The Witchwood Crown

  Etan felt like Saint Sutrin being tempted by the disguised angel. “You make a strong case, my lord. Is it truly up to me to decide?”

  “Yes, of course. And if you say you will undertake it, I will give you such letters from Josua as I have. From Lady Faiera, too. You will have knowledge about the League of the Scroll that none but Scrollbearers have possessed. What say you, Brother? Do you need time to think?”

  Before he could answer, they heard the clatter of hurrying footsteps in the passageway outside his chambers. Etan looked up in alarm, so surfeited with secrets he half-expected someone to break in and arrest him.

  Tiamak did not wait, but limped across the chamber before the knocking even began and opened the door to reveal a stout priest there, Tiamak’s secretary, all gasps and dripping sweat.

  “Father Avner!” said Tiamak. “Is something wrong?”

  “Lord Tiamak, your wife Lady Thelía bids you come swiftly! To the royal chapel! She says you must come now!”

  “Take a breath, Father,” said Tiamak. Etan thought he sounded much calmer than he could truly be. “Take as many of them as you need to tell the story straight. Of course I’ll come. What’s amiss? Is it the Sitha woman?”

  Father Avner wagged his shaven head in confusion. “Sitha? I don’t know about that, Lord. But the prince has fallen off the tower.”

  Shocked, Brother Etan made the sign of the Tree. “God preserve him!” he said. “And us!”

  “Is Prince Morgan badly hurt?” Tiamak demanded. “Dead?”

  “I don’t know—she only told me to fetch you,” said Avner. “But they say he fell off Hjeldin’s Tower, and that is very, very tall . . .”

  Tiamak hurried toward the door. Etan leaped to his feet and went after him. The messenger, his task accomplished, now bent over and put his hands on his knees, struggling to get his breath back.

  33

  Secrets and Promises

  Every time the queen tried to get close to Morgan on his makeshift bed, hastily set up in the royal chapel, Lady Thelía frowned at her and politely asked her to move back again. Miriamele bristled at being waved away like a child, but did her best to keep her temper.

  Thelía finally straightened up. “Now, Majesty, you may have your turn. The tidings are good—he merely fell while at the top of the tower, not off it, thank our merciful Lord. Other than a quite impressive lump on his jaw and a bloody foot, I have found nothing worse than some cuts and scrapes and bruises.”

  “Blessed Elysia be praised!” Miri kneeled down and dabbed at Morgan’s forehead with a damp cloth. “Thanks to Almighty God you are not worse hurt. Poor lad!”

  “Poor lad?” The king was pale, and his voice was hoarse, although Miriamele knew that was as much because of fear as anger. “Climbing on Hjeldin’s Tower! Climbing that evil, forbidden thing!”

  Morgan groaned and opened his eyes. The royal couple and the others in the chapel—servants, a pair of vergers, and the chaplain, Father Nulles—all murmured their relief. “Where is Snenneq?” the prince asked after he had looked around for a few groggy moments. His eyes widened in fear. “Is he all right? Did he fall?”

  “No, he didn’t fall,” his grandfather said. “He’s well, and thank the Lord and all His angels for that. Snenneq climbed down and found help. Binabik was already looking for you two after his daughter came back.” The king took a deep breath before speaking, but his voice still quavered with anger. “Boy, what were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?”

  “Don’t shout at him now,” Miriamele said, dabbing Morgan’s brow. She had been so terrified when the servants came for her. The time it took her to get from her chambers to the chapel where the guards had brought her grandson seemed like a nightmare. In fact, it had been very much like the nightmares that had tormented her nearly every night in the first year after John Josua’s death—always hurrying, knowing he needed her, but always too late. Every one of those dreams had ended in a closed door, or an empty bed, or footprints in a grassy field, but no other sign of her lost, beloved son. She could only thank God over and over that this ending had been different.

  “I need to talk to Snenneq,” said Morgan, who still looked frightened. “Can someone bring him here?”

  “No, you need to sleep, Highness,” said Lady Thelía. “That is what you need. Sleep is the sovereign cure for almost any hurt that does not kill you. And Usires be praised, your fall, however unfortunate, does not seem to have done you any lasting damage.”

