‘What’s your name, young sir?’ she asked.
‘Tom, Your Grace.’ He bowed extravagantly to her and vanished down the chain.
As they closed in for the next figure, the King took possession of her and marched her along the shore. A pair of pages held torches so close to them that she feared for her hair, but she looked up into his face and smiled, and he smiled down at her.
‘What I was trying to say,’ he managed, ‘was that in my pater’s time, we were much closer to the Wild at Christmas. It was fun. And good for the knights.’
She leaned up, her fur-lined boots secure in the slippery, stamped-down snow, and kissed him on the lips, and hundreds of people close by let out a whoop and did the same.
‘The Wild is always close,’ she said. ‘We are the children of it, not its enemies. You can find the Wild under the floors of the New Palace, and Wild in the woods across First Bridge.’
‘What you say is close to blasphemy,’ he said.
‘Nay, my lord. Simple fact. Feel the air – smell the spruce? You could reach out and touch a tree in the Adnacrags tonight. The world shimmers on the solstice, my lord. The gates are all open, or so Master Harmodius used to say.’
The King stopped and looked up. Behind him, a thousand couples paused, sipping wine or kissing or wondering what the royal couple were about, but such pauses in the dance were not so rare.
‘God’s truth!’ the King swore. ‘I’ve never seen so many stars, that much is true.’ He picked her up and spun her. ‘By God, madam, why can I not believe you? I want nothing more than a son.’
She put his hand on her belly. ‘There is your son, my lord. Feel his heartbeat – feel it beating strongly for Alba.’
He leaned down in the torchlight. ‘I cannot believe that you would betray me.’ His hand was warm against her.
Then they were moving again, and the procession returned to a circle, and she lost the King in the turnings – in the great chain that some old Harndoners said marked the binding of all the people of Alba, one to another. In a very old way.
The Queen moved on, first turning with a circle of women – there was Emota, her expression strained, and there was Lady Silvia, a new girl from the north, and a trio of red-faced merchants’ daughters, giggling with panic at being in the Queen’s set, and then she was whirled away into the great chain again, and she touched hands with a young knight of Saint Thomas, who smiled at her with a beatific peace on a heavy, bluff face; on along the chain, a dark-visaged man with dirty hands who nonetheless beamed at her, and a handsome man in a magnificent fur-lined hood, the fabric some sort of Eastern silk worked in figures that flashed in the torchlight. She had a pair of torches by her all the time; despite her elation, she knew that both young men were royal squires, and both were armed. Young Galahad d’Acre alone could handle a dozen footpads or any number of men of ill intent. It wasn’t that she was afraid – merely that the last few days had made her uncharacteristically aware of her vulnerability. And her baby’s.
Another figure, and she was being turned in place by a man – one of the Galles. He passed her off – somewhat roughly, she felt, but she feared to imagine a slight – and she heard a shout from behind her right shoulder. She reached out a hand and it was taken, and there was the Captal himself. He turned her, his hand not quite resting on hers and his smile fixed in place. His eyes were on the commotion and she turned – it was time for the women to gather in their own circles-
Galahad was down. She knew that from the change in the light. He was struggling to get to his feet and someone hit him.
The snow had extinguished his torches.
She acted, humming deeply in her chest and reaching into the night – and to the stars – and taking what she needed.
The two torches burst into light – brilliant, screaming light.
Galahad caught his assailant a stout blow in the groin with a burning torch and the man burst into flame. He stumbled away into the crowd, and the crowd gave a shriek and parted cleanly before him.
Galahad got his feet under him and raised the torches, ruthlessly illuminating his attacker’s last moments. The man burned – his flesh and muscles and fat burned very fast, and his screams stopped, and the blackened sticks of his bones fell to the snow, hissed and went out.
A delicious smell of roast pork wafted over the crowd, and a woman threw up her dinner.
Galahad was weeping.
The Queen looked around her, seeing Lady Almspend close, and Lady Sylvia a little further back. But no Lady Emota.
One of the Galles – the Count d’Eu – took her. ‘Your Grace is, I think, in some danger,’ he said.
She retreated a step. The Galles were all around her.
‘With me, Galahad. Where is young Tancred?’ she asked, keeping her voice as steady and light as could be managed.
‘Here at your back, Your Grace,’ Tancred’s high, girlish voice was at odds with his heavy build and single brow.
‘Please allow me to escort you to the King,’ the Count said. He bowed, and the pressure of his hand on hers was normal. Kindly meant.
One of the Galles wearing d’Eu’s colours put a hand on the breast of another Galle and pushed, and the man went down.
The Count’s hand pinned hers like a blacksmith’s vice and he held her arm under his own as if they were wrestling. He dragged her along. She almost lost her feet and stifled a scream.
‘Your Grace is in great danger,’ he muttered to her. ‘My men are doing their best to foil it, but there is an attack on your person. I swear to you it is none of my cousin’s doing. I would know. Come.’ D’Eu swept her along the ice, and she was comforted that her two squires remained tight by her sides, both wearing short swords and maille under their fur-lined cotes. Galahad’s torches continued to burn more white than red, and the light they cast illuminated the darkness for a bowshot.
‘My ladies!’ she said suddenly.
The Count paused and turned. ‘Monsieur d’Herblay!’ he called. ‘The Queen’s ladies!’
At the edge of the light, a man dressed in clerical black gave a bow and turned. He went back into the darkness with a dozen men at his heels.
The crowd around them began to thicken like ice forming in a bucket. The Queen felt her right hand going numb, so fiercely did the Count pin her hand. She saw concerned faces flash by – the man in the beautiful hat bowed, and then followed her, and then she saw the tall boy, Tom, and he, too, followed.
She saw a dozen torches gathered together on the river, and she knew the King was there, and the relief she felt was so palpable that her knees trembled beneath her.
The King was laughing with the Count of the Borders and the Master of the Staple. He turned and handed her a cup of wine, even while a pretty young woman with red hair plucked at his hand.
‘Come, Majesty,’ she said.
The Queen took her cup, and the red-haired young woman dropped a curtsey and backed away into the crowd.
The King picked up the tension from her hand, and from the thin set of the Count d’Eu’s lips. ‘What is happening?’
The Count d’Eu bowed. ‘Your Grace, I have no firm idea, but men attacked your squire here, and I feared for the Queen.’
‘He was right to do so,’ the Queen said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
The King returned the Count’s bow. ‘Then you have my thanks, messire, as always. We must go back to the dance. People will talk.’
He ruffled young Galahad’s hair. ‘What happened to you? You look white as the snow.’
‘I – I struck a man.’ Galahad’s voice caught. ‘And he burned like a torch.’
The King paused, one foot already lifted to walk. ‘Did you?’ he asked. ‘There is a prophecy . . . never mind now.’ He set his face and leaned down to his Queen. ‘This is an odd night, and I’ll be the happier when we are done with it.’
Then they were back on the river, and she was dancing again. The air became heavy, and she had trouble breathing. There was something in the torches, she thought . . .