More than anything in the world I wanted my ma to be there to see that, but even Our Lady can’t raise the dead.
I turned away from Iagin then, before he could see the tears in my eyes.
Chapter 16
Two days later I was in the palace for my investiture.
I was wearing my very best mourning clothes, and so were Anne and Billy. We were in the throne room itself, with some hundred or so other folk all in black. Most of the governing council were there too, so I was told, and a great number of nobles and courtiers and other folk whose purpose in this world completely escaped me.
The Princess Crown Royal was up on the dais, seated on the famous Rose Throne that had been her mother’s. Massive red banners hung vertically behind her from the high ceiling, bearing the white rose of the royal house and providing almost the only colour in the room. The outsized golden chair made the princess look more than ever like a porcelain doll, and once again she wore a heavy black brocade mourning gown and a black satin cap that covered her blonde hair. Both gown and cap were heavily sewn with black pearls.
Her royal father the Prince Regent was beside her on the dais, wearing another dress uniform with a broad black sash across the breast, but no medals that day. I wondered idly if Vogel had taken them away from him as a punishment. If so, it occurred to me, he didn’t know the Prince Regent half so well as he thought he did. The prince sat in the same smaller throne that had been his as Prince Consort, but it was he who ruled there now.
On the face of it, anyway.
Ailsa stood at his right shoulder, slightly behind him, and as the audiences wore on she frequently leaned forward to whisper some word or other in his ear. Whether they were her words or Vogel’s didn’t matter; the prince was quite obviously being told what to say by the Queen’s Men. Ailsa looked like a visiting Alarian queen herself, standing at his shoulder in a magnificent black silk gown that put my fine coat and doublet to shame. I watched her as the time slowly passed, and I swallowed with a dry throat.
Lady, but she was beautiful.
Fool, fool, I told myself.
Billy tugged on my sleeve. ‘Papa, that’s the princess up there, isn’t it?’
‘Aye,’ I said, wondering who the fuck else he thought it might be. ‘That’s Her Highness the Princess Crown Royal, in the throne next to the Prince Regent. You saw her on the balcony, you remember.’
‘She’s got the cunning in her,’ Billy said.
I turned and stared at him. Billy could see the cunning in those who had it, I knew that, but this shocked me all the same.
‘Are you sure, lad?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ he said. ‘Maybe she doesn’t know it, but she has. I know she has. I couldn’t see before, not from that distance, but I can see it now. And she’s very, very strong.’
When Billy knew a thing in that way he was always right. Except for the time when he hadn’t been, of course, the time that had cost Captain Rogan his life and Cutter half his face. I swallowed again. I didn’t want to think about that, or what it might mean.
‘Aye, well,’ I said. ‘That’s good to know, Billy. Thank you.’
Her maids have a lot of accidents. Burns, mostly. Bad ones. Apparently it’s becoming hard to hide.
I wondered what that might mean. I thought back to the funeral, and how fast the fire had spread and how hot it had burned, hot enough to make the coffin catch alight and roast the queen’s foul remains inside. I had thought that was strange at the time, but with the uproar of the guests and the princess screaming and the magicians watching and everything else to worry about, I had put it out of my mind. Now that he said it, though, it made sense. I wondered if she did know she had the cunning.
Burn, you witch, the princess had screamed at her mother’s coffin.
I thought perhaps she did, or that she at least suspected. Perhaps she had inherited the cunning from her mother, and resented it. The cunning was low magic, sorcery, no different to witchcraft in anything but name. That was something to be feared, maybe even something to be hated. That wasn’t a thing for princesses. It certainly wasn’t something for a queen.
I was still thinking on that, and wondering whether I should tell anyone or not, when a herald called my name.
‘Father Tomas Piety of Ellinburg,’ he announced me to the assembled people.
I bowed and walked slowly towards the dais the way Ailsa had instructed me to, my left hand held behind my back and my right down against my thigh in a way that symbolised how I wasn’t reaching for the sword that I wasn’t wearing anyway. I felt something of a fool, but apparently this was how it should be done.
There was a curious gilded stool below the dais, square and carved, with four stout, short legs, topped with red velvet and with a raised rail on its right side. This was the Knighting Stool, so Ailsa had told me, and she too had knelt there once.
The Prince Regent stood when I approached, and our eyes met. It had only been a few days since he had been weeping drunkenly on his knees in front of me, only a few days since he had confessed his terror at the thought of his daughter taking the throne, but of course we both pretended otherwise.
‘Father Tomas,’ the prince said, ‘you are to receive the accolade of the most holy Order of the Knights of the Rose Throne,