  Tiamak and young Brother Etan appeared in the doorway of the chapel, their faces suggesting they had not yet heard that the prince had not actually fallen off the tower and was not too badly hurt. Miriamele watched as the chaplain went to speak to them.

  “Oh, my heart is beating so fast,” she told her husband. “I was so worried.”

  “Our grandson doesn’t seem to bring us much else,” Simon said. “But this is the worst.”

  “Don’t you dare shout at him—not in front of all these people.” Miri kept her voice low. “You can wait until he’s in his own room again.”

  “And that will happen soon enough,” Simon declared. “We are not going to leave him here in the chapel. He’s not lying in state, he’s just given his foolish chin a good thump. We’ll carry him upstairs that way, in the same blanket he’s lying on.” And before Miriamele could object, he began giving orders to the servants.

  “Carefully, please!” said Thelía as two male servants and two Erkynguard took a corner each and lifted Morgan. “We do not know for certain that he has not cracked a rib.”

  “All of them,” Morgan moaned as he was bumped a little in the process of lifting him off the steps in front of the altar. “Every damnable one is cracked, I’m sure.”

  “And serves you right, you young . . . mooncalf,” the king said, but quietly, so that only Miriamele heard him. She was too weary with fright to smile, but she remembered how many times a younger Simon had been called that himself.

  Lillia had heard the news, and was waiting breathlessly to see her brother. She was allowed to speak to him for a moment before he was carried out, just so she could see that Morgan was not badly hurt. The little girl scolded him so severely that Miriamele could not help feeling a little sorry for her grandson, much as he deserved it.

  Lord Chancellor Pasevalles had arrived too, as pale with surprise and worry as everyone else. “How is he, Majesty?” Pasevalles asked after the procession had passed and he could step through the doorway. “I just heard. Pray God he is not badly hurt . . . ?”

  “Took a thump on the jaw, that’s all,” growled Simon, although it was Miriamele that Pasevalles had addressed. “Hope it teaches him a lesson. God knows what everybody will think—everyone knows that tower is forbidden!” Simon shook his head, more of a shudder than a negation. “Why would anyone want to go near that cursed place? I’ve warned him about it enough times.”

  “Too many times,” said Miriamele. “It’s just a story to him, like one of your Jack Mundwode tales.”

  “Praise God, I am much relieved, Majesties,” said the Lord Chancellor, smiling. “So he will be well?”

  “Only bruised and scraped, says Lady Thelía.” Miriamele’s own hands were still trembling. “And with a fine purple lump on his chin. Thanks be to our blessed Mother it was not worse.” She quickly explained what had happened, or at least what she had learned: that Little Snenneq had gone and found help, that several workmen with tools and harnesses had mounted to the roof of Hjeldin’s Tower, and then managed to lower the insensible Morgan to the ground.

  “But he did not go inside the tower, I hope,” Pasevalles said.

  “Apparently not,” said Simon. “Just slipped on the roof and hit his head. We have that to be grateful for, at least. Horrible, poisonous place. I was in it myself, you know. During the war. I still have dreams . . .” The king broke off, staring at nothing.

&nbs
p; “If you will pardon me, then, Majesties, I will return to the Chancelry,” Pasevalles said. “I was in the middle of something most important, but of course the moment I heard I hurried straight here.”

  “Why not?” said the king. “No reason everybody’s day should be wasted because our grandson doesn’t have the good sense to—”

  “Yes, go, Pasevalles,” Miri told him, interrupting her husband. “Say a prayer for his speedy recovery, please.”

  “I will light a candle this evening at mansa.”

  Tiamak and his wife and Brother Etan had all joined Morgan’s blanket-progress back to his bed upstairs. After Pasevalles had left the chapel, only the servants, Father Nulles, and the chapel folk remained. Nulles offered his sincere sorrow at what had happened, and Miri did her best to be gracious, but what she really wanted to do was go and tend her grandson. Even Simon’s anger seemed beside the point to her. The accident had already happened. There was no sense stewing over it, fuming and cursing. But when she told Simon they should go to see that the prince was comfortable in his rooms, he balked.

