The Very Best of Kate Elliott (12 page)

So she got mad, for she had not trudged all this way just to have her corpse tossed into a rubbish heap and the general left for dead in the forest.

“Stupid boy, let me in! Tell the soldiers I am your poor mother come to beg a loaf of bread in the kitchen and that I will scold you if you don’t let me in. I will see that the lady knows you helped me. But General Olivar will die if you do not act now.”

He was so surprised by her harsh tone that he opened the gate and, as soon as she slipped through, slammed it behind her.

The Forlangers ran up as she hurried across a courtyard to the servants’ door.“You! Who was that?” they demanded.

The youth’s voice was shaking, but it could as well have been from annoyance as fear.

“My mum, as if it’s anything to you. Cursed woman keeps coming to beg bread off the kitchen. I’m that ashamed of it, but if I don’t let her in she stands outside and scolds me. And she’s drunk as usual. Best day of my life when I walked out of her cursed filthy hovel.”

Their argument faded as she reached the door. She whispered thanks to the gods when the big latch pushed down easily, not locked. The door opened onto an entryway bigger than her cottage. She closed the door and stood there gaping at a high ceiling and wood paneling illuminated by oil lamps, the richest ornamentation she had ever seen, such fine carving as put the headman’s house in the village to shame. The heat and smell of the oil in the lamps drenched her; the fierce light after the dark streets made her blink. A riot was happening somewhere down the hall, a clattering like a battle and many voices talking over each other.

Something about a roast.

A girl in a neat skirt and blouse covered by a linen apron dashed down a length of stairs with a tray in her hands. Seeing Anna, she stopped.

“Where is that careless girl?” bellowed a voice from the room where a mob was evidently destroying every piece of furnishing.

The girl ran into that other room. Anna tried desperately to get her bearings, but the long corridor, the many doors, the stairs, and the echoing sound confused her more than forest, road, or city streets had.

The girl appeared again, stared at her again, and ran down the corridor to vanish into another room. She reappeared with a radiantly handsome woman behind her who might have been Anna’s age and was wearing the most fashionable clothing Anna had ever seen, a gold gown that shone like sunlight and a finely embroidered bridal shawl draped over her shoulders. Anna stood stunned, not knowing how to show honor to a great lady, the king’s own sister!

The woman approached her with a stern gaze. “Who are you, Mistress? How have you gotten through the gates this night? I am surprised that Roderd allowed you in, for he knows better. On the new moon, the lady gives out alms. You must come back then.”

“You are not the king’s sister?” Anna asked.

Those lustrous eyes opened wide, and the woman smiled. “I am her downstairs chatelaine, the keeper of the kitchen and lower hall. Where are you from? For you have a country accent and a country look about you.”

Anna looked toward the girl, a little thing no taller than her second daughter but lively and as smartly dressed as the headman’s three proud daughters who liked to traipse around the village showing off their expensive garb.

“Go along,” said the chatelaine with a gesture. The girl scurried off into what Anna at long last realized must be a kitchen so large that the headman’s house would fit inside it. That explained the echoing clamor of many cooks and servants at their work, making ready for some manner of feast.

“Do not make me call a guard to throw you out, Mistress,” said the chatelaine more kindly, as if suspecting Anna was slow of wit and perhaps drunk besides.

“I beg pardon for my manner,” said Anna, recovering her tongue at last,“but I have never seen such a fine house as this one.”

The chatelaine sighed.

She went on hastily, seeing the woman’s patience wane. “I pray you do not throw me out. I am come many days’ walk from a distant village with news I can only trust the king’s sister to hear.”

“You must imagine such a tale will fall coldly on my ears.”

Anna did not know what to do. What if the Forlanger soldiers pushed past the lone guard and rushed into the house? She had to trust that the mark of the king’s sister being a swan and the general’s mention of her meant that the lady’s servants were also loyal to the man. Her voice dropped to a whisper.“News of General Olivar.”

The chatelaine’s eyes opened wide. From the courtyard, shouting broke out.

Anna reached into her bodice and pulled out the tin swan.

The chatelaine gasped.“Hide it!” she said, then grasped Anna’s wrist and tugged her along up the stairs in such haste that Anna stumbled twice before they reached the top. There, a pair of bored young men wearing swan-embroidered tabards straightened up as if caught doing what they were not allowed.

