The Prince in Waiting (14 page)

“But that is treachery! There would be no honor . . .”

“Listen,” my father said. “There are times when the world changes, when the customs of generations shatter and things are no longer fixed. Ezzard has told me we are in such a time. Because of this a man born a commoner became Prince of Winchester. Andrew of Petersfield used machines against us. We in turn took his city; and on the Spirits' command have kept it. The changes are not yet ended. If Prince of two cities, why not three?”

“But if Jeremy's army fights alongside ours, if it is he who has the key to the gates . . .”

“He is a timid man. He is shrewd enough but lacks courage. He is a little dog who wants a big dog to run with and will therefore let the big dog take what he wants and be content with the scraps. He offered me the city without my asking; he will be content with Stockbridge and the land around it. And with our friendship.”

I said: “I can think of others I would sooner have as friends.”

“So can I. But a Prince is bound by policy, not by liking. And by the Spirits. Ezzard supports this plan. He has told me: I will be Prince of many cities—you, if you are guided by the Spirits, Prince of all the cities in the land.”

I was silent. I thought of asking: did we want such an empire? But I guessed the answer I would get—that our wanting or not wanting was unimportant. The Spirits required it. They had served us well so far but their wrath, if we failed them, could destroy us as quickly as their benevolence had raised us. We had no choice.

•  •  •

Edmund kept away for the remainder of the visit, and for a time after. In the end I sought him out at the house in Salt Street, and persuaded him to come with me to the stables. There were just the two of us. Martin was already under instruction to become an Acolyte and busy that morning.

We walked in silence at first. There was constraint between us, the recollection of our last parting. In the end I said:

“I am sorry for holding you back. I would have liked to see you hit him. I would have liked to hit him myself.”

He did not reply at once and I thought he was still resentful. Then he said:

“No, you were right. It would not have been worth it to knock him down. What a toad he is! You would not believe how he fawned on me . . . in the old days.”

I said feelingly: “I think I would believe it.”

“And Jenny—he paid her such elaborate compliments and told her all the time how unworthy he was of her. It was true enough, but you could see he didn't believe it. She hated him even then but of course had to obey our father. If there is a consolation in what happened it is that the city is rid of that alliance.”

I thought of what my father had told me but was silent. Edmund went on:

“She was saying, after that meeting, that she had only just realized what an escape she had in not having to marry him. She can marry whom she likes now, or not marry if she so wishes. There are advantages in no longer being royal. I would have had to marry for policy, too, and I would have detested it.”

I said: “Does it matter so much? There are more important things.”

“Do you think so?”

“One does not spend all that much time in the company of women. There is riding and hunting, battle, gaming—the company of one's fellow men.”

Edmund shook his head. “It would matter to me.” He grinned, at last open and friendly again. “It is just as well that you do not mind, since you are going to have to obey the rules. As a matter of fact, Jenny and I were speculating the other day as to who was most likely to be the lady of the Prince of Princes. We were for Maud of Basingstoke.”

She had come to Winchester a few years ago when her father, Prince Malcolm, paid a state visit. She was dark and swarthy and very short in stature. People said that she should have been called dwarf but her mother pleaded with the Seer at her birth and he allowed her to pass for human.

I made a mock punch at him which he parried, laughing. It was good to be back on our old terms. On our way to the stables we gathered loose snow into balls and pelted each other like children.

•  •  •

Once again spring was late. Beyond the walls the fields lay white until mid-April and the thaw when it came seemed partial and uncertain. There were gray skies and a harsh east wind. Farmers, coming into the city on market day for the Spring Fair, complained that the ground was still too hard for planting; they had never known it so bad.

I was too concerned about the new campaign to care much. This year I would not be condemned to look after the baggage train. I was not allowed to be a warrior but I would be a scout, and Edmund with me. We rode our horses far out and practiced the arts of observation on the downland sheep.

The arrangement was that the army of Romsey was to come first to us, to be joined with our army under my father's command; the combined force then moving north against Andover. They arrived late one afternoon and we saw their tents going up in the Contest Field and on open ground around it. That was the place that had been allotted them for a camp. Prince Jeremy had suggested it himself, saying that even if accommodation for his men could be found in the city it was wiser for them to remain outside. Even though our two cities were allies, conflicts might arise in living at such close quarters. My father, who had had similar thoughts, praised this as an example of Jeremy's common sense. There was more to him, he repeated, than his fat foppishness would indicate.

Jeremy, with a handful of his Captains, came in for conference. James came as well. He had not improved in the months since I had last seen him; there was the same mixture of arrogance and sly servility, the same hungry envy for what he saw as our better fortune. Our horses were in better condition than theirs and looked faster, our dwarfs forged better swords.

“And our leather, I suppose,” Edmund said to me when I had slipped James's company one day and was telling him all this, “comes from cows with thicker hides. He disgusts me. You say he is to scout for them? Not along with us, I hope?”

“No,” I said. “I have made certain of that. The armies part company on the second day. They take a line in advance of us and to the east. The idea is that they draw the Andover army onto them. Then we strike north to the city itself where the south gate will be open.”

The plan had been divulged to the Captains so I had felt I could tell it to Edmund; what had been said had been in the Great Hall, not my father's parlor. He now said, brow wrinkled:

“I do not like it. It is not a good way of fighting.”

It was what I had said to my father and there were still doubts in my mind. Suppressing them, I said:

“The Spirits approve it.”

“Oh, the Spirits . . .!”

