Toby Bishop - Horse Mistress 03

by Airs of Night

  Amelia took it with trembling fingers, her nose already telling her it was food. It was a substantial packet, wrapped neatly in a tea towel that smelled faintly of laundry soap. Amelia crouched on the floor to unfold it on her lap, and found a half dozen apples, a small loaf of heavy bread, some cheese and biscuits, and a

  little tin of tea. “Oh, Jimmy,” Amelia said. “This is wonderful. Will you share with me?”

  He ducked his head again. “Oh, aye,” he said softly. “Eat as much as you like. I don’t like them soldiers, but they eat good. I’m not hungry at all.”

  “Mahogany would love the apples,” she said. “And if I could have a little bread and cheese . . .”

  She held it up to him, but he shook his head. “Have all of it, Miss. I’m going home tomorrow, and Mam’ll feed me, sure.”

  Mahogany, behind her, whickered hungrily. Still she hesitated, though her mouth had begun to water at the scent of the bread. “Jimmy . . . how are you going to get home? They’ll be looking for you, and I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid there’s going to fighting.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said, with a flash of confidence. “And as soon as it starts, I’ll be on my way home quick as my feet can carry me! I’m Osham-born and -bred, and I know the back ways.”

  “But won’t they come for you again?”

  He shook his head. “Nay, Miss. They’re saying Lord Francis will be Duke next.”

  “Are they? Who is saying that?”

  “Everyone! Well, not them up at the house, but lots of folk. My mam and my uncle. And when Lord Francis is Duke, them extra taxes will go away.”

  She got to her feet and went to Mahogany with the apples. As he crunched them enthusiastically, she bit a chunk from the wedge of cheese. It was sheep’s cheese, soft and rich, nearly as good as that of Marinan. She could hardly restrain herself from tearing at the bread with her teeth, too. She waited until Mahogany had finished every scrap of apple, cores and stems included. She led him to the water barrel and let him drink, then she sat cross-legged on one of the lap robes and ate the unexpected gift with as much courtesy as she could manage.

  Jimmy watched her, grinning. “My mam loves to see a hungry person eat,” he said.

  “Then I would give her joy,” Amelia said, smiling back at him. She finished everything, and sighed, feeling pleasantly sleepy and nearly safe. She wrapped herself in a second lap robe, keeping the one beneath her for some cushioning against the hard planks of the floor. Jimmy did the same. They had almost drifted off to sleep, unlikely companions of the night, when Amelia had a thought.

  “Jimmy,” she whispered.

  “Aye?”

  “Do you know someone with a boat?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  THEsky had cleared to the hard, cold black of winter by the time Philippa marched down the steps of the Ducal Palace and across the courtyard to the stables, where William’s carriage horses were being harnessed.

  The Beeth driver had flatly refused to allow any of the Duke’s militia to use his master’s equipage. There had been an exchange between one of William’s captains and the driver, but when the captain put his hand on his smallsword, Philippa intervened.

  They were still in the foyer of the Palace, though the doors stood open to the icy wind. Philippa stepped between the soldier and the Beeth retainer. She put her back to the militiaman, and said quietly to the driver, “Thank you for bringing me here. Please take your horses back to Beeth House, and let Lord and Lady Beeth know I’m now in the Duke’s custody.”

  There was a moment of tension, when she thought the man might not give in, but the militia captain rattled the scabbard of his sword, and the driver’s face paled a bit.

  Philippa said, “No one doubts your courage, I promise you.”

  He cast her a grateful glance and tossed his head at the militiamen who stood stiffly around the foyer.

  There were a dozen of them, and as Philippa moved toward the door, they followed her, the hard soles of their boots clicking on the marble floor. She led them at a brisk pace across the snowy cobblestones

  and experienced a small flicker of satisfaction when two or three of them slipped on the icy surface.

  Blackley was still putting the horses into their traces, and he suggested Philippa step into the tack room to stay warm while she waited.

  The man who was apparently the leader of her contingent of guards began to protest when she stepped out of his sight, waving the heavy musket he carried. Philippa heard the stable-man say, “Leave be, man.

