The Rebel Prince (50 page)
Gravel rattled loosely behind her, but Wynter didn’t turn. She could not take her eyes from Jonathon, who was just then falling to his knees at Alberon’s side. She dropped down onto the sun-warmed stones and watched as the King turned his son over. Jonathon knelt for a moment, his hands poised, staring down at Alberon’s limp body. Then he grabbed his son’s tunic, pulled him into his arms, and screamed at no one in particular.
‘He breathes! He breathes! Save him!’
There was a small movement at Wynter’s side, and she turned to look into Razi’s dusty, bloodstained face. He blinked at her, those big brown eyes, flecked all through with gold.
‘Razi,’ she whispered, ‘save him.’
T
HE LITTLE
boy ran, fear and excitement spurring him on. It was the first time he had been allowed to travel this journey alone, and the city had never seemed so big. He clutched the crackling parchment note to his chest as he dodged through the heedless citizens, his small feet flying in their green leather boots.
Breaking from the gloom of a crowded arcade, he emerged into the harsh light and sun-blasted stillness of the big piazza. It was midday, and the open spaces were relatively deserted. Even the shadows stayed close to the feet of the buildings, waiting for the heat to pass.
Pigeons scattered from the uneven ground as the boy skirted the bronze statue of the Man on His Horse. ‘Honeycat’, his mama called him. That always made the little boy smile; he loved the taste of the word in his mouth.
Honeycat.
It seemed such an odd name for so imposing a man.
As he jogged past, the little boy glanced up at the statue. He loved the man’s horse: he loved its wide, strong neck, he loved its knotted tail. Though, like his father, the little boy disapproved of the rider’s spurs. He never failed to wince at the sight of them, and shake his little head. A good rider should have no need of such a brutal tool.
The sun tyrannised the open air, hot as a furnace, and the little boy hurried across the piazza and into the protective shadows thrown by Il Santo. He raced along the smooth stone walls of the Basilica – past the first little door, past the great big door, past the second little door – and then out into the sunshine again before ducking into the shelter of another
sottoportego
and down a dim and quiet arcade street. It was time for siesta, and work on the new city walls had paused for an hour or so. In the absence of the usual dust and noise, the entire world seemed to be napping.
The little boy heard the End of Lessons bell just as he turned the corner and began to run down the sunny little lane that led to the compound and the site of the new hospital. Free from their classes, the bigger children began to trickle from the arched gateway, and the little boy slowed his progress, pretending to be preoccupied. It was not that he was afraid of the bigger children. Of course he wasn’t. But there was something about this
particular
group – a certain pride, a certain lack of courtliness – that made him uncomfortable. It was unfair to them, he knew; they had never done him harm. But still, he hung back.
The bigger children walked together, talking softly in their own strange language, their slates clutched at their chests, their satchels on their backs. The little boy was just about to crouch and pretend to tie his lace when a familiar figure came strolling out among them and the little boy straightened with a grin and ran on.
‘Good afternoon, Anthony!’ he called in his clear little voice. ‘Are you done your alphabets for today?’
The young servant turned and the little boy took great delight at the surprise and concern in his face. ‘My Lord!’ he cried. ‘Hast thou come here all alone?’
The little boy tutted. ‘I am well able to cross the city alone, Anthony. I am not a baby, you know.’
Anthony hefted his satchel onto his shoulder and scanned the arcaded streets behind the boy. ‘Does thy father know thou hast . . . ?’ Something caught his eye and he smiled. ‘Of course, my Lord,’ he said, looking back to the child and bowing. ‘I do keep forgetting how big thou art.’
The child glanced suspiciously behind him, but there was no one there.
Anthony’s friends stopped to wait for him at the corner of the street. An equal mixture of boys and girls, they paused in a bright splash of sunshine, and it gleamed on their silver bracelets and shone in their long hair. They smiled, but did not bow. The little boy had long ago given up taking offence at this. After all, as his mama always said, a nod was as good as a bow where these folks were concerned.
