Bad Prince Charlie Page 7

  “Don’t rush me, Charlie. This is important.” The ghost took a pull from its bottle. “You didn’t happen to bring anything to drink, did you?”

  “I stopped drinking when I left Damask. Alcohol makes me short-tempered and irritable.”

  “Oh, that’s what does it, eh? Okay, I’m not going to repeat this, so listen up.” The ghost put one hand on its hip and held the other one out in what was apparently supposed to be a dramatic gesture, although the bottle in its fist somewhat lessened the effect. It spoke:

  But soft, the gibbous moon and starry night

  Give witness to the secret I reveal

  For whence I journeyed to the Land of Nod

  And there did meet a most unnatural death

  There in my bed, while deep in slumbered bliss

  Foul poison entered in my trusting veins

  Thus curdled blood . . .

  “What the hell are you going on about?” Charlie interrupted. “Are you trying to do iambic pentameter?”

  “Quiet! I’m dead, I’m bringing you a message from beyond the grave. Of course it’s in blank verse. There’s a protocol to these things.”

  “Well, save it for the open-stage poetry slam at the Cuppa Java.”

  The king was momentarily thrown off topic. “What is it with those coffee shops?” he muttered. “They’re everywhere. One and three for a mocha frappuccino? Where do people get the money to burn?”

  “If we could return to the subject.”

  “Charlie, I did not die from natural causes.”

  Charlie gave him a like-I-care look.

  “I was poisoned, Charlie.”

  “I’m not surprised. Alcohol poisoning is the first thing I’d suspect.”

  “Not alcohol poisoning!”

  “You were bit by a snake?”

  “Two snakes. Packard and Gregory. My own brothers. They poured poison—extract of hebenon—in my ear while I slept.”

  “No kidding? That really works?” Charlie patted his pockets, looking for a pencil stub. “Let me write this down. I may need to try it someday. Extract of hebenon?”

  “Dammit, Charlie! Your uncles murdered me!”

  “Good for them. They should have done it years ago. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it myself.”

  The ghost glared at him. “Your sovereign and father was murdered. It’s your duty to avenge my death. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Give them a medal? No, too public. Perhaps just a thank-you note and a bottle of wine.”

  “Charlie . . .”

  “Dad, I have to ask myself a question. In what way, exactly, is Damask worse off by your death? And you know, nothing is coming to mind.”

  “So you’ve turned against me, too,” the ghost said bitterly. It looked despairingly over the ramparts.

  “I’ve never been for you.”

  “Why? What have I done to deserve your opprobrium?”

  “You must be joking. You want the whole list or just the top ten? Let’s start with something you didn’t do. Specifically, you didn’t marry my mother.”

  The ghost did its best to look innocent and aggrieved. “Really, Charlie, is that what’s bothering you? Come now, I’m hardly the first man in the kingdom to sire a child out of wedlock.”

  “You banished her from the castle. You threatened her with death if she ever came in your sight again.”

  “Yes, well, that was for her own protection. To stop rumors.”

  “Rumors! You denounced her in public! You called her a slut and a whore!”

  “Foul lies! Honestly, Charlie, you know that a king always has opponents who will try to smear his reputation. You should know better than to believe stories like that. Where did you hear such nonsense?”

  “From you. When you got drunk and started bragging to your cronies about your sexual conquests.”

  “Um, okay, but the point was that you were around to hear those stories. I recognized you as my son, didn’t I? You are called Prince Charlie, aren’t you?”

  “You know damn well that’s an unofficial title. You didn’t recognize me as your son until everyone else in the kingdom was already calling me Prince Charlie, when it became obvious that we looked so much alike.”

  “Don’t change the subject,” said the ghost, changing the subject. “Did you come out here just to whine about your unhappy childhood? I tell you Packard and Gregory are not to be trusted. They’re up to something. You’ve got to warn the new king.”

  “Warn the new king?”

