Straw Into Gold (15 page)

"Then, Alyson, you will be careful while wearing the queen's cloak? You will stay out of the range of the arrows?"

Alyson leaned down and kissed Innes on top of his head, then blushed, half amazed at what she had done. She grabbed the queen's cloak and rushed to the door, turning back to look at us. The blush had not left her cheeks.

We ate the oatmeal—it was the same as the nurse had stirred, with cinnamon swirled into it—and drank the milk hot from the cows."Innes," I said,"you realize that you are next in line to the king himself?"

He took a long drink. "Tousle, do you mind much?"

"That you will be king?"

"No." A long moment passed with no sound but the crackling of the fire.

"That the queen is your mother?"

"That she is not yours."

I set the bowl of oatmeal down. I had almost finished it anyway."I was happier than I could have thought for those few minutes in the chapel," I said.

Innes nodded.

Then the door opened and the queen appeared. She was dressed in the long robe of a Holy Sister and held two more robes across her arm. "The attendant is walking along the abbey walls now," she said. "It is time for us to fetch the day's water."

Our robes must have been for Holy Sisters taller than us; they reached the ground and dragged over the frost. I held one end of a long pole, Innes the other, and we balanced it on our shoulders, careful to keep the buckets in the middle from sliding and knocking one of us in the head—and even more careful not to trip on the hems of our robes. The queen, her head low, walked just behind us. "You walk like two boys," she whispered. "You are Holy Sisters now. Keep your feet low to the ground, and your knees in, not out. Low, Tousle."

It was not an easy thing, to walk like a Holy Sister and balance a load of buckets, jerking our way across the commons and past the houses of Saint Eynsham.

"Keep the buckets balanced," whispered the queen again. "And your face down, Tousle."

"How can I keep my face down and the buckets balanced at the same time?"

"Lord Beryn's Guard is just ahead. Perhaps you might ask them," she replied.

Above us on the abbey walls, the attendant—Alyson—walked regally back and forth in the queen's cloak, as if taking the early-morning air. Beyond us the Guard stood grouped around their fires, watching the procession of twelve Holy Sisters come down to the brook. They quieted with our coming, and as we got nearer, I kept my face to the ground, even when I felt the bucket slide backward and clunk into Innes.

"The fresh morning of the world, sister." Lord Beryn.

The sister at the head of our procession said nothing.

"Sister," came Lord Beryn's voice, mocking, "shall we allow a mere siege to disturb the day? If I were as rude as you, I might forbid you this water."

"This water is befouled," the Holy Sister announced.

"Even the best of horses will do that, I'm afraid."

A snort from Innes behind me. A silencing whisper from the queen.

"We will go farther," said the sister, calling back to us. "Into the woods there."

"The greater the distance that you must carry the water," Lord Beryn pointed out.

We moved quietly upstream. I was sure to keep my knees in and my feet low to the ground. When there were only pine needles below me, I looked up and saw that we had come well into the trees, far enough that the three of us might successfully slip away, but not so far as to arouse suspicion.

"But,"said the queen suddenly to the Holy Sisters,"they will see that there are only nine of you returning to the abbey."

"We will go back and forth in small groups. They will be easily confused."

I could have wished that the pine trees grew together more thickly, or that the lower branches had held on to more of their needles. A look behind us still showed the encampment. But when the queen motioned us ahead, Innes and I laid our buckets on the shore of the stream, folded our arms into the wide sleeves of our robes, and slowly, slowly, slowly moved upstream. It took everything in me not to break to a run.

If the cherry trees had been hopeful of the spring in Saint Eynsham Abbey, there was little reason for hope in the deeper woods. Most of the brook was still frozen over, the banks on either side iced with old snow. The ground was hard as gray slate, and the pine needles that springtime would soften were frozen upon it.

At first the queen led and we kept Innes between us, him holding on to the queen's long robe and sometimes to her hand. But as we moved farther into the woods, farther away from the Guard's encampment, we walked all together, never minding the branches that snapped off at our passing, never thinking that we should be careful about the trail. If the cold had not hovered so beneath the boughs, I could almost have believed we were on a lark, caring more about the going than the coming.

