by Anna Kendall
“This, Mistress Conyers, is what killed your husband and wrecked the Frances Ormund—this!”
She looked at me. I steeled myself for the blow. Instead she said with a kind of hopeless wonder, “But he’s just a boy.”
“Worked with the wreckers, mistress. The foulest vermin there is . . . He’ll hang with the other.”
Her brow furrowed painfully. I could see that she hadn’t taken it in yet: the wreck, her husband’s death, her own freakish survival. She was like those newly arrived in the country of the Dead, bewildered by where she found herself, unable as yet to make sense of this new terrain.
She said, “How old are you, boy?”
All at once I found my voice. I wanted to live. Two nooses swung outside, and I was not yet ready to dwell in that other country. And I looked—so skinny, so underfed—younger than I was, despite my height. I fell to my knees.
“Eleven, mistress. And I did not wreck the ship! My uncle brought me there—he made me come—I didn’t know—I didn’t know!”
Enfield snarled, “A blubbering coward, as well as a wrecker.” He seized me, but I tore myself from his grasp and stayed on my knees.
“Please, mistress, I swear to you—I did not know! And my aunt was there, too, my uncle killed her as well—look for the body! It’s skinny and frail. . . . She didn’t enter the sea, she wasn’t killed by anyone coming ashore—she was my mother’s sister! ”
Again Enfield grabbed me, this time much harder. But the dazed, grieving widow raised her hand. “No, wait, please . . . please.”
“Mistress, he’ll say anything to get himself off! He’s lying!”
“Was . . . was . . .” It seemed hard for her to weave her thoughts. “Was there a woman’s body on the beach?”
I thought Enfield would lie, but somewhere amid the vengeance in him also lay truth. As it did in my story, if he but knew it. After a long pause, he said, “There was.”
“Murdered? ”
“Her head was bashed in,” Enfield said reluctantly. “But this bastard might have done it himself!”
“No,” I said. “Aunt Jo was the only one ever kind to me.”
And now, when she was dead, I saw that this, too, was true. My aunt had never protected me from Hartah, no. But she had shared with me what food she had. She had told me to run from this very clearing. She had lost her life coming down to the beach to tell me, yet again, to run. “Roger! Go! Go now!”
And I had treated her with rage, with contempt, because I was too afraid of Hartah to direct those feelings at him.
Tears pricked my eyes. For Aunt Jo, for my lost mother, for myself. Then shame flooded me—fourteen was too old to cry! Eleven would have been too old to cry. All I could do was hang my head, but I knew both Enfield and Mistress Conyers had seen.
She said wearily, “Let him live. He’s just a child.”
“He is not! This is an act and he a coward, a lying—”
“Let him live. It is my right.”
Enfield bellowed, pulled me upright, and dragged me outside. He was not going to listen to her; he was going to hang me. But all he did was hold me fiercely and force me to face the great oak.
One noose dangled, empty, from a high tree. The other lay around the neck of the yellow-haired youth. His whole body trembled and his eyes rolled wildly. He shouted something, but the words made no sense. Three men on the other end of the rope pulled, and the young wrecker was jerked off his feet into the air.
He went on jerking for what seemed forever, kicking desperately. The men knotted the far end of the rope around another trunk. The rope chafed the tree bark as the hanging man struggled for air, his face distorted as he swung, kicking and kicking and kicking. . . .
Eventually the kicking stopped.
Enfield drew his knife and cut my bonds. He shoved me to the ground, where I lay looking up at him.
“Now go,” he said. “Run. It is her right.”
But the dead man had had the right to a priest, and they had hung him without any priest. Looking at Enfield’s face, I knew I would not get twenty feet into the woods before he, or one of the others, spitted me on a sword. Or worse. Mistress Conyers would never know.
Her gown, bedraggled and drenched and torn though it was, had been made of richly embroidered velvet.
She had been the wife of a ship’s captain.
Enfield obeyed her, as long as he was in her sight.
