Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword (36 page)

Women take longer than men to bathe and dress. Finally Maggie appeared, her fair hair in clean springy curls, her trim figure clothed as country girls dress, in a borrowed white smock, tight-laced black stomacher, and a wool skirt hiked up over a striped petticoat. She looked pretty and young and not at all like a woman who had survived captivity at Galtryf. A passing soldier threw her an admiring glance.

But before I could tell her how beautiful she was, Jee burst through an inner gate and ran towards me across the cobblestones, and it was clear from his face that something was very wrong.

‘Roger! Ye maun come!’

‘I’m coming. What is it, Jee? Is the princess … I mean, the queen—’

‘She will live. But ye maun come!’

Maggie rushed up to hug Jee. A brief hug, only – he grabbed her hand and hurried us both along. Jee had never spoken much, and he did not talk now. Nor, more surprisingly, did Maggie. Even as she ran, her shoulders squared for battle.

Jee led us past the throne room, its great carved doors closed. We raced on, servants flattening themselves against the walls as we passed, but scowling, too – Jee they knew, but who were these two upstarts with him? Then we came to rooms I knew all too well, the royal apartments. Jee waved his hand and the guards sprang
aside. He was more than a page, then. He was what he had made himself: eleven-year-old protector, playmate, friend to the queen. What did Lord Robert make of that?

The presence chamber, as deserted as the throne room. Next the outer chamber, where a flock of ladies in waiting, all gowned in purple, sat sombrely sewing on benches or stools. These were not the chattering butterflies of Queen Caroline’s reign but rather older women, motherly and sober, except for two little girls playing cat’s cradle in a window embrasure. Then the privy chamber, where two men sat drinking wine at a great oaken table. One was Lord Robert, the other the court physician who had attended the nursery when Stephanie and her brothers still occupied it.

Lord Robert rose to gaze at me without warmth. ‘So you have come, Roger.’

‘I was sent for, my lord,’ I said – stupidly, since of course he knew that. It was his soldiers who had brought me.

‘Her Grace wishes to see you,’ Lord Robert said. Something moved in his eyes, and for a moment I almost pitied him. It couldn’t be easy to rule as regent for a seven-year-old queen who listened first to an eleven-year-old page and then to an old woman whom Lord Robert, being no fool, must suspect of ‘witchcraft’. And now here I was back at court, the boy who had first brought that witchcraft to his child sovereign, and who had done something – no telling what! – to restore the tranced children of The Queendom. No, his position could not have been easy.

‘Go in then,’ he said to me harshly. ‘But you, mistress, will stay here!’

Maggie opened her mouth, but then she closed it again. She had been a kitchen maid in this palace. It was one thing to defy soldiers – her brother had been one, after all, and she had no awe of the army – but quite another
to defy the Lord Protector and High Commander of the realm. Maggie cast down her eyes, dropped a grudging half-curtsey, and sat herself on the stool that Lord Robert indicated.

Jee led me to the queen’s bedchamber, which I had never seen.

It was a curious room: half trappings for a reigning monarch, half nursery. Rich tapestries on the walls, polished oak chests, tables covered with embroidered cloths. On a dais stood a huge bed with carved headboard and purple silk hangings. The bed was empty. In one corner were two trundle beds separated by a low table covered with dolls and wooden toys. A woman dressed as a nursemaid sat on a low stool, and a stout lady in waiting, purple brocade straining across her bosom, leaned over one of the beds.

‘Just eat a little, Your Grace,’ the stout lady said.

‘I don’t want it!’ The querulous voice of a sick child.

‘My lady,’ Jee said, and the voice changed.

‘Jee! Have they—Oh, Roger!’

The stout lady in waiting moved, and I could see both beds. In one lay Queen Stephanie, her thin little face alight with pleasure despite the dark smudges under her eyes. She wore a white nightdress of some fine material and a matching cap on her lank brown hair. A withered crone I did not recognize slept in the other bed. And then I did recognize her. It was Mother Chilton.

Stephanie struggled to sit up. She could do so only with the aid of her lady, and I saw how weak and ill she really was. I dropped to one knee and bowed my head. ‘Your Grace.’

‘Oh, get up, Roger!’ Stephanie said. To the purple lady, ‘Please leave us, Lady Elizabeth.’