‘I have a message,’ he said importantly, holding the parchment out to show them. ‘Papa entrusted it to me!’ Anthony’s friends raised their eyebrows and made impressed noises, and the little boy turned back to his servant. ‘You may go with your companions if you wish, Anthony,’ he allowed. ‘I shall not need you till much,
much
later. I am well able to return home alone, once my work is done.’
‘Thank you very much, my Lord,’ said Anthony, his lips tugging at the corners.
Bowing with a rather amused solemnity, the young servant strolled off to join his friends. They glanced back at the small child with undisguised fondness, waving and smiling with quite an appalling lack of propriety. The child watched them go with a patient shake of his little head. Anthony was a very good servant, indeed he could almost be called a friend – but on occasion he did keep rather dubious company.
Glancing behind him once more – there was most definitely no one there – the little boy ran beneath the sandstone gate-arch and down the lane that led to the compound’s stable yards. The sound of hooves on cobbles came to him as he rounded the corner, and he paused at the sight of the Chief of Horses leading one of the Arabians across the yard. The little boy faltered for a moment in the shadows.
It was not that the little boy disliked the Chief of Horses. In fact, he liked him very much, but there was something about him that made the boy shy. It was hard to define. There were those terrible scars, of course, and his horribly accented Italian. But it had more to do with a strange feeling of
loss
that the little boy felt around this man. There was a sense of hidden grief to him that made the little boy feel sad. He was often filled with the desire to clamber up the man’s wiry body and hug his scarred neck, but the man’s noble reserve made such a gesture seem inappropriate.
A familiar, nudging presence at the child’s back made him turn and he was greeted with a blast of musty dog-breath and a face full of slobbering kisses.
‘Dog!’ spluttered the little boy. ‘Stop at once! Or I shall be drowned!’
The hound, of course, declined to stop, and the little boy abandoned the pretence at annoyance and embraced his shaggy neck, laughing. The huge creature snuffled down the collar of the child’s tunic with great enthusiasm, and the child giggled at his tickling whiskers.
‘Boro,’ called the Chief of Horses. ‘Leave the lord be.’
The great hound broke off his slavering attack and trotted over to his master. Nudging the man’s hands and licking his scarred wrists, the dog rolled his eyes in adoration and whined like some ridiculously huge puppy.
‘Bloody fool,’ growled his master. ‘I take back of my sword to you if you not behave.’ The dog grinned and yawned and flopped down into the dust, showing his belly for a scratching. The Chief of Horses sighed and shook his head, but crouched down to oblige nonetheless. ‘My Lord,’ he said, squinting across at the little boy. ‘You come for to take out your horse? It a little hot for riding yet,
nach ea
? Maybe you wait for evening and then I bring you down along the river?’
‘I am on business, Freeman! I have come all the way here with a message for the Protector Lady!’ He held out the note with great pride.
The Chief of Horses’ face drew down in concern. ‘You come alone?’ he said. ‘Across the city? Your father knows this?’
‘Papa
sent
me, Freeman. I am quite old enough, you know, to deliver a message.’
As the child spoke, the man’s eyes drifted to the corner. Whatever he saw there wiped away his grim concern, and his weathered face softened into amusement. The child snapped his head around just in time to glimpse his father’s aide duck back behind the wall.
‘Marcello!’ cried the little boy. ‘I
see
you!’ He stamped his foot in rage. ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘Papa sent you to follow me! After he promised I was to do this
alone
!’
The dapper little man stepped out into the sunlight. He smiled, and tilted his head. ‘I assure you, my Lord, your father did not send me. The Lord Razi has absolute faith in you, and trusts entirely that you shall deliver his message. I am here on separate business, and it is but a coincidence that we have arrived together.’
The little boy glared at him. Marcello Tutti spread his hands in all innocence. ‘I swear by the Holy Mother of Jesus, my Lord, I am here for my own ends.’ His dark-brown eyes lifted and met those of the Chief of Horses. ‘Is that not so, Sólmundr?’ he said softly.
