The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

The counsellor, a dapper man in a red doublet and gold chain, pulled a face.

  ‘Any man who arrives suddenly with a pretender to two great houses, and possibly the throne, deserves suspicion. I would have laid money that he wished to enlist us in some plot, or at least to ransom or use the boy for some end of his. Your offer of haven for one tested him, as no doubt you intended …’

  ‘Flatter me not, man, but I did.’

  ‘Yet he asked nothing for himself, and so, for my judgement, did he prove his purpose honest. From what he said of the boy's mother, I judge that he very much desires that she should yet be alive, whatever the truth may be. Perhaps it is some feeling for her that has led him to act as he has done.

  ‘More, he said that he would now ride to aid Septimus against the rising of Velis. If he is honest in this as well, we may judge that a plot for the crown was never part of his thinking.’

  ‘Padry?’ said the Widow.

  ‘I would say so,’ said a fat man in a green gown, whose round face bore a fringe of clipped beard. ‘Though I would also say that his resolve to join with Septimus came upon him when he learned that his son followed Velis, and not before.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the Widow. ‘How far is the Kingdom fallen, that for the son to take one side is cause for the father to take the other!’

  ‘Yet I thought also that he meant to test you, my lady,’ said the counsellor in red. ‘With his talk of riding to Septimus.’

  There was a subtle change in the stance of the men, as though this was something they knew the Widow did not want to discuss.

  ‘Did he, or do you?’ said the Widow, eyeing him sourly.

  The red counsellor bowed. Ambrose wondered if the man was about to get into trouble.

  ‘Septimus will send for your help, my lady. He has lost much. You will have to make some sort of answer.’

  ‘Have I not enough weary business that I must make war as well?’ cried the Widow.

  ‘War, yet again? Will it never end?’

  The men were silent, waiting for her.

  ‘Septimus is poorly placed now,’ she said at length. ‘What Lackmere can throw into the scales will not save him. We all know that. Even what we here could do might not be enough, and yet would cost us everything for a king who has never paid heed to his support in the Kingdom. No, I will not stir for Septimus.’

  There was a slight murmur among the men. Ambrose had only half-understood what they were saying, but he could tell that not all of the counsellors were happy with that answer. The Widow must have felt it, too, but she was ignoring it. She was looking at him.

  ‘It is a bad time to be a pretender without friends.’

  Answer fairly, Mother had always told him. Tell the truth, fairly, and least harm will come – although that had mostly been about when she caught him stealing honey from the store.

  ‘I don't pretend to anything,’ he said, and his voice was hoarse.

  ‘Call me “My Lady” or “Your Grace” when you speak with me. Do you pretend to be hungry, boy?’

  His mouth was open to answer at once, when a thought came to him.

  It came to him suddenly and clearly, like a whisper in his head.

  It is a trick, it said.

  It was a trick.

  He swallowed, and looked into the eyes of the Widow.

  ‘I'm not pretending about that, my lady,’ he said.

  Someone grunted. Surprise? Laughter? He did not know this place.

  The Widow leaned back in her chair. ‘So. We will have food brought up to you.’ She looked at the man in the green gown. He nodded and, still smiling, made his way out of the room.

  ‘Can you read?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes – my lady.’

  ‘Read this.’

  In her hand – it seemed to have come from nowhere – was a small book. She held it out to him with her finger marking a page. He had to take three steps towards her before he could focus on the tiny, beautiful writing.

  ‘There is no treasure but Truth,’ he began slowly.

  ‘There is no Truth but Wisdom. There is no Wisdom, but from Learning, and Learning is won by the devotion of hours, years, days and nights to the works of Nature and the Treasures of Truth that others have gathered.’ The page ended there. He looked up at her, wondering if this was another trick. But it seemed not.

  ‘Good. Someone has made you not altogether worthless. Do you know it?’

  ‘No – my lady. Is it a prayer?’

  ‘Of a sort, yet it is addressed to no angel. Nevertheless I see that you read fairly; and that, hungry or not, you can think as well.’ She jerked her chin to the low stool by the fire in the room. He made his way over and sat in the warmth, conscious of his damp and ragged clothes, and the aching famine inside him.

