The Poison Throne Page 2

  The path would take her to within six or seven feet of them before it curved away again and they watched her as she approached. They were her age or perhaps a year or two younger, thirteen, maybe, plump-armed and rounded, their faces shaded under the brims of their wide straw hats. The taller girl was a Maid of the Bucket, out to get water. Her pails rested empty on the lip of the well, her yoke balanced on one shoulder. The other girl, younger than Wynter had first thought, maybe only ten, was a goose-herder and she idly batted her striped skirts with a switch as she looked Wynter up and down.

  It wasn’t the masculinity of Wynter’s clothes that intrigued the girls. Women often travelled in britches and short-coats, and it was quite obvious that she’d been travelling – the strong smell of horse sweat and campfire off her was evidence of that. It wasn’t even so much the fact that she was a stranger; palace life was always full of strangers. No, it was her apprentice garb that really grabbed their interest.

  She could see their eyes travelling over the uniform, taking in the tightly bound club of hair at her neck and the red tunic embroidered with the carpenter’s crest. Both these things told them that Wynter had been four years an authorised apprentice. They slipped a glance at her boots and their eyebrows shot up at the sight of green laces. Only the most talented of apprentices were granted permission for green. They checked for the guild approval pendant and saw it hanging around her neck. This told them that she had earned the right to wages, and not just the bed and board granted to all apprentices.

  When they looked her in the eye again, she saw wariness and speculation. So here is something new, that look said, a woman doing well in a man’s apprenticeship. She could sense the cogs turning in their minds as they decided how they felt about that.

  Then the older girl smiled at her, a genuine smile that showed dimples, and nodded her head in respectful greeting. Wynter’s heart soared like a bird released. Acceptance! She allowed her face to soften slightly and gave them a fleeting smile and a bob of her head as she passed them by.

  As soon as her back was turned, Wynter made a triumphant little whooping sound under her breath. The girls’ conversation had already bubbled up behind her as she left the yard and rounded a corner out of sight.

  Into blessed shade again, the avenue of chestnut trees this time. She looked around in expectation and her grin deepened as she caught sight of what she’d hoped to see here: Shearing’s ghost.

  The lanky spirit glimmered in the dappled shadows ahead of her. If anything he was even more ragged than she recalled, his tattered cavalry uniform shredded at shoulder and knee, so worn as to be an affront to his magnificent military record. His head was down in thought as he prowled the trees, and Wynter quickened her pace to catch up to him. He was following the path as he always did, wending his endless journey down the avenue, flickering on and off as he traversed the patches of sunlight.

  “Rory!” she called softly, as she trotted towards him, “Rory! It’s me, I’m home!”

  Shearing’s ghost jumped and spun on his heels as she rapidly closed the distance between them. His pale, transparent figure shimmered like heat haze as he took her in, registered the changes, put the older face and body to the voice and realised it was his young pal and playmate. She saw a delighted smile begin on his pale lips and he half-raised a hand in greeting as she jogged down the leafy path. Then his face fell and his delight was replaced with concern. Wynter’s grin began to fade as Shearing’s ghost backed away, his hand up to stop her progress. He looked quickly around in obvious panic, checking that no one was watching.

  Wynter ground to a halt, suddenly cold. Shearing was afraid. He was afraid to be seen with her! Wynter had never seen a ghost behave this way, ghosts didn’t generally care what the living thought of them, and Shearing in particular had no truck with politicking: you were his friend or you were not, that was all there was to it. At least, that is how things had been, before she went away.

  She stood, still as a statue, while Shearing made certain they were alone. Then he turned to her, his fine face a picture of regret, and held his finger to his lips. Shhhhhhhh, that gesture said, we are not safe. And then he faded away, his pitying look an echo in the hazy air.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, her heart hammering in her chest, but it must have been quite a while, because the Maid of the Bucket caught up with her on her way back into the palace. The girl cleared her throat as she came up the path and it made Wynter startle and turn to look at her.

