On impulse, he delved into the hold again. This time he touched paper. The single sheet of foolscap he brought out was ancient and crumbling, but the writing was clear and the signature un-mistakable. The name was Leven Valera, the infamous Black Duke of the Southern Barony. Valera, who might someday have been King, had instead spent the last twenty-five years of his life in the room at the top of the Needle for the murder of his wife. No wonder the pictures in the locket looked familiar! The man was Valera; the woman was Valera’s murdered wife, Eleanor, about whose beauty ballads were still sung.
The ink Valera had used was a strange rusty black, and the first line of his note chilled Peter’s heart. The note entire chilled his heart, and not only because the similarity between Valera’s position and his own seemed too great for coincidence.
To the Finder of the Note-
I write with my own Blood, drawn from a vayne I have opened in my left Forearm, my pen the Shaft of a Spune which I have sharpened long and long upon the stones of my Bedchamber. Nearly a quarter of a Centurie I have spent here in the sloe; I came here a Young Man and now am I Old. The Coughing Spells and Fayver have come on me again, and this time I think I shall not survive.
I did not kill my Wyfe. Nay, though all the Evidence say otherwise, I did not kill my Wyfe. I did love her and love her still, although her dear Face has grown misty in my treacherous Mind.
I believe 'twas the King’s Magician who killed Eleanor, and arranged Matters to see me put asyde, for I stood in his Way. It seems his Plans have worked and he has prospered; yet I believe there are Gods who punish Wickedness in the end. His Day shall come, and I have come to feel more and more strongly as my own Death approaches that he shall be brought down by One who comes to this Place of Dispair, One who finds and reads this Letter written in my Blood.
If 'tis so, I cry out to you; Avenge, Avenge, Avenge! Ignore me and my lost Years if you must, but never, never, never ignore my dear Eleanor, murdered as she slept in her Bed! It was not I who poisoned her Wine; I write the name of the Murderer here in Blood: Flagg! 'Twas Flagg! Flagg! Flagg!
Take the Locket, and show it to him the instant before you relieve this the World of Its greatest Scoundrel-show him so that he may know in that Instant that I have been a part of his Downfall, even from beyond my unjust Murderer’s Grayve.
Leven Valera
Perhaps now you can understand the true source of Peter’s chill; perhaps not. Perhaps you will understand it better if I remind you that, although he looked to be a man in a hale and hearty middle age, Flagg was really very old.
Peter had read about the supposed crime of Leven Valera, yes. But the books in which he had read of it were histories. Ancient histories. This crumbling, yellowed parchment first spoke of the King’s magician, and then spoke of Flagg by name. Spoke his name? Cried it, shrieked it-in blood.
But Valera’s supposed crime had happened in the reign of Alan II-and Alan II had ruled Delain four hundred and fifty years ago.
“God, oh great God,” Peter whispered. He staggered back to his bed and sat down on it heavily, just before his knees would have unhinged and spilled him to the floor. “He’s done it all before! He’s done it all before, and in exactly the same way, but he did it over four centuries ago!”
Peter’s face was deadly white; his hair was standing on end. For the first time he realized that Flagg, the King’s magician, was in reality Flagg the monster, loose in Delain again now, serving a new King-serving his own young, confused, easily led brother.
73
Peter at first entertained giddy thoughts of promising Beson another bribe to take the locket and the crumbling sheet of foolscap to Anders Peyna. In his initial flush of excitement, it seemed to him that this note must point the finger of guilt at Flagg and set him, Peter, free. A little reflection convinced him that while that might happen in a storybook, it would not happen in real life. Peyna would laugh and call it a forgery. And if he took it seriously? That might mean the end of both the Judge General and the imprisoned prince. Peter’s ears were sharp, and he listened closely to the gossip of the meadhouses and the wineshops as it was passed back and forth between Beson and the Lesser Warders. He had heard of the Farmers’ Tax Increase, had heard the bitter joke which suggested that Thomas the LightBringer should be renamed Thomas the Tax-Bringer. He had even heard that some few daring wags had renamed his brother Foggy Tom the Constantly Bombed. The headsman’s axe had swung with the regularity of a clock’s pendulum since Thomas had ascended Delain’s throne, only this clock called out treason-sedition, treason-sedition, treason-sedition with a regularity that would have been monotonous, had it not been so frightening.
By now Peter had begun to suspect Flagg’s goaclass="underline" to bring the ordered monarchy of Delain to an utter smash. Showing the locket and the note would only get him laughed at or cause Peyna to take some sort of action. And that would undoubtedly get them both killed.
In the end Peter put the locket and foolscap back where they had come from. And with them he put the little three-foot pigtail it had taken him a month to weave. On the whole, he did not feel too bitter about the evening’s work-the rope had held, and the finding of the locket and foolscap after more than four hundred years proved at least one thing-the hiding place was not apt to be discovered.
Still, he had much food for thought, and he lay long awake that night.
When he slept, he seemed to hear Leven Valera’s dry, stony voice whispering in one ear: Avenge! Avenge! Avenge!
74
Time yes, time-Peter spent a great deal of time at the top of the Needle. His beard grew long, save for where that white scar streaked his cheek like a lightning bolt. He saw many changes from his window, as it grew. He heard of more terrible changes yet. The headsman’s pendulum had not slowed down but actually speeded up: treason-sedition, treason-sedition, it sang, and sometimes half a dozen heads rolled in the course of but a single day.
During Peter’s third year of imprisonment, the year in which Peter was first able to do thirty chin-ups in a single effort from his bedchamber’s central beam, Peyna resigned his post as JudgeGeneral in disgust. It was the talk of the meadhouses and wineshops for a week, and the talk of Peter’s keepers for a week and a day. The warders believed that Flagg would have Peyna jailed almost before the heat of the old man’s bum had left the judge’s bench, and that soon after the citizens of Delain would find out once and for all if there was blood or ice water in the judge-General’s veins. But when Peyna remained free, the talk died down. Peter was glad Peyna had not been arrested. He bore him no ill will, in spite of Peyna’s willingness to believe that he had murdered his father; and he knew that the arrangement of the evidence had been Flagg’s doing.
Also during Peter’s third year in the Needle, Dennis’s good old Da’, Brandon, died. His passing was simple but dignified. He had finished his day’s work in spite of a terrible pain in his chest and side and came slowly home. He sat down in the little living room, hoping the pain would pass. Instead it grew worse. He called his wife and son to his side, kissed them both, and asked if he might have a glass of bundle-gin. This was provided. He drank it off, kissed his wife again, and then sent her from the room.
“You must serve your master well now, Dennis,” he said. “Ye’re a man now, with a man’s tasks set before you.”
“I’ll serve the King as well as I may, Da’,” Dennis said, although the thought of taking over his father’s responsibilities terrified him. His good, homely face was shiny with tears. For the last three years, Brandon and Dennis had buttled for Thomas, and Dennis’s responsibilities had been much the same as before, with Peter; but it had never been the same, somehow-never even close to the same.