by Glenda Larke
Ryce watched the battle of wills between horse and man as he approached, a conflict made worse by the appearance of his own two dogs to spook the roan further. As he was still hoping Saker would be dead by the time he reached the shrine, he was glad enough to stop.
“Can I help you?” he asked, giving the second horse a sidelong look. A dapple grey. By the Oak, that’s odd. It looks like Saker’s. It should now be the property of the Faith, surely. Pickles ’n’ pox, it is Saker’s Greylegs.
Thoughts started roiling in his head. This was the man the guards at the walls of the city had told him about. He felt his ire rising, along with his confusion. The Prime sent someone up here? Why? To kill Saker too? To rescue him? Who was this scut, and what was all this about?
The man was now standing by the roan’s head, calming the animal as the hounds sniffed at its feet. Ryce summed him up with a glance: slightly built fellow, no rings or jewellery, well dressed, good-quality boots. A newly prosperous merchant, perhaps.
Calling his dogs back, he switched his gaze to the man’s face. For a moment he could make no sense of what he was seeing. The man was the double of Mathilda’s handmaiden, Celandine Marten. Her brother?
They stared at one another, wordlessly, for what seemed to be an age.
“I think perhaps you owe me an explanation,” he said at last, his anger growing, his voice gravel in his ears. “Who the devil are you?”
“Celandine Marten,” she replied, meeting his eyes without a scrap of discomfiture. “Who else?”
For a moment he was rendered speechless, appalled then embarrassed at seeing her without her skirts. Dressing as a man? Her hair tied at her neck like a lawyer’s clerk? Had she taken leave of her senses? And what the pox was she doing here? Still mounted on his horse, he waved a hand at her clothing. “I thought you must be her brother. Your brother. If you have one.” He was succeeding in sounding beef-witted, which riled him still further. “Have you no shame to dress like that? Not even a bawd from the midden fringe would be so – so disgustingly immodest!”
She shrugged, the gesture insolent in view of her knowledge of whom she was addressing. “If I’d tried to come all this way alone dressed as a woman, I would have been robbed at the very least. So easy for a man to be critical, isn’t it? You don’t have to think of your safety every moment you’re alone! You have your dogs and your sword and your strength and your position. What do I have?” Her glare was fierce. “And what about you, your highness? Have you no shame, sneaking around alone like this, in order to kill a man in cold blood? The man who used to be your spiritual adviser?”
“How dare you!”
“Oh, I dare. Easily, because I don’t think things could be much worse for me at the moment. We have much to discuss, you and I, Prince Ryce. But first, would you mind helping me find out what’s wrong with this horse’s hoof? No point in prolonging the suffering of an animal longer than necessary, is there?”
He gaped at her. The quiet handmaiden had turned into an impudent wench, speaking to him as if he was no more than a scullion in a taproom. He was having trouble believing what he was hearing. Had she taken leave of her senses?
“Well?” she asked. “Are you going to come down here and help fix this hoof?”
Raging with indignation, he dismounted, fumbling for his dagger.
When Saker woke in the morning, the sun was already in the sky. He couldn’t believe he’d actually slept. Real sleep, not just dozing. Hours must have passed while he slumbered, because he’d missed the dawn. He pushed himself out of his pile of leaves, astonished to find himself still alive and, as far as he could see, with no frostbite. Even his cheek wasn’t hurting. He touched it gingerly, to make sure it wasn’t frozen, and his probing fingers snagged on the roughness of the scarring. Frowning in confusion and disbelief, he tried to remember everything that had happened.
He’d suffered some sort of phantasmagoria, obviously. He remembered that much. When he concentrated, he could even remember what had been said to him by the people he’d imagined. None of it made much sense.
“Think about it later, you maltworm,” he muttered. Right now I have to get out of here. I have to free myself somehow, and find somewhere safe and warm by nightfall, or I really will die. The last meal he’d had, a generous one supplied by Horntail an hour or so before they’d reached the shrine, now seemed a lifetime ago. He was hungry, thirsty, dirty, cold and scared.
