The Cup and the Crown

by Diane Stanley

  “Yes, well, the point is that she has asked me to pay you myself, and she’ll reimburse me later. I’ve brought—”

  “Don’t!” he snapped. “I owe her—my whole family owes her—far more than the price of a chalice, considering how she was betrayed. It disgusts me to live there. It’ll be a pleasure to come to the workshop early and stay late.”

  “All right, then. I’ll be back in a week to pick up the cup. In the meantime, if you should happen to be accosted by a raven—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A raven, with a slip of paper wrapped around its leg—?”

  “Of course!” he said, rather too loud. Then he dropped back to a whisper. “I understand now, about the messages. Very clever.”

  “She is, apparently—clever. Tobias keeps mentioning it.”

  “I’ll be especially friendly to ravens from this moment on, though how this particular bird will know who I am and where I am to be found—”

  “I’m sure it already does. This particular raven is also quite clever. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a human living under an enchantment. Most certainly it serves the lady with impressive devotion. Now, I’d better go. You can frown when I leave, as though I forced my conversation upon you.” Richard made to rise.

  “Wait.”

  He sat down again.

  “One last question. This plan . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it . . . limited? To the number of persons who can . . . you understand me?”

  “I do. And no. It is not like . . . a boat, say, where there are only so many seats.” He knew what Jakob was asking, but he’d let the boy do it himself.

  “In that case, would you ask the lady if I might go with her?”

  “I will, and I’m sure she’ll say yes.” Then, after weighing it in his mind for a moment, he added, “I’ll be going, too.”

  31

  The Tunnel

  CONSTANCE ALWAYS SEEMED to know when morning had arrived, though the shed in which they slept was as dark as a cave, having no windows whatsoever. Perhaps she possessed some secret dog-knowledge to which he was not privy. Or maybe she just had better ears and could hear the cocks crowing in the village. However it was, Tobias could depend on her to wake him early by walking across his chest and nuzzling his cheek with her warm, wet nose.

  He gave the dog a friendly squeeze and a scratch behind the ears, then sat up and felt in the darkness for the lantern and flint.

  Richard was very particular when it came to his equipment, and he insisted that light-stones, while an admirable invention, weren’t nearly bright enough for ratting at night. Nor could you adjust the degree of their light by turning a flame up or down as you could with a lantern. So he’d petitioned the Council for a special dispensation to continue using oil lamps, and his request had been granted.

  When the room was lit, Tobias opened the rat-proof iron box and took out some bread and cheese. Richard always brought him the best his neighborhood cookshop had to offer: juicy meat pies, ripe cheeses, fresh fruit, plump sausages, and bread that was whiter than white—all a complete waste of money. It might have been cakes made of sawdust for all Tobias cared. Food was just fuel for his body, giving him strength for the labor ahead.

  Having fed himself and the dog, Tobias dressed, rolled up his pallet, and stashed it in the corner along with the rat-proof box. Then he slipped on Richard’s heavy leather gloves and went to work removing the boards that covered the entrance to the tunnel. Constance stood, her senses primed, her muscles quivering with desire. As soon as the first board was off, she shot through the opening like an arrow, scrabbling down the stairs and into the long, dark, wonderful hole where the rats lived.

  When he had the entrance completely uncovered for the day, Tobias followed with the lantern, hunching over since the ceiling was low. His back ached constantly from working in that unnatural position. But Tobias didn’t care about that, either. He just thought about the work.

  When he and Richard had first started clearing the entrance, they’d noted with growing excitement that the walls and ceiling were sturdily constructed of stone blocks, most of them still intact. But breaking up the hard-packed dirt and rubble that filled the tunnel, then carrying it all out bag after bag, was slow, tedious work. And Tobias did most of it alone, since Richard had his two ratting jobs to attend to, plus disposing of the bags of rubble and running back and forth across town to get food and other supplies. If the tunnel was like this all the way through, the job could take a year or more—and even Richard couldn’t explain that to the owner of the house.

  Then one evening when Tobias was in the tunnel, working late, swinging his pick for the thousandth time that day, he felt the barrier give way. After that, he went at the little hole like one possessed until the opening was wide enough to reach his lantern through. Only then did he know for sure that they wouldn’t have to dig the whole way out. As far as he could see by the lantern’s light, the passageway was clear, if you didn’t count the mess carried in by countless generations of rats, and their desiccated corpses, and the droppings they’d left behind.

  “From now on,” Richard had said when he’d arrived later that night, “we go at it quick and dirty. No need to clear out the muck. I seriously doubt your lady cares what she walks through so long as she comes out beyond the walls at the other end. We can finish the last bit tonight, you and me together—just enough to get through, that’s all we really need. Then we go to work like demons on the far end.”

  Left hanging in the air, unspoken, had been the Great Uncertainty: what they would find on the other side. Tobias had tried not to think about it as he slammed his pick into the slowly receding back wall day after day. Yet think about it he had, asking himself how he would have gone about hiding the egress from a tunnel. He’d have rolled in enormous boulders to cover the fill, that’s what; and the thought of that was horribly depressing: to work so hard and get so far only to run into solid rock.

