Singer from the Sea (32 page)

The actual event enlightened him. The brief agenda was barely mentioned before the ministers were off in full cry over something else entirely. Women were disappearing from rural areas of Dania; daughters, some of them, but also a few youngish wives, mostly commoner women, but a few noble women as well. Tranquish, Duke of Dania, charged his colleagues in Merdune and Barfezi with harboring abductors in their respective provinces. Neither Lome Vestik-Vanserdel, Duke of Barfezi, nor Gardagger Bellser-Bar, Duke of Merdune, were present, but their spokesmen were, along with allies and interested persons, and when the council of ministers adjourned for lunch some hours later, neither the question of P’Naki nor the matter of marriage age had even been mentioned. Though the Marshal kept a wary eye on Efiscapel Gormus, said Gormus said nothing at all but yawn and scratch himself at intervals.

“What is all this?” growled the Marshal to Prince Thumsort, who served as minister for his own home county of Tansay.

“Tranquish thinks it’s either Merdune or Barfezi taking his women. Merdune and Barfezi think it’s Tanquish himself. I think the women probably ran off on their own. Women are like sheep, one jumps a fence, all the rest must jump it too.”

Though this remark cut very close to the bone, the Marshal chose to ignore it. “Why would anyone want Danian girls?” he asked. “As I recall, the mountain nobility tend to loud voices, hefty bodies, and chapped faces.”

“Marshal, don’t try to make sense of it. Every time we meet, some of the commoner ministers bring up this business of their womenfolk running off. They usually accuse a neighboring province, either of harboring malefactors or of being in complicity. About once every five years, the ministers set up an investigative committee, and when they look into it, it turns out the women ran off to the city, or they eloped with someone, or they were pregnant by someone Papa didn’t approve of.”

“When will we get to business?” growled the Marshal,
wishing to end this discussion of women running off. “I don’t intend to waste another half-day on this nonsense.”

“Get to business?” Prince Thumsort asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh, you mean the agenda? We won’t. We never do.”

“But we
need
more P’naki!”

“Oh, His Majesty has that well underway. While the ministers argue, he goes right ahead, you know. He says it gives the people a sense of taking part without noticeably slowing down the necessities of government. Eventually, they’ll decide it’s best, and a day or so later the Lord Paramount will announce it’s done. That gives them participation and gives him a reputation for efficiency.”

“And lowering the age of marriage?” asked the Marshal, his own eyebrows almost at his hairline.

“The Tribunal has already decided that question. Including it on the agenda was just a way of informing the public. Our young men are so urgent that girls aren’t waiting until they’re thirty, so why make a fetish of that age, ah?” The Prince winked and smiled, a secretive sort of smile.

“Then what in deepsea does he need the ministers for?”

“Need us?” He bridled, ducking his head into a wealth of chins, grinning widely. “Well of course not, Marshal. He doesn’t need us. We’re just part of the cover, don’t you know?”

The Marshal did not understand all these winks and sidles, and his ignorance was explicit in the volume of his, “I don’t know, no!”

And suddenly Prince Thumbsort gave him a different sort of look, one full of surprise and apprehension, as though he had perhaps said something thoughtless, unwise, even dangerous. “Heh, heh, heh,” he chuckled. “Just joking, of course. The Lord Paramount needs all of us, Marshal. Of course he does.”

“Not a nice joke, not at all,” the Marshal rumbled. “Why, he told me himself he needed me here.”

“As he does,” Prince Thumsort soothed. “As he most certainly does. You especially, Lord Marshal.”

Aufors bought a horse in Reusel-on-mere and rode westward along the road that marked the county border between
Wantresse and Southmarsh counties. The day was fine, crisp but not overly cold; the reeds in the marshes south of him glittered with frost while the stubble fields of Wantresse were full of birds, scavenging for the odd beakful of grain missed by earlier gleaners. Fifty miles along the road he would find a post house, where he would spend the night, and another fifty miles would bring him to a small village where Wantresse stopped and Evermire began. Bessany Blodden and her child would be found another half-day’s ride farther on.

