Master of the Books

by James Moloney

  ‘Not ready! You’ve been fretting to get away ever since I took you prisoner.’

  ‘Yes, and I will leave soon, but there’s something I need you to do for me first. I’ve heard the villagers speak of your days as a soldier and what a great swordsman you were. Please, Stig, teach me to use a sword better than any man alive.’

  CHAPTER 7

  A Different Witch in a Different Forest

  MARCEL’S LONELY FIGURE WALKED among the white roses of the palace garden, his dark robes trailing on the gravel of the pathways. They had been made too big for him on purpose so that he would grow into them. Every morning when he put them on, he wondered if he ever would. Not that he even noticed the loose robes at that moment. In recent weeks he’d been visited by the same dream almost every night and it was no accident that he’d come to this rose garden to ponder its meaning.

  After wandering aimlessly among the silent flowers he halted before a stark expanse of marble with a single word carved into its surface: Ashlere.

  ‘I can’t make sense of it, Mother. Sometimes I think it’s you in my dreams, especially when the voice pleads for her son. If it’s Fergus who’s in danger, then it must be you. Then I hear the voice again and I’m not sure.’

  Each time the dream visited his sleep he heard the fateful words, a grave injustice. But how could he set it right unless he knew what it was?

  Close by the rose garden stood the sandstone chamber where Damon and Eleanor had once been imprisoned by Lord Alwyn’s magic. If Marcel closed his eyes he could see himself stumbling through the darkness behind Sir Thomas Starkey. Nicola and Fergus were with him, none of them aware of how Starkey had tricked them so cruelly and so completely. The man had brought them here for one purpose only: to open the chamber’s door.

  Marcel retraced their steps from that night until he stood before the door and read its magical inscription carved into the wooden panels:

  To common folk this door is locked

  But try it if you dare

  This gilded cage will only yield

  To a true and rightful heir

  That last line held the telling words. Starkey needed them because, apart from King Pelham, the king’s three children were the only ones who could release Damon and Eleanor from their prison.

  Marcel reached out to the handle and felt it slip down easily, just as it had done that night, more than a year ago, when he and Nicola and Fergus had placed their hands together on the handle and set their greatest enemies free. He still burned with shame at the memory.

  That’s odd, Marcel thought. He’d opened the door on his own just now, yet on that terrible night when Fergus had tried the handle by himself it wouldn’t budge. Starkey had demanded that they try it together and only then had the door opened.

  Marcel read the inscription again: A true and rightful heir. He hadn’t noticed before but the words were clear. Just one person was needed to open the door, as long as that person was an heir to the throne. So why hadn’t the door yielded to Fergus? He was an heir to the throne, like his sister and his brother. To Marcel, he was even more than a brother, for the two were twins, so how could it be otherwise?

  ‘I’D LIKE TO SEE my father,’ Marcel told the king’s secretary.

  ‘He’s very busy, Your Highness.’

  Marcel didn’t challenge the secretary openly, but he knew that in the hour after lunch his father liked to steal a few moments of rest alone in his room. ‘He’ll see me,’ he announced in a no-nonsense voice and walked straight past the blustering secretary into the king’s private chamber.

  ‘Ah, Marcel, that’s you bluffing your way in, is it? Come in,’ called Pelham, waving the boy to the divan where he was sitting with his belt loosened and legs outstretched. ‘I heard you were wandering in the rose garden this morning.’ When his son replied with a sad nod of the head he asked, ‘Have you regained any memory of your mother?’

  It was best not to mention the dreams, not until he knew more, Marcel thought. ‘No, nothing,’ he answered. ‘But I’ve come to ask you something about her. I heard a story once, about the night I was born. Is it true that you were locked out?’

  The king tilted his head back and laughed easily. ‘Yes, it’s true. There I was, the most powerful man in the kingdom, and I had to wait outside in the lane.’

  ‘Mother had gone to the midwife on her own?’ said Marcel, surprised.

  ‘Yes, I never understood why, when she had all the assistants she needed here in the palace.’