Everything he’d once been was indeed a lifetime ago…
He bent to take a look at his fetters.
They weren’t around his ankles. They were lying next to him, opened.
He stared. And stared. Nothing could make sense of that. Nothing, so he didn’t try. Thank Va. Thank the unseen guardian. Think about it later.
He had to get away, quickly.
Stepping out on to the track, he rubbed his arms in a desperate and futile attempt to keep warm, and started to walk towards the east, away from Chervil. He’d hardly gone three or four steps before he realised there was someone standing in front of him, ten or twelve paces away, blocking the track. His heart pounded furiously in shock. She’d appeared out of the air, and he’d seen it happen. One moment she hadn’t been there; the next she was standing as solid as a statue on the path. Memories of his night came flooding back. This was the lady dressed in green. She was even more beautiful in reality, but her expression was stern. Wordlessly she raised her right arm and pointed back down the track towards Chervil.
He turned to look, but there was nothing to see that had not been there before. His shivering was shaking his whole body and he was no longer sure whether it was fear or cold.
“Who are you?” he asked, staring at her. “What do you want?”
She made no reply.
He continued to walk towards her. But when he was within five paces, he found he couldn’t move. His feet felt leaden, almost as though they were tied down. All the while she pointed back the way he had come.
“What do you want?” he asked again. “Tell me who you are.”
When she still didn’t reply, he tried to walk around her. He thought he’d succeeded, but once again she was there, in front of him, blocking the way. He whirled and looked behind, but there was no one standing where she’d been before.
He turned back to face her again. She was still pointing towards Chervil. Refusing to give up, he tried several times more to leave, but each time she was there in front of him, and if he approached too close, he couldn’t take the final steps, no matter how hard he tried.
At first he was afraid, then furious, then resigned. He returned to the oak to think. Seated on the pile of leaves, his back to the tree, his shivering stopped. He didn’t feel warm, but at least he wasn’t in danger of freezing. In some mystical way, the oak was warming him. Carefully, he thought back over all that had happened, or what he thought had happened, the night before. He’d heard and seen scenes from his past, either imagined or remembered. And then the lady had come to bargain with him, and to give him advice. The bargain, if he interpreted it correctly, was that she would save him now, if he gave his future life to her cause. Her advice had been to look to the twins of Lowmeer. And her cause? That depended on who she was, of course.
She’d said he must have the answer inside him. She’s not a person, or even a ghost of a person. She’s the unseen guardian of this oak. Only she’s not really unseen, is she? Or is it just me that’s giving her a form and face? She can’t really speak to me. All she can do is take something from my mind and fashion it into a truth I can recognise.
The answer was there, clear in his head. I thought I saw a goddess, but in truth she is nature, our land, our landscape, our living world, speaking to me. It was all one. People, the land, the sea, Va. All one, and that was the only truth that mattered, because what mattered was to care for it all. To protect it. That was Va’s desire – or creation’s desire. Or just what was right.
With bemusement, he remembered that he had recognised that truth t
he night before. He’d agreed to her bargain. He’d already given his life away.
He chuckled ruefully and said, “All right, lady, you win. I’ll walk back towards Chervil, to whatever my fate might be. I put my future, my destiny in the hands of guardian witchery. Or Va. Or whatever. I am yours, now and always.”
He could think of plenty of worse fates, after all.
For a moment he glimpsed her again, shimmering in the wan sunlight at the edge of the tree canopy. Her smile was both sad and content. He thought he saw her lips move, but there was no sound.
Somewhere inside his head, though, he knew the truth she’d uttered the night before. If he – or someone else – didn’t succeed, all that was most precious in the world would wither and die. And he didn’t have the slightest idea why.
He started to walk towards Chervil, but away from the shelter of the oak he began to shiver. And so he ran, ignoring the pain of his bare feet on the rough path. Anything to keep warm.
