The Cup and the Crown (7 page)
“Excuse me,” Pieter said. “I must go and explain. Please don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
“Control yourself,” Molly hissed when Pieter had gone.
“It’s very hard to do, sweetheart
.
Under the circumstances.”
She covered her mouth to hide a grin. “Well, you must try. This is important.”
“I know, my darling.”
“If you darling-dearest me one more time, I’ll tell him the truth, and he’ll send you packing.”
“No you won’t. But all the same, I promise to behave. I was just overcome by a wave of giddiness. I’m completely recovered now. Rather bored by it, actually.”
“Good. We’re sworn, just so you know. My father made the arrangements.”
“Your father?
Really?
”
“Tobias!”
“He’s coming back now, Molly. You’d best control yourself.”
The official produced a ring of keys and unlocked the door. The jury filed out, followed by the prosecutor and the scribe. Only the judge remained—standing in the open doorway, backlit by the warm light of a late summer afternoon—glaring at them. The man with the keys waited.
Something wasn’t right. Molly wondered if the barrister actually had the authority to let them in. Certainly the judge disapproved. But Pieter was standing his ground. Finally the judge shook his head, slowly and solemnly as if in warning, then turned on his heel and left.
Pieter watched him go. At last, his face flushed and his voice dark with feeling, he turned to them and spoke. “He’s old-fashioned in his views. I respect him, but in this case he is wrong. We can never, ever turn away one of our own—and a child of the Magnus line!” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “He will be gone now. No need to fear any unpleasantness. Will you follow me?”
Just as they were about to step over the threshold, Pieter paused. “My lady,” he said solemnly, “welcome home.”
PIETER’S OFFICE WAS
a pleasant chamber with a wide bank of leadlight windows looking out onto the great courtyard of the university. Everything about the room was tidy and bright, the personal space of a thoughtful man who was not lavish but who loved pretty things.
He introduced them to his mother, who sat by the window with her needlework. She was small and elegant like her son, her dark hair streaked with silver. “Mother will serve as your lady companion for now,” he said to Molly. “Later we will make other arrangements. It’s not our custom here, but I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
Molly wished like the devil that she’d never brought the whole thing up. It had just been an excuse to bring Winifred.
Pieter led them over to a pair of handsome chairs facing a large wooden desk. “Please,” he said. “Make yourselves comfortable.” Then he went around the desk and sat across from them.
“If you will excuse me for just a moment, I must make some arrangements. I promise it won’t take long. Then we will talk.”
He took several sheets of vellum out of a drawer and laid them on the desk. Then he unstopped his inkwell, dipped the point of his pen into it, and began to write, taking great pains with his swirls and loops. When he was finished, he blotted the ink, turned the paper over, and addressed it on the top edge. But he didn’t fold and seal it as was done in other places. He just rolled it up and tied it with a ribbon.
Now he took up his pen again and started on a second letter. When he was done with that one, he wrote a third. At last he flashed a smile at them that said
Almost done!
and rang a little brass bell that sat on his desk. An assistant popped out of an adjoining room, and Pieter handed him the letters.
“Deliver the one to the Council first, then the one to the Magnussons. After that you can go to Neargate. It’s a lot of ground to cover, so you may take the spinner.”
The boy’s face brightened.
“And, Robbin, if you damage it, I’ll take it out of your hide. You understand?”
“Yes, Master,” the boy said. “I’ll bring it back as good as new.” He hurried out, shutting the door behind him with exaggerated care.
“There,” Pieter said. “Everything is now in motion. Like the heavens,” he added with a chuckle. “Now draw your chairs closer, if you will. While we wait, I have something to show you.”
He brought out a much larger roll of vellum and spread it out on the table. As it wanted to curl back up again, he set little velvet bags filled with sand on each of the corners to hold it down.
They leaned forward to look at the scroll. It was covered with curvy letters, some in writing so small you couldn’t possibly read it even if you knew how. There were lines connecting one word to the next and little pictures rendered in color. Everything was embellished with gleaming gold paint.
