My Lady Jane (14 page)

THIRTEEN

Edward

The king (the actual king, we mean), through no particular fault of his own, was lost.

During the first few hours in his newly acquired E∂ian form, he'd been caught up in what he could only describe as a kind of beautiful bird joy—the sweet euphoria of flight, of riding the wind, testing the strength of his wings, encompassed in the soundless serenity of the world as seen from so high above. He'd lost himself in how good it felt to no longer be . . . well, dying.

Edward didn't know this at the time, because he had no way of looking at himself and assessing what kind of species of bird he actually was, but he had transformed into a kestrel, which is, for those readers who are not bird-enthusiasts, a small falcon—
Falco tinnunculus
—with very handsome brown-speckled feathers.
Edward simply knew that he had wings and a beak and two legs that ended in talons, which made him some kind of bird. And he knew that up there, against the sky, he was free in a way that he had never been free before.

But after a while—who knows how long, really, as kestrels aren't known for their ability to keep track of time—he began to have a nagging human thought in the back of his brain, and it was this:

I should be doing something.

Which led to:
I should be going somewhere.

He strained to remember more.
It's not somewhere that I should be going to, so much as someone,
he thought.
Someone who will help me.

Then he remembered that he was not just a bird, but a king, and someone had attempted to assassinate him and steal his throne, and he had a sister named Bess who had told him—what had she told him? That his mother had also been a bird, a beautiful white bird, and wasn't it divine to be a bird, to rule the air, to dive and lift so, to hover, and then the bird joy had him again.

Some time later he thought,
No, that wasn't all Bess told me. She said to go to Gran
—his grandmother—although he hadn't seen the old lady in years.

At Helmsley. Which was an abandoned, half-fallen-down old castle.

North, somewhere.

Now which way was north?

As a sixteen-year-old human boy, Edward had never possessed
the keenest sense of direction, since most of the time when he wished to travel to a place he was taken by carriage and did none of the driving. As an only-a-few-hours-old bird, he didn't know north, either. He knew there was a river in one direction, and a series of low hills in another direction, an expanse of green field below him, and in that field he somehow knew there was a little brown field mouse, just coming out of its hole. Without consulting him at all, his body plummeted toward the defenseless creature, wings tucking in, talons reaching, until Edward-the-bird struck the mouse with tremendous force and snatched it from the face of the earth. The poor thing gave a rather awful shriek, which was understandable, and then went quiet. Edward-the-bird flapped off to a nearby tree branch, still clutching the mouse, and then, to Edward-the-boy's horror . . . he ate it, bones and fur and all.

Edward stayed in the tree for a while, disgusted with himself on the one hand, and on the other wanting to go out and find another delicious mouse, or perhaps a tasty garter snake. A growing bird has to eat. But he needed to get control of these bird impulses, he decided. He needed to get moving. The sun was going down. Hadn't it just been morning?

North. I need to find my way north,
he told himself sternly.

Which way was north, again?

The sun goes down in the west,
he recalled vaguely. He subsequently pointed himself toward what would be, by extension, north. But once he was in the air, it was only a few minutes before the wind charmed him again, and the bird joy overtook him, and when he
came back to himself more hours had passed and it was dark and there was no way to know which direction he'd been flying in, and which way he should go.

So, as we said before, the king was lost.

For a while he followed a carriage that was making its way slowly down a road. The carriage must be carrying someone important, he concluded, because there were mounted guards riding on all sides of it. Then he figured that someone with so many men—perhaps twenty—could be heading toward London, and that was the last place he wanted to go, so he turned around and flew in the opposite direction.

The road led him to a shabby-looking village. At the edge of the small cluster of buildings there was a large oak tree, and he settled into the upper branches and looked around. His eyesight, he found, was quite marvelous in the dark.