  Well, he told himself, they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. For now his mission was simple and clear: to break down the wall at the end of the tunnel, shovel the dirt and rocks into canvas bags, and haul them up to the storeroom for Richard to dispose of later. Then, after stretching out his back for just a moment, he’d go back in and do it all over again.

  Constance helped break the tedium, trotting along beside him with her boundless energy, always on the lookout for anything ratlike, eager to show Tobias how beautifully she did the disgusting thing she’d been bred to do. (In addition to the bags of rubble upstairs, there was also a smaller one filled with the lifeless bodies of her vanquished prey.)

  The “rat-muck” Richard had mentioned so lightly was more plentiful and revolting than Tobias could have imagined. The tunnel stank of it; so did Constance and Tobias. For all his care—leaving his boots and tools inside the tunnel at night, boarding it up, washing himself and the dog as well as he could with what water he had—the smell of rat urine was in his nostrils day and night.

  And then there was that other thing, which was worse.

  Richard had told him that the Harrowsgode folk thought plague was carried by vermin. Since then, the very sight, sound, and stink of rats became forever linked in his mind with a single terrible image: his parents laid out on their marriage bed, the baby placed between them, their spirits gone, their bodies ruined—and his little sister, Mary, not yet showing any symptoms, looking up at him and asking why Mama wouldn’t get up and make her porridge.

  But none of that erased the fact that unless they finished clearing the tunnel, they would never get out. Tobias would die, probably soon, and Molly would be a captive all her life. So he offered up his suffering as a sacrifice, knowing it to be superstitious nonsense, knowing that all the rat-stink in the world couldn’t buy Molly’s freedom. But it helped to play tricks with his mind, so he chose to think that way.

  Around midday Richard arrived, more than usually jolly. He’d brought some pork pies for
Tobias and a pig’s knuckle for Constance.

  “Sit down and have a rest,” Richard said. “And have yourself something to eat. You’ll be no use to anyone whatsoever if you pitch over dead from overwork. And you’ll be in the way, too. We’ll have to climb over your body on our way out.”

  Tobias laughed, feeling the tension drain out of him. He sat and ate as he’d been instructed—though not before washing his hands—and was quite miraculously restored.

  Richard went on smiling. He plainly had something to tell and was waiting for Tobias to ask.

  “All right,” Tobias said, “what is it?”

  “This!” He produced a strip of paper with an enormous grin.

  “From Molly?” He took it from Richard’s hand and saw that it was covered with words, not pretty written, but bold as brass—Molly through and through. He looked up at Richard pleadingly. Don’t tease me, not now! Just tell me what it says.

  This only served to encourage him.

  “Now, you’ve told me rather a lot about that girl of yours, Tobias; and I confess I’ve doubted whether she could be as amazing as she’s been presented: battling demons, rescuing princes—”

  “Richard, for heaven’s sake!”

  “She’s beautiful, of course, and clever, clever, clever—”

  “I could strangle you with one hand, you know, while eating this pie with the other; and I’m quite inclined to do it, too, if—”

  “Patience, lad. Who would bring you food if you strangled me?”

  “No need. I’d slice you up and eat you raw.”

  “That’s the spirit! I’ll tell you—though, mind, this is something that deserves to be told right—”

  “And you’re the very man to do it.”

  “I am indeed. So here it is: your beloved has sent me to a silversmith’s shop to see about a cup, which I have done. It will be ready within the week.”

  “That’s why you’re grinning?”

  “No. I told you it must be enjoyed slowly, like a fine dinner.”

  Tobias glared at him in silence.

  “What else? Let me see. She is gratified to know that you are safe and that we have found an escape route. I was so exceedingly careful in my choice of words, in case the message was intercepted, that I rather feared I might have been too subtle altogether. But she made my meaning out perfectly and was nearly as cagy in her reply, so that I had to read it over a time or two before I got it entirely straight in my mind.”

  Tobias folded his hands as if in prayer, the very model of quiet patience.

  “Oh, dear, I shan’t do it justice, but I really can’t bear to drag it out.”

  Tobias raised his eyebrows, just a little.

  “Prepare yourself, man, to be knocked over with amazement. Are you ready? You are? Good. Well your lady—who I have vastly underestimated, I confess it now, without reservation—is at this very moment . . .”

  Tobias unlaced his fingers from their prayerful pose and reached out a hand as though to grasp something—a ball, say, or Richard’s throat.

  “. . . is building herself some wings.”

  Tobias froze, stupefied. “Wings?”

  “Yes, Tobias. Wings. Your lady is going to fly out of bloody Harrowsgode Hall. Now, what do you think of that?”

  32

  Wings

  HER NEW ROOM WAS twice the size of her chamber in the tower. And while the windows there had been small and covered by a grille, here she had a large double casement. When both of the panes were opened, it provided a fine, wide sill—a perfect place to perch while arranging one’s flying apparatus before flinging oneself off the building.

  It was also a more comfortable spot for Uncle to land; he’d managed with difficulty before.

