‘Michael's Wings! Why … ?’
‘You wanted it.’
‘Michael's Wings!’ he said again. ‘What if you had been caught?’
‘I don't care.’
The council chamber had been empty. So had her mother's anteroom, with the writing desk and the secret drawer. The drawer had opened to the touch of her fingers. The key had been there. It had fitted the lock of the chest, as she had guessed it would. Within there had been boxes and heaps of letters, many of them in a hand that she knew had been her father's. At another time she would have seized on them and read them, to help her remember him. But she had not come for them. She had come looking for the cup, cut from plain stone, that Chawlin had brought to Develin. She had guessed it would be in the chest, and there it had been, nestling among the papers. She had taken it because she could.
She had taken it, secured the chest again, and was gone in less than a minute, with a sureness as if someone had been telling her that no one would ever know what she had done.
Chawlin turned it in his hands. All at once he let out his breath.
‘I don't know … I don't know …’
‘I thought you might know how it could help us.’
‘I carried it. I never used it, or saw it used. Tarceny used it, and he was torn to pieces. It's dangerous. It must be.’
‘I can take it back, if you don't want it.’
He shook his head. Of course he wanted it.
‘No. No, let me think.’
He stood there, staring at the thing in his hands. Beyond him, the light was fading. The glow of the walls had slipped to a dull orange. It would soon be the hour for supper. The Widow would want to talk with her then, and afterwards, about her duty. This would be her last chance to speak with Chawlin today.
He must decide!
He wanted the cup. She knew that. If he wanted to keep it he would have to flee. If he fled, he might as well take her with him.
Still Chawlin knelt there, thinking, turning the thing at arm's length as if to find some hidden catch or crevice in it. The deepening shadows of the house settled on his face.
Awkwardly, as if he did not quite know what to do, but was being told by someone else, he put the thing down on the floor between them. Sophia crouched beside him. Chawlin rested one hand on the rim of the cup and then drew it away, palm still inwards towards the bowl. His lips were moving, soundlessly.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Just some words I— Look! Look!’
The bottom of the cup was filling, from nowhere, with water. It swirled brownly in the bowl. A scent of damp stone came to Sophia, recalling – what? She had smelled it before. At night somewhere. She could not remember.
‘How did you do that?’ she asked, shocked at the simplicity of the miracle.
‘It – it came to me. I …’
‘What do we do now?’
‘Look,’ he said at last.
‘What for?’
‘Ideas. Help, perhaps.’
‘Let's look then,’ she urged. ‘We haven't much time.’ Still something about that plain stone bowl – maybe just a memory – made him hesitate. A hiss of impatience escaped her. He must have heard it.
He bent over the water in the dimming light. Sophia tried to peer in, too. She could see nothing. Perhaps it was just the angle at which she was looking at the water. But Chawlin began to murmur again, softly to himself. His eyes were fixed on the bowl. Something was happening, there. What was it? Why didn't he tell her?
‘Rocks,’ said Chawlin. ‘Rocks. What place is that? No trees, grass or houses. It is not the mountains … Ho. Different now. Sunlight …’
Sophia looked at him, and at the water again. It was plain, a little brown and smelly, she thought. He seemed rapt in it. Perhaps the cup was speaking only to him, not her.
‘There – found it! Did you see that?’
‘No. What?’
‘My home – the manor where I was raised at Greyfells. But there's no help to be had there,’ he went on, half to himself. ‘My uncle could not hide us, even if he wanted to. What about … ? Ah, that's how. There, can you see?’
It was just brown water.
‘No,’ she said.
‘My keep, at Hayley in the March of Tarceny. It's all a ruin now. But it's not bad land, and there are few that live there.’
She knelt back, struggling with the suspicion that this was all a trick, and that he was just pretending, to humour her. But why would he be doing that? It was a risk for him even to be here.
Horrible thoughts came in a horrible time. She loved him. She must also trust him. She watched him, trying to guess whether he had made up his mind without saying so. He was intent on the bowl, and did not look at her. Perhaps he was using it as a way of putting off having to decide. Maybe she should not have shown it to him until he had done. But …
Something struck the side of the bowl with a sharp rap! and skittered away.
‘What was that?’
‘A twig. Someone threw it in from below!’
Who knew they were there? She jumped up to peer over the roofed parapet into the courtyard. A boy was down there, looking up at her.
‘Luke!’ she hissed, and stepped back out of sight.
They were both silent for a moment, listening for a step on the stair.
‘So he managed to find us after all,’ said Chawlin, still kneeling on the floor. ‘He's clever, no doubt about it. I should have remembered that I brought him here. And he knows we are together. What does he want?’
‘He wants to tell me his nightmares,’ Sophia said bitterly. Why had she shown herself ? At her foot was the twig that had landed on the platform. There was a small roll of paper around it. She picked it up, between a disdainful thumb and finger.
Chawlin was looking into the bowl again.
‘It's changed,’ he said. ‘Why has it done that?’
‘What can you see?’
‘A man and a woman – in a mountain valley. He's a knight … It's not us … Why is it showing me this?’