I got to my feet. But instead of running into the woods or toward the track from the clearing, I ran back into the cabin and threw myself again at Mistress Conyers’s feet.
“My lady! Please—if I go, the soldiers will kill me! Take me with you!”
Outrage finally brought some color to her face. “How dare you—my husband—”
I said, “I can bring you news of him from the country of the Dead!”
“Guards! Guards!”
I did the only thing I could. I threw myself against the corner of the table, hard, aiming so that the corner would hit my forehead. Pain shot through me like fire, great sharp lightning bolts of pain piercing my head, and the room went dark.
I crossed over.
6
I STOOD IN the same clearing, although the cabin was gone. Nine of the Dead sat cross-legged in a circle, holding hands, and I had appeared in the middle of their circle. They ignored me, or didn’t see me, or didn’t care. I stepped over them and started through the clearing toward the track down to the beach.
There was no track.
The sea lay below me, calm and gray beneath the eternally calm sky. I stood at the top of a steep cliff, much steeper than it had been in the land of the living. There was no way down. Far below, tiny figures moved on the rocky beach, although there was no sign of a ship, either afloat or wrecked on rocks.
Was one of those figures Hartah? Was another Aunt Jo?
I pushed the thought aside; otherwise I could not act. I had to get down to the beach soon. Always the newly Dead had a period of disorientation when they could be talked to and would answer—but that period was very brief. I had to get to the beach while the Dead from the Frances Ormund were still bewildered, still not reconciled to their new home. Otherwise there was no chance that any of them—who were young sailors, not gossipy old women—would notice me at all. Frantically I thrashed my way through the woods at the edge of the cliff. No paths down. The beach disappeared from my view, and I stumbled back to the clearing.
The hanging tree stood before me, its leaves unmoving in the quiet air. I shuddered. “Where is the track down?” I screamed at the circle of Dead. None of them as much as glanced up.
I ran back to the cliff edge. Two of the newly Dead had waded out to rocks and sat cross-legged on them, quietly contemplating the water.
Time was running short. If I threw myself off the cliff, I would surely die—that is, if I could die here! But if I didn’t get down there soon, Enfield would just as surely kill me in the land of the living.
I cried out, a great echoing howl of despair. One of the tiny figures on the beach looked up, shading his face with his hand. The next moment he flew through the air to stand beside me at the top of the cliff.
I don’t know who was more surprised, he or I. A rough sailor, he wore a brown jerkin with a leather belt and torn pantaloons. Salt water dripped from his clothing, his untrimmed beard, his greasy hair. He screamed, drew a knife from his belt, and charged toward me.
“Stop!” I shouted, before I knew I was going to say anything. And he did.
“How did ye do that? How did you bring me to ye?” he sputtered. “And where be I?”
He didn’t yet realize that he was dead. Was that why he had been able to soar through the air and up the cliffside? I had never seen any other Dead do anything like that—what else could they do?
My mind raced faster than it had ever done before. This was my chance, probably my only chance. He repeated, “Where be I?”
I said, “You are in my queendom!”
He eyed me
, fear and doubt warring in his eyes. “Ye don’t look like no prince!”
My clothing was as poor as his, and not much drier. I said, “No, of course not. This is the queendom of . . . of Witchland, and I am an apprentice witch. How else could I have flown you up the cliff?”
Fear routed doubt. The sailor threw himself at my feet in the weeds and rocks. “Witchland! Oh, spare me, sir . . . uh, my lord . . . spare me!”
“I will spare you if you tell me all you know of the ship that brought you here, its voyage, and its captain.”
The sailor, still on his belly, peered up at me with the expression of a dog that expects to be beaten. I realized then what I should have seen at first. His beard had hidden most of his face, but his flat nose and big head, the slur in his voice, his confusion at being asked three questions at once—this man was like Cat Starling, but without her beauty. His was the mind of a child, and it was as a child that he could not grasp where he was, what had happened to the ship, or why the murderous seas had turned calm in the space of a heartbeat.
