The Caravan Road

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Alec stood, and stepped to the center of the street, his hands raised high over his head to draw the attention of the approaching forces. He felt a terrible pain and a blow in the back that pressed him forward, then he heard Carla’s voice scream, and he blacked out.

  Chapter 6 – Alec’s Injury

  When Alec awoke he was in a narrow bed that was in a gloomy attic. The angled gable roof was only a few feet above his head, and the source of dim light was somewhere off to his left. His chest felt aflame with pain, and it flared to an even more intense level as he tried to take a breath. He moaned, then coughed, then felt spasms of even more pain.

  “Here,” a soft voice called, and a small packet was gently pressed between his lips into his cheek. He turned his head to see who was there.

  It was an older version of Carla, a woman with the same red hair and high cheek bones, though a wider mouth and thinner lips than Alec had noticed on his young companion. “These herbs will lessen the pain; just let them rest in your cheek.”

  Alec gave his head a slight nod to signify he understood, and his hand reached out from underneath his cover, then groped to find hers, and gave a weak squeeze.

  “You just rest. You’re safe here for now. Carla will return after sunset. She’ll be so pleased to know you woke up. The girl has sat here by you constantly,” the woman told him.

  “Your daughter?” Alec tried to croak a question, but his chest felt pierced with increased pain, and he closed his eyes as a spasm stormed through his torso.

  “You can’t try to talk,” the woman brushed her fingers across his forehead. “Stay quiet, rest and heal.”

  Alec closed his eyes, and fell back into a drowsy state of anxious sleep, trying to understand what had happened to him. The pack of herbs in his cheek began to act, making his mouth feel numb first, before the pain diminished slightly in his chest.

  When he opened his eyes again, the room was dark. He tried to look around and detected two faint gleaming points at some unknown distance. When he blinked, the points were further apart, and then they were eyes in a face, reflecting some small amount of light, and a hand lay gently on his shoulder.

  “Alec, stay still. Don’t try to talk,” Carla spoke to him. “You’re very sick, and we can’t bring a doctor to see you. The duke’s patrols are looking all over the city for you and me and Charls and anyone else they think is against them.”

  Alec closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the pain he felt with every breath. He wished he knew what had happened to him, but the pain was so severe he couldn’t call upon his Healer energies to diagnose or cure himself. He slowly raised one hand and laid it upon Carla’s, giving a feeble squeeze to show his appreciation. There was so much he wanted to know, but couldn’t ask.

  “My mom says thank you for what you’ve done for us, for healing my dad the first time, and for watching out for me. She’s been here watching you almost as much as I have. The soldiers have been here once already searching our house, but they didn’t look up here,” she warned.

  “As soon as you’re well enough to move, we’ll try to get out of the city to some place safe.”

  Alec gave a slight nod, then closed his eyes. He rapidly dozed off, and Carla sat beside him a while longer, his relaxed hand still atop hers on his shoulder. She was worried, though thankful he was still alive. She had screamed in terror when an arrow had bolted from the roof of a building near the palace and pierced all the way through his chest from the back, its point protruding from the front of his chest, evidence of the force with which it had been shot. She and Charls had immediately grabbed Alec and begun to hurry him away, as a squad of guards from the palace had come charging towards them.

  The small collection of Alec’s converted supporters had put up a brief and unsuccessful street battle against the palace forces, who were led by an Ajacii, but the battle had lasted long enough for Carla to lead the other two to safety in her own home. Her mother had made the decision to draw the arrow out, a procedure Carla had been unable to stand to watch, then they had bandaged Alec and hidden him and Carla up in the attic just minutes before palace forces had knocked on the door and stormed into the house, as they did every other house in the vicinity, looking for Alec and the others.

