The Prince in Waiting (8 page)

The remark must have been aimed at Edmund—he had seen Martin and me together often enough—and I did not like it. It was said that the Seer had been among those who were for killing the sons of Stephen, and I supposed he was angry that Edmund had escaped and angrier that I should befriend him. But he went on:

“It is good to see quarrels mended before they become feuds.” He turned to Edmund. “Your brother is with the Army?”

“Yes, sire.”

There was something in his voice which was not quite contempt but a long way from the deference which was reckoned to be the Seer's due. He had not been to a Seance, I knew, since his father's death. He believed in the Spirits, I think, and acknowledged their power, but hated them. His long face was without expression but I saw scorn in the blue eyes under the high forehead.

Ezzard, disregarding this, if indeed he saw it, said:

“He fought well in the battle.”

“What battle?” I asked.

“The battle at Bighton, where Alton was defeated.”

I stared at him. “We have only just come from the Citadel. There is no news yet. The pigeons have brought none.”

Ezzard smiled his thin cold smile. “The Spirits do not have to wait on the wings of pigeons.”

“This is from the Spirits?”

“Would I tell you else?”

“And a victory?” Martin asked. “At Bighton?”

“The pigeons are already flying,” Ezzard said. “They will be in their cotes before sunset.”

It must be true. I asked:

“And my father . . .?”

“The Prince is safe.”

I was too excited to speak further. But Martin said:

“How do they bring the news?” Ezzard looked at him. “The Spirits? If not on wings, how?”

Ezzard said: “A wise man, or boy, does not ask questions concerning the Spirits. They tell him what he needs to know. That is enough.”

It was a rebuke, but Martin persisted. “But you know things about the Spirits, sir, since you serve them and talk with them. Is that not true?”

“I know what I am told, boy.”

“But more than the rest of us do? How they bring their messages without wings, perhaps?” Ezzard's eye was on him. “I am not asking how, sir—just if you do know.”

“I know many things,” Ezzard said, “and I keep my knowledge to myself, imparting it only to those who have dedicated their lives to serve the Spirits. Would you do that, Martin? Would you be an Acolyte?”

It was a good reply, and one that must stop his questioning. Even if I had not heard him blaspheming the idea would have been ridiculous. One would have to be crazed to be an Acolyte—shaving one's head, fasting, droning prayers to the Spirits all day and half the night. I expected him to be abashed.

But to my astonishment he said: “I might, sir.”

Ezzard stared at him keenly, nodded, and went his way. Edmund and I poked fun at Martin when he had gone. He joined with us. It had been a joke, he said, at the Seer's expense; and the old fool had believed him! I accepted what he said but I was still not sure. I had watched his eyes as well as the Seer's. If the earnestness had been deception it had been marvelously done.

•  •  •

Two days later I stood on the walls by the North Gate and heard the wild cheers of the crowd as our army returned victorious. A big man led them on a big chesnut horse: my father, Prince of Winchester.

T
HE VICTORY OVER ALTON WAS
overwhelming. Five captains were taken for ransom, including the prince's nephew—his probable heir since he had only one son whose poor health prevented his being a warrior. A sixth Captain had been killed and they left more than three score men dead or badly injured on the field. We for our part had one Captain crippled and scarcely more than twenty men dead or seriously wounded.

We had a triumphant Autumn Fair. They had ceded the village of Bighton to us, and altogether over a hundred thousand acres of land. Feasting went on for more than a week and the special ale my father had ordered the ale-makers to brew was exhausted in half that time, in toasts to his health and the city's victory. (There was no shortage of milder ale and they strengthened it with raw spirits; men lay drunk in the streets not just at night but at broad noon.) The Hardings and the Blaines were quiet, raising their glasses with the rest but doubtless thinking their own thoughts. These were mixed, I fancy. I have no doubt they rejoiced in our triumph, for which they themselves had fought also, but it could not have pleased them to see so much honor paid to their stopgap Prince. We guessed that behind locked doors they were talking hard, with grim faces.