When Prince Ryce came towards her, knife in hand, dogs at his side, Sorrel paled and skipped around to the other side of the horse, from where she eyed the blade with caution. “Why the knife, your highness?” she asked.
Prince Ryce felt himself colour up. He was supposed to kill her. “Your horse may have picked up one of the stones from the track, or need his foot cleaned,” he said, more gruffly than he intended. “If my groom was here, we’d have the proper implement for the job. As it is, this is all I have.” He added in freezing tones, just to show that he didn’t appreciate her suspecting he was about to hurt her, “Now, if you wouldn’t mind holding the horse’s head and stroking its neck to keep it calm…”
His inner voice was more stripped of niceties. You are going to have to kill her, you know that. You’re just playing games. Something inside his chest squeezed hard, paining him.
She did as he asked, once more the meek servant, at least for the moment. He still had trouble even beginning to understand how – or why – she had reached this spot, and how she had got hold of Saker’s horse. He found it hard to believe her presence had anything to do with Prime Fox. No, she’d come on her own, to do … what? Save Saker? The dapple grey made sense if that was the reason. But why would she want to do that? Why help the man who’d ravished her mistress? And this was the second time she’d helped the wretch of a witan too, damn her eyes…
The hoof problem was caused by a small stone, which didn’t seem to have done any long-term damage. He told her as much after he’d extracted it, and ended by saying, “Now you mount up and head back down to Chervil. Wait for me at the inn.”
He had to kill her right here. When she turns her back…
He’d never have a better opportunity. Yet he hesitated. Va above, how can I murder someone who never did me any harm? That’s not the kind of prince I want to be.
He knew what his father would say: now that she’d guessed what he was going to do to Saker, her death was even more imperative. Maybe he could slide his sword into her back if she turned around. Maybe he could take her two horses and leave her here, out on the heath, to die of cold. It would be easier that way.
Or so much easier to ask one of his guards to do it back in Chervil. But how long could you trust a guard to keep his mouth shut? A lifetime? Or just until he had a reason to talk?
She gave a tight little smile. “Turn back? And let you go on to kill an innocent man? I think not.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Saker, innocent? Are you out of your mind? Weren’t you there when the Lady Mathilda told the King what that rutting cleric did to her?”
“Indeed I was, and almost every word of it was a lie, told in the hope that the King would not send her away as a virgin bride when she patently was no such thing. Losing her virginity was her idea, not Saker’s. And she certainly had no plans to lose her maidenhead by rape.”
His mouth gaped foolishly open. It was a moment before he thought to snap it shut. Mathilda lied? He groped for words to deny what must be a calumny. “Have you no modesty, you – you – saucy…” Words failed him, until in the end he shouted, “You lying-tongued viper!”
He’d never been so furious. How dare this nobody, this servant from some unknown Shenat family, defile his sister with her words? He sprang at her, dagger still in his hand, and this time he did have murder on his mind. She dodged behind the roan again, but that placed her at a disadvantage because she was hemmed in by the dapple grey on the other side. There was nowhere to run except across the heath. He expected her to try, and yelled at his hounds to guard her. They approached her from behind, growling, but they were half-hearted about it. Va-damn, they knew her as someone likely to feed them titbits, rather than present a threat to him.
She ignored them and faced him instead, with surprising calm. “Think about it, your highness. Think about what the Lady Mathilda said. Consider what you know about your sister’s character. Do you really think she would rise in the middle of the night to go to the chapel to pray? And if she did, do you think she’d go without me or one of her ladies-in-waiting? And consider what you know about Witan Saker. Is he really the kind of man to force himself on a woman? Let alone the Princess!”
She stood tall and proud in front of him, dressed in her ridiculous clothing, looking him directly in the eye. She didn’t appear frightened, or embarrassed by her lack of skirts, or intimidated by his position. She didn’t do any of the things he thought a normal woman would do under the circumstances. Instead, remarkably composed, she said, “So, would you like me to tell you the whole story?”
Nonplussed, he hesitated, aware that his moment of sheer rage had passed. “You can try,” he said. “If you lie, I’ll kill you.”
