"The greater the distance that you must carry the water," Lord Beryn pointed out.
We moved quietly upstream. I was sure to keep my knees in and my feet low to the ground. When there were only pine needles below me, I looked up and saw that we had come well into the trees, far enough that the three of us might successfully slip away, but not so far as to arouse suspicion.
"But,"said the queen suddenly to the Holy Sisters,"they will see that there are only nine of you returning to the abbey."
"We will go back and forth in small groups. They will be easily confused."
I could have wished that the pine trees grew together more thickly, or that the lower branches had held on to more of their needles. A look behind us still showed the encampment. But when the queen motioned us ahead, Innes and I laid our buckets on the shore of the stream, folded our arms into the wide sleeves of our robes, and slowly, slowly, slowly moved upstream. It took everything in me not to break to a run.
If the cherry trees had been hopeful of the spring in Saint Eynsham Abbey, there was little reason for hope in the deeper woods. Most of the brook was still frozen over, the banks on either side iced with old snow. The ground was hard as gray slate, and the pine needles that springtime would soften were frozen upon it.
At first the queen led and we kept Innes between us, him holding on to the queen's long robe and sometimes to her hand. But as we moved farther into the woods, farther away from the Guard's encampment, we walked all together, never minding the branches that snapped off at our passing, never thinking that we should be careful about the trail. If the cold had not hovered so beneath the boughs, I could almost have believed we were on a lark, caring more about the going than the coming.
The queen knew that this stream flowed out from the river passing the old mill on the way to Wolverham. We did not ask how she knew this. We followed her because she was the queen, and because she knew the riddle's answer. And because she was Innes's mother.
And so we walked through the morning, a pale sky over us, a pale ground under us, following the stream in its windings, the heat of our walking filling our robes while the cold air tipped our noses.
Around noon the land began to jolt up around us. Soon we were in a small but deep valley, the pine trees clambering one atop another, up and up the steep sides. We stayed down below so we would not lose the stream, but it was a hard business. The snow was deep here, sometimes well above my waist, and though the top had crusted over, we broke through it with almost every step, so we left plates of icy snow behind us. Sometimes the snow lifted into drifts that hid the stream, and we had to blunder around them until we saw the black water running again. We were all as wet as if we had plunged in and out of the stream again and again, and I began to wonder how we would spend the night without the cold and the wet killing us.
For a time the queen broke through the new snow herself, but soon she left it to me to lead. I would heft a leg onto the top crust, push against it and hope that it would hold, then heft the other leg up. And once in ten steps I could stand on top for just a moment—until the next step. My crunching falls echoed against the steepness of the valley. We staggered to a frenzied exhaustion, feeling the frantic hours rush ahead of us as the sun started to yellow the pale sky.
Finally we decided to risk losing the brook and climbed up the valley sides. The snow was not nearly as deep here, but it was slick where the sun had melted patches that froze to ice in the night. All of us felt our feet slip wildly away and the calamity of a hip thumping on rock-hard ice.
"Perhaps," said Innes, picking himself up for the fourth time, "we should have tried the horses after all." We clambered back down the sides.
At the bottom we stopped to eat the bread and honey that the queen had prepared, though stopping let our sweat cool and chilled us even more. We ate quickly, ravenously, even the queen holding the bread with both hands and tearing at it. Then we ate apples whose insides had browned with the bruises that apples will suffer at the bottom of a barrel. They too had frozen in this wintry forest, and they tasted like icicles. I felt their cold nestle all the way down into my stomach, a cold like the black of a pit.
It was while eating the apples that we heard the sounds of horses high above us. The jangling of harnesses and rhythmic pounding of hooves struck down the steep sides to seek us out, and we stood in sudden and complete silence, Innes with his apple still to his mouth as the sounds above us grew louder and louder, then passed on and were finally lost. All that time we did not move, did not speak, did not look into one another's eyes.
"We are discovered," the queen whispered.
"Not discovered," said Innes. "Not yet. They know that we have escaped the abbey and that we must head back to Wolverham. But they have passed by."
"I wonder," said the queen slowly, "what our escape has cost the Holy Sisters."
We followed the valley, crouching now and listening for the sounds of horses. None came, and finally the steep sides flattened out and the trees thinned. Here the crust had melted and frozen enough to hold our weight. In some places it had melted enough to yield to hard ground, and we could walk on frosty land.
But the stream had gone. Sometime as we had clung to the valley sides, it had meandered away under the snowdrifts. The queen looked steadily at me, and I saw that she did not know the way to the river and on to Wolverham.
None of us spoke what we all knew: We would need to find a place for the night. The sky had thickened into a quilt of clouds, and the light was graying, blurring the shadows thrown on the snow into a general darkness. We were all hungry, but we did not stop to eat. There was simply the eternal marching ahead, me in the lead, Innes behind, then the queen.
And there was no doubt that she was the queen. All day we had tramped through the snow, with only a single break to eat. Her robe and skirts hung wet and heavy, the bottoms stiffened with frost. She had pushed back her hood, and her hair that had begun so tightly tied back had fanned out and flattened against her cheeks and forehead. Her breathing came loudly.
