A Skinful of Shadows

by Frances Hardinge

  Over and over, she tried to make sense of the way she had woken at the stable door. It had felt exactly as though somebody had pinched her arm. Bear might bite, but he did not pinch. So who or what had woken her? Makepeace did not know what would have happened if she had not been nipped awake. She tried not to think of Bear going on a rampage. She hoped she would not have woken up covered in blood, among dead and screaming horses.

  Groggy with her injuries and lack of sleep, Makepeace felt like one in a dream. She was not used to seeing green hills that sloped gently, without erupting in crags or stretching in stark, barren wilds. She was outside the Fellmottes’ sprawling estates at long last, and she could not believe it. It did not seem real.

  For the last three years, Makepeace had lived in fear, trapped under the chilling gaze of the Elders. Now she was terrified of being caught again, but at least she felt alive. The Fellmottes might catch up with her at any moment, but for this breath, and this, and this, she was free.

  Both Makepeace’s companions seemed comfortable in the saddle, and even chatted as they rode. The trio had decided upon their roles now. Helen was, of course, a gentlewoman travelling with her two servingwomen. Whenever they passed some travelling newsmonger, loaded down with printed sheets, Helen would slow her horse.

  ‘What news? What do you have for sale?’

  She bought corantos, piping-hot tales of the latest happenings filled with hearsay and gore, and separates, reports of Parliament’s latest doings.

  ‘’Tis all rebel rot,’ Peg said a little reprovingly as Helen pored over her latest news-sheet. ‘We are in Parliament-held land now.’

  ‘Indeed,’ answered Helen. ‘But we must know the enemy’s tunes if we wish to sing along. And I believe our friend here will wish to read this.’ She leaned across to pass the paper to Makepeace.

  Most of the pamphlet was sizzling with righteous fury. The King’s men were burning down churches with women and children inside! The wicked French Queen wanted poor, noble England under the evil sway of the Pope! Prince Rupert was in league with the Devil! His dog ‘Boy’ had survived every battle, and therefore was clearly a familiar bringing orders from his Infernal Master!

  It was strange to bump into such beliefs again after so long. Catholic spies, the wicked Queen – it was like being back in Poplar! But since arriving in Grizehayes, Makepeace had grown used to hearing everything from the Royalist side, and now the news-sheet gave her a frightened, unsteady feeling in her stomach. For three years she had been breathing in other people’s certainties, and she now realized that her opinions had quietly shifted towards everyone else’s without her noticing.

  ‘Look at the bottom of the page,’ said Helen.

  Scanning downwards, Makepeace spotted the name ‘Fellmotte’. It was a list of those who ‘have sided with the King and Papists against Parliament and our most ancient rights’ and whose estates were to be ‘sequestered’. All of the most eminent Fellmottes were on the list.

  ‘Sequestered – what does that mean?’ asked Makepeace.

  ‘It means forfeit,’ answered Helen. ‘It means that if Parliament has its will, they will seize the Fellmotte lands, plunder them of all they can, then hand them over to someone of their liking.’

  ‘Somebody like Master Symond,’ murmured Makepeace under her breath. She had imagined that he was only making a break for freedom. But perhaps his ambitions stretched further. Perhaps he was making a bid for the whole of the Fellmotte lands.

  ‘Your kinsmen will fight against it, I am sure,’ Helen said crisply. ‘They have friends in London, and money enough to buy a host of lawyers.’

  Occasionally the trio passed bands of soldiers. Most did not wear uniforms, just sashes or pieces of paper in their hats to show their allegiance. They often made a show of stopping the three travellers, and sometimes asked for a ‘toll’, which Helen paid each time without a murmur.

  Sometimes there were murmurs about confiscating the horses for the troops, but such suggestions wilted before Helen’s confident, genteel outrage. Class was her armour and weapon, and for now it was still serving her well. Makepeace wondered if it would work so well against a Parliamentarian officer or gentleman.

  Helen had lent Makepeace a sun-mask, of the sort ladies wore to keep their complexions fair. She was glad of its concealment now, and glad of Helen’s confidence and willingness to handle conversations.

