Ambergate

by Patricia Elliott

  The walls pressed close. It was colder suddenly, and damp, yet not musty, as if fresh air came from somewhere. I thought I heard water. But there was something else.

  For a moment I hung back, frightened. “I’ve been here before.” My whisper echoed breathily around the stairwell…. If I held a candle to it, it would glow: my amber gate…

  I stepped out at the bottom and was in a great stone place, with stone underfoot and, beyond me, stone arches like trees that disappeared into the darkness: a stone clearing in a stone forest.

  The candle flame wavered in the mysterious currents of air. “Gobchick only carer now, Gobchick look after this place.” He shook his head so that the tattered feathers flew, his voice mournful. “But Master comes now, so Gobchick hide. Days of laughter over.”

  I turned about, staring. “How did you know I’d been here before?”

  I knew the place, but not well, as if I had once come across it in a dream, then dreamed the dream again.

  By a pillar there was a dark tumble of rags, a pewter plate. Gobchick’s den. This was where he must spend his nights—and many a day too.

  “Let me hold your candle,” I whispered. My heart thudded; I was certain all of a sudden that there was a painted ceiling above our heads.

  I held the candle high, and there was the gleam of gold leaf, the flash of white against vivid green and blue. There were twelve panels set into the vaulted stone, like the patches in a quilt. Each panel showed a swan—black-eyed, slender-necked, proud—swimming on a background of sunlit blue or turquoise, or the deep green of reed-shadowed water. Around its neck each swan wore a golden crown that glinted in the candlelight.

  “Why ever did I come here? Why, Gobchick?”

  Gobchick pursed his lips together, silent; his feathered costume made strange shadows on the stone.

  There is a mystery in this place for me, I thought, and I must discover it.

  I began to walk around, venturing farther into the darkness with my single candle. I was frightened but determined. I tried not to think of the bodies stored in the corpse houses beyond the arches.

  Then, where the dark was thickest, the candle picked out a gleam of gold.

  It was a double gate, formed of curving golden branches that were studded with amber. As I took the candle closer, the amber stones caught the light. They were the color of sunlight, from the pale straw of spring to richest autumn brown, and clasped in delicate frilled acorn cups of burnished gold. Exquisite golden birds with feathered tails were eating the fruit of the sun.

  I looked between the branches where the two gates met, into the darkness beyond. My cheek pressed against a lock garlanded with golden ribbons. The amber glowed around me, tiny suns without heat. I could smell water.

  “Gobchick!” I whispered, for he had appeared from nowhere beside me. “You knew all the time the Gate was here—in the crypt!”

  The Amber Gate was tall, higher than my head; beyond it was a curved brick ceiling—the beginning of a tunnel—and beneath the tunnel roof there was water. It was a river of cold, secret water, quiet, yet gently nudging at its narrow border of stone, as if moved by the power of the moon and tides far above it. I could make out a brick platform, a rusting iron mooring ring. A dark, damp breath came from the tunnel mouth.

  “Where does the river go, Gobchick?”

  “To Paradise.”

  A little shiver ran over me. “What do you mean?”

  But he shook his head and grasped my dress urgently. “You were little Clem then.”

  What did you call me?

  He looked up into my face. “Are you the meaning of your name?”

  He was mad, after all; he waved his head like a lunatic as I stared at him.

  There was a sudden flare from the candle flame; in the stairwell, footsteps echoed, light moved. “Someone’s coming!” I hissed.

  He danced about in front of me, gleeful. “’Tis safe. ‘Tis friend.”

  And Erland stepped out into the crypt.

  41

  I could not bear to look at him. Different emotions fought inside me, and I did not know what to say. He must have followed me. He couldn’t speak to me in the Palace, so he followed me today. A tiny whisper of hope sounded in my head, but I knew it was false and I mustn’t listen.

  He came straight across. He was holding a lantern.

