The Poison Throne

  Razi bent his curly head to hers and, with an amused grin, whispered confidentially, “That’s because he is coming to the banquet.” He drew back to see her reaction, his eyes dancing. She tried not to show her amazement but couldn’t quite carry it off, and he chuckled in glee. “It really vexes the lords.”

  Wynter gasped. “Oh, Razi no! Please don’t tell me he’s seated at the lords’ table! They’ll have him poisoned!”

  Razi made a little sign at his throat. “Don’t even joke, little sister. No, the last four nights he’s been seated at the commoners’ board. A great honour.”

  “A great honour,” she murmured, glancing back at the man in question. He was describing something to her father, waving his hands about without a trace of self-consciousness. Her father laughed at something the young man said. Christopher raised his eyebrows, pausing in mock offence and then continued whatever outlandish rubbish he was weaving. Wynter grimaced. “A great honour, indeed.”

  “He says it’s a royal pain in the arse,” said Razi with a sigh. “God, Wyn, I can’t help but agree. I hate all this, after so long free of it. Father…” he paused to nod at a passing courtier, bowed at a loitering knot of ladies and thought better of saying any more about the King.

  “You didn’t keep a court in the Moroccos, Razi?”

  Again, the generous smile, the rueful quirk of his mouth. “Much to mother’s distress, no, I did not.” He drifted away for a moment, to somewhere warm, somewhere scented with spices. His smile grew a little sad and he looked down at her. “I kept a home there, Wyn. It was lovely. That’s what I want in Padua. A proper home, with proper family and real friend… I want—”

  “We’re here, my Lord,” Lorcan broke in, coming up behind them and taking them both by surprise.

  “Ah.” Razi looked at the door that would lead them to the royal quarters, where only the royal family and its highest honoured companions would gather before a feast. Razi and Wynter’s father would have to break off from them here, so as to make their entrance with the royal party.

  Lorcan bent and kissed Wynter quickly on her cheek, squeezing her shoulder before ushering Razi through the door and then letting it swing shut behind them.

  Wynter looked at the closed door for a moment, then turned and looked about quite aimlessly, only to find Christopher watching her. The dimples showed on either side of his mouth in the briefest of smiles. “I’m going this way,” he said, indicating the long corridor that led to the common door. His expression said, are you all right? Do you need me to stay?

  She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Enjoy your meal, Christopher, and may the morning find you well.”

  Those damn dimples again, but he had the good grace to bow properly, and headed off down the hall without a further word. Even his retreating back looked amused.

  The hall was already quite crowded. The lords’ tables in particular, one on either side of the great hall, already filling rapidly. At the end of the hall furthest from the royal platform was the commoners’ board; it would be filled with those servants and lesser courtiers specially favoured by the King. At the top, draped in white and scarlet, was the two-tiered royal platform. The higher tier would be reserved for the King, his queen and his heir; the lower tier comprised a long table for the councilmen, favoured lords and any spare royal children that might be around. It would be a lonely meal for the King, thought Wynter, with his queen dead, his heir missing and Razi relegated by protocol to the lower tier.

  A page came over to her and asked if she wished to be shown a seat. It was always put that way, “Do you wish to be shown a seat?” to which you had to answer, “Yes” because otherwise you would not know where the King had decided to put you.

  She was placed close to the head of the lords’ table on the left – a very good position. While the bottom halves of the lords’ tables on both sides filled rapidly, seating at the top filled more slowly, as those places were reserved for the particularly favoured.

  The commoners began to stream in and take their places: no pages or protocol there, just a merry jostling and shuffling around for seats. Everyone must be in and seated before the royal entrance, so that they could all rise in unison and salute the King. If you weren’t there before the King, you weren’t allowed in at all.

  Wynter watched Christopher stroll through the crowded commoners’ entrance, nodding and smiling at those few who seemed to know him. He made a beeline for a very pretty, dark-haired woman with snapping eyes and a red mouth. Wynter snorted as he bent and murmured into the woman’s ear, flashing his dimples. She shuffled up to make room for him. The man on the other side of Christopher said something, laughing, and Christopher gave him that tomcat grin and adjusted his tunic as he sat down.

  The room was almost filled now and getting warm. The fanners began to pull their heavy ropes, and the big fans on the ceiling started their gentle swooshing, instantly cooling the air. Buttle-boys served beakers of iced strawberry cordial. There was still no sign of a grand entrance from the royal rooms.

  As Wynter took her first sip of cordial, the musicians in the lesser gallery began to play a soft minnelieder, and she automatically glanced at Christopher. Sure enough, he had turned to look up at them, his face hidden from her sight. Wynter saw the woman beside him notice his hands as though for the first time. The woman started and drew back a little. If she had been seated at the lords’ table nothing would have been said, but she would have made it her business very quickly to remove herself from his presence. This was a commoner, though, and Wynter saw her puck Christopher on the arm and gesture to his missing fingers.

  Christopher held up his hands as if to say, What, this? He gave the woman an easy grin, and launched into something animated and complex that ended with a quirked eyebrow and an expressive pause. The woman beside him looked shocked for a moment and then the two of them burst into simultaneous hilarity. The woman dashed tears from her eyes and commented laughingly to him, taking up her beaker to sip her drink. Christopher leaned in to whisper in her ear and she blushed pink. Wynter saw her grin around the rim of her cup.

