The Very Best of Kate Elliott (11 page)

A new party rode up at a canter, from the direction of West Hall.

Her heart froze, and her mouth turned as dry as the stubble of a mowed field in summer’s heat. The lord she had seen in the clearing of Dead Man’s Oak arrived with all his anger riding as a mantle draping him. He was accompanied by ten mounted soldiers. The infantry leaped to their feet, hastening to pack away their flasks and bread.

“Why do you loiter here?” he demanded. “We have reports of a remnant of General Olivar’s company that escaped us and is even now making its way cross country to reach the court. Get up! Get up!”

He reined up by the flustered lads dusting off their backsides and shouldering their packs. His eye lit on her, sitting at peace among them.

“Who is this?” he asked them in a tone that snapped.

“My lord,” said the merry one hastily.“Just a herbwife who chanced to be resting her feet here when we halted.”

“Get on the march,” commanded the lord.

As they hastened away, that stare came to rest on her. He had the eyes of a fish, moist and deadened, and thin lips that might, she hoped, never waken desire in a lover so that he would never know what it is to share true affection.

“What are you about on the road, herbwife?” he demanded.

Kindness would make no shift with a man like him. He could only see what he expected.

“I am but a poor widow,” she said, pitching her voice to whine like her youngest would do in a tone both grating and harsh, “for my husband is dead of drink and my daughter married. The wicked girl promised I could live with her, though she didn’t mean a word of it even though she took my marriage bed, so what am I to do when her ungrateful brute of a husband said he wanted nothing to do with me and him a drinker, too, I’ll have you know. But mayhap you have a coin to spare for a sad widow.”

“Which I daresay you will spend on ale the moment you reach an alehouse, you old shrew,” he replied with a sneer. But he tossed her a copper penny and rode away. That quickly they were all gone, riding at speed away toward the city while she sat shaking.

Finally, when she could breathe calmly again, she picked up the copper for all that it had the taste of his evil hand on it. Old shrew! Not that old, surely, but then she looked at her work-chapped hands and she supposed her sun-weathered face appeared little different. There was certainly gray in her hair, for her comb told her that, although still plenty of the auburn that Olef had said was the fire washed through her that made his heart warm. Not just his heart.

She pressed a hand to her breast, feeling the tin swan tucked within her bodice.

A league more brought her to a small river whose name she did not know. She had only traveled to the King’s City twice in the whole of her life, and while there were landmarks she recognized from her other trips, she did not know what they were called.

The road wound through coppiced trees. Ahead of her, she heard the harried voices and the grind of wheels just in time to step off the road. A shout chased along the wind. A half-dozen men trotted into view, pushing carts laden with sheepskins. They cast frightened looks back over their shoulders.

“Here, Mistress,” called the eldest, seeing her.“Trouble at the bridge. Best you hurry back the way you came.”

“What manner of trouble?” she asked, but then she heard thumping and screaming, and she knew.

“A fight on the bridge,” said the oldest man, slowing to a walk as the rest kept moving.“Don’t go down there.”

“But I must get to the King’s City.”

He gestured in the direction of the carters as the last vanished around a curve in the road.

“Did you see the big ash tree with the blaze on its north-facing trunk? There’s a trail there that carries on upstream to Three Willows village. They keep a small bridge, though they charge a penny for a crossing, so we don’t like to go that way. But better a penny than dead.”

He hurried on after the others, but Anna crept forward, careful to stay concealed in the undergrowth. She had to see.

The bridge in quieter times had a watchman and a gate flanked by two posts, each with a carved hawk on top whose talons held lanterns at night.

The watchman was dead, and dead and wounded men sprawled on the bridge’s span, caught while crossing. A body bobbed in the sluggish water, dark hair trailing along the current. Several saddled but riderless horses had broken away and now sidestepped skittishly through uncut grass, not sure whether to bolt or to await their lost riders.

The skirmish had swirled onto the other bank, a few last desperate men trying to break away from the Forlangers, but they were outnumbered. Anna stared in horror at the melee.

