Dragon's Keep (11 page)

_Punishment

ON
our
ride down
the path I warned Kit not to speak to any in the castle. We
might tell of her cure in time, but I sensed Mother would find Kit's voice good
reason to dismiss her. The queen liked it well that my lady's maid was mute.

We dismounted in the graveyard. "We'll
take the secret way inside." I felt along the wall for the tinderbox that
the sexton kept hidden there. Candle lit, we entered the Pendragon tomb
and passed Queen Evaine's carved effigy atop her
stone casket. In
a deeper chamber down more stairs I found the jagged
crack and gave it a push. With a squealing sound of stone on stone the wall
moved back.

"This is our way of escape if the castle
is ever under siege," I whispered. "Father showed it me last year,
but you must never say you've seen it."

"Aye," whispered Kit hoarsely. And
whom could she tell, being mute to all but me?

We looked down the dark passage. The tunnel
seemed a living thing, a long serpent wending beneath the earth. The dank

air
that wafted from the opening smelled like rotting
meat. I stepped inside but Kit held the small doorway. "I feel a chill,
Rosie."

"A wet
passage," I said, shouldering my misgivings. Together
we closed the door and walked the muddy floor in the
flickering rushlight.

Down the dark tunnel I heard a soft scuttling
noise across the walls. Rats. I wanted to run but this was our only way in.
Side by side we stepped along, following the passage that ended in the wine
cellar, and as we pushed against the door, I spied the casks all lined against
the wall.

The door creaked when we pressed it shut
behind us and we held our breaths, but no one came to check the noise.

We might have made it to our beds. And
sometime before dawn, I might have mended the tear in my glove to leave off all
suspicion. But Marn was far too motherly. Awakened by the
cold, she discovered Kit and I were missing. Anon
she caught us
creeping down the hall. Marn drew us both into her chamber
and shut the door.

"Now, where have ye been!" she
cried. "I'm of a mind to thrash you both!" She squinted at our soiled
gowns, the bit of blood still on Kit's
mouth,
though I
thought I'd wiped it clean.

"Who's harmed you?" she cried.

"She took a fall from her horse," I
said, thinking of no better lie.

"A
fall?
Ah, my
precious girl! Are ye hurt?" She held Kit close
and wept into her hair. "Wicked girls," she
scolded through her tears. "How could you think to go riding at night
without so

much
as a sprig of wolf's bane to protect ye? Ah, I'm such
a fool
to let you slip out so!" She
cried as she undressed Kit and searched
her for blood wounds.

"God be praised," she said, dabbing
her eyes with her shawl. "The fall did you little harm, poppet." She
wrapped Kit in her nightdress, tucked her in her bed, and turned to me.
"Come, Rosie," she said. "I'll be putting you to bed now. Wild
girls, the both of you! On the morrow you'll have your punishment for
this!"

I followed Marn down the hall like a dog its
master. Any punishment awaiting us could not touch my joy now that Kit could
speak. Marn shut the window tight. Then pulling me to my chair, she set me down
and lit the rushlight.

"Ah, dearest," she said, brushing
out my tangled hair. "I love ye like a daughter. To think you rode out
without a guard and Kit fell off her horse, and I wasn't in the knowing of it.
A better nurse would have felt the trouble in her bones, but I've grown old and
useless." And she began to cry again.

"No," I said, "you're the
dearest old Marn and I—"

"There's no telling what the queen will
do when she hears of this!" said Marn flinging down the brush.
"There's punishment on the morrow for us all, mark me!"

I sat on the corner of my bed. "Ah,
Rosie," said Marn. "Never steal away again. Promise your old Marn.
There's a deal of evil in the world you have no knowing of, and I would not
have you touched by it."

Marn kissed my cheek and looking
down,
she saw my soiled gloves and the tear.

"Filthy!" she
said.
"And torn.
The queen will fly into a
rage!"
She hovered over me, sniffed,
and wiped her eyes. "I fear her anger more than dragon fire," she
whispered. And I saw in her wrinkled face that it was so.

"Wash them," she said to herself
with a nod, and quick she tore off the gloves. Her swift action startled me and
I had not time to hide my hands.

Seeing my claw, her jaw dropped and her hand
flew to her mouth. "Le-leprosy," she stuttered.
"Ah,
God!"
Her face went
tallow
colored. My gloves fell to the floor. "So that's what drove
you
out. You went to see the lepers encamped in the hills! And now you've caught
their blight!"

"No," I cried. "I did not go
to them!
This thing.
This curse..." But already
Marn was rushing to my door crying, "Leprosy!" And from the hall I
heard her moan, "We're all undone!"

I heard Marn knocking on a chamber door as I
picked up my discarded gloves and slid them back on.
Leper.
Leper.
Leper.
Marn's cry sounded in my mind with every knock. Down the hall the door opened,
then shut again, cutting out all sound. She'd gone in to Mother! I couldn't
move. Now there was only my scattered breathing caught inside my quilt and the
rattle of the night wind at my window.

In my dreams there seemed no peace that night
but a swirling and a twirling, all the world going widdershins from God. Still,
I would never have wished awakening had I known what dawn would bring.

Hadn't Marn said we would all have our
punishment on the
morrow? Aye, the wild
girls got their punishment with the break
ing of the dawn, just as Marn
had warned, and it was worse than any whip.

"Rosie!" Kit
was on her knees by my bed, her hair askew,
her
eyes puffy.

"What is it? Did the dragon
attack?"

She shook her head no.

"Is it Ali? Was
your mother attacked on her way to the abbey?"