  Rolling her eyes at their behaviour, Wynter turned her attention to another familiar face, Andrew Pritchard, who was taking a seat one place setting up from her on the right. They nodded politely to each other, before he turned to begin a conversation with the man beside him.

  A page exited the royal door to their left, and there was a ripple of tension all down the hall. Was the royal party coming? But the boy closed the door gently behind him and the crowd relaxed and conversations rose up again as he began to make his way down between the tables.

  On an errand for some councilman, no doubt, thought Wynter, following his weaving progress down the hall. Her relief didn’t last long, though, and a knot formed in the pit of her stomach as it became obvious that the page was heading for the commoners’ table.

  Oh God.

  She wasn’t the only person surreptitiously tracking the small figure through the crowd. No one entered or left the royal door without being taken note of, and more than a score of the assembly reacted with varying degrees of interest as the page approached the commoners and touched Christopher Garron on the arm.

  Wynter couldn’t hear what was being said, but she saw Christopher’s patent shock and confusion as the page spoke to him. She swallowed and leaned forward in nervous tension as the page gestured impatiently and ushered the baffled young man to his feet. Obeying the page’s gestures, Christopher began to make his way to the lords’ table.

  No! Oh God, was the King mad? Could he possibly be so crazed as to have ordered Christopher to sit amongst the lords? Did he hate him so much? Did he want him torn apart by wolves?

  Wynter watched in horror as the page led the mortified man through the wide space of no man’s land that lay between the commoner’s territory and that of the lords.

  Don’t abandon him! she thought, don’t just leave him here to find his own seat.

  But she knew, s
he just knew, that this was exactly what the page was going to do. More than anyone else, the servants would detest this outrageous breaking of rank, this terrible, terrible, insult to protocol.

  As she suspected, the page accompanied Christopher to the end of the table, gestured vaguely to the bench and walked off, his heels clicking in the now almost totally silent room. Christopher was left standing uncertainly at the end of a very long row of pointedly turned backs, all his brash certainty fled.

  There was an empty space, about ten persons up from where he stood, and Christopher gratefully made his way towards it. But as he walked up the narrow corridor between the bench and the wall, the lords and ladies shuffled and rearranged themselves so that, by the time he got to it, the space had vanished like a magic trick. Christopher paused for a moment, looking down at the rigidly turned back where his seat had been. Then he slowly began walking towards the next available space, the knowledge of what was going to happen burning in his cheeks. Sure enough, the space was gone by the time he actually got there.

  Once, twice, three more times Christopher tried to find a place, as the lords and ladies played their childish, shuffling game. Then he just stood there, rigid with anger, his flaming cheeks the only colour in his face.

  He’s going to leave, Wynter thought, he’ll turn on his heel and leave, and that will be the end of his life here. There will be no way to survive that kind of insult to the King. Of course, that was what the lords wanted. If Christopher left now, it would be seen as throwing the King’s generosity in his face, and he would have no hope of remaining at court. It would be the best thing for all of us if that happened, Wynter thought, watching the young man fume at the other end of the hall. Best for Razi, best for Christopher, best for me.

  She closed her eyes and begged herself to just let him go. But in the end that would have taken the kind of cruelty that Wynter just didn’t have in her. Sighing, she opened her eyes and took the sharp knife from the wooden platter in front of her. Casually she put her hand in the empty space on the bench between herself and Andrew Pritchard and leaned back so that Christopher could see her down the length of ramrod straight backs. She raised her chin to him in invitation.

  He saw her immediately, how could he not? Her shock of loose red hair suddenly popping into view like that. And she saw him hesitate, uncertainty in his eyes. He thinks I’m going to trick him, she realised with a jolt, that I’ll bring him all the way up here and then close the space on him like all the others. She let the hurt of that show in her face and saw him make up his mind.

  He made his slow way down the bench, his arms stiff at his sides, his face still creased up in furious embarrassment, and as he passed them by, the lords and ladies nudged and wriggled and shuffled to make certain that no space became available for him.

  When the time came for Andrew Pritchard to shift into the vacant place, he found his hip on very intimate terms with Wynter’s sharp meat knife. A shocked glance in her direction met with Wynter’s sparking green eyes. He jerked back in time to allow Christopher to vault over the bench and settle himself into one of the best seats in the hall.

  The minnelieder continued to play and it filled up the silences until the conversation began to swell and grow again. Eventually, the room returned to a semblance of its former volume, but there was a dark, shifting undercurrent to it now. People whispered, people were nudging each other, people were staring. Christopher and Wynter were as exposed and on show as insects pinned to a board.

  Christopher cleared his throat and gestured for cordial. None of the buttle-boys managed to see him. He sighed. “The air is fierce thin up here,” he muttered, “I feel the chill.”

  “You should have come prepared,” answered Wynter coldly, “it doesn’t do to swim in strange rivers.” She pushed her cordial towards him without looking at him and he took a sip without thanks.