When the Fair was over and the prisoners exchanged for Alton gold, the Court rode out to hunt. I was one of the party, for the first time. I asked that Martin and Edmund might come also but my father would not agree: to belong to the royal hunting party was a great privilege which must not be awarded lightly. Martin was a commoner and it would be a scandal if Edmund, son of a man condemned by the Spirits, were included. Martin, I knew, was not sorry about this; he was neither fighter nor hunter by nature though he had helped me in the Contest. I had seen him turn pale when we watched a pig's throat being slit at the slaughterhouse. But for Edmund, though he said nothing, it was salt rubbed into unhealed wounds. This would have been his first year for the hunt also.

One of the things that had made the summer memorable had been the weather. It was not just that it seemed better to me (one sees brighter skies in times of happiness): others, even the old ones, agreed that it was many years since we had been so fortunate. For more than a month, in July and August, no fires were lit in the palace except those in the kitchens. Very often the sun shone clearly, sometimes through the whole day with cloud obscuring it for no more than an hour or two. The harvest was good: all the granaries were filled and corn piled in bins in the mills.

And the sun which had shone on my rambles with Martin and Edmund and on my father's campaign had not yet deserted us. We rode to the hunt on a morning sharp but clear; frost crackling in the grass under our horses' hoofs, but the sky blue all round. I read a book once, the ink in places fading from the parchment, in which it was said that before the Disaster the sun shone almost all the time in summer. I had thought it a fantasy like some of the other things written there—as, for instance, that one of the wonders with which the devils seduced our ancestors before they destroyed them was the power to talk with and even see one another when they were a hundred miles or more apart. But now I could almost believe it. I was sorry for Edmund, left behind in the city, but it was impossible not to take joy in the air's crisp freshness, the horse under me, all the colored beauty of the dying year.

We rode south, following the river, toward the forest of Botley. There had always been boar there and it had long been a royal hunt, but new stories had come back lately from the country people who lived on the outskirts of the forest. Their fields had been attacked by beasts of incredible size and wiliness. Polymufs, they said, and implored the Prince to destroy them.

It was forbidden to keep polymuf cattle or poultry: all deformed creatures must be destroyed and burned or buried. (There were some who would have done the same with polymuf children, but the Spirits decreed that they should live, though separate from proper men and serving them.) Wild polybeasts were killed also, within civilized lands. Elsewhere, in the barbarous places, it was said they lived and flourished, in all sorts of strange and monstrous forms, from rats that built houses, or at least mounds to dwell in, to the terrible Bayemot that destroyed everything in its path. From time to time, polybeasts came down into our lands and when they did it was the Prince's duty to exterminate them. Not that we believed these boar were polymuf: country people are given to exaggeration and alarm. But a boar hunt was justification in itself.

We found nothing on the first day. We came on their spoor—tracks and droppings—but they were not, in the judgment of Bannock, the Master of the Hunt and one with great skill in reading signs, even fresh. Tents were set up that night in the fields by Shidfield village. My father had been offered lodging but declined, on the grounds of not inconveniencing the villagers; but as he said, laughing in private, also because he had never yet encountered a village lodging that was not overrun with fleas, and polymuf giant fleas at that. As it was, they brought meat and ale to us, and bread and cheese and honey cakes. Of no high quality: if it was their best, my father said, they deserved to have their taxes remitted on grounds of poverty, but he had no doubt it was not their best. They too were aware of conclusions that might be drawn and were wary. After being entertained by them three years before, Prince Stephen had increased their tax assessment.

On the second day we drew boar and killed two. They were good specimens but although Bannock examined them long and carefully he found no trace of polymuf. We roasted one that night on a spit turned by two kitchen lads recruited from the village. The flesh was good and sweet. We killed another beast on the morning of the third day, an old tusker who crippled two dogs before Captain Nicoll ran him through. On the fourth day we found the polymuf.

