The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  She put her hand on the nearest.

  ‘Try it,’ she said. ‘Push.’

  He put both hands on it. The surface was rough, and covered with old lines that must have been cut by men. He pushed. Nothing happened. He placed his feet carefully and pushed again, using his legs and all the column of his body. He might as well have been pushing at the mountain.

  ‘It's not going to move,’ he said.

  ‘No, it isn't.’

  Again Ambrose looked about him. Nothing seemed to have happened yet, but he was still nervous. The cold air made him shiver. At the same time he did not want her to know that he was afraid.

  ‘I could get a lever,’ he said stoutly. ‘And I could dig away the ground.’

  ‘You could. And in time you might move it. But I don't want you to. That stone is your safety, my darling. I've brought you up here to show it to you – and all its friends. Come, let's try the next.’

  Her voice was calm. Puzzled, Ambrose followed her.

  They picked their way down the rough, thorny slope to the next stone. This was balanced right on the very edge of the cliff. Surely, if he rocked it hard enough, it might go.

  He tried. It would not budge.

  ‘I am more anxious about this one than any of the others,’ she said. ‘But as you see, it is fast in its place.’

  ‘What are they for?’

  ‘They are a prison, my darling. And we are the jailers. Let us try the next.’

  They went on down the slope. It was difficult going – it always was on the mountainside, unless there was a path. In the still air of the dawn their voices and the clatter of stones under their feet echoed flatly from the far cliff. Ambrose kept glancing into the pit. The surface of the pool was nearer now. He could see nothing in it but the reflection of the sky.

  They tried stone after stone. Most were tall, like the first two. But others were lower, thin and flat like bladebones, and two were simply boulders that crouched like beasts among the thorns. Ambrose was able to move one of the blade-bone ones just slightly – a hair's-breadth in the earth at its root. The rest might have grown straight from the mountainside.

  They were approaching the lowest point in the cliff, opposite where they had started. A huge stone rose there, like the tooth of an enormous beast.

  Pebbles rolled under Ambrose's feet. He swayed, and once more looked to his left into the pit.

  ‘There's someone there!’ ‘Yes,’ she said, and did not turn around.

  There was someone there, standing among the low rubble that bordered the far edge of the pool: a thin figure, hooded in a grey robe, looking into the water.

  There had been no one a moment before.

  The figure was standing quite still. It made no sign as Ambrose stared at it.

  ‘He likes the sunrise, even now,’ his mother said.

  ‘That's why he shows himself at this hour. If we had come at another time there would have been nothing for you to see.’

  She was waiting by the next stone. He scrambled down to her and peered around it at the grey man on the far side of the pool.

  He was still there, still looking into the water. Ambrose could see him quite clearly, across the fifty or sixty yards between them, standing motionless like one of the big heron-birds that waited bright-eyed by the stream for something to kill.

  The rising sun was filling the bowl of cliffs with light. The pool held the reflection of the rocks, and of the grey figure, with barely a tremble on its surface.

  ‘Who is he?’ Ambrose whispered. His heart was still beating hard with the shock.

  ‘Who is he, indeed? He is our chief prisoner. But that is only the end of his story, not the beginning.’

  Her eyes were fixed on the man by the pool. Her jaw was set, as if she was looking at something foul or disgusting. Ambrose shivered.

  ‘I was born to a high house, Amba. But to the man you see I am no more than a daughter of farmers – so he once said. What kind of man could he be, do you think?’

  She drew breath, and spoke loudly so that her voice bounced among the cliffs.

  ‘Ambrose, tell me the names of the first princes.’

  She meant the seven sons of Wulfram the Seafarer, who had led the people over the sea three hundred years before, to conquer the land and live there. It was the very first story out of history, and he knew it quite well. But …

  But the figure lifted its head and looked at him. Under the hood, its face was that of an old man with deep-sunk eyes. Ambrose could almost feel those eyes, resting like a weight upon him.

