Gradually some order emerged. The Sergeants rallied the men. I went to my father’s tent and found him there with his Captains. One said:
“I have heard of these things. They throw metal a great distance. But they are machines. The Seers forbid them.”
Harding said: “They bark more than they bite. Two men wounded, I am told.”
“So far,” another said. “But if they keep on with this long enough . . .”
Harding said: “We can move the camp back. I don’t know what range they have but it must have limits. And we are still in their lands.”
“Once we retreat it will give them heart. And if they bring these machines with them . . . if we ride against thunder that belches steel, will the men still follow?”
Harding shrugged. “We have no choice but to retreat. We could leave this campaign and ride against Alton again, or south to Chichester.”
Blaine, a red-faced burly man with small sharp eyes, said: “What does the Prince say?”
Neither he nor Harding would be sorry to see the campaign against Petersfield called off. It might not bring my father down but it would besmirch the reputation he had gained last year and help undermine his power. I saw them watching him.
My father said: “They use machines. It is not just the Seers but the Spirits that forbid them.”
“They can kill for all that.”
“The Spirits promised us victory,” my father said. “And these men defy them. So we attack.”
Harding said: “How, since they will not come out?”
“We attack the city.”
They stared at him in disbelief. One of the reasons Stephen had been laughed at, building his walls higher each year, was that in more than a generation no city in the civilized lands had fallen to the army of another. Taunton had gone down, three years before, but Taunton was a border city and the barbarians from the west had taken it. The armies fought, harder, as Burke had said, the nearer they were to home, and won or lost, and peace was made, ransoms and tributes paid; but the cities stayed safe and untouched. What my father was saying sounded not merely foolhardy but almost heretical.
Blaine said, his tone only just concealing the sneer:
“And take it? All the easier, do you think, for having the machines against us? They may or may not be able to bring them against us in the field. But, by the Great, we know they are on the battlements. Are we to walk like flies up the walls and into their very mouths?”
“Why not?” my father said. “Since the Spirits are with us.”
There was a silence and I saw the Captains look at one another. If one spoke up in opposition the rest might rally to him. But it was my cousin Peter who spoke. He said:
“Why not? When the Prince leads, do his Captains fear to follow?”
• • •
It seemed hopeless. They had to advance on foot, with the machines, three of them, blasting down at them from above. Even without these, scaling the walls would have seemed impossible. Because of the risk of earthquakes they were of loose construction but they were steeply sloping and more than thirty feet high, manned by archers who could pick off the crawling attackers with ease. One of the Captains had suggested making the attack at some other point where there might not be machines, but my father refused. We went under the Spirits’ protection and would advance against the machines whose use the Spirits forbade.
I watched from the camp with Burke. The machines roared again and again and I saw our men fall as the hot steel slashed their bodies. They were in bow range, too, now and the arrows also took their toll. My father led them. I do not think they would have gone forward against such odds under any other Captain. If he fell, they would scatter and run, and I guessed the enemy’s fire would be concentrated on him. Even if, by a miracle, he went on unscathed, I thought they must break as comrades dropped and died at their sides.
Then the greater miracle happened. From the central machine came another roar but louder, more shattering, and the wall around and underneath it exploded outward. Dots darted through the air, of rock, of metal, of the limbs and bodies of men. As the dust and debris settled one could see that the wall was breached. At that point it was no more than a pile of rubble with a gap of ten feet or more at the top, and undefended.
There was a shout from the men of Winchester and they moved forward faster, running and stumbling upward over the rocky slope. Then they were through the gap and inside the city.
SEVEN
THE HIGH SEERS
THAT YEAR WE HAD STRANGE and distinguished guests at the Autumn Fair: the High Seers came to the city.
They came, three of them, black-cloaked on pure white horses, and the city turned out to greet them at the North Gate. It was not a greeting such as had been given to the army when we returned with the spoils of Petersfield. Then the people had shouted their acclamations for the Prince and his followers, and even I, riding with Burke at the head of the camp followers, had heard my name echo from the city’s walls. The High Seers were received in silence, but a silence that was perhaps more impressive than any noise, having reverence in it.
The crazy Christians on one side, there had been always some who were skeptical concerning the Spirits, and Ezzard’s powers as mediator and interpreter of their will. Many, possibly a majority, contrived to hold belief and disbelief in dubious balance. There was something there, they thought, but they did not quite know what, or what the extent and limitations of its authority might be. I think I was among them. Even though I had been angry with Martin for expressing blasphemy, it had been chiefly through anxiety over men’s response to it, not fear of what the Spirits might do. In part I believed in the Spirits—after all, they had named my father Prince and myself his heir, a Prince to be—in part, I doubted.
