The Prince in Waiting (9 page)

My father took his bodyguard with him, of course, and a few of his Captains, but for show rather than protection. Men did not make war in the winter and such a visit as this was in any case safeguarded under the customs of all civilized peoples. We waved him good-by as he and his entourage rode out from the South Gate and then we turned back to our ordinary occasions. Dull always at this time of the year—halfway between the Autumn Fair and the Christmas Feast—I found them duller still with my father away, and the summer's excitements fading into memory. The days passed and the evenings lengthened as winter tightened its grip. I wearied of games played by lamplight, and of the amusements which delighted my mother and her friends: the polymuf jugglers and clowns, the guitarists strumming and singing melancholy love songs. My leg was still splinted so I could not ride during the day. I was restless, bored, wanting something to happen. But when it did happen it was not during the dragging day or tedious evening but at night, while the palace slept.

I awoke to a smell that was so strong one almost tasted it, and sat up coughing, the smoke in my throat and lungs. It was pitch black. I hobbled to my window and flung the shutters open. Cold fresh air streamed in. The night was dark apart from the glow of the Burning Lands, and a light nearer at hand, blossoming from a window beneath me, and with it the dreaded crackling that told of fire.

I shouted an alarm and, wasting no more time, headed for the door and the stairs. My room was to the right of the staircase, my mother's apartments on the far side of it. But as I opened the door the crackling was more like a roar and automatically I shielded my face from the light and the heat. The staircase was a torrent of flame, spreading, moving upward. It had passed the landing and was ravenously eating its way up toward the attics.

If I could leap it, I thought, and get across to where she was . . . The surgeon had said my splints could come off in a few days. I got back to my room and, needing no light from the brilliance of the fire behind me, found my knife and slashed the binding cords. My leg was terribly weak and I winced with the pain of putting my weight on it, but it would do. I headed back to the staircase.

It was impossible. In the short time I had been away, a matter of seconds only, the fire had spread and strengthened. It was frightening to look at, like a living creature in its raging hunger and power. I could not get within feet of it without being scorched.

There was another chance. Wooden gutterings ran along the side of the building, below the windows. I got to my bedroom and clambered out, holding onto the sill with my hands. People were gathering in the courtyard, more than twenty feet below. I heard their voices, shouting, calling, a woman screaming, and tried to ignore them. The gutterings were wide and shallow and I had already discovered that one could use them to get from room to room. It was not easy—one had to stand on this narrow ledge and inch one's way along with one's face flat against the wall—but it was possible. I started on my way. I thought only of my progress, closing my mind to everything else: to what I would do if I reached her and also to the terrifying possibility of a misstep.

But what I could not close my mind to was the increasing heat of the boards against which I was pressed. The fire, triumphant inside, was beating out against its confines. In a spot where the timbers were not properly caulked I caught a glimpse of the furnace within. But I was getting past the worst, I thought, the part that lay over the staircase. I risked a look in the direction in which I was edging and saw no sign of flame. I had come at least a dozen feet and probably had no more than that to go before reaching a window. I was cool in mind and increasingly confident. And I remember no more until the point at which I woke up, in bed, in daylight, my head splitting with pain.

One of the pegs that supported the guttering, weakened by the heat perhaps, had given way and I had fallen. A soldier in the crowd below had tried to break my fall. He succeeded in part—my recently knitted leg did not snap again—but my head struck something which knocked me unconscious and, as sometimes happens, took away my recollection of the accident as well.

Wilson told me this, sitting beside my bed with his long face, never much better than melancholy, a solemn mask. He was Sergeant in charge of the palace, an old and well-trusted follower of my father. They had served in the ranks together as young men. My father, on becoming Prince, had wanted to make him a Captain, to ennoble him, but he would not have it. He had had a wife many years before but she had died, broken-hearted, after giving birth to a polymuf child. He had not married again and apart from my father had no real friends.

My mind was confused, my head aching. I sat up and it was worse. Wincing, I said:

“And the fire? What happened . . .?”

“That wing is gutted. The rest was saved.”

I think it was his look of misery which recalled what my own purpose had been. I said:

“My mother . . .”

He shook his head very slowly. No more was needed. I could not believe it, though I knew it was true. I had seen her only a few hours before, her eyes half closed, foot tapping, head slightly swaying to a tune she loved. She was fond of music which I was not. I had slipped away without, I now remembered so sharply, bidding her good night.

I concentrated my wits and asked Wilson questions, which he answered. I think he thought me strange, perhaps callous, to do so at such a time; but it seemed to me that my sorrow was my own, a private thing, and not to be talked over even with one so well known and well trusted as Wilson. Pigeons, he told me, had been sent to Romsey, calling my father back. To my query as to how the fire had started he said it was fairly sure it had been deliberate, a murderous act. This had always seemed likely because, living in wooden houses as we did, we observed strict precautions against accidental fire. A special patrol checked the palace each night. But it was not a matter of supposition only. One of the guard had found a polymuf watching the fire from hiding. He had flint and steel on him, and oil-soaked wadding. Moreover he was known for a crazy loon who loved playing with fire. There had been trouble before and he had been exiled in the end; he was not allowed in the city and lived in a ramshackle hut beneath St. Catherine's Hill, shunned even by the other polymufs.

I asked: “How did he get into the city?”

Wilson shrugged. “It is not difficult.”

That was true. The gate guards were supposed to check all who passed through but I had myself slipped past their backs when I did not want to call attention to myself.

“And why the palace?”

Wilson said: “That will bear looking into.”

“Has he been questioned?”

“No. We await your father's return. But we have him safe. I set the guards myself. No one will get to him, either to rescue him or to close his mouth.”

“No other trouble?”

