The words, ‘No, she’s Danovian’ almost popped out of Roderick’s mouth, but he managed to stop himself. Had Ruby lied to him about where she was from?
‘Shamus can pick a Nareean from five miles,’ said Fromley. ‘So we stopped her and asked her who she was. She said she was Baronian.’
Roderick tried to hide his surprise. Now Ruby had three nationalities!
Shamus shook his head, ‘Nareean. Plain as day.’
‘How can you tell?’ asked Roderick.
‘When I was a border guard I saw lots of Nareeans. Rounder face than ours, longer ears. Buttocks shaped more like oranges, whereas we have apples. Usually dark-haired. Little things like that.’
‘What about other nationalities, like Danovians?’ Roderick coaxed.
‘Spent time on that border too,’ said Shamus. ‘They’re generally smaller than us. Fairer complexion. Almost all have blue eyes. This one has brown, like most Nareeans. Troubled times like these, you can’t be too careful of spies. We searched her and found a map of Baronia with all these different places circled on it. And now that we know where Banfor was, the map makes more sense because one of the places circled was the mountains where you found him. And you know what she had written on that part of the map? A capital “B”.’
‘She’s one of the Nareeans looking for him,’ said Shamus.
‘So,’ said Fromley with a smile. ‘We brought her home with us. We’ll let the Queen decide whether or not she’s a spy.’
‘Of course she’s a spy,’ said Shamus. ‘Why else would she lie about where she was from?’
‘You said she was heading into Baronia when you first saw her?’ asked Roderick. Ruby had told him that she was leaving Baronia and going home to Danover.
‘Yep.’ Fromley nodded.
Roderick was trying to decide whether to tell Fromley and Shamus the truth: that Ruby had nothing to do with the Nareean army, and had only been looking for Banfor because she wanted her invisibility cured.
But was that the truth? Maybe Ruby was a Nareean spy. For all Roderick knew, before he arrived within the Circle of Mountains, Ruby may have been trying to persuade Banfor to return to Nareea with her. He remembered what she had said to Banfor when they parted. ‘Are you sure you will go with him? And not with me?’ Why should he stick his neck out to try to help her when he didn’t know what she was really up to, or even who she really was? Anyway, whatever he said, Shamus wasn’t about to let her go. So he stayed quiet.
He looked at Ruby bouncing up and down across the horse. That had to hurt. ‘Do you think she’s all right like that, Sir Shamus?’ he eventually asked timidly. ‘Should we stop for a rest?’
‘Huh!’ Shamus snorted. ‘Do you think the Nareeans would stop for a rest if you were their prisoner, Roderick?’ He dug his heels into his horse’s side, urging it into a trot that bounced Ruby even more roughly. Roderick winced. For the rest of the ride into Palandan he made sure he stayed on Shamus’s left, so that Ruby was facing away from him. He definitely did not want to have to look her in the eye again.
Soon, they reached the city. At the castle gates, Aloysius pointed out to Shamus that Ruby was not on his list and therefore could not be allowed to enter the castle. In reply, Shamus pointed out that he had been sleeping on the hard ground for the last two weeks and he was tired and hungry and a little bit grumpy, and if Aloysius didn’t change his mind, Shamus might well think that the quickest way to solve the problem would be to chop Aloysius’s head off with his sword. Aloysius decided to let Ruby in.
Inside, they rode into the stables and dismounted. Roderick offered to look after the prisoner while Fromley and Shamus reported their return and arranged for guards to take her to the dungeons.
‘Don’t untie her,’ warned Shamus, pausing at the stable door. ‘Nareeans are cunning.’ He looked Roderick up and down. ‘Although it seems you’re more capable than you appear.’ A hint of a smile battled its way through Shamus’s beard, and Roderick couldn’t help but feel proud.
Shamus strode out the door with Fromley, leaving Roderick and Ruby alone. Roderick pulled off her gag. She looked terrible. Exhausted, bruised and filthy. He helped her off the horse onto the ground and propped her back against the stable wall, then knelt beside her and offered water, which she drank greedily.