  ‘Did they go with her? Was that why you weren’t allowed in, because the midwife’s house was crowded with nursemaids and servants all there to help with our births?’

  ‘Crowded? No, not at all. There was only that bossy midwife. Did the whole job herself for both of you. She was the one who locked the door. Said it was no place for a squeamish man, the cheeky old crone.’

  ‘You mean the only person who saw us born was the midwife?’

  ‘And your mother, of course. You can hardly forget her part in it,’ said the king with a wink, but the gleam in his eye died quickly as he and his son shared a painful glance. ‘I’d give up the throne if she could be with us now, alive for you both and your sister too.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The midwife, the one who locked you out.’

  ‘Grandmother someone, Moody or Bodie. That was it, Gammer Bodie.’

  BY DINNER TIME THAT evening, Marcel had asked a dozen people about Gammer Bodie, ranging from lords and ladies to servants in the kitchen. Some said she was dead, though no one was quite sure. One thing did seem certain, however: the midwife had barely been heard of since Marcel and Fergus were born.

  ‘She was a witch, you know,’ declared a cook’s assistant who could have been mistaken for one herself. ‘Magic’s the only way she could’ve saved all them babies and their poor mothers when things went bad.’ Then the woman leaned in close and whispered, ‘We were all a bit afraid of her, even the grand ladies of the court. There was only one who was close to her, maybe because he’s such a strange one himself.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Marcel.

  ‘That big fellow who’s come back to work in the stables, the one they call Old Belch.’

  MARCEL PAID LITTLE ATTENTION to the food at dinner that night and none at all to the conversation. ‘All that time alone in your room is sending you dotty,’ Nicola complained when for the third time she had to repeat what she’d said to him.

  But Marcel was thinking ahead to his meeting with Old Belch, and as soon as the king rose from the table, he slipped away as well, to the stables where the master horse-handler was settling to sleep in a stall among the animals he loved.

  ‘My lord, the prince,’ said Old Belch, trying his best at a bow. His enormous stomach made this impossible and only encouraged a treacherous burp. Marcel waved away a cloud of onion-scented breath.

  ‘You were friends with a midwife called Gammer Bodie?’

  ‘Was I?’

  Such an abrupt answer would sound insolent coming from a stable boy, but Marcel and Old Belch were not master and servant. Marcel had once stolen a horse from the man, a rather special horse he’d named Gadfly, and though the crime was long since forgiven, it had left these two as equals, and friends.

  ‘A servant in the kitchen said you knew her better than anyone. Can you tell me where to find her?’

  ‘She can’t be found, Marcel. She’s …’ He hesitated just a little too long before finishing. ‘She’s dead.’

  Old Belch was too honest to be much good at lying, but Marcel knew that if his trusted friend needed to deceive him, there must be a good reason.

  ‘Dead! That’s a shame,’ he said, pretending to believe it. He turned away in a show of disappointment and headed slowly towards the stable doors. He was almost out in the saddling yard before Old Belch called to him.

  ‘Why have you come looking for her?’

  Marcel breathed a silent sigh of relief and went
back to the stall, stroking the nose of an inquisitive horse as he passed. ‘Because Gammer Bodie was the only one who saw me and my twin brother being born.’

  ‘Is that so important? Such things are the business of mothers. Children should just give thanks that they arrived safely in this world.’

  ‘Most children, yes, but I was born as an heir to the throne and my brother wasn’t. I have to know why.’

  MARCEL SLEPT BADLY THAT night, even though the woman’s voice left him in peace. He was awake when the first birds announced the dawn, and once the light began to strengthen in the east, he abandoned the warm blankets for his desk beside the window. The rest of the palace was still asleep, the lords and ladies anyway, and it gave him an odd feeling of satisfaction that he had begun his work so early. Since the light wasn’t quite strong enough, he lit a candle and began to read.

  Before he’d finished the first page, cursing erupted in the courtyard below. Peeping over the window ledge, he saw Old Belch backing a horse into the traces of a two-wheeled cart. It wasn’t like him to swear at his horses. Marcel watched while Old Belch heaved his lumbering body into the seat and called gruffly for the horse to get a move on.

