The Fire Star

  ‘Companion,’ I correct through clenched teeth.

  Reeve pushes his chair back and jumps to his feet. ‘Words,’ he says, pointing to my plain brown dress as he paces past. ‘You said yourself that you dress like a servant so as not to forget your place. And yet you tell me now that you are organising your mistress’s life just so. Even Lady Cassandra describes you as having many talents . . .’

  Reeve stops pacing and turns to face me once more. ‘Just what are those talents, Maven? What am I missing here?’

  I try to laugh it off with a toss of my hair and a flirtatious smile. ‘Why, just look at me?’ I simper. ‘Can you not see? Are my talents not obvious?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Reeve snaps, and, despite everything, I feel a pang. I do not need this pretty boy’s approval, but his curt dismissal hurts me in a way I thought I’d grown beyond.

  ‘Sorry,’ Reeve says, and I rearrange my expression, which must have given away my inner turmoil. ‘I did not mean to offend – I just meant that we have already agreed to do away with all that . . . stuff!’ He waves a hand between us, and I remember our deal to avoid courtly banter. ‘That’s all.’

  Somewhat mollified, I stand to face him. Over his shoulder, I can see my face like an apparition in the old mirror on the wall, pale and waxy and . . . unremarkable.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘I understand.’

  Reeve says nothing, still waiting for me to explain. I turn from him with a sigh, wondering just how much to tell him. How much can I trust this boy who stands out in a crowd as much as I blend in?

  ‘You might as well tell me,’ he says, as though reading my very thoughts. ‘What could possibly be worse than putting in motion a plan to steal a stone worth a king’s ransom and getting a man killed in the process? Hmmm? What?’

  He is right. He already knows too much about me. All I can do is give him the whole of it and then do something that I thought I would never do again. Hope.

  ‘I can read,’ I whisper, feeling as though the words are being pulled from within me by force, and I hear his sharp intake of breath. ‘I can write. I can name every star in the night sky, I can make you a poultice, I can argue politics, I can discuss science, I can play chess.’

  Even as I make the admission, I wonder if I have read him correctly. Will he repay my trust, my hope, and keep my secrets? For if he does not, I will not be able to run far enough, fast enough, to survive.

  ‘Are you a witch?’ Reeve’s voice squeaks on the last word. ‘Like Lady Cedwyn of Lygon?’ He steps back and instinctively reaches for his belt, where his sword would hang if he were wearing one.

  What can I do but laugh? Just last year, poor Lady Cedwyn had been discovered in her father’s study, teaching herself the basics of physicking from an old book on the shelf. A book her father had probably never read, having ‘acquired’ it after a nearby abbey had all but burned to the ground.

  Perhaps it was a Beech Circle member who had taught Cedwyn her letters, I do not know, but, in Cartreff, where women are deemed ‘inferior learners’ and therefore not worth teaching, her ability to read was taken as a sign that dark forces were at work. I do not blame Reeve for his reaction, but I am tired of living in a place where my cleverness is a liability.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ I say. ‘I am no witch. There is no magic here, no spell, no potion. I do not even believe such things exist. I am just . . . lucky. And cursed.’

  Reeve pales at the word, and I kick myself for using it out loud. ‘Not cursed like that,’ I say, feeling the urgency rise within me. I must make him understand, and quickly.

  ‘It’s just an expression. I mean, I was lucky enough to have a father who recognised in me a mind that would be forever questing, fortunate that he was not frightened of a girl like me, and . . . cursed that he could not beat his own demons, meaning I have been consigned forever to my own form of hell.’

  I cannot even look at Reeve, but it matters not. The weight of his stare hangs upon me.

  ‘He educated you? Your own father?’ he asks, horrified. ‘Even knowing the consequences for you – and for him – were it to be discovered that you were educated? That you know and understand things that women and girls cannot know?’

  The consequences. That I would be considered ‘unearthly’ and burned as a witch, my father forced to watch in silence, carrying the burden of guilt and grief the rest of his days.