"Marn!" she choked. "It's
Marn."

"Is she ill?"

Kit could not answer. I leaped from my bed
and threw on my cloak, heading for her chamber, but Kit pointed down the hall.

"Where is
she?"

I raced behind Kit, my head more full of
pleading prayer than any beggar's chapel.

We reached the edge of
the moat, where a crowd of servants
gathered.
Bumping into Cook, I pressed through the crowd, and I found my Marn.

"God, no!"
I screamed, falling to my knees by Kit.

In the moat Marn was
floating, her shawl still wrapped about
her
shoulders. A dead rat and three bright plum leaves tangled in her hair. Water
swirled around her. And the morning rain pattering on the moat made ring on
ring that broke against Marn's body.

The servants hovered behind me, weeping.

Cook lifted her hands to Heaven calling,
"She's killed herself! What sorrow brought the woman here?"

"Hush, wench!" shouted Sir Allweyn
as he poked Marn's hand with his pole.

"Don't," I pleaded. I could not
bear his poking at her so. There was the hand that had held me when I was
small, picked my berries, mended my gowns, and just last eve had stroked my
head. Guiding the pole with steady motion Sir Allweyn drew Marn from the moat.
The chapel bells rang, and all of us were weeping.

Cook was wrong. I knew Marn had not leaped to
her death.
She was a sturdy soul. She'd
wept when sorrow took her. Rocked
herself and said binding charms when
she was sore afraid. But never would Marn drown herself. I knew this to the
bone. Someone had pushed her. Some devil had murdered my Marn, and were a
knife within my hand, I'd kill the one who'd done it sure as the morning. I'd
slit his throat and watch his blood spill on the ground.

Sir Allweyn laid Marn's body on the shore. I
wept over her,
kissed her cheek, and pulled
a bit of moss from the corner of her
mouth.

Cook leaned over Marn's bloated face and
screamed. The
other servants joined in till
all about the water's edge there was a
sound like the death wraiths
keening.

Sir Allweyn waved his pole and tried to hush
us but on we went. We cried all together, Kit holding me as I lifted the wraith
song up to the morning sky.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Her Spirit Unbound

All
of
marn's death day,
Kit and I huddled by my chamber fire, our eyes
swollen with tears. The day passed outside my window, but I didn't care to see
the sun. On we sat, heavy with grief. When the sky grew purple Kit leaned in
close to me and said, "Remember the day Marn told us about Sir
Magnus?"

I nodded. It had been three days ago when we
were all alone in the walled garden. As Marn tidied the herb bed she'd told us
how she came to Wilde Island as a young wife. Her husband had been banished
from England for poaching on Lord Headington's
land. "Though he was innocent as a lamb," she'd said. Then
she'd talked of the great Sir Magnus, castle astrologer and counselor to
my
mother.

"Thinks he's God's gift to the world, he
does," said Marn. "But he's a twisted man, I say, and I know well for
he came aboard the same ship I did to serve out his years of punishment here on
Wilde Island."

Marn weeded round the rue and boneset.
"And what was he

banished
for, my dears?" She'd tightened her lips, looked
about, and lowered her voice. "Murder, I say."

"Murder?"
I'd felt the thrill of the word churn through me as
if I were milk on my way to butter. I'd sensed the man was evil, but never
guessed he'd killed anyone.

"Aye," said Marn. "And I'm
glad I've told
ye
now, for someday you'll be queen
and you'll need to know not to trust the man."

"I never have," I said truthfully.
"Whom did he kill?"

"His sweet young wife.
Poisoned her for her money."

"We would have hanged him for that here
on Wilde Island," I said proudly.

"Aye, and they would have in dear England, too, but some say he coin-pursed the judge and so came here instead."

I grabbed Marn's arm. "Does Mother
know?" I asked, but my question was drowned out by the sound of footsteps
on the far side of the garden wall.

"Who's there?" asked Marn,
startled. Kit and I climbed the
apple tree.
No one was below on the other side. Kit looked wide-
eyed at me then,
mouthing the word
Magnus.
Below us in the garden Marn had crossed
herself.

In my solar Kit's cheeks were flushed as we
each recounted the tale. "Magnus must have listened beyond the wall that
day
and overheard her telling us,"
whispered Kit. I stood up, agitated,
then
sat
again.

"Then yestereve," Kit went on,
"when Marn was alone Magnus took his chance to—"

"Hush," I warned. "Someone's
coming down the hall."

The door opened. In stepped Mother.

"Leave us," she ordered. Kit quit
the room, her soft gray gown rustling as she went.

Mother locked the door. "Put these
on." She tossed a pair of her golden gloves onto my lap. I tore off my
filthy ones and Mother threw them in the fire. A putrid smell rose with the
smoke as they burned. I choked, slipping the new ones on. They were too large
but I said nothing.

"It is a sorry day." Mother's face
was still scratched and bruised from her fall. I looked away, silent.

The fire popped. A small bright piece of wood
fell near my gown. Mother jumped up and knocked the cinder into the hearth
again with the poker. Her sleeve fell back, showing the scratches along her
arm.

"It doesn't matter
if you speak," she said. "I know you sorrow
for your nurse, as we all do. But you left the castle
unguarded with Kit yestereve."

"We rode to save Ali."

"You took this on yourself?"

"We saw the villagers coming up the hill
with torches and so we went."

"Did you not think to come to me?"

I watched the shadows on the wall.

"Such risks you take with your life,
Rosalind. You know you're not allowed to ride without an escort."

"You did."

Mother's neck stiffened. "I'm not a
child."