  “Scuff? I’ve been so anxious for your safety .…”

  I tried to find words. I said stiffly, “You forget. I have lived in the Capital before. Have you forgotten so much of our talk together on the Eastern Edge?” I looked at him in the eye, and thought he looked a trifle discomforted.

  “There’s so little time,” he began quickly. “There are things I must tell you .…”

  “Oh, I know already,” I said, casual. “I had word with Miss Leah myself, at the dance.”

  He looked bewildered.

  “I know you love her now,” I explained, very kindly. This was too beautiful a place for what I was feeling. A little while ago I would not have been so bold, and I felt a faint satisfaction in myself.

  “Scuff…” He seemed at a loss. Gobchick went to crouch by himself a little way away in the darkness. I looked bitterly at Erland and thought that in the light he looked older than the youth I remembered on the Wasteland: he was a man, not a boy.

  “Scuff,” he began again. “I’d bring you heartache. My life’s a lonely one; it’s always been so. Until I met Leah, I accepted that that was the way it was for me and I’d never meet another like myself.”

  “And now you have?” I said with pain.

  “I’m not the right one for you,” he said gently, “but let me tell you I love you now as I did in the Wasteland—no less.”

  The turmoil inside me eased a little.

  “Gadd did what he thought was best when he took you to Poorgrass Kayes. He knows my nature and was concerned for you. He was right, you know.” He sighed and followed one of the whorls of gold with his finger.

  “I feared you’d be in danger, alone in a town like that. I’d let you down. I wanted to protect you. I tried…”

  “I don’t need protecting, not any longer. It’s too late.”

  “I was always with you in spirit, you know,” he said gently. “I traced you down to the Capital, but had to leave you when I had the Protector’s summons. There was too much at risk. Then I found you in the Palace. I knew you as soon as you began to sing.” He reached a hand out to me. “Why are you in such a dangerous place, Scuff? Are there secrets you’ve never told me?”

  I thought it outrageous that he should accuse me of keeping secrets, while hiding so much himself. “They are not worth the telling,’ I said angrily. I longed to tell him of my deadly bargain with the soldier Titus Molde, but I was sworn to secrecy. “Why are you there? I thought you a boy from the Wasteland, unschooled in courtiership. You are so sophisticated, so mannerly—and so very friendly with the Protector! I thought you hated him and all he stood for.”

  He looked around at the darkness surrounding us.

  “Oh, there is no one down here but us,” I said. “What are you so afraid of?” When he didn’t reply, I made to move past him, though my heart yearned for him. “I must return to the Palace.”

  He gripped my arm. “Don’t go—don’t sing tomorrow!”

  I thrust his arm away and tried to sound cold and grand. “Why not, pray?”

  “I’ve heard the rebels plan to attack. The Cathedral will be a death trap!”

  “I am sure the Protector has security organized.” I looked at him, at his strong cheekbones, his secret, shadowed eyes, and my heart broke. I pulled myself together. “How is it you know of the attack?”

  “I know many things, Scuff.” He spoke fast, urgent. “In the time you were at Murkmere, did you ever hear tell of a packman named Matt Humble? He went to the house on many an occasion to meet with the steward.”

  I was taken aback that he should talk of meaningless things while I felt such pain. “I believe he took
ale in the kitchens once or twice. What is he to do with anything?”

  “Before he was murdered some three years ago, Matt Humble was a spy on the rebels’ side. He would report to them what took place in the Palace of the Protectorate. He was able to move freely there because Porter Grouted thought he brought information from the rebels.

  “After his death, another took his place, though young in scheming, then. But he also came from the Eastern Edge and he knew all Matt’s secrets. How could he not? Matt had been the dearest friend of his father—whose name is Gadd.”

  I stared up at him. “You are a spy?”

  He nodded. “They call me the Messenger. I shouldn’t tell you this. But I want you to know—to understand. I can’t bear you to think I have betrayed the Cause. But now that you know the truth about me, let me tell you to escape the Capital now, before the wedding.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t leave, Erland. There’s something I must do and I’m bound to it.”

  He stared at me. “Tell me what it is.”