  “A friend encouraged me. It would appear he lied when he told me to ‘come on in! The water’s fine’.” He shoved her beaker back with a jab of his finger and cast a longing look at the dark-haired woman with the red mouth. She was pointedly avoiding his gaze, her head turned so far in the other direction as to be ridiculous. Christopher sighed again. “What a shame,” he murmured.

  Wynter glanced at the woman. “You were doing rather well there, weren’t you? What exactly did you say to make her laugh like that?”

  Christopher looked at her for a moment, seeming to consider his reply, then he shrugged and looked away. “Nothing you would find amusing.”

  “You seem fond of amusing women.”

  The dimples showed, very briefly, as he scanned the room. People made a point of not meeting his eye. “Well, the women here seem a touch starved of affection.”

  Wynter snorted, and without meaning to, she muttered, “What are you doing here, Christopher?” She meant what is it you want? What do you hope to gain?

  “God, I wish I knew…”

  She turned to look him, thrown by his reply. The unexpected sadness in his voice made her stare into his face.

  “This is hell; I don’t understand why Razi would put himself through it.” He continued in a low, confidential tone, “I’m glad I came with him, though, and I’m glad you finally showed up.” He scanned the room. “Is there even a single person here who doesn’t want something from him? It’s like living in a vulture’s nest.”

  Wynter had no idea how to answer that because it was so far from what she had expected to hear, but Christopher was already distracted by some activity on the far side of the room.

  “I know I’m not very used to these things,” he said, gesturing with his chin, “but isn’t it unusual to serve the food before the royal party are seated?”

  The double doors were open and some very disconcerted servers were carrying out huge trays. They held the small fowl that were the traditional start to any banquet. A low hum of concern spread its way through the crowd and people began casting worried glances around them. Someone from the commoners’ board said, “Shame! For shame!” loud enough for it to be replied to with “Aye!” by some members of the lords’ table.

  Wynter stared anxiously at the royal door. What could be keeping the royal party? She tried to conceal the panic that had started to roil in the pit of her stomach. What was everyone to do? Should one accept the food? Or would that insult the King, who had not yet sat down or been saluted? Who was going to be foolish enough to take first choice of the meat, traditionally the sole privilege of the royal table? But then, if the tray was offered and one didn’t accept the food, would that be considered an insult to the King’s generosity? Would it be worse than accepting? What if one took a small piece of meat onto one’s plate, but didn’t eat it? Would that be acceptable?

  She could see the same struggle going on in the faces all around her. Except for Christopher, who was looking under his platter and up and down his section of the table, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Where is my knife?” he wondered.

  Wynter frowned; there had been a knife there when she sat down. She glanced across at Andrew Pritchard and saw him give his neighbour a satisfied smile. She leaned further back and saw a discreet flurry of movement ripple its way down the lords’ table. Something was passing from person to person until, right at the very end of the table, Simon Pursuant called a buttle-boy to him and handed over a “spare” knife. The boy frowned at it and asked a polite question, to which Pursuant shrugged and gestured negligently, I must have been given two by mistake. Wynter gritted her teeth in frustration. Childish, petty, stupid…

  The royal door opened and everyone’s attention turned immediately to the very young page who mounted the second tier of the King’s table and announced in a high nervous voice, “His Majesty, the Good King Jonathon, bids you eat, having been delayed momentarily in matters… um…” The child looked nervously over his shoulder and someone hissed at him from the partially opened royal door, “… in matters of state. Not wishing his beloved people to hunger in his a
bsence, he bids you to commence the fowl in… in the… in the assurance he will join you soon.” The child fled the stage and the staff commenced to pass around the room with the enormous trays of steaming fowl.

  The matter of who would take the first choice of meat thankfully fell on the shoulders of those at the very head of the lords’ tables, Francis Coltumer and Laurence Theobald. As they were sitting right next to the royal platform, the servants felt safest approaching them first. They stood, one pair in front of each old man, and unshouldere’d the huge trays, holding them down at table level for the gentlemen to take their pick. Old hands at this game, Francis and Laurence glanced at each other across the hall, nodded, and simultaneously speared the smallest fowl that either of them could find on the tray in front of them. A sigh of relief rippled through the crowd as the two old fellows dropped the birds onto their plates and began delicately picking at the meat.

  Low, uncertain conversation began once more to underscore the music from the minstrel’s gallery and the trays were carried from guest to guest. Christopher was still searching for his missing knife, his head beneath the table now, looking under the bench.

  “Christopher…” murmured Wynter, eyeing the tray that was heading their way. “Christopher!” She kicked him and he jerked upward, banging his head on the table and cursing in Hadrish.

  He sat up, rubbing his head, and smiled appreciatively as the fragrant heap of roast fowl was brought on level with his nose. “Oh my,” he breathed, licking his lips.

  “Tell me which one you want,” whispered Wynter, “and I’ll…”

  But before she could finish her sentence, Christopher had reached down to his calf and come up with the longest, wickedest dagger that Wynter had ever seen produced from a boot. He speared a nice fat chicken for himself and then glanced at her. “Can I get you one?” he asked, genuinely oblivious to the mixture of fear and outrage being directed his way from the whole length of the table behind him.