We had ranged farther from our base, to a new part of the forest. The trees for the most part were thin enough for us to ride without difficulty, but there were patches of thicker growth. Spoor was found which impressed Bannock: the hoof marks were very big indeed, and the droppings also. We cast around and the dogs at last gave tongue. They led us to a stretch of dense undergrowth. While the beaters were working round it the beast broke cover and rushed straight for our lines.

It was enormous, five feet from ground to shoulder and large in proportion. And it moved fast, more like a horse than a boar. It got through while two men stabbed futilely at it with their spears. We turned to give chase but as my horse's head came round I saw with astonishment that the beast had also turned, with amazing agility, and was heading back toward us. I did not waste time thinking about this but, realizing that it was coming my way, set my lance and spurred my horse to meet it.

All I saw was a massive blur of motion, gray and hairy, racing through the trees. Perhaps my horse saw more, or more clearly. At any rate he reared in fright. In controlling him I let my lance tip hit the ground. With bucking horse and the shock from the lance I could not keep my seat. I hit the ground, rolling to break my fall. I was cursing my misfortune and the fact that there was now another gap for the boar to break through our lines a second time. I looked for it and saw it. It was not going for the gap. It had changed its course and was bearing down on me. I could see it well enough now, see red-rimmed eyes and the savage white gleam of tusks. I tried to get to my feet and realized, as pain shot down my leg, that I was injured. Voices shouted, but a long way off. The boar smashed a bush aside like straw. The sight of it, almost on me, and its stink dried my throat with fear. Then from my left there were hammering hoofs. I saw a horse and rider and a lance which raked the boar along its ribs, forcing it away with a huge squeal of pain. The horse cleared me as I lay there. The rider was Peter, who had stayed close by me throughout the hunt.

He had not killed the boar but the wound helped the rest to run it down within an hour and dispatch it. It was a fearsome beast, I was told, seven feet in length from snout to tail. The size alone branded it polymuf, but apart from that it was double-tusked and its head was bigger in relation to its body than was usual. A polymuf strain was sometimes thought to be an indication of greater intelligence, as with the building rats that tales were told of, and this one seemed to have behaved with more than mere cunning, in doubling back to attack its enemies and in going for me when it saw me unhorsed. I gather it led them a fine dance before they finished it off.

My father said he would have dearly liked its head to hang on the palace wall: Bannock, in more than thirty years of hunting, had never seen anything that could come near matching it for magnificence. But the law held. They built a pyre and left the carcass burning. I did not see anything of this, having been helped back to the camp after Bannock had set my leg, broken in the fall.

I was taken back on a litter strapped between quiet horses. For two more weeks I had to lie on my bed, my leg splinted. After that for long enough I hobbled with a crutch. My friends came to see me to help me pass the time, Martin every day but Edmund less frequently. I knew why: it was still an ordeal for him to come to the palace, and I guessed he had to steel himself afresh on each occasion.

Autumn closed into winter. The good weather had broken even before the hunt was over and we paid for past beneficence with freezing fogs and, in early October, with blizzards that sent snow whirling round the city walls, piling high against houses, blocking the streets and drifting up against the windows of the palace to obscure my view out over the town. In other years I had loved the coming of the first snow, when gangs of boys were formed in snowball fights that raged all day (apart from the break for dinner at midday) through the grazing meadows and even up into the streets of the town until our elders put a stop to it. I was past the age for that, and for skating: my enforced inaction only emphasized my inability to take part, but it emphasized my boredom, too. I played games with Martin—chess and checkers and liars' dice—but he beat me too easily at the first two and I won too easily at the third: he had no guile.

In November my father went to Romsey, to visit the Prince of that city. Prince Stephen's refusal to send his army into the field, his reliance on walls built higher every year, had been part of a more general isolation. There had been no state visits, made or received, for some time. My father's accession, followed by his victory over Alton, had changed that. It was not only Romsey that wished to see the new Prince of Winchester.