Phoenix by Richard Cowper

Author:Richard Cowper
Language: eng
Format: epub

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Margolis took lunch in the company of his secretary, his favourite neophyte, and Hana. Jonathan presided over the serving of the courses and poured the wine but for reasons of his own elected to eat his own meal in the kitchen. The morning’s business at the court having gone smoothly, the Tribune was in a good humour and laughed uproariously at his own jokes. Hana waited until the fruit bowl had been placed on the table and then said: “I have been speaking with the boy.”

“Boy?” Margolis arched an eyebrow quizzically. “Ah, yes, our bard. Well, go on.”

“He is himself now,” she said. “Still weak, of course, but the fever has left him and his wounds are healing nicely.”

“Good,” said Margolis. “A tribute to your nursing, my dear. And what have you found out about him?”

Hana glanced quickly across the table at Thomas but he was engrossed in the tricky problem of paring an apple and keeping the peel in one piece. “I am sure he is bewitched,” she said.

The Tribune’s eyebrows arched sceptically. “Oh, come now,” he protested. “Don’t tell me you found him flying round the room.”

Hana looked down at her plate. “I asked him how he came to be lying naked on the mountainside,” she said and then went on to recount all Bard had told her and what had happened afterwards. She made no attempt to heighten the story or to emphasize any particular aspect at the expense of the truth. When she reached the end she raised her eyes and found that everyone was staring at her. “He was not lying,” she insisted. “I will stake my life’s blood on that.”

The Tribune spat a plum-stone into his cupped hand and transferred it to his plate. This reopening of a subject he had already considered closed offended his sense of decorum, yet his faith in Hana’s judgment was such that he could not bring himself to dismiss her tale as arrant nonsense. He recalled Son Anthony of Luton and frowned. “It’s a strange story,” he said. “What do you make of it, Thomas?”

“Well, to be frank, Pontius, I suspect he’s trading on Hana’s good nature. I spoke to him this morning and mentioned in jest that I had at first supposed he might be one of the Old Ones. Is it not likely that he has decided to exploit the possibilities for his own ends?”

Margolis nodded to Hana. “What do you say to that, my dear?”

Hana shrugged. “I still say he was not lying. Of course I have no proof, but had you been there you too would have believed him.”

Margolis said: “But it is more than fifteen centuries since the Death, Hana—fifteen hundred years]—and in that time only once to my knowledge has anything occurred which might hint at such a possibility. What’s more, Son Anthony was writing six hundred years ago and from hearsay.” Poppy, who had been listening wide-eyed to the conversation, broke in with: “Oh, but I’ve heard all sorts of stories about them Ponty.

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