The outnumbered soldiers were the general’s men by their colors: pine green and white. There were only six left, and two of those were badly wounded. A horse stumbled and went down with a spear in its belly. Lord Hargrim himself directed his men as they moved to encircle the last survivors.

At once, five of the general’s soldiers charged with shrieks and shouts while the sixth drove his horse into the water and flung himself into the current to swim. It took a while for the Forlanger archers to loose arrows because the last of the general’s soldiers had spread out, killing themselves by disrupting the Forlanger line for just long enough that the swimming man could get out of range.

Shouting curses down on their enemy, they too fell to lie bleeding at the feet of the Forlangers. The riderless horse made it across the river and stumbled up the bank, then headed straight for the other horses as for home.

“Follow him!” shouted the lord.“He must not get away.”

A half-dozen Forlanger men were left behind to pick through the survivors, kill any who still breathed, and drag away their own wounded.

She turned her back on the slaughter and walked as quickly as she could, shaking, afraid at every sound, sure they would come galloping up behind her and lop off her head. But the ash tree with its half-hidden blaze was still standing, and she cut into the forest and was well into the trees when she heard horses pass on the road. Her heart pounded so hard that she walked without tiring until at length she caught up with the carters.

The older man nodded to acknowledge her.

She said, “Your pardon, but might I walk with you the rest of the way? Seeing that blood-soaked bridge has taken ten years off my life.”

“I pay no mind to the fights the king’s men have among themselves,” he said,“and nor should you. Not as long as they do not bother us.Why your haste to reach the King’s City? You should just go home.”

“I’m off to visit my daughter in the city, for she is to have her lie-in soon. Her first child. And while I do not like to speak ill of any woman, I must say that her husband’s mother does not treat her in a generous way. Rather she lets my daughter do all the work while she sits in a chair and gives orders.”

He was a chatty man, happy to talk about his own wife’s mother and how she had been a scold unlike his own dear mother, both now long passed. He was just friendly enough that she did not mention she was a widow, and his younger kinsmen were polite but preoccupied at having seen slaughter done right before their eyes.

The path led upriver for about a league to a small bridge she would never have known existed but for the carters. A watchman at the bridge demanded the penny toll, and she handed over the coin the lord had thrown at her.

There was a party of Forlangers guarding the bridge on the far bank, but after they searched the carts for smuggled men, they let the wagoners pass and her with them, for no one paid her any mind in her worn shawl and with her worn face.

So she came to the city gates just as dusk was coming down, later than she had hoped. She knew well how to make a dry nest in the forest whatever the weather, but how to find a place to sleep in the city seemed a fearful mystery. The place was so crowded and so loud, and it stank.

She made her way to the river bank’s stony shore. There, the last laundresses were heaping their baskets with damp cloth to haul back to their households.

“My pardon, good dames, but I’m wondering if you know where I can find my cousin’s sister. She is laundress to the king’s sister, so they tell me. I walked here from the village to let her know that her brother is gravely ill.”

They laughed at her country accent and her ignorance.

“The king’s sister’s laundry is done indoors in great vats with boiling water, not out on these cold rocks,” said the youngest of them, who was almost as pregnant as Mari. “Those women don’t talk to us. You have to go round to the Dowager House beside the King’s Palace. The king’s mother has been dead these five years, so the sister has set up housekeeping there. And a good thing, too.”

“Shhh,” said the other women, and many of them hurried away.

“Why do you say so?” asked Anna, watching the others vanish into the twilight. Smoke made the air hazy. Everything tasted of ash and rubbish and shit.

“My pardon, I didn’t mean to say it,” said the girl. “It’s dangerous to speak of the troubles in the court. You know how it is.”

“I am up from the country. We hear no gossip there.”

“Better if I say nothing,” said the girl as she shifted the basket awkwardly around her huge belly.

“Let me help you,” said Anna, taking the girl’s basket. “It is a shame for you to carry such a heavy load so near your time.”

The girl smiled gratefully and started walking. “The work must be done. Where are you from, Mistress?”

