Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (19 page)

At sunset on the fourth day my door unlocked and Leo
stood there with a candle, which he ostentatiously lit. ‘Now, Roger, you can see the surprise I promised you.’ Another figure stood behind him, too tall to be Rawnie. The candle flared.

All at once the air went from my lungs and the strength from my limbs. My mouth fell open. Standing behind Leo was Maggie.

15

‘Roger!’ She rushed forward, threw her arms around me, sobbed once, then pulled back and hit me on the shoulder. ‘You left me again!’

That had been a year ago. Before I could react, she had again collapsed against me, and her whisper in my ear was both urgent and frightened. ‘Say nothing of the baby! Nothing!’

Over Maggie’s shoulder my eyes met Leo’s; his grin was nasty as always, but it did not seem to promise further cruelty. Maggie trembled against me, her belly flat. If the dream from Stephanie had been accurate, Maggie had given birth not very long ago.
Where was my son
?

Leo said, ‘She’s here to watch you die, Roger. You didn’t think we knew that you had run off from court with a kitchen maid all those years ago, did you? A mistaken notion on your part. The Brotherhood knows everything.’

Against my shoulder, Maggie gave a tiny shake of her head.

Leo put his hands on his hips and surveyed us with a vicious smile. ‘Such a touching reunion. I think I will leave you two alone for a while. That will make it all the more painful for her to witness what will be done to you.’ Ostentatiously he banged the cell door closed and locked it, taking the candle with him.

I pulled Maggie to my straw pallet and lay with my
arm tight around her. My mouth moved against her ear. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he … is he …’

She stirred against me, her mind quick as always, her voice low. ‘How did you know it was a boy?’

‘Too complicated to explain. Where is he?’

‘Three strange women came for him, the night before these men took me … oh, Roger, they were witches!’

Web women. Relief washed over me like sunlight, and just as warming. If Mother Chilton had my son, he was as safe as was possible in what the world had become.

‘It’s all right, Maggie. The women come from Mother Chilton and—’

‘Her!’

‘You must trust me on this. They are the only ones who might be able to protect him.’

‘How do you know?’

How to explain it all to her? There was so much, and she knew so little of it: the soul arts, my long history with Mother Chilton, all that Fia and Alysse and the mouse-woman had told me, the Brotherhood, the war that my father’s
hisafs
were losing against Soulvine Moor. She knew nothing of Tarek, of Princess Stephanie’s talent, of my dreams, of my mother. Most of all, she knew nothing of Katharine, the mad sister I had murdered who had crossed over into one of the misbegotten dogs born in the Country of the Dead. She knew nothing, and I did not want to take hours to tell her. I wanted to clasp her tight and hear about my son.

I repeated, ‘You must trust me on this.’

But had she done so, she would not have been Maggie. ‘Tell me! This is my child we are discussing!’

‘And mine. Oh, Maggie, I have longed for you so! I love you, my sweetheart, and I have been The Queendom’s
biggest fool not to realize it before all this happened. If I could, I would ask you now to be my wife.’

That stopped her. She rose on one elbow and stared at me. In the gloom I could not see her face but I knew from hours of imagining how her wide eyes and the fair curls straggling over her forehead would look. She would be dirty from travel, eager with hope, sceptical with her own acerbic Maggie-scepticism. Never had I loved her more, now when it was almost too late.

She breathed, ‘Lady Cecilia …’

‘A boyish dream. Even if she were not dead, it’s you I would want.’

Tears fell onto my face before I even knew they had filled her eyes. They tasted salty on my lips. But Maggie was Maggie still. She said, ‘And you could not have realized all of this three years ago, when it might have done us some good?’

I pulled her towards me and kissed her. She gave a low, strangled gurgle that might have been sobbing, or laughter, or protest. If it were the latter, it did not last long. The last light faded from the cell. And finally, in the darkness of my last prison, I made love to Maggie as I should have long ago, with my whole heart, a fool no longer.

Only afterwards, as we lay close together in the darkness, did I remember her condition. I whispered frantically, ‘Maggie! Should we have … you gave birth not so long ago!’

‘I wanted to,’ she said simply.

‘But did I hurt you? Did anything … anything ….’ I knew little of women’s insides.

‘I’m all right. I’m strong, Roger, and it was a very easy birth. The midwife would scarcely believe it was my first.’

