She backed away and worked her way out to the exit. And caught the eye of another portrait, one she had never bothered to do more than glance at before. A woman. A thin white-faced woman with black hair piled up high and an angry little frown between the eyebrows. Hildy. O great One! Misery came thundering down on Maewen again, more than she had thought possible—and here she had thought she was as full of it as she could be. Memories came with the misery: Mitt brushing at the damp patch of her tears in the Lawschool; the straight, greasy feel of Mitt’s hair when she put the crown back on him; the incredible knuckliness of Mitt’s hands….
Maewen caught up with herself to find she was racing upstairs again, pushing past a big party of tourists and then another, and then hammering on upward alone. By the time she flung through the doorway of the palace office, she hardly had breath left to pant. She leaned against the wall to recover, watching the usual frenzy, people rushing all over, papers being passed, typing, telephones ringing. Dad sensed she was there. He put down a telephone to turn to her over his shoulder and raise his chin inquiringly.
That pose! Now Maewen knew whom Navis had all along reminded her of. Both of them were short men. And just like Dad, Navis was in his element giving orders and attending to a thousand things at once. No wonder Mitt had made Navis a duke and let him organize the kingdom! Dad saw she needed something and came over to the door. That was like Navis, too.
“What’s the matter, Maewen?”
Nothing, she wanted to say. I’m only in love with a King who died over a hundred years ago. Stupid. Keep your mouth shut. “Dad, who did Amil the Great marry?”
He raised an eyebrow, although unlike Navis, he could not do it without raising the other eyebrow slightly, too. “Is this important? All right, I see it is. Well, she was never very prominent. She seems to have been rather a retiring character, because very little is known about her apart from the fact that she was very tall, and I believe she was also very kind-hearted—”
“Her name, Dad!” Maewen said. “Not a lecture.”
“Didn’t I say?” He was surprised. “Enblith—though she is not, of course, to be confused with Enblith the Fair.”
“Thanks.”
Fancy that! Maewen thought as she ran away downstairs. Biffa! Biffa! Well, Mitt had shown some sense, at least! And it was really a very good choice, she thought, patrolling round the museum gallery while she waited for Kankredin to show himself. Biffa was nice—so nice, in fact, that it was entirely likely that Mitt had lived happily ever after. Maewen tried to feel glad. But in moments she was saying, “I expect he forgot about me entirely after a day or so. I don’t suppose he thought about me once in the rest of his life.”
Her voice rang out, peevish and hurt. Don’t be so ridiculous! she told herself. Kings have to marry. Besides, he had to remember you in order to get the waystone changed to a huge one, like I told Moril it was. And—well, the waystone was not really a message, since it had to be there—but Maewen stood suddenly stock-still, wondering if Mitt might not indeed have left her a message, buried in history. She was on her way upstairs again, before the idea had had time to be fully formed.
“Dad!” she said from the office doorway.
Dad was reading a bundle of papers, but he came over to her. “Yes?”
“Dad, how did the Tannoreth Palace get its name?”
“Amil named it,” Dad said. “I’m sure I told you the first day you were here. Nobody knows quite where he got it from. The first part, tan, is the old word for ‘young’ or ‘younger,’ and we assume Amil was thinking of Hern’s old palace, which may have been on the same site.”
“And the noreth part?” Maewen asked.
“Nobody knows. It seems to be just a name—Maewen, forgive me, but I must get this read before the Queen’s Office phones me.”
Maewen galloped away downstairs again, thinking, Young Noreth—no, the younger Noreth! Not Noreth, but the one who was younger. Great One! He named a whole palace after me, and I’ll never be able to say thank you! It made her eyes prick, and it warmed the heavy hurt inside her without making it any better. She walked twice round the gallery, hugging Mitt’s message to her. Then there were other things that she just had to know. Upstairs she dashed again.
“Dad!”
She forgot how many times she rushed up to the office or quite what order she asked the other questions in. Each time Dad was surprisingly patient—like Navis, if you really needed something. Or was it, in some confusing way, that Navis had had some kind of family feeling for Maewen? One of the first things she asked was, “Dad, who did the Duke of Kernsburgh marry?”
Dad frowned. “I really don’t remember the name of his first wife. But his second wife was the widow of the Lord of Adenmouth.” He clicked his fingers. “What was her name? Eltruda, that was it!”
“Thanks, Dad.” Noreth’s aunt. It all fits. And downstairs again to patrol round the gallery.
Upon one of her reappearances in the office, one of Dad’s young ladies handed her a cheese roll, saying it was lunchtime. Maewen had no appetite. She carried the roll about as she patrolled. She was carrying it when she saw Wend coming and fled from him up to the office again. There she had to stop and eat the roll, chokingly, for fear of offending the young lady.
“Dad, who did Hil
d—er, the Duke of Kernsburgh’s eldest daughter marry?”
“Hildrida. Dear me. That family seems to be an obsession with you,” Dad said. “I really can’t remember. She certainly did marry, because her descendants are still Wardens of the Holy Islands, but—Not that Hildrida ever spent much time in the Islands. Amil was there far oftener, and so was Hildrida’s brother, Ynen, building up our navy. That was when Dalemark first became a big sea power, you know. Ynen tried out the first steamships there.”
Bless Dad and his lectures! Maewen thought. You always got twice the answers you asked for. Sometimes on her visits to the office she got more than she wanted, like the lecture she got when she asked who Hobin was. That lecture started, “You mean Bloody Hobin of Holand? He was the center of the uprising in the South at the start of Amil’s reign. Like so many revolutionaries, he got quite out of hand….” Maewen did not attend to this one much, because it was all about Hobin and nothing about Amil.
But there were times when she got next to nothing, as when she asked, “Moril the Singer, Dad? Does history say anything about him?”
“No,” Dad said. “I never heard of him.”
“Hestefan the Singer, then?”