Flint turned to him and laid his finger across his lips. “Sssshhh.”
Just before Chert lost his mind entirely, he was distracted by a flicker of movement along the crest of the roof. As he stared in utter astonishment, a figure appeared there. For the first moments he thought the tiny man-shape must be someone standing on the uppermost point of some distant tower, a tower which itself was blocked from his view by the roof on which he and the boy were sitting—what else could explain such a sight? But as the figure began clambering down the roof toward them, moving with surprising grace and speed along the moss-furred spaces between tiles, Chert could no longer pretend the newcomer was anything but a finger-high man. He sucked in air with a strangled wheeze and the little fellow stopped.
“That’s Chert.” Flint explained to the tiny man. “He came with me I live in his house.”
The minuscule fellow began to descend again, faster now, almost swinging from one handhold to another, until he reached Flint. He stood by the boy and peered past him at Chert with—as far as Chert could read in a face the size of a button—a measure of suspicion.
“And tha say un be good, so will I believe ‘ee.” The tiny fellow’s voice was high as the fluting of a songbird, but Chert could make out every word.
“A Rooftopper.” Chert breathed. It was amazingly strange to see an old story standing in front of you, living and breathing and no bigger than a cricket. He had thought the Rooftoppers, if not entirely invented by generations of Funderling mothers and grannies, to be at least so distantly lost in history as to be the same thing. “Fissure and fracture, boy! Where did you find him?"
“Find me?” The little creature stepped toward him, fists cocked on his hips. “What, Beetledown the Bowman but a child’s toy, found and dropped again. “Bested me in fair fight, un did.”
Chert shook his head in confusion, but Beetledown didn’t seem to care Instead, he turned and produced a tiny silver object from the inside of his jerkin and put it to his lips. If it made a noise, it was too quiet or high-reaching for Chert’s old ears, but a moment later an entire crowd of diminutive shapes appeared over the crest of the roof, moving so quickly and silently that for a moment it seemed a small carpet was sliding down the tiles toward them.
There were at least two or three dozen Rooftoppers in the gathering or delegation or whatever it was. Those in the front were mounted on gray mice and carried long spears. Their plate armor looked to be made from nutshells and they wore the painted skulls of birds as helmets, as they pulled up their velvet-furred mounts, they regarded Chert balefully through the eyeholes above the long beaks.
The rest of the group followed on foot, but in their own way they were just as impressive. Although their clothes were almost uniformly of dark colors, and made of fabric too heavy and stiff to drape like the clothes of Funderling and big folk, they had clearly spent much time on these garments—the outfits were intricate in design, and both the men and the women moved with the gravity of people wearing their finest raiment.
All this, he thought, still sunk in the haze of astonishment, to meet Flint?
But even as the tiny men and women stopped in a respectful semicircle behind the mouse-riders, it became clear that the day’s surprises were not over. The fellow who called himself Beetledown again raised his silver pipe and blew. A moment later an even more bizarre spectacle appeared on the roofline—a fat little man just slightly bigger than Chert’s thumb, riding on the back of a hopping thrush. As the bird made its awkward way down the roof toward the rest of the gathering, Chert saw that the creature’s wings were held fast against its body by the straps of the tall, boxlike covered saddle on its back. The fat man below the awning pulled aggressively on the reins, trying to direct the bird’s track down the tiles, but it seemed to make little difference: the bird went only where it wanted to go.
I’ll try to remember that if someone offers me a ride on a thrush someday, Chert thought, and was less amused by his own joke than he was impressed he could even conceive of one under the circumstances. The whole thing was like a dream.
When the thrush had finally lurched to a halt behind the mice, its rider was dangling halfway out of the saddle, but waved away two of the mouse-riders when they started forward to help him. He righted himself, then clambered down out of the covered seat with surprising mmbleness for his bulk. His climb was hampered a little by his clothes—he wore a fur-collared robe and a shiny chain on his breast. When he reached the tiles, he accepted deep bows from the other Rooftoppers as though they were his due, then stared squintingly at Chert and Flint as he stepped closer to them—but not so close as to advance more than a pace or two beyond the protective line of mouse-riders.
“Is he the king?” Chert asked, but Flint did not reply. The Rooftoppers themselves were watching the tiny fat man with wide-eyed attention as he leaned his entire head forward and . . . sniffed.
He straightened up, frowning, and then sniffed again, a great intake of air so powerful that Chert could hear it as a thin whistle. The fat man’s frown became a scowl, and he said something in a quick high-pitched voice that Chert couldn’t understand at all, but the other Rooftoppers all gasped and shrank back a few steps, looking up in fear at Chert and Flint as though they had suddenly sprouted fangs and claws.
“What did he say?” asked Chert, caught up in the drama.
Beetledown stepped forward, his face pale but resolute. He bowed. “Sorry, I be, but the Grand and Worthy Nose speaks the tongue of giants not so well as we men of the Gutter-Scouts.” He shook his head gravely. “Even more sorry, I be, but he says tha canst not meet the queen today, because one of tha twain smells very, very wicked indeed.”
