“But if Jeremy’s army fights alongside ours, if it is he who has the key to the gates . . .”
“He is a timid man. He is shrewd enough but lacks courage. He is a little dog who wants a big dog to run with and will therefore let the big dog take what he wants and be content with the scraps. He offered me the city without my asking; he will be content with Stockbridge and the land around it. And with our friendship.”
I said: “I can think of others I would sooner have as friends.”
“So can I. But a Prince is bound by policy, not by liking. And by the Spirits. Ezzard supports this plan. He has told me: I will be Prince of many cities—you, if you are guided by the Spirits, Prince of all the cities in the land.”
I was silent. I thought of asking: did we want such an empire? But I guessed the answer I would get—that our wanting or not wanting was unimportant. The Spirits required it. They had served us well so far but their wrath, if we failed them, could destroy us as quickly as their benevolence had raised us. We had no choice.
• • •
Edmund kept away for the remainder of the visit, and for a time after. In the end I sought him out at the house in Salt Street, and persuaded him to come with me to the stables. There were just the two of us. Martin was already under instruction to become an Acolyte and busy that morning.
We walked in silence at first. There was constraint between us, the recollection of our last parting. In the end I said:
“I am sorry for holding you back. I would have liked to see you hit him. I would have liked to hit him myself.”
He did not reply at once and I thought he was still resentful. Then he said:
“No, you were right. It would not have been worth it to knock him down. What a toad he is! You would not believe how he fawned on me . . . in the old days.”
I said feelingly: “I think I would believe it.”
“And Jenny—he paid her such elaborate compliments and told her all the time how unworthy he was of her. It was true enough, but you could see he didn’t believe it. She hated him even then but of course had to obey our father. If there is a consolation in what happened it is that the city is rid of that alliance.”
I thought of what my father had told me but was silent. Edmund went on:
“She was saying, after that meeting, that she had only just realized what an escape she had in not having to marry him. She can marry whom she likes now, or not marry if she so wishes. There are advantages in no longer being royal. I would have had to marry for policy, too, and I would have detested it.”
I said: “Does it matter so much? There are more important things.”
“Do you think so?”
“One does not spend all that much time in the company of women. There is riding and hunting, battle, gaming—the company of one’s fellow men.”
Edmund shook his head. “It would matter to me.” He grinned, at last open and friendly again. “It is just as well that you do not mind, since you are going to have to obey the rules. As a matter of fact, Jenny and I were speculating the other day as to who was most likely to be the lady of the Prince of Princes. We were for Maud of Basingstoke.”
She had come to Winchester a few years ago when her father, Prince Malcolm, paid a state visit. She was dark and swarthy and very short in stature. People said that she should have been called dwarf but her mother pleaded with the Seer at her birth and he allowed her to pass for human.
I made a mock punch at him which he parried, laughing. It was good to be back on our old terms. On our way to the stables we gathered loose snow into balls and pelted each other like children.
• • •
Once again spring was late. Beyond the walls the fields lay white until mid-April and the thaw when it came seemed partial and uncertain. There were gray skies and a harsh east wind. Farmers, coming into the city on market day for the Spring Fair, complained that the ground was still too hard for planting; they had never known it so bad.
I was too concerned about the new campaign to care much. This year I would not be condemned to look after the baggage train. I was not allowed to be a warrior but I would be a scout, and Edmund with me. We rode our horses far out and practiced the arts of observation on the downland sheep.
The arrangement was that the army of Romsey was to come first to us, to be joined with our army under my father’s command; the combined force then moving north against Andover. They arrived late one afternoon and we saw their tents going up in the Contest Field and on open ground around it. That was the place that had been allotted them for a camp. Prince Jeremy had suggested it himself, saying that even if accommodation for his men could be found in the city it was wiser for them to remain outside. Even though our two cities were allies, conflicts might arise in living at such close quarters. My father, who had had similar thoughts, praised this as an example of Jeremy’s common sense. There was more to him, he repeated, than his fat foppishness would indicate.
Jeremy, with a handful of his Captains, came in for conference. James came as well. He had not improved in the months since I had last seen him; there was the same mixture of arrogance and sly servility, the same hungry envy for what he saw as our better fortune. Our horses were in better condition than theirs and looked faster, our dwarfs forged better swords.
“And our leather, I suppose,” Edmund said to me when I had slipped James’s company one day and was telling him all this, “comes from cows with thicker hides. He disgusts me. You say he is to scout for them? Not along with us, I hope?”
“No,” I said. “I have made certain of that. The armies part company on the second day. They take a line in advance of us and to the east. The idea is that they draw the Andover army onto them. Then we strike north to the city itself where the south gate will be open.”
The plan had been divulged to the Captains so I had felt I could tell it to Edmund; what had been said had been in the Great Hall, not my father’s parlor. He now said, brow wrinkled:
“I do not like it. It is not a good way of fighting.”
It was what I had said to my father and there were still doubts in my mind. Suppressing them, I said:
“The Spirits approve it.”
“Oh, the Spirits . . .!”
There was a noise of someone approaching. We were in the den under the Ruins which bit by bit we had furnished into a sort of comfort, with furniture and rugs taken from unused rooms in the palace and with oil lamps now for lighting. Martin joined us. These days he wore the white of an apprentice Acolyte and his shaved head was covered by a wide-brimmed white hat. I still had not got used to the change in his appearance.
Edmund said: “We can ask the expert for advice. Why is it, Martin, that the Spirits who have in the past told men to fight honorably now urge us to rely on treachery to win our victories?”
Martin said: “No expert. I am not even an Acolyte yet, and will not be for another year.”
“All right. But give us an opinion, as one who is planning to spend his life serving these same Spirits. Have they changed their minds? Has the Great Spirit sent out fresh instructions?”
He said it with a smile but Martin did not smile in return. He said, stumbling but in serious fashion:
“Without knowledge one cannot understand things. And knowledge is always limited. What I mean is . . . it is not so much that things change as that they happen in a different way.”
Edmund said in astonishment: “I believe they have converted him already.”
“I’m not very good at explaining what I mean.”
Edmund said: “But you’ve changed, too, like the Spirits, haven’t you? You take it more seriously.”
“Do I?” His expression showed reluctance. “In a way, perhaps.”
“Then you’ve been told things?”