The Chief of Horses ducked his head, and the small boy frowned curiously up at him. ‘You have gone very pink, Freeman,’ he observed. ‘You really should not go about without your hat, you know. Papa says the midday sun can quite fry a man’s brains.’
For some reason, this made Marcello Tutti chuckle, and the Chief of Horses went even pinker.
The child looked from one to the other of them in confusion. ‘Um,’ he said, waving the paper, ‘I must deliver Papa’s message. Now you
must
not follow me on the way home, Signor Tutti! I am very able to travel alone, you know!’
The Italian bowed his agreement, and the child turned in haughty pride and walked off, heading for the schoolhouse and the building site beyond. A soft conversation rose up behind him as he trotted across the yard: Marcello Tutti’s cultured voice, and the Chief of Horses’ quite awful, but warmly rasped, Italian.
‘You owe me a game of chess, my friend.’
‘I not play no longer, not till you agree to be honest.’
‘I will be honest. From now on, I will be unflinchingly honest. If you win, it shall be upon your own merits and not because I allow it.’
There was a brief silence. At the corner, the child glanced back at the two men. Marcello Tutti was squinting up at the Chief of Horses, a shy anxiety clear in his face.
‘So . . . I may visit tonight?’ he asked. ‘After I have seen the Lady Mary home from mass?’
The Chief of Horses gazed down at the dark little man, and something in his expression made the child wait. He wanted to hear the man’s answer for some reason. For some reason, it felt very important that he know it.
The Chief of Horses reached and plucked something from Marcello Tutti’s shoulder. ‘You got a leaf there,’ he said gravely. Then he met Marcello’s eyes and grinned his rare and charming gap-toothed grin. ‘I see you tonight,’ he rasped. ‘After you finish with your religions. You be honest, and we soon see who wins the game.’
Marcello Tutti relaxed into a smile. ‘Tonight,’ he agreed, and the little boy ducked around the corner, satisfied that all was well between his two friends.
Down the flagstone path and into the shadow of the schoolhouse, all was still and quiet now that the Protector Lord had closed up for the day, and the little boy’s footsteps echoed from the whitewashed schoolhouse wall, its blue painted snakes and bears watching as he ran past.
Then around he went into the resinous smell and sawdust of the hospital site, and came to a halt.
The great timber frame of the building itself was almost complete and it soared above him, cutting the seamless blue sky into mathematical slices. All was colour – the red timber, the dusty golden sunshine, the purple shadows. All was stillness. The heady, living smell of fresh-sawn wood and shavings spiced the air.
The little boy gazed upwards, listening.
There was a light thud as something hit the ground behind him and a warm voice lilted in his ear. ‘How do, Isaac? Have you come to learn your ABCs?’
The child squealed with delight as he was swept up by strong arms. He was instantly engulfed in that familiar spicy scent as the Protector Lord swung him onto his slim back. ‘You want to go visit the lass?’ he asked, smiling sideways over his shoulder as Isaac knotted his little hands beneath his chin.
‘Yes, please.’
‘Don’t choke me on the way up, mind. And don’t let go! I’ll never hear the end of it if you plummet to your doom!’ Tucking his long hair into his collar so that it wouldn’t get into the little boy’s face, the Protector Lord grabbed a rung on the first ladder and began to clamber, hand over scarred hand, to the top of the scaffolding.
Secure in the absolute certainty that he wouldn’t fall, Isaac clenched his legs around the Protector Lord’s waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. The lord’s necklace tickled the little boy’s wrist as they climbed up and up, and Isaac shifted so that he could watch it glinting in the sun.
Isaac loved that necklace. Recently, he had succeeded in counting all the ornaments upon it. He had numbered them all – twenty-four warm, amber stones, sixteen fangs of silver, eight of gold. The Protector Lord had been delighted with him. He had proclaimed him ‘excellent good at the ’rithmatics’ and asked when he could hire him as a teacher at the school. The Protector Lady had beamed with pride, but she had not allowed Isaac to take a turn wearing the necklace. It was the Protector Lord’s, she had said. He had waited too long for it. No one else must ever wear it.