  Marcel slammed his book shut. By the time the cart was through the palace gates and into the streets of Elstenwyck, he’d arrived in the stables himself.

  ‘Quickly,’ he called, rousing the sleepy grooms. ‘I need a horse, saddled and ready to go.’

  He caught up to Old Belch before the cart had left the city, though he had no intention of trotting right up beside it. Instead he held back to be sure he wouldn’t be noticed. This wasn’t easy among the open fields, although on some farms the corn grew high enough to hide him, and the tracks Old Belch followed led through many a wood where the trees kept him out of sight.

  ‘I’d make a decent spy, don’t you think,’ he asked the horse.

  They were climbing steadily away from the fertile plains into hills where the trees grew more thickly. At last the cart disappeared into more than a wood. This was a forest. It was much darker among the oaks and beech trees, and if Old Belch hadn’t snapped the reins at a fortunate moment, Marcel would have missed the narrow trail his friend had turned down. Finally, the cart came to a halt before a neatly tended cottage with a herb garden and a finger of grey smoke pointing straight up from the chimney.

  Marcel kept his horse out of sight as Old Belch dismounted awkwardly and stretched himself, emitting a few burps. Then, to the boy’s dismay, he cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and called back the way he had come, ‘Marcel! I know you’re out there. Come here and join me.’

  ‘Guess I’m not much of a spy after all,’ Marcel muttered to the horse as he kicked it into motion with his heels. Half a minute later he slipped down from the saddle. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because I made sure you followed me, starting when I saw the candlelight in your window.’

  Suddenly the uncharacteristic swearing and the slapping of reins made sense. ‘You led me here!’

  ‘Yes, to Gammer Bodie. She’s waiting for you inside.’

  ‘So I am!’ an aging voice called through the doorway, which had opened as they spoke. ‘And I can guess who it is you’ve brought to see me, Belch. A boy ready to leave his childhood behind, I’ll bet. He’s been a long time coming.’

  Old Belch led Marcel into the cottage. The darkness made things difficult to see, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom he picked out the fireplace with a chair beside it and, easing herself into the chair, an old woman.

  ‘Which one are you?’ Gammer Bodie asked as soon as she was settled.

  ‘Marcel, Prince Marcel. My father is King Pelham.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ she said with a teasing doubt that Marcel didn’t miss. ‘Well, I never learned what names Ashlere chose for the pair of you. I left Elstenwyck the day after you were born and I’ve stayed out of sight ever since. Come forward, I can’t see you well enough to decide. Light some candles, Belch, every one you can find. I must see the boy’s face.’

  Old Belch moved about the cottage with remarkable grace for one his size, gathering the stubs of spent candles and finding two new ones, all of which he lit in the fireplace. It wasn’t long before Marcel was standing before a ring of flames, each throwing their yellow light onto his features.

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see it. The eyes are the same and your brow, even the line of your chin. You are Ashlere’s son.’

  Marcel hadn’t known there was any doubt until the old midwife made her unsettling comment.

  ‘So you’re a prince, Marcel. Forgive me if I don’t stand up and curtsy. Old Belch wouldn’t have brought you here if you didn’t have questions about your birth. I was there when you entered this world, so you may ask whatever you like.’

  ‘It’s not my birth I’ve come to ask about, it’s Fergus.’

  ‘Your twin?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it. There’s something I don’t understand. We’re twins and that means Fergus must be an heir to the throne, like me and our sister, but when he tried to open the chamber …’ He realised Gammer Bodie wouldn’t have a clue what he was babbling about. He had to be more specific. ‘It’s as though he’s not King Pelham’s son at all.’

  ‘He’s not.’

  Marcel should have been more shocked by her blunt reply, yet he had come here expecting an answer like this. He still had to know why. ‘How can that be? We were born on the same day, from the same mother. What kind of magic can allow —’

  Gammer Bodie put up her hand to stop his desperate stream of words. ‘Not magic, but the black heart of man. That’s where most evil finds its source. You were born on the same day, that much is true, but from different mothers.’

