Messages were sent ahead to Tuscolo, demanding that the city declare itself. But neither Caw nor Aun of Lackmere would wait for a reply.
‘Our necks are already in the noose,’ Aun said. ‘Delay now and the other side will start to reckon the odds. March boldly and they will think you already crowned – if they have time to think at all.’
They covered twenty-five miles the first day, and at the end of it found a baron of the north, Lord Herryce, waiting with another two-score men-at-arms to pledge his allegiance. On the second day they forced their pace, marching thirty-five miles closer to the capital. They passed by three castles, including one belonging to the regent Lord Joyce, but no one opposed them. They halted that night within five leagues of Tuscolo.
Again riders went out, demanding yet more from their horses. They were under the city walls by dawn, hammering at the gates and shouting the arrival of the new King with a great force. But Ambrose’s party did not break camp the following morning. They rested and fed their mounts, repaired their harness, sharpened their weapons and put on their armour with care. Only when the sun had begun to decline and the heat of the day was past did they mount and move warily towards the city.
Messages dribbled back to them during the afternoon: from Lord Seguin, defiance and a demand that they surrender; from the Lord Chancellor Padry, to say that the treasury was secured for Ambrose and had been removed to a secret place; from Lord Joyce, proposing a parley before the walls and also that a Great Council of the nobility and clergy should consider Ambrose’s claim to the throne; from the Bishop of Tuscolo, urging that there be no bloodshed; from a city burger called Wrathmore, begging that the new King consider urgently his case against the Mercer’s Guild as soon as he was installed in the city.
They pushed on. Aun of Lackmere had his men stop every traveller coming away from the city and make them march back towards it in Ambrose’s train. They pressed donkeys, carts and drivers from the fields to join them, too. The column straggled back for a mile along the road, raising a great cloud of dust on the sun-blasted earth, which drifted high into the sky for the watchers of Tuscolo to see.
Another report came, from one of their own outriders. The city gates had been closed. Some of their men, already in the city, had been cut off. The citadel was flying flags with the devices of Gueronius and Seguin. At that, Caw ordered a halt and Ambrose called a council of war. But even as Caw and Aun were arguing about what to do, more horsemen arrived. The gate was open again. Moreover, Lord Joyce was now bidding them come with all speed. A crowd was said to be gathering on the walls.
‘Quickly then,’ said Aun. ‘We must be there by sunset or our moment will have passed.’
On they went. The sun dipped behind them, throwing great shadows of the horsemen forward on the road. They topped a rise and there was the river and the city itself on the near bank. Its walls and towers were bathed orange in the long light. There were banners drooping in the air, and a crowd massing by the gate. The road led down towards it. People were beginning to gather at the wayside, landsmen hurrying from their fields to gawp at the passers-by and townspeople come out from the gate to call blessings on the new King or shout their own petitions for when he should come into his own. Rough garlands were hoisted up on sticks to the leading riders. Ahead of them the gates were indeed open.
‘Now cheer, you dogs!’ cried Aun. ‘Ambrose Umbriel – King!’
‘Hurrah!’ bellowed the escort. And the cheering spread back down the line to the followers they had forced to come with them, and ahead to the crowd at the gate, dissolving into a shapeless, endless barrage of noise as Tuscolo, a city of ten thousand souls, welcomed its new master home.
In the gateway stood the bishop, with the keys of the town. On his right, in armour, was Lord Joyce, a small man with a huge plume and a little rat face peering out through his open visor. On his left was the chancellor, Thomas Padry, with a wreath of oak leaves in his hand. Hastily made banners were waving among the crowd: the black-and-white Moon of Tarceny, the Sun and Oak Leaf of Trant, and banners of any colour with the letters AU stitched upon them, which stood not only for ‘Ambrose Umbriel’ but also recalled Aurelian, the last High King, whose reign a century before had been counted a golden age.
Before the doors Ambrose dismounted. He knelt for the bishop’s blessing, then stood to receive the keys and the wreath. All three men bowed to him.
‘Welcome, Your Majesty,’ they said. ‘Welcome to your city.’
‘Where is my Lord Seguin?’ demanded Ambrose.
‘Your Majesty, he left by the east gate an hour since,’ said Lord Joyce. ‘He had but few followers with him. Loyal men hold the castle of Tuscolo for you.’
‘Then may the Angels be praised,’ said Ambrose. ‘For there will be no blood shed today.’
And on foot, with crowds around him and armed men at his back, he entered the city of kings.
Melissa reached Tuscolo with Atti a week later. Even before she arrived her head was in a whirl. She had crossed the lake by boat, which she had never done before (water all around her – as far as the eye could see!). She had passed strange fields, with few trees, yellow grass and pale brown earth all cracked and baked hard from the sun. And now she was in the city, where there were houses and more houses, people and more people, stalls and street criers and smells that punched into her nose; walls further around even than those of Tarceny; buildings with their own towers, some of which were called chapels and were supposed to be holy; whole streets in which only meat was sold, or only leather goods, or only iron. When she lay down at night, all the images of the day went on going round and round in her mind, chasing her into her sleep and tumbling among her dreams.
