The Brave Apprentice (21 page)

Simon stopped and stuck his lower lip out. “And that’s when one of them swatted me.”

Patch felt countless goose bumps sweeping down his arms. He looked toward Cecilia. She was staring at him, her mouth small and tense and her eyes wide.

“Simon,” Patch said. “Didn’t you say they hit you when you were drawing pictures, too?”

“True,” Simon said, looking cross. He rubbed at some remembered bruise on his rump.

“Draw for me what you drew for them,” Cecilia said. “Here.” She pointed toward the ground meal that was scattered across the grindstone.

“Certainly, my queen!” Simon skipped to the grindstone. He spread the meal into a fine, wide layer and began to trace shapes with his finger. “First, I always draw a pig.” A moment later, the image of a pig had appeared in the meal. Patch and the queen stepped close, on either side of the fool.

Simon used the side of his hand to erase the pig. “Second, I always make a cow….” As Patch and the queen watched, he drew creature after creature: A mouse. A butterfly. A duck. A frog. A deer.

Patch turned toward the small open window that was near them, afraid he might have heard heavy steps. But just as he became aware of it, the sound stopped. Perhaps it was only the distant crash of more stones striking the walls of Dartham.

“And that’s when they swatted me! Now I remember!” he heard Simon say.

The humming in Patch’s head grew to a roar as he looked down at Simon’s drawing. But of course, he finally realized, it wasn’t a hum at all.

Patch hopped and danced about the room, as quietly as he could, whirling his arms in every direction, with a mad grin on his face. “That’s it, Simon! Oh, that’s it!”

Simon sat on the stone with his arms crossed and the corners of his mouth pulled down. “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to start acting like a fool, what’s left for me to do?”

Cecilia took another look at Simon’s picture: a tiny
round head on a striped oval body, with wide teardrop wings and a stinger on the bottom.

“A
bee,
Patch? Can it be that simple?”

Patch rushed up and took her hands, the words spilling out of him. “That’s why the trolls stay in the Barren Gray—because it’s barren! It’s why they keep out of the sun, too. And it’s why they’re here now, while it’s cold and snowy. No fields or flowers in the winter, and no bees! Remember Griswold’s stories—the little girl in the meadow that the troll wouldn’t chase? And the troll who just dropped dead all of a sudden?”

Cecilia nodded. “Years ago … there was a boy at Dartham. The cobbler’s son. He was stung by a bee … died from it, within the hour.”

“A lady in Crossfield, same thing,” Patch said.

Cecilia squeezed Patch’s hands, and her eyes sparkled. “The apiary is not far from here. Not far at all. Do you believe in fate, Simon?”

“Not really,” said the fool, scratching at his chin. “I suppose I wasn’t meant to.”

And then came a splintering crash over their heads, and an enormous gray fist burst through the roof of the mill.

of straw and fragments of wood and wet snow rained into the mill. A coarse voice yelled, “Yurg! I’ve got them!”

Patch and Simon and Cecilia huddled against the wall of the mill. “Not now,” Patch moaned. “Now that we finally know …”

Enormous hands, with those nails as hard and thick as shields, pried through the hole and wrenched it open wider. The three of them flattened themselves against the wall where they might not be seen. A glob of the yellow stuff that oozed always from the eyes of the trolls came down and hit the tabletop with a splat. Instantly they could smell that rancid, sick-sweet odor.

The troll put its mouth to the opening. “I know you’re in there,” the mouth growled, and then it hissed and flicked its pointed tongue. “I hear you. And I
smell
you.”

Simon whimpered, and his chest rose and fell like a panicked mouse’s. He held his breath for a moment, and
then yanked the cloak off Cecilia’s arm. He threw it across his own shoulders, pulled the hood close over his head, and opened the door. “Simon, stop!” Patch whispered hoarsely. But the fool leaped outside and ran, screaming in a ridiculous high-pitched voice, “I am the queen! Don’t chase me, don’t chase me!”

Incredibly, the troll did exactly that. Through the open door, they saw Gargog stomp away after Simon. Ahead of the fool, the other troll charged out of the mist. Simon veered right. His voice cracked even higher, “Leave me alone, you monsters, I’m the queen!”

Patch and Cecilia had one last glimpse of him, with his gangly legs churning, one hand holding the hood in place and the other waving madly over his head. Then he was lost in the whiteness, with the snarling trolls in pursuit.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Patch said.

“Fooled by the fool. Let us pray he outruns them,” Cecilia said. “Now follow me to the apiary.”

It took only minutes to get there, but it seemed endless as they crept through the mist, hugging the hedges and cottages to hide from sight, and listening always for the squishing sound of heavy feet. Finally they were standing in front of a wall made of bricks, nearly six feet high and three deep.

“Here,” Cecilia said. There were a series of deep recesses like windows in one side of the wall, each of them packed tight with straw. She went to the nearest one and pulled the straw out, revealing what looked like
a large basket. It was shaped like a bell, rounded at the top and woven from thick horizontal bands of wicker. Patch had seen its like before, at the beekeeper’s home in Crossfield. “A skep,” he said, remembering the name the beekeeper used for them.

“That’s right,” Cecilia said. She pulled the skep out and placed it on the ground. It stood perhaps three feet high. “The straw keeps them safe from the elements during the winter. Let’s look inside.” She pulled the domed top away and turned it upside down for Patch to see.

Honeycombs, built of countless waxy six-sided shapes, hung from the wicker in irregular rows inside the dome. And packed in the largest gap between the combs was a mass of hundreds upon hundreds of bees, huddled together in a dense and fuzzy orange-brown knot.