By riding harder and longer, Aufors could have shortened the trip, but men who ride hard and fast are usually on a mission, for themselves or some other, and Aufors had decided it would be safer to appear unhurried, unworried, unconcerned, which would give him time to figure out, first, how to get rid of the rider or riders who stayed just out of view back on the road, and second, how he would transport a woman and infant back toward Merdune. A full day of riding into the wind gave him no idea about the former but a sensible notion about the latter. Sailing up the Potcherwater at this season would be a good deal easier than riding horseback. He had been well funded by the Duchess, so passage would be no problem. The wind was steady from the northwest. The Potcherwater was placid and deep from Wellsport all the way to County Gide; he knew Barfezi well from the Potcher War; and the river would take him to the very town where the inn stood, the one where the cook would, presumably, tell him where to find Genevieve.

Once this had been decided, he turned his mind to the other thing. All in all, he thought he might lose his follower by simple misdirection. Any followers were in search of Genevieve, not Aufors. Therefore, if the rider or riders thought Genevieve was known to be in a particular place, he or they might stop following Aufors and go on to that place. He made a little plan, then let his mind drift onto other things: to the research he had done in the archives, to the unexpected amiability of Prince Delganor, to the things that Duchess Alicia knew but didn’t say, to the possible reasons her daughter had had for running away from her husband. He strongly suspected that all
these happenings were linked, but he could not find any common factor among them.

About noon, he saw three riders approaching from the west, whipping their horses as they came. When they saw him, they pulled up their lathered mounts, one among them shouting, “Hey, you there, have you seen anybody on this road this morning?”

Aufors eased himself in the saddle. “Yes. Several.”

“Who?” cried the first man. “Who’ve you seen?”

Aufors shook his head, smiling slightly. “I have no idea. I don’t know the people hereabout.”

“Come,” cried the first, rather angrily. “Men, women, what?”

Aufors took a deep breath. “Four men, several miles back, with a flock of sheep. A whole clutch of people and children threshing grain with oxen. That’s on the Wantresse side. On the Southmarsh side, I saw several young fellows hunting ducks.”

“Did you see a woman with a baby?”

Aufors allowed himself a ponder on this subject, finding it possible to answer with complete truth. “I don’t think I’ve seen a woman since I left the Reusel. There may have been women with babies at the threshing, but I don’t remember seeing any.”

The three muttered together, then the questioner turned to Aufors. “You’d have noticed this one. Long red hair and a pretty face.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t notice anyone like that. Who is it that’s missing?”

“The Earl Ruckward’s wife. And his infant daughter. They were thought drowned, but someone told the Earl his wife had been seen here, on the Wantresse road.”

“Taken, you think?” asked Aufors, his mouth open. “Abducted?”

“Why should you think that?”

“Well, stands to reason a young woman with a child, an infant, wouldn’t be traveling alone. And if her husband doesn’t know where she is, then chances are she was abducted. There’s a frightful lot of it going on, I’ve heard.”

“Where? Where is it going on?”

“Well,” Aufors eased himself and again adopted his
pondering expression. “All during this trip I’ve heard there was a great deal of abducting going on in Nighshore county in Sealand. And in Dania, both.” The last of which was certainly true. People at the inns were talking of little else.

The three before him looked at one another in puzzlement. “Nobody said we should look for her there. Just said ask if she’d been seen, along here.”

“Not by me, I’m afraid,” Aufors responded. “I’ll keep my eyes open for her, however.”

“If you see her, send word to the Earl. He’s staying at Poolwich, at the Elver’s Wife.” And the three rode on eastward, galloping furiously.

Aufors gave silent thanks for the encounter, which had warned him to stay clear of Poolwich. Also, if the men took all the talk of abductions seriously, it could well deflect the search. Meantime, he would definitely plan to sail up the Potcherwater, preferably on some old tub that no one would look at twice.

Before arriving at the post house, he put a stone in the horse’s hoof and then, when he stopped, complained loudly about the horse being lame and the necessity of giving it a day’s rest on the morrow. At supper, he was accosted again by searchers, as well as by a single rider who had come in some time after Aufors himself. All claimed to be hunting Earl Solven’s wife. Aufors pretended to get quite drunk with them after dinner, saying he didn’t care about Earl Solven’s wife for he was on his way to a wife of his own, who was waiting for him at Poolwich.