  All she’d lacked was privacy, and that would be essential once she started constructing her Magus wings. To that end, she’d had a few words with the chambermaid, begging the girl to stay out of her room and never mind the mess. Because otherwise the maid was sure to tread on one of the kites, or be tripped up by a bit of string, or knock over a pot of glue. The girl had not minded in the least—that much less for her to do.

  Now Molly sat on the floor with her pile of willow wands. Winifred had gathered them at her request; and Uncle had carried them by night, one at a time, to her new room at Harrowsgode Hall. Then he’d gone back to Winifred for one last package containing a penknife, a needle, and six spools of thread.

  The choice of willow had been brilliant; it was supple, light, and strong. But tying the individual branches together to form a perfect curve, making sure that at each connection point the thread was wound tightly many times, then finished with a stout knot—that wasn’t so easy. And her life would depend on having done it right.

  She laid out the first willow branch on the floor, admiring its graceful curve. Then she nested a second one against the first and slid it down about a handsbreadth so that its thin end extended beyond that of the first. Now she bound them together at four points. In this way, with each addition, the structure would grow in length and sturdiness.

  She worked in a dream state, with utter concentration, effortlessly harnessing something within her that guided her busy hands, correcting the shape of the curve as needed, alerting her if the thread was too loose at any of the connection points. When it was, she’d unwind it and start again.

  Time was suspended. The slender moon, a bright shallow cup, hung motionless outside her window as she worked.

  When the two wings were completed, their supporting struts attached and the trailing edges perfectly formed, they proved to be equal in length, exact mirror images of each other, each with a delicate curve from side to side and front to back, as when you cup your hands to splash water on your face.

  Now she started on the central structure that would join the wings and support the harness.

  Still the moon remained a fixed point in the sky. Still Molly worked under the guidance of her inner spirit. The world around her was hushed.

  She’d reserved the thickest branches for this final step. Simple though it was—a box shape, longer than it was wide, reinforced by crosspieces and the overlapping origin of the wings—it had to be strong.

  Her hands knew exactly what to do.

  When at last it was finished, lacking only its silken skin, she lifted it and felt its weight. It was heavier than she’d expected, but still she believed. From working with her kites she knew the astonishing power of wind against a broad surface. It would hold her weight and that of the wings, and carry them over the city walls to freedom.

  As soon as the cup was ready, as soon as the tunnel was finished—then she would cut apart her beautiful Magus gown and attach the silk to the frame with careful stitches, using the scraps to form a harness—one loop to support her chest, one to support her hips, and a small handle on either side to grip with each of her hands.

  Now she had only to wait, and sleep.

  Outside, the little sliver of moon began to move in the sky again.

  33

  Rats

  AS BEFORE, TOBIAS was alone in the tunnel when his pick bit through the fill.

  He’d found the first stair earlier that morning and known that he was close. Perhaps by dusk, when Richard arrived, he’d have broken through altogether. Excited, he’d redoubled his efforts, clearing step after step.

  But it was trickier digging up than it had been digging down. There was always the danger that a large chunk would break away from the wall and bury him in a heap of rubble. So the nearer he came to the top, the more careful and analytical did his process become—working in from the side, for example, instead of starting in the middle.

  It was going well. He allowed himself to hope. Any minute now his pick might cut right through that wall like a knife through butter; light would come streaming in from the outside world, bringing with it the sweet smell of sun-warmed grass.

  But instead his pick met stone, and the unexpected impact sent him tumbling down the stairs. He lay there fo
r a moment, catching his breath. Then he got to his feet again and held the lantern up to the wall. There wasn’t much to see. Stone, yes, undoubtedly—in one particular place. But that wasn’t the whole story, not yet.

  And the more he thought about it, the more hopeful he became. They couldn’t possibly have moved a single boulder large enough to cover the entrance. It must be a pile of rocks, then, in varying sizes. There might be gaps between those rocks. Some of them might be small enough to move. To find out, he’d simply have to keep knocking rubble away till the true state of affairs was revealed.

  He continued chipping away with the pick, exposing more and more rock. He worked all the way to the ceiling and found that the rock extended beyond the opening. He would have to work laterally, then. But nothing he found brought him joy. So far it was all the same: one single, enormous stone pressed against the opening.

  Constance had been busy at the other end of the tunnel, doing what she did best. Now she came to join Tobias, bringing her usual offering.

  “What a bloodthirsty, precious little monster you are,” he said, using the point of his pick to fling the rat corpse off the stairs. Then he went back to clearing the stone, the endless, enormous, giant, hopeless—

  Constance was at it again, this time over on the corner, right at the top of the stairs. She made a fierce little growl and began scratching frantically at the dirt with her forepaws. Well, Tobias thought, at least that was one section he wouldn’t have to clear.

  She barked twice, then returned to her digging: scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch—very fast.

  Tobias stopped and stared.

  Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch! Bark-bark-bark!

  “Constance!” he said, but she ignored him. Rats always came first. So he went and squatted beside her, loose bits of dirt flying out as she dug, covering his boots. Finally she reached the nest-hole and a rat darted out. Constance caught it on the run; and there followed the familiar screech, the creature’s death throes, and then it was over. She dropped it, limp, on the flagstone. Another gift.