The village was comprised of a scattering of cottages with thatched roofs, and a smoke-bellowing building that must be the blacksmith, a small stable, and a large ramshackle wooden building in the center that seemed to loom over all the others, with lit windows and a sign over its door with a horse head carved into it. He could hear bawdy music from inside, and men laughing and talking loudly. An inn.

He could become human again, and go inside. People would surely recognize him—after all, his face was on their coins. His subjects loved him, didn't they? He was their beloved king, deigned by God to be their ruler. That was what he'd always been told.

But how did one return from bird to human, exactly? There were no magic words that he was aware of, no series of gestures, no spells to transform him. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd managed to go from human to bird, before. He'd simply jumped from the window and wished for wings and hoped he wouldn't die.

He glanced at the inn again. In an inn, there'd be food. Real food, not mice. And dinner rolls. And tall glasses of ale. All of which would almost certainly not be poisoned.

There'd be stew—maybe rabbit stew, so tender it almost melted in your mouth, with onion and a bit of carrot and potato, something that would warm his empty belly, at last.

There might even be blackberries.

Edward fell out of the tree. Since he was in the highest branches, his crash down made a spectacular amount of noise, branches breaking and Edward cursing and then thumping hard onto the ground. He landed on his left ankle all wrong, which alerted him to the fact that he had ankles again. He had done it somehow. He had wished to be a human eating human food, and here he was.

The door to the nearest cottage was flung open, and a large, red-faced woman wearing an apron stepped out. She was holding a rolling pin. From behind her wafted the smell of baking bread, which instantly made Edward's stomach grumble and his mouth began to water.

Lord, he was hungry.

He struggled to his feet. His ankle hurt so much his eyes watered.

“Madam,” he wheezed.

The woman looked him up and down, which is when Edward realized a second important bit of news about himself.

He was, apparently, naked.

Edward tried to respond to this humiliating situation in as kingly a way as possible. Kings didn't cower down holding their hands in front of their private parts like simpletons. He stood up straight. Tried to look her in the eye.

“Er . . . madam, I know this looks . . . less than ideal, but I can explain. I'm—”

“Pervert!” she screamed.

“No, no, you've got it all wrong.”

“You're one of those filthy E∂ians, aren't you?” she yelled, her face growing even redder in hue.

Or maybe she didn't have it all wrong.

“This was a decent village, you know, before your kind came around spoiling it. Thieves and murderers, the lot of you. Like those dogs that watch me get dressed through the window and then run away. Perverts!”

“No, I can assure you, I never—”

The woman's mouth opened and she brandished the rolling pin over her head like a Highland warrior. “PERVERRRRRRRT!” she screamed, and then she ran at him, clubbing him wherever she could reach.

Edward tried to run. His ankle didn't cooperate, and he was out of breath within a few steps, so he didn't get away as quickly
as he would have liked, but the woman wasn't in the best of shape, herself. After she'd beat him about the head with her rolling pin a few times, she seemed satisfied to fall back, screaming “Pervert!” after him as Edward stumbled on nakedly through the night.

He tried to steal some clothes that were hanging to dry outside of a farmer's house, farther down the road, but the farmer had a dog, who wound up giving him a nasty bite on his right leg—the uninjured one, of course. Finally he ended up at another farm in the hayloft of a large barn, hiding under a horse blanket in a pile of prickly hay.

I'm better off as a bird,
he thought miserably. He tried to turn himself back—to imagine himself with wings again, but nothing happened. The hay made him sneeze, and then cough, and then cough some more. The poison was still inside of him, working its evil. He was so weak. And now his ankle throbbed. His calf burned from where the dog had bit him. There was a goose egg rising near his temple where the woman had beaned him with the blasted rolling pin, and bruises forming up and down his thin, shivering arms, which bore scabbing cuts from Master Boubou's bloodletting.

Plus he was cold. And hungry. And horribly, horribly lost.

