The Hidden Land (10 page)

“The props are sure better,” said Patrick.

Ted closed the lid of their box, also carved, on the chess pieces, and he and Patrick put board and box away.

“So,” said Patrick as they went downstairs, “do you think it’s a good idea to be crowned?”

“Randolph thinks it is,” said Ted, “and he’s the only one who knows what’s going on.”

They nodded politely to Agatha, who passed them carrying a tray with two cups and a jug on it. She gave them a look of resigned suspicion, then smiled suddenly.

“Fence knows what’s going on,” said Patrick when they were several corners further on.

“That’s not what I meant. Randolph killed the King, and he’s the only one with real plans about what should happen after, because he’s the only one who knew the King was going to die. Fence wanted to have the coronation after the battle, and I’d rather, but Randolph said we should have it before.”

They clattered down the last steps.

“Did he say why?”

“He said that if they didn’t crown me it would show doubt of me.”

Patrick frowned at the wall. “Maybe they doubt you anyway. If
I
was Edward,
I
might kill the King. He was a terrible father.”

Ted felt that this was unjust, but could not say why. Then the first part of Patrick’s speech caught up with him.

“They
could
think I did it. They never did tell me what happened when Jerome got them all together and Agatha asked them questions, and Matthew wrote it all down.”

“Well, Randolph won’t let them hang you for it,” said Patrick, starting down the hall again.

There was a guard at the open door to the practice yard. There had never been one there before. The ways from the yard to the outside were guarded, so another guard on this door was silly.

Ted wished he could feel more like a prince and less like a guilty child. He and Patrick had every right to come practice their fencing. They had been doing it for weeks. But let somebody with a sword and a leather cap and a mail-shirt show up, and he wanted to run for his room.

Patrick, after a brief pause, had marched on as if he were afraid he was going to miss the beginning of a movie, and Ted ran to keep up. The guard looked Patrick over until Ted came up, and then moved out of their way.

“Give you good morrow,” she said. Ted looked at her in surprise. She was the woman with the scarred forehead who had sat next to Matthew at the Banquet and guarded the Council Chamber after the King was poisoned.

“Good morning,” he said.

Patrick simply stared, and then pulled Ted out into the yard.

“I never saw a woman guard before,” he said as they picked out their swords. Every rack and weapon had a patina of moisture, and Patrick frowned. “How come these things don’t rust?”

“I saw some after Randolph poisoned the King,” said Ted.

“Well,” said Patrick, “if there are women in the army then I guess the girls can come to the battle.”

“I don’t know,” said Ted, trying to imagine Laura in the middle of a fight. “It’s not just that they’re girls. They’re only little kids, except Ruthie.”

“So’re we,” said Patrick shortly, as he jerked a sword out, and danced away across the sand. “Come on.”

Ted’s fencing was better than his chess had been. But after less than an hour, Benjamin interrupted their labors by grabbing Ted’s tunic collar and scolding him roundly for not having heard him coming. He then scolded Patrick for not having warned Ted.

“A milliard of years ye have had for swordcraft,” he said when he had finished with that, “and ye needs must leave it all for coronation morning. Thou,” he said to Ted, “with me, and thou,” to Patrick, “to the West Tower.”

The woman with the scar grinned at them as Benjamin hustled them through her door.

“My lord Benjamin,” was all she said.

“Celia,” said Benjamin, fixing her with his glare, “thy children have ridden Lord Conrad’s new horses six times round the lake and done them no small damage.”

Ted watched in fascination as Celia’s face struggled to encompass worry, mirth, and respect all at once.

“My lord, you must speak to my husband,” she said, her voice a little stifled. “I am at my work this fortnight.”

“Oh, aye,” said Benjamin, “and when, in all this hugger-mugger, I shall find time to catch thy husband, ’twill be, ‘Speak to Celia, for I am at my work.’ Meanwhile, those brats must take this castle stone from stone and use it to play at conkers.”

“Are they worse than us?” asked Patrick.

“No fear,” said Benjamin. “They are but three, and no twenty children are worse than ye. To the West Tower, go.”

Patrick went.

Ted looked over his shoulder at Celia as Benjamin pulled him along, and was rewarded with a wink and a salute. He frowned, and suddenly remembered. Unless Celia were a common name at court, this was the person Matthew had wanted to ask about the fire-letters: the most accomplished musician.

