‘Oh dear,’ Ailsa said.
‘Right, so she’s not happy, then,’ I said. ‘What’s the word from the Old Man, Iagin?’
‘We arrest him tonight. Our little princess has a new toy she wants to play with.’
Chapter 23
Arresting the likes of Baron Lan Drunov was our bread and beer by then, and I won’t record the details of it here. Suffice to say we broke into his house that night, Iagin and me and Bloody Anne and some of our boys, and we dragged him out of his bed and back to the house of law with us. The interesting thing happened two days later, in the early evening.
Our little princess has a new toy she wants to play with, Iagin had told me, and I soon learned what he meant. Apparently the crown had some time ago commissioned the construction of a massive new siege cannon, larger than any we had used at Abingon. Quite why, or how anyone was paying for it, were questions best not asked. All the same, I was given to understand that the monstrous thing was now complete and awaiting its first live firing.
Perhaps I was being naïve, but I didn’t see it coming at the time.
At sundown that day we were outside the city walls, on what is now called Cannon Hill, to the north of the city. The hill had some other name in those days, but I can’t remember what it was. Half the fucking court was there, and Ailsa and Iagin and Konrad and me.
The cannon was truly enormous, and I knew it had taken a great number of men and oxen to drag the thing up there onto the hilltop that morning. It had a barrel diameter of twenty inches or more, and it must have been fifteen feet long at least. The barrel was made from great bars of iron hooped with black iron rings, all fused together into one huge mass of hatred and destruction. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have weighed, much less cost.
It would have been almost impossible to move under battlefield conditions and it was utterly stupid, but it seemed that the Princess Crown Royal was well pleased with it. She was seated under a black silk canopy atop tiers of hastily constructed wooden benches, commanding a view along the length of the cannon and out into the open farmland beyond.
‘Lady’s sake, Ailsa,’ I whispered to her, ‘this is ridiculous.’
‘It’s Her Highness’ will,’ Ailsa said, and turned away to make an end of it.
Her Highness’ will, I thought. That was all it took, to move this many men and beasts, drovers and carpenters and soldiers and all the other people who must have been sweating blood for the last two days to make this mummer’s show happen because Her Highness fucking willed it.
That was what royalty could do, even with only twelve years to them.
‘Tomas,’ Iagin said, appearing at my elbow. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’
There were tents all around the tiers of raised seating, taverners and vintners and folk who were cooking meat on sticks over open fires to sell to the assembled crowd of nobility. Pedlars always appear from nowhere at any event like this, like flies around a carcass. I let Iagin lead me to a tavern tent where we bought mugs of strong beer for a few coppers.
‘I’m seeing it, Iagin,’ I murmured to him, ‘but I still don’t quite believe it.’
‘What part are you struggling with?’
‘The cost of it all,’ I admitted. ‘The sheer fucking waste.’
‘The Old Man thinks it’s worth it.’
‘Aye, to keep Her Highness happy, perhaps. What does her royal father the Prince Regent make of all this, I wonder?’
‘He’s not here,’ Iagin said, and I frowned for a moment before I realised he was right.
‘No, he ain’t, is he? Shouldn’t he be?’
Iagin’s huge moustache twitched as he smirked at me. ‘Should he? That would depend on who you ask.’
I supposed it would, at that.
‘Aye, well,’ I said, and took a swallow of my beer. ‘How long?’
‘Not long,’ Iagin said. ‘We ought to take our seats.’
I followed him to the tiers of benches, and we climbed up half a dozen or so rows to find our places beside Ailsa.
‘Where’s the Old Man?’ I asked, as Iagin took a drink and wiped beer from his huge moustache with the back of his hand.
‘With the princess,’ Ailsa said. ‘With the Prince Regent deciding not to join her, he thought she would benefit from a fatherly arm to lean on.’
‘This was her fucking idea,’ Iagin muttered, but I didn’t think Ailsa heard him.
Had the Prince Regent truly decided not to join her, I wondered, or had he been prevented from doing so? He might be back under house arrest again, for all I knew. By that point it really wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that he was.
The sun was setting by then, and before I had finished my beer a fanfare of trumpets sounded. We all turned and craned our necks to look up at the royal box, where the Princess Crown Royal was now up on her feet. Lord Vogel was standing beside her, I noted, wearing the most severe mourning clothes a man could commission. He rested a hand on the princess’ shoulder as she spoke in a voice that quivered with the drugs coursing through her young veins.
‘My loyal subjects,’ she began, ‘a time of change is a difficult thing. The death of Her Majesty our royal mother has shocked the realm, but it is my duty and my honour to assure all those here gathered that the crown remains resolute in the face of our enemies. I assure you all, the Rose Throne stands like a rock in the tempest, unassailable and unbreakable.’
I looked up at her, standing there with Vogel’s hand resting on her shoulder in a fatherly manner, and I wondered if the little lass had ever known a time of change before in