  When they stopped for the night at an inn, she collapsed exhausted into bed, but her sleep was broken. Over and over she jerked awake, her nose filled with the smell of Bear.

  Even when she slept, her anxieties did not.

  Makepeace dreamed that she was back in the little upstairs bedroom at her old home in Poplar. She was very young, and sitting on a woman’s lap, trying to read a coranto with news of the war. It was very important that she understand it, but the letters kept moving and telling different stories.

  The woman said nothing. Makepeace felt that she should know who the woman was, but something stopped her from turning to look at her face. Instead, she watched the woman’s hand reach out and slowly scratch an ‘M’ into the grime on the wood of the door jamb.

  It was the key to everything, Makepeace was sure, but she could not make sense of it. All she could do was stare and stare at the letter, until her mind darkened into a deeper sleep.

  On the afternoon of the second day, the trio left the main road and took a winding lane to an isolated house where a solitary man was waiting with a wagon full of barrels. He levered up the lid of one so that Helen could inspect the contents.

  ‘And the gold is inside?’ she asked.

  ‘Every penny we could gather,’ he answered. ‘The personal fortunes of three great men, who would languish in the Tower if it was ever known that they had done this. All our hopes rest with you – tell His Majesty that we have answered his call in his time of need! God bless you, and see you safely to the King!’

  Makepeace’s mouth turned dry. She had thought that Helen and Peg were simply trying to slip into Oxford with messages for the King and Lady April’s gold. But no, apparently they were about to smuggle a king’s ransom past an entire Parliamentarian army. The barrels looked very obvious. Makepeace wanted to ask what else was in them, but was afraid to reveal how little she knew of the plan.

  ‘Will they not be searched?’ she whispered to Peg instead.

  ‘No, child,’ Peg answered. ‘God willing,’ she added in an undertone, and Makepeace felt less than reassured. ‘Anyway, necessity is our master. The King’s cause is desperate – if he cannot pay his troops, he has no army. He must have this gold . . . and we cannot carry all of it on our persons, not this time. You’ll see, there is only so much you can hide on yourself before your knees start to give. Last time I nearly swooned right into a sentry’s arms.’

  Sure enough, Makepeace was soon being shown how to conceal some of Lady April’s coins inside the lining of her stays, in her shoes, in the rolled braid of her hair and in dropped pockets under her skirt.

  Riding in the wagon with her two companions, Makepeace felt an odd excitement building inside her. She was in a fellowship of sorts, even though she was there under false pretences.

  ‘We are most likely to be searched when we are ten miles from Oxford,’ Helen told her. ‘For two months the rebels have been sending men to talk to the King, to see if there is a chance of peace. While they talk, they have agreed that for now the rebel troops will stay ten miles clear of the city, and the King’s troops will not venture outside that circle. Neither side measures it too carefully, though, so there are raids and clashes aplenty, but they make a show of honouring it.

  ‘But it means that just outside that ring, Parliament has camps and garrisons set, champing at the bit and keeping watch, to make sure no help comes to the King.’

  As they drew closer to Oxford, Makepeace noted, to her surprise, that there seemed to be a lot of people on the road, and not all of them soldiers. Some were clearly carrying baskets of wares for sale
– pans, flour, capons, herbs.

  ‘Market day,’ murmured Peg over her shoulder. ‘All the better for us if we are not the only ones travelling to the city.’

  ‘Are all these people going there?’ Makepeace asked. ‘What about the Parliament troops ahead? Won’t they all be stopped?’

  ‘Oh no, the army won’t stop people going to market!’ Peg winked. ‘How else would they find out what’s happening in Oxford? That’s how they get their spies in – a goodly number of them, anyway. And it puts the locals out of humour if they cannot do their business or find ways to fill up their pantries.’

  ‘Hush now, chickens,’ said Helen. ‘I see soldiers ahead.’

  The village they were entering showed the marks of war. The fields were trampled, and the narrow road gouged to mud by more traffic than it had been designed to take. There were soldiers everywhere, standing in doorways, dragging unwilling horses, or leaning out of windows to smoke clay pipes. To Makepeace’s country eyes, they looked like a full army. Then she glanced past the drifting smoke from the smithies, and saw the real army.