“What’s she doing guarding?” he said aloud.

“Who else should do’t, all thy father’s men being suspect?”

Comprehension dawned. The first women in mail, or with weapons, Ted had seen in High Castle: standing at the door of the Council Chamber after the King had been poisoned. Neither the King’s, nor men. That explained it.

“Am I suspect?” he asked.

“Didst not spill the bottle from Randolph’s hand, to Andrew’s sorrow?”

Ted was too startled to lie. “Yes, but—” Now who had told them that? Andrew, perhaps.

“Cease thy foolish questions,” said Benjamin. “Princes are foolish, but kings must be canny. Best begin now. Thou art as foolish a prince as I have seen.”

Despite these dampening remarks, Ted felt more cheerful. Benjamin would rant, whatever happened. Maybe being king would not be so different from being Prince Edward.

Becoming king could, however, accurately be described as a royal pain. Ted had chosen to laugh at this thought at an inauspicious moment, and had a scratch from the tailor’s shears for his trouble. The tailor had apologized, but without being in the least abject. It was clear from Benjamin’s expression that, if he had thought there was time to spare, he would have spent it in making Ted abject instead.

The scratch was not a bad one, but the sweat caused by his coronation clothes made it sting. It was one discomfort too many. Ted was hot; the banquet hall was airless and crammed with people; they were all making a noise like twenty kindergarten classes let out to recess; and the musicians were making sounds like a restive zoo.

Ted held his arms out to his sides, hoping for some air to creep under the loose sleeves of his under-tunic. He had four layers of clothes on, two of them velvet and all of them cumbersome. The colors went together nicely, and he was pleased to have a white and purple unicorn on his front and a black and red dragon on his back instead of the usual running fox. But he felt more suited to Arctic exploration than to a formal ceremony.

“Except if I moved I’d fall down,” he said aloud.

“If thou movest thou destroyest the ceremony,” said Benjamin into his left ear. “They come to thee, not thou to them.”

Ted looked out over the brilliant, shifting crowd and was not at all sure he wanted any of them to come to him.

Randolph appeared from their midst and sprang, like a child playing kangaroo, onto the platform where Ted and Benjamin stood. Despite his apparent energy, he looked exhausted. Ted thought he was thinner than he had been. He had blue smudges under his eyes. Ted stared at these for a moment. Ellen had managed to produce a very similar effect with the juice of smashed mulberries and a little cornstarch, to decorate a weary Lady Ruth after she brought Ted back from the dead. The rest of them had laughed at her, saying that nobody ever looked like that really. But Randolph did now.

“Benjamin,” said Randolph, a little breathlessly. “Where are Matthew’s children?”

Benjamin looked sour. “Seek them in the stables, or at the bottom of the lake.”

Randolph pushed irritably at his hair, and Benjamin appeared to relent. “They need not attend; they are not of age.”

“Margaret hath speech and reason.”

Benjamin shrugged. “ ’Twill not be noticed in her.”

Randolph went still, reminding Ted of Fence. “Benjamin,” he said. “I will have every wight of useful age in this castle swear fealty to Edward if it is my last act.”

Benjamin put a hand on Randolph’s forehead, more as a calming gesture, thought Ted, then as if he were checking for fever.

“I will have no more like Melanie,” said Randolph.

Benjamin sighed. “There was never yet coronation in this castle that began at its proper time. I will hold them ’til you come again.”

Randolph slid down into the crowd and was gone.

“You mean all that rush was for nothing?” demanded Ted.

“It was not,” said Benjamin.

Ted decided not to pursue this. “What did he mean about Melanie?”

“You need have no fear of Margaret,” said Benjamin.

“I don’t. What’d he mean?”

“Consider your history,” said Benjamin, and Ted shut up and wished for Ellen. Some five hundred years ago, Melanie had spent her childhood in High Castle until she got into trouble with the unicorns, but he did not know what this had to do with coronation oaths.

