubs had tussled during the night, and did not answer the call of duty beyond a noncommittal wave of his tail. “Go!” said May, slashing her sword; the magnificent tail waved. “Oh bear!” cried May, feeling her material growing thin. “What can you smell? Is it the blood of my poor brother Clarence?”

“I hope so,” cackled the Queen. “I’m glad he’s dead dead dead!”

“I’m not,” said May, and there was something in her voice that Cecily might have noticed, a quaver, a pulled thread, as if she had sympathy for all those who pay a heavy price for rash decisions — had not Byron, at that instant, flung up his head and barked. His hair went electric, his white fangs showed, he transformed into a creature more ferocious than any bear. Cecily and May sprang away, but even as they leapt it was clear the dog wasn’t barking at them. His blazing eyes were fixed on something which hovered somewhere behind Cecily, in the core of the ruin.

It was May who gathered her wits first, and hastened to scoop her arms around the dog’s neck. “Shh, By-By! It’s only that boy!”

It was the younger one, watching them resentfully as if they were the intruders, not he. Cecily glared, hardly believing her eyes. “You!” she said.

“Me,” the child replied.

May hugged Byron. “You gave us a fright!”

“That dog did,” the child corrected. “I don’t care for that dog.”

“The dog doesn’t care for you,” said Cecily. There was an arrogance about this boy that brought out a remorselessness in her, and she felt no guilt in allowing it free rein, but rather a primitive satisfaction. Some instinct, much older than her twelve years, warned her that she must not let the boy, these boys, lull her. “Where’s your brother?” she asked.

“Would you rather talk to him?”

“Not particularly. I’m just wondering where he is.”

The child smiled, leaned his head against a wall. He was wearing his florid outfit of velvet and linen, and his long fawn hair hung in groomed ringlets. “People always want to talk to my brother. Never to me.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Sometimes
I’d
like to be the special one.”

Cecily, second-born and, she frequently suspected, second-best, was taken aback. “I know how you feel,” she had to admit.

“
Do
you?” He looked up. “Why do you?”

“I’ve got an older brother too. You’re not the only one.”

The child thought this over. “Does he talk of things you don’t care about? Does he sometimes say,
Go away, I must think
?”

“All the time,” said Cecily.

“We are friends then!” chirruped the child: and the smile he gave Cecily was so endearing, so vibrant and full of willingness and invitation to play, that the wary instinct inside her seemed misguided, like the good dog in the tale of the hobgoblins. Indeed, in the boy’s smile Cecily remembered things she had forgotten: toys long lost, cuddles from her mother, the taste of biscuits she’d chewed as a baby. It was very odd, yet it made her want to be his friend.

The good dog who stood beside her, however, was not so easily won over. Byron continued to growl at the boy. The child hardly glanced at the animal, but May saw that he kept the dog in the corner of his eye. “Where is your brother?” she asked. “Are you alone?”

He smiled again — secretive and knowing, this time — and looked over his shoulder. “They can’t see you,” he said, and his brother was suddenly there, beside his sibling; and both girls had the confusing sense that he’d always been there, in the shadows, but that somehow they’d been unable to notice him.

Like the child, the older boy was wearing an elegant outfit of navy velvet. His long hair shone cleanly, and his face, porcelain-pale, was blushed with pink life. Together, the brothers made Cecily think of pretty dolls which never had left a glass cabinet; which were, perhaps, locked in the cabinet, in a locked attic, high up in the roof space of a boarded-up and forgotten house. The older boy stared dubiously at the Newfoundland: “Brother,” he muttered, “come away.”

“Sit down, Byron! That’s enough!” With the big dog quietened, Cecily said to the pair, “Why are you still here? Weren’t you escaping from your hosts and running back to your mother?”

“We still wish to go home. But it’s only a dream.”

Cecily snorted. “You could at least
try
. You haven’t tried very hard, have you? All this time and you haven’t taken one
step
closer to home.”

The boy dropped his gaze. “I should do better,” he admitted. “But we are watched, as I told you. The roads are watched. If we are caught, we will be punished.”

“Who will punish you? Your host family? We’ve heard that some people are treating their evacuees poorly, making them work on the farm and clean floors — is that what your hosts have been doing? Have they whipped you? Are they starving you? Have they beat you with a stick?”

“Silence!” The younger child jabbed a sudden finger at Cecily. “You said your father would save us!”

“I meant he will save us
in the war,
you goose. He can’t save you from scrubbing the floors, he’s too . . .” Cecily stopped short of using the word
important
. She should have been proud, yet she hesitated. “He’s busy with big things, like battles. Not small things, like children.”

The taller boy’s curls tumbled as he shook his head. “It no longer matters,” he said. “It’s too late for us now. I had hopes, but I have given up hoping. Everything is lost.”

“No, no, all is not lost!” The child clutched his brother’s shoulder as if to prevent him from sliding irretrievably away. “All isn’t lost! You still have me!”

“Yes, I have you.” The boy smiled faintly at Cecily and May. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t. If it were just myself here, I would not fear. They could do with me as they please —”

“Don’t say this! Oh, don’t lose heart!”

“— but I must protect my brother. That is my single duty now. And it is dangerous to leave this place. Dangerous to go home; yet dangerous to stay.”

Cecily pawed the grass. Inside her boiled a perplexing brew of feelings for these two. They infuriated and fascinated her, made her feel strong but also ignorant. “Home is dangerous because of the bombs? Of course it’s dangerous! But my daddy is in London, and May’s mum is there, and thousands of other people are there —”

“We don’t trust strangers,” said the child.

