The crystal cave - Mary Stewart [41]
There to my left was the high wall which masked my grandfather's garden, to the right the dovecote and the raised terrace where Moravik used to sit with her spinning. Ahead of me was the low sprawl of the servants' quarters. To my relief hardly a light showed. All the light and uproar of the palace was concentrated beyond the wall to my left, in the main building. From even further beyond, and muted by the rain, came the tumult of the streets.
But no light showed in my window. I ran.
What I hadn't reckoned on was that they should have brought him here, to his old place. His pallet lay now, not across the door, but back in the corner, near my bed. There was no purple here, no torches; he lay just as they had flung him down. All I could see in the half-darkness was the ungainly sprawled body, with an arm flung wide and the hand splayed on the cold floor. It was too dark to see how he had died.
I stooped over him and took the hand. It was cold already, and the arm had begun to stiffen. I lifted it gently to the pallet beside his body, then ran to my bed and snatched up the fine woollen coverlet. I spread it over Cerdic, then jerked upright, listening, as a man's voice called something in the distance, and then there were footsteps at the end of the colonnade, and the answer, shouted:
"No. He's not come this way. I've been watching the door. Is the pony in yet?"
"No. No sign." And then, in reply to another shout: "Well, he can't have ridden far. He's often out till this time. What? Oh, very well..."
The footsteps went, rapidly. Silence.
There was a lamp in its stand somewhere along the colonnade. This dealt enough light through the half-open door for me to see what I was doing. I silently lifted the lid of my chest, pulled out the few clothes I had, with my best cloak, and a spare pair of sandals. I bundled these all together in a bag, together with my other possessions, my ivory comb, a couple of brooches, a cornelian clasp. These I could sell. I climbed on the bed and pitched the bag out of the window. Then I ran back to Cerdic, pulled aside the coverlet, and, kneeling, fumbled at his hip. They had left his dagger. I tugged at the clasp with fingers that were clumsier even than the darkness made them, and it came undone. I took it, belt and all, a man's dagger, twice as long as my own, and honed to a killing point. Mine I laid beside him on the pallet. He might need it where he had gone, but I doubted it; his hands had always been enough.
I was ready. I stood looking down at him for a moment longer, and saw instead, as in the flashing crystal, how they had laid my grandfather, with the torchlight and the watchers and the purple. Nothing here but darkness, a dog's death. A slave's death.
"Cerdic." I said it half aloud, in the darkness. I wasn't weeping now. That was over. "Cerdic, rest you now. I'll send you the way you wanted, like a king."
I ran to the door, listened for a moment, then slipped through into the deserted colonnade. I lifted the lamp from its bracket. It was heavy, and oil spilled. Of course; he had filled it just that evening.
Back in my own room I carried the lamp over to where he lay. Now -- what I had not foreseen -- I could see how he had died. They had cut his throat.
Even if I had not intended it, it would have happened. The lamp shook in my hand, and hot oil splashed on the coverlet. A burning fragment broke from the wick, fell, caught, hissed. Then I flung the lamp down on the body, and watched for five long seconds while the flame ran into the oil and burst like blazing spray.
"Go with your gods, Cerdic," I said, and jumped for the window.
I landed on the bundle and went sprawling in the wet grass, then snatched it up and ran for the river wall.
Not to frighten the pony, I made for a place some yards beyond the apple-tree, and pitched the bag over the wall into the ditch. Then back to the tree, and up it, to the high coping.
Astride of this, I