Sophia's impatience was growing, and with it, the beginnings of fear. Already one person in the castle knew where they were. She did not like the way Chawlin kept poring over the cup. She did not like not being able to see what it showed him. She should have been more careful, she thought. She could have talked to him about it, before giving it to him. What they were doing was witchcraft – real witchcraft! Many people thought witchcraft was worse than murder.
There was so little time!
‘Michael's Wings!’ said Chawlin again. ‘It is him – Lackmere!’
‘Who?’
‘My old captain …’
‘Can he help us?’ (Chawlin! Remember what you are doing here!)
‘Maybe. He is no friend of Velis. He could be anywhere on the edge of the Kingdom. Maybe he is in exile after Septimus's fall. He looks fit enough, whatever. Who is the woman, though? She is …’
Suddenly Chawlin exclaimed and bent forward, as if to force a closer look from the narrow waters.
‘What is it?’
‘I know her – or knew her! Angels above … So she's alive, too. Where has she been all this time?’
‘Who?’
‘That's the bride of … That's the mother of our Luke …’
‘He's orphaned.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘So you know his family then?’
Slowly, Chawlin withdrew his gaze from the cup. ‘I guessed …’ He looked at her, then dropped his eyes as though wondering how much to say. ‘It changed – it changed when his twig hit it. It knew him.’
Sophia peered out again into the courtyard. It was empty. Luke was gone. Night was nearly on them. From her vantage point she could see the upper walls of the main courtyard, reflecting the glow of the braziers that had been set by the doors of the great hall. Distantly, the sound of the house gathering for supper came to her.
She should be down there.
‘What does it m
ean?’
‘I must think.’
Sophia nearly stamped her foot again.
‘Why don't you tell me?’
He looked at her again. ‘What do you want me to tell you?’
After a moment she said: ‘Tell me what you are going to do.’
That was what mattered – not Luke; not the cup; not even that he loved her. What was he going to do?
‘I will think …’
‘You've been thinking all day!’
‘Sophia. We're on the edge of a cliff. If we jump, maybe we can fly. But maybe we will kill ourselves. We need to be sure – both about what we want to do, and about whether we can do it.’
‘There's no time! What if the King wants to take me away with him?’
‘It's hardly likely, is it?’
‘He's coming himself, the day after tomorrow. He thinks it's all settled!’
Chawlin pulled at his lip. The shadows of evening had grown about them. She could barely see his face.
‘We could not just set out as we are in any case. It would take a day, maybe two, for me to gather the very least we would need. I may start storing it up by that fishing shelter you hid in the day we met. At the same time I want to think. And you must think, too. If, in two days, we are both sure – and I think we can – we will go.’
Sophia groaned. Two days!
‘What was it Luke wanted?’ Chawlin asked.
She looked at the twig. She did not care what Luke wanted. But she picked at the twine that held the scrap of paper, unrolled it, and lifted it in the last light of sunset. ‘It says: Please meet me at noon tomorrow on the chapel steps. That's all.’
‘Better to see him, if you can.’
‘Why?’
‘It will keep him quiet. I doubt he would carry stories of us to your mother. But if he were minded to – well, at least hearing him out will win us time.’
Sophia stared out over the parapet. Everything was suddenly difficult, and complex. The threat of marriage bore down upon her like a galloping knight. And now there was the threat of discovery, too. What would Luke do? She had no idea. The boy was gone. The stone angles of her home were empty. She had stolen the cup from her mother's chest. And she must stay here for at least two more days.
‘What shall we do with that thing?’ she asked, nodding towards it.
‘Does your mother open the chest often?’
‘I don't think so.’
‘Then I'll hold it for now. It is safer than putting it back and getting it out again.’
He was going to keep it.
‘I must go,’ she said.
They embraced. She put her ear to his chest. She heard the warm heart thudding within it. Then she let him go. He pulled up the trapdoor for her. Even as he bade her goodnight his eyes were going back to the cup, as if he wanted to peer into it again. But the water was vanished from it, without either of them seeing where it had gone. With a deep depression in her spirit, she began to pick her way down the stairs.
He had not even said that he loved her.
The hours that followed were long. She could do nothing except give promises that she knew she would betray if she possibly could. She stood in the Widow's chamber, answering her mother shortly and hanging her head, but swearing, when it came to it, that she did indeed understand her duty and would do as she was bid. The Widow did not seem to be reassured.
‘Remember,’ she said at least twice, ‘you have not been out of Develin before, except to my other manors. There will be many things in Tuscolo and Velis for you that you have not seen. At your age you should rejoice at that.’
‘Yes, my lady,’ Sophia replied, thinking that the Widow did not sound very convinced herself. She was acutely conscious, as she stood there, of the secret drawer in the writing desk that she had rifled for the key, and of the emptiness in the bowels of the chest next door, where the cup had been. She did not think the chest had been opened in months. But what if someone did so now?
What if Chawlin was found with the cup?
