The Widow and the King

by John Dickinson

‘One of them is all that remains of Talifer, son of Wulfram. Another was once Rolfe, son of Wulfram, the father of the house of Ferroux. He came to you in the garden, as your Angel said he would. He came to you as he was, leading his brothers. Why, I do not know. But he and his brothers were there when the Angel spoke through your father. No doubt they believed, as we all did, that the prophecy concerned you. So I guess they came to you to beg for help – or perhaps for pardon.’

  To beg him for help. If there had been an appeal from those lipless throats, he had not heard it; any more than Chawlin had heard him when he had called for rescue. He had been as deaf as the man who had died.

  ‘Can you think what evil had been done, to have such a price as lies in the bottom of this pool? At the founding of our Kingdom countless thousands were slaughtered, driven from the land, forgotten, so that Wulfram's sons, and his people, might divide it between them. Then Paigan trapped each one of his brothers, and brought them here, and confined them to a living death at the bottom of the pit. Here they have remained for three centuries, while their bodies deformed slowly under the grief of the tears the goddess has shed over what they had done. And only the gold remains as a sign of what they were.’

  ‘Can they be cured?’

  ‘Is that what you want?’

  He remembered the wretched voices, pleading in the darkness by the fountain; the hand that had stretched towards him; the voice of the Angel who had sent him to them.

  ‘We must.’

  ‘I thought this would be your answer, although at this moment I do not know how it may be done. But for this reason I have told Orcrim that we should not resume the stone-raising. No cure can come to them if they remain down there. And first we must decide what we are to do with this cup …’

  She paused, looking into the empty dry bowl.

  ‘I think – if I could be sure that in breaking this thing we would remove the Tears from the world altogether, I would say it should be done, even if I and seven others must be removed also. And if I could be sure that neither I nor they would be changed by destroying it, I should again say that it should be done, simply to remove a thing that has been used to work evil. But I do not know. And so I do not dare speak.’

  ‘I can imagine no world without grief,’ said Aun.

  ‘We will keep it, and guard it,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘Septimus gave the same order,’ she said. ‘And it could not be obeyed.’

  ‘We will be more careful,’ said Ambrose. He could not permit them to destroy it if there was a risk to her. And perhaps there was some point in being King, after all, if it meant they had to agree.

  ‘Who will take it then?’ she asked.

  ‘You should,’ said Ambrose.

  Still she turned the bowl in her hands, as if poring over memories. She was not laughing now. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Until we think of something …’

  She was interrupted by a cry from behind them.

  ‘Orcrim! Orcrim!’

  ‘Oh, he's awake,’ sighed Mother.

  Caw had passed a poor night, shifting restlessly in pain from his wound. Hob and some of the others had watched over him by turns, talking with him when he was able to talk, trying to ease his fears as the darkest hours passed. Hob had said that he had seemed to relax a little at first light. By the time Ambrose was up, Caw had dropped into a shallow sleep.

  ‘We'd better see,’ said Ambrose.

  He turned and made his way through the camp. Aun followed him. Around him members of the Company were loading their horses and tightening straps for the first stage of their journey back to the March.

  ‘Orcrim!’

  ‘I'm here,’ said Orcrim, coming up to stand over the wounded man, who lay wrapped in cloaks on the ground. He was carrying the banner of the Doubting Moon. Like Mother, he seemed to be in a good mood this morning. ‘How are those scratches?’

  ‘You're going, aren't you?’ gasped Caw.

  ‘The job's done here. We're off to Aclete with my lady Develin, to see if we can nip over the water and sort her out at home. With luck we'll sort out a nice place for you at the same time.’

  ‘Help me up,’ said Caw.

  ‘Oh, no. You're staying, my man. We'll lift you down to the house, but that's as far as you are going. I was planning to ask your former mistress to make sure you don't starve.’ He bowed slightly to the woman who had appeared at Ambrose's side.

