Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 5 An anthology of stories

“We should worship her as a miracle,” I said evenly, coldly, straight into his eyes.

“We should kill her, and smartly! She is a demon! The longer she lives, the longer she dazzles such fools as you! You will see,” he hissed close to my face, “how pretty she is, all red-boiled and bursting. You will see what insolence will bring you, and thinking you can please yourself!”

It took some while to ready the pot, though boiling water was brought down from the council-house kitchens. It was a large pot, big enough to boil several people at once, I would have thought. They built the fire so high that the walkway around the top of the pot began to scorch, and a man was sent up there, to keep it wettened, and not catch fire himself. Every face about me, except for the King’s and the more important of the courtiers’ imitating him, was alive with surprise and curiosity, or with a kind of greed—whether for more suffering by the Aquilina or more embarrassment of the King I could not tell—and some with suppressed mirth. Whatever his state of mind, every man here, at this moment, contained very little more than the vitality of his interest in what would befall them next, this woman and this king, what damage would be done by each upon the other. I was glad the maid had her back to us still and did not see any of this, how eagerly men wished her ill, and the lengths they were going to, to see her harmed and to have that harm endure.

They led the woman to a spread net of rope, such as is used to tangle and tie a mad bull in, and subdue it. They made her stand in the middle of it; they threw the corner-ties over a ceiling-beam and the net rose around her and lifted her, and up it carried her to the railing of the pot-platform, where a hook held it aside from the rising steam. Up went the King and his nearest; one of these turned and beckoned for more to climb the wooden steps, and my father was high-ranked enough that he could bustle me up there, and press me to the front of the crowd, where a second railing kept us from pitching forward ourselves into the bubbles, into the cauldron full of torch-flash and darkness.

“You see what fate awaits you, girl,” said the King, stilling the murmur around him that the sight of the water had started.

Silence from the net.

“Answer His Majesty!” snapped some official.

“His Majesty did not ask a question,” she said coolly; I could not see her face for stripes of rope-shadow. But her voice was clear enough, fine and light among these rumblers and roarers. “Yes,” she said, “I see my fate there in that water, in that fire—is that the answer you wish for?” A green eye, only, looking sharpish out.

“You know the answer I want, girl,” said the King, and truly he did look most handsome and noble, regarding her fiercely and gently both, as if he could not quite believe what he had come to, as if he might take pity on her at any moment, did she show any sign of distress, or of indecision. “Marry me and you live. Refuse me and I lower you to boiling.”

“Then lower me, Your Majesty, if those are my only choices. For my body and soul are not mine to give to you.” And her fingers, strong and lean and sun-browned, sprang through the netting and grasped it in preparation.

Soldiers unhooked her, and let her out to swing in the steam, in the silence but for the fire-noise, but for the water bursting and rolling. Within the ropes, she looked up and listened, as if she were a child hiding, waiting for the seeker to find her, for her amusement to begin.

The King gave a sign. Some other behind him passed it on, and the men below began to let out the rope.

It would have been most unsatisfactory for His Majesty, for the drowning woman let out not a whimper, let alone a scream or a begging for mercy, but went down into the water silent as a turnip or her bouquet, and the water closed over her head, and her dark hair lifted and snaked on the bubbled water a moment among the ropes. Then, only the weighted corner ropes stood stiff out of the turmoiling water, and the steam buffeted all our faces, without cease.

“There,” said the King. His be-ringed hand gestured for the bringing up of her body. Little sighs of accomplishment sounded around us, murmurs of excitement at the prospect of seeing what had been done on her, but my father the Captain only leaned, with his wrists on the rail and his hands fisted, looking down, watching the woman boil.

Up they hoisted her, but we could not see her immediately for the steam pouring up and the water pouring down, and then she was only a slumped thing in the net there. The man with the hook-stick caught and pulled the net towards the platform, and a space was made, several people having to move down the steps to make room.

But not us; we were only one layer of watchers from where she was brought to land. Her small foot hung white below.

“You said she would be boiled red,” I whispered to the Captain.

The foot touched the wooden platform and dragged as if it were dead—but then the touch woke it, and it braced itself against the boards, and in the moment that the net was loosed from above and fell open about her, up rose the shepherdess, the miracle girl, to standing. The steam of the boiled rope, of her boiled self, rushed up, rushed out. “Praise my Lord and Lady and all the Saints for their works and wonders!” came her clear, happy voice out of the cloud, and there she was, not a mark upon her, no worse for her wetting, or for being wrapped in boiling-wet cloth and cloaked in boiling-wet hair.

All fell back from her—in horror, in wonder, in both—and the Captain pulled me back too, so it should appear I did the right thing, instead of standing forward and laughing and clapping my hands with delight, as I was tempted to do.

The King? I saw a flash in his eyes, just a moment there and then gone, of the rage I had seen in the Captain’s face, hissing and pressed close to mine. Then the handsome man was stony-faced again.

“Bring my robe and mask,” he said, and on the word mask his voice broke to a growl. “Bring me a flask of spirit. Bring reeds, bring knives—you know what I need.” He did not look at those he commanded; his gaze was fixed on the steaming, smiling woman.

The courtiers looked to Bones-and-brains, who was a little forward of them, startled-faced and on the point of speaking. But the King was motionless, watching the shepherdess like a hunter keeping a faun in sight as he fits an arrow to the string. Mr Bones stepped back into the servants’ doubtful silence, not taking his eyes from his master. “You heard His Majesty,” he said sharply over his shoulder.

The whole platform about us was glances like knives or darts thrown hither and thither, the very air dangerous with them. The Captain kept his grim face so steady that I could watch in his eyes the last of the steam rising off the lady, but the rest of the court and chamber were too nervous to speak or stay still. “Where should we be?” hissed someone. “Is it safe for us?”

The King stepped towards the outer railing, men scattering like shooed flies before him. He looked down on the great room; there was standing-room for many watchers around the rack, and the wheel, and on either side of the cat-pit. “Along the wall there,” he said with a large gesture.

“All along, sir?” said Mr Bones, with doubt in his voice, then, “Very well,” he added most obediently.

“What is he doing? What is he planning?” I hissed under the turn and shuffle of people around us, the quiet exclamations around the King’s iron silence.

“He does it in battle,” said the Captain, his voice dead of opinion or feeling. “Only a King has this power; the priests awaken it when they invest him.”

“Power to what?” I knew a dozen outlandish stories: that the King could fly, or call down thunderbolts, or conjure great winds to flatten the enemy like a field of grain stalks.