*
“It was long ago—so long ago,” Merolanna told them. “When I first came here from Fael to wed your great-uncle Daman. You do not remember him, of course—he died long before you two were born.”
“His picture is in the long hall,” said Briony. “He looks . . . very serious.”
“I told you, dear, you may not interrupt. This is difficult enough. But, yes, that is how he looked. He was a serious man, an honorable man, but not . . . not a kind man. At least, not kind as your father is, or as Daman’s brother the old king was when he was in his cups or otherwise in good cheer.” She sighed. “Don’t take what I say wrongly, children. Your great-uncle was not cruel, and in my way, I came to love him. But that first year, taken from my own family and brought to a country where I scarcely spoke the language, married to a man almost twice my age, I was very sad and frightened and lonely. Then Daman went to war.”
Barrick was finding himself hard-pressed to sit still. He was full of ideas, full of vigor today. He wanted to do things, to make up for the time lost during his illness, not sit here all day listening to his great-aunt’s stories. Merolanna’s earlier talk of madness had caught his attention—almost it had seemed that she was about to confess the same night-visitations that had plagued him, but instead she seemed to be wandering into a story of events so ancient as to have taken place in an entirely different world. He wanted to get up off the bed, perhaps even to leave, but he saw Briony stiffen from the corner of his eye and decided to stay quiet. Everything had been so difficult of late he couldn’t bear the idea of having to fight with his stubborn sister.
“It was a small thing, just short of war, actually,” Merolanna was explaining. “One of the sea barons of Perikal—a dreadful man, I cannot remember his name now—was harrying the shipping on the western coast, and Ustin sent his brother to the assistance of the King of Settland Daman went away and I was even more lonely than I had been, day after day by myself in this unfamiliar, cloudy place, all these dark stones, under all these frowning old pictures.
“There is no excuse, as I said to Hierarch Sisel, but . . . but after some months I found myself keeping company with one of the young men of the court. He was the only one who bothered to visit me, the only one who treated me as anything other than an outsider too clumsy with her new langua
ge to speak wittily, too removed from the center of court life to have any interesting gossip to share. He alone seemed to admire me for who I was. I fell in love with him.” The old woman sat up a little straighter, but her eyes were fixed on the ceiling. She had stopped moving the fan. “More than that. I gave myself to him. I betrayed my husband.”
It took Barrick a moment to understand what she was saying, then he was astonished and disgusted. It was one thing to understand that older people at one time must have felt the lusts of the body, another to be told about it and then be forced to imagine it. But before he could say anything, Briony s hand tightened hard on his arm.
“You were alone in a strange place, Auntie,” his sister said gently. “And it was a long time ago.” But Briony looked shocked, too, Barrick thought.
“No, that is just the thing,” Merolanna said. “It would seem that way to you—that to someone my age it must be so far back that it can scarcely be remembered. But one day you will see, dear, you will see. It seems like it was yesterday.” She looked at Barrick, then Briony, and there was something in her face that overcame Barrick’s dislike of what she was saying, something lost and sad and defiant. “More than that. It seems like today.”
“I don’t understand,” Briony said. “What was the man’s name, Auntie? Your . . . lover.”
“It doesn’t matter. He is even longer dead than Daman. All gone, all of them.” Merolanna shook her head. “And in any case, by the time Daman came back from the fighting in the west, it was all over. Except my shame. And the child.”
“The child . . . ?”
“Yes. You do not think I would be so lucky, do you? To have my one transgression end so easily, so . . harmlessly?” Merolanna laughed a little, dabbed at her eyes. “No, there was a child, and although when I found out I thought I might pass it off as my husband’s since he was expected home soon, he was delayed by storms and squabbling among the victorious captains and did not return for almost a year. The Sisters of Zoria helped me, bless them. They saved me—took me into their temple at Helmingsea for the final months while all in the castle thought I had returned to my family in Fael to wait for my husband’s return. Yes, well you may look, dear. Deception upon deception. Did you ever think your great-aunt was such a wicked woman?” She laughed again. Barrick thought it sounded like something broken and rasping. “And then . . . then my baby came.”
Merolanna took a moment to regain her breath and her composure. “I could not keep him, of course. The Zorian sisters found a woman who would have him to raise, and in return I brought the woman back to Southmarch with me, to live on a farm in the hills outside the city. She is dead now, too, but for years I quietly sold some of my husband’s gifts every year to pay for her living there. Even after the child was taken.”
“Taken?” Barrick became interested again. “Taken by who?”