  “Right. Tell him to be on his guard. Whom did they pick, anyway? Was it Richard? Richard is the obvious choice.”

  “I thought so, too,” said the prince. “But no. They offered it to someone else.”

  “Jason, I’ll bet. I’m not surprised. I always thought he was pretty stupid. That’s the kind of guy they want.”

  “You think so?”

  “Oh yes. I know my brothers, and they’ll pick some dumb chump they can easily manipulate. That’s why you’ve got to act quickly. Get in to see whatever brainless idiot they’ve set up on the throne, and persuade him to come to the ramparts at night so I can tell him about . . .”

  “It’s me,” said Charlie.

  “It’s always about you. As I was saying, get the fool up here where I can talk to him.”

  “You’re talking to the fool now. It’s me, Bad Prince Chump.”

  The ghost stared. “Ridiculous. Why you?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad. Now let me ask you something. You said you were murdered while you were sleeping in bed, right?”

  “Right.

  “By someone pouring poison in your ear. While you were asleep, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, so if you were asleep, how could you know who poured the poison in your ear?”

  The ghost sputtered. “I know because . . . because . . . I’m a ghost, dammit. Ghosts know these things.”

  “Totally convincing. Okay, Ghost, you’ve said your piece. You are released. No longer must your tortured soul haunt the environs of your sad demise. You may continue your interrupted journey to that ethereal plane to which we all ascend upon our dying breath. Et cetera, et cetera.”

  The ghost looked exasperated as only a ghost can. “All right. God only knows what Packy and Greg are up to, but I’ve got to trust you. Charlie, I’ve got something else important to tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Ciao.” The prince started to walk off.

  “I mean it. This is important.”

  “I’m sure it is and that’s why I don’t want to hear it. I know how ghosts work. You’re going to start telling me something, and just when you get to the critical details, you’re going to fade away, or be interrupted, or yanked down into Hell, leaving me with an impenetrable mystery to solve. Well, forget it. I’ve got enough to do already.”

  “You have to find Thessalonius.”

  “I’m not listening.”

  “Quit fooling around. Get your hands away from your ears. Would I go through all the trouble of haunting these ramparts night after night just to tell you half a secret? Now start acting like a king . . .”

  “Prince regent, actually.”

  “Like a prince regent and pay attention.” The ghost once again assumed a dramatic pose. Charlie rolled his eyes but sat down on the wall and listened.

  Destruction of the city is at hand

  If weapons magical are come to light

  “Not verse again,” the Prince muttered.

  Too strong the power that in this kingdom lies

  Sorcery that can wreak a havoc great

  “That last line doesn’t scan.”

  “Shows what you know,” said the ghost. “It’s a trochee.”

  Thine uncles seek to make this weapon theirs

  And thereby to destroy Noile’s strength

  Their army shall be rendered into mush

  Like boiled zucchini too long ’ere the pot

  “Enough!” snap
ped Charlie. “Get to the point. You’re telling me that Thessalonius developed some sort of magical weapon?”

  “Yes. One with immense destructive power. If ignited at the right place and time, it can destroy an entire army.”

  “And you think Uncle Packard and Uncle Gregory want to use it to invade Noile?”

  “Exactly. I know them well, Charlie. Territorial expansion has long been an ambition of theirs. They suspected that Thessalonius had developed a Weapon of Magical Destruction for me, and they wanted it. They poisoned me when I refused to even consider their schemes.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Dad, you have it completely wrong. They don’t want to take over Noile. They want Noile to take over us. They’ve already sold out to Fortescue. They put me on the throne to have someone that Fortescue could easily overthrow.”

  The ghost shrugged. “Fine, have it your way, Charlie. That only makes it worse. Fortescue is the last person who should get his hands on a WMD. You can’t deny that he is warlike and ambitious. He’d use it without a second thought.”

