Ambergate (10 page)

Even from the boat, Chance had recognized the girl, as soon as he had seen her with the vagrant. They were standing not far
from the grassy wall that ran along the reach of the river. She’d been half hidden behind the man, but Chance had known at
once the shy, sideways tilt of her head, her long sweep of hair.

When their search for the girl—Number 102—at Murkmere had proved futile, Caleb Grouted had produced the Wasteland chart he’d
ripped from the wall of the Lawman’s hut. Chance had heard Mather say, “Excellent foresight, Lieutenant Grouted,” and he had
ground his teeth with envy.

Then Mather had ordered Caleb to carry out a preliminary survey of the river, with a view to searching the Wasteland for Number
102. Chance was told to accompany the Lord Protector’s son and guard him.

Chance had never actually believed the girl could have reached this fearful place alive, but all along the Gods had been on
his side. They had granted him this stroke of luck. He said nothing to Caleb about seeing the girl; he was going to arrest
her himself. If he said anything to Caleb, then Caleb would take all the glory. Chance’s plan was to go ashore while Caleb
was distracted by the vagrant, seize her at gunpoint, and shackle her to himself for the journey back in the boat. She would
be his prisoner by rights and Caleb could do nothing.

But Chance didn’t like stepping on to the shifting shingle; when he took his first step, stones, mud and sand moved under
his feet, and his musket banged against his back. He looked with distrust at the short coarse grass that stretched before
them in the gray light. Caleb, impatient, headed off in front. He spotted the vagrant again and, with a shout of triumph,
raised his musket.

And then the girl stood up.

The birds came from nowhere, it seemed—the swans.

As Caleb raised his musket, they rose from the inlet beyond him in a fury of white feathers. They hissed ferociously, outstretched
necks like snakes. Their wings created a slamming and booming of air that seemed to vibrate to where Chance stood transfixed.
In the churning storm of wings and necks and beaks, Chance couldn’t tell how many there were; he’d never seen so many swans
together.

They circled Caleb. Caleb, whimpering beneath them, tried to aim his musket. Then they flew lower so that they were just above
his head. Chance saw him dodge and duck, his musket wave wildly. He was too frightened to move, to go to Caleb’s rescue.

Suddenly there was an explosion of gunfire. Chance had the impression of something heavy falling from the sky through a cloud
of white smoke.

At once the swans ceased their attack and veered off. He heard the thrum of their wings as the great birds cleaved the air
laboriously.

In the distance Caleb crouched down. He began to sob: loud, noisy sobs of relief.

Chance came to himself at last. He trembled with shock.
The swans are the guardian spirits of this place
, he thought.
He’ll he damned
.

Caleb stumbled back toward him, red in the face and wild-eyed, clutching his smoking musket. An acrid smell clung to him.
“I shot one, didn’t I?” he said with triumphant bravado. “I shot a swan, filthy creature. I frightened them all off. I killed
a Bird of Significance and survived. What does that mean, eh, Chance?”

“Not good, I reckon,” muttered Chance, still trembling.

Caleb seized him by the collar of his jacket. “You fool. It means I’m more powerful than they are. You saw, didn’t you? They’re
only weak creatures, after all. It died, shot with one of my musket balls! Only wish I could have killed that vagrant. Those
blasted birds got in my way!”

Chance, half throttled, automatically balled his fists, but before he could throw a punch, Caleb hastily released him. Chance
glowered and readjusted his collar.

“Not a word about this back at camp, understood?” growled Caleb. “Say nothing to Mather. I’ve the power to make things very
unpleasant for you, don’t forget. Could get you discharged—like that.” He snapped his fingers.

Chance nodded resentfully. “Goin’ to leave it behind then, are you, Sir—your trophy?” he managed to say with heavy sarcasm.

Caleb stared. “What?”

“The bird you shot.”

Caleb opened his mouth, thought better of answering, and brushed past Chance to the boat. Chance followed sullenly. There
was no way he could search for the girl now, yet she had been so close to him—still was, no doubt. On the other hand, this
place gave him the creeps. He wanted to leave smartish in case those swans came back.

Behind them the Wasteland was silent.

Poorgrass Kayes

G
add took me to Poorgrass in the dory that self-same day, as soon as he had made Erland as comfortable as he could.

