The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

  ‘Your father did not know you, my darling. At the time he had never set eyes upon you. And he did not really know the mind of the man he dealt with. Men can do very evil things to people they do not know, and when they listen to the words that that man speaks.’

  ‘I'll get a bow and arrow,’ Ambrose said once. ‘I'll give the hillmen one of our goats for them. Then I'll go up and shoot him.’

  She smiled.

  ‘He would be gone before your arrow had flown half the distance. Don't you remember how he appeared and disappeared? There is a place he can go where no arrow can follow him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Not far: into a dream of this world, I think. Anyway,’ she added, frowning, ‘the angel did not say “kill”. I would gladly see him dead, but I do not know …’

  ‘Then what am I to do?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘Then how am I supposed to know?' he shouted at her.

  ‘Mind your manners. I do not know yet. For the time being, we just go on living. That's all we need to do.’

  He knew she had told him the name of the enemy; but he never had to use names much and he knew that his own was spoiled. So it did not seem fair that his enemy should have a name at all. He made no effort to remember it, and in his mind he called him ‘The Heron Man’, from the colour of his cloak and the way he had stood by the pool.

  And he did as he was told, and stayed away from the ring of stones.

  ‘Living’ seemed to mean that his days should be filled with things she wanted him to do: fetching water from the big underground cistern; taking their half-dozen brown goats out to feed among the greener patches on the hillsides, and bringing them back up to the house again at the end of the day. Milking them, hand-feeding them, making sure they were penned into the outer yard. Cutting, carrying, and drying the goats' winter feed; cutting and carrying up firewood, carrying up and drying fish from the traps; and, of course, Taking Care. The older he grew, and the more he would do, the more she seemed to worry about him. She kept warning him not to fish when the river was high, for fear he might be swept away. She kept warning him away from the pot, for fear that he might burn himself. Of course he tried stirring it when she wasn't looking, and, as luck had it, he did burn himself. He didn't think that proved anything, but she did.

  And when chores were done, there would be other things, before he could play or they could have supper. There was a slate on which she showed him how to write letters, and then words. He must write any word that she said, and form the letters correctly too, if he wanted to eat well that night. She had two small books of prayers to the Angels, and she made him read them until he knew them by heart. Even when they had finished with the slate, and he had begun to play with his cup-and-ball game while they waited for the pot, she never seemed to stop wanting him to learn things.

  ‘You know, the hillmen say that the world is like a cup,’ she said as she watched him one evening.

  ‘That's because they live with mountains all round them,’ said Ambrose, who could remember their last trip to the house of the people he called Uncle Adam and Aunt Evalia at Chatterfall, in the Kingdom where the great broad sky stretched in all directions.

  ‘That's one reason. Now, the mariners of Velis say the world is like a ball.’

  The ball bounced rebelliously out of the lips of the cup. Ambrose looked at her, crossly.

  ‘Who's right, then?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Maybe they both are.’

  ‘They can't both be right!’

  ‘They can, because the world can be more than one thing. Perhaps the cup and the ball are each a dream of the other.’

  ‘You're being silly,’ he said.

  ‘You're being slow. You should be able to catch much faster than that. Let me.’

  She reached for the cup, and he let her have it. With quick movements she swung the ball into the cup clip-clipclip three or four times, but then the ball bounced out, as it always did if it landed on the part that was a bit pointy. It tumbled free to the end of its twine.

  Ambrose laughed. His mother sighed.

  ‘I could have done it with my old one, in my father's house at Trant. I should have made this one better.’

  ‘Why didn't you?’

  ‘Amba!’ she said reproachfully.

  ‘Was I ever taught to carve wood? I did my best, and no one can do you better than that. If you don't like it, play with your stones.’

  ‘Did you make those?’

  ‘No. Someone else did that.’

  ‘Maybe I will, then.’

  ‘Mind your manners, Amba, or there'll be no supper.’

  He knew he would not give up the cup-and-ball, because at least the cup-and-ball did something, while the pebbles just sat there, or got lost by themselves when he wasn't looking. But he wanted to let her think he was thinking of it. So he picked some up from the windowsill where he kept them, and turned them over in his hands.

  ‘Why do the stones keep him in?’ he asked.

  ‘Why can't he walk between them?’

  She took a pebble from his palm and held it up before his eyes. It was one of the more knobbly ones, with the same faint lines and traces on it that they all had.

  ‘It's stone, isn't it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is, and it isn't. The hillmen say they are teeth from the mouth of the world-dragon, Capuu. Capuu is very strong. They cannot come past him – so long as the ring is left to stand.’

  She watched him turning it in his fingers.

  ‘You have got them all still, haven't you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘That's not good enough, Amba, and you know it. Find them and count them out for me, please.’

  He sighed, and she looked up sharply. But there was no point complaining. She had always fussed about keeping the pebbles together – even more than she fussed about keeping him away from the pot. He gathered them in fistfuls and counted them out on the table for her.