  She turned to Old Belch, saying, ‘Get my guest a chair. There’s a tale to tell here and his legs might not like what his ears hear.’

  Marcel barely noticed as a chair was placed behind him and Old Belch’s gentle hand pressed him into it. ‘Different mothers. You mean Fergus is not my twin, not even my own brother?’

  ‘No, not your brother, but he is related to you, all the same. His mother was brought to me the day before you two were born. In a terrible state she was, half starved and dressed in rags. I did the best I could and early the next morning her baby came. I haven’t seen many births harder than that one and I knew she wasn’t strong enough to live. She knew it herself, poor dear, and she begged me, “Send for Ashlere, bring Ashlere to see me.”

  ‘“The only Ashlere I know is the queen,” I told her.

  ‘“My sister,” says the dying woman and she gave me a gold bracelet from her wrist. “Show her this and tell her my name, Clemenza. She will come.”’

  ‘You mean Fergus’s mother was —’

  ‘Yes, your mother’s sister, Lady Clemenza. She’d been missing for half a year, so it was no surprise that the queen came to my house in Elstenwyck, and alone too, because that was what Clemenza insisted on.

  ‘The queen could see as well as I that her sister didn’t have long to live. “What’s happened to you? Who is your baby’s father?” the queen asked, but Clemenza was terrified of the man and wouldn’t say his name. Just that he was a powerful figure in the kingdom and he wanted her baby dead. As her life slipped away she told the rest of her story. She’d fallen in love and believed the man’s promises of marriage, but a seer had warned her against him. She was already carrying his son by then, a boy who would try to kill his father if he was allowed to live.

  ‘When Clemenza discovered this, she fled, hiding in forests and scavenging for food where she could. When her baby was due, she came to Elstenwyck and tried to enter the palace unnoticed to reach the queen, but she saw the father of her child near the gate and hurried away again. Now the baby was born and her greatest fear was that her son’s father would claim him and have the baby killed when there was no one to protect him.

  ‘Lady Clemenza was as brave a mother as I’ve ever seen. She knew she was dying but she cared nothing for her
self and with her last breath made Ashlere promise to protect the tiny baby, to find him a good home where he could grow up in safety, and never to tell anyone who his real mother was, not even the boy himself. No sooner had the queen sworn a solemn oath than Lady Clemenza slipped away.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing to have your sister die in your arms, but your mother showed more steel than I expected from a queen, Marcel,’ said Gammer Bodie, making no effort to hide her contempt for pampered royalty. ‘She held back her tears and asked me to find good parents who would take the boy in. I knew of a childless woman who’d have taken him in a flash, but our plans were interrupted, by you, young prince. You were in too much of a hurry to be born, or perhaps it was the shock of Clemenza’s death, but your mother began her pains and you arrived in this world soon after, while she lay weeping beside her dead sister.

  ‘By then your father, the king, was outside in the lane, demanding to be let in. I locked him out, as you’ve no doubt heard, hoping I could hide your cousin and slip away with him unnoticed. But you both put a stop to that plan. You began to cry at the top of your lungs, the pair of you, until the king shouted, “Two babies. I can hear two.”

  ‘What was your mother to do then? If she’d denied it, and revealed who your cousin’s mother truly was, she’d have broken her pledge. Word would quickly spread through the city and the boy’s father would surely have heard, just as Clemenza feared.

  ‘But your mother was as determined as her sister was brave, Marcel. “There’s only one thing to do,” she told me. “Quickly, cover Clemenza’s body so no one can see it,” and when I’d done that she stood up, even though she’d given birth less than an hour before. “Give me the babies, one in each arm,” she said, and when that was done too, she walked to the door. “Open it, Gammer. Let the king see his twin sons.”’

  Gammer Bodie had created such a picture in Marcel’s mind that he could almost see the bed where he was born, with a pile of blankets disguising Lady Clemenza’s lifeless body. ‘And Fergus’s mother?’ he asked.