He washed Erland’s wounded leg with a vinegar mixture to quell the bleeding, then dressed it with a sour-smelling poultice
of yarrow. When that was done, he said we should set forth immediately, while the tide was on the ebb and in our favor. There
would still be light enough to get us to Poor-grass, and to get him safely returned on the flood tide before nightfall.

I was shocked. “Must I leave while Erland is in this state, Mr. Gadd?”

Outwardly, Gadd seemed his calm self, but his face was grim. “You say one of the soldiers saw you?”

I nodded miserably. At the time I had scarcely cared whether they did or not. I thought Erland dead, that the Lord
Protector’s son had shot him as the swans flew about his head. It had been impossible to see what happened in that frenzy
of feathers, the fog of white smoke.

But it was a flesh wound: the musket ball had ripped past Erland’s thigh. There was so much blood, though, that I had to tear
up his shirt and my petticoat to staunch and bandage his leg before I could help him limp back to the shelter. He couldn’t
tell me what had happened: he was speechless with pain.

“It be wisest to leave now,” said Gadd quietly. “The soldiers may return and search the Wasteland any time. You’ll be safest
in Poorgrass, with your new employers.”

“Shall the soldiers come here to question you, do you think?” I asked fearfully. “Shall you tell them the truth, Mr. Gadd?”

“What truth be that?” said Gadd, shrugging. “Nay, you’ve told me neither your given name nor birthplace. And Erland be too
ill to speak, so I shall do his talking. Nobody knows nothing, I shall say. All we did was take in a sick young maid and tend
her till she be well again, as we would any of God’s creatures.”

I looked at Erland lying helpless on his pallet beside the fire, as I had done myself until only recently. His eyes were closed:
he slept; and how dearly I wanted him to wake, to protest that I must stay to look after him, that I was his love. In the
song about the Amber Gate the maiden tends her true love, who is sick unto death, and words from the refrain kept running
in lunatic fashion through my head:
And shall he wake no more? And shall he wake no more
?

“You will give Erland my address, won’t you, Mr. Gadd?” I begged. “I’ll be allowed time off, I’m sure, to see him next time
he comes selling in Poorgrass Kayes. Get word to me, I beg you, of how you’re both faring. You’ll remember where I am, with
the Bundishes of Gull House?”

I prayed Gadd’s memory still worked: he was an old man, I thought dismally.

“Erland will find you, wherever you be.” Gadd moved jerkily about the shelter, sucking in his breath as he bent to pick up
sail bags and ropes.

“I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused,” I said in a low voice. “All this is my fault—and now you have to put yourself at
risk as well as Erland.”

“Bless the maid,” he said, his smile strained. “Erland would have been shot whether you was there or no. They be like that—soldiers.”

My old clothes had become too ragged and filthy to wear. I was dressed in a skirt that Gadd, in the kindness of his heart,
had roughly stitched for me from a piece of supple leather, and a warm sheepskin jacket that had once belonged to Erland when
small, as had my laced leather boots. I took a brush of boar’s hair and brushed myself clean of Wasteland mud. At least my
old frayed bodice had had a wash in hot water only two days before. As for my face, I rubbed it with a wet cloth until my
cheeks stung, and then I combed my hair, tying it up with string for lack of ribbons or bonnet.

But in truth I little cared if my employers thought me some outlandish country clod. My heart was heavy.

I looked my last on Erland’s peaceful face.
I will see you
soon
, I thought, but immediately into my head came the maddening refrain:
And shall he wake no more
?

I shut the mahogany box that he’d given me and tucked it under my arm. Then we left.

“Oh, Mr. Gadd!” I gulped, crouching down uncomfortably as the dory rocked in the current, the sail billowed wildly and the
waters fought beneath the hull, “I’m not sure I like this!”

“You’ll not need endure it long,” said Gadd shortly. He pulled on a rope somewhere, and the sail became taut. Suddenly wind
and water were moving us along in a surge of speed. But I could not understand how it was we remained afloat, given the fearful
straining sounds of rope and sail and wood. And over our heads was the incessant mockery of the herring gulls, and all around,
the cold gray surface of the river waiting to gulp us down.

