I went out of the room to give the postboys their vails, and the postmaster bustled up with a tisane he had brewed with willow bark, feverfew, and honey. “We have seen that fever all winter,” said he, “and it is a terrible blight upon the world. After all, this sickness killed our queen, and her husband, too, I suppose.”
I thanked the postmaster and took the tisane to Floria. I made her sit up, supporting her with my arm, and held the cup for her to drink. Afterward, she seemed to rest easier.
After all, this sickness killed our queen.… The words chilled my blood. I had brought Floria on this adventure, and the thought that I might cause her death was beyond horror. As I composed myself to sleep on the threadbare carpet, I heard the rattle of Floria’s cough and could not stop contemplating that dreadful possibility, and wondering if I was destined to witness the long, dreadful decline into death of this young, vital, and completely royal woman. And I wondered what would become of me afterward—for I had staked my life and fortune on Floria, and if she died, I would be lucky to escape with my head, and then only if I fled abroad and never returned.
What drove me frantic was the thought that I had abandoned you, and that now all my hopes might come to nothing, and we would not see each other ever again.
I slept but little that night. In the morning Floria was still ablaze with fever, and her burning skin was clammy with sweat. She murmured a few words that I could not understand. I went into the common room and asked for another cup of that tisane. I had a bowl of porridge while I waited for the tisane, and then brought it to her. Again I propped her on my arm and made her drink. She complied, though she did not once open her eyes, though when she was finished she gave me a sweet smile and thanked me in a hoarse whisper.
For that long day I tended her, and I laved her face and neck with cooling cloths. Her fever burned on.
That night she shivered beneath the pile of blankets and quilts I had layered upon her, and twice she fell into convulsions so violent that she nearly flung herself from her bed. I held her in my arms to keep her from injuring herself, and afterward cooled her face and neck with a moistened handkerchief.
Yet that night was the worst, and at dawn Floria was sleeping peacefully. Her fever had not broken, but it had declined, and when I brought her some of the postmaster’s tea and supported her with my arm so she could drink, her hazel eyes opened and looked into mine.
“You have adopted another new profession, Nurse Quillifer,” she whispered in her new, hoarse voice. “I think I like it best of all.”
“I will expect a position in your household,” said I.
“It will be amusing to see you in your apron,” she said, and closed her eyes, and was at once asleep.
She managed to rest that day, and at suppertime I persuaded her to take some porridge and a little wine mixed with hot water. At night her coughing was worse, and she was restless in her sleep.
Next morning she ate porridge willingly and was able to sit up in her bed. There was still no possibility of travel, but I felt as if the weight of a cannon had been lifted from my shoulders. She had passed the crisis, and I could hope only that Bonny Joe and Rufino Knott could keep Edevane’s hounds off our trail until Floria was fit to travel. That night I slept soundly for the first time in days.
The following morning Floria donned her man’s apparel and came down to the common room for breakfast. She was pale, and her hoarse voice acted to confirm her male identity. She thanked the postmaster for his tea and his concern, and after porridge and some bread, she returned to her bed.
The storm had nearly shut down travel over the Cordillerie, but now that the storm had passed and the snow had melted, the post-house began to receive new travelers. Those that came from Howel I questioned closely, but they had little news beyond what I already knew. Floria, I learned, was generally pitied. “They say that the viceroy wants her head,” said one traveler, “and, as he is a grasping onion-eyed foreigner devoid of decency or mercy, he will get what he wants. We all feel sorry for the princess.”
“Has she no friends?” asked I.
“Nay, sir,” said another. “All are too much afeared. And now some say that she is poisoned, and dying in her house.”
“And I,” said the first man, “am going home to Longfirth to brick up all my windows, and save paying taxes on them.”
Bonny Joe, it seemed, was doing his job well.
Another storm rattled down from the sky the next day, and was accompanied by a fierce western wind that howled along the eaves and brought strong trees crashing down on the slopes of the mountains. Floria was greatly improved, and ate sparingly of such provender as the postmaster provided. The fever now touched her but lightly, though the cough had not abated. Yet she was weak, and though she said she wished to get on the highway, I decided to wait until the snow had melted. Which was wise, because the fever made another attempt to overcome her that day, and at supper she had but a few spoonfuls of a wholesome pottage made with salt pork and dried peas, and then went to bed.