  “You go if you want. I can’t even look at him just now.”

  Miri felt a flare of anger. “You did worse when you were his age.”

  “That’s different, Miri. I was not the heir to the throne. I wasn’t a prince, I was just a kitchen boy. Nobody would have cared if I lived or died.”

  “Some would,” she said, softened by a memory. “I always thought you looked interesting.”

  “Hah.” Simon loosened enough to laugh a little. “Interesting. Yes, I’m sure you looked at a gawky, red-haired scullion tripping over his own feet and thought, ‘I’d like to have a long chat with that likely fellow.”

  “No, that isn’t what I thought.” She could suddenly recall the very day she had first seen Simon running across the Inner Keep like a clumsy young colt trying its first gallop, limbs going everywhere except where they should. “I thought, ‘He looks so free! Like he hasn’t a care in the world. I wonder what that feels like?’ That’s what I thought.”

  “Well, at least you don’t pretend you were caught by my handsome face.”

  “I spent my life among handsome faces, first in Meremund, then here,” she said. “But I’d never seen anyone who looked less like he cared what other people were thinking than you did.”

  Now Simon laughed again, this time finding something more like his natural humor. “It wasn’t that I didn’t care at all about what people thought, I just kept forgetting, my dear one. Rachel always said that—‘It’s not that you’re purely foolish, boy, it’s that you don’t remember to be clever unless you’re trying to get out of a punishment.’”

  “I know you miss her,” Miri said. “But she scared me. Always glaring at me like she knew I’d left a mess somewhere that she’d have to clean up.”

  “Rachel the Dragon—the chambermaid who glared at messy princesses.” Simon nodded. “Yes, that’s how she would have liked to be remembered.”

  “Are you going to come with me to see Morgan?”

  Simon shook his head. “I’ve seen him. I’ll let you treat with him for a bit. But you and I are going to have a talk about this—you do know that, don’t you?”

  Miriamele sighed. “Yes, I do, and I agree he deserves punishment, but I won’t let you bully him.”

  “It’s not punishment he needs, Miri. It’s something different. He has to start acting like a man, not a child.”

  “Don’t scowl like that. It makes you look like a child yourself. No, it makes you look like Morgan.” It was true, she realized—except for the hair color and the prince’s lack of freckles, the resemblance was quite remarkable, especially when she remembered Simon at the same age. No wonder she had trouble staying angry at their feckless grandson.

  They parted in front of the royal chapel, the king to return to scheduling the assizes with Count Eolair. Before she left, Simon squeezed her hand to reassure her, a little message between the two of them, a way to be alone together even when the whole court surrounded them.

  The guards and servants had carried Morgan out of the chapel and across the courtyard to reach the wider set of stairs, because Morgan had already complained several times about the pain of being jostled, but even on the wider steps it was difficult for the men at the top end of the blanket to walk upstairs backward while lifting the weight of the man-sized prince.

  As Pasevalles watched, a pair of prisoners emerged from the guardroom near the base of the stairs, two men in irons accompanied by several Erkynguards. When they saw the fuss on the stairs, the two prisoners pushed their way toward it, ignoring the complaints from their guards, who seemed rather half-hearted about the exercise of their duty. The Lord Chancellor understood a moment later when he recognized the prisoners.

  “Ho, there!” he called to the sergeant of the guards. “I see you have our friends Sir Astrian and Sir Olveris.”

  “And hello to you, Lord Pasevalles!” Astrian called out cheerfully. “Yes, we have been taken up for the terrible crime of enjoying a few drinks, and now we’re on our way to listen to Lord Zakiel scold us.”

  “But first we wanted to give the prince our best wishes for a swift recovery,” said Olveris. With his dour, serious voice, he almost made it sound true.

  “Did you hear, fellows? I fell off Hjeldin’s Tower!” called Morgan from the depth of the carrying-blanket. “Thumped my jaw, cracked all my ribs! I’m in terrible pain!” But he was laughing a little breathlessly, as if it truly did hurt. “Tell Porto I shall be as feeble as he is after this.”