  Charls was hidden in a nearby house, and Carla had spent the day there with him, waiting until dark before she stealthily returned to her own home and Alec. She and Charls had talked during the day, telling each other all that they could about Alec, Carla trying to explain the few brief hours she had seen him, and Charls recollecting the times in years past when Alec had been involved in the governance of his duchy. And Charls had provided a comforting presence for Carla, who had lost her father and then lost the security of Alec’s presence in the same day. Charls was a steady man, one who recognized her emotional strain and reacted sympathetically, letting her talk throughout the day about her father, providing the opportunity for her to release a portion of the pain and frustration that had bottled up inside her.

  It was Charls who recollected a possible way to help his duke heal more quickly. “The duke showed me a patch of plants in the palace garden that he said he had brought from an estate near Eckerd. He said the plant could cure anything,” Charls confided to Carla. “If I can get back into the palace, I could pick some and bring it back to heal him.”

  Carla sat silently, pondering a return to the palace. “I can get you into the palace garden,” she said at last, “if you’ll go along with my plan.”

  “What plan is that?” Charls asked, leaning forward, studying the girl intently.

  “I will go to the gate of the palace, and tell them that my elderly mother wishes to see the flowers in the palace gardens one time before she dies. The guards will let a harmless girl in, I suspect, especially with her frail mother, and then we’ll go find the duke’s plant, pick some, and leave,” she said in a straightforward manner.

  “I suspect the guards will gladly let such a pretty girl into the palace,” Charls said, pleasing Carla with his gallant comment. “But how will you and your mother know which plant to pick in the garden?”

  “This is the best part!” Carla said with a sparkle in her eye. “You’ll be dressed up as my mother! You’ll be able to go in and pick the right plant!”

  Charls reared back abruptly, his eyes widening. “You can’t be serious!”

  “You can do this; this is for Alec! This is for your duke,” Carla spoke emphatically. “This may be the only way. You saw that arrow sticking all the way through him; he’s not going to recover from that without something extraordinary, maybe this plant you say he told you about.”

  “If we’re caught, I’ll go back to the dungeon, or execution,” Charls said. “You’ll suffer the same, but not right away. Are you really willing to risk the things they’ll do to you?”

  “The first time I saw the duke, he saved me from being taken to the palace and raped,” Carla said. “He didn’t know me, or anything about me. There wasn’t anything to know. I was a complete stranger to him, and he fought to free me. He saved my father’s life, at least for a little while, and he went into the palace to set you free. He can make this city the good place it used to be, better for everyone.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to set him back on his feet,” Carla said, rising to her own feet. She reached over and grabbed Charls’s shoulder, urging him up. “Let’s go get you dressed for this; the sooner we do this, the better.”

  With a sigh, Charls resignedly acceded to the girl’s plan, recognizing that it was in fact the only way he could imagine they would be able to enter the palace grounds now. Together they entered her mother’s room and slowly dressed the unhappy steward in a strange collection of dress, blouse, and many scarves that covered his head and much of his face.

  Charls returned to Alec’s room and took one of the knives from his unconscious duke, then returned and met Carla at the front of the house. With that done, Carla tied a scarf over her own bright red hair, and the two of them walked
back towards the palace they had escaped from just days before.

  Chapter 7 – Deposing the Duke

  Carla felt intimidated when they were within sight of the palace gate. She had been raised in the city, and lived there all her life, without ever entering the palace until Alec had smuggled her in. It was a place she had always fantasized about with her friends around the market place, the big building with servants and feasts and carpets on the floor, the features they believed it had and that made it opulent in their eyes.

  For Charls, it was a return to a place that had been his assumed place of duty for decades, one that he took for granted, or had until a few weeks earlier when the new duke had arrived and turned the world upside down.

  “Slow down,” he hissed to Carla as they began their walk in view of the guards. “Remember, I’m your elderly mother. You need to slow down to help poor, frail me.”

  “Sorry,” Carla said contritely. She immediately shortened her stride and offered her arm, while they approached the watchful guards at the gate with a more measured gait.

