Ambergate

by Patricia Elliott

  “Thank the Eagle I found you!” said Nate, white-faced, as the coach steadied to a rumble. He still sounded furious. “Do you realize I’ve been looking for you all morning? I heard about what happened in the Cathedral. You could have been killed! And all for a silly whim—insisting on going alone into the heart of the Capital on such a day!”

  “It was not a silly whim, Nate,” I said in a small voice. “I had to go.”

  “I bribed Bernard the guard to drive. I didn’t think I’d ever find you otherwise!”

  “I’ll pay you back when I can, Nate.”

  “Oh, stuff that! And the danger you were in when I spotted you—that ruffian—anything could have happened!”

  “It was the man you took me from,” I said meekly. “The soldier.”

  “I didn’t have time to see his face. Anyway that man is no soldier, that’s nonsense.”

  “He is, he is!” I stopped quickly for fear of further questions.

  “What were you doing, anyway—seeing that vile creature again?” He sounded exasperated. “You’re nothing but a confounded nuisance, Scuff. I don’t know why I ever rescued you in the first place!”

  A lump of misery rose in my throat. Before I could help it, tears began to spill from my eyes, plopping onto the black leather.

  I turned my head so he wouldn’t see. The tall houses with their crumbling façades were blurred, and soon I couldn’t see them at all. I gave a huge gulp that he must have heard, for suddenly a white silk handkerchief was placed on my lap.

  “I didn’t mean it, Scuff, you know,” said Nate’s voice awkwardly.

  “I’m sorry,” I hiccuped. I struggled not to cry, but more and more tears poured from my eyes as if of their own doing.

  I felt his arm go around my shoulders and draw me close. “Hush, my poor little Scuff, hush,” he murmured. He began to stroke my hair and wet cheeks with his gentle fingertips. “It is the shock, my poor little girl, my little sparrow.”

  That made me give a tiny smile in spite of myself.

  After a while I whispered, “It is the pity of it all I weep for, Nate—the terrible pity. Those poor people in the Cathedral—how could the soldiers be so cruel?” I shuddered against his arm. “And it was on the orders of the Lord Protector!”

  “You have been through such things today,” he said softly. “What a brute I was to talk to you so!” He looked at me with kind, wondering eyes. “You have even lost your hat! There, I knew you had no scars of any sort! You are quite perfect.”

  “My hat!” I sat up in alarm.

  He drew me back, with a sigh. “We shall find you another one, if that is what you want. Is it your face you wish to hide? You have too many secrets, Scuff, too many from me and from others, perhaps. We must be honest with each other.”

  I lay against Nate’s arm and could not speak. I longed so much to unburden myself, but I’d risk losing his loyal friendship and endanger him most horribly. Then I thought of something certain to distract him. I whispered, “You will not believe me, but I saw the Amber Gate this very morning. The stories are true!”

  He sat up at that, detaching me gently from him. He gave a quick glance to check that the windows were safely shut, and looked at me gravely. “I know. It is in the Cathedral crypt, which has been blocked over a hundred years.”

  “You know?”

  “Remember, my father was Keeper of the Keys. So was his father before him. He knew many secrets of the Capital. He said that the city once took its name from the Gate, its sacred heart. Ambergate.”

  “And he—you—told no one?” I was incredulous.

  “I’ve lived with the secret since my father’s death. He always said that on the day Porter Grouted found the Gate he would plan to destroy it—melt it down for his own coffers. And my father was right.” Nate’s face was somber. “Grouted has read his own meaning into the mystical ceiling, and that’s why Miss Leah must marry his son. The Gate and the Ceiling—the two greatest treasures of the Capital—and Grouted plans to use them both for his own ends! One hears many things as a Boy Musician. Servants of the Protector are not expected to have ears.” He paused, and his eyes met mine with his clear, direct gaze. “But you know all this, don’t you, Scuff? You are like the Messenger, are you not?”

  I shook my head earnestly. “I told you the truth the other night at the supper dance. But you know about the Messenger?”