But he didn’t untie her.
‘Roderick,’ she groaned weakly. ‘I’m not a spy. Come and visit me in the dungeons and I can explain.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘I’ll tell you everything. I promise. Visit me in the dungeon,’ she pleaded, ‘and bring a pinch of herniflour, a rollotree root and a handful of dipweed. Please.’
He recoiled. She was using him, just like before. ‘Why?’ he said icily. Footsteps approached.
‘Just bring them and I’ll tell you. If you don’t believe me then, you don’t have to give them to me. But at least bring them. Please!’
Fromley and Shamus stomped in with six guards. Overkill, Roderick thought, for a girl who could hardly stand.
Roderick woke next morning to find a letter had been pushed under his door. It was from Sir Lilley, and informed him that his belongings would be moved to a ‘more spacious suite’ on the second floor, and that the Queen would officially thank him for his ‘heroic deeds’ at a parade to be held in the town square in three days’ time. There was also a key to his new quarters. Roderick could hardly believe it. A parade in his honour!
It was Tuesday, one of the week’s three market days, and after breakfast Roderick headed into the town square, already full of hundreds of stalls. He dodged his way between them until he came to his mother’s. When he saw her, surrounded by herbs in bags and potions in jars, she looked so alone that Roderick felt his throat catch. He realised with a stab of guilt that the recent rise in his own fortunes had coincided with what was probably – along with Roderick’s father’s death – the worst period of Gwenda’s life.
He told her the news that there was to be a parade in his honour.
‘That’s wonderful, Roderick,’ she said emptily. She saw his disappointment. ‘I’m sorry, darling. It is wonderful for you, after all you’ve had to put up with. But I’m just so worried about Sonya.’
‘That’s all right, Mum,’ said Roderick, giving her a hug. ‘I’ll ask around. Someone must have seen or heard something.’
Roderick had come to market often enough over the years to know many of the stallholders. Over the next few hours he talked to dozens of them. A few, his mother’s close friends, knew Sonya was missing and responded gravely to Roderick’s questions. With those who did not know, Roderick chatted, gossiped, joked and eventually casually enquired where, when and with whom they might have recently seen his sister.
By lunchtime he had spoken to a lot of people and, as the stalls were being packed away, he found a quietish place on the grassy bank by the city wall and assessed his findings.
The sum of all the individual bits of information he had obtained was this: in the two weeks before her disappearance Sonya had frequently been seen around the markets with a man of average or above average height, aged between twenty and forty, with most guessing closer to twenty. His hair colour had been most commonly described as brown, but there were also votes in for black and blonde. About half the people he spoke to said that the man’s hair was curly, while the other half were sure it was straight. Fendall at the massage stall said he was positive that the man was bald. Five people had said that they thought there may have been something a little odd about the man’s face, but none could specify exactly what.
Some thought the man worked at a stall, but were not sure which; others were sure he did not. No one could remember seeing the man since Sonya’s disappearance.
None of it was much help.
What had Banfor said? Use your brain and be bold. The answers may be closer than you think. Why couldn’t he have said som
ething more helpful like, The man Sonya was seen with lives in a big brown house at the end of Gonk Street.
After reporting back to, and once again trying to comfort, his mother, Roderick walked out the castle gates, over the bridge and into the forest. He had some herbs to find. Not because he had decided to give Ruby what she wanted – but if he had them, then he had the option of either giving them to her or not, and having options was always a good thing. Plus a bit of gardening in the forest might help to clear his head.
Later, he returned to the castle and called in at the stables to see Fruitcake. He had spent every minute of the past two weeks with the horse, and Roderick missed him. The chief stablehand, a burly-looking man called Jonas, was cleaning out the next stall, and Roderick asked him for something he could feed to his horse.
‘Carrots, sir. Over there.’ He pointed to a bucket by the wall. ‘Good idea to feed him up. Might be off again before too long.’
‘Er . . . huh?’
