The Fatal Child

by John Dickinson

  Suddenly, after the long silent days among the mountains, Melissa’s world was crowded. The adults and the older children worked in the abandoned olive groves and fields below the castle during the day, but even so there was laughter and shouting and bustle among the old brown walls as the younger children fought and played, and supervising mothers scolded them. And there were always a couple of the men knocking and banging away in corners as they tried to repair bits of the castle, replacing stones and timbers that had crumbled or had been taken for building materials by the handful of cotter families who still lived on the land nearby. The upper floors of the keep were judged too rotten to be safe, so Ambrose and his friend the baron slept in the first-storey room when they were at home. A stretch of the roof of the living-quarter building was repaired so that Atti and Melissa could have two adjoining rooms there. Ambrose told them they had once been his mother’s.

  ‘They were my father’s, too,’ said Atti as she watched Melissa stop up crevices in the walls.

  Melissa looked up, astonished. ‘You lived here before?’

  ‘My father held Tarceny for King Septimus, after the fall of Ambrose’s father,’ said Atti simply. ‘Then Septimus wronged him and they went to war with each other. Septimus killed my father and destroyed Tarceny, which is why it is like this now.’ She looked around. ‘This must be the room I dream of. Only it seemed much bigger then.’

  ‘It’s this room?’ Melissa gasped. She looked at Atti, alarmed. ‘Will you be all right here?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Atti mused. ‘I wonder where the curtain was – across that door, I expect.’

  She was sitting on the end of her pallet bed, teasing gently at the ends of her long hair and speaking as if she thought it was the most unimportant thing in the world that she should be sitting in the very place she saw in her dreams. Melissa watched her nervously, wondering if at any moment a fit would come on her and set her thrashing and screaming there in the sunlight.

  ‘There would have been tapestries,’ Atti said, almost dreamily. ‘And joined furniture. And everything in bright colours.’

  ‘Tapestries?’

  ‘Like rugs, only beautifully woven. They would hang on the walls so you could look at them.’

  And hang them across a door, maybe? thought Melissa. Yes, to stop the draughts, of course. And then any time anyone wanted to come in …

  ‘Don’t stare at me so,’ said Atti coldly. ‘And close your mouth or I’ll put something in it.’ She stomped to the window to look out at the view across the wooded ridges north of the castle.

  ‘They’re giving me a headache,’ she said.

  She was sulky now. But she did not sound as if she were about to scream. She was just being Atti – normal Atti, if there was such a thing. Melissa shrugged and got back to her wall.

  She herself had grown used to the constant hammering of the carpenters. She was grateful to them for the new roof above her. Of course they had to move on to the other buildings in the courtyard now. She could hardly expect them to stop, just because she and Atti would be in the dry! And at least the men were working. What she didn’t like was when they found an excuse to stop work and drink the strong drink they brewed in the outer sheds. Then they sang and swore and fought each other, and not even Ambrose could do anything with them. It had been horrible, the first time she had seen a man who could not speak clearly or walk in a straight line. It had made her angry. Dadda had never brewed anything that made him silly when he drank it! But these men were not like Dadda. They did not stand on their two feet. They leaned on each other, more like. Yes, it got you great big roofs that no one man could have made by himself. But it got you a lot of other stuff, too.

  The clay was cold and sticky on her fingers. It was also heavy. Melissa had a whole pail of it, which someone else – bless them – had carried up from a stream bank for her and others to use. She would need nearly all of it. After years of no one living here there were cracks wherever she looked, and any of them could house large spiders or scorpions, or the little lizards that flickered along the walls and out of sight whenever they saw you move. She did not mind the lizards but they made her jump.

  ‘You must call me “Your Highness,” Melissa,’ said Atti suddenly. ‘It’s important, now that we are with other people again.’

  Melissa’s thumb smoothed one more blob of clay into place.

  Your Highness. That was what she had just said.

  Atti, we’ve been living cheek-to-cheek for two years!

  You wouldn’t have lasted a month up there if I hadn’t…

  Her fingers dabbled once more in the pail. Her lips moved.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Yes …?’ Atti had not turned her head. Neither did Melissa.

  ‘Yes, Your Highness.’

  ‘So how is Atti doing?’ asked Ambrose.

  Hey! thought Melissa. I didn’t go to all that trouble just to talk about her, did I?

  She had caught him perfectly. She had been watching him from the shelter of the gate as he harangued a drunken and surly settler who was late on his way to the fields. She had seen him turn and come back towards her and had timed her appearance from the woodstore, struggling with an enormous armload of firewood, so that as he strode frowning in under the arch he had almost run into her. (Whack, hit! It had worked just as she had wanted it to, like a stone flying true from a sling!) He had smiled at once and had taken half her load. Now they were walking back towards the living quarters side by side, moving at Melissa’s pace, which was as slow as she could manage without letting him guess that she was being slow on purpose.

  Except that he wanted to talk about Atti, and Melissa didn’t. She wanted him to talk about – well, about herself, if she had the choice.

