“I’ve had a long time with the best mole that ever dug the earth,” said Mistress Cott. “I’d wish him alive to grow old, but I don’t know that it would suit him. And I’d wish him alive to see Moth and Twigg married, and the young ones grown up. But there’s always much to wish for and much to thank for, and just now, I’d rather be thankful.”
Sepia had returned from the kitchen to the room that had been set aside for her to find a large and smiling hedgehog with an autumn garland in his paws.
“For Miss Sepia, with the thanks of the king and queen,” he said. “Breakfast has been laid in your chamber for you.”
The breakfast consisted of so many of Sepia’s favorite things that she wondered how they knew what she liked. There was hazelnut bread, honey—she was very glad of the honey, as her throat was hurting after a night of damp air and salt water—cobnuts, berries with a dish of cream, and a silver pot of spiced cordial. She ate a little, to be polite, but she wasn’t hungry. Presently, Scatter was sent to keep her company and together they slipped to the Gathering Chamber to say their farewell to Captain Lugg, then returned to the chamber so that they could cry without being disturbed. After that, Sepia was just wondering what she was meant to do next and whether she’d be allowed to go home when there was a knock at the door, and a wide-eyed mole maid came in, staring at Sepia as if she were seeing a vision.
“The queen wishes Miss Sepia to go to her chambers, please,” she whispered. Sepia brushed down her fur, glanced in the nearest mirror, smoothed her ear tufts, and presently appeared, curtsying, at the royal chambers.
Queen Cedar was holding Catkin against her shoulder, rocking her and patting her back, pressing her cheek against the soft baby fur so that Sepia smiled with delight. It was almost as if they had never been separated.
“Is she asleep, Your Majesty?” asked Sepia.
Cedar turned to show the baby’s face. Catkin, clutching her blanket, was not remotely asleep. She gazed with huge eyes at Sepia and squeaked.
“Are you well this morning, Sepia?” asked the queen. “I didn’t send for you earlier in case you needed to sleep—or couldn’t you sleep?”
“No, Your Majesty, I couldn’t,” said Sepia. “But that’s all right, I mean—I mean I think I was just too excited to sleep.”
“As we all were,” said Cedar. “Dear Sepia, what you did for the island and for us is beyond measure. The whole island is talking of you, and quite rightly, too.”
“Oh!” said Sepia in surprise. For a moment she was lost for words, then she said quickly, “Well, never mind, Madam, they’ll soon stop it.”
“Sepia of the Singing Voice and the Quiet Spirit,” said the queen, smiling, “is there any service the island can give you, after what you have done?”
Sepia, at a loss to know how to answer, wondered if it would be all right to say no. She couldn’t think of anything at all that she wanted.
“Perhaps you need time to think,” said Cedar. Catkin held out her paws, and the queen placed her gently in Sepia’s arms.
“Your Majesty,” she said, “what will happen to Linty?”
“She is in the care of the healers,” said the queen gravely. “She will stay there as long as she needs to, which may be all her life.”
“I’m very sorry for her,” said Sepia. “I know she meant well, but…”
“Yes,” said the queen. “But there’s always a reason for animals to behave the way they do. It may not be a good reason. It may be a very bad one, or an insane one, but there is always a reason.”
Catkin wriggled to get down and Sepia held her paws as she tried to walk. She had managed a step or two with Sepia behind her, holding her upraised paws, when the door was thrown open, and Crispin came in with Urchin following. Catkin gave a giggle of recognition as Crispin swept her into his arms.
“Hello, Sepia!” he said, and kissed her. “I was afraid Catkin would forget who I was. Urchin and I have just come off duty. We haven’t had much chance to talk to either of you two about last night. I assume you’ve both heard each other’s stories.”
“I heard what you did, Sepia,” said Urchin. “It was wonderful. I would have been there to go with you, but…” He looked up at Crispin. “Your Majesty, I haven’t told you this yet. Lugg and I both would have got there sooner, but we couldn’t get out of my chamber at the Spring Gate.”
