by Jane Yolen
“Better than we could have hoped,” Piet said. “I expected it to be mortared.”
“I am sure Father expected that the boards and the racks of wines were more than sufficient to keep us from attempting another sortie,” said Corrie. “I was certainly not to be caught twice that way, and Jem only wanted someone else to try the escapade. He had no such courage on his own.”
“But it is too small for one of us,” Petra pointed out. “And we dare not send one of those boys.” She nodded toward the barracks room.
“Why not?” asked Jareth. “I was a boy when I fought in the war. And surely we are at war again now.”
“But they are small boys. Not near man’s estate as you were,” said Petra. “And what would I say to their mothers …?”
“I believe I can fit,” Sarana said. “Take out the glass and the casing and I can surely slither through. I have been in caves and tunnels. We’ve a lot of them on the coast. It’s all a matter of knowing when to twist—and how. If my shoulders can get through, the rest will follow.”
“It is a drop onto the rocks, and into the sea thereafter,” warned Corrie. “I remember now why I was happy I had become stuck!”
“We can make a rope out of your cape and any extra clothing we can find,” Sarana said. “I am a strong climber.”
“But can you swim?” asked Petra.
“Like an oyster,” Sarana said laughing.
“Meaning you will sink to the bottom?”
“And crawl along to the shore, if necessary,” Sarana replied. “But I do not expect to go into the ocean at all. It is too cold for my taste. And too filled with salt.”
So while the two tallest of the soldiers helped Corrie prize out the window, halting between attempts when things got too noisy, and bemoaning the ruination of a good weapon, Sarana and Petra organized a search for clothes to knot and plait together into a rope. It was necessarily a makeshift strand, but Sarana continually tested its strength and declared herself pleased at the end.
They wrapped one end of the line around the burliest of the men, once around his waist and once over his shoulder. “To serve as anchor,” Piet said.
The other end Sarana tied around herself, up under her arms. Then, boosted up to the oriel window—but a hole in the rock wall now with a brisk wind blowing in—she twisted head and shoulders through first.
“What the shoulders go through, she said …” the tallest soldier commented.
“The rest will follow,” said the rope handler.
“I surely hope so,” Corrie whispered, “though that is not what happened the time I tried.”
But clearly Sarana was more agile than the young Corrine had been. And not near as thick around at the waist. She shifted a bit, kicking her feet, and suddenly slipped through the hole and was gone, down faster than anyone could see out the window. But the rope grew taut around the soldier’s waist and shoulder and his companions helped him hold on.
Suddenly the rope was loosened and Corrie whispered, “May the goddess speed you, Sarana; Great Alta at your heels.”
They coiled the makeshift rope back up and spent the rest of the night setting up the wine rack again and reshelving the bottles. The broken glass and window casement, plus the boards, they put under the pallets. If it made sleeping thereafter uncomfortable, not a one of them complained.
Only Corrie worried about the missing window. But at dawn, when the wind died down, he forgot about the problem as they all laid bets on how soon Sarana might make her way out of Berick and find Scillia and her loyal troops.
THE BALLAD:
THE BALLAD OF CORRINE LACKLAND
Harken to me, gentlemen,
A ballad I shall tell,
Wherein two brothers royal born
In Berickshire did dwell.
The one of them was Jem the Bold
Who fought with either hand,
The younger was Prince Corrine
Who was left with little land.
As they were drinking ale and wine
Within his brother’s hall,
Prince Corrine pointed to a port
That opened in the wall.
“That green gate is to Faerieland,
Where Mother dear does dwell.”
“Nay, brother,” quoth the bold Jemson,
“That is the gate to hell.
“But if you’re sure, my brother dear,
Then you the path shall find.
And as I am king on the throne,
I shall remain behind.”
He pushed his brother through the port,
Far down Lackland did fall.
His portion was six feet of earth
And death to bear his pall.
THE STORY:
The difficult part had not been wriggling through the window, though Sarana had cut her knee on a piece of broken glass that had somehow resisted the enlarging of the portal, and was sticking out at an angle beneath the outside edge.
Nor had the descent been a problem. The makeshift rope had held.
Held too well, actually. It had taken her precious moments getting the knots under her arms undone, and her increasingly cold fingers made the problem worse. But when she finally was able to shrug out of the harness, she gathered up the prince’s cloak, which had been one of the end pieces, un-knotted it, and put it on. It warmed her at once.
She looked to her left where the sea was muttering in its rocky bed.
Low tide.
At the turn, she would be long gone, and glad of it. She had not told the other woman, but she was petrified of water. Her father used to half-drown her as a punishment, sticking her head down in the horse’s trough until she was forced to breathe in the dirty water and rise spluttering, coughing, and vomiting up everything she had eaten for days. The very thought of falling into the sea had almost undone her. But she had known that of the few who could get through the small window, she was the only one who could find the queen. None of the boys would have had a chance. So when she had stuck her head and shoulders out and seen with the light of the full moon that the tide was low enough for her to wade around the rocks, she had twisted through the window without another bit of fear.