  (Anyway, saying whether Atti ever liked something was always a bit difficult…) ‘She was glad to leave the mountains,’ she said.

  ‘And now?’

  Melissa thought. ‘Could we get her some tap … um, tapeasies …?’

  ‘Tapestries? You think that would please her?’

  ‘For a little, maybe,’ said Melissa truthfully.

  He paced on beside her. Melissa wondered if he had guessed at the things she hadn’t said – all those little complaints about Atti that she told to no one except the lizards on the walls. (Why couldn’t the girl be happy with what she had? Why wasn’t anything ever good enough for her?) Maybe he was sorry that she thought them.

  ‘Didn’t know this was the place she dreamed of, sir.’

  She said it to show that she was still trying to look after Atti, as he had asked her to.

  ‘Didn’t you? She did, and yet she still wanted to come. Is it affecting her, do you think?’

  ‘Not that I’ve seen.’

  ‘No. In a way I was hoping it would. I thought it might help uncover things. But the dream – the memory itself – isn’t the trouble. It’s just the clothes that the trouble comes in. I mean, yes, her house was destroyed. Twice, in fact. Once here, when she was very little, and then again in Velis a few years ago. You know how bad that can be. But it’s not the past, for her. I can see that now. It’s the future. She’s convinced that it’s going to happen again – or something like it. You know, sometimes I wish I could set her up in a high palace, surrounded by minstrels and knights in shining armour, so that wherever she looked she could see she was adored … But I can’t, of course. The best I can do is see that there’s a roof over her head and meal in the bucket and clean water in the bowl. Which is hardly …’

  His voice tailed off thoughtfully. He was looking up at the living quarters. The unshuttered windows looked back down on them like a row of blank eyes.

  ‘Water,’ he said. ‘That reminds me. Those carpenters still haven’t done the winch for the well yet. I swear my arms are an inch longer than they should be from hauling heavy water buckets up hand over hand. And Aun keeps saying we have to get them to build us a proper gate, or one day someone we don’t want will come riding straight in on
top of us and catch us here like rats. That’s a huge job, though. Sometimes I despair of ever getting everything done. So …’ He pulled a face. ‘At least let’s get this lot up to your rooms. We want to keep you warm, don’t we?’

  She clumped after him up the stairs. He knocked at the girls’ door but there was no answer. He led the way in. Atti was not there.

  ‘Where shall we put it?’ he said. ‘There?’

  ‘Tapestries?’ he mused aloud as they stacked the wood together. ‘They’d have to come from Watermane. And just one would cost us all we could produce in a harvest, I guess. But fire’s cheap, and on a dull night it’s prettier than any tapestry. Let’s look at the things we have and be thankful. We’ll help as many needy people as we can, Melissa. But we’ll see ourselves warm and fed at the same time.’

  ‘Yes, sir …’ said Melissa.

  They were kneeling side by side. It was now or never.

  ‘Um …’

  He looked at her. She felt the blood rising to her face.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, sir,’ she said.

  She held it out – the little four-pointed moon-rose flower, with its three white petals and one black, that she had picked from below the walls that morning.

  He looked it at. Slowly the smile returned to his face.

  ‘Now there’s a thing,’ he said softly. He touched it with his fingertip. ‘Why did you bring me that?’

  ‘Because it’s like the moon on your flag,’ she said. ‘Black and white, see?’ She looked at him earnestly, wanting him to remember that first time they had seen each other – the firelight and the hut, and the needle that had fallen to the ground.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But the moon had a piece missing. This says something different.’ He touched it again. ‘This isn’t a piece missing, is it? It’s just a petal that’s black, not white. What do you think that means?’

  ‘Sir?’ she said, still holding it out to him. (Oh, take it! Take it, please, for me …)

  ‘Here, the black is part of the whole thing. It says you can’t have the flower without it. And even the black leaf grows towards the light.’

  ‘Um …’ said Melissa. Her heart was going flip-flip-flip because he was so close to her. Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, because she had used up all the things she had thought of to say to him, and it was hard to think of any more. (Take it. Oh, please take it…)

  ‘You show me this,’ said Ambrose. ‘And thinking about Atti … Do you know who I mean by Beyah?’

  ‘The mountain, sir?’

  ‘The mountain near my mother’s house is called Beyah, yes. But it’s not just a mountain. It’s also a woman. A spirit. She’s been weeping since – well, for a long time, anyway.’

  ‘Um, yes. Your mother said.’

  ‘Did she? Did she show you the Cup?’

  ‘A cup? There were bowls—’

  ‘No. A stone cup. She keeps it for me up there. If you have the Cup, you can make Beyah’s tears appear in it. And then you can do various things. But of course they are tears – sad and cruel. They’re everywhere: in the Cup, in Rolfe and the other princes, in Mother. To some extent they are in all of us. And I think that when Atti was very little Beyah must have wept a tear straight into her heart. It’s still there, colouring everything for her. I can almost smell it.