  She stood aside to let the girl pass. As she came abreast of her, the swinging buckets spattering droplets on the toes of her dusty boots, the girl eyed Wynter, obviously puzzled by the sudden change in her demeanour. Where had the cool self-collection gone? And what was it that had so ruffled the stranger’s calm? Wynter knew she’d be the subject of even more gossip in the maids’ dormitory tonight.

  Wynter purposely schooled her face and regulated her breathing. She nodded to the girl and waited until she was out of sight before allowing herself to relax once more into agitated thought.

  Shearing’s ghost had really thrown her. She felt as though the world had just slipped sideways and she was sliding towards the edge of it. What had happened here, that cats wouldn’t reply to a civil greeting and ghosts were afraid to converse with a friend?

  In the fifteen years of her life Wynter had come to understand and accept that most human beings were unpredictable and untrustworthy, faithful only for as long as the wind fared well. But ghosts? Ghosts and cats had always just gone their own way, and although you could never trust a cat to serve anyone’s purpose but its own, you always knew where you stood with them. The orange cat on the bridge had been frightened and confused by Wynter’s greeting, as disconcerted by her attention as Shearing’s ghost had been. And this flung everything up into the air, all the foundations of Wynter’s life undermined suddenly, leaving her shaky and confused.

  She glanced around her, no one in sight, safe for the moment. She took a very deep breath and briefly closed her eyes. She let herself feel the reassuring weight of her father’s roll of tools on her shoulder. The awls and adzes and planes and chisels, collected and cared for during his twenty-two years as apprentice and master, and her own roll of tools, not so substantial, only five years in the gathering so far. She settled her feet wider, balancing herself and feeling the solidity of the ground beneath her boots. Good boots, solid riding boots, made to last. She felt the stir of the sluggish air against her face. She listened to the sleepy chirp of sparrows waiting out the heat in the chestnut trees, the steady flutter of the leaves.

  A slow trickle of sweat rolled down her shoulder blades, the sharp smell of travelling rose up from her clothes.

  She used all these things to ground herself, as her father had taught her, to make herself solid and here. What her father called, in the moment. She grabbed her mind and corralled it. Stopped it flying off into all the possibilities of what might come to pass. She forbade herself any more speculation on what might have happened while she was away. All these things would be revealed in time, but only through careful and calm investigation. She centred her mind on just being there, breathing in, breathing out, feeling the ground beneath, the trees above, the weight of the tools on her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes, and immediately there were three things Wynter knew for certain. First, she needed food. Second, she needed to find Razi and Alberon, and third, but not least, she needed a bath. Right, she thought, adjusting the tools and releasing her breath in a steady sigh, first things first and all other things would follow. She turned on her heel and calmly made her way to the kitchen.

  Razi

  At the rear of the palace, a door fronted by wide stone steps swept down to a gravel path. The path wound away from the castle, through an acre or so of tame woodland, and from there across a guarded moat bridge to the densely packed wild forest outside the bailey. The King used this route when he was in the mood for an informal day’s hunting or fishing. He called
it “the back door”. He’d say, I’m sick of state, let’s go out the back door, lads, and dally the day away like wild boys.

  Wynter had often watched the King and her father head out that way together, their fishing poles or bows slung across their shoulders, a little knot of companions in tow. She stood now, looking up the path and recalled how Razi, Alberon and herself used to loll about on the steps watching the men leave, sulking that they couldn’t go along. By the time The Great Changes had begun, Razi had already turned fourteen and she and Alberon were well accustomed to the sight of him disappearing up that path with the hunters. It was one of her most vivid memories: Razi, turning to look back at herself and Alberon, his affectionate smile meant to lift their spirits as he left them alone.

  “I’ll bring you back a rabbit!” he’d call, and he always did, or a pheasant or a clutch of quail eggs. Always some little thing to alleviate the fact that he had abandoned them. That he’d left Alberon, who haunted Razi like a shadow and felt his absence keenly.

  When you’re eleven, that’s what they were told, when you’re eleven you can join the hunt. But by the time they had turned eleven, everything had changed. Razi had been sent to the Moroccos with his mother; Alberon had been prisoner to the throne, a constant presence at the King’s side; and Lorcan and Wynter had been dispatched North, to the cold and damp that had destroyed her father’s health.

