The Promise of the Child

CHAPTER 1 (updated daily)

THE PROMISE OF THE CHILD

VOLUME ONE OF THE AMARANTHINE SPECTRUM

TOM TONER

'Smiles form the channels of a future tear.'

Byron

'It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.'

Oscar Wilde

PROLOGUE

Praha: 1319

Eliška watched the rain outside while she waited, the windowpanes already misted with the steam from her sodden furs. The chestnut leaves brushing the glass were a rich emerald green against the dark sky, fat and luscious from a fourth summer of unceasing rain. Somewhere in the square a peddler was shouting, his calls softened by the downpour.

She let her eyes wander to the desk before her, carved from light wood and heaped with papers. Thick black and red seals of office dangled from some like dried scabs, snapped where the knife had slit them. If she stood from her chair she might perhaps see some of what was written, but she knew better than to think of disturbing anything on that wide table, instead looking to the shelves, her eyes settling on the fireplace. The dank day made it feel much later than it was, but the flagstones in the hearth were clean and swept, the andirons resting on them still unused. There would be no fire tonight in this fine, high-ceilinged room, not even if its master worked at his desk until morning.

On her walk across the mostly deserted Judith Bridge, she had seen a woman leaning against the parapet, vomiting into the swollen river. Two stray hounds on the far side had stopped in the driving rain to watch her with ears pricked, their eyes bright. Eliška had hurried on, her escort clapping his hands to shoo the animals. The dog packs had a taste for children, but it couldn't be long before they started after larger prey in this starving city. People blamed the rotten meat thrown into the shambles for encouraging the packs, and perhaps soon they'd need to be hunted in the narrow streets like boar in a woodland.

Hearing the muffled bells of St Vitus sounding across the Mesto, she looked back to the window, watching the scrape of damp leaves against the glass.

'Princess.'

The voice in her ear was pleasant, conversational, but she gasped nonetheless.

'Do not stand,' the man pleaded, holding out a ringed hand and smiling down at her look of alarm. He glanced over her furs and tutted. 'You are wet.'

'Bonjour à vous, Aaron,' said Eliška softly, composing herself and running a hand over the fur at her throat. She knew it pleased him when she practised. 'I walked.'

Her husband's principal exchequer, acting ruler of Bohemia in all but name, nodded and smiled brightly, glancing out at the square. 'I would have sent someone if you'd written ahead.' He went to his desk and papers, sparing them a cursory glance before moving to the window. Eliška knew the glance was contrived to be casual, but those eyes took in everything; they'd have spotted a single moved or shuffled document, any item out of place. Not for the first time, she wondered if it might be a test, leaving his private correspondence for all to see while they waited in his office, and whether the sheaves of paper were even important at all.

At the window, the man stopped, taking in the view between the trees. 'Praha looks splendid even in this rain, don't you think?' He turned to her, that face always somehow difficult to recall, kind and avuncular, just beginning to run to fat from years of sitting behind great tables.

'As lovely as Paris?' she asked him, trying her best to smile.

He laughed lightly, a breath from his nostrils. 'Very nearly.'

Her eyes lowered to the newest chains of office around his shoulders, globular garnets winking from their links. John had rewarded his advisor well for his years of service, as had his father before him. The town house he kept on Seminárská was no indication of Aaron's true wealth – the man could have had a palace carved from blue Carrara marble or splendid quarters in the castle on the hill if he so chose – but this modest building had served as the advisor's sole residence since her husband's coronation in 1310, before the years of famine and damp had scoured the city.

'They say the rain will continue all summer,' she said, sitting back in her chair and watching his reflection in the glass as their eyes met. 'But Gascony and Aragon will be spared this year.'

Aaron's reflection continued to watch her, a spirit peering in at her from the window. He shook his head.

'Not England. I have a letter from King Edward; he writes that there was no bread for him with his supper when he stopped at one of his towns in June. No bread for their own king. Bohemia is not yet that desperate.'

Bohemia. Perhaps when it is, you shall take your leave.

Eliška glanced to the thickly embroidered rug covering most of the pale floorboards beneath her chair, as if in contemplation. There might be letters from more illustrious men than Edward on that table, had she the courage to look earlier. A certain Pierre, a friend of Aaron's and a fellow Frenchman, wrote to him often. Pierre went also by the name of Pope Clement, when it pleased him.