But there was no doubt that she would go on and on, that if she must, she would pick both of us up in her arms and carry us on her shoulders.
And there was equally no doubt that Innes would not let that happen, that he would go on and on.
And I too would go on. By Saint Jude, I too would go on.
But the world was running its course, and the coming darkness drew with it a wind that whipped us with its tail, pushing under and up our robes, lashing at us with a grinning ease. We had long ago lost any path, and we pushed and stumbled on now in hopes of finding a light or suddenly falling into a farmer's field.
But the trees were growing thicker and thicker again. Thicker and thicker, hunching together in a bristling line of pines. Soon they pressed so thickly on either side of us that there was only a single passage to follow between them.
A single passage! There was only a single passage opening between them! Not wide enough for one horse to pass another!
"Majesty," I called back. "Majesty, there will be shelter ahead. A place to spend the night. And food. And hot cider."
"You'll have to pardon him," said Innes. "He also thinks that horses are gentle animals."
"You'll have to pardon Innes, who always thinks we're about to be lost."
"An arrow in the shoulder will do that."
"Oh, your eternal arrow," I scoffed."Who was it who had to pull it out?"
"Who was it who couldn't help a turnip find its way out of a cart?"
"But," said the queen, and her voice was laughing, almost giggling, "there'll be no need for any pardons."
I looked ahead at the light that beamed through the woods, casting a long brightness down the path between the trees.
"I smell baking bread," said Innes.
"It will be a cottage," I said,"tidy and perfect."
And it was, of course. A cottage just like the one we had seen before. Everything was the same: the sharp roof, the cornices, the carved door,
the twisting bricks of the chimney. Everything was the same, as if the cottage had not burned, but had lifted from its foundations and found its way here to this lonely spot. And when we walked in, the table was set with the same crockery, and the fire leapt up again to greet us merrily. There was the brown bread waiting on its warming bricks, and the jug of hot cider, and its steaming mixed with the steam coming up from our warming clothes.
We dropped our robes in a heap and stood by the fire so that it might melt the ice from our bootlaces. Then, with our feet held out to the flames, we sat and ate and drank and drank and ate, the heat of the fire thawing us with a delightful pain. The queen did not seem startled at the surprise of the cottage; she was not even startled to find three beds laid out in a loft. We never spoke of Da, but every time I looked around me, I expected to see him suddenly standing there, holding his pipe just out from his lips. For some reason I thought that the queen expected him as well.
Full and warm, we settled beneath plump covers that night. The jangling of Lord Beryn's horses seemed very far away, and I fell into a sleep with no dreams. I woke up only once, when I heard the familiar sound of a new log rolling to the grate and then arranging itself in the fire. The cottage was still as warm and merry as it had been when we had arrived, and I leaned down over the loft to watch the fire's brightness, thinking that Da might be down there tending to it. But he was not, and I fell back into sleep with a sigh, wondering where he was, wondering whether he would be standing with me when we finally reached Wolverham.
I was not surprised to find the oatmeal in the morning. Beside it stood a crock of milk, still warm, and the jug of cider, as full as when we had first come. We ate standing by the fire, as if we could fill ourselves with its heat and carry it with us. Outside, the sky showed thick and gray, and the few snowflakes that drifted out came from clouds plump with their downy filling. But inside, inside was everything that could be wanted on a stormy, cold day: food, fire, blankets. Da was so close here.
But there was only a single day to reach Wolverham, and we set off with sure steps, following the path given to us by the pine trees, watching the path push through the woods and shoulder the snow off to clear the way. Within an hour we had gone farther than we had all the previous day. And the queen! The cider had taken years from her, and she skipped like a young maid off to dance on the village common.
"You cannot know what it feels like to be away from the abbey," she called.
"Has it been such a prison for you?" Innes asked.
"An abbey is no place for a miller's daughter who once lived all her life in the fields and woods. Why, there were days when I was a girl that I would leave with the dawn and come back with the moon, climbing the very tallest pines or bending birches down and up again. There was a nob or hill—much like that one there—that I could climb straight up. Its rocks were just like those, and if you gripped there, and just there..." She paused, then tilted her head to one side and held back her hair."It's the very nob," she said quietly. "The very nob. And that tree just beyond it—I've climbed it more times than I can count. You see, Tousle, that one branch broken off? You have to reach just above and ... Oh!" She put her hands to her face as if she were suddenly startled by what she was seeing."I'm home."
And grabbing both our hands, she bustled us through the woods—the trees stood well apart now—stopping now and again to exclaim at a place she recognized. "I built a lean-to here. You can still see the notches I cut." She ran her fingers into them wonderingly. "And there, where that one tree breaks into two trunks. Do you see the hollow? I would put apples and nuts in it for the squirrels, then stand there and watch them scramble."
On through the ever-widening woods we rushed, the queen almost glowing as her memories took on weight. Her laughter and her tears were all one thing.
"Majesty," I said, "the trees are growing fewer and fewer."
"Of course. We are just this side of a long meadow. And beyond that lies the road."
"But the trees give us less and less cover."