  A high modulated wail broke into her thoughts, making Wynter jump and then laugh as she realised what it was. She hadn’t heard that particular sound for years, and it had taken a moment for her to recognise it. The Musulman boys were kneeling in the shade of the trees, making undulating prayers to their God. Wynter rose onto her tiptoes and searched their bobbing ranks for Razi, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he hadn’t been brought home at all? That thought sent such a sharp pang through her that she pushed it away. Razi had never been one for prayers, she reminded herself. He was here, just elsewhere in the complex.

  The smell of roasting mutton intruded on her and her belly cramped in response. Good God, she was hungry. She dropped her recollections and turned away from them, her desire to be in the kitchen suddenly overwhelming.

  At the head of the kitchen steps, the statue of the Cold Lady stood gazing wistfully up the woodland path. Despite the heat, her stone face was covered in frost and little icicles dripped from her delicately carved fingers. Wynter glanced up at her as she passed, marvelling, as always.

  The maids and dairy-men had placed their pitchers of milk and cordial, pots of butter and bowls of cream all along the plinth at the hem of the Cold Lady’s dress. It reminded Wynter of the offerings that the Midlanders left to their Virgin. She caught the sharp tang of cheddar as she passed by and she was so hungry that her mouth filled instantly with spit. She almost ran down the dark stairs into the fragrant gloom of the kitchen, the Musulmen’s prayers rising musically into the sunlight behind her.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. A pot-boy pushed past her with a basket of onions, but no one paid her any attention and she was able to survey the organised chaos from her slightly elevated position at the foot of the stairs.

  Oh yes. Here was what she had missed. Here was the true heart of home and the spirit of the kingdom she had longed for.

  All the mixes of race and religion that summed up King Jonathon’s realm seemed focused in the palace kitchen. All the brown and white and cream and yellow faces, sweating and shouting and running about. A high continuous cacophony of multilingual patois and pigeon-talk, gestures and pantomime, combining into an efficient, if disorderly, unit. And at its steaming hub, Marni, huge, bear-like, her meaty arms, her enormous red hands and absurd bulbous face towering over everyone. She was the centre of the cyclone, the perpetual-motion Goddess of the kitchen.

  Wynter lifted her head to look over the produce-laden chopping table and sought out the poultry-spit-boy. When she saw him she smiled and some small thing settled in her chest, calming her.

  The poultry-spit-boy was the lowest of the low in any palace kitchen. The little lad who would be employed to turn the lighter chicken and poultry spits, while the older men turned the heavy meat spits. She had seen spit-boys of six or seven, naked because of the heat, matted in grease and soot, being screamed at by the basters for flinching when the scalding fat of the meat had burnt their hands. She remembered watching in horror as a Midlands castle cook had beaten one tiny child with a wooden ladle. It made it all the worse that the little child still kept turning the spit. Even as his eyes swelled up into black puffs, he kept the handle going for fear the meat would burn and his punishment would worsen.

  To Wynter, the spit-boy was the ultimate indication of the soul of a palace; most of them were blackened, hollow-eyed things, forgotten and abused.

  The spit-boy who sat in Marni’s kitchen was laughing while he turned the meat. His tiny hands were gloved and a big metal disc attached to the spit handle shielded him from the worst of the scalding splatter. He was sooty and shiny with grease and sweat, but he was clothed in a proper uniform and he was plump and jolly.

  He was leaning forward, talking to someone who appeared to be crouched on the floor out of sight. As Wynter watched, the child took a piece of chalk from the unknown person and, still expertly turning the meat with one hand, he wrote something on the flagstones.

  Wynter leant to the side to get a better view. A man was hunkered down beside the child, his dark head bent to look at the chalk marks on the floor. He was clad in the sky blue robes of a doctor, and, though his voice was too low for Wynter to hear the words, he said something to the child that brought a grin of pride to his greasy little face.

