The Starkin Crown (14 page)

Peregrine nodded but said, ‘He must not be called king. There is only one king and that is my father. He has thanked this rebel leader for his loyalty and allegiance and named him lord of the fenlands, but no true treaty has yet been signed. Still, I believe Lord Percival will help us if he can'.

‘They say he is a law unto himself,' Grizelda said in a shaking voice. ‘That he has destroyed all the causeways into the marshes, and shoots anyone who comes near the fens. What is to stop him shooting us?'

‘He shoots any
starkin
that comes near,' Jack said with satisfaction. ‘So his Highness and I should be safe enough. I guess you'll just have to pretend to be a hearthkin'.

‘After a week without a bath, I'm certainly filthy enough to be taken for a hearthkin,' she answered bitterly. ‘I guess my smell will have to be my disguise'.

B
LACK FOREBODING CAST A PALL ON
P
EREGRINE, DESPITE
the brightness and beauty of the day. Snow should have been falling, wind should have been howling, if all was well with his mother. What did this sudden sunshine mean?

He kept glancing behind, sure eyes were watching him. Once he thought he could hear horses' hooves behind them, though Grizelda said it was only an echo.

By the day's end, they came to the edge of the forest. Patchwork meadows, brown and grey and white, rolled away to the horizon, edged with low drystone walls and thorny hedges. Small cottages could be seen nestled among small copses of bare-branched fruit trees. Far away, a white castle stood on a hill, its banners flourishing in the breeze, its thousands of windows shining golden in the last rays of the sun.

‘That's my home,' Grizelda cried, pointing in delight. ‘Look, it's only a day's ride away!'

‘The old road leads straight towards it,' Peregrine said gloomily. ‘We'll wait till it's dark before we ride out'. He
dismounted stiffly and stretched, his whole body aching. Blitz flew down to his wrist and Peregrine stroked his head. ‘Did you have a good fly, boy? Catch us any dinner?' Blitz rubbed his master's hand with his beak, then flew to a branch nearby, grooming his ruffled feathers.

Jack dismounted too, and came to take Sable's reins. Oskar whined and twitched his ears, glancing back into the forest. His tail wagged. Grizelda sat still in her saddle, staring at the castle. ‘I want to go home,' she said firmly.

‘You can if you want,' Jack said. ‘We're not stopping you.'

Suddenly there was an unearthly shriek. A huge white owl hurtled out of the twilight-grey forest, talons extended, straight for Grizelda. She screamed and flung up one arm, trying to protect her face. A bow string twanged from the shadows. An arrow sped out, piercing the owl through the breast. She tumbled down to land awkwardly on the ground, one wing bent and broken.

‘Stiga!' Peregrine screamed. He flung himself on his knees beside the owl, who groaned and shimmered, changing shape into a frail old woman, an arrow protruding from her chest. Blood ran down and stained the frosty ground.

‘Your Highness, we must flee!' Jack cried. ‘Get up, sir! Mount! I'll pass Stiga to you'.

Peregrine obeyed at once, numb with shock. He leapt into his saddle and bent so Jack could pass Stiga up to him. She was light, no heavier than a child. One arm dangled helplessly. Peregrine dug his heels into Sable's sides. The stallion bounded into a gallop, Jack only a few seconds behind him. Blitz screeched and flew after them.

‘Ride, Grizelda!' Peregrine shouted. ‘Quick!'

She was close behind them, her hair tumbling free of her
hood and whipping behind her. Heedless of any watchers, the three companions galloped down the old road, straight towards Swartburg Castle.

Peregrine bent over the limp form of his old nursemaid. Her eyes were shut, her face blanched of any colour. He crumpled up her shawl to try to staunch the flow of blood. ‘Stiga,' he whispered. ‘Don't worry. We'll find somewhere safe to stop and tend to you. Everything will be all right'.

She opened her dark eyes and looked up into his face. ‘Stormlinn is betrayed, fallen to the blade'.

The world spun around. Peregrine kept his seat with difficulty. ‘Mam? Father? Aunty Rozie and Uncle Zed?'

‘All you love is taken, the castle is forsaken'. Her voice was such a thin thread he could barely hear it.

‘Taken? Where?'

She shook her head. Her face twisted in pain.

‘What happened? Can you tell me how?' he demanded. ‘Please, Stiga. Who betrayed them?'

‘They came in through the secret way, all the guards they did slay'. Her voice failed her. She shut her eyes.

‘But how could they have known about the secret way? Who could've told them?'

She did not answer. He felt a strange tingling in his hands and arms where he held her. Then she was gone, and he carried in his arms a dead owl.

Peregrine buried Stiga under a cairn of rocks in a small copse of trees, saying in a low, choked voice: ‘Go easy, beloved Stiga, fly once more in the moonlight, fly across moor and meadow, fly across forest and field, fly across the bright sea,
let the waters carry you to the sun. Be at peace, faithful Stiga, and know I shall never forget you'.

Jack knelt beside him, passing the rocks to him in silence. Grizelda sat nearby, her arms wrapped about her knees, her eyes wide and fearful.

‘The arrow just came from nowhere,' Peregrine said in a choked voice. ‘I heard nothing. Nothing!'

‘He must have been following us all the time,' Jack said. ‘He must've crept up close, to hear what we were saying, maybe'.

‘Why did he shoot her? Why, why?'

‘She was attacking Grizelda,' Jack pointed out.

‘But why?' Grizelda said in a small voice. ‘I've done nothing. I warned you the soldiers were coming!'