  ‘Their names,’ she repeated, standing strong at his side.

  ‘Dieter, and Galen …’ he began awkwardly.

  ‘Louder.’

  She wanted the man to hear what he said. Ambrose didn't. He could still feel the eyes that watched him. But he filled his lungs and spoke out as he had been told.

  ‘Dieter and Galen. Marc …’ He hesitated. Then he went on: ‘Lomba. Hergest, Rolfe and Talifer.’

  Talifer, echoed the cliff opposite. It was the name of his own ancestor: the prince who had founded the house of Tarceny.

  ‘Indeed.’ She smiled, as if between them they had won a small victory. Still speaking clearly into the air, she began to walk down towards the big stone.

  ‘You have told the names that men remember.’

  ‘But …’ Ambrose was still staring at the figure by the pool. Without thinking, he had begun to bite the knuckle of his thumb.

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘there was one son who is not remembered. You are looking at Paigan, the living brother of all those first princes. And through all the years between then and now he has pursued his brothers and their descendants. He ruined them and brought them to evil in any way he could, until all the house of Dieter was destroyed, and so were the lines of Galen and Marc, Lomba and Rolfe and Hergest, and of the male line of Talifer only your father was left; and at last only you.

  ‘And then we caught him – the hill folk and I.’

  She gave a little laugh.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, calling across the pool. ‘How was such a terrible prince caught by a daughter of farmers?’

  Farmers, said the far rocks.

  For a moment more the figure looked at them. Then it moved at last. It turned and walked with slow paces away along the apron of rock that fringed the pool. Over the still water Ambrose could hear the pebbles clatter lightly beneath the old man's feet. He watched, fascinated. Again he was reminded of the herons, and the jerky way they walked among the reeds and white snow-fisher flowers by the stream.

  ‘He finds it galling, you see,’ she said softly. ‘For he thought me no more than his tool. And now he is trapped. He cannot pass the stones.

  ‘And pleasant company I wish him,’ she called across the water, ‘among those that are with him there.’

  … with him there, said the far cliff.

  The man paid her no attention. He paced on, alone by the water.

  ‘Who else is there?’ asked Ambrose urgently.

  She looked at him.

  ‘The things you remembered in your dream, my darling. Creatures he sent to kill you, when you were a child less than two years old.’

  Ambrose stared around the enclosed pool. Nothing moved among the bright rocks. The surface of the water showed only the reflection of the cliffs and the grey figure standing beneath them. Ambrose swallowed.

  The Thing! Here!

  ‘You are right to be afraid, Amba,’ she said. ‘I brought you up here to tell you this.

  ‘I know what you saw, because I have seen them, too. They are savage things, desperate and ill-formed. They come from deep within the pool. When they were free, they could appear anywhere in the land without warning.

  ‘But also I have brought you here to show you that the ring of stones holds them in. They cannot escape unless the stones fall. Neither can he.’

  This man, and his … Things. All his life they had been here, within a mile of the house! She had never told him t
here was anyone on the mountain but themselves.

  ‘What does he eat?’ Ambrose whispered.

  ‘He does not need to eat.’

  ‘Where does he sleep?’

  ‘He does not sleep.’

  The grey man paused on the far side of the pool. Once again he looked into the water.

  ‘What's he doing?’ Ambrose hissed.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  Waiting for him.

  Ambrose swallowed. Why him? It didn't seem right or fair. He had always done what he was supposed to. He watched the goats. He gathered firewood when they needed it, and even when they didn't. He prayed …

  His mouth was open to protest when another thought came to him.

  It came to him suddenly and clearly, like a whisper in his head. And it had nothing to do with anything that had been said before; and yet it seemed absolutely right and to the point. It was the thing to ask. It was the moment to ask it. So he did.

  ‘What happened to my father?’

  She frowned, sharply, at the figure across the pool. After a moment she said: ‘Come away.’