  ‘I confess that I have spent many long nights wondering if it was that very fact that sent him to the pleasure parlours and gaming tables in the first place,’ I say. ‘He knew he was risking my life, but could not help himself, and I was ever-thirsty to know more. Perhaps he lived with that risk through the thrill of gambling.’

  I will not admit that this is the opinion that my mother and sisters have taken, and the reason they will never speak to me again. They won’t tell anyone about me, about what my father did – they cannot, without damning themselves as well – but they choose to keep me at a distance. The greater the distance the better, as far as they’re concerned and, to be honest, as far as I’m concerned, too.

  It is not easy to live with the idea that your own family is frightened of you.

  Reeve pauses, and I find myself wiping my damp palms on my skirt before shoving them in my pockets. My fingers curl reassuringly around my silent, waiting knife, a steadying weight.

  ‘Now I understand your anger at your father,’ Reeve says. ‘And at Lorimer.’

  I look up, startled.

  ‘Oh, don’t act so surprised,’ he says. ‘I’m good at two things, Maven – observation and people. You were seething in Lorimer’s company, despite your best efforts to remain polite.’

  I let go of my knife and bring my hands back into the open. ‘He could have done more to help my father,’ I say. ‘To stop my father. He was the Steward of the Household – he knew when things started to become dire, when the silver plates began disappearing to pay debts, and yet he said nothing to my mother, or to anyone. Instead, he helped my father into further debt to keep him afloat, in the Prince’s company, at the gaming tables, while Lorimer secured himself another position. Then, Lorimer left, while we picked up what few pieces were left.’

  Reeve begins to pace again. ‘Does he know? Lorimer, I mean, does he know about you?’

  ‘Nobody outside the immediate family knows. My father was careful about that. He is good at keeping secrets when he wants to be.’

  Reeve nods. ‘But the Lady Cassandra knows,’ he states, looking at me in the mirror even as his back is to me. ‘About you, I mean.’

  Again, I find myself wondering just how much I dare tell him.

  ‘Some,’ I settle for.

  Cassandra knows I can read and write, because one day she caught me in her father’s library. She keeps my secret because it has proven useful to her, over and over again. It is why we are able to smirk together over ‘sorcery’ and ‘pitiless bad luck’.

  She does not know, however, the extent to which my father taught me about the art of war and strategy during long nights over a chessboard, and with maps and bronze armies on paper battlegrounds.

  She does not know how he schooled me in the inner workings of the King’s court, that he could see the disastrous present of our ‘noble’ King laid out like a path from the Prince’s earliest days as an indulged child in the palace gardens.

  She does not know that my father would come home in the early hours and wake me, a child of nine or ten, to fill my ears with drunken stories of the hustling and manoeuvring of the men who ebbed and flowed around the then-heir to the throne, trying to parlay friendship into power.

  The Lady Cassandra does not need to know these things.

  Not yet.

  Reeve settles another long look upon me.

  ‘Maven,’ he says quietly, but I can feel the tension in him. ‘Where is the Fire Star?’

  Turning to him, I take a deep breath and give him my first truly honest answer since we met.

&nbs
p; ‘I don’t know,’ I admit, fighting the panic rising within me – the panic I’ve been distracting myself from ever since I clapped eyes on the body in the brambles. ‘Reeve, I don’t know.’

  He stares at me. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  Reeve couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That Maven and Lady Cassandra had set up the entire disappearance of the Fire Star in the first place was bad enough. That the conduit for the deceit was now dead in a ditch and Maven had no idea where the stone was – well, that was quite another thing.

  ‘He had it,’ Maven whispered through thin, pale lips as though the dire reality of the situation had only just dawned on her. ‘Sullivan had it. And now it is not there.’

  Reeve sank into a chair. If the sweeping man – Sullivan – had taken the Fire Star beyond the castle walls, then right now the stone could be . . . anywhere. He groaned.

  ‘You were out here to meet him,’ Reeve said, turning to Maven. ‘That’s why you followed me, why you “happened” along the road when you did. Were you to meet this Sullivan here?’ He waved a hand in the air above his head, taking in the quiet room around them.