No sooner had she excused herself than we heard the sound of horses in the courtyard, and two grim men entered, each in a long leather overcoat, with fur collars spangled with drops of dew. Their spurs rang on the flags, and the west wind had burned their faces. These were dispatch riders, and they called for food so they could ride the night to Mankin Clough.
“You will ride all the night?” asked I. “Is your message that urgent?”
“The storm delayed us one entire day,” said one of them. “And we must ride this next stage night and day, to pass our dispatches to the next riders.”
He threw on the table the black leather pannier-bags that held his dispatches.
“What is so important?” asked I, but received no answer.
While the postmaster brought bread and pottage to the new arrivals, I went to my room to find Floria already asleep. I took my old cheviot overcoat and my sword and pistols, then threw my boat cloak over all and left quietly by the back door. The ostlers were bustling in the stables, walking the riders’ old horses and fetching the new, shifting saddles and bridles from one to the other. They did not see me as I moved from shadow to shadow. In the tack room I found a coil of rope, and with this over my shoulder I slipped away into the night, and hastened down the highway.
The road descended steeply from the post-house. The strong west wind threw tiny shards of ice into my face, and the trees overhead waved their surrender to the wind’s fierce attack. I hurried along three hundred yards or more, then looped one end of the rope around a stout birch. I drew the rope across the road to an osier that had the stump of a limb jutting out at knee-height. Then I checked the priming on my pistols and waited.
It was no more than ten minutes before I heard the clatter of horses on the road, and I took hold of the rope and waited. When the riders appeared, I pulled the rope taut off the surface of the road, then secured it by throwing a loop around the limb-stump. When the horses, trotting abreast, crashed into the rope, they struck with such force that the trees on either end of the line bowed their rustling heads as if in salute to the doomed riders.
One of the horses made a somersault on the steep road and threw its rider into the muck. The other kept its feet, but was tangled with the rope and bucked and snorted as it tried to break free. I took a grip on my pistols and stepped out of hiding.
I own that what followed was murder. I walked up to the rider still on his horse, pressed the muzzle of the gun to his side, and pulled the trigger. The explosion and flash were somewhat muffled by his heavy overcoat, but still he pitched off his horse and fell motionless on the highway. The other rider was lying stunned in the road, and I had no trouble shooting him in the head with my second pistol.
I drew my broadsword and returned to the first rider, but the sword was unnecessary, for my bullet had struck him both in heart and lungs, and he was already dead.
The sequel was laborious. First I had to calm and restrain both horses. The one that had tumble
d was lame. I tied their bridles to the osier, and then dragged their riders into the forest to where they were screened by some buckthorn shrubs. Then I had to reload my pistols and lead the horses to their execution, for I could not have them wandering home and alerting the postmaster to the fate of their riders. I shot the horses in the brains, and then, taking the pannier-bags, I panted my way uphill. I took the single dispatch I found in the bags, stuffed it in my pocket, and threw the bags into the forest.
When I came in through the back door of the post-house, I feigned having returned from a trip to the jakes, and then made my way to my room by the light of a horn lantern. The dispatch was large, of heavy crown paper, and sealed with three seals that, by the light of the lantern, I did not recognize. I broke the seals and opened the dispatch, only to discover that it was in cipher. I debated whether to try breaking the cipher, but decided against it. Reading the message would not change what I had done.
I cleaned my pistols, pulled off my boots, and took to my hard, lonely bed on the threadbare carpet. I was awake for some time, my mind returning over and again to my actions. It was possible—even likely—that I had just killed two innocent men. But that ciphered dispatch might have been to the lord lieutenant in Longfirth, ordering him to close the port and search the town for Floria, and that meant I could not take the chance the message might find its destination. Now, because the message was in cipher, I could not know whether I had acted rightly or not. In the hollow of my chest I felt a sharp pang of misery at the thought of those two strangers whose blood I had spilled, and who now lay cold on the mountainside.
