The Prince in Waiting (6 page)

He said: “The Spirits be with you.”

We muttered back: “And with you, Seer.”

“The Captains of this city,” Ezzard said, “have called for guidance to the Spirits, as their forefathers did before them, begging the Spirits to help and advise them in a time of need, in the distress of the city. As Seer I have consulted with the Spirits and they have made answer: he who was Prince . . .”

There was a noise in the doorway. Ezzard halted his speech. We all looked and saw Prince Stephen standing there, Charles and Edmund behind him. After a pause, Ezzard went on:

“He who was Prince shall be Prince no longer. Forsaking the city in fear he loses right to the city's fealty . . .”

Prince Stephen interrupted him. He shouted:

“Ezzard, I left the city on your advice!” Ezzard watched him in silence. “On the warning of the Spirits, given through you.”

“No.”

“By the Great, it is true!” I heard his voice crack. “You told me . . .”

“I told you that the Spirits saw danger, to you and to your house. Anything more came from your own fears. And the Spirits spoke truly through me: the danger is here and now but your peril is of your own making, not due to the shivering of the earth.”

“You let me think . . .”

“The Seer counsels the Prince; he is not required to teach him self-control. Even if the danger had been of earthquakes, would not a true Prince have looked after his people instead of fleeing from the city in panic?”

It was a charge that could not be answered. Prince Stephen tried, floundering:

“You said the Captains would see to it . . .”

“And they have.” Ezzard looked away from him, to the Captains. “He who was Prince shall be Prince no longer. In his place the Spirits offer Captain Robert Perry for the approval of his peers. Does any man say no?”

There was silence. Ezzard said:

“Who acclaims?”

We all shouted together, in a roar which echoed. Ezzard said:

“Therefore, as Seer . . .”

Prince Stephen broke in again:

“I am Prince and this is treachery. I challenge the traitor to prove himself with his sword.”

My father had no need to respond. He had been acclaimed by the Captains and so was Prince already. But we watched as he rose to his feet. He said:

“Not here, in the House of Spirits. We will see to this outside.”

Ezzard said: “You are a dead man, Stephen. No man can fight when the Spirits forsake him.”

There was an open yard between the Seance Hall and Ezzard's house, which stood behind it, with a high fence on either side. We watched them fight there. By the standards that judges use in tournaments Stephen was a better swordsman than my father, who had learned his skill in battle, not from a fencing master. But under any circumstances my father's strength was much the greater. His sword smashed aside the thrusts and parries of the other, carelessly it seemed. And as Ezzard had said, what man could fight when the Spirits had forsaken him? Stephen's last throw had been hopeless when he made it, a desperate alternative to the miserable wandering exile which otherwise was the best future he could expect. He retreated a few times round the ring and then rushed on my father, offering no guard. My father's sword took him just beneath the ribs. He gasped and fell forward on it and blood gushed from his lips.

•  •  •

I was in my aunt's house the next day when my father came, his first visit to her since he had been made Prince. She called him Sire and bent her knee, but he shook his head, laughing.

“Leave that to the courtiers, Mary! It suits them better. I come here for peace and quiet.”

She ordered Gerda to fetch ale and herself knelt and undid his boots. He said, looking round the small room, smoky from a fire that would not draw on a day of blustering wind:

“But we must find you a better place than this.”

“It is good enough for me, Bob,” she told him.

“But things have changed. You must learn to live like a Lady.”

She said: “No, I am no Lady.”

“That is soon remedied. The Prince makes whom he will noble.”

“Not I.”

“I say yes!”

“Please. Let me stay here as I am.”

He looked at her. “Is there nothing you want?”

She put slippers on his feet. “For myself, nothing. I have it all.”

•  •  •

That night Ezzard presided over a true Seance. We sat in darkness while the Spirits manifested themselves in strange sounds and sights: weird music, fluting high up in the rafters, tinkling bells, lights that moved across the blackness overhead, faces suddenly appearing as the Spirits put on again the flesh they had long outgrown. Voices.

A woman asked for help, her husband being sick, and was answered by the Spirit of her mother, ten years dead. She was told of herbs to pick, at a certain time and place, and of a broth to be made of them which would cure the sickness. There was a little dim light now, from the lamps of the Acolytes who stood on either side of the Hall, and I could see her, a small thin woman, nodding her understanding and thanks.

Others followed with questions. One of them, a farmer, said:

“I lost six lambs last year. I paid gold to the Seer for an audience and was told all would be well. This year I have lost eight. What of the promise?”

He spoke almost truculently. The Spirit who answered was that of his grandfather's father. He said:

“Thomas, you farm the land I farmed. Do you do your duty?”

“I do.”

“Do you keep the laws?”

“I keep the laws.”

“Then you would have prospered. Unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you have kept Polybeasts that should have been killed at birth, and raised them for meat.” There was a pause, but the farmer made no reply. “You lied, Thomas, when you said you kept the laws. That is why your flocks have sickened a second time. No gold will save him who defies the Spirits.”

He went out, shuffling. There were others, some rebuked, some advised, some comforted. Then when the questions were over the little lamps were turned down again and the darkness returned. And in front of us a face grew, like a stern majestic man's but larger. A voice cried, deep and resonant:

“I speak, Stephen, Prince of this city in years gone by, ancestor of one who dishonored my name and lately died for it. The Spirits who guard this city have given you a new Prince. He will rule you well and lead your warriors to battle against your enemies—to battle and to victory.”

There was a deep hush, not even a chair squeaking. The voice said:

“The Spirits crown your Prince.”

It floated down from above, gently, gently, in the shape of a crown but having no substance, a faintly glowing crown of light. It came down to where my father sat, and hovered just above his head.

