The Safe-Keeper's Secret (13 page)

“Or this world would be an even sadder place than it is,” Angeline agreed, coming to her feet. “Would anyone like dessert? Fiona and I made a cherry tart this afternoon.”

“Now that's
my
dream come true,” Reed said. Everyone laughed.

After that they made tea and ate sweets and talked late into the night. Both guests were gone by morning, after promising to meet again no later than Wintermoon. Fiona spent her final week in Kate's garden, taking prized cuttings and listening intently to the detailed instructions on how to care for them.

In a week, Fiona and Reed and Angeline were packing their belongings and piling into a comfortable traveling carriage that Robert had insisted on lending them. Fiona and Reed leaned out the windows to watch the town fold back behind them, but Angeline merely sat with her head resting against the back of the seat, and looked as if she was tired before the journey had even begun.

When they were not far from the outskirts of Tambleham, only about two miles from their own house, the carriage came to a complete halt. “
Now
what?” Angeline exclaimed, because they'd been stopped twice already on the road, once by a flooded river and once by a felled tree.

Reed craned his head out the window. “It looks like—it looks like a hay cart has dropped its load all over the road,” he said. “Oh! And there's another wagon. I think maybe they collided and the hay got knocked out. The horses are sideways across the road, too.”

Angeline looked alarmed. “Is anyone hurt?”

“Not that I can see. They all look mad, though.”

“Can we drive around?” Fiona asked.

“Field's pretty wet,” Reed observed. “Might get stuck.”

“I don't think I can bear to sit one more hour on the road,” Angeline said.

Reed had already pulled the handle and opened his door. “I'm going to walk the last couple of miles,” he said. “I'll be home before you.”

He had one foot out the door when Angeline said, “Wait.”

He turned back with an inquiring look on his face. Fiona was already staring at her aunt. Angeline had been so quiet during the whole long journey that Fiona had assumed she was sleepy, or maybe had developed a headache from the rock and clatter of the coach. But now something in Angeline's taut features and expression of misery gave Fiona a creeping, bone-deep chill.

“What is it?” Fiona asked in a low voice. “What's wrong?”

“There is—when you get home—you'll find that your mother's been sick,” Angeline said.

Reed drew his foot back in and shut the door very carefully. Fiona said, “How sick?”

Angeline shook her head. “I don't know. We both thought—and even Elminstra thought—if she spent the summer very quietly, doing nothing, she might recover. That's why you both came to stay with me. And Elminstra went to see her every day, and tried every potion she knew. But she—but your mother—she hasn't gotten stronger. She's gotten weaker instead.”

“How weak?” Fiona asked in the same clipped voice.

“I don't know. I haven't seen her. But Thomas says she's very frail.”

Without another word, Reed palmed the handle, shoved open the door, and jumped out of the coach. Fiona called after him, but he was already ten yards away, racing at a full-out run across the fields, by the shortest route back to the cottage.

Fiona returned her attention to her aunt. She was furious. “How could you do this?” she whispered. “How could you take us away from her when there might not be very much time left?”

Angeline shook her head. “Our hope was to make her better, not to keep you away from her.”

“How could you not tell us such an important thing?”

“She asked me not to,” Angeline said starkly. “And I'm a Safe-Keeper.”

“And Thomas? He knew?”

“He knew.”

“And
he
did not tell me?
He
, who repeats every thought the minute it pops into his head? He knew, and he didn't tell me?”

“Sometimes,” Angeline said sadly, “a Truth-Teller can choose not to speak. It is just that nothing he says is false.”

“I hate you both,” Fiona said flatly, and got out of the coach.

She could not run as fast as Reed, but she was a good walker, and she knew the way as well as Reed did. The ground was muddy but only impassable in a few spots, and she followed Reed's footprints around any particularly marshy places. She was so full of rage and fear that she almost was not aware of her feet moving and her body working. Her skin was hot from sun or exertion or terror, but her heart was cold.

No one had had to speak the truth out loud for Fiona to know that her mother was dying.

She was panting a little by the time she made it in sight of the cottage. The garden looked overgrown, as if no one had tended it all season. The back door was open, as if Reed had run through without bothering to close it behind him. The carriage with Angeline was nowhere in sight—it was probably still stuck behind the hay cart two miles down the road.

Fiona pushed herself to a run and hurried through the back door, into the welcome coolness of the cottage. Damiana and Reed were right there inside the kitchen. He was on his knees and weeping into her skirt; she was standing there gazing down at him, her arms cradled around his head.

She looked up and smiled when Fiona burst in. “I hope you were not cruel to Angeline,” she said, and her voice was raspy, as if she had been crying or coughing or simply not talking very much. “None of this is her fault.”

It was Reed who had always been able to express whatever the emotion of the day brought; Fiona was not able to fall to her knees and lament, much as she wanted to. She merely stared at her mother and read the story in her eyes.

“This was a secret you could have trusted me with,” she said.

Damiana shook her head. “This was a secret I never wanted to tell,” she replied.

Angeline did not come to the door for several more hours, though Fiona thought she heard the coach lumber by the front gate about a half
hour later. By that time, Reed had calmed down enough to sit and have tea, and the three of them were gathered together at the kitchen table, talking.