  ‘How – thoughtful of you, sir,’ she said coldly.

  ‘No, damn you!’ said Caw.

  ‘… And you can come down to Aclete nice and easy in a month or so,’ said Orcrim.

  ‘Orcrim! She'll poison me!’

  Orcrim gave a look of mock surprise.

  ‘I don't think so. You won't, will you?’ he said to her.

  ‘She'll look after him,’ said Ambrose. ‘So will I.’ He turned to her. ‘It must be us,’ he said. ‘They'll need everyone they've got, when they reach Develin. And you told me you begged for his life, once.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Although I have never begged to bear his company.’

  ‘I beg that you should,’ said Ambrose. ‘For a month, at least,’ he added.

  ‘You have already asked much of me today,’ she said. ‘And I rose so joyfully this morning.’ She sighed. ‘Well, Caw,’ she said after a moment. ‘It seems our Prince has passed judgement on both of us, and sentenced us each to a month under the same roof. May Umbriel count it as atonement for what we have done.’

  Caw stared helplessly at the sky, and did not answer.

  ‘What about you, Old Iron?’ said Orcrim to Aun. ‘Are you coming with us?’

  ‘No, I will stay here.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘As before. I will keep him alive, as long as I can.’

  He jerked his head towards Ambrose.

  ‘And – the things we spoke of ?’

  Aun grinned. ‘We'll not march on Tuscolo this season, I think.’

  ‘So?’ Orcrim waited for a moment, as if expecting Aun to say more. Then he shrugged. ‘One thing at a time, maybe. Well, my lord,’ he said to Ambrose, handing him the banner. ‘After forty years I am leaving the service of the Doubting Moon. I am sorry for that. But before summer I look to have a hearth of my own in Develin, and some good southern vines. If anyone here comes to my door while I live, there will be warmth for you of one sort or another that you will find good, I swear. And maybe we can talk of other things again. My lady?’

  Sophia had come up, leading her horse.

  ‘Are we ready?’ she asked him.

  ‘We need the litter for my friend here. Hob!’

  ‘A moment,’ called Hob, from where he and a few others were bending over something on the ground.

  ‘A moment, he says,’ said Orcrim cheerfully.

  Sophia gave Ambrose a quick, tight smile. Ambrose did not know what to think, or say. She had lost so much, and suddenly she was leaving. There were all those dangers ahead of her, as she tried to go home. Goodbye, good luck. I'm sorry about Chawlin. Words could say so little. And there was no time now. The Company was on the point of going. A smile was all the farewell that would pass between them.

  He watched her lead her horse a little way down the difficult slope to where the horsemen were forming. He had liked her a lot – more than he had realized. She was a good person. She was also very strong. Even looking at her now, dusty and grieving, he could see the way she carried herself. He could imagine a kind of glow coming from within her that would lift her and at the same time touch those around her. He thought that if ever she managed to take her mother's seat at Develin, people would quickly look up to her. Perhaps one day he would be able to go and see. He hoped so.

  The litter appeared – a frame of wood made from the heavy tripods and the levers, with a bed of rope wound to and fro to support a man's body. They lifted Caw onto it. Four men took their places around it. Orcrim was calling from the head of the line, waving with his gauntlet. The Company began to move, slowly, scrapin
g and clattering as they coaxed their mounts down the steep rocks. Caw cursed as the litter-men began to lift him down the slope, a pace at a time, feeling their way. Ambrose stayed where he was, watching them go.

  ‘That's the way he was thinking of,’ said Aun suddenly, pointing to where Sophia was bringing her horse down to the faint track that ran around the end of the ridge. ‘If you wanted it. Wed Develin now, and you would have a better chance at the throne than any man alive.’

  ‘No,’ said Ambrose.

  ‘If you don't take it, someone else will.’

  Ambrose thought that Orcrim and Aun knew a lot about how the Kingdom worked. But they did not know Sophia.

