Free The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner Page A

mainly grass, acres of it. If I was rich. Gentle slopes planted with trees, and a lake or a stream, like the grounds of a palace in the country. You could ride a horse across it. You can do whatever you want if you’re rich. Maybe if I trained in magic and became as famous as Aldebaran. Or more likely, if I was high up in the army. But I’d never get anywhere in the army. I paced faster.
    A noise made me start, and I turned and saw Maria coming out into the yard.

    I noticed that I was walking in a circle, and stopped where I was. “Just … er … getting some fresh air,” I said.
    “Me also,” she said, and crossed to the gate and leaned over to look down the alley into the street. “I am glad to see you well again.”
    “Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for helping me … you know, the other day.”
    “It was nothing,” she said. And then, turning to me, “You looked so tired and pale—you look quite different with some color in your face.” Of course, she looked just the same as I remembered, only perhaps even prettier.
    “Where is Anselm?” I asked her.
    “He’s asleep—for once,” she said. “Upstairs. My mother is with him.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Oh, he makes me so tired! It is a lot of work caring for a baby, and yet I get bored with it. I cannot agree with people who say that awoman’s work is nothing but bringing up children and cooking and cleaning.”
    I laughed. “Then you are in a minority for sure these days.”
    “Perhaps I am.” She smiled.
    “Of course I love him dearly,” she went on. “I don’t mean that I don’t. He is so sweet; who could not love him? But … I don’t know! Today he cried for three hours, hardly stopping for breath; I was in despair! And then my mother came through the front door and said at once, ‘He wants his blanket.’ I told her that he already had his blanket, in fact two, and she said, ‘No, Maria, his yellow blanket.’ And she went and got it, and laid it on him, and he stopped crying straightaway. And then she said something about a ‘mother’s touch.’
I’m
a mother. She’s not to be believed! I tell you what—she is the one who drives me to distraction, truly, not Anselm.”
    “It must be annoying,” I said, into the silence. “If she always thinks she can bring up a child better than you.”
    “That’s exactly what she thinks,” she said. “But it’s not as if he is her baby.” I was watching her mouth as she talked.
    “No,” I said.
    “I cannot be expected to know everything that she does, but she doesn’t even give me a chance. And she has only brought up one child anyway. That does not make her an expert.”
    “Maybe that is why she is like that,” I said.
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, perhaps she feels threatened by you. As if she doesn’t want you to be better than her at looking after children. I mean, not exactly that … but …”
    “No—it’s a good point.”
    “Just a thought.”
    We stood in silence. Maria twisted a loose splinter from the gate, frowning, and dropped it distractedly. “It annoys me,” she said, “the way she’s always telling me I’m wrong, or else looking disapproving, like this.” She showed me, pulling her mouth into a tight line and raising her eyebrows. I laughed, but she looked beautiful even when she did it.
    “I’m surprised if she really looks like that,” I said.
    She laughed too. “Well, perhaps not so bad, but you know what I mean by it. It’s driving me insane.”
    “I’d guess that it would.”
    “What do you think I should do?”
    “I don’t know. I know nothing about that sort of thing, as no doubt Stirling will have told you.” They seemed to have been talking often since Maria had arrived.
    “Not at all,” she said. “He never has anything but the highest praise for you. Only yesterday he was saying that he missed you at school because you always looked after him.”
    “Truly?” I was pleased. “Typical