  In a field beyond was a forest of weather-stained tents. To her startled gaze it seemed to her that there must be thousands of men and horses – too many to take in.

  ‘You can stare,’ said Peg drily, who had noticed Makepeace watching the troops sideways. ‘It would look strange if you did not.’

  Makepeace remembered the murals in the Map Room, with their vivid blues and reds, and the miniature army tents neatly arranged in rows, as if seen from a great height. This encampment of dull canvas, with its dusty horses and rutted ground, was shockingly real in comparison. It had a chorus of smells – damp wood ash, gunpowder, oil and horse dung. There were surprising numbers of women as well, scouring out cooking pots, carrying firewood, and in some cases suckling tiny infants. The whole scene was chaotic and brutally practical.

  Those sentries standing to lacklustre attention in the middle of the road, with the dusty restlessness of stray dogs in the summer heat, had real blood that might be spilt. They had real shot in their muskets that might be fired. It might be fired at her. After all, what was she now? An adventuress. A she-intelligencer. A spy.

  ‘Have your papers ready,’ said Helen, ‘and take off your sun-mask. Courtesans wear masks too, remember – we will never get past the camp if they take us for those.’

  Makepeace felt her stomach turn to acid as they rode slowly up to the waiting men, who were shielding their eyes from the sun and squinting at their approach. Two carried muskets, and the sun gleamed off the metal with lazy menace.

  ‘Where are you heading?’ called one of the sentries.

  ‘Oxford,’ said Helen, with startling confidence.

  The sentries looked askance at the wagon, then back at Helen and her ‘servants’. They were unlikely to be mistaken for farmers taking goods to market.

  ‘Sorry, mistress, but we cannot allow anyone to provision the enemy army.’

  ‘Read this.’ Helen produced her paperwork. ‘I have permission from Parliament. See – the barrels are mentioned in this letter.’

  The first sentry blinked at the papers, and Makepeace felt a sting of sympathy as he passed it to the next in line. The paper was promptly handed on again to the tallest sentry, apparently the only member of the group who could read.

  ‘So . . . you’re a washerwoman?’

  ‘A laundress,’ Helen corrected him with quiet gravitas. ‘One that has attended upon royalty and ladies of court.’

  ‘And those barrels are full of soap?’ The sentries gazed at her with a strange mixture of hostility, doubt and deference. Helen had all but declared herself a Royalist. And yet she was a lady of quality, and a lady bearing a letter from Parliament.

  ‘The finest Castille soap, made with the purest thistle ash,’ declared Helen. ‘You can see the assay-marks on the barrels.’

  ‘Spanish muck,’ muttered the sentry. ‘Has Oxford no soap or washerwomen?’

  ‘Of course,’ answered Helen promptly. ‘But none suitable for His Majesty’s clothes and person. Do you think he can get any old crone to scrub his silks with mutton fat and lye?’

  We are going to die, thought Makepeace with a strange calm. Our cover story is completely mad. The letter from Parliament could only be a forgery. The sentries were bound to realize this, and call their superior officer, and everyone on the wagon would be arrested. She was very aware of the sun’s heat on her face, the weight of the gold hidden in her clothes, the scent of dry mud baking, a lone buzzard circling above in the summer blue. She wondered whether spies were shot or hanged.

  The sentries were conferring under their breath, casting occasional glances at the women on the wagon. The word ‘search’ reached her ears.

  ‘Me? No!’ she heard one mutter in response. ‘I’m not groping a royal laundress!’

  One of them cleared his throat.

  ‘We will need to look in the barrels, mistress,’ he said. ‘Of course,’ said Helen.

  The youngest sentry came over and rolled down one of the barrels from the wagon, then carefully prised it open. Makepeace was sitting closer than the others, and caught the distinctive reek of smoke and olive oil. Sure enough, the barrel was filled with misshapen, greasy white oblongs of soap, glossy and slippery from the heat. The young sentry unwillingly leaned down and stirred them around with his hands, grimacing.

  ‘Well – get on with it!’ called one of his friends.