“That’s beautiful,” Tobias said. “I never saw anything like it.”
“Well,” said Pieter, “thank you for saying so. It’s my own little project, not anything to compare with the great Map of the People that is kept in Harrowsgode Hall. But it will suffice for our purposes.”
“
You
made that?” Molly asked, astonished.
“Well, yes, I did. I rather fancied myself an artist in my youth, but there’s little call for such skills in my profession. So I entertain myself with a brush and pen—in my spare time, you understand. Now let me tell you about it; I brought it out for a reason.
“Here at the top you see three thrones, and upon them sit three kings. This one, whose throne is raised above the others, let us call him the Great King for the sake of simplicity. He was the father of the two below. We shall come to them in a moment.
“Now the Great King was strong in war, very powerful and clever with weapons. When he was still a young man, the crown hardly warm from the touch of his brow, he gathered an army and sailed across the waters to conquer our people. That was long ago, hundreds and hundreds of years.”
Molly loved a story. She leaned in, her elbows resting on Pieter’s desk, for a closer look at the three small images of kings on their thrones: one above, two below; two fair, one dark.
“Now the Great King married a lady of his own race, and she bore him a son, Harald—also several daughters, but they were of no account, for women could not rule. This is Harald: the fair one who sits below his father on your left.
“Now in time the queen died, as queens do, giving birth to yet another daughter; and the Great King married again. Only this time he chose a lady from the conquered race, one of our own. Here is
their
son, on the right, with the dark hair. He was called Magnus.
“Now the Great King loved his second wife, and the son she bore him, more than he loved the first. And when his life’s thread had worn thin and was near to breaking, he made his desires known regarding the succession; to the astonishment of all, he chose Magnus as his heir instead of the firstborn son.
“Well, you can imagine what happened after that. It was war all over the kingdom, with Harald, who claimed to be the rightful heir (and surely you can see his point), driving Magnus off the throne, after which the once-conquered people rose up in revolt. Many died in those terrible times.
“And it was all utterly pointless, for Magnus was a mystic and a scholar, not a warrior or a man of the world; he had no desire to rule a country or lead an army. Yet all over the kingdom his people were dying in his name, dying to defend his right to an unwanted throne. So he formally renounced the crown and acknowledged his brother as king.
“But it was already too late. The pot was boiling; everyone was angry—conquered and conquerors alike.
Our
people were convinced that their king had been forced to abdicate.
Their
people were sure the crown had been stolen from the rightful heir.
“Finally Magnus made a proposal. There was a large island belonging to the kingdom called Budenholme, just off the coast. As the soil was poor and rocky, it was mostly uninhabited. Magnus said it was all the land that he would claim. He would go and live there, never to return, but any of his people who wished to follow him must be permitted to do so. He would become the ruler of his own tiny kingdom.
“Harald agreed to this, and provided Magnus with ships to carry everything he and his followers would need to start their new life on the island. Then he left them in peace to live as they wished, just as he had promised.
“But there were others, wild raiders with fast ships who swore allegiance to no king. They noticed that the once-barren island was now sprouting cottages and wheat fields; the hillsides were covered with herds of grazing sheep. And so they came sweeping in time after time, stealing sheep, pigs, grain, and now and then a comely maiden. It was so easy—why, the innocents who lived there didn’t even have an army! They had no weapons at all!”
“Horrible!” Molly said.
“Yes, it was. So clearly they would have to find another home, someplace safe, quiet, and remote. But where?
“Magnus needed to consider the matter, and to do this he needed to be alone. So he climbed to the top of the highest hill and built himself a crude little shelter, just enough to keep off the sun and the rain. And there he stayed—we don’t know how long—living on nothing but the bread and water that were set outside his door every morning. And during that time King Magnus had a vision.”
Molly gasped.
