descent.
He found himself in a bedroom, or more accurately a bedchamber: it was too large, too full of shabby grandeur, to be merely a room. The ceiling was very high and the windows tall and heavily curtained – as in so much of the house, daylight was plainly unwelcome, forcibly excluded even when it had the chance to get in. There was a fourposter bed on a dais at the far end draped with still more curtains, layers of curtains, brocade frayed into threads and moth-eaten muslin, looped and scooped and tied with tattered cord. In the bed, supported on a lop-sided stack of pillows, was a man in a nightcap. He looked both fat and thin, his limbs like knotted pipe-cleaners, his rounded body smothered under a mound of rucked-up bedclothes. The rag-end of a bandage showed beneath the hem of his nightshirt. Another person stood beside the bed, holding a candle which dripped wax onto the coverlet. Nathan recognized him at once, even in the gloom – his dandelion-seed hair and elongated nose. The man from the library.
‘You could do with some light in here, Maj,’ he was saying. (Madge? Nathan thought.) ‘Let me open the curtains – open the windows. Fresh air, that’s what you need. Air and light!’ He set down the candle, almost setting fire to the drapes, and went to the nearest window.
‘It was Mrs Prendergoose,’ the invalid explained. ‘She thought the dark would help me sleep. Anyway, she says daylight is bad for the sick. And fresh air.’ He sounded almost apologetic.
‘Fiddle-fuddle! Twiddle-piffle! Woman’s a fool. Nurse to the princess, indeed – Nell’s so healthy she’s never needed a nurse. Wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Prendergoose couldn’t nurse a sick rabbit – or cook one, come to that.’ Daylight spilled in, revealing their surroundings to be even shabbier than Nathan had suspected, sombrely furnished and cobwebby about the corners. ‘Did she give you lunch?’
‘Beef jelly. She says it’s very nourishing.’
‘Probably right,’ said the old man with an abrupt volte-face. ‘Things that taste boring often are.’ He came back to the bed, twitching aside both covers and nightshirt to expose a bulky mass of bandaging from calf to thigh. In the stronger light the invalid looked very ill. His face must once have been round and merry, but his cheeks had dropped to the jaw and his eyes sunk deep in their sockets. There were grey shadows on his skin, dark as bruises. His nightcap slipping sideways should have given him a comic look, but instead the effect was merely pathetic. Nathan noticed a tiny crown embroidered on it and realized who he must be.
He’s the king. Of course. The king who’s sick. Maj … your Majesty …
The old man undid the bandage. Nathan couldn’t see very well but there seemed to be a long wound running half the length of the leg, imperfectly closed and seeping an evil ooze. The old man began to clean it, using a white cloth and water from a silver basin. Then he scooped dollops of thick paste from a jar and applied them to the infected area. ‘Honey,’ he muttered. ‘Amazing stuff. Extraordinary healing properties. Intelligent creatures, bees.’
‘It’s awfully sticky,’ the king pointed out. Some of it had found its way onto the bedding.
‘It’s supposed to be sticky. Change the linen later. Give the Prendergoose something useful to do.’
He covered the lot with padding and a fresh bandage, winding it round and round while the king, with a palpable effort, lifted his leg off the mattress. When it was over he fell back on the pillow-stack, his voice suddenly hoarse and faint. ‘Frimbolus!’ He seized the old man’s collar, trying to draw him closer. ‘Will I – will I ever be cured? Tell me the truth! How long has it been – ten years – twelve? What if I never get well again?’
Frimbolus detached the grasping hand and laid it gently down on the royal stomach, giving it a pat in the process. ‘Ten years,’ he said, in the tone of one who likes to get things right. ‘Nellwyn was four when it happened. There’ll be a cure – there’s always a cure. Anyway, we have to keep trying – mustn’t lose hope. Maybe the honey will do the trick. Magical stuff, honey. One of these days –’
‘Will I live long enough to be cured?’ the king said with a fretful movement of his head.
‘Spineless guffle!’ Frimbolus responded. ‘You’re the king, aren’t you? Duty – responsibility – loving daughter – loyal subjects! No business to go dying on us.’
‘How are my subjects?’ the invalid asked, sounding very weary. ‘They haven’t seen me for so long. Do they still remember their king?’
‘They’re doing all right. The princess looks after them.’ He doesn’t know, Nathan thought. They haven’t told him about the people leaving. ‘Important thing is to keep your spirits up. They mustn’t see you like this.’
‘Spirits … up …’ The king managed a smile, as though mocking himself, and then seemed to fall asleep.
Frimbolus emptied the basin out of a window, picked up the soiled bandages and left. Nathan tried to follow him, but the dream plucked him away, transporting him through a network of dim corridors where tapestries billowed in phantom draughts and embroidered horsemen galloped past him. Fireplaces yawned, dust sifted through the still air, pattering footsteps fled from him, vanishing into the muffling gloom of the house. Reality receded; the dream became surreal, the building a vast Gormenghast where his thought roamed endlessly, trapped as if in a maze, searching for something he couldn’t find. Then suddenly there was an open door, daylight, normality. Another room, another scene. A room whose fourposter bed looked small and inviting, patchwork-quilted, its curtains sewn with silver stars, its pelmet carved with more stars and a crescent moon. There was a sheepskin rug on the floor and a dressing-table with an oval mirror – a much bigger mirror than Hazel’s, Nathan noted. It was the sort of mirror in front of which a queen might have sat, ermine-collared and velvet-gowned, applying her eyeliner or demanding verification of her beauty from some supernatural source. But the person sitting there had untidy hair and a darned dress and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. The princess.
He knew now her name was Nellwyn, Nell for short. Princess Nell. It suited her.
Behind her was the woman he had glimpsed once before, calling her and the other children in from the garden. Her head was bundled up in a species of wimple and her plump face was worn with time and worry. It was the sort of face that Nathan would have called comely, an old-fashioned word which in his mind meant homely, pleasant, almost but not quite pretty. It was marred by the worry-lines on her forehead and the pursing of her mouth. She was brushing the princess’s hair, taking it a section at a time, dragging the brush through thickets of tangle while Nell winced and complained.
‘Prenders, please … Ouch! Why can’t I just leave it, like the other girls do?’
‘You’re the princess. You’re not supposed to look like other girls.’
‘Megwen Twymoor comes from one of our oldest families, so does Bronlee Ynglevere, and they don’t have to spend hours brushing their hair. I know: I asked.’
‘Megwen Twymoor looks like a gipsy, and Bronlee is barely six, so she doesn’t count. A woman’s chief beauty is her hair.’
‘I’m not beautiful,’ Nell said, pulling faces at the mirror. ‘Anyway, there’s no one here to see me.’
‘That’s not the point,’ said her nurse (Nathan was sure that was who she must be). ‘You don’t want to get into bad habits.’
‘I’d love some bad habits,’ Nell sighed.
‘One