I shut my eyes; it seemed the safest thing to do. “I can’t swim,” I whispered to myself.

Holding the tiller steady above me, Gadd said, “I cannot swim neither, and have never had need to yet.” I took comfort and
opened my eyes a crack to see where we were.

“Look,” said Gadd. “See Poorgrass Kayes? There be her watch-tower.” Indeed, there the tower was, rising against the overcast
sky and easy to mark, since the land was flat all the way.

“It is no distance at all!” I exclaimed. I felt considerably cheered.

“Little by land, farther by water,” Gadd said.

And so it proved. Though my eyes watered with looking,
the tower never seemed to draw any closer. The river widened and narrowed and widened again, as we sailed past mudflats, salt
marshes, and low mounds of samphire and seaweed.

But at last the mudflats gave way to dykes, the long shingle banks protecting the farming land that sheltered behind them:
fields still mostly bare and brown, divided by draining ditches. Sheep clustered down by the river and sheltered around the
few stunted, windblown trees; they skittered off when we passed close.

Far beyond our little boat, the gray river flooded into the horizon and became part of the vast gray sky. “Is that the sea?”
I asked.

“The town sits before the bar,” said Gadd. “It be the sea, right enough.”

“It’s too big,” I murmured in dismay. This place was to be my home. Could you live in a port and turn your back on the sea?

Gadd found a mooring for the dory on the nearest quay. Above us, warehouses of dark brick rose from the long causeway, which
was thronged with merchants and seamen, bartering and arguing over piled barrels and bales of wool. Around us sailors threw
their ballast over sails hung between boat and quay and shouted to each other in words I didn’t understand.

My head rang after the peace of the Wasteland; my heart sank to my boots.

Two young men from a fishing smack helped me onto the quay, and Gadd after me. They doffed their woolen caps to us, then said
something to each other, laughing. An old
fisherman, chewing a lump of mastigris as he sat on a bollard, stared at me expressionless and spat out a stream of orange-stained
spittle.

There was a trawling net by my feet full of dead fish: the reek was overwhelming. For a moment I thought I’d be sick.

Gadd and I looked at each other. Gadd twisted his old leather hat between his hands. “Now then, Miss Scuff, tide’s turning.
I must get myself home.”

“Of course you must, Mr. Gadd,” I said. My feet rocked beneath me with the remembered motion of the river. I felt oyster shells
splinter beneath my borrowed boots. I swallowed hard. “I don’t think I realized Poorgrass was so very far…”

“You have the address safe?” said Gadd.

I felt for the parchment tucked into the pocket of Erland’s old jacket, and nodded.

“Then fare you well, maid.”

That was all he said. He turned and scrambled awkwardly back down into the dory. The young fishermen watching didn’t help.
When Gadd glanced up, they moved back to their black-hulled smack, shoving at each other and making a lot of noise.

I couldn’t watch Gadd sail away and leave me. I shifted the mahogany box more securely under my arm, then bent my head, crunched
over scattered fish bones to the causeway, and slipped quickly into the crowd.

I was tempted to go up one of the alleys between the warehouses. It would bring me out into the town where someone
might well know the Bundishes and where they lived. The house couldn’t be far.

I could see a marketplace down the end of one alleyway. I hesitated at the opening. It was dank and narrow; filthy urchins
played in the puddles. A man came out from a hidden doorway and spoke roughly to them. He looked over at me. My scalp prickled;
I walked on hurriedly.

Gull House is on Kaye Street
, I thought.
It must be here on the causeway somewhere
.

I began to search along the warehouses, weaving my way in between the groups of haggling merchants before the open doors.
Most were too engrossed in their business to pay me any attention, but when I wandered out onto one of the quays, a sailor
looked up from coiling rope to stare at me, eyes gleaming in his weather-beaten face. He smiled; he seemed friendly.

A small boy crouched nearby, feeding a plump cat a dish of milk. I looked at the milk thirstily. I’d had nothing to eat or
drink since breakfast at first light.

‘All alone, Miss? You somethin’ to sell?” The sailor’s eyes went to the mahogany box under my arm.

I tightened my grip on it. “No, indeed, Sir,” I said quickly, and turned back to the causeway. I’d heard the sound of the
Capital in his voice.