“Rise,” I said as lordly as I could manage. “Good. Now, tell me—what was the name of your ship?”
“The Frances Ormund.” He turned his eyes toward the sea and grimaced in bewilderment—where had the ship gone?
I did not want him thinking, remembering, realizing. “Look at me. No, directly at me . . . good. Now, who was her captain?”
“Cap’n James Conyers.”
“Good. Where was she bound?”
“For Carlyle Bay.” It seemed to steady him to have only one short question at a time, questions he could answer with certainty. The fear had not left his misshapen face, nor the knife his hand, but I sensed that as long as I kept his attention focused on me, he would not panic. The knife had a curved blade, wickedly sharp, and a wooden handle carved like an openmouthed fish.
I said, “How many hands aboard the ship?”
“Eleven, and the cap’n, and Mistress Conyers.”
“What was your cargo—no, don’t look down—what was your cargo?”
“Gold from Benilles and cloth from . . . I forget.” He hung his head.
“It’s all right that you forgot,” I said. Cloth and gold—a rich cargo, a small ship, a light crew. A good choice for wreckers.
“Oh!” he said, brightening. “And we brung a man from Benilles—someone important, he was! With medals on his chest!”
The man, his medals, and his importance had all been devoured by the hungry sea. “What is your name?”
“Bat.”
“No other name?”
“No, sir. Bat be all I carry.”
“And what kind of captain was James Conyers to you, Bat? A fair master?”
This question was too complicated. Bat looked at me hopelessly.
“Did Captain Conyers ever have you flogged?”
“When I fouled the line. The cap’n, he give me three lashes. But they was light. He tell me that I . . . I be trying as hard as I can, and that be true.”
“Did he—”
But Bat had found his tongue. “The cap’n have the bosun flogged for stealing, and we put him ashore at Yantaga, we did. No pay, neither, and lucky he warn’t sent to no gaol. The cap’n, he stood on deck when the big storm came, and he won’t let no man leave his post, and then afterwards he said—”
I heard all of what the captain said, what the captain did, what the captain was. This simple-witted man stood before me, salt drying on his ruined clothes, and painted the picture of an idol, a man such as I, at least, had never known. Fair. Kind. Intelligent. Capable of doing anything. How much was true, and how much blind devotion?
Bat finished with, “But where be the cap’n now? I can’t leave my post!” Panic took him. “Did you witch my cap’n?” The curved knife in his hand twitched.
“I did not.” More figures had emerged from the sea to wander the beach below. One might even be Captain Conyers. “Bat, come with me.” I tried to make my voice as full of authority as I could—I, a skinny and fearful murderer fighting for his very life. Which, in this country, hardly even existed. But Bat followed me.
I led him to a stump halfway between the cliff and the clearing. “Sit there. Wait for me or the captain or the first mate. One of us will come.”
“Aye, sir.” He sat. I had no doubt that he would wait there until the end of time, if necessary. I left him.
Behind thick bushes, I tried to make myself fly through the air, as Bat had done. I willed it, I jumped, I closed my eyes and tried to command myself. Nothing. Apparently it was not enough to merely be here; one had to also be dead.
I bit my tongue, enough pain for a return, and crossed over.
“He’s reviving,” a woman’s voice said. I lay on the floor of the cabin. Mistress Conyers’s face, weary and grieving and disgusted, sagged above me. “Guards, take him outside and set him free.”
“No, wait!” Beyond shame, I clutched the sodden hem of her velvet gown. “Listen to me! I—”
“Out!” Her voice rose to a shriek. She was not, I sensed, a woman giving to shrieking, but here and now . . . Her husband lay dead in the roiling sea, his ship wrecked on the rocks, her life in ruins. A soldier seized me, not gently.
I blurted, “Captain Conyers bought you roses in Yantaga! When you put into port to put the bosun ashore for theft . . . yellow roses, masses and masses of yellow roses!”
The soldier had me halfway out the door. Mistress Conyers said, “Wait.”