  ‘Not here,’ Maven said, dropping onto a straight-backed wooden chair across from him. ‘That would never do. I was to meet him at the bottom of the hill, take back the Fire Star and bring it here. But –’

  She didn’t need to go on.

  ‘So Sullivan definitely had it on him,’ Reeve groaned again. ‘It left the castle walls.’

  ‘I can only assume he would not have come to the meeting place without it,’ she whispered.

  Reeve exhaled. ‘So it’s gone. Thanks to you and Lady Cassandra, the Airl’s precious family heirloom, worth a fortune, is . . . gone. And with it my future!’

  ‘My future, too,’ Maven reminded him, her voice barely audible as she studied the worn timber tabletop. ‘I didn’t know this would happen, Reeve. I thought the plan was foolproof. We told no one . . .’

  Reeve thumped the table in frustration, and Maven jumped. ‘No plan is foolproof,’ he said. ‘And somebody knew.’

  He paused to let that sink in before going on. ‘We need to get it back – for both our sakes. You need to think about who else could have known about this little plan of yours.’

  ‘No one,’ she snapped, her open-palmed slap on the table echoing his own. ‘Myself, the Lady Cassandra and Sullivan. That’s it. And do not thump the table at me, Reeve of Norwood.’

  Taken aback by her vehemence, Reeve bowed and forced himself to relax. ‘My apologies, Maven of Aramoor. I am . . . overwrought.’

  He sat back, considering Maven’s words – and all he now knew of the Fire Star’s disappearance, and those who were involved. ‘Did Sullivan provide the boot print in Lady Cassandra’s room?’ he asked.

  ‘His boot did,’ Maven admitted. ‘I collected it from him after everyone had gone to bed, and returned it a short while later.’

  ‘And did anyone see you wandering the halls of Rennart Castle with a man’s boot under your arm?’ Reeve asked, unable to control the sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘No,’ she said, as though it was a silly question. ‘Though I saw others wandering. You, for starters.’

  ‘I was not wandering,’ he said, sitting up straight. ‘I put Sir Garrick to bed and returned to my own room. I saw no one else –’ Reeve broke off, as a memory suddenly surfaced.

  ‘Did you see someone run into me?’ he asked. In the upheaval of his day, he’d all but forgotten being bowled over in the dark.

  Maven pushed her chair back, wincing as it scraped across the cobblestones. ‘I caught a glimpse,’ she said. ‘It was not long after I’d left my lady’s rooms.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘I had seen him before. He was in a group of men ordered from the Great Hall just before Lady Cassandra announced herself.’

  Reeve froze. ‘What did he look like?’ he asked, putting aside the fact that Maven had even been present for that moment in the Hall. He had not seen her, but then who would have done so when all attention was fixed on her mistress.

  ‘Scruffy,’ she said. ‘Dark hair. Unshaven. Staggering.’

  Reeve just managed to stop himself from thumping the table again. ‘Brantley! It had to be him. But why was he running through the halls after dark?’

  And courting the Lady Anice in the garden the very next day, Reeve finished silently. That was a piece of information he was keeping to himself for the time being. The fewer people who knew of the liaison, the better for Lady Anice’s good name.

  ‘You think Brantley had something to do with all this?’ Maven didn’t look convinced. ‘I’d never seen him before that night. I can’t see how he would know anything about the Fire Star.’

  Reeve had to agree with her, but he also knew from his experience of completing colourful picture puzzles with Lady Rhoswen that every piece had a place. Some seemed as though they would never fit anywhere until, all of a sudden, they were the perfect shape to slip into a space.

  Brantley was disgruntled and unhappy. Quite what Lady Anice saw in him, Reeve couldn’t say, but Brantley’s discontent made the man dangerous in any court.

  ‘I don’t know what he knows,’ Reeve said out loud to Maven. ‘But we need to find out. Everyone in the castle is a suspect, until they’re not.’

  Maven raised one eyebrow. ‘How do you know that poor Sullivan wasn’t set upon randomly by thieves?’

