The Talisman

disobeyed me in connection with some little job, and I am angry with you. I think no one will stop us if we make this performance convincing. At least I can get you inside – but it might be a little trickier once we are in. You think you can do it? Convince people that you’re my son?’
    ‘My mother’s an actress,’ Jack said, and felt that old pride in her.
    ‘Well then, let’s see what you’ve learned,’ the Captain said, and surprised Jack by winking at him. ‘I’ll try not to cause you any pain.’ Then he startled Jack again, and clamped a very strong hand over the boy’s upper arm. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and marched out of the shelter of the flap, half-dragging Jack behind him.
    ‘When I tell you to wash the flagstones behind the kitchen, wash flagstones is what you’ll do,’ the Captain said loudly, not looking at him. ‘Understand that? You will do your job . And if you do not do your job, you must be punished.’
    ‘But I washed some of the flagstones . . .’ Jack wailed.
    ‘I didn’t tell you to wash some of the flagstones!’ the Captain yelled, hauling Jack along behind him. The people around them parted to let the Captain through. Some of them grinned sympathetically at Jack.
    ‘I was going to do it all, honest, I was going to go back in a minute . . .’
    The soldier pulled him toward the gate without even glancing at the guards, and yanked him through. ‘No, Dad!’ Jack squalled. ‘You’re hurting me!’
    ‘Not as much as I’m going to hurt you,’ the Captain said, and pulled him across the wide courtyard Jack had seen from the cart-track.
    At the other end of the court the soldier pulled him up wooden steps and into the great palace itself. ‘Now your acting had better be good,’ the man whispered, and immediately set off down a long corridor, squeezing Jack’s arm hard enough to leave bruises.
    ‘I promise I’ll be good!’ Jack shouted.
    The man hauled him into another, narrower corridor. The interior of the palace did not at all resemble the inside of a tent, Jack saw. It was a mazelike warren of passages and little rooms, and it smelled of smoke and grease.
    ‘Promise!’ the Captain bawled out.
    ‘I promise! I do!’
    Ahead of them as they emerged from yet another corridor, a group of elaborately clothed men either leaning against a wall or draped over couches turned their heads to look at this noisy duo. One of them, who had been amusing himself by giving orders to a pair of women carrying stacks of sheets folded flat across their arms, glanced suspiciously at Jack and the Captain.
    ‘And I promise to beat the sin out of you,’ the Captain said loudly.
    A couple of the men laughed. They wore soft wide-brimmed hats trimmed with fur and their boots were of velvet. They had greedy, thoughtless faces. The man talking to the maids, the one who seemed to be in charge, was skeletally tall and thin. His tense, ambitious face tracked the boy and the soldier as they hurried by.
    ‘Please don’t!’ Jack wailed. ‘Please!’
    ‘Each please is another strapping,’ the soldier growled, and the men laughed again. The thin one permitted himself to display a smile as cold as a knife-blade before he turned back to the maids.
    The Captain yanked the boy into an empty room filled with dusty wooden furniture. Then at last he released Jack’s aching arm. ‘Those were his men,’ he whispered. ‘What life will be like when—’ He shook his head, and for a moment seemed to forget his haste. ‘It says in The Book of Good Farming that the meek shall inherit the earth, but those fellows don’t have a teaspoonful of meekness among them. Taking’s all they’re good for. They want wealth, they want—’ He glanced upward, unwilling or unable to say what else the men outside wanted. Then he looked back at the boy. ‘We’ll have to be quick about this, but there are still a few secrets his men haven’t learned about the place.’ He nodded sideways, indicating a faded wooden wall.
    Jack followed him, and understood when the Captain pushed two of the flat brown nailheads left exposed at the end of a dusty board. A panel in the faded wall swung inward, exposing a narrow black passageway no taller than an upended coffin. ‘You’ll only get a glimpse of her, but I suppose that’s all you need. It’s all you can have, anyhow.’
    The boy followed the silent instruction to slip into the passageway. ‘Just go straight ahead until I tell you,’ the Captain whispered.