“But after all those years, why does it pain you so much now, Auntie?” asked Briony. “It is terrible and sad, but why have you taken to your bed like this?”
“Such pain never really goes away, dear. But there is a reason my heart is so sore. Merciful Zoria, it is because I saw him. At Kendrick’s funeral. I saw my child.”
For a moment Barrick could only look at Briony. He felt queasy and strange Nothing made sense anymore, and the duchess’ confession was just another crumbling of what was ordinary and safe. “A shadow,” he said, and wondered again what Merolanna’s dreams were like. “The castle is full of them these days.”
“Do you mean you saw your child grown? Maybe you did, Auntie. No one ever told you he was dead…”
“No, Briony, I saw him as a child. But not even the child he was when I saw him last. He had grown. But only a little. Only… a few years…” And she was weeping again.
Barrick grunted and looked to his sister again for help making sense of this, but she had clambered across the bed to put her arms around the old woman.
“But, Auntie,” Briony began.
“No.” Merolanna was fighting to keep the tears from overwhelming her. “No, I may be old—I may even be mad—but I am not foolish. What I saw, ghost or figment or waking nightmare, it was my own child. It was my boy—my child.The child I gave away!”
“Oh, Auntie.” Suddenly, to Barrick’s immense discomfort, Briony was crying too. He could think of nothing to do except to get up and pour Merolanna another cup of wine and then stand beside the bed holding it, waiting for the storm of tears to pass.
17. Black Flowers
THE SKULL:
Whistling, this one is whistling
A song of wind and growing things
A poem of warm stones in the ashes
The Grand And Worthy Nose, larger and fatter than his fellow Rooftoppers but still no taller than Chert’s finger, had spoken these strangers smelled of wickedness. There was to be no meeting with the queen. Chert didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed—in fact, he didn’t know much of anything. When he had risen this morning, the idea that he might end up on the roof of the castle with a crowd of people smaller than field mice had not even occurred to him.
Most of the Rooftoppers had backed away in fear from their two large visitors after the Nose’s pronouncement. The boy Flint looked on, his thoughts and feelings well hidden as always. Only the tiny man named Beetledown seemed to be actively thinking, his little forehead pinched into wrinkles.
“A moment, masters, I beg ‘ee,” Beetledown said suddenly, then skittered across the sloping roof with surprising quickness to the Grand and Worthy Nose and said something to that plump dignitary in their own tongue, a thin, rapid piping. The Nose replied. Beetledown spoke again. The assembly of courtiers all listened raptly, making little noises of wonder like the cheeping of baby sparrows.
Beetledown and the Nose trilled back and forth at each other until Chert began to wonder again if he had lost his mind, if this entire spectacle might be happening only in his own head. He reached out to the roof tiles and stroked the fired clay between his fingers, poked at the damp moss between them. All real enough. He wondered what Opal would make of these creatures. Would she put them all in a basket, bring them tenderly home to hand-feed them with crumbs of bread? Or would she chase them off with a broom?
Ah, my good old woman —what madness have we gotten ourselves into with this stray boy?
At last, Beetledown turned and trotted down the roof toward them. “I beg grace of ‘ee once more, masters. The Grand and Worthy Nose says tha can meet our queen, but only if we can put bowmen on shoulders of each of tha twain. ‘Twas my idea, and I be sorrowed for its ungraciousness.” He did indeed look ashamed, crushing his little cap in his hands as he spoke.
“What?” Chert looked to Flint, then back to Beetledown. “Are you actually saying you want to put little men with bows and arrows on our shoulders? What, so they can shoot us in the eyes if we do something they do not like?”
“ ‘Tis all that the Grand and Worthy Nose will agree,” said Beetledown. “My word did be bond enough for the young one, but you, sir, be a stranger to even me.”
“But you heard him. You heard him say that he lives with me—that I am his… stepfather, I suppose.” Despite his anger, Chert couldn’t help being a bit amused to find himself arguing with this absurd manikin as though with any ordinary man. Then he had a sudden, grim thought: was this how the big folk felt about him—that even treating him like a real person was an act of kindness on their part? He was ashamed. A Funderling, of all folk, ought to know better than to judge another person by his size. “Is that all they wish to do? Ride our shoulders and prevent us from doing wrong?” He realized he was as much worried for Flint as himself. Fissure and fracture, I am truly becoming a father, will it or not. “What if one of us coughs? Stumbles? I am not anxious to get an arrow in my eye, even a small one, over a misstep or a sudden chill on my chest.”
The fat Rooftopper offered something else in his shrill voice.
“The Grand and Worthy Nose says we could bind ‘ee, hands and feet,” explained Beetledown To his credit, he sounded a little dubious “ ‘Twould take some time, but then no one would fear wrongdoing.”
“Not likely,” said Chert angrily. “Let someone tie my hands and feet, up here on a high, slippery roof? No, not likely.”
He saw that Flint was watching him, the boy was expressionless but Chert couldn’t help feeling rebuked, as though he had pushed himself in where he was not wanted and was now spoiling it for everyone.
Well, perhaps I wasn’t wanted. But should I have simply let the boy climb the roof without a word, without trying to follow him? What sort of guardian would I be? Still, it seemed it was up to him to make things right.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Your archers may perch on me like squirrels on a branch, for all I care. I will move slowly, and so will the boy—do you hear me, Flint? Slowly. But tell your men that if one of them pinks me or the child without reason, then they will meet an angry giant for certain.” Despite his irritation and fear, he was startled to realize that to these folk he was just that—a huge and fearsome gian.t Chert the Giant. Chert the Ogre.
I could scoop them up by the handful and eat them if I wished, just like Bram-binag Stoneboots out of the old stones.
He did not, of course, share these thoughts with the Rooftoppers, but sat as still as he could while two of the mice, each bearing a rider, begin to climb his sleeves. The scratchy little claws tickled and he was tempted simply to lift the bowmen and their mounts into place, but he could imagine such a gesture being taken wrongly. The faces of the little men were frightened but determined within their bird-skull helmets, and he had no doubt their tiny arrows and pikes were sharp.
“What is this in aid of, by the way?" he asked when the guards were in place on his shoulders. “Lad, you have not told me why you are here, how you met these folk, anything. What does this all mean?"
The boy shrugged, “They want me to meet the queen.”
“You? Why you?"
Flint shrugged again.
It is like trying to chip granite with apiece of soggy bread, Chert thought. The boy, as usual, was as talkative as a root.