“He saw a lush valley fed by rivers and guarded by mountains on all four sides, the coastal range dropping precipitously down to the sea. He saw a few peasants living there, growing crops, cut off from the rest of the world since the time before time. He saw dense, honey-colored stone ready to be quarried for building. And he saw his men at the top of soaring cliffs with a system of winches and ropes, hauling their things up from the ships below, animals and bedsteads alike. And best of all, he saw the way in to that sweet, protected spot: a narrow canyon near impossible to find if you didn’t know the way, cutting right through the southern mountains.
“When he came back down the hill—ragged and dirty, no doubt, and with a scraggly beard—he told his people to pack up their belongings and get the ships ready to sail. That is how they came to settle in this place and build this beautiful city. It was a labor of many generations, but these walls and these mountains have kept us safe ever since.” Pieter took a deep breath, his face glowing with pride.
“That’s amazing,” Molly said. “What a wonderful story.”
“Indeed. And as you shall see, we have created a paradise here, untouched and untroubled by the world.”
Molly stared thoughtfully at the great sheet of vellum.
“But what about all the rest of the scroll—that part, and that? All those little pictures and lines?”
“It’s a map of our people, showing the leaders of the seven clans, from the time of Magnus to the present generation.”
“What does that mean—clans?”
“They grew out of family groups long ago. There would have been a patriarch named Gunnar, for example, who was a great hunter, so his descendants became the Gunnarclan, who now serve as the archers on our ramparts. We don’t allow weapons here, as you know, but we have made that one exception. As we are not a warlike people and have no army, we need at least
some
protection. Just in case.”
“No army?” said Tobias, astonished.
“We have mountains instead.” Pieter smiled. “So, that’s the Gunnarclan. In the same way, long ago, there was a man named Stig, who was a sailor. His descendants are the Stiggesclan, from which our Voyagers are chosen. They don’t sail in ships, not anymore; but they are the only ones who are permitted to leave our valley and go out into the world—secretly, you understand—to learn of new things and bring back wisdom to our people.”
“And you?”
“I’m of the Visenclan. We are scholars, mostly. This is my family line, here.”
“But what about the one in the middle? It has more names than the others. And so many lines lead to it, and there’s so much gold paint.”
Pieter smiled. “That is
your
clan, lady—the descendants of King Magnus.”
“Gaw!” cried Tobias, forgetting himself entirely. “You’re a royal princess, Molly!”
“Is it true?” she asked.
“In a way. Not exactly. The king’s line is here.” He showed them where the Magnus clan had split several times, some lines dying out, a few running side by side all the way to the bottom. “See the little gold crown I have painted here? That’s our king, Koenraad; and below him you see his son, Prince Fredrik. You are part of this other line, here. But it’s true you are of royal lineage—noble, I believe you’d call it in your country.”
Molly was struck speechless. Royal blood—who would have thought it?
Pieter now opened a drawer and took out a strange object. It was like half of a ball made out of glass. He positioned it carefully at the end of her branch of the Magnus line, peering down and adjusting it slightly. “There!” he said. “Don’t touch it, lady. Just—it’s better if you stand and look straight down. Now tell me, what do you see?”
“Oh, you have made the words larger.”
“Not me, the magnifying glass.”
“Is it magic?”
“No. It’s science, the science of optics. But what I wished you to notice is the word that’s being magnified.”
“Oh. I don’t know how to read.”
“That’s all right. I’ll help you. Now imagine two valleys, side by side.” He drew the shape with a finger in the air. “That is the letter
W
.”
“But I know that one already!” she cried. “I also know the letter
M
.”
“Well, how clever of you!”
She flushed then, hearing her own words and hearing his reply. No doubt he’d meant to be kind, but to say to a man who could read
anything
, a man who knew
all
the letters and could write them down as well—to say
I know
M
and
W as though that were some great accomplishment . . .
“I had a necklace,” she explained. “The king of Westria has it now. My grandfather made it as a love-gift for my grandmother, so he worked both of their initials into the design:
M
for
Martha
and
W
for
William
. That’s the only reason I know. Otherwise, I’m as ignorant as a toad.”