The queen knew that this stream flowed out from the river passing the old mill on the way to Wolverham. We did not ask how she knew this. We followed her because she was the queen, and because she knew the riddle's answer. And because she was Innes's mother.

And so we walked through the morning, a pale sky over us, a pale ground under us, following the stream in its windings, the heat of our walking filling our robes while the cold air tipped our noses.

Around noon the land began to jolt up around us. Soon we were in a small but deep valley, the pine trees clambering one atop another, up and up the steep sides. We stayed down below so we would not lose the stream, but it was a hard business. The snow was deep here, sometimes well above my waist, and though the top had crusted over, we broke through it with almost every step, so we left plates of icy snow behind us. Sometimes the snow lifted into drifts that hid the stream, and we had to blunder around them until we saw the black water running again. We were all as wet as if we had plunged in and out of the stream again and again, and I began to wonder how we would spend the night without the cold and the wet killing us.

For a time the queen broke through the new snow herself, but soon she left it to me to lead. I would heft a leg onto the top crust, push against it and hope that it would hold, then heft the other leg up. And once in ten steps I could stand on top for just a moment—until the next step. My crunching falls echoed against the steepness of the valley. We staggered to a frenzied exhaustion, feeling the frantic hours rush ahead of us as the sun started to yellow the pale sky.

Finally we decided to risk losing the brook and climbed up the valley sides. The snow was not nearly as deep here, but it was slick where the sun had melted patches that froze to ice in the night. All of us felt our feet slip wildly away and the calamity of a hip thumping on rock-hard ice.

"Perhaps," said Innes, picking himself up for the fourth time, "we should have tried the horses after all." We clambered back down the sides.

At the bottom we stopped to eat the bread and honey that the queen had prepared, though stopping let our sweat cool and chilled us even more. We ate quickly, ravenously, even the queen holding the bread with both hands and tearing at it. Then we ate apples whose insides had browned with the bruises that apples will suffer at the bottom of a barrel. They too had frozen in this wintry forest, and they tasted like icicles. I felt their cold nestle all the way down into my stomach, a cold like the black of a pit.

It was while eating the apples that we heard the sounds of horses high above us. The jangling of harnesses and rhythmic pounding of hooves struck down the steep sides to seek us out, and we stood in sudden and complete silence, Innes with his apple still to his mouth as the sounds above us grew louder and louder, then passed on and were finally lost. All that time we did not move, did not speak, did not look into one another's eyes.

"We are discovered," the queen whispered.

"Not discovered," said Innes. "Not yet. They know that we have escaped the abbey and that we must head back to Wolverham. But they have passed by."

"I wonder," said the queen slowly, "what our escape has cost the Holy Sisters."

We followed the valley, crouching now and listening for the sounds of horses. None came, and finally the steep sides flattened out and the trees thinned. Here the crust had melted and frozen enough to hold our weight. In some places it had melted enough to yield to hard ground, and we could walk on frosty land.

But the stream had gone. Sometime as we had clung to the valley sides, it had meandered away under the snowdrifts. The queen looked steadily at me, and I saw that she did not know the way to the river and on to Wolverham.

None of us spoke what we all knew: We would need to find a place for the night. The sky had thickened into a quilt of clouds, and the light was graying, blurring the shadows thrown on the snow into a general darkness. We were all hungry, but we did not stop to eat. There was simply the eternal marching ahead, me in the lead, Innes behind, then the queen.

And there was no doubt that she was the queen. All day we had tramped through the snow, with only a single break to eat. Her robe and skirts hung wet and heavy, the bottoms stiffened with frost. She had pushed back her hood, and her hair that had begun so tightly tied back had fanned out and flattened against her cheeks and forehead. Her breathing came loudly.

But there was no doubt that she would go on and on, that if she must, she would pick both of us up in her arms and carry us on her shoulders.

And there was equally no doubt that Innes would not let that happen, that he would go on and on.

And I too would go on. By Saint Jude, I too would go on.