  They were still watching him. He shifted on the stool, but there was nowhere else he could go.

  ‘Your cut-throat friend would have me make you a page,’ the Widow said at length. ‘To learn gentle manners and how to empty a man's skull of his brains with a sword. I will do better for you. In my house I keep places for fortynine scholars. Their family is no matter to me. The poorer the better, so long as they have the wit to study with my wise men, and carry out into the world what they have learned. You will join them. And for your safety, and my peace, I think we shall not speak to any of your line. You are an orphan, found by a traveller, and brought to my charity. That is a story common enough in this cold time. We shall choose a new name for you …’ She paused, and looked around at the men.

  ‘His mother's father was of Trant. Trant's badge was the oak-leaf, if I remember. Shall we call him Acorn? Wisgrave, what do you think? Acorn?’

  ‘Is it not a little obvious, my lady? Better a name with no reference to his family, no meaning at all.’

  ‘All names have a meaning in my house, sir. Hervan – what is your thought?’

  ‘That it might be both more true and more safe to make a name of the signs of both houses, the Moon and the Oak. So I say Monak, which will mean little to those who do not understand.’

  ‘Except that you all but call him Monarch, and I would have no whisper of that.’

  ‘Perhaps Monk, then …’

  It was a game, Ambrose thought. The moon was for his father and the oak-leaf for his mother. The men were tossing them and his name between them, and the winner would be the one who could make his name disappear. His name was almost the last thing he had.

  ‘Since you have called the Monk, we should let our Monk speak. Martin, help us …’

  The bald monk smiled.

  ‘Let us use my friend Hervan's idea, my lady, and yet change it just a little. If we mix the words for Oak and Moon in the old speech, we reach the name Luquercunas, which …’

  ‘Which stretches the mouth too far …’

  ‘Which, as I was about to say, my lady, we may shorten swiftly to Luke.’

  ‘A point to you, sir,’ said the Widow. ‘I think you have it.’

  ‘Luke,’ said the red counsellor eagerly, ‘recalls a heathen god of the sun, as I think my friend Martin will allow. The sun stands for royalty, and therefore …’ He let the end of his sentence dangle in the air.

  The Widow smiled wryly. ‘In truth,’ she said, ‘the boy's calling shines through all effort to obscure it. No, sirs, “Luke” is plain, and yet speaks to those of us who have understanding. Enough. But I want no talk that the son of Tarceny is in my house – not even to those close friends and counsellors of ours who chance not to be here this morning – or men will say that I am plotting to put him on the throne. Hervan, you will instruct the guard who left with Baron Lackmere in this as soon as we are finished. And you, boy. Understand that it is a risk for me and all my house that you are here. It pleases me to take this risk, and to forgive you the wrong your house has done me, because I hold you innocent. But from now on your name is Luke, and you do not know your father. Be faithful to me in this, and study well, and I shall consider myself repaid.’

 
Ambrose nodded, supposing that he could not disagree.

  ‘Here is food for you, then.’

  The man Padry had been standing at the door for the past few minutes, with a small tray in his hand. He placed it on the ground in front of Ambrose's stool – nervously, as if Ambrose were a stray dog that might bite. Ambrose looked at the tray, and his mouth tickled at once with juices. There was a loaf, and legs of cold, small meat of a kind he had never seen before. He gave up trying to follow the talk, and wolfed at the food. There was wine, too, of a rich pungency that swam in his head as he drank his way cautiously toward the bottom of the bowl.

  He understood that the Widow had tested him, swiftly and ruthlessly – not only with the reading, but also in the question: Do you pretend to be hungry? It had indeed been a trick. If he had just said ‘yes’ or even ‘no’ – which, under her stern look, he might have done – he would have got nothing. But somehow his brain had picked it up. It almost made him shiver to think how close he had been to going wrong. But he had got it right. He could be pleased about that. And now he was being fed.