“Look, Patch—the warming air is beginning to wake them.” And it was. There was a pulse of movement all over the mass of bees. As Patch watched, a few rolled off the outer layer of the pile, apparently dead.

“They huddle around her during the winter. Many sacrifice themselves to keep her warm,” said Cecilia softly. “Her?”

She carefully replaced the top of the skep. “Yes, Patch. In the middle of all those bees is the queen. Don’t you see? They’re protecting their queen.”

Despite the circumstances, despite his fear for the lives of Ludowick and Simon and everyone inside Dartham, Patch had to smile. “Like Lord Addison said.
‘The queen must be saved.’” Cecilia blushed and returned his smile.

Patch looked again at the skep. “We have to warm them more, wake them fully.”

“The kitchen, Patch—the ovens are always warm. Let us go!”

Patch shook his head. “I’ll bring it. You have to hide here—the trolls will be looking for us.”

The skin between her brows crinkled as Cecilia glared at him. “Hide here alone? They have my scent, remember—I would be hunted down like a fox. No, I will take my chances with you, Patch Ridling. And besides, if this works, I need to see the look on Giles’s face!”

It was like a fever dream, returning to Dartham. The sounds of the struggle grew louder as Patch retraced his steps and they drew closer to the eastern wall. There was a shriek unlike anything he’d ever heard. It could only be a troll in mortal agony, and it gave him hope. But a moment later, there was a long scream from some poor fellow, a scream that seemed to rise up and arc high through the air, and then down again until it ended with a thud on the ground. And amid all this was the endless crashing stone and splintering timber, the shouts of soldiers and archers, the twang of bowstrings and the whine of arrows, and the roars and hisses and laughter of the trolls.

At last they stood at the edge of the moat, across
from the little door in the wall. “How stupid!” Patch cried. The plank across the ditch was gone, of course: The soldier had removed the temporary span after he and Simon left.

“So we cross it anyway,” Cecilia said. She climbed down without hesitation, and Patch followed.

“It’s not just that,” he said. “The door is going to be locked. And I doubt anyone will be there to let us in.”

“We’ll see,” Cecilia said. She reached the bottom, where a sheet of ice lay under a growing puddle of slush, and her feet nearly slipped out beneath her. “Fancy breaking my neck in the moat after all this,” she said. She walked sideways across the ice with tiny, cautious steps.

The sense of nightmare grew in Patch’s mind as he followed her, holding the precious skep with one arm and taking her hand with the other. Their pace slowed to a crawl.

“The moat is here to slow down attackers,” Cecilia explained, nearly losing her balance again.

“It’s working, Your Majesty,” Patch said. He was more nervous than ever now, keenly aware that if a troll should wander by, they could not hope to escape while trapped on the ice. But finally they reached the other side and scrambled up the slope. Patch went to the door. There was no handle on the outside—it had been built to blend into the wall. He put his fingers through the tiny window and used that to tug, but the door did not budge. “Locked,” he said, frowning at Cecilia. Then he peered through the tiny
window. “Hello? Anyone there?” he called.

On the other side of the door, someone was sobbing. He got up on his toes to look down and saw a girl sitting there, hugging the knees that were drawn up to her chest. She must have crawled into this place for refuge during the attack.

“Let me,” said Cecilia, putting a hand on Patch’s shoulder to gently push him to the side. “Hello, child,” she said. Patch could not see, but the sobbing was replaced by sniffing. From the smile on Cecilia’s face, he knew the girl was looking up at her now.

“I know you’re frightened, young lady. I am too. But I think we have a way to defeat the trolls. And you can help. We need to open this door—but I fear the bolt is too heavy for you to move. Would you like to try? You would? That’s a fine young girl.”

Patch heard the bolt jiggle on the other side. The girl tried three, four, five times. Cecilia watched through the opening, with her bottom lip between her teeth. Then a small, quavering voice came from behind the door. “I can’t do it.”

Cecilia glanced at Patch and grimaced. “What is your name, little girl?” she said, her eyes beginning to shine with tears.

“Dulcie,” she replied.

“Dulcie, I need you to do the bravest thing you’ve ever done. You need to find someone strong enough to open this door.”

The girl gasped. “But the trolls—they’re out there!”

Cecilia’s voice shook as she spoke, and she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the door. “I know, Dulcie. But you must try. Your king needs you. Your queen needs you. And most important, your friends and your family need you.”

“All—all right.”

Patch put the skep on the ground while he waited, and he listened to the sounds of the battle inside. Men were shouting; he tried in vain to pick out Addison’s voice, or Milo’s, or even Mannon’s. He heard Cecilia whispering, and saw her hands clasped, and knew she was praying for the safety of the tiny girl.

There was a grunt somewhere in the fields behind them, and a sloshing sound. Then a series of squishing steps, heavy feet sinking deep into the slush and mud. The sound grew louder with every beat. He leaned toward Cecilia and whispered in her ear, “Troll coming.”

The slippery moat was in front of them, and only the high walls of Dartham at their backs, with nowhere to hide, left or right. “Should we run?” the queen whispered back.

“Don’t know,” Patch mouthed, straining to determine the source of the sound. He felt a hint of a warm breeze. The fog was changing. It was no longer a dense and uniform sea of white; now as he looked across the eastern fields he could see the insubstantial curtains of vapor wafting from right to left, randomly obscuring
and unveiling the features of the landscape.

Something in front of them, dangerously near, sniffed the air. The moving mists revealed what might have been mistaken for a huge boulder, but was instead a troll that was squatting on the far side of the ditch to examine footprints in the snow. He lifted his head to smell the air. Patch felt the queen’s arm slide under his, pulling him in close. “Don’t move,” she said.