  Charlie made a sound like an exasperated sheep. “Bah.” He turned away and leaned over the wall. There were still a few lights in the city below, glowing in the windows of late-night taverns and restaurants. He watched them for a while, thinking that he wasn’t prepared for this. He had expected to walk out tonight and meet a typical ghost with a typical secret—“The will is hidden behind the cupboard” or “The gold is buried beneath the old oak tree” or “The real heir was switched at birth with a swineherd’s daughter.” Now he was getting dumped on with another important responsibility.

  He turned back to the ghost, who had emptied the last few drops out of the bottle and was licking the rim. “All right. I agree for the moment that Thessalonius made a WMD and is hiding it somewhere. Tell me where it is and I’ll see that it is destroyed. Does that make you happy? And why did you even allow him to build such a device if you weren’t intending to use it?”

  “I can explain that,” said the ghost. “We intended to—hark!” It cupped a hand to its ear.

  “What?”

  I hear the feathered herald of the dawn

  The harbinger of early morning light

  “The what?”

  “I heard a cock crow.”

  “You did not!”

  “Yes, I did. There it is again.” The ghost began to fade away.

  “We don’t have cocks in Damask!”

  “Um, it was a peacock then.” The ghost was little more than a white shimmer.

  “Peacocks don’t count! Get back here!” Charlie screeched. He grabbed at the ghost, but his hands passed through empty air. Overbalancing, he ended up hanging over a parapet, looking at the courtyard below. A handful of guards were staring at him curiously. He straightened up and waved. “Just talking to myself a bit. Not a problem. Carry on.” He backed away from the stone wall and stood for long minutes, scowling at the place where the ghost had been. Then he said aloud, to no one in particular, “It’s cold out here,” and went back inside.

  Back in the misty reaches of time, when the forests were untamed, and the sea was a monstrous barrier to travel, when the climate was colder and wetter, and the highest passes were covered in snow for most of the year, an advanced civilization had flourished in these mountains. Archaeologists, with unusual good sense, called them the Matkans, because that’s what they called themselves. The Matkans had developed a crude writing system, and from the records that survived, scholars had been able to piece together a detailed description of their—even by classical standards—extraordinarily boring culture. Their music, for example, had never progressed beyond the penny whistle. They had produced tons of artwork, nearly all depictions of sea captains, sad-faced clowns, and kittens with big eyes. Their drama consisted entirely of watching a woman spin a big wheel with letters on it while trying to complete a mystery phrase. The Matkans would have been well and deservedly forgotten, had it not been for their roads.

  They built great roads. This hadn’t been discovered until fairly recently, for the Matkan roads had been long overgrown. But once the first one was found and excavated, more discoveries followed, and the archaeologists learned that those roads led to more roads, and those to more roads, thousands of miles of them, stone paths that extended through nearly half the continent. Big deal, some might say. Lots of civilizations built roads. But the Matkans went all the way, building a complete traffic system, with passing lanes, cloverleafs, and metered parking.

  Then the Matkans disappeared. Their civilization vanished. They left no clues to their disappearance, which did not prevent scholars from writing learned papers about it. Some said that climate change had destroyed their agricultural base, others that a murderous slave trade had caused them to leave their homes and flee into the forest. A few believed they had slowly poisoned themselves by eating a strange new sweetener made from maize, and a handful of the really dippy scholars claimed that the Matkans were so advanced that they had attained a higher plane of existence and transcended into beings of pure light. The truth, however, was that the Matkan civilization broke down because of the roads.

  “You never take me anywhere,” a Matkan woman would say to her husband. “I am so tired of being stuck at home with the kids, while you’re out chopping wood. At least you get to see the other woodcutters. And now there’s this new road running right past the hovel, so you can’t say it’s too far.”

  The husband would think it over for a while and agree. “No use paying all those taxes on roads if we don’t use them. Beside, there’s this gadget for the cart I’ve been meaning to try out. Called an axle. They say you can hitch an ox to the cart and get it up to three, maybe four miles per hour.”