  “I can’t.” I shook my head and saw incomprehension in his eyes. I knew that if I stayed longer, I would not be able to stop myself from telling him everything, it weighed so heavily upon me. “If all goes well tomorrow, I shall leave.”

  “I’ll do my utmost to help you.” He hesitated. “I have to think of Miss Leah as well.”

  Sudden furious jealousy knotted inside me. “You think it is a spy’s duty to rescue Miss Leah? What’s she to do with any Cause?”

  He spread his hands, with the long fingers I remembered so well. “She is a girl in despair at her fate.”

  “And what of me? Leah has brought it on herself, while I never desired adventure. She should never have left Murkmere in the first place—leaving that huge house for Aggie to run and too few of us to help her. She thought only of herself!”

  “That is not true,” said Erland quietly. “There were many reasons why she had to leave. Her life was in clanger.”

  “Oh, to be sure,” I said, trying sarcasm. “She merely had to put on the guise of a swan and she could fly away! Others, earthbound, had to do all the work at Murkmere while she floated on the pleasure lakes and along the city’s canals.”

  He took a step back, as if buffeted by my anger.

  “Leah is avian—cursed!” I cried. “She has put herself in this pretty pickle with Caleb because she wants the swanskin back. She will not leave without it, even with you. She’d rather marry Caleb!”

  There was a terrible silence between us. At last he said grimly, “Then I shall get the swanskin for her.”

  I lifted my chin. “It does not matter to me what you do.”

  “Tell me you will leave now, Scuff. I need to know you are safe. It’s important. You mustn’t stay in the Capital.”

  “You do not want me!” I turned my back on him and began to walk quickly away. “You have chosen her now. Escape with her and go!”

  I heard him take a step after me. “Wait, you don’t understand…”

  “I understand well enough,” I said, over my shoulder. His figure was hidden in the darkness behind me. “Don’t bother about me. I’m not your true love. I’m only a kitchen maid, a girl with a number but no name.”

  Gobchick gibbered frantically, but I took no notice. I ran from them both, still clutching the candle.

  I was at the stairwell and beginning to climb when I heard Erland coming after me. I tried to hold the candle steady but the light jagged on the stone walls. There was a movement above me, and at once I blew it out.

  Too late. I stumbled out at the top, straight into the arms of a soldier.

  42

  He was alone, young, but armed; yet in the light from the lantern he carried he looked as alarmed by my sudden appearance as I was by his. “Well, well,” he said. “Spying in the crypt. Better skip out swift, Miss, and tell no one what you’ve seen.”

  I mumbled thanks and fled from him, through to the main body of the Cathedral, and immediately found myself in the middle of a milling crowd.

  At first I was relieved, for Erland would never find me now; but then I saw that something was horribly wrong. All around me bewildered men and women were being bullied from their pews, dragged into the aisles: the ragged, the infirm, new mothers with wailing infants, sniveling, frightened children, men with haggard faces. While I’d been below in the crypt, the soldiers had returned—many more of them.

  They came in their dark gray uniforms, with their rifles and coarse, brutal faces, their mouths covered by plague masks. Stepping from the shadows, they chanted: “Out, out, out!”

  Near me, a white-haired man was wrenched from his place. His weeping wife followed; behind them came a dark-haired girl, wringing her hands.

  “Becca!” I said. It was Becca of Madam Anora’s, in Poor-grass Kayes.

  Her face lit up. “To find you here, Scuff!”

  “And you!”

  We clung to each other; the crowd had jammed in the aisles, unable to move. The middle-aged man and woman on either side of her each clutched a handful of her shawl as if their lives depended on it.

  “I came back to the Capital to find my parents, just as you said I should,” Becca said, trying to smile.

  “And you did find them!” They looked kind and gentle and dreadfully frail.

  “You said, ‘You are braver than you think,’ and so I was!” Becca said.

  We hugged again and would have talked forever, but around us the crowd had begun to move again, pushing and jostling. Our clinging hands broke apart, and she and her parents were hidden from me at once.