But the world was running its course, and the coming darkness drew with it a wind that whipped us with its tail, pushing under and up our robes, lashing at us with a grinning ease. We had long ago lost any path, and we pushed and stumbled on now in hopes of finding a light or suddenly falling into a farmer's field.

But the trees were growing thicker and thicker again. Thicker and thicker, hunching together in a bristling line of pines. Soon they pressed so thickly on either side of us that there was only a single passage to follow between them.

A single passage! There was only a single passage opening between them! Not wide enough for one horse to pass another!

"Majesty," I called back. "Majesty, there will be shelter ahead. A place to spend the night. And food. And hot cider."

"You'll have to pardon him," said Innes. "He also thinks that horses are gentle animals."

"You'll have to pardon Innes, who always thinks we're about to be lost."

"An arrow in the shoulder will do that."

"Oh, your eternal arrow," I scoffed."Who was it who had to pull it out?"

"Who was it who couldn't help a turnip find its way out of a cart?"

"But," said the queen, and her voice was laughing, almost giggling, "there'll be no need for any pardons."

I looked ahead at the light that beamed through the woods, casting a long brightness down the path between the trees.

"I smell baking bread," said Innes.

"It will be a cottage," I said,"tidy and perfect."

And it was, of course. A cottage just like the one we had seen before. Everything was the same: the sharp roof, the cornices, the carved door, the twisting bricks of the chimney. Everything was the same, as if the cottage had not burned, but had lifted from its foundations and found its way here to this lonely spot. And when we walked in, the table was set with the same crockery, and the fire leapt up again to greet us merrily. There was the brown bread waiting on its warming bricks, and the jug of hot cider, and its steaming mixed with the steam coming up from our warming clothes.

We dropped our robes in a heap and stood by the fire so that it might melt the ice from our bootlaces. Then, with our feet held out to the flames, we sat and ate and drank and drank and ate, the heat of the fire thawing us with a delightful pain. The queen did not seem startled at the surprise of the cottage; she was not even startled to find three beds laid out in a loft. We never spoke of Da, but every time I looked around me, I expected to see him suddenly standing there, holding his pipe just out from his lips. For some reason I thought that the queen expected him as well.

Full and warm, we settled beneath plump covers that night. The jangling of Lord Beryn's horses seemed very far away, and I fell into a sleep with no dreams. I woke up only once, when I heard the familiar sound of a new log rolling to the grate and then arranging itself in the fire. The cottage was still as warm and merry as it had been when we had arrived, and I leaned down over the loft to watch the fire's brightness, thinking that Da might be down there tending to it. But he was not, and I fell back into sleep with a sigh, wondering where he was, wondering whether he would be standing with me when we finally reached Wolverham.

I was not surprised to find the oatmeal in the morning. Beside it stood a crock of milk, still warm, and the jug of cider, as full as when we had first come. We ate standing by the fire, as if we could fill ourselves with its heat and carry it with us. Outside, the sky showed thick and gray, and the few snowflakes that drifted out came from clouds plump with their downy filling. But inside, inside was everything that could be wanted on a stormy, cold day: food, fire, blankets. Da was so close here.

But there was only a single day to reach Wolverham, and we set off with sure steps, following the path given to us by the pine trees, watching the path push through the woods and shoulder the snow off to clear the way. Within an hour we had gone farther than we had all the previous day. And the queen! The cider had taken years from her, and she skipped like a young maid off to dance on the village common.

"You cannot know what it feels like to be away from the abbey," she called.

"Has it been such a prison for you?" Innes asked.

"An abbey is no place for a miller's daughter who once lived all her life in the fields and woods. Why, there were days when I was a girl that I would leave with the dawn and come back with the moon, climbing the very tallest pines or bending birches down and up again. There was a nob or hill—much like that one there—that I could climb straight up. Its rocks were just like those, and if you gripped there, and just there..." She paused, then tilted her head to one side and held back her hair."It's the very nob," she said quietly. "The very nob. And that tree just beyond it—I've climbed it more times than I can count. You see, Tousle, that one branch broken off? You have to reach just above and ... Oh!" She put her hands to her face as if she were suddenly startled by what she was seeing."I'm home."