“Arh!” Cecily kicked out; the weedy crown, riding forgotten on her head, flopped into the grass. “I’m not talking about
strangers
! I’m saying, other people are being brave! You should stop making excuses and just admit that you are scared! Scaredy-cats, is what you are — you’re nothing but two little chickens!”

From their corner the brothers stared at her in astonishment. The crown caught Cecily’s eye, and she stomped on it. It snagged on her wellington, clung to her foot; another good stomp crushed it utterly. May said something, and Cecily swung to her. “What? What?”

“They’re only children,” said the girl.

Stoked by frustration, Cecily puffed like a train. Byron was on his feet; she gripped his ear to calm herself. “I know that,” she grumbled. “But it’s still true.”

The older boy spoke. He was holding his brother’s hand. “It
is
true,” he admitted, and his voice was like the skeleton of a leaf, his smile a cradle for all the sorrow history has known. “I
am
afraid. I was brought up to be bold, to know my mind, to believe I wouldn’t fail: but all I am is what you say. I’m nothing but a frightened boy.”

Now that this truth had been admitted, Cecily should have felt better. She had scored a victory — both boys actually seemed slighter, smaller, faded — yet victory was hollow. These two were merely fancy-dressed waifs, two homeless white mice: berating them was as nasty as striking a pup. “It’s all right to be frightened,” she sighed. “I’m frightened too, sometimes.”

The children didn’t speak for some moments, as children don’t when their hearts are beating hard and they must soothe their own feelings if they are to stay friends. Finally May said, “Some days we’ve come to Snow Castle, but you haven’t been here. Where do you go, when you’re not here?”

“We go where we can’t be seen,” answered the child.

Cecily would endure no more cryptic guff. “And when you’re there, what do you do?”

“We talk. We pray.”

“Ah,” said Cecily.

“You don’t care for talking?”

“You love talking,” said May.

“It depends what I’m talking about,” said Cecily.

“Do you pray?”

“Mmm, when I want something.”

May announced, “I believe in Heaven.”

The boy’s glance flew to her. “The place of the fathers,” he said.

Cecily moved on. “What else do you do?”

“We tell each other stories. We walk as far as is safe. We watch the birds, the rooks, the swallows. Birds lead interesting lives.”

Cecily refrained from rolling her eyes. “And what about when you’re hungry? How do you get food?”

“I used to eat and
eat,
” blurted the younger enthusiastically.

“Our needs are fewer now,” his brother said.

Cecily grimaced. “Don’t you ever do what other boys do? Don’t you run and jump? Don’t you — wrestle? Don’t you — throw things around?”

The small boy looked at his sibling, and for the first time his face was lit as a child’s should be, with all the brightness of excitement. “Can I tell them? Let me tell them.”

“If you wish,” his brother said.

“We have great battles!” The little one shouted it. “We each have ships, big warships with sails, and sometimes we are enemies and sometimes we are friends, and we have battles and the battles can rage for days! And sometimes I jump on his ship and stab him, and sometimes he knocks my ship to pieces, and it’s my favourite game! I have a hat!”

He reached to his head to brandish this hat, dropped his hand on discovering it wasn’t there. His grin, however, did not falter: “Warships is my favourite game.”

“We also play army,” prompted his brother.

“Yes, with swords and horses! If I capture his flag, I win! Army is good, but warships is better. When I grow up, I shall be a sailor.”

“And do you wrestle? Do you fight and yell, like other boys do?”

“All the time!” shrieked the child joyously. “I scratch and kick! Would you like to play?”

“No thanks,” said Cecily. “I don’t play like that.”

“You were playing something, though.” The older boy eyed them shrewdly. “We saw you. We heard you.”

“Sanctuary,” said May. “It’s a game we made up. Cecily was a queen hiding in sanctuary, and I was a duke trying to make her come out.”

The brothers shifted in the shadows; in their dark velvet they melded into the gloom so well that, for an instant, they vanished completely. “That sounds,” said the boy, “like a serious game. Not one I should very much care to play.”

“It was only a game,” said May. “Not real.”

The child pointed a sullen finger. “She doesn’t look like a queen.”

“I’m dressed for rambling!” Cecily squeaked. “The wind’s been blowing my hair!”

“He’s teasing you,” said May.

“I’m not. She doesn’t.”

“Hurgh!” Cecily could suddenly no longer be bothered. “I don’t look like a queen because I’m
not
a queen, just like
you
don’t look like a sailor because you’re only a fat little pig.” And, as her internal clock was striking gongs, she added, “Come on, May, let’s go home. It’s lunchtime.”

Byron followed his mistress willingly; May paused. She might have asked any other pair of strays if they needed money or the materials to write a letter or if she should bring them some more food: but she didn’t ask such things of these two. There were countless questions she would have
liked
to ask, a symphony of strange queries which, given answers, might have made her sleep more soundly . . . but Cecily was yelling, “Come
on,
May! Timeliness is the rule, remember?” and she let her questions go like leaf-boats on a river, never to be seen again. “We’ll come back another day,” she promised, and ran away through the grass. When she looked back, the brothers had vanished. A raven stood at the highest peak of the ruins, leaning into the wind.

For some time Cecily said nothing. The girls and the dog forded the river and climbed the bank. A slug stuck to May’s palm, and they giggled and cringed about this. In the woods, where the artwork of branches gave them privacy, Cecily ventured to say, “They’re very clean, those boys. For boys living outdoors, they’re very clean.”

“Hmm,” said May.

“I don’t think boys who live outside could manage to stay that clean. I think they could only be that clean if they were staying somewhere out of the weather. Maybe a barn. Maybe an empty house.”

“I don’t know,” said May.

“They
have to
be. They can’t live in the ruins. Nobody could do that.”