“Get down to the door and by no means allow any outsiders farther than the entry until I return,” the chatelaine snapped. “Send Captain Bellwin to me at once in the library.”

The young men grinned, like hounds eager to the scent, and pounded down the stairs just as some manner of altercation erupted at another door. But Anna had scarcely time to think, for the dazzling corridor down which they hurried was like a palace of the gods, all studded with gold and silver and color. There were people walking and standing and hunting and dancing along the walls too, so like to people that she wanted to reach out and touch them, only she knew they were paintings like the one in the market hall that depicted the king being anointed and crowned.

The chatelaine pulled her into a room so filled with books that it smelled different than any room Anna had ever been in. She did not know there were so many books. Even the priest at the temple, who bragged of his treasure-house of six books, would lose his ability to speak could he have seen the shelves and shelves of them. Who made so many books? What was their purpose?

What was going to happen now?

The chatelaine released her wrist and glowered at her until a neatly clad servant girl peeped in.“Get me water to wash,” she ordered.

They waited a bit longer. The girl returned with a bowl and pitcher and towel, and poured and rinsed the chatelaine’s hand where she had touched Anna, then took everything away. As the servant went out, a soldier dressed in a swan tabard strode in.

“There is trouble at the gate. I did not know Roderd’s mother is a drunk beggar.” His gaze fell on Anna. A glint of humor in the slant of his lips gave her hope.“Is this the dame?”

“I am not the lad’s mother,” she said. “It was a lie so that the Forlangers did not take me.”

“She says she has news of General Olivar.” The chatelaine turned on Anna, and her fierce stare was the most frightening thing Anna had seen on her entire journey, for she could not tell if it promised or threatened.

It was only now that she realized it might all be for naught. She might have walked into a trap, and her life forfeit. Yet then she would join Olef on the other side. Mari and Hansi had the wit and strength to take care of the little ones. So be it.

She fished the tin swan out of her bodice and displayed it.

The chatelaine and the captain exchanged a foreboding glance.

“How come you by this token?” asked the captain. “What is your name, and where are you from?”

“I am called Anna, my lord. I have taken this token from the general. If you wish to save his life, then you must rescue him from the place where he is hidden.”

“Word came last night that he is dead,” said the captain in a flat voice.

“He is not dead. He lives, but is wounded and hidden. I brought this to show the king’s sister, for he said that she would be able and willing to aid him. The Forlangers mean to kill him.”

“They have already struck,” said the captain to the chatelaine. “I thought it must be Lord Hargrim’s doing, but we cannot establish he is the one behind the attack.”

“General Olivar is proof,”Anna insisted.“But the Forlangers control the roads.”

The two servants conferred in low voices, and then the chatelaine left. Anna knew perfectly well the captain remained as a guard to make sure she did not escape. What surprised her was that he did not attempt to take the tin swan out of her hand. Nor did he speak. He went over to the desk and, still standing, opened a book and looked at the scratchings just as a priest could. Anna watched him but he did not move his lips as the priest did when he read; only his eyes moved, tracing left to right and then skipping back to the left and so on, a pattern as steady as that of a woman knitting.

The door opened to admit the chatelaine escorting two women. One was a magnificent noble beauty dressed in a gown of such splendor that she might as well have been dressed in threads spun of gold and silver. Her small, ordinary companion wore simpler garb sewn out of a midnight blue cloth so tightly woven it shone. They studied Anna, who did her best to stand respectfully, for she was not sure how to properly greet a king’s sister.

The small, ordinary woman spoke to her, her speech so colored by odd pronunciations and words Anna did not recognize that she could make no sense of it. The king’s grandparents had come from a distant place to establish their court here; that no doubt accounted for their strange way of speaking.

The chatelaine translated. “Her Serenity addresses you, Mistress. She wishes to see the token you hold.”

Anna held out the swan. The tin badge was such a cheap thing, a trinket any girl could buy at a summer fair as a remembrance of her journeying there. Yet both ladies gasped, and the ordinary one stepped forward, took the swan out of Anna’s hand, and turned it over. Her cheeks flushed when she saw the scratchings. Her gaze fixed on Anna in a fearsome way that made Anna see that she had mistaken the beautiful woman for the king’s sister when it fact it was this unremarkable one who had the power and majesty.