There was a noise of someone approaching. We were in the den under the Ruins which bit by bit we had furnished into a sort of comfort, with furniture and rugs taken from unused rooms in the palace and with oil lamps now for lighting. Martin joined us. These days he wore the white of an apprentice Acolyte and his shaved head was covered by a wide-brimmed white hat. I still had not got used to the change in his appearance.

Edmund said: “We can ask the expert for advice. Why is it, Martin, that the Spirits who have in the past told men to fight honorably now urge us to rely on treachery to win our victories?”

Martin said: “No expert. I am not even an Acolyte yet, and will not be for another year.”

“All right. But give us an opinion, as one who is planning to spend his life serving these same Spirits. Have they changed their minds? Has the Great Spirit sent out fresh instructions?”

He said it with a smile but Martin did not smile in return. He said, stumbling but in serious fashion:

“Without knowledge one cannot understand things. And knowledge is always limited. What I mean is . . . it is not so much that things change as that they happen in a different way.”

Edmund said in astonishment: “I believe they have converted him already.”

“I'm not very good at explaining what I mean.”

Edmund said: “But you've changed, too, like the Spirits, haven't you? You take it more seriously.”

“Do I?” His expression showed reluctance. “In a way, perhaps.”

“Then you've been told things?”

“Not much. Nothing, really.”

“Tell us. We'll judge.”

Martin looked more and more unhappy. I said:

“He is bound by oaths and you know it. He must not tell the secrets of the craft and we must not ask him.”

“Let him speak for himself,” Edmund said. “Do you say so, Martin?”

Martin said uncomfortably: “I've nothing really to say.”

Edmund looked at him curiously. “You believe in the Spirits now—is that it?”

“Yes,” he said. But it sounded as though the word was being dragged out of him. “I believe in them.”

•  •  •

We left the city the day before we were to march on Andover and camped in the fields on the far side of the road from the Romsey army. The reason for this was that Prince Jeremy had invited our men to join his at supper on the eve of our campaign together. He said that although it had been wise to keep the two forces from mixing inside the city, it was also wise that they should meet and feast moderately together before setting out. In this way they would get to know and have confidence in each other. My father was more dubious about this than he had been about the earlier suggestion but agreed that it could do no harm. The feasting, he pointed out, would need to be moderate, particularly as far as drinking went, since we were to ride next morning.

When we went over I, of course, found myself saddled again with James. He took me down the lines, denigrating even his men, which I thought unpardonable: they were less stout than ours, he said, but then they did not live so well. I ignored that and asked him about something else which struck me as odd: they had bowmen with them, at least a hundred, I could not understand what they were doing with an army in the field. Bowmen were part of the garrison, a defensive force. James said:

“An idea of my father's.” He shook his head. “It probably won't work.”

“I still don't see . . . Even if they could come up with a troop of horse, the horsemen would gallop out of range before they could do any real damage.”

“It's something to do with a scheme for luring the enemy into an ambush where the bowmen would shoot them down. As I say, it will very likely prove useless.”

“But meanwhile your own walls at Romsey are undefended.”

He gave a high laugh. “The women can toss slop buckets down on anyone who attacks. Apart from that, they can take their chance. The bowmen are defending the one Romsey skin that is precious. In my father's eyes, at any rate.”

I said in annoyance: “I do not think that is true, unless it is your own skin you mean. Your father is concerned for you more than himself; and more, perhaps, than you deserve.”

“What does he deserve? Does a weak man deserve anything?”

“A son owes a duty.”

“You can say that,” he said bitterly, “with a father such as yours.” He looked at me with hatred for once showing instead of the usual ingratiating affability. “You can respect your father.”

It was not worth responding to the remark. We went on down the lines and he showed me the horses, drawing attention to their weak points. But he came back to the subject just before we parted. He said:

“You will grieve, I suppose, when your father dies?”

“Yes, but I do not expect to do so for a long time to come.”

“It could happen in this campaign. He fights in the van, doesn't he, not from behind like the Prince of Romsey?”

“But fights well. It would take a good man to unhorse him.”

He laughed, but it was more a titter, mirthless.

“Good warriors have been brought down before now by cunning lesser ones.”

I said nothing, but left him.

•  •  •

The feasting was moderate as Jeremy had promised: extremely moderate. The meat was barely enough to go round and the ale, which for some unfathomable reason they called the Strong, was thin and sour compared with what our men were used to. There was some grumbling but our Sergeants controlled it well and got the men back to their own lines fairly early on the promise of a measure of decent ale there. It was not a particularly auspicious start to a joint expedition, but it could have been worse: there had been no fighting or even quarreling.

My father did not come back with the rest of us. Jeremy asked him to stay the night in his tent, an ornate affair four times the size of my father's own and lined with silk: in this respect, at least, James could not bemoan Romsey's poverty. Jeremy said he wanted to have a final private discussion about the campaign. I think my father thought he was nervous and needed reassuring. At any rate, he agreed to stay.

In our camp there was for some time a buzz of noise, part of the excitement which always attends the first few days in the field. Gradually it died away as the night drew on. I myself lay awake for a long time, turning restlessly despite my weariness. It was not the hardness of the ground which caused this—I had grown accustomed to hard living the previous summer—but a fit, for which I could find no cause, of my old melancholy. When I did sleep I had bad dreams: I could not remember what they had been but twice I woke in fear, sweating despite the chill of the night.

After that I slept heavily, exhausted. Edmund had to shake me into consciousness. I blinked up at him, and asked:

“What is it?”

“They've gone . . .”

“Gone? Who? What do you mean—gone?”

I was aware of a hum of talk and shouts outside; it had an anxious disturbed note like that of a hive broached by a clumsy beekeeper.

“The Romsey army. They have left camp in the night.”

“My father . . .?”