  That’s a horsemistress of Oc, and she deserves respect.”

  Philippa couldn’t make out the guard’s grumbled response, but Blackley snapped, “They devote their lives to the winged horses. You lot ought to know that.”

  There was a rattle of leather traces and the clacking of horses’ hooves on the stones. The empty Beeth carriage clattered out of the courtyard, its wheels going silent when it reached the snowy boulevard. A moment later, Blackley came into the tack room and bowed to Philippa.

  “Begging your pardon, Horsemistress,” he said, shamefaced. “The carriage is ready to take—that is, ready for you.”

  “Thank you, Blackley,” she said, just as if she had ordered up the carriage herself.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. He looked as if he would like to say more, but couldn’t think what. He cleared his throat, and looked over his shoulder as if the militia might have followed him into the tack room after all.

  Philippa said, “I understand your feelings perfectly, Master Blackley. Don’t trouble yourself. It isn’t your fault.”

  His eyes met hers, then slid away again. He took a step closer, and she caught the scent of horseflesh and leather about him, the good, homely scents of a man who spent his life in the stables. “Mistress,” he said in an undertone, “my family worked for old Duke Frederick, and we’re as loyal as any—”

  The captain of the guard banged on the door with his fist. “Let’s go!” he said.

  “Mistress,” Blackley said hurriedly. “If you want, I’ll keep these fools busy while you slip out the back . .

  .”

  Philippa gave him a nod of appreciation. “You’re a good man, Master Blackley. I appreciate the thought, but I’m willing to go.”

  “But, Mistress . . . Islington House will be . . .”

  “A prison, yes. Though a velvet one!” She gave him a tight smile. “And in the bosom of my family, no less.”

  The captain banged again on the door. He put his head in, scowling.

  “Oh, aye, we’re coming,” Blackley answered. He muttered to Philippa, “Bad times, Mistress. Bad times.”

  “Yes,” Philippa said in a dry tone. “Precisely so, Master Blackley.”

  She walked out of the tack room and stepped up into the Duke’s carriage, disdaining the proffered hand of the captain. He climbed in beside her and banged on the ceiling of the carriage with the butt of his musket. “Islington House!” he ordered. The driver shook the traces, and the carriage began to roll.

  Philippa settled into a corner and folded her arms. She fixed the captain with a stony gaze, and he had the grace to flush a little and look away. They rode off in silence. Behind them came the rest of the guard, mounted on saddle horses.

  They drove for twenty minutes, leaving the park of the Ducal Palace behind and wheeling swiftly out into the main road. Philippa cast a surreptitious glance through the window to assess their distance from the White City. The gas lamps of the city center glowed faintly in the distance, and squares of yellow light marked a farmhouse they were just passing. She sat up a little straighter. Her guard stared at the back wall of the carriage.

  He was young, she saw, with a twinge of regret, a plump, rather short man who could hardly be older than her third-level girls. She wondered what drove a young man to the militia. Dreams of glory? Until recently, such an opportunity hardly existed in Oc. A safe job, perhaps, or perhaps such a man believed service to the Duke was its own reward. It had been easy to
decide to commit herself to the winged horses, but she didn’t know if committing oneself to military service would be as simple.

  She looked away from the young captain, not wanting to remember his soft features, which he clearly

  worked hard to make as stiff and forbidding as possible. She had seen the same such effort on the faces of her students. When they were most frightened, they hardened their faces and stiffened their necks.

  They hid their fear from everyone, including themselves.

  This young man’s job was about to become much more complicated, and possibly far more dangerous.

  If all went as planned, the fulcrum of the coming struggle would shift from Amelia Rys to her.

  LARKwatched from her hiding place as Mistress Winter, leaving Sunny behind at Beeth House, stepped up into the carriage and was driven off, alone.