  And with food moving into his belly he could look at the world differently. He could see, through a square window behind the Widow's chair, the brown lines of hills that he had travelled to come here. Out there were the comfortless places where barns stood ruined and fields all run to seed. That was where he had seen his mother fall, crumpling under the blow at the clifftop. That was where Wastelands was going, where enemies still roamed with steel in their hands. The walls between there and here were deep, hard stone. He could measure the casement of the window with his eye. The depth of it was longer than his arm's reach – maybe twice as long. And now these people had taken his name, and put it beyond the walls with all the rest. They had made him into someone else. He could still feel his sadness, but it had moved a little further from him. Here inside there was fire and food. He was beginning to feel warm, and braver about being left on his own.

  And he was beginning for the first time to feel sorry for Wastelands. He wished, now, that they had liked one another better. He felt that they should have done. Perhaps it had been his fault that they had failed.

  The bald monk had passed Mother's letter to the Widow.

  ‘She writes He is loose,’ he was saying.

  ‘I think I can guess who she meant by He. Pity that she has told us so little.’ The Widow looked at the writing.

  ‘So what has she told us, Martin?’

  ‘Enough to support our fears about the fall of Watermane. Velis, or one close to him, may be following the same road that Tarceny did ten years ago.’

  ‘Then Velis is in great peril.’

  The monk seemed surprised.

  ‘Indeed, my lady. Although I own that I thought more of Septimus, who for all his faults is a man of honour and must contend against this thing.’

  The Widow sighed. ‘Septimus is finished. I can do nothing for him. I say that to you now, sir. If I must fight the ghost of Tarceny, then fight I will. But I will do it in my own way – in wisdom, not war.’

  They were standing around her, waiting for her.

  ‘Martin, I would that you go to Velis.’

  ‘I? And say what?’

  ‘Not as an ambassador, but as a counsellor. I shall write a letter for you to carry. You are my gift to him. I release you from my service, that you may serve him as you have served me. Watch for witchcraft, for untruth, for wanton cruelty. When you see them, speak against them. Velis is a pup, suckled on war. If he achieves the throne, he will need your help to bring peace.’

  ‘As – as I am commanded, my lady.’

  ‘Good, then. It remains therefore that we prepare our answer for Septimus when he should send … What is it, Martin?’

  ‘My lady – if I am to accept this charge, I beg leave to withdraw.’

  ‘What, to put your head in a bucket, sir? In faith, but I thought you stronger of stomach!’

  Ambrose saw that the Widow wanted the monk to laugh with her, and also that the monk was not in a mood for laughing. He smiled, tightly.

  ‘I would speak again with the Baron Lackmere before he departs. He may tell me more of his son's doings than could confirm our guesses. Also I would speak with him of the mother of – of our Luke here. She was friend to me, too.’

  ‘That one? You have strange friends, sir, but I love you for it. And yes, you may withdraw. You will find that scoundrel in the kitchens, I guess. Yet come you back here straight. Now I must lose your counsel, I feel that I want it sorely.’

  The monk turned to go and found his way blocked. A man stood in the doorway wearing the red and white chequers of the Widow's house over his mail. He bowed.

  ‘What is it?’ said the Widow.

  ‘A party of armed horsemen, my lady. They have come across the bridge and are approaching along the gate road.’

  ‘Armed horsemen? Who?’

  ‘We see no banners, my lady. But the watch has counted fifteen or sixteen horses.’

  ‘My lady,’ said one of the others in the room. ‘I guess that these may be Lackmere's pursuers.’

  ‘So. Is Lackmere aware?’

  ‘He is gone, my lady,’ said the newcomer. ‘This past half-hour. He mounted and rode as soon as he left you.’

  ‘Gone? Did he not even stay for meat?’

  The Widow rose and peered through the window as if expecting to see through its narrow scope the figure of a horseman fleeing across the hills. Her fingers still held the letter, but she had forgotten it.

  ‘I did not mean that he should part without even a drink from my wells,’ she said.

  ‘Yet if these are indeed his pursuers, my lady, and they serve someone of rank, then it is better that he is not found within our walls.’

