In November my father went to Romsey, to visit the Prince of that city. Prince Stephen’s refusal to send his army into the field, his reliance on walls built higher every year, had been part of a more general isolation. There had been no state visits, made or received, for some time. My father’s accession, followed by his victory over Alton, had changed that. It was not only Romsey that wished to see the new Prince of Winchester.
My father took his bodyguard with him, of course, and a few of his Captains, but for show rather than protection. Men did not make war in the winter and such a visit as this was in any case safeguarded under the customs of all civilized peoples. We waved him good-by as he and his entourage rode out from the South Gate and then we turned back to our ordinary occasions. Dull always at this time of the year—halfway between the Autumn Fair and the Christmas Feast—I found them duller still with my father away, and the summer’s excitements fading into memory. The days passed and the evenings lengthened as winter tightened its grip. I wearied of games played by lamplight, and of the amusements which delighted my mother and her friends: the polymuf jugglers and clowns, the guitarists strumming and singing melancholy love songs. My leg was still splinted so I could not ride during the day. I was restless, bored, wanting something to happen. But when it did happen it was not during the dragging day or tedious evening but at night, while the palace slept.
I awoke to a smell that was so strong one almost tasted it, and sat up coughing, the smoke in my throat and lungs. It was pitch black. I hobbled to my window and flung the shutters open. Cold fresh air streamed in. The night was dark apart from the glow of the Burning Lands, and a light nearer at hand, blossoming from a window beneath me, and with it the dreaded crackling that told of fire.
I shouted an alarm and, wasting no more time, headed for the door and the stairs. My room was to the right of the staircase, my mother’s apartments on the far side of it. But as I opened the door the crackling was more like a roar and automatically I shielded my face from the light and the heat. The staircase was a torrent of flame, spreading, moving upward. It had passed the landing and was ravenously eating its way up toward the attics.
If I could leap it, I thought, and get across to where she was . . . The surgeon had said my splints could come off in a few days. I got back to my room and, needing no light from the brilliance of the fire behind me, found my knife and slashed the binding cords. My leg was terribly weak and I winced with the pain of putting my weight on it, but it would do. I headed back to the staircase.
It was impossible. In the short time I had been away, a matter of seconds only, the fire had spread and strengthened. It was frightening to look at, like a living creature in its raging hunger and power. I could not get within feet of it without being scorched.
There was another chance. Wooden gutterings ran along the side of the building, below the windows. I got to my bedroom and clambered out, holding onto the sill with my hands. People were gathering in the courtyard, more than twenty feet below. I heard their voices, shouting, calling, a woman screaming, and tried to ignore them. The gutterings were wide and shallow and I had already discovered that one could use them to get from room to room. It was not easy—one had to stand on this narrow ledge and inch one’s way along with one’s face flat against the wall—but it was possible. I started on my way. I thought only of my progress, closing my mind to everything else: to what I would do if I reached her and also to the terrifying possibility of a misstep.
But what I could not close my mind to was the increasing heat of the boards against which I was pressed. The fire, triumphant inside, was beating out against its confines. In a spot where the timbers were not properly caulked I caught a glimpse of the furnace within. But I was getting past the worst, I thought, the part that lay over the staircase. I risked a look in the direction in which I was edging and saw no sign of flame. I had come at least a dozen feet and probably had no more than that to go before reaching a window. I was cool in mind and increasingly confident. And I remember no more until the point at which I woke up, in bed, in daylight, my head splitting with pain.
One of the pegs that supported the guttering, weakened by the heat perhaps, had given way and I had fallen. A soldier in the crowd below had tried to break my fall. He succeeded in part—my recently knitted leg did not snap again—but my head struck something which knocked me unconscious and, as sometimes happens, took away my recollection of the accident as well.
Wilson told me this, sitting beside my bed with his long face, never much better than melancholy, a solemn mask. He was Sergeant in charge of the palace, an old and well-trusted follower of my father. They had served in the ranks together as young men. My father, on becoming Prince, had wanted to make him a Captain, to ennoble him, but he would not have it. He had had a wife many years before but she had died, broken-hearted, after giving birth to a polymuf child. He had not married again and apart from my father had no real friends.
My mind was confused, my head aching. I sat up and it was worse. Wincing, I said:
“And the fire? What happened . . .?”
“That wing is gutted. The rest was saved.”
I think it was his look of misery which recalled what my own purpose had been. I said:
“My mother . . .”
He shook his head very slowly. No more was needed. I could not believe it, though I knew it was true. I had seen her only a few hours before, her eyes half closed, foot tapping, head slightly swaying to a tune she loved. She was fond of music which I was not. I had slipped away without, I now remembered so sharply, bidding her good night.
I concentrated my wits and asked Wilson questions, which he answered. I think he thought me strange, perhaps callous, to do so at such a time; but it seemed to me that my sorrow was my own, a private thing, and not to be talked over even with one so well known and well trusted as Wilson. Pigeons, he told me, had been sent to Romsey, calling my father back. To my query as to how the fire had started he said it was fairly sure it had been deliberate, a murderous act. This had always seemed likely because, living in wooden houses as we did, we observed strict precautions against accidental fire. A special patrol checked the palace each night. But it was not a matter of supposition only. One of the guard had found a polymuf watching the fire from hiding. He had flint and steel on him, and oil-soaked wadding. Moreover he was known for a crazy loon who loved playing with fire. There had been trouble before and he had been exiled in the end; he was not allowed in the city and lived in a ramshackle hut beneath St. Catherine’s Hill, shunned even by the other polymufs.
I asked: “How did he get into the city?”
Wilson shrugged. “It is not difficult.”
That was true. The gate guards were supposed to check all who passed through but I had myself slipped past their backs when I did not want to call attention to myself.
“And why the palace?”
Wilson said: “That will bear looking into.”
“Has he been questioned?”
“No. We await your father’s return. But we have him safe. I set the guards myself. No one will get to him, either to rescue him or to close his mouth.”
“No other trouble?”
If this were a plot, laid by the Hardings or the Blaines, maybe both, now would be the moment to rise, before my father could get back. I saw by Wilson’s face that he took my meaning.
“No trouble. And we are ready for any that comes.”
• • •
My father was back before evening. It snowed heavily in the afternoon, obliterating the familiar tracks, but that did not stop him. He rode up through the city streets and into the courtyard in advance of his laboring escort. I heard a distant cry—“The Prince!”—and the clatter of hoofs on stone and ran to the window of the room in which I had been bedded. I saw him dismount, a snow man from a snow horse, and stand there, staring in front of him, while the horse was taken by a groom.