If this were a plot, laid by the Hardings or the Blaines, maybe both, now would be the moment to rise, before my father could get back. I saw by Wilson's face that he took my meaning.

“No trouble. And we are ready for any that comes.”

•  •  •

My father was back before evening. It snowed heavily in the afternoon, obliterating the familiar tracks, but that did not stop him. He rode up through the city streets and into the courtyard in advance of his laboring escort. I heard a distant cry—“The Prince!”—and the clatter of hoofs on stone and ran to the window of the room in which I had been bedded. I saw him dismount, a snow man from a snow horse, and stand there, staring in front of him, while the horse was taken by a groom.

He was looking at the wing in which we had lived. It was a sight I had already seen, with sickness and a sad thumping of the heart. The snow, which had mostly been cleared from the courtyard, lay thick there, in uneven mounds from which a few blackened upright timbers pointed toward the gray sky. It was a whiteness and desolation that chilled the blood, a wilderness made more horrifying by the buildings which still stood all round. I saw him take a step, as though to go toward it and then with a twist of his head turn away. Then I called to him from the window; in a low voice, but he heard me and looked up. Even from that distance and with the light beginning to fade I could see the grief and anger in his face.

I threw clothes on and, ignoring the protests of the nurse who was attending to me, hurried downstairs. I found my father in the Great Hall along with others—Peter, three of his Captains, and a number of commoners, including Wilson. Wilson was talking, telling the story of what had happened, and my father was listening. His face was a cold hard mask now. He said at the end:

“Has the polymuf talked yet?”

“Only in crazed words.”

“Have him brought in.”

Peter said: “It may be he acted on his own. He is known to be a lunatic.”

“Yes,” my father said, “well known. And therefore a good weapon to another's hand.”

Neither Blaine nor Harding was there, and none closely linked with them. If the polymuf had been set on by someone, I wondered which. Perhaps both. They had made no move but it might have been their plan not to—to wait until my father's return and attack then, while he was shattered by the earlier blow. He looked like a man of iron, waiting for the polymuf to be brought. If they thought a blow could shatter him they were in for a surprise.

The polymuf, his hands chained, was pushed forward by the guards and sprawled at my father's feet. I recognized him as one I had seen wandering alone in the fields beyond the East Gate. The Spirits had marked him with a hare lip, fissured red up to the nostril, and his voice showed that his mouth had no roof. He lay on the floor and talked nonsense, the words themselves scarcely understandable. I heard him babble about fire . . . the Spirits . . . death . . . and fire again.

My father stooped down and took him by the hair. He said:

“Who told you to do this?”

His voice was cold and sharp; only his eyes blazed with anger. The polymuf spoke again, but still in nonsense. My father shook him, with force enough to send his legs skittering across the polished boards but not letting go of his hair. The polymuf howled. My father said:

“I have a gift for you, polymuf. Tell me who put you up to it and you die quickly. It is a good reward. I do not think you care for pain.” He shook him a second time, a dog with a rat. “There was another. Was there not?”

“Yes!” the polymuf cried. “Yes, Lord . . .”

“Name him.”

“Not a man. It was . . .”

My father dragged him upright and stared into his face. “Do not say it was the Spirits or I will not keep my temper.”

“Not the Spirits. It was . . .”

I thought I grasped the words but he spoke so badly I could not be sure. And it made no sense. My father said:

“Say again.”

“Your Lady, Lord.”

“You fool!” my father shouted. “Are you saying my Lady told you to light the torch that burned her? You get no gift for that. You will . . .”

“Your other Lady, Lord!” My father's hand dropped from him as though it too was scorched with flame. “She who lives on the River Road.”

•  •  •

At first my Aunt Mary denied everything, claiming that the story was an invention of the polymuf to save himself from torture. But when she was confronted by a farm worker, who had seen her coming away from the polymuf's hut, she fell silent. Thereafter during her trial she did not speak, not even when the sentence of death by burning was pronounced on her. I was in the court and saw her eyes go to my father's but I do not think it was in appeal. It was his gaze that, after a moment, turned away. Her look followed him while she was being taken off by the guards.

The execution was fixed for the next day. That evening I had word that she wished to see me. It was her polymuf servant, Gerda, who brought it. She had been weeping, it was plain, and wept again when I hesitated.

“Master Luke, I beg you! For a few minutes only.”

I had never heard my aunt give her anything but scoldings, but her grief might have been for a mother. That by itself would not have persuaded me to go. It was my aversion which did so. I had felt for my aunt, since I heard the accusation that spilled from the lips of the crouching polymuf in the Great Hall, both horror and a kind of fear. I would not give in to this. I told the maid I would see her.

The Sergeant of the prison guard demurred at first about admitting me. When he did, he accompanied me to the cell and himself stood there while we talked. From time to time he cast my aunt uneasy glances, as though fearing that, although unarmed and helpless, she could by some witch's art strike me dead.

She looked very old in the gray shapeless felon's gown. And feeble, though I knew she had not been put to torture. But her eyes were as sharp and strong as ever; and her mind had not budged from its single concern. She asked me:

“Where is Peter?”

“Under guard.”

“What will they do with him?”

I hesitated. In fact, I did not know. There had been no evidence to link him with the crime but to some it was condemnation enough that it had been done for his sake. Others said that even if not treacherous in the past he could not be trusted now, the son of such a mother.

My aunt said: “Speak for him, Luke.”

I said: “It was me you wanted dead, Aunt, wasn't it? Not my mother.”

She shook her head, as though impatient, almost angry, at an irrelevance. She said:

“Peter knew nothing of it. You must believe that.”

“You wanted me dead.”

Her eyes met mine, unwavering. “Only because you were named heir. There was no right in it. My son is the elder, born in wedlock.”

“The Spirits named me.”

“There was no right in it,” she repeated.

“You would do it again, if you could.”