  ‘You see, Melissa, if I could find out what to do about that tear inside Atti, I might know what to do about Beyah and her tears wherever they fall. That’s very, very important. It’s the most important thing there is. But is it a piece missing? Or is it part of the whole? I don’t know. I need to think some more. Thank you, Melissa,’ he said, taking the flower from her hand at last. ‘Now I’d better get after those carpenters, or they’ll be down behind the woodpile with a bottle of that wretched ale and no use for anything for the rest of today …’

  He was rising, turning, smiling, and leaving through the door. She saw him put the flower away in a pocket as he went.

  And then he was gone. His footsteps clumped down the bare boards of the passage and clattered away down the stairs. The glory she had felt went with him, leaving her as dull and flat as a muddy river-bed after the spring flood had passed. There had been no meaning in his smile.

  Sometime this evening, she thought, he would put his hands into his pocket again. He would find the flower there, wilted and forgotten. It had already been wilting when she gave it to him, because she had had to pick it hours before. He would see that. He would know that she had planned the whole thing, and that the firewood had just been a way to catch him. Perhaps he had known that the moment he had seen her carrying it. And he had gone and helped her anyway, because, because …

  She thought back over all they had said together, and saw that it had all been about Atti. Even while he’d been talking about carpenters he had been thinking about her, and that was why his talk had gone back to her when she had showed him the flower. And she remembered the way he had looked around as he had stepped into their rooms, expectantly, as if hoping that Atti would be there. She wondered if he had used the firewood as an excuse to visit their chambers, just as she had used it as an excuse to be in the outer courtyard when he came in through the gate.

  With a sinking feeling she decided that he had.

  Tonight he and Atti would play chess together again, moving all those knights and bishops and queens around on their chequered board in a way that Melissa could never understand. And barely a word would pass between them, but they would speak to each other with their eyes over the pieces. It took a different sort of mind to do that, thought Melissa. And their minds were the same.

  Her hands had started to rearrange the firewood, not because it needed it, but because she needed something to do. It will help to keep you warm, he had said. She picked up a stick, and looked at it. She remembered another stick, years before, with the flame licking around its end.

  How could it keep her warm, when the moon was out of reach?

  XIII

  Iron on the Wind

  he woke suddenly, in the darkness of the living-quarter chamber. She had heard something in her sleep. She knew that. She did not know what it was.

  She listened.

  She heard the wind in the trees beyond the walls – a watery sound, rising and falling.

  And a low chink-chink sort of noise, like metal, coming from somewhere on the slopes below the window. What was that?

  Was that what she had heard?

  There were noises inside the castle, too. A man was speaking quickly in a low tone. Wood scraped, as if something heavy were being pushed against or away from a door. Footsteps were hurrying along the corridor from the keep.

  She sat up, her heart beating hard, with the blanket wrapped around her. The knock came softly.

  ‘Up, both of you,’ whispered Ambrose urgently from the corridor. ‘Get dressed and come to the fighting platform. Don’t show any light.’

  He was gone, like a breath of wind into the darkness. Atti was standing at the door to the inner chamber where she slept. Melissa could not see her face – only the black line of head and hair and shoulder against the paler dark from the window beyond. But she knew. They both knew.

  Her home was destroyed, too, thought Melissa.

  The two girls stared at one another. Chink, chink, chink came the sounds from beyond the window. And then the unmistakable noise of a horse, blowing within a hundred paces of the walls.

  ‘Quickly!’ hissed Atti.

  They hurried into the inner chamber. Melissa groped for Atti’s gown and threw it on over her nightdress. She left the fastenings for Atti, who fumbled with them, muttering in the dark, while Melissa hunted for Atti’s cloak and shoes. Then Atti was moving for the door, saying urgently, ‘Come on!’ Melissa, still in her nightdress, her feet bare, felt her way back to her pallet and groped for her own clothes. Don’t leave me! she thought. But Atti was already gone. Melissa listened, heart beating hard, but she could hear nothing more from outside.
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br />   She left her gown, her shoes – all of it. She found her cloak and hauled it around her shoulders. Barefoot, she hurried through the corridors in the direction the others had gone.

  The stairs led up, twisting, past the old war room to the fighting platform at the top of the bastion. She emerged breathless among the battlements of Tarceny. The great keep looked down on them, flat and black against the sky. For a moment she thought she was alone.

  ‘Don’t show yourself!’ said Lackmere’s voice, low and urgent.

  They were crouching against the parapet on the north side. Atti was there with them. The figure of a man – it must have been Ambrose – was peering round a battlement at the hillside beyond. The others were keeping down.

  ‘Among the trees, about level with us on the ridge,’ he said. ‘Horsemen, for sure. I think there are others down among the groves.’

  ‘Posted to watch the postern,’ growled Lackmere. ‘Whoever they are, they know this castle. And the main force will come in through the outer courtyard. Damn, but I knew we should have got those gates repaired!’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Armed in the night? Enemy, of course.’