But there was no time to stand and gawp, because from the moment she arrived she was running errands for Atti. These were mostly messages for this person or that to find the things Atti wanted for the apartments that had been set aside for her, or for clothes, or for someone or other to come to see Atti instantly because there was something she needed to discuss with them. And Melissa would hurry through the great castle, getting lost and finding her way again, asking and finally tugging on the person’s sleeve to get them to stop what they were doing and listen. And then when she returned there would be another errand, and another.
‘I shall need a lady-in-waiting,’ said Atti to the mirror on the third morning while Melissa was arranging her long hair for her. ‘At least one, and preferably six. Find me pen and paper, and I shall write to my Lady Joyce and my Lady Faul for their help. I shall need a clerk, too, I suppose.’
‘Can’t I be your lady-in-waiting?’ asked Melissa, frowning at the plait in her fingers and trying at the same time to remember what a pen and a paper and a clerk were, and where she was supposed to find them all.
Atti’s head turned slightly. ‘No, Melissa. You cannot be.’
A lady-in-waiting, Melissa discovered, had to be a lady herself. Lady Something diThis, or Lady Somebody of That, with servants of her own to look after her. Some of them could be young – the daughters of any important Lady Whoever. But the chief lady-in-waiting had to be someone important in her own right, and a lot older than either Atti or Melissa. Melissa did not feel so bad about it once she had understood that.
But it was hard nonetheless, on the day of the betrothal, when she and the half-dozen other servant girls whom Atti had employed stood back from their mistress (on whose hair and face and hands they had been working since dawn) and watched the young Lady Someone give Atti her fan, and the Lady Thingummy pick up the baby lynx that Atti had been given, and other ladies lifted Atti’s train, and the chief lady-in-waiting swept her eyes over all of them, nodded, and led the way out of the apartment towards the great hall.
And Atti was gone – gone out to her destiny, with him. Melissa could not go with her. She could only train the hair, clean and trim the nails, and see the beautiful thing she had helped to make walk itself away, surrounded by women who had never heard her cry in the night or
felt her shiver under the same blanket in the mountains.
‘We can watch from the gallery,’ said one of the other servant girls. ‘No one’s going to need us before it’s over.’
That was the thing, thought Melissa – knowing when you were going to be needed. In among the running around there was beginning to be quite a bit of waiting, too, sitting on stools in small back rooms and listening to the talk of the other servant girls with whom she had so little in common. Once she had told them all she cared to about Atti, there was hardly anything left to say. But no one was unfriendly, at least. And now they assumed she would go with them. So she did. She had never seen the court before.
She followed the others along unfamiliar, unlit corridors, knowing that if she lost them she would be lost altogether. She could hear them ahead of her, whispering to one another, giggling as someone tripped, and a mock-cry of pain as someone else stubbed her toe. She followed them left and right through the shadowy passages, hearing the distant murmur of the court swell ahead of her. She waited at the back of the group while the leading girls fumbled at a door. She saw the light crack around it as it opened, swinging away. The clamour of a crowd rose from beyond.
They emerged one after another onto a narrow wooden gallery that ran along one wall of a huge vaulted room. Others were here before them but there was still a little space. Melissa pushed her way to the rail and looked down on the court of the King.
Below her was the crowd – knights and barons, nobles and ladies, packed against either wall so that the long aisle was clear. The air was warm with the press of bodies. Everyone down there seemed to be talking, lifting their voices so that their neighbour might hear them in the clamour. Guards in polished armour stood shoulder to shoulder at the front of the crowd, holding long weapons in their hands. They lined the central path all the way from the double doors on her left to the throne itself.
And there he was, Ambrose, sitting on a high seat at the top of a short flight of steps at the right-hand end of the hall. There were banners above him and richly dressed men around him, and on the wall above the throne was a great golden sun, to which had been added, in fresh green paint, a giant leaf of oak.
He sat there amid all the clamour. He was wearing a tunic of blue edged with gold. His new little beard was trimmed to a point after the fashion of the capital. But the same simple circlet that she remembered was on his head, and there was the same thoughtful look on his face that she had seen on the knoll.
He hasn’t changed, she thought suddenly. He’s here to do just what he was doing before. All the rest of it’s fancy dress – no more than that.
He was waiting for something.
A trumpet blared. Melissa jumped. It had come from the door on her left. Armed men stood there, wearing yellow shirts over their mail, marked with a black bird flying over a black tower. The babble of the crowd was subsiding. Up and down the hall people were craning to see. And now other people were coming through the doors – ladies carrying garlands, and then …
And then came Atti herself, in her long pale dress, standing out among the bright colours of her escort like a diamond in a golden ring.
They had dropped that stupid veil over her face, thought Melissa crossly. No one would be able to see all those jewels she had pinned into Atti’s hair that morning, or the whiteness of her skin or the fine lines of her brows that two of the others had spent all that time perfecting. Her head was the main thing after all. Why hide it?
Slowly Atti and her escort advanced down the hall. When she was ten paces into the room the last of the ladies carrying her train were still emerging from the door. When she was twenty paces into the room she stopped. Her escort stopped with her. Again the trumpet sounded.