  The Widow glared at the counsellor who had spoken. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘If they wish to parley, then I will speak with them. Maybe I will win that old rascal another halfhour yet.’

  Her eye fell on the man in the door. Ambrose saw at once that there was something more he would say, and did not know how to.

  ‘The Lady Sophia, my lady …’

  ‘At her lessons, at this hour, I hope.’

  ‘She … we think she may have gone out beyond the walls …’

  There was a moment's silence. The men around the Widow had stiffened like deer that scent a wolf. Ambrose trembled.

  ‘So!’ barked the Widow. ‘You are telling me that my feather-brained daughter has played truant again and gone frolicking among the daisies, is that it?’

  ‘My lady …’

  ‘At the very moment when a troop of armed men, who may well be brigands, have chosen to ride up to my gate as bold as you please, sir?

  ‘And that you have allowed her to pass, although you knew that I would not let it?

  ‘And I guess, that this is not the first time?’

  The man could do nothing but bow.

  ‘Angel's knees, sir! Do I have walls for no purpose? Gates, guards, all useless?’

  ‘I have ordered a sortie, my lady. Thirty armed men on horse …’

  ‘I doubt it will come to that. But when this is past, I do not think the Lady Sophia should remember this day with pleasure. Nor should the guards who let her out, knowing she should be at lessons. And you and I, sir, will speak of this again this evening. Now, show me these brigands who think to crack their lances on my gate-bells!’

  She stood among them: a short, round woman in black among those tall and colourful men. They bowed to her as she passed, her black shawl lifting slightly in the air of the room. The armoured men and the red counsellor followed her through into the passage way. Calls sounded in the corridor. Somewhere, someone began to run. The noises receded.

  Three men remained in the room with Ambrose, muttering among themselves.

  ‘It would be easier if we knew who they were,’ said a greybeard in a blue gown.

  ‘She will not take sides,’ said the bald priest, Martin. ‘She has made that plain. So she will be carefu
l. For all that, I guess that these people – from Velis, or someone else – will receive little help from her.’

  ‘And Lady Sophia?’

  ‘Will find it easier to sleep on her front tonight, I suppose.’

  They laughed, in spite of the tension in their voices.

  ‘You think she is not in danger, then?’

  ‘Oh, I fear she may be. But I tell myself that it is not for her that they came. Nor do I think that they will prove to be just brigands.’

  ‘So you know who these men are?’

  ‘Fifteen riders? I might make a guess.’

  There was a pause. Ambrose looked up. He thought that a moment before they all had been looking at him. The man Padry cleared his throat.

  ‘I think it falls to me to show the boy his place in the house. Ha, er – Luke, if you are ready?’

  ‘Fifty scholars now, and only ten masters,’ said the other man.

  ‘And more councils in a week than we used to see in a month. We shall have our hands full. But I would rather be here with five hundred young ingrates than follow you to Velis, Martin. That's a thankless task she has given you.’

  ‘She has spoken of it before, although I had halfhoped she had forgotten. It was not a surprise. Yet I am sorry that I shall not have the pleasure of instructing our fiftieth scholar.’

  Ambrose, who had been picking himself up to follow the man Padry, stopped. The monk was watching him. This was the one who had known Mother. There was something like sympathy in his eyes.

  ‘Come, boy, come,’ said Padry from the door.

  The monk nodded in dismissal. Ambrose left. Padry was waiting in the corridor, tapping his foot.

  ‘Come on, boy!’

  Outside the Widow's chamber the sound of singing swelled again. It floated up the stair and seemed to flood the corridor. Maybe all these stone passages were always filled with music, just as they were always lit with lamps. But there were other sounds, too. From somewhere below came the sound of men hurrying in mail. Horses were snorting and turning in the courtyard. Through narrow windows Ambrose glimpsed red and white pennons dipping on the ends of lances. Somebody called an order, and another voice cursed him and yelled at him to keep his voice down. Ambrose scampered after Padry, infected by urgency as the sortie armed in the courtyard.