  ‘Thirty,’ she said, nodding. ‘And mine makes thirty-one. Just as there are thirty-one stones by the pool. Each of these was cut from one of those stones. They have the same virtue.

  ‘That was how we caught him, you see. I knew that he dwelt at the pool, because it was the source of his power. And I had found out what the stones do. So I came into the mountains with gifts for the hill village on the other side of the valley. They fear him, but they also hate him. One morning I approached the pool, with forty hillmen and their beasts. The ring was broken then, because one stone – the big one – had fallen and was out of its place. But I laid your pebbles across the gap before the enemy was aware of us. And so he and his powers were caught within the ring. Then we raised that big stone, inch by inch. It took us almost four days. Some of the hillwomen came and played with you and made you grass-dolls while a few yards away the rest of us were sweating and pulling on the levers and ropes that shut him in. And when it was done you and I went down to live in the enemy's house, and the hill folk went singing back to their village. And the enemy could do nothing.’

  The hill people knew about living, Ambrose thought. They also knew how to play while they did it. Their village was perched on the opposite slope, some way along the valley. It was the only place within a day's walk where other people lived. Sometimes she took him there when she wanted things like baskets and clothes and tools, which the hill folk made much better than she could. On those days they had to leave at dawn, carrying items from the little store of trading goods that she had brought up from their visits to the Kingdom. They would walk and walk down their side of the valley to cross the stream at the bottom, and then climb up and up, following the path that wound backwards and forwards, and it was always more bends than he remembered before the little stone-built huts came into view.

  Ambrose liked the village because going there was an adventure; and because of the little, bird-like hill folk too. They smiled (with very few teeth) and played music on their pi
pes for him, and sometimes gave him titbits of a kind that his mother did not make. They called him hala-li, which she said meant ‘little king’. He supposed it was because they knew he lived in the house with the throne. He wondered if they also knew that he sometimes sat in that throne pretending to be a king addressing armies that would go out and conquer all the mountains for him.

  In the summer after he was twelve, she began to let him go to make her trades on his own. He liked that, too. Bargaining was fun, using hand signs and face expressions and the very few words he knew of the language of the hills. And it meant that he could spend a whole day away from the narrow crib of his home and out in the beginning of the rest of the world. And when he was in the village he could look at the path that ran on away from it, along the hillside, up and down for days until it came at last to the Kingdom and the great lake, and to places like Chatterfall, which was the only other house he knew.

  But he could never stay for long. He would have to start back in the very hottest part of the day if he was to be home before darkness. And he would walk and walk back the way he had come, until at last he would be climbing up the final stretch of path in the summer dusk. His feet and legs would be aching, and so would his shoulder if he was carrying anything heavy. The air would be cool and the mountain-colours fading.

  And he would look up at the hillside above him, where the jagged ridgeline hid the pool and the stones around it.

  And he would think: He's still waiting.

  III

  The Man Who Shaved

  he had asked him to spell ‘justice’ on his slate and he hadn't formed the letters well.

  ‘It isn't any use anyway!’ he yelled at her.

  ‘The letters don't do anything.’

  ‘That's enough! I'll dress you in goatskin if I must, but letters are a thing I can give you and I will not leave the job half-done!’

  ‘But there's only the prayers to read, and I know them already!’

  ‘Amba, that's enough!’

  They glared at each other for a moment. He was nearly as tall as she was now. But he still couldn't meet her eye when she was angry. He sat down, fuming, and looked at his slate again. He knew quite well what strokes she expected to see, but his fingers didn't want to do them. Neither did he.

  ‘I'm never going to use them though, am I?’ he grumbled.

  ‘Ambrose!’

  Now she was angrier than ever.

  ‘You have so many things to learn still! One of them is that if you do something you should always do it properly. So you can write it out now, or start again tomorrow on an empty stomach. It's up to you!’

  He mumbled and hung his head. But the moment her back was turned he stalked out of the room and banged the door behind him. He hurried across the throne-court to the archway. Here his way was blocked by the hurdles that kept the goats from straying inwards during the night. He dragged them aside, passed through and replaced them firmly, as if he could wall his mother in with them. Then he strode, furious, into the outer yard.

  Running out on her was happening quite often now. She kept saying that he was twelve and should be able to do more, and he kept thinking that he wasn't going to put up with it. And yes, it usually cost him his supper, but at this time of year he could wander the hillside while the light lasted and find berries to fill himself up a little. The trouble was that it never got him out of doing what he didn't want to do. Later that day, or maybe the next, he would have to get down to it – or miss another supper. So she always won.

  She wasn't going to this time, if he could help it. This time he was going to do something – something so bad she'd think twice before ordering him around again.

  The goats, which he had brought in from the hillside an hour before, were gathered in a small flock against the low wall. They lifted their heads and looked at him with their misshapen eyes.

  He thought of opening the outer gate and driving them all out onto the hillside again.

  But that would be stupid. Either he'd have to go and get them all back later or, if he didn't, they might both starve that winter. No use.

  He wanted to break something – a door, maybe. Or perhaps start a fire.