  Reeve paused. ‘I don’t,’ he admitted.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Maven said, jumping to her feet. ‘There was no scuffle. If Sully had come across strangers, he would have run, or fought, hard. But there was no disturbance on the road at all, suggesting to me that he was happy enough to encounter his killer – or, at least, had to be civil.’

  Reeve did not miss the growing excitement in Maven’s voice as she continued: ‘And, given he’d been in the castle only a few days, that narrows the field.’

  ‘I wish that were the case,’ Reeve said, not wanting to dampen her enthusiasm. He realised that, even though their situation was dire, a small part of Maven was enjoying the chance to use what Reeve was beginning to suspect was a formidable mind.

  ‘He was working as a groundsman, Maven, sweeping every corner of the great courtyard every day. Over the course of just a few days, he would have seen every knight, squire and servant in the castle. Gads, he probably even knew where that shirker Neale is hiding! Sullivan may not have known the name of his killer, but he would have recognised any person from Rennart Castle – even if they weren’t wearing livery.’

  Maven bit her lip and groaned. ‘You’re right,’ she said, slumping back into the chair opposite him once more. ‘So we have no leads.’

  They sat in perplexed silence for a moment, allowing Reeve to gather his thoughts – and realise that, on a day of many questions, he still didn’t have an answer to the one that had seemed most urgent not that long ago.

  ‘Maven,’ he said. ‘Where are we? And who are we waiting for?’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I open my mouth to speak but, before I can get a word out, there’s a creak from the top of the stairs, followed by a brief flash of light and the sound of the wooden door being pulled closed.

  ‘You’ll see,’ I murmur to Reeve, who says nothing but turns to face the stairs.

  There is a soft swish of skirts on the steps and then a pair of sturdy boots, worn as lightly as dancing slippers, appears.

  ‘Ah, Maven,’ says Myra, her smooth, silvery voice like music to my ears. I met this woman only one day ago, but she emanates a soothing calm that is both rare and instantly trustworthy – even for me. It’s also totally at odds with her outer appearance, I acknowledge, taking in her wild curls and ragged, patched gown.

  ‘And you, young sire?’ Myra continues, her glance skipping over Reeve’s face before landing on my own, the questions obvious in her startling green eyes. ‘It is a long time since one such as you has graced this room.’

  I bow my head
, knowing that I have stretched a very new friendship by bringing Reeve here. ‘I had no choice but to bring him,’ I say. ‘I was worried for his safety.’

  ‘My safety? What are you talking about? And how do you two know each other?’ Reeve sounds torn between outrage and bewilderment, but I say nothing until Myra indicates with a small smile that I should answer.

  I open my mouth, then close it again, worried about how much to reveal. How much more to reveal. Myra seems to sense my hesitation.

  ‘I think we can trust the young squire with our secret,’ she says to me. ‘After all, he has trusted me with one of his.’

  Reeve blanches, and even I can hear the underlying tenor of threat in Myra’s statement. What does she know of him, and why would he be so worried about it? I file the questions away for later, but ask them I will. I have given Reeve my secrets, and I will be safer if I hold his in return. But for now it is enough that Myra knows them.

  ‘I’ll begin with your question about safety,’ I say, getting to my feet and walking alongside the length of the table as I speak. ‘You found a dead man on the road, Reeve, and without thought or caution hurried towards him. What if the killer was still there, hidden in the bushes beside the body?’

  I turn in time to catch him flinch. ‘Or what if,’ I continue, strolling as casually as I can back towards him, ‘it had not been me who found you, but another, less trusting, person who decided that you were the killer? Had you considered that? What defence would you have given?’

  Myra’s face is impassive, but Reeve’s mouth has tightened into a grim line as he considers the implications of my narrative.

  ‘The Airl and Sir Garrick charged me with finding the Fire Star,’ he says, sounding stubborn. ‘I would have explained that I was carrying out my duties.’

  ‘And as I explained to you on our way here, you have no allies in that castle, Reeve. Not yet. You are dispensable, and they have no reason to trust that you did not kill Sullivan yourself and pocket the stone. At the very least, they would carry out their threat to send you back home to your father, your dreams of a knighthood up in smoke.’