  Then the first shot was fired.

  Around me there were screams, hysterical cries, as the crowd panicked. The strongest shoved the weakest aside. An old woman hobbled a step before someone’s elbow caught her. Her hand went up as if she were drowning, and she sank out of sight.

  Another shot was fired, then another. In the shadows, soldiers were firing up into the vaulted roof, peppering the ancient stone with bullet holes. The ravens had long flown away. How long would it be before the soldiers were bored with that game, and started shooting the crowd?

  I was swept along in the flood—too light, too small to resist the terrible onward movement, as everyone surged toward the doors. My hat was knocked off, my skirts dragged and torn. I had no breath to scream; I couldn’t even breathe.

  I was thrust out into a world of light and heat. Like water bursting through a dam, people on all sides of me were forced out by those behind them. Some lost their balance, stumbled over the others already outside, and fell heavily to the ground.

  I staggered to a halt and collapsed onto the stones of the square. I was trembling violently.

  The square was still filling up with those that had managed to escape from the Cathedral. The shots and screams were muffled now. The sun beat down. When I looked up at last it was to stare straight into the lost eyes of a woman with blood streaming down her face, before she was helped away by her sobbing children. Two soldiers carried out the crumpled body of a young girl, no older than myself, and laid it on the stone. Then another body—a child—its dead feet sticking out beneath the soldier’s arm.

  I dragged myself away, to a bench beneath a tree on the far side of the square. Vaguely I wondered what had happened to Erland, to Gobchick, to Becca and her parents.

  I sat there with an empty head for a long time. Slowly, my trembling stopped.

  The square was emptying at last. Wagons trundled through and removed the pile of bodies. Soldiers shouted in the distance. Men and women and children led each other away from the scene of desolation. There were splashes of dark blood on the stone.

  I rose shakily to my feet and began to walk away. I took the nearest street in the fan that would bring me out onto the Central Parade. It was deserted. Word must have spread fast that there had been mayhem in the Cathedral: every surviving soul had shut himself inside.

  The sun was directly over my head. Was it only noon?

  I was
so surprised, I did not see a man slip from the doorway in front of me until it was too late.

  It was Titus Molde. I did not recognize him immediately, for he wore a black, wide-brimmed hat low over his brow and was unshaven, yellow bristles hiding his jaw.

  I stopped in alarm, my hand to my mouth. At the same time his hand landed heavily on my sleeve as if to detain me. “Oh, S-Sir, it is you,” I stammered, confused, my poor heart beating thickly. “Why aren’t you with the other soldiers?”

  He paused while still gripping my arm. He examined my face, too close, and I couldn’t draw away. I had forgotten the brilliance of his eyes. “I am not on duty now,” he said. “But I wish to speak to you, Miss. I need to know when you will do the deed. You remember our secret pact?”

  I nodded, dumb.

  “You have taken too long. It is the wedding tomorrow. Do it then, you understand? Do it then, or die yourself.”

  I nodded again, and gave a little moan as he tightened his grip on my arm. With his other hand he swatted his head violently as if to dislodge a clinging insect. “I shall be there, Miss, waiting, watching. And afterward—afterward we can be friends, accomplices. I’m expecting great things of you.”

  Behind him there was the sudden grinding of wheels over the cobbles, the ring of horses’ hooves.

  With a curse Titus Molde dropped my arm and started around as a black coach came swaying down the street drawn by two horses, the driver behind them in the uniform of the Palace security guards.

  The door with its gold emblem of the Eagle opened while the coach was still moving. As it pulled up beside us, Nate’s curly head stuck out and his hand reached down to me.

  “Scuff! Get in!” I’d never heard him sound so fierce.

  I’d thought my limbs wouldn’t obey after so many shocks, but somehow my hand clasped his, and he pulled me in beside him. I was flung back against the black leather seat as the carriage careened off again, with a terrific jingle of harnesses and clattering of hooves.

  I’d not even had time to see what had happened to Titus Molde.