  ‘But what happened … ?’

  ‘I will tell you, my darling; but not at his bidding. Come away.’

  She walked quickly away from the pool, down the hillside below the tall stone. Ambrose followed a pace or two. Then he looked back.

  The man by the pool had disappeared.

  ‘Amba, come on,’ she said.

  He hurried after her. She led him swiftly downhill along a faint, narrow path that ran away towards the tip of the ridge where the house stood. In places it faded altogether beneath screes of grey pebbles. The footing was bad. But she did not slow her pace, and he slithered along behind her as best he could. He knew something had made her angry.

  After a while walls appeared on the ridgeback above them. It was the house: their house. He had never seen it from this angle before.

  Abruptly she stopped and seated herself on a boulder. She rested her chin on her hands, looking out and away to where the peak of Beyah was colouring with the morning sun. There was just enough room on the rock for him to squeeze onto it beside her. He wanted to be as close as he could, now that he knew what else lived on their hill.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to both of us,’ she said at last.

  ‘Never taunt a man who is helpless: especially if he is not quite as helpless as he seems. I should not have done it. And I should have kept us well back from the ring. But I was angry for you, after what you remembered last night. And now he has paid me back through you.’

  ‘I only asked …’

  ‘He wanted you to ask, Ambrose. And you did. And it hurt me, for your sake and mine, just as he intended. No, don't worry. I will tell you. But first remember how easy it was for him to suggest it. Remember, too, that when you looked back you could no longer see him. He is often very hard to see. So now you understand why it is that you must never approach him. Above all you must never listen to him, or speak with him, no matter how important it seems that you should.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ she sighed. ‘Your father.

  ‘You know your father was Ulfin, Count of Tarceny. He was a fine man, handsome and masterful. He ruled a great march of land within the Kingdom …’ Her hand waved away along the ridge. ‘And he wanted to be King, because he saw much that was wrong with the Kingdom and believed that he could right it. To be King he needed power. He found this strange grey man, who now called himself the Prince Under the Sky, and who offered him power and claimed him as a son.

  ‘What your father did not understand was that he was being tricked. The Prince had only hatred for him. He hated all his brothers and their descendants, because their settlements had succeeded where his had failed.

  ‘Did you never wonder why there was a throne in the courtyard of our house? It was his. We live in what was once his stronghold. But it was not strong enough. His brothers abandoned him. He was overwhelmed here in the mountains by the very hillmen he had come to conquer. They flung him bleeding into the pool, meaning to make an end of him.

  ‘Perhaps they thought he would be a sacrifice to appease their goddess. For the pool holds the Tears of Beyah, who in their legends is the mother of the world.’

  Beyah was the mountain across the valley. But yes, she had told him that the hillmen thought her a goddess. Of course the hill-gods were stories, and you did not pray to them in the way she had taught him to pray to the Angels. But she had also said that they were something more than stories. So he frowned, and tried to grasp the story he was being told.

  ‘But the Prince did not die. Instead the Tears gave him the power to live and work ruin. That was the power he offered to your father, long afterwards. The Prince offered it to him in a stone cup. I saw that cup. It was just a plain, rough-carved thing. But it held the Tears. And so, in a way, it held the whole world.

  ‘Your father used it. He knew that using it was wrong, but he needed it, and he persuaded himself that he was just being clever. He knew other people would have called it witchcraft and evil, but he called it under-craft, which in his provinces is a word for cleverness. He wrote his thoughts on this in a book, which I do not have.

  ‘Now this is the hard thing I have to tell you, Amba. In his war to become King, your father needed this “undercraft” very badly.

  ‘So badly, that when the Prince told him that the price for it would be your life, he agreed.’

  Opposite them the mountain of Beyah hunched against the sky. Fingers of light were creeping down its ridges like the runnels of tears; Ambrose remembered that very clearly afterwards, just as he remembered the tremble in his mother's voice when she said those words.