  ‘I think there's going to be a Widow in Develin again.’

  One by one the Company passed. A man took a moment to raise his hand in salute. Others copied him. Ambrose shook out the folds of his banner to let them see the Moon that they were leaving. He remembered that there must have been a full moon last night. But he had not seen it rise because of the high horizon of the mountains, and he had not seen it set either. He had slept, and he had dreamed. And now it would be waning again, clouded by new doubts, as it made its way upon its endless journey through the sky.

  There's a piece missing. There always would be. That was what the Doubting Moon meant.

  There would be fear. There would be grief that could only be endured. He could not part the Cup from the World.

  He could only hope that people would listen to him.

  By late afternoon the Company were picking their way along a scrubby slope that fell to the valley floor a thousand feet to their left. Near the head of the line, Sophia allowed her horse to follow the leaders, while the flies of the hillside wove around her ears. Her eyes alternated over the path immediately before her and the big view out across the valley to her right. She could see the blue of the sky and the detail of the distant ridges. She could look back and still pick out the knuckle of rock where they had left Caw with Ambrose, his mother, and Aun in that strange house. She could see the huge peak of Beyah that rose far beyond, white-capped and purple-sided with the shadows of the clouds.

  She saw the beauty in the mountains; but it did not speak to her.

  An hour before, the little track they were following had passed by some huts of a curious, circular build that she had not seen before. The men had said that they were the dwellings of hillmen, but that they must have been abandoned in the last season. The low stone walls and little dark doorways were shells that had once held life, but were now empty. Perhaps life would come back to them after the defeat of the enemy by the pool. But no life would come back to her heart.

  It was already more than a day since Chawlin had died. Sophia could not believe that it had been so long. She felt that she had been distracted by other things. The war to avenge him had passed, and she felt that she had done little in it – mostly to have marched with the others in dark places, while her arm throbbed and the horses misbehaved. The horses were behaving now, but her arm still hurt and hurt: another distraction.

  And Orcrim had been trying to talk to her for much of the day. He wanted to hear about Develin – about who on the manors might support her, about the attitudes of the towns, their status, and their relations with her mother – all the things he needed to know for his campaign. And of course she should tell him. All that would matter, soon, to all of them. Her hours and days would be full of it. She would no longer be able to remember Chawlin as he should be remembered.

  She had woken knowing that he was dead.

  Somewhere ahead of her lay his grave, under a pile of stones in the foothills. She did not know when they would pass it. She had an idea that it might be days before they reached it, and yet already she was looking at each new view that the mountains showed her, trying to pick out where it might be. Flowers would not grow on it, on that bare hillside. The best that she and he could hope for would be sunlight, and perhaps a gentle covering of moss on the shaded side of the cairn, as the fist of the world closed over him for ever. Such a poor grave, for the man who had lit her life. And already the tides of politics would bear her beyond it, hurrying her on to errands in the south. She would pass, unable to improve what he had been given, or even to stay and weep.

  The days ahead of her would be meaningless – busy, and smiling for the sake of the people around her, but meaningless. She would go back to Develin, if she could. She would gather and protect the people she had left behind. She would have men repair the fire-damage, find what remained of the dead and bury them. She would see that her mother and the others who had been lost were remembered. She would re-found the school, for their sake. And perhaps there were still men in the Kingdom who, as masters and counsellors, could speak the things that would help her bear the disorder of living. But still Chawlin would lie out here, beyond the lake, beyond the March, in a little lost valley where few came and none understood whose story had ended under the cairn of stones.

  Ahead of her, the leading rider called and pointed upwards. Immediately behind him Orcrim rose in his stirrups and, shading his eyes, studied the skyline. She looked up. The path they were on was rising slowly to the crest ahead. They must have seen something up there, against the sky. She glanced upwards, but there seemed to be only rocks. Nothing moving. No life.

  Orcrim was looking back at her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone on the path ahead of us. He's gone over, now.’