“Strange,” said Crispin. Sepia bent her head over the cup and sipped her cordial.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Urchin. “The door jammed because there was a wooden plank wedged underneath it. It wasn’t there when we went in, or we would have noticed it. We got out by scrabbling away the loose earth around it and wriggling it out. I don’t know how it got there.”
“Do you think it was done on purpose?” asked Crispin, and Sepia heard the edge of concern in his voice. She stared out the window, seeing nothing, feeling the heat in her face and wondering if it showed.
“I don’t understand who could have done it or why,” said Urchin. “I don’t even know who was around, but it didn’t put itself there.”
“Thank you for telling me, Urchin,” said Crispin. “If anything else suspicious happens, tell me. There may be something going on that we need to be aware of.”
Sepia gulped down the rest of her drink so quickly that she spluttered and her eyes watered. The queen sprang to her paws and offered her the water jug.
“I’m all right, really,” she croaked. “I…um…” She gathered her courage and looked up to face King Crispin. “May I speak to you alone for a moment, Your Majesty?”
“Of course you may,” said Crispin, and Cedar said something about going to take Catkin to Mother Huggen.
“And may I go and find Fingal?” asked Urchin, and was dismissed.
Sepia stood before the king, feeling very small, trying to control the trembling of her paws. Crispin was always kind and understanding, but she felt sure that even his patience could wear out. She took a deep breath.
“Please, Your Majesty, I’m afraid you’ll be angry, but I was the one who shut Captain Lugg and Urchin in the chamber, but I did it because I had to. I pushed that wood under the door so they couldn’t get out.” There. It was over.
The king’s eyes were smiling. Perhaps he hadn’t fully understood.
“Remember to breathe, Sepia,” he said. “And then tell me why it was so important to shut them in.”
“Because they mustn’t go beyond the mists,” she said. “And they might have done if they’d gone after Linty, especially with all that fog, so they might not even have been clear about where the mists were. Nobody’s ever come back a third time, so I didn’t want to risk them going.”
“There’s no certainty that anyone will ever get back,” said Crispin.
“I know,” she said, “but especially those two. And just now, when Urchin was telling you, you were worried about what had happened, so I had to tell you that it was only me. And”—she looked unhappily down at her paws—“they got out, and Lugg died anyway.”
“Yes, you’re not a very good jailer, are you?” said Crispin. “I’m glad you told me. You should have left them to make their own decisions and take their own risks, but in the end, they did.”
“I meant well,” she said. “I really did mean it for the best. It isn’t always easy to know what to do.”
“I wasn’t at all happy about you going off in the boat last night,” said Crispin, “but you had to take your own risks, and I made sure you had animals as near as possible to protect you. After this, the queen and I will probably never want to leave Catkin alone in her cradle without being strapped in and guarded, but that’s no good, is it? Off you go, now, Sepia, and I’ll let Urchin know that there was nothing sinister going on last night. I won’t tell him it was you, but you could tell him yourself. He might laugh, but he won’t be angry.”
Leaving the chamber, Sepia felt she had been in the tower with its sorrow too long. She needed fresh air and ran from the tower to the clean, breathy sho
re to find Needle, Scatter, and Hope already there. Hope was picking up shells to take to Brother Fir, and an otter was swimming toward the shore, pushing something in front of it.
“Fingal!” she called, waving. As he came nearer she saw that he was steering a plank of driftwood to the shore. Normally all driftwood looked alike to Sepia, but there was definitely something familiar about this piece. He scrambled to the shore, dragged it onto the dry sand, and ran beaming to meet her.
“Look at this!” he yelled, long before he reached her. “Just look at this!”
“It’s a plank,” said Sepia.
“It smells squirrelly,” said Hope, sniffing at it.
“Of course it does!” laughed Fingal. “Oh, come on, Sepia, you know what it is! Tell her again, Hope. Piece of driftwood. Squirrels.”
“Is it…?” said Sepia, “I don’t know, it was dark, and I was concentrating on what I was doing, but is it the one I rode on last night?”