She gave the faintest of smiles and said, “Oh, I suspect you’ll be more likely to kill me if I tell the truth. Still, here’s the true story of what happened that night. The Princess woke me about midnight. She told me she wanted to borrow a dress and my cloak in order to leave the solar, disguised as me. I wanted to know why. She wouldn’t tell me. She ordered me to help her, and when I objected and called her behaviour foolish, she threatened me with dismissal. Your highness, I have nowhere to go. I have no money, no family who has any interest in my well-being, nothing except what Lady Mathilda gives me.”
“So you’re telling me that instead of performing your proper duties as a handmaiden and protecting your princess, instead of acting in her best interests, you allowed her to leave in the middle of the night dressed in your clothes, to go Va knows where?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I did do. I’m not proud of it.”
“And as a result she was raped by a man we all trusted – her spiritual adviser.”
“No, your highness. Her plans didn’t include rape. I’m guessing she chose Saker to seduce because he’s a very handsome man, and because he’s in love with her. Any woman with her eyes open could see that. So she went to his room and knocked on his door.”
“But you weren’t there! How can you possibly know what happened?”
“I followed her, how could I not? Oh, I thought the passage was safe enough – there may not have been guards outside our door, not then, but the main entrances to all the corridors in the royal wing are guarded, after all. But I couldn’t be sure where she was going, and I wanted to make certain she was safe. I saw her knock at Saker’s door. I saw the door open. Va help me, I turned around and went away, leaving them alone.”
She flushed. Colour filled her cheeks, suffused even her neck.
“And I do know what she told me afterwards,” she added. “When she returned to our apartments I was sitting up waiting for her. She said she’d set out to seduce him, and succeeded. She came in with a smile on her face. She looked triumphant, not devastated by – by some sort of bestial attack.”
His rage returned. He reached out, seized her shoulder with one hand and placed the point of the dagger to her breast. “You lie!”
“Do you want to hear the rest?”
He couldn’t understand it.
She still didn’t seem to be afraid. She wasn’t even trembling under his hand. She met his gaze fearlessly.
“Go on,” he said, forcing the words out when he would rather have hit her. But even as he spoke, he pressed down on the knife until he felt it slip through the cloth of her clothing to break the skin beneath.
She flinched, but continued her story. “Lady Mathilda changed out of my clothes and into her own. While she dressed, she told me what she’d done. ‘I’m no longer a maid,’ she said, and she was so smug about it. ‘Saker is an accomplished lover.’ So I asked her why she’d done such a thing, when she was about to go to Lowmeer to marry. In truth, I was shocked. I know Lady Mathilda can be giddy at times, but I never dreamt she would do anything that dizzy-eyed. I never considered that Saker would…”
She stopped and took a deep breath. “That’s when she told me she was going to the King. She thought that as she was no longer pure, he would not – could not – send her to the Regal for marriage.”
Calmly she laid her hand over the top of his where it clasped the dagger, and said, “Would you mind not doing that? The point is hurting me.”
Her cold serenity astonished him. He had control over her life or death, and the only person who could gainsay him was King Edwayn himself. So why wasn’t this nondescript woman afraid of him? He poured his fury into his words. “Just who do you think you are to tell me what I can and cannot do?”
She did not move. “Are you going to kill me for telling the truth, your highness?”
“Why should I believe you instead of my royal sister?” He pushed the dagger in a little further. She gasped this time, and blood seeped out, staining her tunic. “So what do you have to say now, Mistress Marten?”
Her face was white, but she still didn’t beg for her life. “If I must die in an attempt to save an innocent man, then I will. Perhaps you might also care to consider the well-being of Lady Mathilda’s soul, so that on her death she can choose her place of rest for all eternity. If Saker dies, he’ll die because of her lies. And think about this, Prince Ryce – could I have come on this journey without her help? Where would I have got the money from? Your sister sent me on this – this pilgrimage to save Saker’s life. I suggest that you think twice before you stab me.”