  The prisoners shouted cheerfully after him as he was carried up the next set of stairs and then through a door into the Residence.

  “All right, you,” said the sergeant. “You’ve paid your respects to the prince. What do you say we get moving?”

  “Just a moment, Sergeant,” said Pasevalles.

  “Yes, Lord Chancellor?” The guardsman looked down at himself quickly, perhaps checking for splotches of food or anything else that Pasevalles might deem an offense against his position.

  “I will take these men. I have business with them.”

  “But Lord Zakiel wants them brought to him.”

  “I understand. Tell Zakiel I will release this pair of criminals to his justice when I’ve finished, but first I have a pressing matter to discuss with them both.”

  The guard captain hesitated, plainly unhappy about relinquishing his prisoners, but even more unhappy with the idea of flouting the lord chancellor, one of the kingdom’s most powerful men. Self-preservation won out over strict application of the rules. “Very well, my lord. If it’s you who’s taking responsibility, my lord.”

  “I am. And you may tell Zakiel I said so. If he needs me to give him my seal on it, send someone over to my office in the Chancelry and my secretary Wibert will give it. I will make sure the prisoners are returned to your leader just as they are now—still a bit drunk and very stupid—and he may do what he likes then. Hang them if he pleases.”

  “Oh, I don’t think they’ll hang, my lord.”

  “No, probably not, more’s the pity.”

  “Are you going to give us a treat, then?” Astrian demanded. “Take us to the market and buy us each a meat pie?”

  “You will be lucky if I do not have you both made into meat pies,” said Pasevalles as the guard captain handed over his charges. “Now, march to the Chancelry. And don’t dawdle.”

  “Aren’t you going to take these fetters off?” asked Astrian.

  “You must be jesting,” said Pasevalles. “I wish they were heavier.”

  • • •

  In the Chancelry, Pasevalles banished Father Wibert and his other secretaries and clerics to the outer chambers so he could be alone with the two soldiers. He had known Astrian for a long time, since his days in Nabban, and had known Olveris almost as long. He had seen them at their best
and worst. He had never been so angry at either.

  “What in the name of Saint Cornellis and all the other saints do you think you were doing?” He could barely keep his voice low to avoid sharing his anger with everyone in the great Chancelry building. “You know you are not to leave Morgan alone, and especially not when he’s getting into this kind of madness. He could have been killed! It is only by the grace of God that he was not!”

  Astrian looked a little chastened, but not much. “You told us he was drinking too much, my lord. We tried to get him to come with us to Zakiel’s ceremony, but when he wouldn’t . . .” He shrugged. “Welladay, what were we to do?”

  “What were you to do? Go with him! Stay with him! And when he said, ‘I’m going to climb that God-damned forbidden tower and fall off,’ you were to say, ‘No, you’re not, Your Highness. You’re to stay with us.’ That’s what you were supposed to do. What do you think I pay you lummocks for?”

  “He’s stubborn,” offered Olveris.

  “Stubborn? Of course he’s stubborn. He’s a spoiled boy barely into manhood, whose boon companions are drunken idiots. Young men his age do stupid things. It is your job to prevent him from doing them.”

  “We try—” began Astrian in a put-upon tone.

  “Don’t. Don’t even start to make excuses.” Pasevalles paced back and forth beside the table where months of accumulated work waited for him while he dealt with nonsense like this. “Do you not understand how important that boy is? He is the heir to Prester John’s kingdom—the whole of the High Ward. After the king and queen, he is the most important person in this world—more important than His Sacredness, the Lector of Mother Church!” He glared, daring either one of them to reply. Having caught the drift of the conversation, neither one did. “What do you think would happen if the Lector’s Horsemen’s Guard let the old man go climbing around on the roof of the Sancellan Aedonitis at night and fall off? Do you think they’d keep their posts? Or do you think they might be drawn and quartered in Galdin’s Square in front of a shrieking mob? Well? What do you think?”