“The very same one!” said Fingal proudly. “Padra left it propped up against a rock, he said I should go back for it, and I couldn’t think why, but look—just look at this!”
With bright triumph on his face he turned the plank over. Traces of deep red and orange paint still clung to it and a decoration of green leaves.
“It’s from my boat!” he cried, and flung an arm around her. “It’s a bit of my boat! If it hadn’t been smashed to bits in the storm, you couldn’t have climbed onto it!”
Sepia hugged him and wondered what they’d ever do if they didn’t have Fingal. She hadn’t the heart to tell him that it was the same bit of driftwood that had hit the boat and woken Linty in the first place. “We’ll all help you build your new boat.”
“I’ve talked to Twigg about it,” he said. “There’s lots of other work to do, so it’ll be a long wait—spring, I should think. But that’s all right.”
When two more days had passed, Brother Fir led the funeral prayers, and the coffin of Lugg of Mistmantle was carried away on the shoulders of four moles through a guard of honor. It seemed impossible to Urchin that they had been without Lugg all this time, but they had survived. The sun still rose in the mornings. Animals, quiet with respect, slipped back to their homes, and Needle, who felt it was time life returned to normal, climbed the stairs to the empty workrooms.
She rubbed her eyes, let herself in, and found a scrap of canvas. She couldn’t sew, as her left paw was in a sling, but she needed only one paw to draw, and she wanted to sketch a design for a Threading. It showed a mole in a blue cloak, his claws in his sword belt, as she had so often seen him. But it looked so like him, so familiar, that she had to stop and push the canvas away, so she wouldn’t spoil her work by crying on it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE CHAMBER OF CANDLES GLOWED more beautifully than ever, filled with rank upon rank of candles, set in brackets on the walls, arranged in rows and clusters on the ground, tall creamy white candles and tiny white lights. Brother Fir and Juniper sang words of blessing so that the flames nearest them trembled in their breath and flickered on the walls as Crispin, Padra, and Arran, bareheaded, stood at the opposite side of the pit.
Urchin was there, Needle, Docken, and Russet, and two of each kind of animal. Grouped together, standing nervously a little way apart, were Yarrow, Hobb, Quill, and Quill’s father, a thickset hedgehog with short spines and—Urchin tried not to notice—a bulging stomach.
“Thank you, Brother Fir, Brother Juniper,” said Crispin. “Now, let us finish this business, as it would have been finished long before if not for the discovery of Catkin and the death of Captain Lugg. Juniper had just discovered the remains of Captain Husk. I do not intend those remains to become a curiosity for animals to stare at for the sake of staring, but today, those who wish to see the skeleton and assure themselves that Husk is dead may do so. This is the place from which he fell. I will personally lead you from this chamber to the old workshop and along the route that Brother Juniper discovered to the bottom of this pit.”
Yarrow and Hobb looked at each other for help, and Yarrow coughed noisily. They were still lost for words when Quill nervously raised a paw.
“Please, Your Majesty,” he said, “I’ve had time to think about it. And”—he glanced up at his father—“Dad said I should always listen to my elders, and so I am. Your Majesty, I’m listening to what you and Captain Padra and Brother Fir said, and you all say you saw Captain Husk fall and he’s dead. So if that’s what you say, Your Majesty, it’s good enough for me. If you want me to go down there, I’ll do it, because I don’t want anyone thinking I’m afraid.” (Urchin suspected that he was afraid, but he was prepared to go anyway and was being extremely brave.) “But I don’t need to. Your Majesty’s word and everyone else’s here is good enough, sir.”
“Good lad, Quill,” said Crispin.
“And all that goes for me too, Your Majesty,” said Yarrow quickly.
“And me, Your Majesty,” said Hobb.
“But in the case of you two, it doesn’t matter,” said Padra briskly, “because you’re going down anyway. Don’t worry, we’ll be with you. And we’ll be far better equipped than Juniper was when he first went down.”
Yarrow suddenly had a fit of coughing, turning his head away and pressing a paw to his chest. “I’ll do my best, sir,” he croaked.