  “My mother,” Carla began, once they reached the gate, “has always wanted to see the gardens in the palace. She’s heard such wonderful stories about the flowers there. I thought that for her birthday today I’d bring her here to ask if we could go in for just a little while to see the garden. We’ll only go straight there and then come straight back out,” the girl wheedled in her most winsome fashion.

  “We’re not supposed to let any strangers in,” the bolder of the two guards on their side of the gate replied, “but we could make an exception for the right reasons,” he added with a smile that held no warmth.

  Carla quelled her desire to shudder at the licentiousness the man conveyed. “We’re worth it,” she replied, and held still as his hand reached out to take hold of her arm.

  “Come with me, and I’ll show you something,” he spoke, as he started into the palace grounds, leading Carla and Charls along the winding way that led into the interior of the palace grounds, where the garden was enclosed. “Tell you mother to go enjoy herself, and I’ll show you something in here,” the guard told Carla as they stood outside a gardeners’ storage shed.

  Carla looked at Charls with despairing but determined eyes. “You go see if you can find the pretty ones,” she said, then bowed her head as she stepped into the shed, the guard directly behind her.

  He closed the door behind him, then reached for Carla and pressed his lips against hers.

  “Wait,” Carla struggled, but the man easily overpowered her immediately, knocking her to the floor with wordless hostility and focusing on ripping her clothes until he heard the click of the door latch behind him, and turned to see Charls slashing violently with his smuggled blade, burying it deeply in the surprised guard’s unprotected chest.

  “We’ve got to hurry now,” Charls said. “They’ll miss him in about a hour, and we can’t go back out through that gate without him.”

  “Thank you, Carla said tearfully. “I wasn’t sure how long you’d take; I didn’t know how long I could fight him off.”

  “I still need to find the plants and take some,” Charls said. “I only stood outside the door for a minute; I didn’t think he was the kind to be subtle or slow.”

  Carla gathered together the torn fabric of her blouse, wiped the moisture from her eyes, and helped Charls stuff the dead guard’s body beneath a wheelbarrow in the back of the shed. They emerged from the storage building and walked towards the corner of the garden that Charls recollected Alec stopping in to show the agrimonia patch he was growing.

  “Walk slower,” Carla whispered, as Charls’s anticipation drove him forward, eager to find the cure that would restore Alec’s health. Charls felt both an unrelenting faith in Alec’s ability to re-seize control of the duchy if healthy, and a determination to demonstrate his own ability to carry out some action to undermine the usurper, a man he despised for his shallowness and destructive treatment of Valeriane.

  Together they strolled into the northwestern corner of the palace garden, the spot best sheltered from winter elements, and Charls’s slow pace allowed him to closely scrutinize the beds of plants that lined the crushed stone path that their feet quietly crunched upon as they walked. “Here it is,” he said triumphantly.

  “There’s someone coming!” Carla replied urgently, as she spotted a gardener striding towards them.

  “This is not the most colorful portion of the garden,” the man said as he reached them, a kindly tone in his voice and an appreciative gleam in his eye as he examined Carla and her motherly companion.

  “My mother was saying that this plant reminders her of a herb her mother planted in their garden back in her own youth,” Carla spoke up quickly. “Could you dig up a portion of it for us to take home?” she smiled a winsome smile again, feeling less of the churning fear in her stomach from trying to charm this elderly gardener than she had felt from dealing with the guard who had let them into the palace.

  “Let me get a shovel for you,” the gardener said. “You have a seat on the bench and I’ll be right back,” and he left them to go to the shed where the dead guard’s body lay hastily hidden.

  “We need to go,” Charls hissed as soon as he realized where the gardener was headed. He bent and grabbed a handful of the foliage of the agrimonia, then began walking hastily out of the garden, with Carla following close behind. They moved as rapidly as they could, Charls encumbered by wearing the unfamiliar dress, and were just leaving the garden when they heard the gardener hail them.

  “I’ve got the shovel! Where are you going?” he called from the spot of the agrimonia.