“I’ve never known.” The old lady dabbed at her eyes. “I used to visit him, sometimes, the little boy. Oh, he was bonny, fair as fair could be! But I could not go there often—too many would notice, and some would have become curious. My husband was the king’s brother, after all So when the woman told me he had been stolen, I didn’t really believe her at first—I thought her somewhat simpleminded greed had at last turned into something worse, that she had hidden the child and was going to threaten to tell my husband if I did not pay her more, but I saw quickly that she was truly heartbroken. She was a poor woman, and of course she blamed it on the Twilight People— ‘The fairies took him!’that’s what she said. Just a little less than two years old, he was.” The duchess stopped to blow her nose. “Gods, look at me! Fifty years ago and it could have been yesterday!”
“But after all those years, why does it pain you so much now, Auntie?” asked Briony. “It is terrible and sad, but why have you taken to your bed like this?”
“Such pain never really goes away, dear. But there is a reason my heart is so sore. Merciful Zoria, it is because I saw him. At Kendrick’s funeral. I saw my child.”
For a moment Barrick could only look at Briony. He felt queasy and strange Nothing made sense anymore, and the duchess’ confession was just another crumbling of what was ordinary and safe. “A shadow,” he said, and wondered again what Merolanna’s dreams were like. “The castle is full of them these days.”
“Do you mean you saw your child grown? Maybe you did, Auntie. No one ever told you he was dead . . .”
“No, Briony, I saw him as a child. But not even the child he was when I saw him last. He had grown. But only a little. Only . . . a few years . . .” And she was weeping again.
Barrick grunted and looked to his sister again for help making sense of this, but she had clambered across the bed to put her arms around the old woman.
“But, Auntie,” Briony began.
“No.” Merolanna was fighting to keep the tears from overwhelming her. “No, I may be old—I may even be mad—but I am not foolish. What I saw, ghost or figment or waking nightmare, it was my own child. It was my boy—my child.The child I gave away!”
“Oh, Auntie.” Suddenly, to Barrick’s immense discomfort, Briony was crying too. He could think of nothing to do except to get up and pour Merolanna another cup of wine and then stand beside the bed holding it, waiting for the storm of tears to pass.
17
Black Flowers
THE SKULL:
Whistling, this one is whistling
A song of wind and growing things
A poem of warm stones in the ashes
—from The Bonefall Oracles
The Grand And Worthy Nose, larger and fatter than his fellow Rooftoppers but still no taller than Chert’s finger, had spoken these strangers smelled of wickedness. There was to be no meeting with the queen. Chert didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed—in fact, he didn’t know much of anything. When he had risen this morning, the idea that he might end up on the roof of the castle with a crowd of people smaller than field mice had not even occurred to him.
Most of the Rooftoppers had backed away in fear from their two large visitors after the Nose’s pronouncement. The boy Flint looked on, his thoughts and feelings well hidden as always. Only the tiny man named Beetledown seemed to be actively thinking, his little forehead pinched into wrinkles.
“A moment, masters, I beg ‘ee,” Beetledown said suddenly, then skittered across the sloping roof with surprising quickness to the Grand and Worthy Nose and said something to that plump dignitary in their own tongue, a thin, rapid piping. The Nose replied. Beetledown spoke again. The assembly of courtiers all listened raptly, making little noises of wonder like the cheeping of baby sparrows.
Beetledown and the Nose trilled back and forth at each other until Chert began to wonder again if he had lost his mind, if this entire spectacle might be happening only in his own head. He reached out to the roof tiles and stroked the fired clay between his fingers, poked at the damp moss between them. All real enough. He wondered what Opal would make of these creatures. Would she put them all in a basket, bring them tenderly home to hand-feed them with crumbs of bread? Or would she chase them off with a broom?
Ah, my good old woman—what madness have we gotten ourselves into with this stray boy?
At last, Beetledown turned and trotted down the roof toward them. “I beg grace of ‘ee once more, masters. The Grand and Worthy Nose says tha can meet our queen, but only if we can put bowmen on shoulders of each of tha twain. ‘Twas my idea, and I be sorrowed for its ungraciousness.” He did indeed look ashamed, crushing his little cap in his hands as he spoke.
“What?” Chert looked to Flint, then back to Beetledown. “Are you actually saying you want to put little men with bows and arrows on our shoulders? What, so they can shoot us in the eyes if we do something they do not like?”
“ ‘Tis all that the Grand and Worthy Nose will agree,” said Beetledown. “My word did be bond enough for the young one, but you, sir, be a stranger to even me.”
“But you heard him. You heard him say t
hat he lives with me—that I am his . . . stepfather, I suppose.” Despite his anger, Chert couldn’t help being a bit amused to find himself arguing with this absurd manikin as though with any ordinary man. Then he had a sudden, grim thought: was this how the big folk felt about him—that even treating him like a real person was an act of kindness on their part? He was ashamed. A Funderling, of all folk, ought to know better than to judge another person by his size. “Is that all they wish to do? Ride our shoulders and prevent us from doing wrong?” He realized he was as much worried for Flint as himself. Fissure and fracture, I am truly becoming a father, will it or not. “What if one of us coughs? Stumbles? I am not anxious to get an arrow in my eye, even a small one, over a misstep or a sudden chill on my chest.”