His wife told him of Dennis's return. Brandon's brow darkened. He went to the door of his son's room and rapped not with his knuckles but with a closed fist. "Come 'ee out here, boy, and tell us why you come back with the ash bucket from your master's study."
"No," Dennis said. "You come in here, Dad--I don't want Mother to see what I've got, and I don't want her to hear what we say to each other."
Brandon barged in. Dennis's mother waited apprehensively by the stove, expecting it was some sort of semi-hysterical foolishness which the boy had thought up, some ill-advised monkeyshine, and that very soon she would hear Dennis's wails as her tired and distraught husband, who must begin today at noon to buttle not a prince but a King, took out all his fears and frustrations on the boy's backside. She hardly blamed Dennis; everyone in the keep seemed hysterical this morning, running around like crazy people just let out of bedlam, repeating a hundred false rumors, then taking them back in order to repeat a hundred new ones.
But there were no raised voices from behind Dennis's door, and neither of them came out for more than an hour. When they did, a single look at her husband's white face made the poor woman feel like fainting dead away. Dennis scurried along at his father's heels like a scared puppy.
Now Brandon was carrying the ash bucket.
"Where are you going?" she asked timidly.
Brandon said nothing. It seemed that Dennis could say nothing. He only rolled his eyes at her and then followed his father out the door. She saw neither of them for twenty-four hours, and became convinced that both were dead--or even worse, that they were suffering in the Dungeon of Inquisition below the castle.
Her dire thoughts were not so unlikely, either, for those were a terrible twenty-four hours in Delain. The day mightn't have seemed so terrible in some places, places where revolt and upheaval and alarms and midnight executions are almost a way of life . . . there really are such places, although I wish I didn't have to say so. But Delain had for years--and even centuries--been an ordered and orderly place, so perhaps they were spoiled. That black day really began when Peter was not crowned at noon and ended with the stunning news that he was to be tried in the Hall of the Needle for the murder of his father. If Delain had had a stock market, I suppose it would have crashed.
Construction on the dais where the coronation was to take place began at first light. The platform would be a jury-rigged affair of plain boards, Anders Peyna knew, but he also knew that enough flowers and bunting would cover the rude spots. They had had no warning of the King's passing, because murder isn't a thing that can be predicted. If it could be, there would be no murders, and the world would almost certainly be a happier place. Besides, pomp and circumstance wasn't the point--the point was to make the people feel the continuity of the throne. If the citizens got the feeling that everything was still all right in spite of the terrible thing that had happened, Peyna didn't care how many flower girls got splinters.
But at eleven o'clock, construction abruptly ceased. The flower girls were turned away--many of them in tears--by the Home Guards.
At seven that morning, most of the Home Guards had begun dressing in their gorgeous red ceremonial uniforms and their tall gray Wolf-Jaw shakos. They were, of course, to form the ceremonial double line, an aisle down which Peter would walk to be crowned. Then, at eleven, they received new orders; strange, unsettling orders. The ceremonial uniforms came off in a blazing hurry and their dull, dun-colored combat uniforms went on instead. The showy but clumsy ceremonial swords were replaced with the lethal shortswords which were everyday equipment. Impressive but impractical Wolf-Jaw shakos were cast aside in favor of the squat leather helmets that were normal battle dress.
Battle dress--the very term was distressing. Is there such a thing as normal battle dress? I do not think so. Yet soldiers in battle dress were everywhere, their faces stern and forbidding.
Prince Peter has committed suicide! That was the most common rumor which went flying about the castle keep.
Prince Peter has been murdered! That one ran a close second.
Roland was not dead; it was a mistaken diagnosis, the physician has been beheaded, but the old King is insane and no one knows what to do. That was a third.
There were many others, some even more foolish.
No one slept as darkness stole over the confused, sorrowing castle keep. All the torches in the Plaza of the Needle were lit, the castle blazed with lights, and every house in the keep and on the hills below showed candles and lanterns, as frightened people gathered to talk about the day's events. All agreed wild work was afoot.