  A pot-girl set a beaker of frothy milk down by the child and a plate of horse-bread and cheese. The little boy went to grab for it, but the doctor stayed him with one brown hand on his arm. Wynter saw his head tilt up to address the girl and her heart leapt as she recognised his profile. Razi.

  “Did you boil the milk like I asked, Sarah?”

  The girl nodded, her eyes wide.

  “Boiled, not just warmed? Made to bubble, and then skimmed so that the evil humours dispersed?”

  The girl nodded again and bobbed a curtsy as if that sealed the question. Razi, his back still turned to Wynter, released the child’s hand and stayed crouched for a while, watching him cram food into himself. Even while eating, the little fellow continued to turn the meat at the exact speed necessary to let it cook without burning. It was as natural a movement to him as breathing.

  As her friend rose from his crouch and turned, Wynter realised that she was not the only one to have grown. She had expected to come home – in her fifteen-year-old body, with her new length of leg and her new height – and find herself the equal of the fourteen-year-old boy she’d left behind, his counterpart in riding and swimming and climbing.

  But Razi too had changed and it was a nineteen-year-old man who now stood before her, rubbing chalk dust from his brown hands. He was much taller. His face more defined somehow, all cheekbones and nose, his dark eyes just as large, but hooded. He was clean-shaven, but his glossy curls were in need of a trim and he kept pushing them back from his forehead with an impatient sigh. His blue doctor’s robes suited him, and she felt an almost violent stab of pride in him, that he had finished his studies and graduated, despite the terrible times they’d just survived.

  Alberon must be so proud of him, she thought.

  Razi pushed his hand through his curls and looked around him absently as if trying to remember what came next. His eyes met Wynter’s and she saw them pass her by, then snap back with sharp attention. She quirked an eyebrow at him, a challenging smile rising up in her face. I dare you not to know me, Razi Kingsson. I dare you not to recognise my face.

  “WYNTER!” He bellowed it, his deep voice taking her by surprise and shocking the kitchen into stunned silence. The staff jerked and ducked as though a cannon had been fired. “WYNTER!” he shouted again, spreading his hands as if questioning her.

 
; Wynter was so pleased to hear Razi say her name that she laughed out loud and tears sprang to her eyes.

  She had sense enough to put the tools down before he waded through the crowd and snatched her from the bottom step. He swung her in a twirling arc that stole the breath from her and had the kitchen staff laughing and clutching for bits and pieces put in peril by his flying robes.

  Good Lord, he’s strong! she thought in surprise as he lifted her high. He was all deceptive grace, this new Razi, his powerful strength well hidden, his muscle so close to the bone as to make him look skinny. You’ve been working with horses, she thought, recognising the type of wiry power that the work gave to a body.

  He flung her out and held her at arm’s length. She hung like a cat in his hands, suspended under the armpits, her feet dangling above the ground, laughing. He looked her in the face and then up and down as if marvelling at her. This close up, she could see the gold flecks in his dark eyes. She noticed that there were fine lines around his eyes and mouth. The harsh African sun and five years of uncertainty must have added them to his young face, and she was suddenly fighting a lump in her throat. Razi. It really was him. Razi. Here and now. Alive.

  “Hello, big brother,” she said, her voice not quite steady, and he hugged her to him with a strangled laugh. He squeezed her so tightly that she had to knock him on the back to let him know she couldn’t breathe.

  They parted, breathless and laughing, their eyes shiny, and Razi kept his hand on her shoulder as if to stop her from flying away.

  “You’re in my way, you tinker’s whelps.” Marni’s gravelly voice boomed behind them and they turned to grin at her, her preposterous face, her cloud of frizzy orange hair. She scowled at them, couldn’t keep it up and beamed her gap-toothed smile on them instead, batting them with her huge hands so that they knocked into each other like nine-pins, giggling. “Your dad’s still determined to turn you into a man, is he?” she growled, eyeing Wynter’s uniform. “Ah well,” she said, not quite able to hide her pride in Lorcan’s unorthodox parenting. “’Tis a damn site better’n marryin’ you off to some musty Lord.”