I slept poorly, and in every sound, in every moan of the wind or step on the stair, I heard the tread of the bailiffs coming to take me to my cell.
In the morning Floria was much recovered and ate her breakfast with a will. Her glance was sharp and quick and clear, and there was color in her cheeks. She wanted to continue the journey, and I was myself eager to be away in case I had failed, in the dark, to properly conceal the bodies of the riders. We said farewell to the kind postmaster, and passed silver to him and to his staff, and then took a small, snug carriage to Mankin Clough. We were happy to endure the misery of that little bouncing box as it was dragged up and down the hillsides, and I managed to sleep despite the ruts and the ditches and Her Highness’s continued coughing.
We reached the town as the shadows grew long. Floria wanted to ride all night, but I did not want to risk her relapsing into pneumonia—so because there was a suitable room available, I took it for the night. Floria ate her supper with a fine appetite, and because in our room there was a little trundle bed rolled beneath the oaken frame of the guest bed, I was able to sleep on a mattress for the first time since I had left Rackheath House, though Floria laughed at the way my feet overhung the end of the little bed.
The next day we renewed our journey and came out of the Cordillerie at last to the River Brood, which led to the firth and the Sea of Duisland. The wide gray river was filled with rafts of logs destined for Longfirth, for the logging continues even in winter, and it is a great pleasure to see the loggers jump nimbly from one great bole to the next as they guide their timber rafts down the chill waters. I rejoiced in the shimmering sight and liquid chuckle and fresh cool scent of the river, and my heart lifted at the thought that we were approaching the end of our journey.
There was no way that Floria could be put aboard one of those rafts, so I went to the quay to negotiate with some of the boats I found there. And so we found ourselves aboard the barge Cadge, bound for Longfirth with a cargo of building stone quarried upriver. The barge was the property of the matriarch, and her son-in-law was the skipper. Her two grown granddaughters, strapping girls with callused palms and windburned cheeks, were the crew, as was her grandson, who was about ten years old, but skilled enough to rope a bollard or set a sail.
They had intended on leaving in the morning, but silver convinced them to depart sooner than planned. On our journey Floria and I seemed to specialize in evicting daughters from their beds, for we were given the daughters’ little cabin, while they slept on benches in the kitchen. Lamps were lit fore and aft so that other boats would know to keep clear of us, the sail clacked up the mast, and we cast off while the matriarch and her daughter stewed a fine dish of an old rooster cooked in wine till he was tender.
I have never had trouble sleeping on the water, though in the morning Floria complained of my snoring. “You are worse than Mistress d’Altrey,” said she. “Though you would know about her snoring, wouldn’t you?”
I rose at once to your defense. “I am unacquainted with it,” said I.
“Well,” said Floria, “you must then have been doing something other than sleeping.”
The river turned to face west, and we were heading directly into that hellish western wind that had by now been blowing for three days. The sail was doused, and the barge let the current take us down the river, aided by the two daughters, who, with their long sweeps, kept us clear of the log rafts and other traffic.
I went onto the foredeck to enjoy the sight of the sun on the river, and the brave sight of the rich lands on either bank, the fields and orchards and fine houses and the sheep dotting the water-meads, but I stayed on deck only a short time before the wind drove me back to the roundhouse, where I found myself under the stern eye of the matriarch. She was a straight-backed woman with a tasseled shawl over her shoulders, and possessed a hawk face and a glaring eye, and a hairy mole on one cheek.
“You had best treat that girl well and seemly,” said she, “and if you abandon her, I hope the gods curse you to a cold grave.”
“What girl?” said I.
Her eyes narrowed. “You take us all for fools? For plain as daylight you two are runaways, and I hope you fly with her out of love, and not with intent to use her and then abandon her among strangers.”
She had penetrated Floria’s disguise, sure enough, and there was no point in maintaining my pretense.
“You mistake us a little,” said I. “We are not lovers.”
Her mouth twisted in a snarl. “You intend to be her pander, then?”