  Carla turned, and concluded that flight was futile. “We were just going to find a bathroom. We didn’t think you’d return so quickly.”

  The gardener already had his shovel in the ground, and a piece of burlap laid upon the walk. “If you need a restroom, there’s one back this way,” he pointed back towards the front gate.

  “If you’re already ready to give us the herb, we can take it and wait until we get home,” Carla left Charls in place and jogged back to the gardener, where she accepted the small burlap ball with a green patch of agrimonia growing from the top.

  “Let me walk you to the gate and see you out,” the gardener offered kindly, and minutes later the two visitors gave heartfelt waves of thanks as they walked away from the palace.

  “Go ahead and give it to him,” Carla told Charls minutes later as they stood in the attic, looking at Alec’s unconscious body.

  “I don’t know how to give it to him. I thought you would give it to him while I change clothes,” Charls replied.

  “Should we just put some in his mouth? What did he tell you about it?” Carla asked, turning away from Alec to face Charls.

  “Maybe it’s supposed to be brewed like a tea,” his muffled voice replied as he raised his dress up over his head. “Or it could be something you just place over the injury.”

  “We’ve got enough here to do all three,” Carla said, looking at the clump the gardener had given them in addition to the handful of wilting leaves Charls had grabbed. “I’ll go down to the kitchen and start brewing some leaves as tea while you try putting them on his wound,” she told Charls, then raised the trap door and went back down into the house.

  Charls removed Alec’s shirt and tore the leaves of the agrimonia into small pieces, which he pressed against the wound in Alec’s chest. He heard distant noises coming from downstairs, and paused to listen for Carla’s energetic footsteps, but heard nothing, so he cautiously turned Alec on his side and began to apply more of the torn leaves to the entry wound in the back, where the deadly arrow had so powerfully penetrated Alec’s flesh.

  That finished, Charls torn more of the leaves into tiny pieces, which he balled up between the palms of his hand, then used his fingers to press the marble-sized collection inside Alec’s cheek.

  Time had passed, Charls realized, more than enough time to steep a pot of tea. Checking Alec
, and satisfied that he was safe to leave alone, Charls went downstairs, and stopped in fearful astonishment. The first floor of the house was a shambles, and Carla’s mother sat on the floor, bruised, sobbing deep, choking sobs. She looked up at the sound of his approach.

  “Mr. Charls! I didn’t know you were still in the house,” she said between crying breaths.

  “What happened? Where’s Carla?” he asked as he knelt by the older lady, a woman close to his own age, he realized as he tried to comfort her.

  “They took her. Soldiers came bursting through the door a half hour ago. They started tearing the place apart, and knocked me over. When Carla came out of the kitchen to see what was happening, they pounced on her and took her away in a flash,” the mother related.

  Charls felt his stomach twist in fear for the girl. He exhaled deeply, as he sat on his haunches and tried to analyze what he could do to help her.

  “I’ll go help her,” he said at length, as he tried to formulate a plan, and to evaluate the chances for success. “Here, let’s get you in the kitchen,” he said as he helped raise her to her feet. Once in the kitchen he helped her sit down at the table, then found the tea Carla had been steeping. The water was dark for the lengthy time it had brewed, and Charls found it was bitter in the extreme as a result. He poured a cup for Carla’s mother, then added a large lump of sugar, and presented the cup to his hostess.

  “You sip this; it’ll make you feel a little better. I’m going to go to the palace and try to get in to find Carla,” he told her, bring a spark of hope to her eyes. “Please take some of this tea up to Duke Alec. He’s still unconscious, so you’ll have to drip it into his mouth drop by drop. Try to give him at least a cup,” Charls guessed at what he hoped was a suitable dose.

  “I put a pinch of herb in his cheek, so you may want to take that out,” Charls added as he rose. “I’ll go get ready to return to the palace. You’ll go take care of the duke right away, won’t you?” he asked. “We’re going to need his help, the sooner, the better.”