Lady Elizabeth frowned. ‘Your Grace, Lord Robert said—’

‘I said to leave us,’ Stephanie repeated, and this time there was no mistaking the tone of authority. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter, and her formidable grandmother’s heir. But she was still also a child. She glanced at the nurse, who was not sent away. I raised my head to study the nurse. She returned my gaze steadily, her pale grey eyes telling me all I needed to know. This was one of the web women.

Lady Elizabeth left, her back rigid. Stephanie grinned at me. ‘She is Lord Robert’s sister and I am stuck with her. But she is not unkind. Roger … you came.’

‘I will always come when you send for me, Your Grace.’

‘Sit. We can talk with Philippa still here. She is one of us. Only … I don’t want to.’

I took the stool beside her bed. Jee remained standing at its foot. I said, ‘You don’t want to talk while Philippa is here?’

‘No! Not that—’ A fit of coughing took her. Philippa rose, pulled a vial from a fold of her gown, and held it to Stephanie’s lips. The little girl drank it eagerly. I remembered the drugs Mother Chilton and Fia had given me, and the one Nell had given Rawley, and a qualm took me. How much did this Philippa control Stephanie?

But the potion merely quieted her cough. Stephanie leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

‘Your Grace,’ I said, ‘you are very ill.’

‘I am spent. And I do not want to do it any more.’

‘Do what, Your Grace? You do not have to do anything you do not wish to.’

‘I did have to.
You
made me! You and—’a fearful glance at the other bed ‘—Mother Chilton. And even you, Jee – you know you did! You, too, Philippa!’

Jee looked wretched. All at once I could see the scene here four days ago. As Nell and I sat huddled in the rain at Hygryll, Jee and Mother Chilton and her lieutenant
Philippa had all urged and directed and prodded Stephanie. It was necessary to do this for The Queendom, didn’t she want to help those poor tranced babies, she could do this if she tried … And Stephanie, a child and always a bit sickly, had exerted all the strength of her delicate body and half-developed soul arts, straining both to the breaking point. The greater part Nell had played had killed her. Stephanie had endured pain and illness, and now she wanted nothing further to do with the soul arts.

And Mother Chilton? I glanced at the other bed to be sure she still breathed. She, too, had paid the price. ‘
Everything has a cost, Roger Kilbourne – when will you learn that?
’

I had learned it well. But Queen Stephanie was seven years old.

I said gently, ‘Is that why you summoned me here, because you don’t want to do it any more?’

‘Yes! Tell them, Roger – everyone listens to you!’

I gaped at my monarch. But from what little she had seen of my tale, it was true. I had directed Jee and Tom Jenkins, had outwitted Tarek to carry Stephanie away from his camp, had – in her view – defeated the
hisafs
who followed us. It was a child’s view, and as a child monarch Stephanie had summoned the one person she thought could order the world as she wished. I thought of Maggie, endlessly ordering me, and I almost smiled.

‘You should have said so to me, child,’ another voice said. Mother Chilton’s eyes opened.

Instantly Stephanie bowed her head. ‘I’m sorry, madam.’

Madam
. So did royal children address their governesses and nurses. But ‘governess’ hardly described Mother Chilton’s relationship to the little queen. No word adequately described it.

Stephanie burst out again, ‘But I don’t want to!’

‘Then you shall not,’ Mother Chilton said.

‘Really? But I thought … I thought …’

‘No one need ask you to use your talent again. Whether you may eventually ask it of yourself is another matter.’

But this was too complicated for Stephanie, who smiled happily on her pillow. Mother Chilton turned her gaze on me, and once more I was shocked at the filminess in the sunken eyes, at the slackness of the incredibly ancient face. When I had first seen her, three and a half years ago, she had looked perhaps thirty. But her voice was still strong. What potion kept it thus, and had she been awake and feigning sleep from the moment I entered?

‘Roger Kilbourne. You want to know of your son. He is well. The conduit does not suffer the same damage as the sender of visions.’

Relief flooded me, so strong I could taste it on my tongue, sweet and strong as new wine.

‘Philippa will send someone with you to go to him. Where is Maggie?’

‘In the privy chamber.’ Once Mother Chilton would have already known that.

‘Here? Have you told her what your child is?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Do not do so.’

I saw my chance. ‘I will not. But Mother Chilton, I would join with Queen Stephanie in asking that my son be used no further by the women of the soul arts. The war with Soulvine Moor is over. We have won –
you
have won. Do not use my son again.’

Mother Chilton said, ‘There is no need.’

‘That is not what I asked. I want you to never—’

‘There is no need,’ she repeated and closed her eyes.