“So why’re you on this road?” demanded the single rider. “The Reusel road would have taken you there easier.”

“Oh, don’t I know that,” moaned Aufors. “But I work for the Marshal, and he has me running messages to Fens-bridge, near the Ramspize, to do with all these Danian cowherders coming across the border. Well, I’ll do that first, then go on down to Poolwich along the coast road.” He took another large swallow and muttered, “That is, I will when my horse gets over being lame! If the damned beast ever does!”

On the morning, while Aufors watched from behind his window curtain, the single rider went off the way he had come in company with two others who had been in the post house the night before. Within minutes, Aufors was off as well, though in the opposite direction. At the inn where he stopped that night, he met yet another group, and it was there he learned that the Earl Ruckward had posted a reward of fifty royals for the return of his wife. No wonder every man with a horse was out galloping the roads. Fifty royals was a year’s income for many of them.

Early on the following morning, he left the inn and rode westward again, this time for only a few miles, turning southward on a narrow track that wound among the low hills above the coastal fens of Southmarsh. The road was all but deserted. He saw a swineherd with his beasts mid-morning, and not another person or animal the rest of the day. At midafternoon, he came upon a croft crouched low at the foot of a hill, and behind it a copse of low woods and a stone dolmen like two hooded figures peering seaward, precisely as his directions had specified. An old woman came out to greet him as he came down the lane, stopping him with a hand on the horse’s nose and a glare from fierce old eyes.

“And what would you be wanting, young man? There’s naught here to interest a young man who’s up to any good.”

“Well,” murmured Aufors, “this young man comes from the mother of a certain one. And that mother wants this certain one and her baby taken safe into Merdune. And it’s best we go soon as can be, for there’s riders everywhere along the main roads, and it’ll be a short time before they’re sifting along these little lanes, like ants after sugar.”

“Riders?” she asked, wonderingly.

“Someone’s offered a large reward, old woman. One that might tempt even you.”

“Pah!” she spat. “Can I be tempted with money? Not likely. What would it buy me, at my age? Food? I’ve plenty. A lover? And what would I do with him? Peace of mind? Hardly, not with what’s going on. But I take your point. Enough riders going hither and yon, someone’s
bound to see something. And that makes me wonder if any such person as you describe would be safe on the road, even with you.”

“No.” Aufors smiled. “She would not. So it would be up to me or her or you to make her look like something else. Either that, or hide her completely.”

“And how would you do that?”

“Well, maybe I’d surround her with a raggedy old mother and a dirty young husband, and I’d dress her in simple clothes, and I’d probably dye her hair. Black, I think, for black tangles nicely. I’d smutch her face and glue down an eyelid to make a squint, and I’d black a tooth or two as well, just to add verisimilitude.”

“Verisimilitude, is it?” She cackled. “And the baby? How would you disguise the baby?”

“Boys around here wear rooster-tail-feathers on their cradle boards, do they not? I’d dress the baby’s cradle with such.”

“Always wanted to travel,” she murmured. “Always did.”

“You’re here alone?” he asked.

“Except for a certain one. And her baby. And a half-dozen old sheep, and a dog.”

“Sheep and a dog would be good additions. Do you have a cart?”

“I do. A good one, too. One my youngest son built, just before he went down to Bliggen, seeking adventure. Wanted to have adventure while he was young, he said. Well, happen he did, though I can’t say what or where.”

“How long ago?” asked Aufors, sympathetically.

“Too long for hope to last,” she said, wiping her eyes furtively on her sleeve. “Now, just for the sake of talk, what would the mother’s name be, the one whose business you’re on?”

“Alicia,” he said, smiling.

“Good enough.” She turned and stumped away on her gnarled cane, pausing at the door to give him time to tie his horse.

“And how might I address you, ma’am?” he asked, stopping to let her go in first.

“Ma Muddy, that’s me. It’s a fen name, and only half a joke.”

He stepped through the door and stopped, frozen in place. Genevieve sat before the fire! He gasped, she turned, and he knew then she was not his love, did not even greatly resemble her except in silhouette. The skin and hair were different, but the line of the forehead, the chin, yes, and especially the nose were almost the same! Full face, this girl was broader across the cheeks, however, and her mouth was narrower.