Crossing Over (41 page)

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Authors: Anna Kendall

BOOK: Crossing Over
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We moved out of the apple cellar and along the passage. It was faced with rough-hewn stone, although the smell was of damp earth. The ceiling was even lower than the apple bin, so that I had to walk at a half crouch, and the passage was so narrow we went single file, Maggie in the lead with her lantern. I felt dizzy and my hand ached. Every few yards I leaned briefly against the damp stone to rest. Then I forced myself on.
Other doors, all closed, lined the passage. I smelled grain and wine. Then the tunnel turned, widened, and ended in a low room with a rough wooden staircase going up to a trapdoor. The room was littered with leather boots, crops, and a girl’s soiled shift. Straw, nowhere near as clean as that in my apple cellar, heaped in one corner.
Maggie said over her shoulder, “The couriers and kitchen girls sometimes use this room to . . . well, you know.”
I didn’t ask if she had ever
you-knowed
here. I knew that she had not. I was her first, as she was mine.
“Roger, let me go ahead. To see who is about.”
I nodded. She set down the lantern, climbed the steps, raised the trapdoor, and disappeared.
Alone, I collapsed onto the straw pallet. My breath came heavy and hard. The stump of my wrist began to hurt in earnest, but it was nothing compared to the panic in my mind. How could we get away? And if we escaped the palace, where could we go?
My whole life, it seemed, had consisted of desperate attempts to escape. From Hartah, from the soldiers who had hung the yellow-haired ship wrecker, from the queen, from Lord Solek’s men, from Hygryll. I longed for a place from which I did not have to escape, a place of peace and tranquility. . . .
But the only place like that was the country of the Dead.
I had just hauled myself to my feet and turned to climb the staircase when the trapdoor opened. Maggie’s face loomed above me, her fair hair falling into her bruised eye. The other half of her face was white with shock.
“They are leading the queen to the fire now!” she said. “And Lord Robert rides hard on the horizon with an army!”
31
 
LORD ROBERT HOPEWELL.
I had forgotten him . . . and why not? The last time I had seen him had been months ago, kicking the door of the queen’s privy chamber and bellowing, “Caroline!” And then the queen, barefoot and wearing nothing but a short shift, her dark hair tumbled loose around her bare shoulders, Lord Solek just gone from her bedchamber. Now Lord Robert was riding at the head of an army he had raised somehow, among farmers or outlanders or who-knows-what.
Did he love her still, love the queen’s changeable and ruthless and tender beauty, even though she had betrayed him with the savage chieftain? He must still love her, to challenge the old queen’s Blues for his Caroline’s life.
I looked up at Maggie and said urgently, “Where are they burning the queen?”
“Just beyond the west bridge! So that the villagers can see . . . The pyre is ready. Come up quickly, there was no one around except the servant who told me, and he’s gone to—come!”
But I was not able to climb the steps. Maggie had to descend and then half carry me up. She was incredibly strong. We emerged into a room crowded with pallets, saddles, items of Blue livery, bridles, and the strong odor of horsey men who lived close together. Across the chamber, a door opened onto the bright sunshine of a courtyard. I hobbled toward it, Maggie half supporting me.
“What’s the quickest way out of the palace?”
“Through the kitchens.”
My old route out to the city. After we left the couriers’ courtyard, I recognized the route. But we couldn’t follow it. All at once people filled the corridors, servants with ashen faces, even a few soldiers shouting orders. Maggie dragged me into a side passage to avoid being seen, and then into another, and all the time we were moving farther away from the kitchens. Finally we found ourselves in the courtyard outside the throne room. And there stood Mother Chilton.
“Roger,” she said quietly. She looked not at all surprised to see me. “You should not be up and about.”
“The Blues—” I gasped. “The battle—”
“Yes. I know. Come with me.”
“I can’t . . . I must . . .”
“You must get away. Yes. But not quite yet.”
She walked to my other side, away from Maggie, who shrank back slightly but did not let go of my weight. However, Mother Chilton shifted most of my bulk to herself. She, too, was much stronger than she looked. Was that true of all women, then?
No. Not of Cecilia.
“Drink this,” Mother Chilton said, and I did.
Its effect was immediate. Not only did my pain vanish, but strength surged through me. I stood straight, feeling my knees steady, my head lose its dizziness, my eyesight sharpen.
“It won’t last long, and you will pay for it later,” Mother Chilton said. “One always pays, for everything. But you already know that better than most, Roger Kilbourne, do you not? Come.”
Then the great throne room doors were unlocked and open—how?—and we three walked through them. Something more had happened to my brain. Now it floated just above my head, keen-eyed but somehow unable to formulate a clear thought. I was seeing everything, understanding all, but deciding nothing. Mother Chilton decided, and I was content to obey without question, a plant turning its leaves to follow the sun. The drink . . . there had been something in the drink. . . .
Mother Chilton led us through the vast throne room, once filled with Lord Solek’s men chanting his glory as he arrived in The Queendom:
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Bee-la kor-so tarel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
 