  He nodded. “My father knew. Father had turned against the Protector by then. He was upset by the way the Protector treated the fool, Gobchick, throwing him out into the streets homeless when he grew too old to serve his purpose.” He hesitated and gazed at me sadly. “If you are not like the Messenger, who are you, Scuff? Why are you in such fear of discovery that you must hide half your pretty face? You are not going to tell me, are you?”

  “I can’t, Nate.” We were moving smoothly along the Parade between the Eagles, toward the Palace of the Protectorate. I stared out at the pairs of marble eyes and they stared back at me pitilessly—the girl with no name. “I don’t even know who I am myself.”

  And yet—and yet. I remembered suddenly that for a strange moment that day it had seemed Gobchick was about to tell me.

  43

  That night the temperature scarcely dropped, and the moon seemed to boil in the sky. It turned a deep copper red for nigh on three hours. I knew it to be the reflection cast up into the sky from the Capital—all the blood that had been shed that day. It was too hot to sleep, and I was too apprehensive. Yet I didn’t crawl into the tiny wig closet for comfort; tomorrow I’d not be able to hide any longer and I must start by being brave now.

  Late the next afternoon, I began to ready myself for the wedding ceremony. I’d washed in the blue-patterned bowl on the washstand and dressed myself in the green silk I’d worn at the supper dance, when a knock sounded at my door and Nate poked his head around.

  “Oh, Nate,” I said, for I’d not pinned my hair up yet, “is it time to go already?”

  He was still in his everyday jacket and breeches and seemed flustered. “Miss Leah wishes to see you, apparently. She asked for you particularly. I hope she doesn’t object to something in our music.”

  “I know what it is, Nate,” I said, laying the tortoiseshell comb by the box. “It isn’t that, I assure you.” She’s going to beg for my help again! I thought furiously.

  “Be back here in plenty of time,” he said. “We must get to the Cathedral before the Ministration arrives. Our coach is already waiting in the courtyard.”

  “I don’t intend to be long,” I said. I rolled my hair and coiled it at the nape of my neck, since there wasn’t time to pin it up properly. I took up the new hat that Nate had ordered for me and was about to put it on when he stopped me. He was staring at me oddly.

  “It’s strange, Scuff, but all of a sudden you look so familiar. Your hair done that way, your eyes—I’ve seen you before, I know it!”

  “Why, you’ve known me all of several weeks now,” I said, half laughing, arranging the hat on my head and pulling the veil down over my eyes. “Of course I look familiar!”

  Then I had to push past him, for it seemed as if he’d never shift from staring stone-struck in the doorway.

  “I could not leave for the Cathedral without seeing you,” said Miss Leah. She gestured impatiently at her personal maid. “Go! I’ve no need of you now.” The young girl tiptoed nervously from the bedchamber, glancing at me from the corner of her eye as I stood in the doorway, waiting for Miss Leah to speak further.

  She was sitting at the dressing table in a crumpled chamber robe, staring listlessly at the creams and unguents cluttering the surface, as if wondering what they were to do with her: the shining glass bottles of milky face lotions, the fat pots of rouge, dishes of charcoal powder, bowls of white face powder, the flat tin boxes of waxed carmine crayons. The air was heavy with perfume from exquisite flagons, filligreed with gold. Hanging from the wardrobe door was the wedding dress she was to wear: slippery cream satin, its slee
ves and hem embroidered with pearls.

  Leah was bone-pale, unadorned, her hair hidden in a pearled snood. I could see her face in the triple mirrors, puckered with disgust and weariness, yet still so maddeningly beautiful. Her great eyes, which needed no blackening to rim them round, moved from the array before her and fixed on me in the mirror, as if she had thought at last of what it was she wanted to say to me.

  “What is to become of me, Scuff?” she whispered.

  “You will be a wife, Miss Leah,” I said with some satisfaction.

  “In order to get my mother’s swanskin back, I must marry Caleb and give up Erland. That is my sacrifice.” She twisted her hands together.

  I felt an unexpected twinge of pity for her. “If the world were different, you and Erland would belong together—you are the same. I saw it at the dance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I believe you know, Miss Leah. I think you knew when the three of us were little children, long ago at Murkmere. You wanted to lead him into the water, to the swans’ nest—do you remember? I tried to take him from you, then—to save him from you—and I only wish I could do so again.”