‘That’s what I figured anyway. They’re telling me I got to get all the horses ready for another big ride soon. Queen’s orders, they say. How am I going to do that? They just got back from two weeks away! They need feeding up, re-shoeing, grooming and a big rest, not to be racing off again. I’ve got to get the vet in for half a dozen of them. They don’t seem to understand that you got to take care of a horse. Why, some of ’em aren’t even back yet. How am I s’posed to get ’em ready to go when they aren’t even back yet?’ He shook his head.
‘Tough job, yours,’ said Roderick sympathetically.
Jonas looked warily at him. ‘Er, not that I’m complaining, sir. Of course it’s a mighty honour to serve the Queen.’
‘Of course. I understand.’
He looked relieved. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He touched his cap.
As he walked into the castle Roderick wondered why they would be going on another journey. It was very unusual for all, or even most, of the knights to be away from Palandan at the same time. The search for Banfor had been the first instance Roderick had known it to happen. The only other occasion he had heard of all the knights riding together was when there was war. But wasn’t the whole point of finding Banfor to prevent war?
He was so lost in thought he almost climbed right past the second floor where his new room was. When he turned the key he found that it was, in fact, two rooms! There was a sitting room that was three or four times as big as his old bedroom and which had a couch, a comfy chair, a table and a view of the town square, and off it a spacious bedroom with a bed long enough to actually fit his entire body. Nice one!
In the middle of the sitting-room table sat a bowl of strawberries. Wow! Roderick gobbled a handful, slumped into his new couch, put his feet up and fell asleep.
He was woken by a knock at the door. He lurched over to it and creaked it open. It was a castle guard. ‘Villager named Fendall, Sir Roderick, at the gates. Asked to see you.’
The good thing about falling asleep in your clothes is that you don’t have to waste time dressing. The bad thing is that when you wake up you feel grotty and stupid. Roderick stumbled down the stairs, trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes and mind. As he emerged into the courtyard he saw long shadows and thought it must be the late afternoon. Then he realised that the sun was on the wrong side of the sky. It was early morning. He had slept right through the afternoon and night. No wonder he was hungry.
He passed through the castle gates to where Fendall the masseur, a big man with a long dark beard, stood waiting. Roderick steered him into an alcove outside the castle walls.
‘Sir Roderick, sorry to disturb you, but the fella I seen with your sister. I was wrong. He’s not bald. I seen him again.’
Those words woke Roderick up quicker than three cups of coffee and a slap on the ear.
‘Where?’
‘I was leaving town to go home a little while back. He passed me riding the other way on the bridge.’
‘You’re sure it was him?!’
‘Saw him clear.’
‘Did you get a better look at him? Is there anything else you noticed about him – apart from his non-baldness – that could help me find him?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fendall. He pointed at the castle walls.
‘The castle? What do you mean? A servant? A guard?’
Fendall shook his head, pointed at Roderick.
‘Me?’ Roderick didn’t get it. Then his hand flew to his mouth. ‘A knight?!’
Fendall nodded. ‘He wasn’t dressed as a knight when I saw him with Sonya. But he was today.’
Whenever knights left the castle, they had to wear their chain-mail and a tunic bearing the Queen’s coat of arms, as well as their knightly undershirts and leggings. If the person to whom Sonya had been talking to around the markets had been a knight, then he had been in disguise.
Who was it? Everyone had struggled to describe the face of the man Sonya had been seen with. The problem was that when a person sees someone’s face, they don’t think about the shape of their eyes or the length of their nose; they just make a mental picture of the face and later, whenever they think of that person, they pull up that picture: but if you ask them to describe the individual features – eyes, mouth, shape of head etc – usually they cannot.
Which is why, when Roderick asked Fendall to describe the man’s face, all he could manage was: ‘It was just . . . like a face . . . a normal face.’
‘Was there anything unusual about it?’ prompted Roderick.
‘Like what?’ asked Fendall suspiciously.
‘I don’t know . . . like something . . . odd?’