“Mistress—”
“Wait.” And to me: “What do you know of yellow roses at Yantaga?”
I knew what Bat had told me, no more. But her face had gone white, and so, of course, there was more. With women, there is always more. I stabbed wildly around in my mind for something to say, to give her, something that might preserve my life.
“The roses were a . . . an offering. Between you two. For something important.”
Her eyes filled with tears. To the soldier she said, “Leave us.”
“Mistress, it may not be safe to—”
“Leave us!” And there it was, the tone of authority I had tried for with Bat and could never, not in this land nor that other, achieve as she did. She was born to that voice. The soldier dropped me and stalked out the door.
“Who are you?” she said. “How do you know these things?”
We stared at each other across the dim space, lit by only one lantern and the gray light from the small window. The other survivor moaned in a corner. The cabin smelled of male sweat, of rodent droppings, of my fear. But I had no choice.
“My name is Roger Kilbourne. I know these things because your husband just told me, while I lay unconscious. Mistress, please believe me, please let me convince you. I can tell you more of your voyage on the Frances Ormund, much more . . . No, please hear me out! I am not lying or conniving or trying to play on your grief. I don’t know why I am this way, and I want nothing from you except my life. Please listen to me. I can . . .”
I had never said it aloud to anyone except Hartah and my aunt, and then only when I was a child, too young to know that some things are better left unsaid.
“I can travel to the land of the Dead.”
7
SHE BELIEVED ME. Hartah had always said that only country folk believed in my ability, never the city-bred nor those above us, and I had found that true. But Mistress Conyers was a rare creature, one of those few who look squarely at the evidence before them, who weigh it, who can accept even that which is distasteful or frightening if it also seems true. After I told her all I had learned from Bat, Mistress Conyers accepted that I could cross over. She also accepted that if I was not to be killed, she must take me away from the soldiers filled with lust for revenge over the Frances Ormund. She believed me, she took me with her, and then she disliked me intensely for both those things.
Witchcraft.
Child of ship wreckers.
We left late in the afternoon. The rain had stopped and the sea had gone from raging to g
rumbling. Those bodies that could be recovered lay under wet blankets in the backs of wagons, along with such cargo as could be fished from the waters. Mistress Conyers and I rode in a different wagon from the corpses, and I stuck close to her. Soldiers in rain-soaked blue glared at me with murder in their eyes. The body of Captain Conyers had not been found. His widow and I did not talk.
We stayed close to the coast, heading always downhill, away from the mountains. In the early dusk of autumn we reached a large inn on the coast. A rider had been sent ahead, and we were met at the inn by a large party of men who had ridden hard and fast to arrive just as we did. These, it turned out, came from Captain Conyers’s brother’s estate, somewhere farther inland. The queen’s Blues left us then, perhaps to make their own camp for the night. With them they took the other survivor from the Frances Ormund. With relief, I watched the soldiers ride away. These new men were armed and booted like the others, but they had no reason to hate me. Not unless Mistress Conyers should give them a reason.
Should I slip off now, disappear into the gathering night? To go where, to eat what, to live how? Here I was being well fed, for the first time in a long time. My head still hurt where I had thrown myself against the table in the cabin, but I had a clean bandage for the wound. And I remembered all too well Hartah’s stories of highwaymen, robbers, lone travelers gutted and left to die.
So I stood in a dim corner of the stable yard, a place where the wooden side of the inn met a high fieldstone wall, and watched the commotion. Men carried chests from the Frances Ormund into the stable; I had no doubt they would be well guarded tonight. The corpses stayed on the wagons, which were drawn behind the inn. Among the new arrivals a woman dismounted, having ridden as hard as the men. She carried a cloth bag into the same door where Mistress Conyers had been taken. All the horses trembled with hard use, lathered with sweat. They were watered, rubbed down, fed, and housed either in the stables or, when there was no more room, in a paddock. The well winch creaked continuously as bucket after bucket was drawn. Inn servants rushed about, calling to each other. No one noticed me.