All at once I was hungry for information about the
child I would never see. ‘Tell me about him. Please. Everything.’

‘He is beautiful. Strong, healthy. With your brown eyes but fair hair, although not much of that. He nurses well … oh, Roger, the women who took him promised a wet nurse but he needs his mother!’

There was nothing to say to that. ‘What is his name?’

She hesitated. ‘I know it’s odd, but there was a friend of yours whom I treated badly even though he was only trying to help me … He brought me to you, or tried to, but I was so upset at the time that I never appreciated his kindness and so … well, I named the baby “Tom”.’

All at once I saw Tom Jenkins, brash and kind and feckless, with his great height and his fresh blue eyes and his bright yellow hair. The only friend I had ever had, and I the cause of his death. He died helping me, as he had tried to help Maggie. My throat closed, but I managed to get out, ‘How did the web women take the baby?’

This time she paused for a long time before answering. Painful memories. But Maggie could always face truth. ‘It was at night. My sister had given us, Tom and me, a stall in the stable to sleep in. She counted me a disgrace to her, unmarried with a child. But the stable was warm and the Widow Lampthol, in the next cottage, had given me a blanket and bits of old furniture, so we were comfortable enough. Long before, Tom had brought me some baby clothes – I don’t know from where – and I still had them. That night I heard my brother-in-law’s horse neigh and stamp; it woke me. Moonlight came in the window and I saw three mice creep towards my pallet. Then all at once they turned into three women.’

Maggie shuddered at the memory – Maggie, who feared almost nothing! But she went on.

‘One of the women was quite old, the other two mere girls. The old woman said that on the morrow some evil
men who could cross over into the Country of the Dead were coming to take away my babe. That little Tom had special talent, beyond even what his father had shown. How did they know who his father is, Roger?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, although I did. Mother Chilton would have told them.

‘How did they become … I know I saw them first as mice … how do they …’

‘That I truly do not know.’

‘I think,’ she said, with a flash of her old tartness, ‘that you know considerably more than you are telling me.’

‘Later,’ I said. ‘Go on about the mice women.’

‘They said that the men sought to kill my infant because he is yours, and that my only chance was to let them take him. I refused and picked up Tom and started screaming for help. And then – I don’t know how it happened – everything went black. When I came to, I was alone in the stall and Tom was gone. But this was in my hand.’

She groped at her gown, still rucked up as high as her knees, and put something in my hand. In the darkness I couldn’t see what it was. But I felt it: a willow whistle, with rough letters carved onto one side. I laid the whistle on Maggie’s breast so that I could trace the carving with a finger on my one hand: JEE.

Maggie said with desperate hope, ‘They might have stolen it from him – but who would bother to steal a whistle from a child? It wasn’t stolen, was it? Jee sent it, so I would know it was good people who took Tom?’

‘Yes, Maggie, yes. Jee is with Mother Chilton, and she sent the web women that took Tom.’

‘That’s hardly reassuring to me! I don’t want our baby caught in those women’s schemes!’

‘Better their schemes than our prison here.’

That quieted her for a moment. Finally she said, ‘Where
is Jee? He left The Queendom with you and Tom Jenkins … where is Tom?’

‘Tom is dead. Jee is at court with Princess Stephanie.’

Maggie caught her breath. ‘With the princess?
Jee?
How did that happen?’

‘It’s a very long tale,’ I said.

‘Tell me. All of it. Leave nothing out. Start with those “web women” – how do they change into mice like that?’

‘Maggie,’ I said, with the same resistance I had always felt to her probing. But now my resistance was untinged with resentment. She was Maggie. She would always question everything, and I would always resist, and that was part of the preciousness of our bond. ‘I cannot explain the soul arts. I cannot explain my own talent. I cannot explain even what I do know because we have no time. But you must tell me this about our son. Did he ever flicker in and out?’

‘Did he ever
what
?’

‘Flicker in and out of existence. One moment be in your arms, the next moment vanish, the moment after that return. Did he?’

‘No.’ Her tone said I had taken leave of my senses. Unlike me, she had not seen the infant
hisaf
flickering in and out of the Country of the Dead.

‘Did he ever do anything unusual?’

‘No! He is – was –
is
a normal baby, and so good, he hardly ever cried …’ She was crying now, with the desolation of bereavement.