He buried his face in the blanket and blinked back bitter tears. What he wouldn't give for his dog right now, her warmth and her protection, even though the thought of Pet as a girl continued to unsettle him. Now Pet was lost to him, too. Everything was lost. Jane. Bess. His crown. The kingdom.

What was he going to do?

Then, because he was exhausted on top of being poisoned and injured and starving, the king—or we suppose that Edward was technically no longer the king at this point, because the carriage he'd seen earlier had contained Jane and Gifford on their way to the castle, and Jane had, only moments before, been crowned the official Queen of England—the boy who had been king, then, dropped off into a fitful sleep.

He woke up with a lantern burning bright next to his head, and a knife at his throat. Because this was the kind of night he was having.

“Hello,” said the owner of the knife.

A girl.

A girl about his age—no older than eighteen, surely, although it was hard to tell in this light—a girl with startling green eyes.

He didn't dare to move. Because knife.

“Well,” she said after a long moment, “what do you have to say for yourself, then?”

Only Edward didn't understand what she said, because what he heard was, “Wull, whadja hev to see fer yeself, thun?”

“You're Scottish,” he murmured. “Am I in Scotland?”

She snorted.

“I'll take that as a no,” he said.

The green eyes narrowed. The knife didn't leave his throat.

“Who are you?” she demanded, and he caught her meaning this time. “What are you doing here?”

He didn't know how to answer her questions. If he told her who he really was, chances were that a) she wouldn't believe him, and she'd cut his throat, or b) she'd believe him, and because he was the ruler of England and she was Scottish and this was the year 1553, she'd get even more pleasure out of cutting his throat. Neither option ended well for him.

She was looking at him expectantly, and the knife against his neck was cold and decidedly unpleasant, so he decided he'd better start talking, and he'd better make it good.

“My name's Dennis,” he burst out.

“Dennis,” she repeated. Still with the knife. “Is that your first or last name?”

“I'm an apprentice for the blacksmith in the village,” he said quickly, to cover that he didn't actually know whether Dennis was his first or last name. “And I was set upon by thieves on the road.”

At this, the girl's mouth turned up in a charming—or Edward would have found it charming, if she hadn't been threatening his life at the moment—little smile. She was pretty, and the green eyes were the least of it. A riot of headstrong black curls cascaded all around her face, which was pale and heart shaped with a delicate, pointed chin and a small red mouth.

“You're a poor liar, is what you are.” With the hand not holding the knife she suddenly pulled back the horse blanket that was covering him and gave him a quick once over, neck to toes and everything in between.

Edward was too shocked to protest.

“Just checking to make sure you didn't have a sword under there,” she said with a smirk. “But I don't see anything particularly dangerous.” She removed the knife from his neck and sat back. “Poor wee thing. You're a bit of a mess, aren't you?”

Edward grabbed the blanket back from her and pulled it to his chest. He wasn't sure what she could be referring to as a poor wee thing. Certainly no part of him. His face was hot as a branding iron. “I was set upon by thieves, as I told you,” he stammered finally. “They took everything.”

“Oh, wearing fine silks, were you? Poppycock. Who are you, really?” She grabbed his hand and turned it over in hers. “Because you don't have the hands of a blacksmith, that's sure.”

He jerked his hand away and rose unsteadily to his feet, still clutching the unwieldy blanket around him. The girl stood up, too, and brushed hay off her trousers. She was wearing
trousers
, he realized. Black trousers and a white tunic and a black cloak, with black boots that came nearly to her knees. He'd never seen a woman in trousers before. It was improper. And unnerving. And surprisingly attractive.

“Who are you?” he fired back. “Because I don't think you're the farmer's daughter.”

The green eyes flashed, but she smiled again. “Do you know what I think?”

He couldn't begin to guess.

“I think you're an E∂ian on the run,” she said. “And when it started raining you ran in here for shelter, in your animal form, of
course, so now you're stuck here without a stitch of clothes.” She
tsk
ed her tongue sympathetically. “So what animal form do you take?”