‘Mother Chilton! I said—’

‘Stop,’ Philippa said, the first word she had spoken. ‘She will say no more.’

‘But she—’

‘Enough.’

I glared at Philippa, then at Mother Chilton. What was I doing, shouting orders at a sick old lady? And this sick old lady would no more heed my orders than listen to a rock. She never had.

Jee stepped into the angry silence. ‘My lady, ye have a reward for Roger.’

Stephanie, who had looked frightened during my heated exchange with Mother Chilton, smiled again. ‘I almost forgot! Jee, help me.’

‘Yes, my lady.’

He moved to her bedside, helped her sit up and swing her bare little feet over the side. Philippa did not protest. Seeing the respectful tenderness with which he assisted Stephanie, I saw that she was indeed and always would be his ‘lady’. When they were no longer children, what would happen? That would depend on her strength of will, on his ability to survive court intrigue. I could not foresee their future. I could not even foresee my own.

Jee left Stephanie sitting uncertainly on the edge of the bed. From the chamber wall he took a sword with a great jewelled hilt. She could lift it only with his help. Stephanie said, ‘Kneel, Roger … good … I dub thee Sir Roger Kilbourne!’

It was ludicrous. Jee must have known that the ceremony, carried out in secret by a little girl, carried no real meaning. Certainly Philippa knew. But Stephanie beamed at me, and I bowed my head and thought how Maggie would laugh and shake her head when I told her. At the same time, I was disappointed. When Stephanie had said ‘reward’ I had hoped for something more tangible.

Jee, bred to a hard life where money to eat mattered more than hypothetical titles, grinned at me. After he helped Stephanie lie down again, he said to her, ‘My lady, the other thing?’

‘What other …? Oh, yes. Fetch it, Jee!’

He took a key from his pocket, and this more than anything else convinced me of his influence with her. Was an eleven-year-old capable of winning a power struggle with Lord Robert Hopewell, should it ever come to that? I hoped it would not. Jee stuck his key into one of the ornately carved chests, pulled out a heavy cloth bag, and handed it to me.

‘Open it, Roger!’ Stephanie said gleefully.

Coins. Gold pieces, silvers, pennies. Stephanie had ruled for less than six months, and for much of that time The Queendom had been in turmoil. There had not yet been time to press new coins. These all bore the pure, lovely profile of her mother, Queen Caroline.

I stammered, ‘Thank … thank you … I don’t know what to say, Your Grace …’

‘I love you, Roger,’ the queen said. ‘But I think I’m tired now.’

She looked it. Philippa stood. ‘I will see Roger out.’

Stephanie did not answer. She had Jee. I knelt, said, ‘Good-bye, Your Grace,’ and then went to bend over the other bed. ‘Good-bye, Mother Chilton.’

She did not answer, either, but her eyes moved under their lids delicate and thin as the wing of a dragonfly.

As Philippa reached to open the chamber door, I said softly, ‘Is she dying?’

‘Her time is coming,’ Philippa said. ‘It will not be long now. Do not look so stricken, Roger Kilbourne, and do not grieve for her. Mother Chilton does not grieve. She is ready.’

For what? To sit tranquil and mindless in the Country
of the Dead – and then what after that? But I did not ask. Even if Philippa knew, she would not tell me.

She said, ‘Take Maggie and go to the Sign of the Three-Winged Dove near the West Gate of the city. Wait there. Someone will come to take you to your son.’ Philippa turned back to her charges.

‘Good-bye, Sir Roger!’ the little queen called from her bed, and giggled.

I returned to Maggie in the privy chamber. The stout woman in purple, Lady Elizabeth, swept past me with her chins in the air and her lip curled. Maggie lounged ostentatiously in a carved chair, drinking wine from a golden goblet, which was probably what had infuriated Lady Elizabeth. Maggie grimaced at her retreating back. I decided not to tell her that, in Stephanie’s eyes anyway, she was now Lady Maggie. She might begin to order the palace guards about.

The money which Stephanie had given me lay heavy in my pocket. If the little queen was now free of her cares, so was I. Or rather, so would I be when I had my son.

EPILOGUE

‘Roger! Roger!’

Maggie comes from the kitchen, holding a dirty cloth. Delectable smells follow her into the taproom, where I sit enjoying a solitary ale before the late-afternoon custom begins to arrive. Late autumn rain swirls against the window. Very soon winter will be upon us.