And I was helpless. I could do nothing to restore our son to her, or to rescue her from Galtryf, or to prevent my own terrible death on the morrow. The web women who might have saved us could not penetrate the blockage and corruption that was Galtryf. My father was as imprisoned as I. His
hisafs
were losing the war with Soulvine.

‘Tell me all you do know,’ Maggie said through her tears. ‘Everything, from the time you left me.’

I began. But despite what she had told me, Maggie must have still been weak from childbirth, from her abduction to Galtryf, or from both. For the next moment she was asleep, despite her best inquisitive intentions. I pulled the blanket up over her and nestled her against me. If this was the last night of my life, it was also the sweetest, with her warm body in my arms and her living breath against my cheek, all the night long.

The next day they took me to the pit.

16

‘Get up, Roger Kilbourne,’ Leo said, unlocking my cell door. ‘You too, slut.’

Maggie, who either woke quickly or was already awake, got wordlessly to her feet. The silence was so unlike her that instantly wariness penetrated my dread. What was she going to do?

‘I said get up!’

Staggering to my feet, I glanced at Maggie. She held both hands at her sides, concealed in folds of her gown. I transferred my weight to the balls of my feet, shifting my feet in my boots. My knives were gone.

It burst out of me before I even thought: ‘Maggie! No!’

Too late. She darted forward and thrust both pathetic knives, my tiny shaving knife and Rawnie’s small trinket, at Leo’s chest. Rawnie’s ‘weapon’ missed. The shaving knife penetrated Leo’s thick leather doublet about half an inch. He looked down at it, surprised, and gave a roar of laughter. His arm came up and, spindly though it was, knocked Maggie across the face hard enough to send her staggering sideways.

I was on him in a moment. My one hand slammed into his belly and doubled him over. But John came through the door and plucked me off Leo before I had gotten in more than the one blow. John, grinning, pinned me easily against his massive chest. ‘Ye be peppery this morning, Roger?’

‘Take … him …!’ Leo gasped, his face purple with pain or rage or both.

Maggie hit John from behind with the wooden chair.

He turned ponderously, like a great millstone on its axle. If Maggie had been taller and able to reach his head, she might have felled him. As it was, the chair had crashed across his broad, muscle-padded shoulders and not even dazed him. One arm still pinned me; with the other he grabbed Maggie around the throat and squeezed.

‘No! She … must … watch ….’ Leo wheezed. The words seemed to take a long time to reach John, as if they – or he – moved not in air but in some thicker substance, molasses or tar. Maggie’s eyes bulged in their sockets and her feet kicked frantically, uselessly, against the floor. When John finally opened his fingers, she crumpled like a doll.

‘Maggie!’ I cried. ‘Leo, let me … please for sweet pity’s sake …’

‘Take … him …’ Leo said. The fury in his dark eyes did not even seem human. But as John dragged me from my cell, I saw that at least Maggie still breathed.

The courtyard was deserted. No maids at the well, no boys attending to horses, no Joan, head bent and figure hunched, hurrying on some errand in her enforced slavery. After my dim cell the light seemed blinding, even though the sky was grey with clouds. The wind smelled of rain. A gull wheeled overhead, crying. All my senses sharpened almost to pain, to blot out the pain of knowing I would soon die.

‘Come,’ John grunted when I sank to the ground. If I were an inert weight, maybe that would slow us down, postpone the inevitable, give me a few more precious moments to smell the wind and hear the gull …
anything for a few more moments
…

John picked me up as if I were a child, slung me over his massive shoulder, and trudged on.

We went out the gate and rounded the corner of the
castle, towards the rubble that was the rest of the ancient city. John picked his way over the rough ground. Clasped tight against his shoulder, I could see nothing, but I heard the sounds of many people. Shouts, murmurs, laughter. Someone called, ‘Breathe your last, boy!’ More laughter.

And so we came to the pit where I would die.

It had once been a large underground room, a guardroom or storage cellar, under the keep’s vanished fortifications. Now it stood open to the sky, its stone walls grown with moss and weeds. The bottom of the pit had been cleared of rubble, exposing the original stone floor. Above the walls a few broken pillars jutted into the sky like accusing fingers. John dumped me into the pit. I fell heavily, amid cheers from the people, Soulviners and Brotherhood alike, ranged around the two sides closest to the keep. They had dressed again in their ‘finest’: soiled silks and velvets and brocades whose tatters stirred in the breeze.