She suddenly stopped, breathless, then laughed and shook her head. "The past is such a temptation. I would have run headlong into it without realizing that the present is ever so much closer."
"I think," said Innes,"we would have run into more than that."
Then we heard it: the jangling and whinnying of a troop of horses. We knelt low to the ground and grouped behind the last of the pines. Beyond the meadow, rows of white tunics rode in pairs along the way to Wolverham. They moved very quickly.
"Oh," said the queen, her hand up to her mouth.
"They haven't seen us," I said.
"The mill ... the mill is burned."
There was no mill to be seen. Some stones still held to each other, and a charred timber poked up sharply into the air. But that was all. The Grip had kept his promise.
"We cannot go there now. But the meadow?" I asked. "Who belongs to the meadow?"
The queen did not answer at first, and I heard her murmur a quiet prayer. Then she shook her head and pointed. "You see where the trees bend around to meet the road. The farmer's house lies on the far side of those trees."
"Then perhaps—"
"He would be of no help. He and my father argued once over the weight of his meal, and neither would ever forgive the other."
"Majesty, perhaps now we should try the farmer anyway."
She shook her head. "Millers and farmers can say fearful things to each other."
"Then," said Innes,"you will need to command him as his queen."
The queen looked at him, quietly and with love, and I felt my soul twist with the sorrow that Innes could not see it, and that it was not given to me. She put her hand along his face. "Then we had better go on. There is a farmer ahead who is about to entertain royalty unexpectedly."
But as it turned out, there was no need to command. Staying back in the shadows, we followed the line of trees around the meadow, and when we came behind the barn, there was the farmer loading bales of straw onto his cart, and on the cart itself, straightening the bales for their journey, was the miller.
We stood still in the forest, the queen with her hands to her face. Neither the miller nor the farmer saw us as we watched them in their companionable work, the bales hefted and stacked, hefted and stacked, with no words needed between the two and the work making its own heat. But there was no heat where we stood, and Innes stamped his feet and beat his arms against his sides.
Perhaps it was that movement that caught the miller's eye. He stared across the field, and when the next bale was thrown up to him, it hit him full in the chest and tumbled back to the ground.
"Your great clumpy miller's hands can't catch hold?" the farmer yelled up, but the miller was already tumbling down the cart himself. Then he was running across the field to us, running with the awkward gait of a man who has not run for many years. He stumbled in the furrows and caught at the air when he tipped forward, but he ran all the while. It was fortunate that the barn hid him from the road; Lord Beryn's Guard would never have missed his careening gait.
And so he came to us, and he grabbed the queen into his arms as roughly as he might have grabbed a sack of flour, the golden dust of the straw that covered his face catching onto hers. They held each other, and held each other, and all the while not a word spoken between them, and no need for one.
And then there was the miller's wife, the farmer not far behind her. And she with her hands up to her face too. Then the miller stood aside, the queen held out her arms, and the miller's wife was in them, pausing only a moment to touch the queen's face before she held her to herself, the scent of the straw strong around us, and a sudden sunbeam casting the dust of it to a golden halo around the three.
Then the queen turned to Innes, and the miller asked, his voice low and gruffed,"And is this him, then?" The queen nodded, and the miller picked Innes up in his two great clumpy miller's hands and held him to his chest, the tears coming suddenly and without pause. Innes reached to feel the co
ntours of his face, and then the miller's wife took his hand and laid it onto her face, and the three of them laughed and wept together, the queen looking on until the miller drew her in. Then it was the farmer and I who watched that holy moment.
"Majesty," said the farmer finally,"the Guard are all about. They've searched the house and barn twice already this morning. And here we are almost in plain sight."
"The farmer is right," said the miller, setting Innes down. "And that"—he grinned—"is not something I say often."
"You should say it more often than you do, you donkey of a miller."
"You ox of a farmer, do something right and I will say it. Though"—and here the miller almost began to weep again—"he took us in, you know, took us in when our mill was still smoldering, as we stood with nothing left."
"And there's been no end of trouble ever since. Who would have imagined that a miller never learned to stack bales. Look at that cart. It won't make the road before it tips over, and then there will be the whole thing to do over again."
"Perhaps," said the queen, "it would do to—"
"Yes," said the ox of a farmer, "to get you all inside. And not all crossing at once so we don't attract unwelcome eyes."
"Let the eyes of the unjust be blind," I thought.
The farmer went first and slid open the barn door, then the miller's wife with the queen, the queen swinging her arms and striding as if her feet had never touched a marble floor. Then the miller and Innes, Innes walking confidently beside him, swinging his arms a bit too eagerly and tripping once, but no one from the road would have guessed that he was blind.
And so I stood alone. Absolutely alone.
Perhaps it was no accident that the sun faded at that moment, but with its going, loneliness fell over me like an avalanche, and I was startled by the hurt of it. I did not envy Innes. I did not. But the knowledge of how little I had froze me, and though I tried, I could not even drag up memories of Da, memories that might have carried a thaw with them.
So I stood alone.
And it was then that the mailed hand reached down across my face and stopped my mouth with its iron taste.
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