The night was even longer than the day. Mrs. Brandon kept watch for her men in terrible loneliness. She sat at the window, but for the first time in her life, the air was rife with more gossip than she wanted to hear. Yet for all of that, could she stop listening? She could not.
As the small hours of the morning stretched out endlessly toward a dawn that she felt would never come, a new rumor began to supplant all the old ones--it was incredible, unbelievable, and yet it was asserted with more and more assurance until even the guards at their posts were repeating it to one another in undertones. This new rumor terrified Mrs. Brandon most of all, because she remembered--too well!--how white poor Dennis's face had been when he had come in with the prince's ash bucket. There had been something inside, something that smelled sick and burnt, something he wouldn't show her.
Prince Peter's been taken in custody for the murder of his father, this awful rumor went. He's been taken . . . Prince Peter's been taken . . . the prince has murdered his own father!
Shortly before dawn, the distracted woman laid her head in her arms and wept. After a bit, her sobbing faded as she fell into a troubled sleep.
36
Now tell me what's in that bucket, and be quick about it! We want no fooling, Dennis, d'you understand me?" was the first thing Brandon said when he entered Dennis's room and closed the door behind him.
"I'll show you, Dad," Dennis said, "but first, answer me one question: what sort of poison was it that killed the King?"
"No one knows."
"What were its ways?"
"Show me what's in the bucket, boy. Do it now." Brandon balled a great hard fist. He did not shake it; he only held it up. That was enough. "Show me now or be knocked aside."
Brandon looked at the dead mouse for a long time, saying nothing. Dennis watched, scared, as his dad's face grew paler, graver, grayer. The mouse's eyes had burned until they were nothing but charred black cinders. Its brown fur had been crisped black. Smoke still rose from its tiny ears, and its teeth, visible in its death grimace, were a sooty black, like the teeth in the grate of a stove.
Brandon made as if to touch it, and then pulled his hand back. He raised his face to his son and spoke in a hoarse whisper. "Where did you find this?"
Dennis began to stammer out bundles of phrases which didn't mean a thing.
Brandon listened a moment and then squeezed his son's shoulder.
"Draw you a deep breath and put your thoughts all in a row, Denny," he said. "I'm on yer side in this, as I am in all else, yer know. Yer did right to keep the sight of this poor thing from yer mom. Now tell me how you found it, and where you found it."
Eased and reassured, Dennis was able to tell his father the story. His telling was a bit shorter than mine, but it still took several minutes. His father sat in a chair, one knuckle digging into his forehead, shading his eyes. He asked no questions, did not even grunt.
When Dennis had finished, his father muttered four words in an undertone. Just four words--but they froze the boy's heart into a cold blue cake--or so it felt to him at the time. "Just like the King."
Brandon's lips were trembling with fright, but he seemed to be trying to smile.
"Do you suppose yonder animal was a King of Mice, Denny?"
"Dad . . . Daddy, I . . . I . . ."
"There was a box, you said."
"Yes."
"And a packet."
"Y
es."
"And the packet was charred, but not burned."
"Yes."
"And tweezers."
"Yes, like Mamma uses to pluck the hairs from out'n her nose--"
"Shh," Brandon said, and dug his knuckle into his forehead again. "Let me think."
Five minutes went by. Brandon sat motionless, almost as if he had gone to sleep, but Dennis knew better. Brandon did not know that Peter's mother had given him the engraved box or that Peter had lost it when he was small; both of those things had happened long before Peter entered his half-manhood and Brandon came into his service. He did know about the secret panel; he had happened on this in the very first year he had served Peter (and not very far into that year, either). As I may have said, it wasn't really a very secret compartment, as those things went--just enough to satisfy such an open boy as Peter. Brandon knew about it, but had never looked into it after that first time, when it had contained nothing more than the glorified junk that any boy calls his treasures--a Tarot deck with a few cards missing, a bag of marbles, a lucky coin, a braided bit of hair from Peony's mane. If a good butler understands anything, he understands that quality we call discretion, which is a respect for the borders of other people's lives. He had never looked in that compartment again. It would have been like stealing.