“And when we get back, we’ll have hot cordials to warm us all up,” said Padra. “Urchin, send a message to Apple and ask if she could kindly spare some of her apple and mint cordial. No cough can survive that.”
Following the upheaval of sickness, quarantine, landslide, and rescue, the workrooms were pleasantly back to normal. Hedgehogs and squirrels sang softly to themselves as they stitched, wove, and painted. Moles fetched and carried and wound wool on shuttles. In the late afternoon there was a pleasant hum of warmth, work, and good humor. Thripple had been patiently teaching a new apprentice hedgehog to hem velvet while, in the passageway outside, Hope and Scufflen played skittles with empty bobbins and a pebble, but now she had called the little ones in, and they all seemed to be very busy with a large sheet of canvas.
At the window, Needle was making the most of the light before it faded and finishing her design for the Threading of Captain Lugg. She marked in the cloak, the sword, and the round head. Whittle, who had learned all he had to learn about fouldrought, had gone back to learning the Threadings code and was surveying various half-finished Threadings while muttering, “brown for moles, heather for strength, rue for sorrow, oak for a captain…” and holding out his paws if anyone needed to wind wool.
“That’ll do,” said Needle at last, and surveyed her work. There didn’t seem to be anything in the Threadings code that really said what everyone felt about Lugg, and as she was now a leading Threading hedgehog, she felt a lot of responsibility. There was a soft knock at the door, and Sepia hopped in with a homespun garment in her paws, the color of oatmeal.
“Mistress Thripple, Needle,” she said, “what should we do with this?”
Thripple came to join them as she shook it out and spread it on a table by the light of the window. It was a priest’s tunic, very neatly stitched and almost finished, with the freshly woven smell and feel of new fabric about it. But a pattern of juniper berries at one shoulder was not complete, and a dark blue thread hung loosely across them.
“Where did this come from?” asked Thripple.
“It was in Damson’s burrow,” said Sepia. “She must have meant it for Juniper’s ordination, but she never finished it. I thought I might do it myself,” she added, plucking at the loose thread, “but I’d only make a mess of it, so I brought it to you.”
“Hold it up to the light, please,” said Needle. Sepia held the tunic up to the window, and Thripple came to look over Needle’s shoulder.
“We can’t tell how she meant it to look,” said Needle. “But it wouldn’t be difficult to finish it, with a berry here and a bit of twig there. Should I work it out on a piece of scrap fabric first? The hard thing would
be to do it so that nobody could tell the difference in the stitching, but…” She stopped, with a feeling that somehow she was saying all the wrong things. Thripple put an arm around her.
“Do you think,” she suggested, “that we should leave it exactly as it is?”
Sepia laid the tunic down, and Needle smoothed it lovingly. Nobody else could complete it quite as Damson would have done. It was her gift, the best she could do for Juniper, as she had always tried to do her best for the injured and abandoned squirrel who had come to her care. Husk had tried to kill every baby born weak or even slightly deformed or shortsighted, and Padra, among others, had risked everything to save them. And now they were just right, those children. What did a curled paw or short sight matter? If some in the community were weaker than others, or slow, or not very bright, there was no harm in that. They were part of Mistmantle, just the way they were. Nothing was ever finished, nothing was ever completely correct. For all the animals of Mistmantle, for the weak and the badly formed, for Thripple with her lopsidedness, and for the unfinished pattern of juniper berries, their imperfections made them perfect.
“We should leave it like this,” she said. “It’s a different kind of finished.”
The autumn day was mild enough for Brother Fir to make the long journey down the tower stairs and onto the shore. Juniper took the stairs very slowly.
“Getting back up won’t be a problem, Brother Fir,” said Juniper. “Any two of us could carry you, or one strong one.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Fir. “I was afraid you might plan to sling me over your shoulder and take the stairs two at a time.” He stopped by a window. A lot of small animals, including Hope the hedgehog and members of Sepia’s choir, were scurrying busily about on the rocks below the tower, and more were struggling down the hill carrying something clearly much too heavy for them.
The Heir of Mistmantle Page 22