  “You must hate me to say such a thing!” She buried her face in her hands.

  “But it would do no good if I could take him,” I said, more gently. “I cannot change his nature. I understand that at last. It is like yours.”

  When she lifted her head, her eyes were red. “He is better than me, Scuff—much better. His nature is wholly good.” Her voice trembled. “I fear he’ll do something foolish today. He’ll try to rescue me before I speak the vows. He’ll forget that his duty as Messenger is to remain undetected by the Lord Protector. His first duty must be to the rebel cause.”

  She turned on the stool with sudden energy. “When I first saw you, you told me you might be able to help me. I needed to see you today to ask you—to beg you—not to change your mind now.”—she spread her white fingers—“now that you know about Erland and me.”

  I swallowed painfully. “My plan’s not changed, Miss Leah.”

  “I can’t live without open water and sky,” she said with a great sigh. “I’d rather die than be without them.” She stared at me piteously. “How can you help, though? What can you do?”

  “I can’t tell you, Miss Leah.”

  She bit her lip. “You must. I command it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m your servant no longer.” I looked at her pale, tense face; she seemed to shrink into herself with despair. “Will it help Erland too?” she whispered. “Only tell me that.”

  Something about the bowed, tragic figure on the stool touched me, and I relented. “I have a dagger, Miss Leah,” I whispered back. “I shall be close to Caleb at the wedding.”

  She jerked upright. Her eyes widened, her hand went to her mouth. “You can’t!” she whispered. “You’ll die yourself!” She paused, then suddenly shook her head as if in contempt. “You’ve no dagger. What a fool I am!”

  I said nothing.

  Her lips curled. “You’re only a child, and you’ve always been a coward. You’d never use a dagger.”

  Anger burned inside me. I bent and touched my boot, with its lethal secret. Her eyes followed my hand.

  “In there?” she hissed, incredulous.

  I nodded.

  She shook her head again, this time sadly. “Don’t joke, I beg you.”

  In exasperation, I bent and pulled the dagger out, and in the same second, she snatched it from me. I thought she was about to turn it on her own throat. “No, Miss Leah!” I cried, reaching out, my hat falling off in my agitation. “No, don’t!”

  After my cry, the chamber was very quiet. We stared at each other without moving. She held the dagger behind her back.

  “You must not risk your own life for us, Scuff. I know you’re no coward. You would do so.”

  “It’s not for you,” I said miserably, “but to save my own skin.”

  She stared.

  I nodded. “I am a criminal,” I said in a low voice, “wanted by the authorities. I have agreed to kill Caleb in return for my own life.”

  “And you could do that—use this dagger in cold blood, even on such a monster?”

  She gazed at me; I looked away. Suddenly she reached out with her free hand and turned my cheek toward her. “I know who it is you look like! It has bothered me ever since I first saw you here, and now, with your hat off and your hair coiled, I see it.”

  I was bewildered, unsure of the sudden change in conversation. Was this another trick to keep the dagger?

  She said softly, “It is the Lady Sophia, my father’s sister, who was married to the Lord Protector. There is a portrait of her as a young girl hanging in the bedchamber she had before she died from the Miasma.”

  “I’m a nameless orphan, Miss Leah, as well you know.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, and then we heard Caleb Grouted’s raised voice outside. “Out of the way, girl. I wish to see your mistress.” There was the sound of a scuffle and a squeal of protest from the maid.

  Leah, white-faced with horror, thrust the dagger into my hand as the latch lifted on the door and Caleb burst in. He was dressed in a frock-coat of pale yellow silk, his dark hair unpowdered, but oiled in ringlets. He lurched toward Leah, his lips parting wetly, and made a grab for her as she stepped aside. “Have you no kiss for your sweet boy on this special day? Can’t a groom kiss his betrothed?”

  “Not before the service, Master Caleb,” said Leah coolly. “Go and ready yourself, else we shall be late.”