  ‘It looks like soap.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘It stinks like soap.’

  ‘I don’t think it will help your enemies much,’ suggested Peg. ‘Or do they fight better when they’re clean?’

  The sentries glanced at the queue of people forming behind the wagon, then back at the large number of barrels.

  ‘All right, all right,’ muttered the taller sentry, the reader. ‘Let them through.’

  Peg clicked and gave a flick of the reins, and the good-natured horses trundled into motion again.

  Makepeace realized that her heart had been cantering, and took a deep breath. The sky was a burning blue, and there were fingernail crescents dug into her palms. She felt oddly exhilarated.

  ‘Where did you get the letter?’ she whispered once they were far out of earshot of the sentries.

  ‘Parliament,’ answered Helen. ‘Oh, it is quite real.’

  ‘They gave you special pass as a laundress?’

  ‘Of course. He is the King.’ Helen gave a lopsided smile. ‘God’s appointed. They cannot help but revere him, even as they fight him. Rebelling against him is only treason. Leaving him to wallow in common filth would be sacrilege.’

  ‘They want His Majesty defeated and brought to heel,’ Peg explained. ‘But they do not want him smelly.’

  So this was the world in all its tomfoolery. Armies might clash, multitudes might die, but both sides agreed that the King must be able to wash his socks.

  The world was turning cartwheels, Makepeace realized, and nobody was sure which way was up any more. Rules were breaking, but nobody was certain which ones. If you had enough confidence, you could walk in and act as if you knew what the new rules were, and other people would believe you.

  CHAPTER 22

  After passing the Parliamentarian soldiers, they followed the road down into a low broad valley with the village of Wheatley strung along it. Its ancient stone bridge had once spanned the gleaming curve of the river Thame, but now part of its length had been knocked down, and there was a makeshift drawbridge mounted at the far side of the gap.

  The soldiers who held it were Royalist troops from Oxford, though, so they were easily persuaded to lower the drawbridge, and the wagon rolled on. The horses struggled up a steep hill. Then, as the road descended, Makepeace caught a few glimpses of the city in the valley below through gaps in the trees – hints of church towers and spires, toast-coloured stone and frayed blue strands of chimney smoke.

  ‘This was a fair-looking county not long ago,’ murmured Peg.

  The
countryside closer to Oxford looked as though the end of days had come upon it. The meadows and farmland were rutted and ravaged, hoof-marks gouging the earth as though the Four Horsemen had ridden by. Copses were clumps of newly shorn tree stumps. Most of it seemed to be flooded too, puddles gleaming amid the clods like crescents of sky.

  Ahead, two freshly dug earth mounds flanked the road, offering crude protection to the bridge beyond. Far off to her right, Makepeace could just make out more new earthworks, a brown, slope-sided ridge hugging the city’s northern side. She supposed it was a protective wall, but it looked as though the wounded landscape had reared up like a great beast to defend itself. On the earthy slopes she could see figures toiling with spades and barrows. ‘They don’t look like soldiers,’ she murmured. There were men and women of all ages, and even a few children.

  ‘They’re Oxford civilians, doing their part to protect the city,’ said Helen.

  ‘Well, it’s that or pay a fine,’ muttered Peg. ‘If I was faced with the same choice, I’d probably be up there with a spade.’

  Beyond the bridgehead earthworks, the road crossed a grand, many-arched stone bridge that spanned a tangle of river tributaries. They rode past a beautiful, sandy-gold building that Peg told her was Magdalen College, and approached the aged grey walls.

  At the gates, a sentry glanced at Helen’s papers upside down, then waved their group on. They rolled carefully in through the gate . . . and into Oxford.

  It was Makepeace’s first city since London. It was beautiful and horrible, and she knew straight away, without being told, that there was something wrong with it.

  The street was fair and broad, the houses high and grand. But it was the stink that struck her first and hardest, turning over her stomach. Every lane she passed seemed to have its own reeking ditch, lumpy with rot and waste. In one alleyway she saw the remains of a dead horse, its eyes white and its hide jewelled with flies. Not far away, children were gathering puddle water in ewers.