But it was hard for any to go on doubting after the fall of Petersfield. My father, calling on the Spirits for aid, had led his men in an attack against walls which, strong in themselves, carried also diabolical machines capable of throwing death from great distances: the camp, on which steel first fell, had been almost half a mile away. If there were no Spirits, or they had no power to help, the project was ridiculous, scarcely sane. But the Spirits had shown their presence and their strength, destroying the machine at the very moment that it belched out death, and by that destruction opening a way for our men to pour through and overcome the shocked and demoralized defenders.
In thankfulness my father had decreed the building of a new Seance Hall, three times the size of the old one. The High Seers were come to consecrate its foundation, and the city greeted them in awe. Each city had its Seer, with his attendant Acolytes, but the High Seers had always stayed in their Sanctuary beyond Salisbury, the holy place. There, it was said, they communicated with the Spirits not just fitfully, for an hour at a time, as Ezzard did, but continuously, even passing through from our substantial world to that strange invisible plane in which the Spirits had their being. It was wonderful that they should have left the Sanctuary and come so far, thirty-five miles at least, to honor us.
That evening the High Seers sat at the long table in the Great Hall, on my father’s right hand. Facing them were other Seers: Ezzard and the Seers of Petersfield and Romsey. It was a great concentration of holiness and the banquet was not, at first at any rate, as banquets usually are, noisy with jests and rowdy laughter. Men ate and drank in a solemn hush; heads turned at the sudden squeaking of a chair, reproving the one who sat there.
The Seers ate and drank sparingly, the High Seers eating least of all. I heard it whispered that the little they took was only for politeness’ sake, that usually they supped on the food of the Spirits that could be neither touched nor seen by ordinary people. Whatever their customary food was, it plainly nourished them; they themselves were solid enough and one at least, sitting between the other two, was big indeed and amply stomached.
They left the table before the sweets were brought and all, my father included, stood in respect as they walked together from the Hall.
When they had gone there was a kind of sigh that rippled down the line of guests, followed by noisy chatter that burst out in relief. The clowns came with the sweets, and serving maids filled the pots with the strong dark brew of ale, itself sweet to the tongue, which was drunk after meat. I took some myself but only sipped it. I had seen enough heads fuddled with ale to be careful in drinking. I could never see what pleasure men got from being made silly and stupid by it. To me it was a hateful thing not to have control of one’s mind and body.
My father swallowed down his pot and called for another but he had a good head for liquor: even when drinking heavily he never seemed to me the worse for it. Tonight, after his second pot, he rose. The guests that remained rose also but he bade them sit down and continue with their feast; he was excusing himself because he had things to attend to. He left, as they toasted him yet again: Prince of Winchester, conqueror of Petersfield! Not long after a servant came to me quietly. My father wanted to see me in his private room.
I found him sitting in the old wooden armchair. His boots were off and he was toasting his feet at the fire. He nodded as I came in and bobbed my head to him.
“Sit down, Luke. I hope you don’t mind that I took you from the feast.”
I said: “No, sir.”
“You are young still but there are things about which I would like to talk with you. Partly because they are your concern as well as mine.” He shrugged. “And partly, I suppose, because there is no one else to say them to.”
In the past there had been my mother, who would smile, half listening, and tell him she was sure that everything he did was right, and would succeed because he did it. And my aunt, who would comment more shrewdly. And Peter. Peter had spoken up for him before the walls of Winchester and gained great glory in the battle that followed, fighting with a reckless courage that everyone praised. But I knew he could not talk to Peter any more than I could—could not look at him without remembering that which he wished with all his heart to forget. There was Wilson, but old and trusted colleague as he was, some things could not be said to him.
I waited. He said:
“I saw your face when I spoke to the Captains before the attack on the walls. Did you think me mad, son?”
“Why, no, sir . . .”
He shook his head impatiently. “Or reckless, or what you will. At any rate, you thought we could not succeed. As the others did. They came with me because I shamed them into doing so. None of you had faith in the Spirits.”
I began to speak again and again he bore me down.
“Let us talk about faith,” he said. “It is a strange thing. Before you have faith you must believe, and before you believe there must be evidence of some sort to persuade the mind. Faith is remembering that evidence and holding to it against all that seems to challenge or contradict it. And some evidences are stronger than others, and more important. I have faith that my dinner will be brought to me tomorrow, but not such faith that I would sit long at an empty table.”
He paused. I was not sure if he wanted me to say something and anyway had nothing to say. He went on slowly:
“You know what my mood was last winter, and you know the reasons for it. I think I went on living because it was too much trouble to seek death. Ezzard tried to give me comfort, telling me that your mother was a Spirit now, with the other Spirits, that she lived still in their world and that one day I would meet her again. He brought me messages that he said came from her. There was no comfort in them. Time after time I sent him away.
“Then at last, as winter ended, he persuaded me to visit him in the Seance Hall. None knew of it and no other was present, not even an Acolyte. Just the Seer and I. And there, in the darkness, I heard her voice. She talked to me, in human speech.”