Many times that evening she thought that she should not have taken the cup to him. She had known it was precious. She had known that it meant much to Chawlin. She had barely thought of the terrible reputation of Tarceny, and of what his thing might hold within it. It was dangerous, Chawlin had said. And yet he had taken it. She should have thought, harder and longer, instead of acting on the strange impulse that had crept into her head as she had passed down the living-quarter corridor and found the council chamber empty.
And yet the impulse had been right. Until he had seen the cup he had been ready to accept defeat and live apart. Somehow – she was not quite sure how – she had known that; and she had known, too, what might jolt him into seeing the world a different way.
At least he was thinking again. At least they had a chance.
She wanted to see him, and talk to him, and be sure that he would not try to persuade her to accept Velis. But that was impossible. For the next two days she must stay away from him altogether. So after her mother dismissed her, she wandered the house until it was time to lie down, and in the morning, after a sleepless night, she ignored her lessons and sought out unused rooms in the upper levels of the living quarters where she could be alone.
She tried to imagine what life would be like with Chawlin, if indeed they made their escape. He seemed to want to go back to his old keep near the mountains. That made sense – they should be as far away as possible from Velis (she could not call him ‘the King’) for as long as that man lived. In the shell of the keep they would build – she had no idea how – a cottage, perhaps, and live upon the milk of goats and bees' honey. And she would greet him when he came home from fishing the mountain streams and remind him of what he had been doing – and she had been doing – on the day they first met.
It was hard to believe in, but she tried, just as she tried firmly to believe that Velis was not so mad a lord as to take revenge on Develin when she disappeared. The Widow would be humiliated. She would be furious, too. Sophia could not help that. In a way, she thought, it was at least partly her mother's fault. She should have sent Velis's messenger away. She should not even be accepting Velis as King. She should have fought him from the beginning. Instead, she was just expecting that Sophia would do what was good for Develin.
At last she left her refuge and began to descend the stair to the main living-quarter corridor. She had, she thought, less than half an hour of liberty left. After that she must dress to meet the ambassador of Velis, who was expected shortly before noon.
And after that, if she could, she must slip away and let the boy Luke have his say at her. As if she didn't have enough to worry about already!
Bright sunshine slanted through the windows of the living-quarter corridor. The walls were barred with black shadow. A new thought came to her, almost naturally, just as the plan about the cup had come the day before.
The thought was of her father.
Father had always been a rule to live by when the world was stupid and unreasonable. Ever since her childhood she had been able to imagine him understanding, even encouraging her, when she ventured into things of which the Widow disapproved. Father wouldn't have allowed this dreadful offer of marriage. She tried to imagine him now, speaking calmly in the halls of Develin, while the messengers of Velis trembled at the softness in his voice.
It was difficult. The voice was wrong. And she could not stop herself from thinking that he might turn his eyes on her and ask: why is it like this?
It's because you're leaving Develin, the thought told her. You're leaving him, too.
She stood at the door of the council chamber, just as she had stood the day before. She was thinking: Father had lived here. All her thoughts and memories of him were set in Develin, their home. Now she was going to have to remember him from far away. She found that her image of him (peering from within the visor of his helmet, smiling, understanding) was already weaker than she had ever known it. She did not want to forget him.
>
His letters are in the chest, the thought said. You saw them. The latch of the council chamber clacked in her hand. The chamber was empty. The Widow was with the butler, hopelessly trying to decide how to take a week's supply of food and drink for a king's retinue (of unknown size) out of the cellars, and yet see the household through the spring without going to short commons. Sophia stood in the middle of the room, wrestling with the image of her father in her mind. Under the Widow's chair was the chest of secrets, apparently undisturbed. Letters from Father lay within it. She had seen them yesterday. She knew how easy it was to open the chest. The secret drawer was in the writing desk in the next room.
She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She opened it. The Widow's antechamber, too, was as empty as it had been yesterday. She crossed to the writing desk, finding and pressing firmly upon the hidden catches – just as Father had shown her, smiling at the joke of the springing drawer when she had sat upon his knee all those years ago.
Did he smile now? Perhaps he did.
The key was a little-barrelled black thing. She took it, as she had taken it yesterday, and retraced her steps swiftly into the council chamber. She remembered Chawlin's warning about the risk of discovery and closed the outer door. Only the Widow would enter without knocking, and she was busy elsewhere.
She knelt before her mother's seat, and opened the chest.
The cup was gone from the middle of it. Around the space where it had lain yesterday was piled paper upon paper, small, folded, bound and addressed in her father's hand. She reached in for one.
Then, at last, she wondered at what she was doing. She had wanted something of Father's. Each one of the papers was written in her father's hand. But the names on the direction were not hers.
To My Lady Develin, in Develin, to be borne by Special Messenger …
To My Lady Develin, in Armany, to be borne by Special Messenger …
To My True Love, The Lady Develin, in Develin …
To My Lady Develin … To My Beloved Lady Develin …
These words did not belong to her. They were for her mother – his wife, his love. Sophia could see that. She understood about love, now. Father was with the Angels, and whatever was left of him on earth must rest here. All she could take with her would be wisps of memories. And for the first time she thought she understood the loss that the Widow had endured when he had vanished from the world.
The Widow and the King Page 26