‘You mean like an extra nose or three ears, that sort of thing? Nah.’
‘Anything else you noticed?’ asked Roderick hopefully.
Fendall looked vacant, but then his face brightened. ‘He might have coughed.’
‘Coughed?’
‘As I passed him. You know, like a . . . cough.’
Roderick sighed. If he could just get Fendall into the castle when all the knights were gathered, he would be able to point the knight out. But getting non-knights inside the castle was not easy.
‘Thank you, Fendall.’
Fendall nodded and then hesitated. ‘Ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘This business about CAKE. Talk your sister was involved there. And . . .’ He looked around. ‘My own boys are a bit involved too. Are they in danger? I can warn them off, see.’
‘I don’t know if Sonya’s disappearance has anything to do with CAKE,’ said Roderick. ‘And the Queen has never mentioned anything to us knights about CAKE. We don’t have any orders to take any action against any of its members.’
Fendall pulled at his beard. ‘Hmm. Thank you, then.’
As Roderick walked back to his room, he tried to work out what it meant. Why had a disguised knight befriended his sister just before she disappeared?
Use your brain, Banfor had said, but Roderick felt like he’d lost the instructions.
Fendall’s question about CAKE nagged at him, too. He remembered what Jonas had said about the knights’ horses being prepared for another journey. Could it be for a move against CAKE?
CHAPTER 13
MORE ABOUT RUBY
One of the good things about being a knight was that you were almost always treated as if you were important. With confidence and assertiveness, a knight could get away with almost anything. For example, Sir Donald had once been captured by bandits. He managed to escape but without his sword or armour. Eventually he staggered into a village. Rather than begging for help, he made for the biggest and best house, announced to the family who lived there that he was a knight and that he would be staying the night, told them what he wanted for dinner and asked them to find a stable and food for his horse. Everyone had instantly obeyed. Sir Donald didn’t threaten anyone, or throw his weight
around. He had simply explained what was going to happen, and because he was a knight, it did.
So when Roderick began to feel nervous as he descended the stone steps to the underground dungeons, he reminded himself that he didn’t need to come up with a believable reason why he wanted to see Ruby. He just had to march confidently in and say what he wanted.
It was gloomy at the bottom of the staircase, and the air tasted stale. Behind a wooden desk sat Hendrug, the chief gaoler who, given his job, was an inappropriately cheerful man with twinkly eyes and a nearly permanent smile.
He looked up at Roderick and grinned. ‘Why, good morning sir. How lovely to see you! And how can I be of service?’
‘I need to see the new prisoner,’ said Roderick as assertively as he could. ‘The Nareean spy.’
‘Right you are, sir. We’ll get that going for ya!’ replied Hendrug merrily. He led Roderick down a cold, dark, damp stone corridor past a series of solid steel doors.
‘And what a lovely day it is, sir, I must say.’ Hendrug beamed.
‘Didn’t think the weather would make much difference down here,’ replied Roderick.
‘Oh I don’t mean the weather, sir. It’s just good to be alive!’ The gaoler took a deep breath and then exhaled with great relish. ‘Beautiful.’
Roderick had been trying to breathe in as little of the putrid air as possible. He smiled as politely as he could without opening his mouth.
A low moan came from behind one of the doors, and sobbing from another.
‘Even the prisoners are chirpy today!’ Hendrug continued. ‘Of course they are! How could anyone not be happy on a day like this?!’
He stopped before a door and pulled out his keys. ‘I’ll have to lock you in if you don’t mind, sir. Just holler when you need me. I’ll be a-waitin’! Unless you like it so much you want to stay a couple of days!’ He let out a peal of laughter.
The door creaked open. ‘Here we go, sir. It’s all yours,’ said Hendrug, spreading his arms wide like a real estate agent proudly showing off a mansion. The cell was a stone cube about eight paces across whose only source of light was a small, high window. Ruby was on the ground doing sit-ups.
The Adventures of Sir Roderick, the Not-Very Brave Page 13