Having nothing else to do, he considered his history further; and suddenly he had it. Melanie had not sworn fealty to the King of the Secret Country because she was so young; she had then gotten into trouble, and gone away for a time. When she came back, she was a powerful sorceress, and still had not sworn fealty to the King of the Secret Country, and caused a great deal more trouble than she had gotten into, because everybody assumed that she
had
sworn fealty. Randolph must think Margaret wild enough to do likewise. Ted was so pleased to have figured out anything at all that he grinned at Benjamin.

“Having this time at our disposal,” said Benjamin, “we would do well to speak of thy counselors. Wilt thou keep all thy father’s?”

Ted, having had no idea that there was any choice in the matter, goggled at him. “Well,” he said, “I don’t trust Andrew.”

“Better to have him under thine eye, then.”

“But I don’t like being under his. Anyway, does that mean I should have Claudia, too?”

“If thou wilt so blithely break with tradition, ’twere better thou hadst Agatha.”

“Agatha?” said Ted, thoroughly confused.

“She served thy mother well, a most astute tactician.”

Ted shook his sweaty hands in the air and felt the beginnings of outrage rise in him. Every time you got used to this place it hit you with something new. “What’s she doing carrying cocoa to little girls in the morning?” he demanded.

“What doth Celia guarding safe doors?” Benjamin mocked him. Ted felt himself growing redder than the heat in the room had made him. “What doth Suzanne spying in the South and Meredith waiting on late councils?”

“Did Wil—did my father kick them off the Council, then?”

“Every last one,” said Benjamin.

“But he put you on? And what’d they do?”

“Thou hast had nose in thy books too long,” said Benjamin. “I served thy grandfather, and thy mother also. She was not so great a fool as thy father, to turn her back on gathered wisdom.”

“You think my father was a fool?” Ted was enthralled.

“In some matters, aye—take him for all in all, certainly he was not.”

“Well,” said Ted. He was torn between asking about his mother and deciding whom he wanted on his council. It sounded as though his mother had been Queen, and William had become King on her death, which was rather strange. But he found deciding about the council more appealing, as well as more likely to be useful. “I want you, and I want Randolph and Matthew. And Fence.”

“Fence will be no counselor. He will advise thee at his whim, not thine. It was ever so with sorcerers, save Shan; and he rued it.”

“Who else should I keep? Can I only have twelve?”

“Kings have had more,” said Benjamin. “They proved but cumbersome.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Ted, thinking of the uproar only twelve could create.

“I favor Conrad and Jerome,” said Benjamin. “Nor is Andrew without merit.”

“That’s only six. Maybe I should see what Randolph thinks. Is Julian good for anything?” Ted paused. “Won’t the rest of them be mad if I get rid of them?”

“They have guarded safe doors before,” said Benjamin. “King or Queen’s Counselor is the most uncertain of professions.”

“I guess I’d better think on it.” Ted felt a pleased excitement, as if he and Ruth and Ellen were devising some new twist to the plot. It had not really occurred to him before how many things he could now do as he liked.

Randolph came to the edge of the platform, flushed and panting. “Benjamin, you may begin. The stable it was.” He wore his blue counselor’s robe now, and used the steps to join them on the stage. His hand came down on Ted’s shoulder for a moment. Ted’s stomach clenched itself in answer.

“I will stand at thy right shoulder,” breathed Randolph. “Shouldst thou forget aught of thy speeches, but pluck me by the sleeve and thou shalt have the words.”

Ted, who had found memorizing speeches while having clothes made on him less than easy, was swept by a fierce gratitude. By the time indignation had begun to overtake it, Benjamin had signaled to the musicians and he had no time to indulge his feelings.

The musicians were playing the minstrel-boy song. Ted sighed. How had that come to the Secret Country? It was all very well to say that the five of them had had the Secret Country put into their heads, rather than inventing it on their own. But that song was an old one. He supposed the Secret Country could have put it into the head of whoever wrote it, but that raised more questions than it answered.

The crowd before him shifted and parted, and Fence came up the newly opened aisle, his robe striking a hundred bewildering sparks, a crown in his hands. It was the same intricately twisted silver as Ruth’s ring, Randolph’s dagger and circlet, and Fence’s key. But the five stones in it were red. Ted looked at it with dismay. Red stones meant Claudia to him, and he did not like to think what it might mean that they were in the crown. Crowns shouldn’t have anything to do with magic anyway, he thought grumpily.