‘Perhaps it was enough that you are of starkin blood,' Peregrine said. ‘Perhaps, in her simple way, she thinks you brought the attack upon the castle'.

Grizelda's voice shook. ‘She always hated me'.

There was a long silence. Peregrine rested his head on his arms. He felt so sick and weary he just wanted to curl into a ball and never move again.

Jack watched the landscape behind them. The moon sailed high in a sky of piercingly bright stars. It was almost full. Nothing moved but the wind in the branches. ‘He does not seem to be following us,' he said. ‘Shall we ride on?'

Peregrine did not answer.

‘Your Highness? Shall we ride on? I don't feel safe here. We're too close to the castle'.

Still Peregrine did not answer, his face hidden. Jack squatted beside him, one hand resting on his shoulder. ‘My lord?'

Peregrine shook his hand away, standing up abruptly. ‘Yes. We'll ride on. What else is there to do? My only hope now is
to find the spear. We'll find the spear, we'll rescue my parents, and we'll wrest the crown from that malevolent old hag, I swear it! Come on, let's ride!'

They rode all night, keeping to the hedgerows, letting the tired horses plod. Once or twice Peregrine almost fell asleep in the saddle. He was jerked awake by the harness, which kept him from falling. Each time at the moment of awakening he remembered with a rush of black despair. Stiga dead, Stormlinn Castle fallen, his family taken captive. Surely he could rescue his parents if he found the spear? If only the spear was still there to be found …

As dawn approached, they hid in a small copse of trees in a valley, bounded on both sides by wide bare fields. It was odd to hear no birds singing. It seemed to unsettle Blitz, who was hunched on his perch, his hooded head turning this way and that as he strained to hear. Peregrine stroked him between his wings and gave him a small gobbet of meat from his wallet, then tied his jesses to the perch. He dared not risk a falcon being seen flying in these birdless skies.

They ate, then huddled themselves in their cloaks to sleep, taking turns to keep watch. Even though the daylight hours were so short that they did not need to hide for long, Peregrine still found the waiting difficult. He wanted to be up and moving. The road was busy this close to the castle, however, and it would not have been safe to ride on. Farmers' carts trundled up and down, a girl walked past with a flock of geese, a battalion of soldiers in silver armour marched by. Once a wedge of sisika birds flew over, and Peregrine shrank down beneath his grey cloak, hoping no betraying piece of metal from the horses' tack would catch the sun.

He slept for a few hours while Jack kept watch, but the sun stabbed through the thin, bare branches and his dreams were restless. At last Peregrine sat up, hunched in his cloak, and watched a farmer working nearby, laboriously mending a broken wall. He was a poor stick of a man, tattered as a scarecrow, with feet bound with rags. Once he came close enough for Peregrine to see that both his ears had been chopped off, leaving only ugly red scars. Peregrine flinched, sick with pity and horror. When he woke Grizelda in the dusk, he demanded to know what crime could possibly result in such a dreadful punishment.

She shrugged, her blue eyes unable to meet his. ‘He could have listened to seditious songs or stories, or to slanderous lies about the queen'.

‘They would cut off his ears for listening to
stories
?' Peregrine asked. When she nodded, he continued furiously, ‘It is evil! This is your county, Grizelda! Your brother is Count of Zavaria, he is responsible for justice in this land. How can he be so cruel?'

‘It is the law,' she said unhappily. ‘The queen makes the laws'.

‘I bet she would not lose her ears if she listened to gossip,' Jack cried.

‘Shhhh!' Grizelda looked around her. ‘Be careful how you speak of the queen,' she said in a much lower voice.

‘Why? Will I lose my tongue if I say something nasty about her?' Jack said sarcastically, then stared in disbelief when Grizelda nodded.

A shrill, triumphant scream right overhead made them all jump as another wedge of sisika birds flew over. At once Peregrine and Jack froze, hoping their hooded cloaks were
enough to hide them from view. Peregrine's heart was beating so hard it bruised the bones of his chest. The giant birds kept on flying, though. Peregrine gazed after them and then cried out in shock.

A net was suspended between two of the birds. People were crammed, struggling, inside. Peregrine saw arms, legs, bodies, heads, pressed hard against the crisscross of rope. Hundreds of wild birds soared around the net, screaming in distress.

His legs gave way. He sat down.

‘Are you all right?' Jack whispered.

Peregrine nodded.

‘What?' Grizelda said. ‘It's only a load of prisoners being taken to the castle'. Then she realised. ‘Oh no! Do you think … I'm so sorry! They're prisoners from Stormlinn Castle, aren't they? Those sisika birds belong to the soldiers that attacked you'.

‘Including your brother?' Jack spoke harshly.

She nodded her head, looking frightened. ‘He wouldn't have been able to do anything to help, though,' she babbled. ‘The queen's commanders—'

‘They're being taken to your castle, though,' Jack pointed out.

‘It's the closest,' she answered defensively.

‘Is there some secret way into your castle?' Peregrine demanded. ‘A passage or hidden door?'

She shook her head. ‘No. It's very well guarded, because of the rebels, you know. There's a moat around it filled with pikes and poisonous water snakes and blood-sucking leeches, and the only entrance is guarded night and day. And then, of course, there are the dogs. They'd tear any intruders to pieces'.
She paused for a moment, then her eyes brightened. ‘I could get you in, of course'.

Peregrine sat staring at the castle, his hands clenched together.

‘We can ride straight there. Oh, let's! We'll have a feast. My brother's cook is the best in all the counties. We'll be able to sleep in a bed. I can have a bath and change my clothes. Oh, please, your Highness … please, Robin'.