A whole arsenal of invention whirled in my brain, while I tried to sort out which lie she might believe, and which not.
“I told you she was my cousin,” said I, “and that is true. But I fly with her not to take advantage of her, but to save her from a miserable fate. Her stepfather intends to marry her to an imbecile, for there is money that comes with that slack-witted, drooling half-man, and the stepfather covets it. It is to save her from that ill fortune that I fly with her. Once we come to my house in Selford she will be safe, and may resume her woman’s garb, and live free and, I hope, happy.”
She looked at me with suspicion. “I hope you speak truly,” said she. “Otherwise my curse will follow you.”
I did not wish to be cursed by an old lady, with or without a hairy mole, and so I put on my grateful-suppliant face. “I swear to you I will not harm or debase her,” said I.
The matriarch seemed not quite to believe me, but at least did not challenge my tale. I gave her a small, respectful bow, and went to our cabin, where I acquainted Floria with my new invention.
“I will play the part well,” said she, “for all my suitors have thus far been imbeciles.”
By mid-afternoon we drifted down into the great deep firth that led to the sea, with the city of Longfirth at its narrow western end. To continue aboard Cadge would be to row the heavy barge into the teeth of that western gale, which was flat impossible even if we passengers agreed to crew another pair of sweeps, so Cadge moored to the quay while I went ashore to find a way of getting to the city. I found a small galley that took messages and passengers back and forth along the firth and the river, and they were willing to carry us to town but would not start till the next day. So we spent a last night on the Cadge, and I bought some bottles of fine red wine to make the night a merry one. After a cup of the wine even the old matriarch smiled.
The
galley was open-decked, and there was no place to shelter from the wind and spray, so I made certain that Floria was well wrapped against the wind, which still blew fiercely from the west. The galley did not row into the teeth of that gale, but raised its lugsail and tacked back and forth across the firth, gaining a little westering with each board. Though the width of the firth varied from half a league to a full, the galley made each board so swiftly that it seemed scarcely to have settled on its new course than it was time to come about onto the new tack. Floria and I tried to stay out of the way of the bustling sailors, but the galley was so small that we were ever in danger of being trampled. Yet by this crooked course the galley made headway, and as the burning sun settled into the west, we could see silhouetted against the scarlet horizon the towers, walls, and bastions of Longfirth.
It was dark by the time we gained the town, which lay on the north bank where the firth narrowed to the width of a river, and was called again the Brood. The quays were alive with ships, and I hailed several to discover if Able was still in port, but none knew. I nearly lost heart, but I bribed the galley’s crew to search for the privateer, and to my surprise and delight we found her, swinging on her buoy in the midst of the Brood’s swift current. I hailed her and we came aboard, to be greeted by Peel, my cannoneer, and by Captain Langsam.
I had expected that Able would have left a week or two before, but the pinnace had been delayed by a refit, bad weather, and by half the crew coming down with the fever. But now she was busked and boun, as the saying is, and ready to sail, and I told Langsam that I wished to depart immediately. I was told that a departure was impossible till the turn of the tide, which would be an hour or two after midnight, and that with the wind holding westerly we should not get far.
“I wish to get as far as possible,” I said. In truth I wanted to get out of the range of the city’s cannon.
I did not know Langsam personally, but I knew he had been employed by the Spellman family, and they trusted him as a fine sailor. He was still young, under thirty, with a clean-shaven face and a disordered tangle of sun-streaked hair. I told him also that my page was recovering from the fever, and I wished to get him into shelter as soon as possible. To accommodate owners or important passengers, Langsam’s cabin could be divided by screens, and these were brought up from the hold and set in place. To Floria I gave the deep bed built against the bulwark, and for myself I stretched out a hammock in which I slept pleasantly until I heard the vessel getting underway. I wrapped myself in my overcoat and boat cloak, and went on deck to see a longboat being lowered into the water. With the western wind heading us, we could never set a sail, but must drift with the ebbing tide, and the boat was to take our hawser, lead us out of the harbor, and keep us from swinging broadside to the wind and running onto the shore or onto another ship.
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