Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, daughter,” he said as he clicked at the cob and woke her up. She thrust herself into her collar, and the gig rolled forward.

  “What’s that smell?” Reverend Purdy asked in a quiet voice.

  “Say it’s the dog if anyone asks. He’s been rolling in the midden again.”

  I heard Corwen growl softly behind me.

  I managed to stay upright as we passed through the citadel gates, but as we drove through the town I heaved a great sigh of relief and let my head sink onto the reverend’s shoulder.

  “Wake me when we get to the Okewood,” I said.

  * * *

  Henry Purdy’s arrival in the Okewood caused a stir. His family, though obviously pleased to see him, were shocked at his condition. Charlotte took charge and, with the reverend’s help, got him washed and dressed in borrowed clothes until his own could be laundered. Personally, I thought they were beyond saving, but Charlotte knew best.

  We only stopped for long enough to deliver him, and then Corwen picked me up and carried me to our bower. I felt the soft heather mattress beneath me and needed nothing else to fall into a deep sleep.

  I awoke to find Corwen sitting next to me.

  “How long was I out for this time?”

  “Two days. I see why you don’t do that very often. How are the babies?”

  I immediately felt guilty for using so much magical energy. I put my hand on my belly. Everything felt all right down there.

  “All right, I think. How’s Henry?”

  “Doing splendidly, thanks to the Lady’s food and drink.”

  “The acorn cups and the might-be-mushroom-things?”

  “Yes.”

  “They should do him a world of good. Small enough not to overtax his stomach, but completely satisfying.”

  “Glad you think so. She sent some for you. Said you need to keep your strength up now.”

  “Does everyone know I’m increasing?”

  “They seem to.”

  “Oh, well, it saves making an announcement.” I took the acorn cup from Corwen and the tiny might-be-a-mushroom, balanced on a leaf plate. It’s difficult to eat slowly when you’re famished, but I did my best. My stomach felt so much better.

  “Ah, that’s good. I think I’d like to lie down now.”

  “You need to sleep again?”

  “I do.” I put my hands on my stomach.

  “You’re sure everything’s all right?”

  “I think so, this time, but Aunt Rosie said not to spend myself magically.”

  “If there’s even the slightest chance that it’s harmful . . . ”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  “Take no more chances.”

  “What about talking to the king?”

  “What about it? We’ve got David’s help now. There should be no need to put yourself in danger.”

  “That’s all right, then.” I put my arms around his neck and pulled him down to the bed with me.

  26

  Weymouth

  WITH FREDDIE GONE, life became much simpler. All we had to do was wait around for news from the goblins and be prepared to make haste to wherever our next likely meeting point might be. The weather, which had held mild if damp through the first half of April, turned against us in the third week. The Okewood was shrouded in hoarfrost, its fernlike ice crystals coating every tree and branch. It looked magical, but the magic faded when it nipped at toes and noses. The glade, thanks to the Lady’s intervention, didn’t freeze, but it was still cold and miserable. I began to think of excuses to visit David in Iaru.

  Finally, word came from the goblins.

  The king’s doctors had recommended he be dipped, and the royal entourage was packing up to head to Gloucester Lodge in Weymouth, the king’s own residence. Using the ways through Iaru, blessedly warm, we collected David and headed for the coast.

  We left the hoarfrost behind. Weymouth Bay luxuriated in a bright blue sky and cool sunshine. We took lodgings in an unremarkable inn a few streets back from the sea on the north side of the harbor, not far from Customs House Quay. The town had become a fashionable holiday resort thanks to the king’s patronage, though the season had not yet begun. I’d read about it in the Gentleman’s Magazine. It was home to what was described as the giddy and the gay, the kind of place where the gouty peer and the genteel shopkeeper mingled on the beach, though possibly not in April.

  The Dorset coast was a well-known danger area to sailors, however. Beyond Portland Harbor, the shifting shingle of Chesil Beach combined with the treacherous currents and undertow had made a graveyard for ships. Six years earlier several British Navy ships had been lost on the same day, and dockside taverns all across the country were rife with stories of over three hundred bodies strewn across the beaches, as the sea gave up her dead.

  Corwen and I spent the whole of our first day walking around the town and the harbor to familiarize ourselves with the streets, seeing the Assembly Rooms and the Theater Royal. The only activity at the king’s seaside home, Gloucester Lodge, a red brick house built sideways- on to the Esplanade, looked to be a bevy of servants opening up the house. There was a sizable garden, but after our experience at Windsor, approaching the king in his own garden was not a good idea.

  Even this early in spring the bathing machines were lined up in the bay. That was where David headed. The king’s bathing machine could be seen from a distance. It was hard to miss, painted red, white, and blue with a tall flagpole, and small, wide wheels to cope with the soft sand. It was still the talk of the town that when the king had come to bathe three years earlier, a band had followed his bathing machine to the water’s edge, playing “God Save the King”, and the bathing women who dipped him wore girdles with GSTK woven through the fabric.