  “Now don’t drive too fast,” the woman would caution. “You’ll get us all killed.”

  “I won’t,” the husband would lie.

  And so they left. First a few, and then more and more, until finally the whole society had packed their belongings, in carts or barrows or on their backs, to follow the roads. They never returned. Their destinations are unknown. Some say their descendants are still traveling, never stopping, searching for that ultimate, and unachievable, utopia—a district with good public schools and low property taxes. Left behind, their homes, public buildings, and temples fell into ruin. They collapsed and were covered over with grass and shrubs until nothing but a few half-buried chunks of stone remained to betray their existence.

  Except the Temple of Matka.

  It was still cold the next morning, and a bit misty, too, when Pollocks and the prince set out for the Temple of Matka. The guards at the gate saluted, but Charlie thought he noticed a tinge of disrespect in their manner. Most of the castle was still asleep. Pollocks was bleary eyed himself. “You’re the one who said we should get an early start,” the prince reminded him.

  “Yes,” his aide conceded. “Force of habit. It’s what I always said to your father. We never actually did it.” His stomach was grumbling. They had left before breakfast, when the cooks were still asleep. “There’s a coffee shop along the way,” he noted. “Perhaps we could stop for a muffin and a café au lait?”

  “Hmm?” Charlie had been lost in thought. “We can eat when we get to Matka.”

  “Yes. Fine with me,” said Pollocks. “I can wait. Whenever you’re ready.” The horses jogged on, past spring flowers, budding trees, and the occasional roadruner.2 They were each leading a second horse, for the road, though well paved, was steep. He tried again a little later, when they stopped to change horses and the sun was full up. “It’s just that the high priestess is, so to speak, high. You have to treat her with courtesy and respect. And it’s often been said that hunger can make a person short-tempered and irritable.”

  “That doesn’t happen to me,” the prince said absently.

  Not so anyone would notice, Pollocks refrained from saying. He was searching his mind for a tactful reply when Charlie asked, “Pollocks, is there an acting troupe in Damask?”


  Pollocks brightened. “His Highness wishes to go to the theater? An excellent decision. No, Damask doesn’t have a resident theater company, but right now there is a show in town called The Fishmonger’s Wife. It played for months in Alacia. I can arrange seats for you if you like. The tickets are seventeen shellacs, so they’ll cost you a ponce. I saw it, and it’s great. It’s about a fishmonger, you see, and he marries this woman with enormous . . .”

  “I don’t want to—wait. The tickets are seventeen shellacs but they cost twenty?”

  “By the time you add the reservation fee, the handling fee, the convenience fee, the parking fee, and the nonvoluntary donation for new theater construction, they’re up to a ponce each.”

  “I don’t want to see the play, Pollocks. I want to see an actor. Find the stage manager and bring him up to the castle.”

  Pollocks immediately looked worried. “The dungeons are getting pretty full, Your Highness, what with all the officials you’ve jailed for bribery and corruption. If you’re going to start arresting actors, we’re going to have a crowding problem.”

  “I’m not going to . . .”

  “Not that anyone would object, I’m sure. They’re actors, after all. But I’m not sure they’ve done anything bad enough to be jailed with the nobility.”

  “Pollocks,” said the prince patiently. “Find out who runs that acting troupe and bring him to me. I’m not going to arrest him. I just want to talk to him.”

  “Yes, Sire,” the aide said doubtfully.

  They stopped again on the edge of Lake Organza. It was a beautiful lake, deep and blue, whose smooth, clear waters reflected the deep green conifers on its banks, and the snowcapped mountains that rose around it. Snow melt and mountain streams fed it from three sides, and on the side facing Noile, a sparkling waterfall dropped eighty feet to become the Organza River. Normally the valleys of Noile were shrouded in cloud and drizzle, but today was unusually clear. Charlie found he could follow the twists and bends of the turbulent river all the way down to Noile’s capital city, and he could even see the sails in the harbor beyond it.