He looked at me and his face lightened into a smile, so rare now.
“I do not ask you to believe this because you did not hear it, and a man can be deceived by his ears. But I know I was not deceived. I could never mistake that voice. I heard her speak.”
I asked: “What did she say, sir?”
“That she was well, that I must not brood over losing her, that we would meet again. It was not what she said but that she said it. I knew then that Ezzard had told me the truth: that there was a world of Spirits and she was in it.
“There is still more. Before I led the army against Petersfield, Ezzard told me how things would go. He said they would fight us in the field and then retire behind their walls. He said their Prince was a man who defied the Spirits, who had found old machines of war and would use them. So I was not surprised when thunder broke from their walls that morning. He said if we fought against them we would win.”
He looked a long time at Margry’s painting of my mother which hung on the wall opposite his chair. It showed her smiling, a shaft of sunlight on her hair and face, puppies in a basket at her feet and flowers behind her head: accompanied by all the things she loved best. He said:
“One thing Ezzard did not promise me: that I myself would come back safe. He did not say I would not, but I thought that was his meaning. He spoke strongly of the need to protect you, my heir. But perhaps it was my own desire that misled me there. Because to die in such a way, fighting on behalf of the Spirits, must mean that I would join her, at once, in the Spirit world.”
He hunched back in his chair, letting his shoulders droop, and for the first time I saw him as old, a man with a burden in which there was now no trace of joy.
“All happened as Ezzard foretold. And I returned in triumph, and I do not think either the Blaines or Hardings will trouble us in the future. I do not know how many years I have to live”—he spoke as a man contemplating a long and wearisome journey—“but when I die the people will call for a Perry to succeed a Perry. You will be Prince of this city. It is something else Ezzard has told us, at the bidding of the Spirits, but even without their aid it would be so. And because you are the Prince in Waiting, I have another thing to tell you. Ezzard has spoken to me about Petersfield. It is the wish of the Spirits that we do not exact ransom but annex this city, making it and all its lands part of our realm of Winchester.”
Despite what he had already told me, I was astonished. The cities were the cities, individual and sovereign. One might defeat another in war and take tribute, outlying land perhaps, as we had done from Alton, but at the end of each campaign the armies withdrew behind their own walls.
I asked: “Is it possible?”
“The Spirits command it.”
“But will the men of Petersfield accept? Or will you keep an army there all winter?”
“If necessary; but it will not be necessary. Their Seer agrees with Ezzard on this. He will proclaim it to them and his power is great since their city was taken through defiance of the Spirits. I shall appoint one of their own Captains as my lieutenant. The Seer of Petersfield has given me good advice on choosing him.”
The Seers, it seemed, were taking a larger hand in our affairs: much larger. I was not sure I cared for it. But it was true they spoke for the Spirits and that the Spirits had showed their powers. True also that so far their powers had been exercised to our benefit. It would not be wise to offend them.
• • •
I was at Edmund’s house on the day the proclamation about Petersfield was made. It was his mother’s birthday and I had taken her a present, a set of pink ribbons made up into a shape something like a rose, to pin on a dress. As soon as I gave it to her I realized I had made a mistake. It was the sort of frivolous thing which would have suited my mother but Edmund’s mother had been, even as the Prince’s Lady, a homely woman not given to fripperies, and now was content to dress dowdily in browns and dark blues. It occurred to me that choosing a rose shape made things worse. Her one great joy when she lived in the palace had been the rose garden. I think it was the only thing of luxury she missed when she went to live on Salt Street. The present might remind her of it; she might even think I had meant it to.
She thanked me warmly but I was e
mbarrassed and uneasy. My mood was not improved by Edmund’s sister, who was also there. She was a year older than Edmund, a thin, sharp-tongued girl. I was never, at the best of times, at ease with girls, but those who used sarcasm bothered me even more than the ones who giggled together in corners. She said something now about the gift I had brought, which I did not fully understand but which sounded mocking. Then she spoke about the proclamation. What a great Prince I would be one day. Who knew how many more cities my father might not conquer?
“Who knows?” I said. “Maybe Romsey, too. If so, I will bring you a gift from there. A lily, perhaps.”
I saw her thin face flush. She had been betrothed to the son of Romsey’s Prince but this had been annulled, of course, following her father’s deposition and death. Lilies were what brides carried at their weddings. She said:
“I know one thing you will never bring to any lady: that is courtesy. It requires breeding, and if you become Prince of all the cities in the world you will always lack that.”
Her words cut like knives, reducing me to tongue-tied silence. Her mother intervened, saying:
“That will do, Jenny. You have been teasing him.”
“Does a gentleman insult a lady, even if he is teased?”
“It has nothing to do with that,” her mother said. “Some men are at ease with womenfolk, some not. You know Luke is of the latter, and you should not provoke him.”
I said: “I am sorry, ma’am.”
She smiled. “I know you are.”