  I wondered where those bathing women might be found and how they were selected for the honor of dunking the fat old man, stark naked, in the sea. Asking around, I discovered the dipping ladies were a close-knit bunch who guarded their positions jealously, making it difficult for an outsider to take up the job. It had been my first idea that Corwen and I should pose as dipping ladies and whisk the king away into a boat, but after we met up with David again, another idea developed, one we couldn’t undertake without Fae help.

  * * *

  David returned from his trip to the beach in a state of high excitement. We met him outside the Golden Lion.

  “I think I can do it,” he said.

  “Shh, not here.” I drew him into the inn, and we climbed to the first floor. Our room overlooked the street from a large bay window, and a fire had already been lit in the hearth. David looked about ready to burst.

  “What have you found?” I asked.

  “Remember last year when you summoned me to Yorkshire to rescue the weavers who’d been using magic?”

  I nodded, wondering what that had to do with the king.

  “You called me through into the mill office because it was a room lined with wood. Wood, not trees.”

  “I thought it might work because of something Corwen once said to me about the definition of a forest.”

  “You were right in a way. With the right kind of magic you can make wood remember it was once a tree. I’ve been to look at the king’s bathing machine . . . It’s all wood.”

  He grinned at me and tapped his foot, waiting to see if I made the connection.

  “Oh!” I raised my eyebrows and he nodded. “You can make a door into Iaru from the king’s bathing machine.”

  “I can.”

  “How will that work?” Corwen hadn’t been with me when I’d summoned David to the mill last year.

  “It was your idea, remember?” I said.

  He looked blank.

  “We were in bed in the inn—oh, I forget where—and I said something rude about the Fae and you
said hush or they might hear.”

  “Ah, I remember, now. You said something like how could they hear when we weren’t in a forest and—”

  “You knocked on the wooden headboard of the bed and said it all depended on how you defined a forest.”

  “I was joking, I think.” Corwen looked bemused.

  “Well, joke or not, I believed it, and it worked. You have more insight than you credit yourself with.”

  He grunted dismissively. “Happy accident.”

  “Accident or not, I think this will work,” David said. “We hide in the bathing machine and when the king enters—”

  “Possibly with someone to help him undress,” Corwen said.

  “We’ll deal with that when we have to,” I said. “We close the door, David creates a gate, and we walk the king into Iaru. If we can’t convince him by showing him the land of the Fae, we’ll never be able to convince him, and we might as well let Dantin have his way, though I shudder to think what destruction he could call down.”

  David grinned. “And when we send the king home again, he won’t be able to tell what he’s seen because everyone will think he’s relapsing into madness.”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “Will it work?”

  “We’ll need to create an illusion that the bathing machine is empty,” Corwen said.

  “I can do that,” David said, “but there’s not much room inside those things, so we’ll all have to squash up to one end. An illusion is visual. It won’t work if he brushes up against one of us.”

  “And we have to make sure no one comes in with him to help him with his clothes,” Corwen said. “That won’t be easy from the inside.” He frowned for a moment. “One of us should stay outside.”

  I started to protest, but he stopped me with a wave. “No, it makes sense. You and David hide in the bathing machine. When the king climbs in, I’ll do something outside to distract everyone at the appropriate moment—”

  “You mean you’ll turn into a wolf.”

  “Not where they can see me change, but a wolf bounding across the beach should be enough of a distraction. I can get close enough to slam up against the door from the outside, and then I’ll be away.”

  “Where will you change?”

  “In the water or, rather, on the water’s edge. Men swim naked here. I’ll change on the far side of the beach and swim up close, leave the water as a wolf and dash back in as a wolf, then change again.”

  “And probably get shot at for your trouble.”

  “It’s a chance I’ll take. You aren’t fast enough on two legs, and if David did it, his Fae magic would light up the beach. Besides he needs to be in the bathing machine to create the gate.”

  “What then?”

  “Talk to the king, then send him back. I’ll get the horses and meet you in Iaru.”

  It was as close to a plan as we could get. I was cautiously hopeful that it might work; however, even if it did and we reached Iaru with the king, we still had to convince him that new legislation for the rowankind and, I hoped, all magicals would be of benefit to the realm.

  * * *

  The king duly arrived in town and, on the first morning, went down early to the sea to be dipped. Unlike his first visit to Weymouth, no band followed to serenade him with “God Save the King.” In fact, it was a modest party which accompanied him. The king himself, and his Master of the Robes, plus three royal equerries and a pair of little dogs which seemed to much amuse His Majesty as they dashed about the sand retrieving a stick he threw and threw again. Neither the queen nor any of their daughters accompanied him.

  We watched from a distance, my magic-enhanced spyglass giving Corwen and me a good view. David didn’t need artificial help. Six uniformed men from the Blues followed at a distance, close enough to step in if needed, but distant enough not to intrude.