At last Dennis asked: "Should we go over, Father, so you can look in the box?"
"No. We must go to the Judge-General with this mouse, and you must tell your story to him just as you've told it to me."
Dennis sat down heavily on his bed. He felt as if he had been punched in the belly. Peyna, the man who ordered jail terms and beheadings! Peyna, with his white, forbidding face and his tall, waxy brow! Peyna, who was, below the King himself, the greatest authority in the Kingdom!
"No," he whispered at last. "Dad, I couldn't. . . . I . . . I . . ."
"You must," his father said sternly. "This is a turrible business--the most turrible business I've ever known of, but it must be reckoned with and set right. You'll tell him just as you've told me, and then it'll be in his hands."
Dennis looked in his father's eyes and saw that Brandon meant it. If he refused to go, his father would lay hold of the scruff of his neck and drag him to Peyna like a kitten, twenty years old or no.
"Yes, Dad," he said miserably, thinking that when Peyna's cold, calculating eyes fell on him, he would simply drop dead of a heart attack. Then (with rising panic) he remembered that he had stolen an ash bucket from the prince's rooms. If he didn't die of fright the moment Peyna commanded him to speak, he would probably spend the rest of his life in the castle's deepest dungeon for theft.
"Be easy in your mind, Denny--easy as you can be, anyway. Peyna's a hard man, but he's fair. You've done nothing to be ashamed of. Just tell him as you've told me."
"All right," Dennis whispered. "Are we going now?"
Brandon got out of the chair and onto his knees. "First we'll pray. Get here beside me, son."
Dennis did.
37
Peter was tried, found guilty of regicide, and ordered imprisoned for life in the cold two rooms at the top of the Needle. All of this was done in only three days. It will not take long to tell you how neatly the jaws of Flagg's cruel trap closed around the boy.
Peyna did not order the preparations for the coronation stopped at once--in fact, he thought that Dennis must be mistaken, that there must be a reasonable explanation for all of this. Just the same, the condition of the mouse, so like the condition of the King, was impossible to ignore, and the Brandon family had a long and valued reputation for honesty and levelheadedness in the Kingdom. That was important, but there was something else of far greater importance: when Peter was crowned, there must not be a single stain on his reputation.
Peyna heard Dennis out and then summoned Peter. Dennis really might have died of fright at the sight of his master, but he was mercifully allowed to go into another room with his father. Peyna gravely explained to Peter that a charge had been leveled against him . . . a charge that Peter himself might have played a part in the murder of Roland. Anders Peyna was not a man to mince words, no matter how much those words might hurt.
Peter was stunned . . . flabbergasted. You must remember that he was still trying to cope with the idea that his beloved father was dead, killed by a cruel poison that had burned him alive from the inside out. You must remember that he had been leading the search all night, had had no sleep, and was physically exhausted. Most of all, you must remember that, although he had a man's height and breadth of shoulder, he was only sixteen. This stunning news on top of all else caused him to do a very natural thing, but it was a thing he should have avoided at all costs under Peyna's cold and assessing eyes: he burst into tears.
If Peter had hotly denied the charge, or if he had expressed his shock and exhaustion and grief by laughing wildly at such an absurd idea, the whole thing might have ended right there. I'm sure that possibility never entered Flagg's mind, but one of Flagg's few weaknesses was a tendency to judge others according to what was in his own black and murky heart. Flagg regarded everyone with suspicion, and believed everyone had hidden reasons for the things they did.
His mind was very complex, like a hall of mirrors with everything reflected twice at different sizes.
The track of Peyna's thoughts was not convoluted but very straightforward. He found it very difficult--almost impossible--to believe that Peter could have poisoned his father. If he had raged or laughed out loud, things probably would have ended without even a trip to investigate the supposed box with his name carved on it, or the packet and tweezers it supposedly held. Tears, however, looked very bad. Tears looked like an expression of guilt coming from a boy old enough to commit murder but not old enough to hide what he had done.