Her snapped question had no word in it Anna understood, but she comprehended what the lady wished to know.

“The Forlangers attacked the village of West Hall, my lady. I went at night to give what aid to any wounded that I might, for I have some herbcraft. We found the general lying beneath the Dead Man’s Oak. I recognized him for he came once to our village to dedicate a market hall. Woodpasture, that is, but he called it Bayisal. Our people have always lent our support to the general. Our men fight when they are called. We have lost men in his service, killed by the Forlangers. My own husband . . .”

She faltered, choked by grief as she rested a hand on her belly.

The king’s sister passed the tin swan to the beautiful woman, who perused it and handed it back, nodding.

The king’s sister spoke and the chatelaine repeated it.

“How are we to know you did not find this token on a corpse and are come at the behest of the Forlangers to trick us into some rash action?”

“One foot in the river
are the words he told me with his own lips. At Elland Fort he saved the kingdom, not Toyant Bridge. So he told me. He was wounded, and he may yet not live, but I did what I could to ease his wound and if the rot does not take him, then I think it likely he will live. I know where he is, and I can take you to him.”

Even the silent captain looked around at that, first startled and then, as his wrinkled brow cleared, brightened by hope. The king’s sister caught in a sob, grasped the beauty’s hand, and shut her eyes. When she opened her eyes, the four of them fell into an intense discussion filled with many exclamations and objections and finally a forceful declaration by the king’s sister that ended the argument.

She and the beauty left. The captain and chatelaine remained, looking as impatient as if Anna was the last chore that had to be done before a girl could run off to the festival night and the promises of a lover. Brisk footfalls sounded in the hall and a soldier appeared.

“The cursed Forlangers are still hammering on the front gate, Captain,” said the man. Like the laundress he was a little difficult to understand with his quick rhythm and city accent, but he spoke the language she knew. “They demand to be admitted to speak to Her Serenity.”

The captain nodded.“I will come in a moment and send them off with my boot in their ass.” The soldier left.“She must be guarded without making it obvious we are guarding her. Make all ready. You heard what Her Serenity commanded. We leave at dawn. Lord Hargrim and his faction must be given no reason for suspicion.”

The chatelaine said,“I will hide her among the servants.”

So she did, giving Anna the finest clothes she had ever worn and feeding her the finest meal she had ever eaten, so rich with thick gravy that it made her stomach queasy. The meal ended with a sweet flour cake that was indescribably delicious, like nothing she had ever before eaten. She was given a pallet to sleep on among the other kitchen women, a decent bed but this at least was not as comfortable as the marriage bed she had shared with Olef.

She slept soundly but woke at once when the chatelaine rousted her. An impressive cavalcade of outriders, carriages, and wagons assembled outside. Anna was tucked in among the gaggle of women servants in one of the wagons, all wearing the same swan-marked midnight blue livery with their hair tucked away beneath cloth caps. With a great blaring of horns, the company rolled down the widest avenue in the city and out the main gate. The wagon with its padded seats was at first jarringly uncomfortable; Anna would rather have walked. But after a time she got the rhythm of it. The women around her gossiped and laughed for all the world as if this were a delightful excursion, and it did seem from their talk—those of them she could understand—they all believed their lady had suddenly taken a longing to visit the cloth markets of Ticantal, which name Anna eventually understood to be the same town she called Cloth Market.

But abruptly the whole long procession lurched to a halt. When she craned her neck to see, she realized they had reached the bridge where the last of the general’s company had died. Soldiers blocked the bridge, and to her horror, Lord Hargrim himself could be seen in his sash and his brilliance speaking to the king’s sister. The lady was riding a horse; he was standing, at a disadvantage because of the horse’s bulk. The king’s sister waved a hand, indicating her procession. Anna’s hands tightened to fists as the lord walked down the length of the cavalcade, ordering his soldiers to peer into the closed carriage, to poke among the wagons carrying luggage. He ordered the wagon full of women servants to disembark, and Anna climbed down not ten strides from the man who had contemptuously tossed her a copper penny and called her an old shrew, but he looked right at her and did not recognize her. His soldiers looked under the benches and checked under the wagon, and yet when their rude inspection was over, even a lord as powerful as Lord Hargrim had to allow the king’s own sister to pass for she was powerful in her own right.