Sliding down the cliffside rocks, the cape billowing behind her, she landed ankle deep in the sea water. For the first time in days she smiled, kicking up water as she went.
First she knew she needed to get free of the town. Too many Garuns for comfort here, she thought. There would be fewer of them near the villages and farms. Seven ships might garrison a castle, but they were not enough to go warring and whoring too far into the countryside. She guessed King Kras would wait to see how well his hostage-son ran the port town before committing more Garun soldiers to another war.
Which gives me time, she thought. But not a lot.
Sarana stuck to the rocky shingle till dawn drove her into the trees where she paralleled the main road until the first farm house. There she waited in the trees until she could see the farmer off in his fields. When his wife came outside and started washing linens in a great tub by their well, Sarana left the trees, crossed the road, and began walking with a rolling gait as if she had no troubles in the world. But she was careful to keep the cloak tight around her so that her uniform, dirty and several weeks from seeing a washtub itself, would not be the first thing the woman noticed.
“Blessed be,” she said when she knew she was close enough to be heard.
The farm wife, who had seen Sarana out of the corner of her eye, gave the blessing back, but tentatively, as if she were long out of practice.
“Could I trouble you for a drink of water?” Sarana asked.
“Sister to sister,” the woman replied. Then she glanced over her shoulder toward the field, where the farmer was still walking his rows. Only when she was satisfied he had not noticed their visitor did she haul up a bucketful and offer it in a tin cup.
Sarana took a long draught before speaking. “My thanks, goodwife. I have come a long way,” she said at last.
“From Berick-ward,” the woman countered. “I seen you come down the road.”
“Away from the king across the water,” Sarana said with little affect in her voice.
“And where be the queen?”
“I go to find her,” said Sarana. “But I must go slow.” She pointed down at her feet and then at the torn trousers bloodied from the cut.
The woman glanced over her shoulder again, but the farmer was now behind his oxen and plow, the reins wrapped twice around his long waist. He was concentrating on the beasts and their furrows and did not look up.
“I will give you my horse,” said the farm wife. “She is but an old mare, spindle-legged and not quick in her paces. But she is steady. It is all the Garuns left us.”
“Will your man mind?”
“I will tell him the soldiers came for her as well. He will believe me. He is a steady man, but like the mare, slow.”
“May Alta bless you.”
“She already has.”
“Then may she bless the queen.”
“The one that is or the one that will be?”
“May Alta let me find them both.”
They went into the tidy barn and the farm wife hauled out the saddle. It was feast-day tack, thankfully not a sidesaddle, but not for a long riding. Still Sarana dared not ask for any other. She simply fitted up the mare who took the bit willingly enough but blew out when the saddle was put on her. However, Sarana was ready for any such tricks and did not let the mare have her way, tightening the girth with grim authority but at the same time careful not to hurt the little horse. Then she led the mare from the barn.
“Go into the woods over there,” the farm wife said, pointing in the direction Sarana had come from. “Do not let himself see you.”
Sarana nodded. “And your name, goodwife, that I may count you in my blessings to Alta.”
“I am Klarissa, wife of Bornas who owns five fields and the river rights as far as the second turning. I have two girls, but they are off in Berick at the market. And you?”
“Sarana, of the Border Patrol.”
“Ah—with that cloak I thought you of higher rank.”
“It was loaned me by Prince Corrine.”
“Then you go on borrowed beast under the protection of the crown.”
“The crown that was,” Sarana said.
“The crown that will be,” the woman countered. “The Garuns have forgot the last war.” She looked back again at her husband who was even then turning the oxen to make another row. Leaning conspiratorially toward Sarana she said with great fire, “And some of our own men have forgot as well. It matters little to him who gets our taxes. Blood is blood, he says, no matter who sucks it. But I say those Garuns come for our money and our horses first, and next they come for our daughters. Then what will he say, who speaks too late?”
And with that last passionate declaration ringing in her ears, Sarana took off, first south into the woods and then north through them, riding the little mare as fast as she would go.
Scillia was lost. Or, she thought, not so much lost as bothered. It was something her mother had once said to her: “I have never been lost in the woods, but once I was bothered for three days in a row.”
No, Scillia told herself, better to be honest. Honesty may be all I have left to give these good soldiers.
“We are lost,” she said to the sergeant as she and the guards muddled together in a small clearing.
They had ridden quickly into the mazed woods without taking time to consider their path, just following Scillia’s frantic lead. The underbrush had given way to first-growth forest, then old-growth trees, and finally to a small meadow that was humped with grassy mounds.
“No, ma’am,” said one of the guards. “We are but in the Gammorlands, and if we ride north we will come out t’other side.”
“How long a ride?” Scillia asked.
“Three days, no more,” the man said. Then added sheepishly, “I believe.”
“He believes,” put in another. “But he does not know.”
“Beyond that, half a day, is the place where the king and queen took their great stand against the Garuns,” the first man added. “If we are indeed where I think we be.”
“The king and queen that was,” the sergeant said quickly.
Scillia gave him a half-smile for the effort. “Do you mean Bear’s Run?”