  Tup and Lark had hidden in the farthest empty stall of the Beeth stables. Since her second year at the Academy, Lark had summered with the Beeths and knew their estate in Marin and the one here in Osham almost as well as she knew her own home of Deeping Farm. After launching from the flight paddock at the Academy and following Mistress Winter and Sunny at a discreet distance, Lark had guided Tup down to the farthest pasture at Beeth House, where in spring and summer a little herd of brown milk cows grazed. They came to ground unseen and made their way through the thickening fall of snow to the back of the stables, where Lark remembered a pony stall. Hester’s first pony had been stabled there, before being handed along to a young cousin when Hester outgrew him. The stall had been empty for years.

  Lark left Tup there, admonishing him against his usual whimpering cry, and crept along the aisle to the front to watch the stable-girl take Sunny in, untack her, and settle her as if for a long stay. Lark longed to run across to Beeth House to find out what was happening, but she knew if Mistress Winter found her there, she would order her back to the Academy immediately. She would be in enough trouble as it was, but then, there had hardly been a time when she was not doing penance for one infraction or another.

  Lark found a window beside a stack of straw bales, a small square of glass that looked out over the long, narrow courtyard of Beeth House. She crouched beside it and peered in wonderment. She saw Lady Beeth emerge to greet Mistress Winter. She saw men, dozens of them, moving behind the windows, or coming out through the side entrances. She thought she saw Lord Beeth once, and she was quite sure she spotted Lord Francis himself moving across the bright foyer.

  She sank onto the sawdust-covered floor and tried to understand what might be happening here. She had followed Mistress Winter out of fear that her instructor would go straight to the Ducal Palace. She was relieved to find she had come here, to this welcoming place, but she couldn’t guess why. Had the weather been more amenable, she and Tup could simply have circled back to the Academy, but the snow was too heavy. And now that she was here, she could hardly bear to leave without understanding what was afoot.

  As the hours passed, she huddled with Tup in the pony stall. She took off his flying saddle and rubbed him down with a purloined towel, then stole a bit of water and oats from the stall of a big, wingless gelding. As she moved stealthily through the aisles, she counted the horses. Not including Winter Sunset, she found there were at least two dozen saddle horses in the stables, in addition to the eight carriage horses maintained by Lord and Lady Beeth. Only when there was a party, as at the Estian festival or one great celebration for Lord Beeth’s birthday, had she seen so many horses at Beeth House. She began to wish she had persuaded Hester to come with her, but she suspected Hester would have cautioned Lark for her impulsiveness and advised restraint.

  As the carriage trundled away, bearing Philippa Winter, Lark stared after it, confounded. Something was going to happen, she felt certain, something big, and she wouldn’t know what it was until it was too late to help.

  Hours later, when the sky had cleared, and hard, cold stars shone down on the snowy landscape, the men began to come out of Beeth House. There was a flurry of activity in the stables as they retrieved their horses, saddled and bridled them, and assembled in the courtyard. Lark kept her hand over Tup’s nose to block the scent of so many men and keep him quiet. He snorted against her palm and lifted one hind leg as if to kick in protest, but she whispered, “No, Tup! Please!” and he subsided, but he pushed his head against her shoulders as if to remind her he was only doing it to please her.

  There seemed to be dozens of people riding out of the courtyard a moment later. Lark left Tup and

  rushed back to the little window. Peering out, she saw that there were perhaps thirty men, most of them mounted, but a few marching in formation. Several of the marchers carried long, wicked-looking muskets over their shoulders. Others had smallswords swinging beside their thighs, or they had no weapon at all.

  At the head of the whole contingent she saw Lord Francis on a fine, tall horse, swathed in a long riding coat and with the scabbard of a smallsword laced to his pommel.

  Lord Beeth rode a high-necked horse that made him look even pudgier than usual. And behind Lord Beeth, with the marchers, was a tall, broad figure that looked familiar to Lark. She looked harder, but the man wore a wide-brimmed hat and a heavy coat with its collar turned up, and she couldn’t make him out.

  He carried no weapon, but he strode forward with purpose, his breath curling from beneath the brim of his hat.

  She watched this force depart from Beeth House. Aside from a command or two, the men were silent.

  The rattle and creak of tack, the stamping of boots, and the clop of horses’ hooves were the only sounds. Lady Beeth stood in the doorway of Beeth House, her tall figure framed in light. She neither called a farewell nor raised her hand. Lark clung to the windowsill, biting her lip, thinking furiously. Of course it all had to do with Mistress Winter, but what? And where were they going?