“How much time?” Reed asked.

Damiana shook her head. “I'm not sure.”

“Till Wintermoon?”

“Maybe not.”

“I'm not going back to school,” he said.

“Of course you are! You—”

“I'm not, either,” Fiona said.

Damiana looked at her helplessly, as if she had been counting on Fiona's support. “But I want you to finish your studies. Both of you.”

Fiona shrugged and sipped her tea. “I don't think there's anything you can make us do right now. Except take care of you.”

“That is not what I would choose for you,” Damiana said softly. “Spending precious months of your life tending a dying woman.”

“You have already taken away three of those precious months,” Fiona said, her voice unyielding. “We're making sure we have the rest.”

Reed looked over at Fiona. His happy, carefree face was set and serious; he looked like a different person. “I can keep the garden and do whatever has to be done around the house,” he said. “And I'm better at math than you are, so I'll buy the goods we need in town.”

“We might need money,” Fiona answered him. Both of them ignored Damiana's small wordless exclamations of distress. “I can see if Lacey has any piecework I can do here at the house.”

“Dirk might let me work at the tavern a day or two a week. He's asked me before.”

“Fiona, Reed—don't talk that way—”

“And I have some cuttings I brought back from Kate's garden,” Fiona said, still speaking only to her brother. “Some things that Elminstra doesn't have. I can make some potions up, see if they make things easier for Mother.”

“Fiona, darling, don't pin your hopes on your herbal remedies,” Damiana murmured.

“One's for pain,” Fiona added, as if Damiana hadn't spoken. “In case nothing else works. It's gotten a good solid rooting, too. I can probably pick a few of the leaves tomorrow.”

“Don't talk like this,” Damiana implored.

Fiona looked over at her mother, at her hurt, hopeful face, seeing the first faint ravages of the disease and the thin lines traced by fear. “We will
take care of you,” she said in a precise voice. “All you have left to do now is realize how much we love you.”

Angeline arrived at dinnertime, in company with Elminstra, who brought a casserole. The old witch came rushing in, throwing her arms around Reed and Fiona in turn, whether they wished to be hugged or not. Fiona felt some of her hardheld anger and panic melt a little against Elminstra's comforting embrace. She took a deep gulping breath and had to fight hard not to start crying into the freshly starched linen of the older woman's dress.

But she controlled herself and stepped away. “Thank you so much for all you've done for my mother while we've been gone,” she said.

“Yes, and I was glad to do it, and I'd do it another three months or another three years,” Elminstra exclaimed. “But it is good to see you back, you and your brother—she has missed you so terribly—”

“Elminstra has brought us dinner,” Angeline said in a subdued voice. “And will stay to eat it with us if we'd like.”

“Yes, please stay,” said Reed, and that settled it. Fiona laid another place and they all sat down together and ate.

The meal was the strangest one Fiona could ever remember. Damiana and Elminstra asked hundreds of questions about how their summer had gone, what they had learned from Robert, from Kate, what marvels they had seen in Lowford. Elminstra in turn related bits of gossip, news of events that had transpired over the summer and that might not have made their way into their mother's letters. Reed talked easily, though without his usual buoyancy, but both Fiona and Angeline were quiet, monosyllabic when they spoke at all.

And yet, for all the awkwardness, it was an infinitely precious meal, one that Fiona would never forget, for here they were all together in one room, the four people she loved the most in the world. Someday soon to be reduced to three.

Someday after that—maybe not so far distant a day—to be reduced again, when Elminstra died, or Angeline. It had not occurred to Fiona till this very moment, but that was the normal run of things; adults passed on, children became adults, more children were born. What she had now, this circle of beloved faces, might come together again only a few more times in her life, and who knew when the next member might be culled? Panic gripped her so tightly that her hand shook on her water glass and she had to set it back on the table unsipped.

“Fiona,” Damiana said in a quiet voice. “I want you to take your aunt out to the garden and show her the fleurmint you planted this spring. It bloomed for the first time yesterday, and she's never seen it.”

Fiona nodded blindly and pushed her chair back. She did not even look over at Angeline, but stepped away from the table and out the back door before anyone else could say a word. Outside, it was dark already, the early dark of late summer, and the smells of laden orchards and cut hay were very strong. In the faint moonlight, Fiona could see only high shadows where the tall stalks of hollyhocks should be, and a low furze of darkness where the summer vegetables lay in their cradles of green.

Angeline stepped outside, the door knocking shut behind her, and Fiona whirled around. It was as if the sobs were breaking her from the inside, snapping her in two bone by bone. Angeline said nothing, merely took Fiona in her arms and held her as long as the crying lasted.

Chapter Nine

W
hat Fiona remembered about the rest of that season was Reed's gentleness. The boy whose chatter could only be stilled by sleep, the boy who ran so fast he could only be caught by nightfall, became a young man who could sit still and silent for hours at a time. It was Reed who brought Damiana her breakfast in the morning, and Reed who carried her from room to room when she grew too weak to walk. It was Reed who sat and read to her for hours, or listened when she had the strength to talk. He did the household chores he had promised—weeded the garden, chopped the wood, shopped in the market, fixed the gate—but more of his time was spent indoors than out, his hand always on their mother's arm.