“You cannot do such a thing! It is against all custom.”
Wheat meant bread for the long hard winter. It stood for life itself. No one rode or fought over growing wheat, and if a campaign ever lasted through summer, harvesting put an end to it.
I said to Greene: “You heard me. That field below us first.”
If Greene had hesitated further, the others might have got together and stopped me. As it was they watched in grim silence. There had been no rain for days and the wind had dried the wheat of the mist’s dampness. The stalks caught and smoke rolled down toward the city.
It was after we had put torches to the second field that they came out. I gave them no chance to assemble in battle array but rode down on them in the shadow of their own walls. We lost some men from arrows but once we had closed, the bowmen could not distinguish friend from foe.
I was happy now, feeling the lifting pulse of battle. Hans rode near me, almost of human stature in the saddle, his voice deeply shouting. I saw fat Blaine rise in his stirrups and deal a Petersfield man a blow that almost severed head from body. For all his fatness he was immensely strong. A horseman, a Captain by his blazon, slashed at me. I parried with my sword which, sliding down from his, skinned his arm. I toppled a trooper from his horse with a thrust under the shoulder. Then they were scattering from us and the battle, if one could call it such, was over.
They rode for their gates but we rode with them. We secured the North Gate and after that they were a beaten rabble.
• • •
Michael Smith had been a florid flashy man, a good talker who was proud of his voice and given to merry songs at banquets. He sang well even when drunk. But he was not singing now, or talking. His body shivered as Greene hung round his neck the wooden toys he had sent to me in mockery.
I felt sick myself. I had no stomach for watching a man die in cold blood. But I also was being watched, by my own army and the people of Petersfield.
I had been driven to burning the wheatfields, and the trick had worked. It was not so bad to break the rules as long as one won. And ruthlessness followed on from ruthlessness. He had rebelled against his Prince and slain his Prince’s lieutenant. He had earned his death. I only wished I did not have to see it.
The day was ending with no sign of the sun. The wind had a cold edge and I could have shivered too, but schooled myself against it.
Greene said in a loud voice: “Let all witness the proper end of a traitor!”
He looked at me. I raised my hand and dropped it. Strong arms pulled on the rope that hung from the pulley of the gibbet, and Michael Smith gave a single gasp as his body was lifted up. His legs twitched as he hung there. They twitched for a long time before they were still.
TWO
PRINCE OF THE THREE CITIES
I WENT TO VISIT EDMUND’S mother the day after we returned from Petersfield. I went unaccompanied and would not let the man-servant announce me. He was normal in shape except for a withered arm and had been in her service for more than twenty years. When her husband was killed and my father took the palace he could have stayed there, a high position for a polymuf, but had chosen to go with her to the little house in Salt Street into which she had to move. She was a woman who commanded affection.
Charles, her elder son, had restored her fortunes to some extent, with bounty won in campaigns under my father and my brother. She lived in West Street now, in a bigger house though one still modest for someone who had been the Prince’s Lady. But she had never troubled herself over wealth or display. I found her in the kitchen, baking bread. She held, as few now did, to the old rule that this was something a housewife did not leave to polymufs. And she had trained her daughter, Jenny, to follow the same tradition. Jenny stood beside her at the well-scoured table, her arms like her mother’s covered with flour.
Jenny started and looked confused at my appearance. She blushed, and it became her. She had been a plain, thin-faced girl when I had first known her and—an awkward newcomer to the court life which she had lost—had felt the edge of her tongue. She was quite pretty now, especially with her cheeks flushed from the heat of the oven and her present embarrassment.
I said: “You have flour on your nose, Jenny.”
It was not true but made her lift her hand automatically to her face. Her nose was floury then. I laughed. She said indignantly, “Oh, you . . . !” then fled the kitchen.
Her mother smiled at me. “Hello, Luke. You come without ceremony and will get none, even though you return as a conqueror.”
I took a chair and straddled it. “I am glad to be back.”
This was very true. I felt at home in her house as I did not in the palace. It was a deep thing with me. I had no happy memories of my own home as a child. My mother was beautiful and I loved her, but though she was fond of small animals she did not have the gift of making a child, even her own, feel at ease; and the house itself was badly run. She did not keep her servants long and while they were with her they were slack and sullen.
Edmund’s mother said: “Thank you for the roses, Luke.”
I had ordered them to be sent down early that morning, the best blooms from the rose garden at the palace. In the old days it had been a great joy to her, and was perhaps the only material thing she missed out of all she had had there. I said:
“Everything in the garden is yours, as I have told you. You are welcome at any time, to pick the blooms or tell old Garnet how to go about his planting and grafting and seeding.”
Garnet was the palace gardener, and had held that post through many reigns. He was a polymuf giant, more than six and a half feet tall, and like most such had a weakness of the back. He could no longer stoop but had a boy—a dwarf except that he also had a cast in one eye—who did the stooping for him.
Edmund’s mother smiled. “The idea of telling Garnet anything! But I am grateful for the roses. They have done well this year.”
We talked about things of the city: pleasant gossip and without malice. She had no malice in her. She brought me a pot of cider, drawn cold from the barrel, and hot spiced biscuits from the oven. I said after a time:
“Jenny is a long time getting the flour off her face.”
“You confused her, Luke.” She smiled at me. “She pays attention to the things you say.”
I shook my head. “I can scarcely believe that. I have never been a match for her words, nor the cool hard mind that frames them.”
“She is not as cool and hard as she seems,” her mother said. “It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings. When she was a child she used to give way to her tempers. Then afterward she was bitterly ashamed of herself. I never punished her for her tantrums; she punished herself more than I could ever have done.”
We heard footsteps in the passage, and Jenny came back. She had washed the flour off her face and hands, and had tidied her hair and put a comb in it. I said:
“Well done! That is a great improvement.”
Her face was flushed but she was composed. She dropped me a mock curtsy.
“Thank you, sire. It is something to get a word of kind approval from the Prince of the Two Cities.”
I looked at her. Yes, she was quite pretty. I thought of another girl, in a city of gaily painted domes and pinnacles on the other side of the Burning Lands. Jenny was quite pretty but Blodwen was beautiful. And Blodwen, in due time, would be my wife and Lady of this city.
• • •
That night we celebrated the victory over Petersfield. The long table was set up in the Great Hall of the palace and I sat at its head. My Captains were ranged on either side down to the first salt. Between the first salt and the second were leading merchants and other men of standing in the city. Below the second salt sat those dwarfs, such as Rudi the Armorer, who were entitled to feast at the Prince’s table.