“Just a small village, no place you’ll have ever heard of. By the forest.”

“Isn’t the forest full of wolves?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Aren’t you scared all the time that they’ll come and eat you?”

“Wolves are no different than men. They hunt the weak. But maybe in one way they are kinder. They only kill what they eat.”

The girl had a wan face, and hearing these words she looked more tired than ever.

“Here now,” said Anna, regarding her sadly, for it seemed a terrible burden to be so young and look so weary. “If you’ll tell me how to find the Dowager’s House, then I will teach you some bird calls. Like this.”

She trilled like a lark, and the girl laughed, so entirely delighted that she looked like a child on festival morning waiting for a treat of honey.

“If you’ll carry the basket I’ll walk you there. It’s not so far from where I work and live.”

“Do you wash all this laundry for a family?”

“That I do, Mistress. I’m lucky to have the work with a respectable tailor and his household. The lady of the house has said she will let me keep my baby in the kitchen during the day as long as I keep up my work.” She named a name that she clearly thought would impress Anna, but Anna had to admit she had no knowledge of this well-known tailor and how he had once made a coat for the king’s sister’s chatelaine’s brother. Anna’s ignorance made the girl laugh even more. Anna was glad to see her cheerful.

So they walked along cobblestone streets as Anna taught her the capped owl’s hoot and the periwinkle’s chitter and the nightlark’s sad mournful whistling “sweet! sweet!” until some man shouted from a closed house,“Shut that noise!” They giggled, and in good charity with each other reached a wide square on which rose the Dowager House, with stone columns making a monumental porch along the front and a walled garden with trees in the back.

The girl checked Anna with an elbow, keeping her to the shadows. “There are soldiers on guard,” she said, bitterness staining her tone to make it dark and angry. “Those are not the king’s men. They belong to the Forlanger lord. He has people watching the Dowager House. He licks the king’s boots, so I wonder what he fears from the king’s sister.”

Anna knew what he feared, but she said nothing.

The girl took her hand, anger loosening her tongue.“My man soldiers with General Olivar’s company, a foot soldier. That is why I do not like the Forlangers. I thought they were to be back by now. He and I are to be wed next month.”

The words took Anna like a blow to the heart, reminding her of Olef ’s last day, of his last words, of his last breath. Of how the Forlangers had been responsible, of how they took their war against General Olivar to the back roads and the isolated places where their actions would remain hidden from the king.

She thought of the market hall, and how folk from all around came there on market day. Now that he could no longer push a plough, her brother Joen had been able to set up a stall selling garden produce that his wife and children tended, together with rope he braided from hemp. What went on in the king’s court she did not know, but if the general trusted the king’s sister, then the king’s sister it must be.

But she could say nothing of this to the young laundress. She could only pray to the gods that the man who had escaped down the river might be her man.

A single guard wearing the mark of a white swan stood guard at the service door, around by the alley. When she touched the tin swan in her bodice, she knew she had to brave this last leg of the journey.

“Go on, child, go home, then, and my thanks to you.” She handed over the heavy basket. “May the Hanging Woman loosen your womb and let your child come easily.”

“My thanks, Mistress.”

Anna watched the girl’s waddling progress into the dusky streets and hoped she would get home without mishap, but the King’s City was a peaceful place on the whole. Folk were still about, so she was able to cross the square by tagging along behind a pair of young apprentices hauling a butchered pig between them. The Forlanger soldiers glanced at the pig and made crude comments about what the lads were like to do with the sow, but their gaze skipped right over her. They took no notice of her at all, right up to the moment she cut sideways and strode up to the side gate and its single swan-marked guardsman.

“I pray you,” she said in a low voice, not hiding her distress as a pair of Forlanger soldiers broke off to trot toward the gate,“if your lady wishes to save the life of General Olivar, then let me inside before they catch me. And tell them this tale, that I am . . .”

Fear made her words fail and her thoughts sluggish. The guard was staring at her as the footfalls of the Forlangers closed in. The poor young man looked as stupefied as she felt. A breath of wind brushed her neck, like the stroke of a sword.