  Start a fire? The tinder was back with her in the kitchen. He wasn't going back there.

  No use, again.

  He thought of going to the Heron Man.

  He could do it. She would be furious, but he could do it any time he liked.

  He thought about it again. The Heron Man, and his Things. He never saw them. But sometimes he thought he could feel that they were up there. They were up there all the time, day and night, like a cloud hanging beyond the ridge.

  Never approach him, never speak with him.

  Ambrose shuddered.

  No use again, he thought.

  But why not? The Heron Man couldn't get out. It ought to be safe. Ambrose could go up there whenever he wanted – whenever she upset him. He could talk to him as much as he wanted, from behind the ring of stones. And it was a man up there – a man like Uncle Adam, away at Chatterfall. Not someone like Mother. Maybe he was someone Ambrose could really talk to.

  What was it like, to be as old as all the stories – three hundred years or more?

  Never speak with him.

  No father! Nothing! It just wasn't fair!

  ‘It's only you that says he's evil!' he said aloud.

  She was not there to hear him, so he could say it. He might say other things, too. It was only she who had said that his father was wicked! It was only she who had said that his father had wanted to kill him! Why didn't she want him to talk to the man by the pool? What was it she was afraid he would say?

  It wouldn't matter, so long as he stayed back from the stones. Nothing could reach him from inside the ring. He could talk, or taunt if he wanted to. She had done, the last time. Why couldn't he?

  And if the Things appeared he'd just – just throw stones at them!

  At once he turned and walked briskly towards the outer gate.

  The goats crowded in under the archway after him, as they did whenever he took them to pasture. The gatetunnel echoed with the sounds of their hooves, magnified to a great cavalcade. He pulled one leaf of the door inwards, meaning to step through and shut it quickly behind him. Then he stopped. The goats stopped, too.

  There was a man on the path outside.

  He was a complete stranger, who had stopped dead in the act of reaching for the door. He wasn't a hillman. He was taller than they were – about as tall as Mother. He had long brown hair, a brown and stained cloak, and heavy, dusty leather boots. And his cheeks and chin were concealed in a thick mat of brown beard, which looked very strange to Ambrose. None of the hillmen had hair on their face like that, nor, so far as he could remember, did Uncle Adam.

  And his eyebrows slanted darkly, even when they were lifted in surprise.

  ‘Ho! Someone does live here after all,’ said the man.

  His accent was strange. Where had he come from?

  His clothes were good – much better than the goatwool tunics or rough mantles Ambrose was used to – yet they were stained and needed mending. He carried a pack over one shoulder. His staff was freshly cut. Ambrose knew there was no tree in this valley the man could have got it from. He must have walked a long way. Altogether he had a wild, mysterious air. Ambrose was impressed.

  ‘… I live here,’ he said, recovering. ‘So does my mother.’

  ‘Your mother? Anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anyone come here – in the last month, say?’

  ‘No one ever comes. Not for as long as I can remember,’ Ambrose said.

  The man dropped his pack heavily to the ground and looked at him sideways. Ambrose gaped back. Behind him, in the gate-tunnel, the crowd of goats waited.

  ‘And how long is that?’ asked the man.

  Ambrose could not answer.

  ‘How old are you then?’ said the man.

  ‘I'll be thirteen this winter. Um. Do yo
u – do you want some water?’

  ‘Thirteen?’ The man raised his brows again. ‘Good. Well, you're tall for your age, anyway. But then I was born to a line of runts. And, yes thank you – it's been a thirsty climb.’

  Ambrose remembered that all the bowls and pails would be in the kitchen, and that Mother would be in the kitchen, too. He didn't want to have to go in to her again. But the man reached into his pack and drew out a leather bottle, which he held out to Ambrose. Ambrose took it. It was empty.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said, and ducked hastily back inside the doorway. The goats were still there, looking at him expectantly. He tried to pull the door shut behind him, to block them from going out, but it stuck on the stones as it always did. He was about to try again when he realized that the stranger would probably think it rude to have the door slammed in his face. Maybe he thought Ambrose had been rude already. But there was no time to think about that. The man wanted water.

  He scattered the goats back into the yard, slipped past the inner goat-barrier and walked softly over to the fountain. The door to the kitchen was open, but Mother did not call from within. He did not call either. Nothing like this sudden arrival had ever happened before. He wanted to keep it to himself for as long as he could. He waited anxiously while the thin stream of water filled the bottle, and then hurried back to the gate, thrilled by the chance of being able to talk to the man again. You're tall for your age. True, Mother sometimes said the same. But it had never sounded so rich with praise before.

  The door was still ajar. He could see the light cracking from top to bottom of the outer arch. A couple of goats were back at the tunnel, looking interestedly at the opening. If he had left it another few moments they would already have made their way outside. He slipped past them and squeezed noiselessly through the gap.

  The man had sat down with his back to the arch, intent on something in his hands. For a moment he did not seem to realize Ambrose had returned. Then he looked up.