It seemed as if the savage song still filled my ears, although now the huge room was silent and empty. Mother Chilton stopped at a blank expanse of wall to the left of the dais and moved her fingers quickly over sections of stone: first high, then low, then high again. The stone swung open.
Maggie gasped, but I merely smiled. It was all right. Everything was all right since I drank the potion, and of course there were secret passages in the palace, hadn’t I always known so? Silly Maggie, to wonder at that. The queen had needed . . . What had the queen needed? There was something I was supposed to remember about the queen, but I could not. All I remembered was her bending over me in the candlelight of her privy chamber, more beautiful than any painting, handing me a goblet of wine. I was just back from a journey—what journey? Where? I couldn’t seem to remember, and yet it was there, somewhere in my mind . . . something about the queen. . . .
“Come,” Mother Chilton said.
Another staircase. But I climbed this one easily, without strain. And why not? Everything was all right, had always been all right, always would be all right. I smiled at Maggie, who glared at me, and I climbed the spiral stairs. A tower . . . we were ascending a tower. Glory had only one tower. Hadn’t I climbed it before? I couldn’t quite remember.
Another door, and we stood in a tiny room, smaller than even the apple cellar. Two vertical slits in the stone wall let in daylight. Mother Chilton closed the door behind her.
Maggie said fiercely, “What potion did you give him?”
“That’s not for you to question, child,” Mother Chilton said.
“If you knew of this secret room, then why did I have to hide him in the apple cellar? Where there was more chance of him being found?”
“This room is not secret while the queen lives.”
The queen. There was something I was supposed to remember about the queen. . . .
I said lazily, “I smell smoke.”
Maggie gave a cry and darted to one of the vertical slits in the wall. What could be out there? Smiling at her eagerness, I moved toward the second slit.
“Have a care, Roger,” Mother Chilton said quietly. “The potion will wear off very soon.”
“Oh,” I said, unconcerned. I put my eye to the slit.
The tiny room looked out over one of the bridges spanning the river from palace to countryside. At first I could not understand what I was seeing. A bonfire—was it Midsummer’s Eve, then? There were bonfires on Midsummer’s Eve, always. But although I couldn’t seem to remember the date, wasn’t it too early for Midsummer’s Eve? Or too late? Anyway, bonfires were for nighttime. This was full day. People, many people, were running
away
from the bonfire. Villagers and palace servants, all scattering and screaming. What a noise! Other people were trying to get close to the bonfire, and those people seemed to be soldiers, with more soldiers stopping them. . . . None of it made sense.
Why was Maggie crying like that?
Something strange was happening with the soldiers, most of whom were dressed in blue. No, only the closer ones were dressed in blue. . . . There were horsemen, too, in green, with one man on a huge black charger. He looked familiar. I could see everything sharply, more sharply than usual even at this distance, the air must be particularly clear—
The air—
The smoke—
The fighting—
“Have a care,” Mother Chilton said.
The
screaming
—
Something lit up in my head, and I understood.
Queen Caroline writhed and screamed, tied to a stake in the center of the bonfire. The flames had caught her green silk gown. Her black hair, tossing wildly as she flailed, became tipped with fire. Beyond the pyre stood a ring of Blues, the Blues I had brought back from the country of the Dead, and they cut down every man who charged against them. Lord Robert’s army vastly outnumbered the few hundred Blues, but the Blues could not be hurt. Swords passed through them, clubs did not crush their skulls. They didn’t even bother to carry shields. The attackers, on the other hand, fell to the ground, sometimes two or three deep. Blood spouted from their arms, chests, mouths, and I could see their faces twitch in agony as they died.
The queen went on screaming, a high inhuman shriek, as her flesh began to burn.
Lord Robert’s horse plunged through the fighting and somehow reached the pyre. He flung himself off his mount, which had three or four swords sticking from its poor body, just as the beast collapsed on the blood-slimed ground. Lord Robert waded into the pyre, jumped back, went again in. With his sword he slashed at the ropes that bound the burning queen.
A Blue came behind him, raised his sword, and prepared to pierce Lord Robert’s back.
Maggie cried out. But I did not—
could
not. The scene before me wavered, and if it hadn’t been for Mother Chilton, I might have fallen. But she held me up, pushing me against the stone wall, and so I saw what happened next. What I had known would happen, ever since Maggie had told me in the apple cellar what day it was.
The Blue soldier attacking Lord Robert disappeared. It happened quickly. His flesh melted and ran; I could see the grotesque mask his face became, but only for a moment because it lasted only a moment. His body turned to bones and the bones to dust, and then all that was left was a pile of blue clothing and tarnished armor, the soldier gone.
And so was all the rest of the army I had brought back from death.
Lord Robert’s army—what was left of it—fell on their knees and covered their eyes. Some cried out, words made unintelligible by fear and distance. The din was terrific. But missing from the shouts and prayers and exclamations was one sound.
The queen no longer screamed.
I sagged in Mother Chilton’s arms and she lowered me to the floor. Standing over me, her old face was calm. She said, “Caroline is dead.”
“Yes,” I managed to say, despite the weakness that suddenly pressed on every part of my body, as if it were covered with heavy stones. But it was not weakness, it was sleep. I held it off long enough to make one more effort of will, one more biting of my raw tongue, to cross over for the last time.
 
 
All was serenity in the country of the Dead. The broad river flowed placidly, the sky shone with its featureless gray light, the Dead sat and stared at nothing. I saw many of Lord Solek’s men, in their shaggy furs, sitting calmly on the ground, their faces blank and their
guns
stilled. I saw many, many Greens, as well. Some had died at the first battle with the dead Blues, the one that began in the laundries and raged through the palace a fortnight ago. Others had switched sides, as some men will always do, and had perished in the battle at the pyre, defending the queen to whom they had felt no loyalty in the first place. Interspersed among them sat the newly slain soldiers of Lord Robert’s army, equally tranquil. Up close, I could see how many of them were boys or old men. The desperate Lord Robert had taken what soldiers he could get, by force or bribery or—it was possible—loyalty to Queen Caroline.
There were no Blues among the Dead. I was the one who had seen to that.
In all that vast peaceful landscape, only one figure moved. She rushed toward me, her beautiful face twisted with fury and grief. “Roger! Where am I?”

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