‘The Lady Astria Anthea Aeris diPare diBaldwin, heir of Velis and of the house of Baldwin, Princess of the Realm!’ cried one of the men in yellow shirts.
And again they moved forward, pacing slowly down the room towards the throne. Before the steps they halted, and again the trumpet blew.
‘The princess will do homage to her King!’ cried the herald.
Atti walked forward and knelt before Ambrose. Her hands were between his. A man was reading words from a scroll. Atti was repeating them. Now Ambrose was replying. And now he was rising from his throne, taking her hand, raising her to her feet. They faced the crowd together. More trumpeters came forward. On their tabards they wore Ambrose’s arms, the moon quartered with an oakleaf. They sounded their brass down the hall. Another voice bellowed that the King now offered his hand to the princess, for the love that there was between them and for the peace of the land. If the princess willed it they should be wed on the day of the King’s coronation and crowned together in the cathedral of Tuscolo.
Atti nodded to her own herald, who roared her reply.
‘The princess wills it!’
‘Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for his Queen!’
And all the crowd bellowed, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’
One of the girls was pulling at Melissa’s arm. ‘They’ll leave now. We’d best be back before them.’
‘Coming,’ said Melissa. The others were already ahead of her, slipping quickly out of the gallery door.
Standing just inside the doorway was a woman in a dull cloak and hood. She must have come in after the serving girls to watch the procession from up here. Now the other girls were pushing past her, ignoring her in their hurry to be back at their posts before Atti returned to her chambers. The woman moved a little to be out of their way but there was not much space. Melissa looked up at her as she passed.
She stopped.
Then she put her hands together beneath her chin in the way the hill folk did, and said: ‘Thanks to Michael, lady, that he has guarded you, and to Raphael that he has guided your way, for you are safe come.’
And Phaedra of Trant and Tarceny, mother of the King, smiled sadly at her. ‘Thank you for your greeting, Melissa. I did not suppose that anyone in this place would know me or notice me. But you did.’
‘You come to see him betrothed, my lady?’
(In the hills she would never have called her my lady. Here, it felt wrong to call her anything else.)
‘Betrothed and wed and crowned,’ said Phaedra. ‘What mother could miss it? I shall do my best to be happy for him.’
‘Wedding and crowning’s going to be another month, my lady. There’s so much to get ready.’
‘You will be busy, Melissa.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And are you happy?’
Happy?
Melissa shrugged. ‘I’m not sick,’ she said. ‘They feed me every day – as much as I want, pretty well.’
‘And now you know that isn’t happiness after all. Not after you’ve had a chance to get used to it. I was sorry to lose you from the mountains, Melissa. They are emptier places without you.’
Melissa said nothing. She did not feel comfortable talking about herself with Ambrose’s mother. She never knew what Phaedra did and did not guess.
Phaedra was looking down at the court again. So they both stood there and watched together as Atti and her attendants walked backwards, train leading, down the long aisle in the middle of the chamber. They were walking with their heads bowed out of respect for the King, but also so that they could see where they were putting their heels. They moved even more slowly than when first they had entered. The rear of the train had only just reached the great double doors. Atti herself still had twenty short paces to go. At the other end of the hall the King sat still. His eyes had never left his bride.
‘I nursed him through the shadows,’ said Phaedra softly. ‘And through the mountain winters. He was my world for thirteen years. What does he remember of that? But he was a child then, with a child’s strength. He strove with an enemy of Angels and did not fail. Now he is a young man. His weakness is that of all young men. And he does not want for his mother.’
‘He does love her, my lady,’ said Melissa. ‘And she him,’ she added stoutl
y.
‘And I loved my husband when I married him,’ said Phaedra. ‘And I betrayed him to his death. Did you know that?’
‘No, my lady! No, you never said.’
‘It is not a story I tell. But one day maybe … Even before his whole court, if I must.’
Atti was still backing down the aisle. Melissa could hear the slight jingling of her jewellery as she moved. The doors stood wide like the mouth of a great frog. The train withdrew into it as if it were a silken tongue, carrying the pretty thing on its tip. All eyes were on Atti as she disappeared. Then the doors closed. A murmur of voices rose in the hall.
‘Um … Does he know you are here?’ said Melissa.
The question pulled Phaedra from her thoughts. She smiled ruefully. ‘He does not, yet. It is ironic, Melissa. I can see far and speak far and pass where no one should be able to pass. Yet in none of these ways can I approach my son. There are too many people around him. There is always someone to hear and see. And until he knows I am here I cannot even walk up to him like a supplicant. Truly I think that a king’s flatterers must be the thickest and most impenetrable of all defences. Can you bring a message to him from me?’
‘I can give it to someone who gives it to someone who gives it to him,’ said Melissa. ‘That’s the way it works here. At least,’ she added, glancing at the doorway, ‘I can when I find my way out.’
The corridor was empty. The girls who had led her to the gallery were gone. Down in the hall the court babbled on, waiting for the next thing.
‘Do you not know the way?’ said Phaedra.
‘No, my lady.’
‘Neither did I when I last came up here. I was no older than you are now. Let us see if we can remember it together.’
The Fatal Child Page 19