  We watched again on the second morning. It seemed as though the king was a creature of habit. He emerged from Gloucester Lodge at six-thirty, marched across the road and down the grassy bank to the beach, and across the sand to his bathing machine, accompanied by the same party as the previous day. After some throwing of sticks for the dogs, the king climbed into the machine, his Master of the Robes followed him, and the door closed. The equerries wheeled the machine to the sea and the king emerged from the opposite door, naked into the arms of two stout dipping ladies, already immersed to the waist and wearing girdles over modest chemises. The sea, in April, must have been barely a few degrees above freezing, so the dips were, of necessity, brief, and then the actions were reversed. The king entered the bathing machine and was wheeled back by his equerries. There was a short delay, maybe five minutes, before the king stepped from the machine, fully dressed, with the Master of the Robes carrying the sheet with which the king had been dried.

  “The dogs,” Corwen said. “I can bolt across the sand, snap at the little dogs, get between the king and his dresser and look as though I’ve hit the bathing machine door by accident. Then I’ll speed back to the sea, change under water, and swim back to my clothes. The rest is up to you two.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to split up like this,” I said. “The last time we accosted the king, you took a bullet through the lung.”

  “I’ll be as quick as I can, and I’ll jink from side to side to throw off any marksmen.”

  “It’s not just the Blues. The equerries may have pistols.”

  “Notoriously inaccurate.” He waved away my worry. “Couldn’t hit a barn if they were standing inside it.”

  I didn’t believe him, of course. We both knew how dangerous a good pistol and a good marksman could be. They didn’t have the range of a rifle, but close up they could be deadly.

  The following morning we rose before dawn. Corwen hugged me and told me not to worry before heading off to the north end of the beach. David and I approached the king’s bathing machine cautiously in case there was an overnight guard, but all was quiet. I’m sure David could have opened the lock magically, but I had my lockpicks with me. With David as lookout, I dealt with the lock quickly and quietly, then locked it securely with the two of us inside. The machine was not large. Down one side was a wooden bench. David was right; the whole thing was scrubbed plain wood.

  “Do you think this is as good as a forest?” I whispered.

  “I hope so.”

  “Can you try it? Test it out?”

  “Better not. Trust me, it will be all right when the time comes.”

  The bathing machine had windows, but they were curtained over. Without twitching the curtains, we couldn’t see what was happening out there, but dawn filtered through, and then full daylight. Thankfully, it was another fine day for the time of year.

  We heard the dogs yapping and cheery voices urging them on as they chased sticks. The voices came closer until a key scraped in the lock. David and I pressed ourselves to the front wall, as far away from the door as we could get. I felt David cast a glamour to make the interior appear empty. I held my breath, trying hard not to move, to scrape a foot on the floorboards or a sleeve against the wall.

  His Majesty huffed and puffed up the steps and stood in the doorway, blocking out the daylight.

  “Come on, man,” the king said to someone behind him. “Datchet will see to the dogs.”

  “Coming, Majesty.”

  Now, Corwen.

  I crossed my fingers. He had to time it right.

  There was a snarl and a growl worthy of Freddie, and the two little dogs set up a frenzy of yapping. The open door slammed shut and the king toppled forward. David and I caught an arm each. David put a hand across the king’s mouth to prevent him from crying out.

  “Make no noise, Majesty, and you’ll come to no harm,” I hissed in his ear.

  “You again.” He glared at me when David eased the pressure on his lips.

  “Yes, sorry, we have un
finished business.” I left the king to David and quickly locked the door.

  It sounded as though the two little dogs had stood their ground against the wolf. What Corwen had hoped would become a chase had become a fight. The dresser was shouting, and the equerries were trying to call off the dogs. There was a yelp—Corwen, I thought, though yelping wasn’t his style. I hoped he was playacting. The yapping grew fainter as the little dogs chased their quarry along the beach. At least one of the equerries was chasing the dogs, calling their names to bring them back.

  There was a scraping of keys, but I’d jammed my lockpick into the mechanism.

  “Majesty, the lock seems to be jammed,” the equerry shouted. “I’ll come around to the front, if you’ll unbolt the door.” After a few seconds, he shouted, “The front seems to be jammed as well, Majesty.”

  “Help! Murder! Help!” The king had a good pair of lungs, I’ll say that for him. He lunged for the door and rattled it while keeping up the shouting. Fortunately, David’s magic meant that no one outside the bathing machine could hear him. Inside, however, was a different matter. The king’s face was beetroot red, and I feared he might have an apoplectic fit.

  “Majesty, please.”

  I doubted he could hear me over his own shouts.

  I drew moisture out of the air and created a tiny deluge over the king’s head. He stopped shouting for a moment to splutter.

  “No one can hear you outside,” I said. “You are harming your throat and our ears to no avail.”

  He opened his mouth to shout again and then closed it.

  “Thank you. We mean you no harm.”

  “It’s you again!”

  “Yes, Majesty. We’ve already established that. We didn’t harm you last time. Please listen to what we have to say.”

  “Majesty.” Someone called and knocked on the door.

  “If I can hear him, why can’t he hear me?”

  David smiled and filled the air with golden sparkles, then let them fade.