The man grabbed off his helm and held it before him like an offering. “Aye, ma’am, that’s it. Where the Bear fell. And the other bloody Garuns with him. And mind, they should have taken that Garun prince Jemson with them.”
At this Scillia had to laugh. “Jemson was not even born yet at the Battle of Bear’s Run. I was but a babe tied to my mother’s back as she fought.”
“Aye, well she’s a fighter, Queen Jenna. That we know. Bless her.”
Scillia did not even try to correct him. The loss of her mother—and Jenna was my mother in truth, Scillia realized with sudden sharp longing—was still an overriding pain in her chest.
“Well, my friends, three days is not impossible, if we are indeed where we think we are. We certainly all know how to live on a forest larder that long,” said Scillia. She remembered her father saying A good shepherd tells his sheep of green grass, not grey wolves. That was not being dishonest with them, just circumspect. “And if we get to the old battlefield I will know my way. My mother and I spent some time there.” She did not say how many years ago it had been.
A collective sigh ran around the guards then.
“Now tell me your names, my soldiers. I will endeavor to learn them all. For who knows how much time we will be forced to be strangers in our own land.”
The farm wife’s mare turned out to be sturdier than Sarana had first thought. Or perhaps she was just delighted to get out of the barn for a ride. She carried Sarana easily through the woods till they were well out of sight of the farmer’s holdings. Only then did Sarana guide her back to the road.
There was little traffic, though the road was the main one, the King’s Way. They met several wagons, two pulled by oxen and three by large Dales plough-horses. Sarana nodded, acting as if she had every right to be on the road. There were only one or two singleton riders, who passed her by, one dashing at breakneck speed toward Berick. He was not wearing a guardsman’s uniform, but Sarana was suddenly greatly afraid that his fast pace meant he had news for the usurper king.
“Perhaps,” she whispered to herself, “the queen has been found.” She urged the mare with her heels and the little horse responded.
They rode through the long day and Sarana only let them rest a short part of the night near a small stream, rising again well before morning. The horse had grazed and drunk its fill and was more than happy to start off again. Sarana had found some wintered-over hickory nuts which she cracked open in the small campfire she allowed herself. And she dug with a stick beneath a saxafrax tree and boiled up some of the roots in the farm wife’s tin cup which she had taken without leave. The tea’s flavor was thin for she had no time to dry the roots in the sun. But though it was little enough, she had gone hungry before. The nuts and tea stayed the worst of her belly pains.
It took her another full day before she got back to the trail she knew, where the scumbled pattern of little feet had first led her along the cliff’s edge. But the footprints and sledge tracks were now all gone. Several hard rains and something else—she did not know what—had made them disappear.
“Well,” she said to the mare, “we have lost the one queen for good, I’m afraid. Now we must find the other before she is gone, too.” She led the horse back along the ridge to the meadow which was fully green, a deeper spring than in the woods.
They galloped through the grass and at the far edge she found what she was looking for, a trail of sorts. It first led into the shelter of trees and then out again. Further along she was able to pick the trail up once more, though only when it was under the protection of the dense forest. She could read the
signs, though barely: a cart and numbers of horses. She had to believe that it was Scillia’s track, though weeks had gone by and it could have been anyone’s leavings by this time. The trail, though, led back toward the city.
When did they discover that the throne had been taken? she wondered. And where did they go from there? She knew they could not have been captured. There was—so Corrie had assured them—only the one wine cellar. Nothing else in Berick would have done as a prison. And she was certain Jemson could never have kept from gloating if he had captured the queen.
Sarana was exhausted by her search and her lack of food. She was filthy. And she did not know where to go next.
The third full day in the dungeon—which he counted by means of their porridge morning and evening—Corrie was sent for. Two Garuns, fully armed, opened the heavy door and called his name, without his honorific. Just “Corrine, to the door!”
He let them cry his name five times in all before he strolled out to the front door. He knew he was not a brave man, but he had a great sense of drama. In some circumstances it could seem the same.
Forcing himself to stop ten strides from the guards, too far for their swords but close enough for conversation without shouting, he remarked, “Prince Corrine at your service.” Then he sketched a Garunian bow, a very flamboyant bow, his hand making a great circle that started at his head and, with a variety of curlicues, finally touched his knee. The bow suggested an insult rather than a greeting. It was one of the first lessons Gadwess had ever taught him, and he had never forgotten it. His clothes, of course, were filthy from sleeping on the wine-cellar pallets and having been worn without change for three full days, though even thus he was far tidier than Piet or Petra or Jareth or the any of the others. But his bow’s insult did not take the raggedness of his garments into account.
One of the two guards, an older Garun with a weak chin and watery eyes, understood the offense and flushed. The younger did not and he bowed back.
“Come, sir, the king wishes to see you,” the younger guard said.
“Then I will come with you,” Corrie drawled. “For he is someone who needs much counsel.”
Again the older man flushed and his weak chin set determinedly. This time even the younger guard understood the contempt in Corrie’s answer and he looked to his companion for guidance, but none was forthcoming. The older man was simply too angry to respond.