  When the last of the men had disappeared down the lane, Lark blew one breath against the cold glass, watching the mist swell and then fade as she tried to decide what to do. She could fly back to the Academy, she supposed, and hope no one had missed her. It was a vain hope, though, and she would no doubt compound her offenses by flying alone in the dark, even though the stars were so bright. She could stay the night where she was, she and Tup huddled together in the pony stall. Or . . .

  She clicked her tongue as her mind made itself up all at once. There was only one logical thing to do, though it would require some explaining.

  She stood, and turned.

  And found her way blocked by Hester’s mamá’s commanding bulk. Lady Beeth stood with her arms folded, her face stern.

  “Well, Larkyn,” she said. “Are you coming across to the house now?”

  Lark inclined her head, out of courtesy and the faint hope of hiding the spots of color flaming in her cheeks. “Yes, Lady Beeth,” she said. “I was just coming.”

  FIFTEENminutes later, Lark sat across the wide kitchen table from Lady Beeth, with a feast of cold roast beef and popovers and a plate of sliced bloodbeets before her. The cook bustled around them with a pot of tea, a saucer of biscuits, and a tiny dish of plum jelly. Lark tried to eat delicately, but the beef was tender and juicy, the popovers soft as clouds. The cook winked at her from behind Lady Beeth’s shoulder, and Lark, her mouth full, smiled at her.

  When she had eaten half of a full plate, Lady Beeth put her elbows on the table and her chin on her open palms. “And now,” she said. “You will tell me, young lady, what you were doing hiding out in our stables all the afternoon.”

  Lark could have protested that she was nineteen years old, after all, and truly an adult, but she didn’t.

  Amanda Beeth always treated the motherless Lark as if she were her own daughter, and Lark returned her affection. She chewed the bite of beef in her mouth, swallowed, and answered, “I followed Mistress Winter. She left the Academy in a hurry, when the flight was over the harbor, and I was worried . . . I thought she might . . .” She waved her fork, not knowing how to
say it all.

  Lady Beeth only raised her eyebrows and watched her.

  Lark took a sip of tea. It was light and fragrant, but it could have used, she thought, a twirl with a fetish.

  She lifted her eyes to Lady Beeth’s and blurted, all in a rush, “Mistress Winter would sacrifice herself for the students of the Academy, for me, and for Hester, and even for Beryl and the others who are loyal to the Duke though he’s making such a terrible mistake. I was afraid she would go to the Palace and turn herself in because the Council said she had to, then her horse would die and the Duke would win! And

  ’tisn’t right; ’tis all wrong!”

  “And what did you think, Larkyn? That you could stop her, all by yourself?”

  Lark shook her head. “I didn’t think,” she admitted. “I just—Tup and I—”

  “I believe Hester would say that it’s up to you to do the thinking for your bondmate.”

  “Oh, aye.” Lark looked down at her plate. Despite the scolding, the beef still looked good to her, and her fingers itched to pick up the remnants of the popover. The cook came close with the teapot to refill her cup, but Lady Beeth waved her off.

  “I assume, Larkyn, that Hester doesn’t know you’re here.”

  “Nay.” Lark shook her head. “She would have stopped me.”

  “Did you not think that she might worry about you?”

  Lark’s cheeks flamed again. “Nay, Lady Beeth. I didn’t think about that, either.”

  Amanda Beeth sighed and dropped her hands into her lap. Her face softened a bit as she looked across the table, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry,” Lark told her. “Truly I am. But I’m worried.”

  “We all are,” Lady Beeth said. “Do you understand now what’s happening?”

  Lark shook her head. “Nay, I don’t. All I know is that Mistress Winter left Sunny here and went off alone, and Amelia has been gone for days, and I’m afraid Mistress Winter is turning herself over to the Duke so he’ll let Amelia go.”

  Lady Beeth reached across the table and touched her hand. “Larkyn, dear. We stand on the brink of civil war. Your teacher is trying to forestall that.”