‘I don’t want to be a prince,’ Billy said at once, and he got a hurt look on his face as he said it. ‘I don’t want a stupid throne. I want Mina.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s good, Billy. It’s made me very proud, to hear you say that.’
I gave him a hug then, and he grinned at me to say that all was well.
Now it was morning, and Billy and me were in an anteroom of the palace waiting for an audience with the Princess Crown Royal herself. I had no idea how this was going to go, and had it been up to me I would have had Bloody Anne there beside me. Of course, it hadn’t been up to me. Ailsa had arranged this introduction, and Ailsa and Anne were far from what you might call friends. The invitation to the audience with Her Highness had been for Billy and me only and no one else, and even so I had been somewhat surprised to be included myself. I could only suppose that Ailsa felt that she owed me that much, at least, as Billy’s adoptive father and legal guardian.
She could have been there herself, of course, as his adoptive mother, but she wasn’t.
Fool, fool.
Of course she wasn’t. Ailsa was a busy woman, and what did she care that the heir to the throne appeared to be trying to court her son? I felt the bitterness swell in my chest for a moment, but then I remembered how horrified she had looked when I told her that the princess’ ‘shining boy’ was our own son, Billy. I wished I could know where I stood with Ailsa, me and Billy both.
Fucking fool.
‘Sir Tomas?’
The voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I looked up to see a nun standing in the doorway. She was a strong-looking woman with some thirty or so years to her. She was tall, and her habit pulled tight across the width of her shoulders. That one had been a soldier before she was a nun, I would have bet gold on it.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘And this is my son, Billy.’
‘Good,’ the nun said, and nodded to Billy. ‘My name is Sister Galina. Come with me.’
We followed her out of the anteroom and onto one of the many staircases that seemed to worm their way through the palace like the roots of old trees.
‘Tell me, Sister,’ I said. ‘You have the look and the age of a veteran about you. Were you at Abingon?’
‘Messia,’ she said, without turning to look at me. ‘I was assigned to the garrison there, after the city fell, and I missed the final battles of the war.’
‘I was at Messia too,’ I said, feeling the need to build some sort of bridge between us. ‘Missing Abingon . . . aye. You should thank the gods for your good fortune.’
‘I do no such thing!’ Sister Galina snapped, and turned on the stair to glare at me. ‘I am a Daughter of Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and I should have been there. I wanted to be there, but the army said it was not to be. It was my holy duty to be at Abingon, to see Our Lady’s will be done!’
‘And I am a priest of Our Lady,’ I told the nun, and I watched her face flush as I spoke. ‘I was there. I saw Our Lady’s will be done enough for all of us, trust me on that. I waded through rivers of blood at Abingon, for Our Lady.’
‘Forgive me, Father,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t know you.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ I said. ‘Our Lady respects your service, and She thanks you for it.’
I just had to sound like I meant it, after all. Sister Galina curtseyed deep to me, there on the stairs, and then she led us up to the Princess Crown Royal’s personal apartments. She was mine now, I knew that. That was how it was done.
The levers that move people. Sister Galina was moved by religious fervour.
At last we reached the door that led into the princess’ residence, where Ailsa had left me that time before when she went in to speak to Her Highness and ended up slapping her. There were guards outside now as there had been then, but I had no way of knowing if they were the same ones.
Sister Galina rapped on the door and pushed it open without waiting for a reply, and I thought that in itself said a lot. The Princess Crown Royal was technically the ruling monarch of the country, but of course due to her age she was nothing of the sort.
She was subject to her regent, and her regent just happened to be Dieter Vogel. Vogel, publicly the Lord Chief Judiciar and secretly the Provost Marshal of the Queen’s Men. I gave Sister Galina a sideways glance, and I wondered how much of that she understood. Did we even have nuns on our payroll? It wouldn’t honestly have surprised me.
Another nun was there waiting to receive her, and she nodded to Sister Galina and gave her what amounted to a very small curtsey. I knew little about nuns, but it seemed they had a form of hierarchy of their own. Almost all organisations do, in my experience, whatever they may be.
‘Sister,’ she said. ‘Her Highness will join you in her drawing room, and she is very much looking forward to receiving her visitor. And his father, of course, as is only proper