This, though a wonder, was expected. What followed was not. The voice spoke again:

“A great Prince and the father of one yet greater. His son shall be Prince of Princes!”

A second crown appeared out of the darkness. Peter stood on my father's right hand and I watched for it to move toward him, to rest over his head as the first one rested over my father's. And then my heart pounded, the blood dinned in my ears and I put my hand to the chair behind me so that I should not fall from dizziness. And my eyes were dazzled with the light shining down onto my upturned face.

T
HE SUMMER OF THAT YEAR
—a year that ended wretchedly—was the happiest time of my life. This was not because the Spirits had named me heir to my father, a future Prince of the city. At least that did not seem to be the reason, though I suppose it must have been a part of it. There was excitement in the air and the city buzzed with activity and expectation. The resentments which had gathered over the years against Prince Stephen's policy of skulking behind walls turned into a feeling of release. It lifted my father to a height of popularity which I do not think the other Captains, when they acclaimed him, could have anticipated. Wherever he went in the city people crowded round him, touching him when they could, blessing him in the name of the Spirits. When he rode out at the head of his army they cheered themselves silly: I saw a fat middle-aged man, having been pushed or having stumbled to a fall, lying in the gutter but still yelling for the Prince. He was drunk, of course, from ale, but the whole city was drunk on the subtler brew of pride.

I had begged to be allowed to go with him on the campaign but had been refused. He smiled at me.

“In a couple of years you will have all the fighting you want. But even with a jeweled sword you are no match yet for the men of Alton. And though the Spirits having promised you a crown greater than your father's no doubt will protect you, they require a man to look to his own safety as well. The Spirits like to be respected but they are inclined to grow impatient with anyone who trusts to their help beyond common sense. This year you stay in the city.”

Peter said: “There's a price to pay for everything, Luke, including being heir to the Princedom.”

They smiled at each other and grinned at me. I had been uneasy with Peter after the Seance of the Crowns, thinking he must resent my being preferred over him, even though the preference was that of the Spirits. Even when he had congratulated me I had been wary, looking for signs hidden in his face and bearing. But I came to realize that there was nothing to find. His feelings for me were as warm and friendly as they had always been: he rejoiced in our father's rise to power and also in my being chosen heir.

We were in the palace. The room was quite small, merely an antechamber to the great Room of Mirrors which Stephen had most used for retirement. My father said it was too big: he did not like to hear his own voice echoing back at him. Nor did he care to see his own face whichever way he looked. So he had furnished the antechamber with simple things, including his wooden armchair from our old house, and he escaped there when court life bored him beyond bearing—which was not infrequently.

He said now to Peter: “A price for everything, you are right, and a duty, but the duties lie heavier on some than on others. I have never been a nay-sayer and I have already ordered the dwarfs to brew an ale to celebrate a victory at the Autumn Fair, but accidents can happen. I may fall off my horse and be trampled.”

We smiled at that. He was a superb horseman, his horse, a big chesnut called Guinea, the surest-footed in the city's stables. He smiled as well, but went on:

“Or die of eating Alton's ailing cattle. If any such thing should happen, Peter, I leave you a duty, to look after Luke.”

“I can look after myself,” I said.

“I don't doubt it, but a wise man takes help where he can. As you know, there are some among those who have acclaimed me who do not wish me well. It did not please them when the Spirits crowned Luke. They are quiet just now because they have no choice. But if I were killed in battle . . .”

Peter nodded. “I follow that.”

I said: “Watch whom you ride with, Father. The men of Alton may not be the only danger.”

“Good advice, but I am already watching. That is part of being a Prince: one's eyes do not get much rest. And the more so in a case like mine, a man born common and chosen Prince because others with better claims could not resolve their quarrel.” He looked at Peter. “You will see to this?”

“I will see to it,” Peter said.

•  •  •

The person who was bitterly aggrieved by what had happened at the Seance, and showed it, was my Aunt Mary. When I went to her house, although she did not say anything and I sat down to dinner at her table as I had always done, I could tell her disapproval. It was not that she was sharper with me or smiled on me less—her tongue had always had a roughish edge and her face did not seem to have been made for smiling—but I sensed resentment, anger, in small looks she gave me. I was not surprised by this. Peter meant everything to her, and had since my father divorced her. Peter was my father's eldest son, born in wedlock, and his natural heir. What the Spirits said meant nothing to her; she would have defied all the Spirits in the universe for Peter's sake.

I thought that her disappointment and bitterness would lessen with time and for a week or two carried on with my visits as though nothing had happened. Then one day I went to her house following heavy rain. I cleaned my muddy boots on the scraper outside her door but did not do it well enough, and there were dirty footprints on the polished boards of her little hall.

She saw them and tongue-lashed me. It was a thing she had done before, but again I found a difference in the scolding, a note of hatred almost. And she said:

“Even if you are to be Prince of Princes, you can still wipe your boots before you enter this house. Or do you already think we should all be servants, to do your bidding?”

The jibe stung and I felt myself flushing. She finished:

“Take your boots off, wash your hands, and come to the table.”

Gerda the polymuf had heard her, and I was the Prince's son and heir. I looked at her, my own anger sharp:

“No, thank you. I will eat at the palace.”

And I turned, saying no more, and left her house. I have wondered since whether things might not have fallen out differently if I had contained my rage, accepted the rebuke, and eaten my dinner with her that day. Or if I had done as I intended next morning and gone to make amends. But I thought that when I went she would scold me further and my pride would not bear it. Two days later I saw her in the street. We approached from opposite directions, saw each other but did not show it, and I was torn between the desire to go to her and the fear that she would treat my overture with scorn. We were near the Buttercross and there were boys I knew sitting on the steps there: they would see and probably hear all that happened. So I passed her in silence with the smallest of nods to which she made no acknowledgment.