  “Yes, Leah,” said Caleb, pretending meekness. He succeeded in catching her hand, which he squeezed and slobbered with a kiss before he released it. I saw her secret grimace as she hastily turned her face away, and he gave a whinny of laughter.

  “Afterward, then. I’ll look forward to that. Eh, Leah?” He punched the air. “They think me a real man for capturing you as my bride. That’s what they all say in the officers’ mess. Leah Tunstall of Murkmere, the most beautifu I girl in the country!”

  “Even though it was your father who arranged it? And held me here under duress until I agreed? Did you tell these lieutenants about the cage?”

  He looked sulky at once. “You shan’t dare to speak to me so once we’re married, Leah. You’ll respect me then, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Leah was silent, and he turned and swaggered to the door. As he brushed past me he seemed to take me in properly for the first time. I clutched the dagger behind my back, praying that the trumpet sleeve of my dress covered it. “Why, ‘tis the little songbird.”

  I curtseyed quickly, keeping my head down, then winced as I felt hard fingers under my chin, tilting my face toward him. He was frowning at me. “You look different with your hair like that,” he said. He seemed at a loss. He dropped his fingers, still gazing at me stupidly.

  I did not wait for him to dwell on it. He is within seconds of remembering me from Madam Anora’s, I thought. If he tells his father…

  I bobbed my head and fled from the room, past the astonished maid, past the idle guards chatting outside the main doors; out into the courtyard, where already the members of the Ministration were starting to assemble, their deep claret ceremonial robes dissolving into the shadow cast by the high walls. When no one was looking, I slid the dagger back into my boot and continued on my way swiftly, slipping through the busy passages. I stopped only at my bedchamber, to collect the mahogany box. I knew I would not be returning.

  In his apartment, Nate, dressed in his green silk jacket, was fitting his ratha into a new leather case, as tender as if it were a babe. He looked up in shock to see me without my hat, in such a state. “Can we leave now?” I said urgently.

  At once he took up his ratha and the sheets of music, and we hurried out together, past the guard at the main door of the apartment and into the dull glare of the courtyard.

  One of the distinctive black coaches of the Protectorate, washed and shining, stood in the shade, waiting
for us. The horses shook their heads as we approached, making the harness jingle. The driver doffed his leather cap. “Tell him to hurry,” I begged.

  We could do no more than a trot as he maneuverd through the courtyards of the Palace. Around us, people scattered from our path, glaring around in alarm and outrage.

  I hid behind the velvet curtain at the window, but as we reached the main courtyard I peered out to see that the Ministration had increased in number: a claret-colored parliament, silent in their ceremonial headdresses. As we swayed over the cobbles, the bird heads turned toward us—raven, rook, hawk, magpie, buzzard, jay—all turning as one to stare, eyes gleaming through the slits. The Ministration needed no plague masks: with the bird heads in place, they had joined the Gods and were invulnerable.

  Others were joining them, stepping out from the wide dark doorway of :he Protector’s apartment. There was the Lord Protector himself, in deep purple robes, holding his Eagle head under his arm; Caleb Grouted, the sun shining on his oiled ringlets and the yellow silk coat; Mather and Chance, spruce and sinister in their dark gray military uniforms, ceremonial swords glittering at their hips. They were all waiting for Leah.

  Our driver, nervous, must have flicked the horses with his whip, for we picked up speed as we rattled by, and clouds of dust and grit and dried mud flew up under our wheels. We almost ran over Chance, who was standing closer than the others, and spattered his clean uniform with filth. I wasn’t fast enough to pull the curtain across the window. As we passed, his furious eyes met mine and widened.

  Then we were past the long line of waiting carriages, their Eagle emblems gleaming in the hazy sun. I could see the drivers’ faces shining with sweat as they waited patiently. It was suffocatingly hot in our own coach.

  “Sacred wings, what’s happened, Scuff?” said Nate as we left the gates behind us and the horses began to canter.

  We clung to the armrests as the coach juddered from side to side. Warm, clammy air blew through as I jerked the window further open.

  “I may be in danger, Nate,” I gasped between the lurches. “I don’t know for sure.”