  ‘He did not succeed. I had friends – Evalia and Adam diManey, who hid you at Chatterfall, and others whom you don't know. Your father was defeated by a man called Septimus, who was less masterly but more honourable. Septimus is King now.

  ‘And in his last living moments your father turned on the Prince who had ruined him. And an angel spoke through him to our enemy. It said: Paigan Wulframson, least of your father's sons. By the last of your father's sons shall you be brought down. Remember that, my darling, because as I have said you are the last of the son-to-son descendants of Wulfram. The Angel was speaking of you.

  ‘You are the one who will bring that son of Wulfram down. He knows it. He tried to stop your father saying the words. And when he could not, he killed him.’

  ‘You told me he was killed by his enemies!’ he cried.

  ‘He was, my darling. Now I have told you why. And now you see why I came here to catch this Prince, and why we live here, in the very house that he built for himself three hundred years ago. Because men have made themselves kings, one after another. Yet all the time he has been the hidden King, who moves men and kings like so many pieces on a chessboard. And he brings ruin on all of us. All the fields I grew up in are wastelands now, Amba. Wastelands. And the wars and troubles that wasted them had their seeds in what he has done.

  ‘And if he were free, he would hunt you with every power he had, because you are the last of his father's sons.’

  It was a lot to understand. She had told him before that he was descended from Wulfram, but she hadn't made it seem important and he hadn't realized that it was. He did not see how the mountain could have wept, or how the man by the pool could have lived for three hundred years, or could go on living where he was without sleep or food; waiting, and wanting to hunt him.

  But what he thought about most of all, as he sat dumb and miserable on the hillside, was his father.

  Ambrose had always wondered what his father had been like. He had often imagined meeting him, and finding ways to please him. Now he knew that his father had tried to kill him. He wondered what it was he could have done that had made his father want to do that.

  She put her arm round his shoulders, and he let her.

  Thinking didn't seem to make it any better. It just hulked at the back of his mi
nd, like something horrible that he couldn't see but always knew was there. The things he wanted to ask would not form themselves. They stuck in his throat as if he might poison himself by saying them.

  Other questions, less important, came more easily.

  ‘So that man is my uncle?’

  She frowned. ‘Yes, in a way. He is your uncle across nine generations. But it is dangerous to think like that, Amba. I have told you how he carries his quarrel with Wulfram's descendants. You must not approach him.’

  He was silent for a moment longer. Then he asked: ‘Which angel was it?’

  Now she laughed.

  ‘My darling – what a question! The Angels move within us, fleetingly, and do not stay to introduce themselves. My friend Martin, who was a priest, called this one the voice of Umbriel, and that will do, I suppose …’

  She often spoke to him about the Angels: Umbriel and Gabriel, Michael and Raphael; whom Heaven had sent to carry its light into the world. Seven-eyed Umbriel was his favourite, because at birth he had been given the Angel's name: Ambrose Umbriel. He had not known that she had actually met any of them. But it did not surprise him very much, because he knew she had lived in the lands of the Kingdom, and had met so many people there – kings and princes and knights and bishops. Why not angels, too?

  Why not – after this?

  And it didn't help anyway.

  ‘I don't like it,’ he said.

  She sighed.

  ‘I know, my darling. I took you up there so that you could learn what it was you were afraid of, and to help you be less afraid. And instead I've let him make me frighten you even more. And he's made us both miserable into the bargain. So it is, with him, even now. But there's nothing we can do but bear it, go on living, and maybe learn a little in spite of him. And that will be our revenge.’

  Her arm tightened around his shoulders and gave him a little rock.

  ‘We can begin now,’ she said. ‘With breakfast. Why don't we have a little of the honey today, to cheer us both up?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Later, he went back to asking questions – many times, and often the same ones. She always answered, even when he did it just to distract her from being angry with him over something he had spoiled or something he hadn't done. She would finish scolding him, and then, after a few moments, she would say: