“Tell me,” implored the child, with all the drowsy persistence of the very young.
“They were eaten by a bear,” whispered Christopher, with such easy conviction that for a moment Wynter believed him, though the story was patently ridiculous.
The child’s eyes showed silver under his lashes again and he peered at Christopher across a huge chasm of sleep, not sure if he believed him. Christopher breathed another soft laugh. “I was fishing for flies…” he said confidentially.
“For flies?”
“Aye.” Christopher’s thumb kept up its easy stroking of the little forehead. “Ain’t you never fished for flies?” The child shook his head, his eyes closing despite his best efforts. “Huh,” said Christopher, “how do you feed your frogs then?”
The child’s eyes stayed shut and Christopher slowly took his hand away, listening to the gentle rise and fall of the boy’s breath. Wynter found herself yearning for the rest of the story. After all that had happened tonight, she wanted to hear more about frogs, and fishing for flies.
Christopher straightened and then chuckled as the sleepy little voice said, “Don’t got me no frogs.”
Christopher bent forward again, murmuring low so that Razi and Wynter had to strain to hear. The fire shot blue and lilac highlights through his curtain of black hair and outlined his chin in gold as he said, “Oh, you must get some frogs, lad. They are excellent good companions.”
Razi stretched his hand across the table, palm up, and Wynter took it lightly in hers, as if they were children again, listening to Salvador Minare spinning his tales at the fire in Jonathon’s chambers.
“How you fish for flies?” the boy mumbled.
“Well…” Christopher’s scarred hand lay on the side of the small head. “You just dip your fingers in honey and wait. “’Course, I fell asleep, didn’t I? And when I woke up, that bloody bear was making off with my fingers. I chased him, of course, and he dropped all but the two that are missing. And your good Lord Razi, he sewed the others back on for me, because he is a great doctor, and a most excellent man.”
Razi put his hand over his eyes at that.
“You know what the worst part was, mouse?”
“Mmmmhmmm?”
“Those two fingers had all my best rings on them. Now, whenever I see a bear I follow him home to see if he’s shat out my jewels.”
The child squeaked out a little laugh of delighted revulsion. “Ew! You roots in bear poop!”
“Silly boy,” tutted Christopher, “I use a stick.”
The child was asleep, dropping off the precipice of consciousness as only the very innocent can. Christopher, his face still hidden, continued to stroke his cheek with his thumb, until Razi came over and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on,” he said roughly. “Bed.”
“I’ll stay a while,” Christopher said, his voice distant, not looking up.
“It’s not safe,” Wynter cautioned, more harshly than she intended. It was as though she and Razi felt duty bound to balance Christopher’s tenderness with iron and rough stone.
“Razi will be all right,” murmured Christopher, his eyes still on the sleeping child.
“For you, Chris,” said Razi, squeezing his friend’s shoulder, “It’s not safe for you.”
“Good Frith!” Christopher leapt angrily to his feet and ducked past them, pushing his way out of the fire-nook.
The cocks were just starting to crow as the three of them headed back to the secret passages and the uneasy comfort of their beds.
Mortuus in Vita
Wynter rose from the deepest of sleeps to the sound of someone hammering on the receiving room door, and the sight of a raven on her windowsill. The raven cawed loudly and eyed her with malevolent disinterest. It had a long strip of bloody meat dangling from its beak, and there were bloody tracks on the pale wood of the sill.
Cages, she thought, still gripped by sleep, gibbets, blood and pain.
The bird spread its huge wings, blotting out the light. Cawing again, it launched itself from the window and disappeared up to the roof, its cries like a rusty saw on knotted wood.
Wynter pushed herself onto her elbows. The shadows were short, the sun high and hot in her window. God, it must be midday or later, which would mean that she had slept like the dead for over eight hours! The hammering on the receiving room door grew louder. She struggled out from under the sheets and the netting, cursing Razi for the bitter draught he’d forced on her before bed. She could still feel its hold on her arms and legs, feel the sleep that kept sucking at her mind like a black river.
“I’m…” She cleared her throat and longed for water. “I’m coming!” she managed hoarsely, unbolting her bedroom door.
She heard Lorcan’s bolt fly back as she passed through the retiring room, and she was amazed to see him come stumbling to his door, frowsy and tousled, in bare feet and long johns, last night’s shirt hanging open to his belly. He had slept in, too! The lord and master of early rising!
“Whu…?” he said. He looked like a puzzled bear.
She opened the hall door and an irate courtier spread his hands at the sight of her in her shift and night cap. “It is the sixth quartering of the shadows!” he said in extreme agitation. Behind him a little page stood, patiently holding a large tray. He peeped at Wynter from around the taller man’s legs.
Lorcan cursed violently behind her and addressed the courtier in alarm. “Has he been waiting all this time?”
The courtier looked him up and down, his lip curling in barely suppressed disdain, just the right side of dangerous insolence. “The King has more urgent things at hand than to wait for you, Protector Lord Moorehawke. He bids you make haste, and he shall meet with you when he’s next free.”
They were treated to one more glacial look, and the man turned smartly on his heel and left.
Lorcan flung his hands up. He grabbed his tangled hair and squeezed his head, looked around him in flustered despair. “Goddamn. Goddamn… where are my poxy boots?”
The little page cleared his throat and offered his tray to Wynter. “Compliments of my Lord Razi, some breakfast. It’s all cold now, though.”
Wynter took it. “Thank you,” she said. The laundry-staff had deposited a neatly folded pile of their clothes by the door, the bill carefully pinned to the top layer. “Will you bring those in for me, little man?”
The page did as he was bid. He seemed young enough and innocent enough, but when Wynter asked him how fared the Lord Razi, the boy just looked at her with solemn, court-wary eyes and didn’t reply. She pursed a sad little smile and nodded to dismiss him. He left with last night’s untouched supper things, and she put the new tray on the table, lifting the cover with the sudden realisation that she was starving.
Lorcan came storming from his room, a boot in one hand. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “Get dressed!”
“Sit down and eat, Dad. Razi said…”
“Wynter! Get your work clothes on, Jonathon is waiting, he’s been waiting for hours!”
His colour was very high. Wynter felt like grabbing him and telling him to calm down before he collapsed again. Instead she sat down and began to butter a scone, as though they had all the time in the world. The scone was rich and fluffy, ripe with sultanas. Lorcan suddenly couldn’t take his eyes from it.
“Dad,” she said, “the King is not waiting. You know that. He’s gone off somewhere. It doesn’t matter what business you have with him, he’s going to ignore you for hours now, just to show you who’s boss. Have some breakfast. Razi says you have to eat.”
Lorcan’s eyes drifted to the tray. He swallowed at the sight of the coffee, which he hadn’t so much as smelled in five long years. Wynter had added cream and sugar and was pouring two big bowls of it. She pointedly put one of the bowls on his side of the table and took a long swallow from the other. Lorcan looked at the bowl, then at the flaky crescent breads, the herby lamb sausages, the boiled eggs and salt, the slices of fresh fru
it. He swallowed again and Wynter heard the spit in his mouth.
“Just a bite,” he conceded, dropping his boot and sitting down.
They cleared the plates between them, eating silently, steadily and with enthusiasm. Eventually there was nothing left but crumbs, and a half-bowl of creamy coffee.
Lorcan pushed back with a satisfied sigh. “Jesu Christi,” he murmured. “That was magnificent.”
Wynter laughed. She hadn’t seen him this rosy-cheeked and replete in an age. He laughed back at her, his old merry self. The sun made emeralds of his dancing eyes. “Ah, girl,” he said fondly, “you’re a bloody tonic.” And they grinned at each other across the devastation of breakfast.
After a few more moments of contentment, Lorcan straightened up and his face became serious.
“Wynter, Jonathon has offered me my licence.”
Her heart leapt. “Oh Dad! That’s great.” she squinted at him, waiting for his smile. Why wasn’t he walking on air? “What limitations?” she asked, thinking it must be very limited for this subdued response.
“No limitations at all, love. All grades open, all tenders legitimate, any province, any city, free to practise.”
“My God, Dad! I… that’s… Hah!” She laughed and spread her hands. “That’s incredible!” Jonathon had just handed her father carte blanche to set up business anywhere he liked, using whatever staff he liked, taking on whatever jobs he fancied. It was the most unlimited licence of work she’d ever heard of. Lorcan should have been elated. Instead he was looking at her with a kind of gentle sorrow.
“It’s hereditary, Wynter.” She dropped her hands at that, stunned. “It’s hereditary, in perpetuity. You get to carry it on. No one can ever take it away from you.”
“Oh, Dad.”
His eyes were huge and glittering in the streaming sunlight. Wynter put her hands on the table, palms down, suddenly cold all over.
She understood now. “He wants you to support Albi’s disinheritance. He wants you to declare for mortuus in vita?” Lorcan nodded. “You can’t. Dad, you can’t. Tell me that you…”
“He has the licence papers, Wyn. He held them this close…” Lorcan raised his hand in front of his face, clenched into a fist, looking at it as though it was something vile and disgusting. “This close,” he repeated.
“Dad,” she reached across the table to him and he looked at her as if she was about to break his heart. “It’s Albi, Dad. It’s Alberon.”
“I know,” he whispered. “But it’s also you, darling. It’s you and what happens to you when I’m gone.” He didn’t say the rest. I’ll be gone soon. You’ll be all alone. This is all I can give you.
The sunlight reflecting in his eyes flickered as a shadow crossed the room, drawing his attention to the window. Then another shadow briefly darkened his face. He got up to have a look.
“God help us!” he said, looking out the window, surprise and amazement. When the implications of what he saw sunk in, he said it again, low, heartfelt, hopeless. “God help us.”
Wynter knew already, had heard the rattle and slide of their claws on the red tiled roofs. She had hoped they’d escape her father’s notice. Ravens. Ravens were gathering. She turned and watched her father as he stepped onto the sill and leaned far out the window, balancing himself with one big hand on the top of the frame. For a moment all she could see were his long legs. Then she heard him curse and he slithered back into the room, his face drained.
“The keep?” she asked, not really a question.
“The keep,” he confirmed, not looking at her. He put a hand on her head as he passed her by. “Get ready for work,” he said, and went into his room, closing the door softly behind him. It was some time before Wynter heard him begin to get dressed.
Ravens over the keep. It could mean only one thing.
Jonathon had impaled the prisoner’s body on the trophy spikes. A broken, bloody, vengeful flag high over the complex; the first of its kind to have been displayed there since Jonathon had taken the throne.
Wynter put her face in her hands for a moment, pushing her fingers into her eyes, shoving unwanted images back into dark rooms and shutting doors in her mind. Then she got up and went to get dressed, leaving the breakfast things to gather flies in the sweltering heat.
She put on her rough work clothes and clubbed her hair. When she came out from her room, shouldering her roll of tools, Lorcan was standing in the receiving room. His tools were on his back, the sunlight in his plaited hair. They didn’t talk. Wynter still had no idea where it was they were going or what it was they were meant to do, and she chose not to ask her father for details. Sometimes words just made things worse.
He turned and looked her up and down, nodded approvingly and said, “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Then he straightened, set his shoulders and raised his head. Face cold, eyes hooded, Wynter’s father disappeared in the blink of an eye and became the Protector Lord Lorcan Moorehawke. He didn’t look at her again, just swept from the room with her in tow, master and apprentice striding forward on their business for the King.
It should have been very quiet at midday at the height of summer, but there was a steady undercurrent of activity in the halls. Grim-faced, eyes down, men were moving through the corridors like worker ants. They carried big paintings and small paintings, the images obscured with cloths. They carried statues, and stacks of manuscripts. All were heading in the same direction – out to the gardens.
She trotted obediently along behind her father, pretending not to notice. But she saw the strained look on the men’s faces. She saw the pages and serving girls snatching distraught conversations as they passed in the halls. She saw the tension growing in her father’s back. Then two men stumbled at the head of a short flight of stairs, the huge painting that they carried escaping their grasp. As they struggled to hoist it back onto their shoulders, the cover slipped and the image was revealed.
Wynter stopped in her tracks.
It was her favourite painting, the one from Jonathon’s chambers. The one that held pride of place above the main fireplace in his retiring room: Alberon, Razi and herself, grinning happily in the garden.
Memories of childhood came pouring over her.
She recalled how she used to lie under the round study table, listening to Oliver and Jonathon and her father talking. She remembered kicking her feet and looking up at that painting through the tassels of the tablecloth. She was always amazed at how like the three of them it was. How unusually accurate a depiction of their true selves.
Razi was shown sprawled against a tree root, a book in his hand, looking down to where Albi and Wynter were sitting on the grass. Albi was cradling Shubbit, his beloved spaniel, and Wynter was looking out from the painting, her eyes full of curiosity. They looked so happy, like a proper family. Proper brothers and sister. She and Albi were about six at the time; Razi must have been ten.
The men righted the painting and started down the stairs with it.
Wynter was brought back to the present by her father’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his guarded face. He was watching the men carry the painting down the stairs, the happy faces of the three children disappearing into the gloom of the stairwell.
Turning suddenly on his heel, Lorcan led the way down the side stairs and out through the small rose garden, from where they crossed quickly to the other side of the main palace building. There was a smell of fire in the air, and thick smoke drifted through the gardens from somewhere behind the complex. As they skirted the pond, Wynter caught a glimpse of the line of men carrying their various packages and bundles around the back of the buildings, heading for the source of the smoke, heading for the fire. A group of empty-handed men trailed back in the opposite direction, smoke in their hair, tension on their faces.
Lorcan mounted the granite steps on the opposite side of the garden and proceeded down a black and white tiled corridor. Suddenly Wynter knew where they were going and her heart sank. The lib
rary. Oh, Dad, she thought, not the library. The roll of tools was suddenly an ominous weight on her shoulder.
Lorcan opened the door, and there it was, just as Wynter remembered it, with its everlasting smell of wood and polish and sun-baked dust.
Jonathon had made this his life’s work. In a time when books were regularly burnt, condemned, outlawed or banned, Jonathon had avidly gathered tomes and volumes of every type imaginable, in every language, of every creed, representing every philosophy known to man. He had been responsible for saving innumerable works of science and medical research from the many crusades, pogroms and purges that tore their way through the kingdoms around him. And then he had made the library freely available to anyone willing to pay a good scribe to make copies for their own use.
Standing in the enormous room, surrounded by the King’s magnificent collection, it was impossible not to be impressed by the immensity of the project, the scope of his vision. It was the wonder of the Europes, perhaps even of the world, a tremendous shining light in the increasingly black void of ignorance that was foisting itself on the populations of the other kingdoms.
Wynter paused at the door and watched her father as he came to a halt in the centre of the room. He put his roll of tools gently down onto the floor and stood looking all around him. Wynter heard his throat click, and his shoulders rose and fell with a deep sigh.
It wasn’t the books that he was looking at, though they were breathtaking in their own right. It was the bookshelves, the wall panels, the ornately carved ceiling beams. Thirteen years of Lorcan’s life had gone into this room. Thirteen years of steadily carving and sanding and polishing the hard redwood that now glowed in the early afternoon sun.
At the far end of the room was the wall panel that he’d been working on when Jonathon had sent him away. The entire frame was pricked out in detail, but less than a third of it had been carved. It showed Jonathon, Oliver and Lorcan standing on the wooded path, their hounds flowing around their legs, their bows slung across their backs. Razi was with them, and Wynter and Alberon were waving to them from the steps. At the two children’s feet lay some of the many cats that had been under Wynter’s care, all sublimely recognisable in their individual quirks and poses. Like all of Lorcan’s work, it was warm and domestic, lacking the stiff formality of much palace art. It hurt Wynter’s heart to see it. It spoke of days lost, never to be retrieved.