Peyna decided he must investigate further. He hated to do this, because it meant taking guards, and that meant some word, some whisper, of these momentary suspicions would leak out, to taint the first weeks of Peter's reign.
Then he reflected that perhaps even this could be avoided. He would take half a dozen Home Guards, no more. He could leave four stationed outside the door. After this ridiculous business had blown over, all of them could be shipped off to the remotest part of the Kingdom. Brandon and his son would also have to be sent away, Peyna thought, and that was a pity, but tongues had a way of wagging, especially when liquor loosened them, and the old man's liking for bundle-gin was well known.
So Peyna ordered work on the coronation platform temporarily suspended. He felt confident that work could begin again in less than half an hour, with the laborers sweating and cursing and hurrying to make up for lost time.
Alas--
38
The box, the packet, and the tweezers were there, as you know. Peter had sworn on his mother's name he had no such engraved box; his heated denial now looked very foolish. Peyna picked up the charred packet carefully with the tweezers, peered in, and saw three flecks of green sand. They were so small they could barely be seen, but Peyna, mindful of what had befallen both great King and humble mouse, put the packet back in the box and closed the lid. He ordered two of the four Home Guards still in the hall to step in, realizing reluctantly that the matter was steadily growing more serious.
The box was put carefully on Peter's desk, little wisps of smoke escaping from it. One of the guards was sent after the man who knew more about poisons than anyone else in the Kingdom.
That man, of course, was Flagg.
39
I had nothing to do with this, Anders," Peter said. He had recovered himself, but his face was still pale and wretched, his eyes a deeper blue than the old Judge-General had ever seen them.
"The box is yours, then?"
"Yes."
"Why did you deny that you had such a box?"
"I forgot. I haven't seen this box in probably eleven years or more. My mother gave it to me."
"What happened to it?"
He's not calling me "m'Lord" or "your Highness" anymore
, Peter thought with a chill. He's not calling me by any term of respect at all. Can all of this really be happening, I wonder? Father poisoned? Thomas terribly ill? Peyna standing here and doing everything but accusing me of murder? And my box--where in the name of the gods did it come from, and who put it in the secret compartment behind the books?
"I lost it," Peter said slowly. "Anders, you don't really believe I murdered my father, do you?"
I did not . . . but now I wonder, Anders Peyna thought.
"I loved him dearly," Peter said.
I always thought so . . . but now I wonder about that, too, Anders Peyna thought.
40
Flagg bustled in and, without even looking in Peyna's direction, began immediately to bombard the numbed, frightened, outraged prince with questions about the search. Had any trace been found of the poison or the poisoner? Any sign of a plot uncovered? He himself was of the opinion that it might have been a single individual, almost surely insane. He had spent the whole morning before his crystal, Flagg said, but the crystal remained stubbornly dark. He didn't care, though, he could do more than shake bones and peer into crystals. He craved action, not spells. Anything the prince wanted him to do, any dark corner he wanted explored--
"We did not call you here to listen to you babble like your own parrot, with both heads talking at once," Peyna said coldly. He did not like Flagg. As far as Peyna was concerned, the magician had been demoted to the position of Court Nobody at the moment of Roland's death. He might be able to tell them what those evil green flecks in the packet were, but that was the extent of his usefulness.
Peter'll have no truck with this weasel when he's crowned, Peyna thought. He got just that far, and then his thoughts derailed in dismay, because the chances of Peter's being crowned seemed to be growing slimmer.
"No," Flagg said, "I don't suppose you did." He looked at Peter and said, "Why am I summoned, my King?"
"Don't call him that!" Peyna exploded, deeply shocked in spite of himself. Flagg saw this shock on Peyna's face, and although he affected to look puzzled, he understood perfectly what it meant and was satisfied. A worm of suspicion was working its way toward the center of the Judge-General's chilly heart. Good.