Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher

shoulders. I saw his fingers tighten and her face twist with pain.
    â€œWhat is it?” he demanded. “Tell me, girl!”
    She dropped her head. The words were very faint, but one heard them.
    â€œShe is dead, sire.”

FOUR
RIDING NORTH
    K ERMIT SAID: “SHE DROWNED, SIRE . That is all.”
    He was palace surgeon, and had held this office as far back as the reign of Prince Egbert, Stephen’s father. He was tall and thin with a face like an egg, having a fuzz of white whiskers at the bottom of the oval and a thinner matching fuzz at the top. He had two younger surgeons to assist him and treated them with contempt. His pronouncements were usually brief and always final.
    My brother said: “But how drowned?”
    â€œShe was in her bath, and alone. She fainted, one must suppose, and slipped beneath the water.”
    â€œShe was young, healthy. Why should she faint? Can you be certain she was not poisoned with some drug?”
    â€œShe drowned,” Kermit repeated. “If she had felt illness, a pain, she had a maid within call, in the next room. She could have been at her side in a moment.”
    Peter said bitterly: “She should have been with her, not in another room.”
    â€œThat is so,” Kermit said, “but it was not permitted. It is known your Lady had strange scruples.”
    He was speaking of that extreme modesty of the body which all the Christians had. The women wore long enveloping gowns. Ann had refused to have maids attend her in her dressing even.
    Peter groaned, his whole body shaking. “If I had known . . . !”
    Kermit said: “You asked, why should she faint? When a woman is with child she may have spells of dizziness. If she lies long in hot water it may be more likely.”
    Peter stared at him, hot eyed. “Why did you not prevent her, knowing that?”
    â€œPrevent? I advised against too much bathing. You have heard me. She did not listen.”
    â€œYou did not tell me there was danger to her.”
    Kermit shrugged. “There is always danger in ignoring a surgeon’s words. But no harm would have come had she kept her maid beside her.”
    Peter was silent. He looked as though he fought against something in himself: an impulse, perhaps, to strike down this creaking old man who showed more pride than pity. Kermit asked at last:
    â€œIs there anything further I can do, sire?”
    â€œCan you bring her back to life?” Kermit looked at him but did not answer. “Then go!”
    He went stiffly, his dignity ruffled by the brusqueness of the dismissal. Peter and I were left alone. He shook his head from side to side and his face was creased with naked pain. He said:
    â€œLuke, how did it happen?”
    â€œI do not like the man,” I said, “but it must have been as he says.”
    â€œIf someone came in . . . and found her there defenseless. An assassin could have held her head beneath the water—so easy a thing.”
    â€œCame in from where?” I asked. “Beneath the window there is a drop of fifty feet, and a guard patrolling at the bottom. The maid was in the next room and beyond that there is the corridor and another guard. There is no way for a man to come in. And if he got in, how could he get out again?”
    â€œThe maid might have been bribed. I could have her put to torture.”
    â€œYou could,” I said. “But the maid was Gerda, who for years served your mother and tended you as a boy.”
    And who came to me, I could have added, when that mother lay under sentence of death, begging me to visit her so that she in turn could plead with me to intercede for her son.
    Peter banged a fist against his head. “I think I am going mad. . . . To talk of torture—what would she think of it? But I am tormented with miseries and hates. I almost hate her, whom I loved and love. That she should have been so careless of herself: she had no