  Someone on the path ahead. Well, one person was not going to be a threat. And very likely whoever it was would run off and hide when they realized that a troop of armed men was following them. She saw Orcrim and the leading rider watching the rocks by the path as they approached the skyline. They had a habit of expecting ambushes, these men. She supposed that was good. As usual, it was needless. The rocks were empty. The path was safe. They crossed the ridge and looked down into a new valley, shallower and narrower than the last, with a stream running in the bed of it. The shadow of the hillside filled it almost to the brim. Only the rocks on the far ridge burst once more into the gold sun. Evening was coming. Sophia guessed that Orcrim would want to camp somewhere along the stream below them.

  The ridge lifted like a curtain behind them as they began to pick their way down. It cut out the view of Beyah at last.

  Almost at once the men were pointing again. Looking forward, she could see what they had seen – a man walking along the track ahead of them, some way down the hill. They would overtake him before long. Orcrim was looking back at her. He was expecting her to say something. He was waiting to hear what she wanted to do about the man on the path. She thought, and realized why.

  It would be Raymonde of Lackmere.

  Had he seen them? He was not acting as if he had. He would have quickened his pace at least, or taken to the hillsides where the horses could not follow him. But he must hear them soon. The clipping and scraping of sixty hooves on stone, the repetitive clatter of pebble after pebble rolling away beneath them – he would have to be deaf not to know that they were coming.

  She knew what judgement Ambrose had given on him, when they had caught him the evening before. But surely he was not counting on that to protect him.

  He had brought Velis's men to do murder in her home.

  He had done other things, too. He had killed his own brother. Did Ambrose have the right to forgive that?

  He had done no good that Sophia could think of. Worse, he had lived, where Chawlin had not. It should have been the other way around.

  They were getting nearer. He would reach the valley floor before them, but not by much. Surely he had heard them by now. He had not looked back.

  Orcrim was looking over his shoulder at her again. His question was clear on his face. A word, even a nod of her head, and this man would pay with his life for all he had done. She needn't even watch while they did it. She could just ride on, and let them catch her up. It seemed a very little thing, his death – too little, to pay for the grief of Develi
n, for Chawlin, and all the rest. But it was all that there was to be had.

  Chawlin. Could she bury his memory beneath the bodies of enemies?

  She could do it. She could do it, because she could.

  She did not even have to do it. She could simply have her troop ride past him as though he were not there. They would leave him his life, but treat his life as if it was nothing. Because it was nothing. He did not seem to be carrying anything – food, blanket or even a weapon. She had no idea how he planned to live on his way through these mountains. And probably, after they had passed, Orcrim would nod secretly to one or two of the men; and they would drop back and finish him anyway. And she would never know or need to know that it had been done.

  Her mind was shut like a box, and she did not know herself what answer lay within it.

  The man limped on before them. He did not look strong. He was cradling one arm as if it had been hurt. He knew they were coming up behind him. He knew who they were, and that they might kill him if they chose. He was trying not to look around at them, but in a moment he would. There! He had done it. He was too weak to rule himself. And yet he did not care enough to try to save his skin.

  They were on level ground now, by the banks of the stream that ran with the opaque grey-blue of glacier water. The bright faces of snow-fishers showed in clumps along the banks as the colours around them dimmed in the mountain-shadow. For a moment the horses could ride alongside one another on this ground. Orcrim and his leading rider pulled back, and let her come up to them. They were still waiting for her command. It would be her first order for them in her service. Her first order would tell them much about the woman they now followed. Was she ruthless? Was she weak? They would watch what she did, and draw their conclusions.

  But her mother had never let that sort of opinion sway her. Why should she?

  She steered her horse around the limping man, wide enough to be well out of reach, and looked down at him. He was making what pace he could on the level ground. He kept his eyes ahead of him. He was ignoring her.

  ‘Look up,’ she said to him, irritated.