It was the same road I had ridden with Kit Beale, nearly nine months ago. Then it had been autumn and now it was early summer, and Maggie plodded beside me. Now, as then, I didn’t know what I was going toward, or what would happen to me. But all else was different. I was different. And every step of every mile, Cecilia filled my heart. With worry, with fear, with pain. With love, which was all three.
My arm hurt only a little. Whatever Mother Chilton had done to it, the
gun
wound seemed to be healing more rapidly than it had under Lady Margaret’s nursing. I was still weak from my illness, and sometimes I had to stop and rest. Maggie had more strength than I. Still, I rested less than expected, and for that, too, Mother Chilton’s poultice may or may not have been responsible.
Maggie had said little all that first day. But when we had made our camp in a thicket well off the road, when we had eaten our bread and cheese and meat, she faced me across the glowing coals. It was cold after the sun set, and both of us wrapped our cloaks tight around our bodies. The moon was a thin crescent in the east, barely visible, and the stars shone high and clear.
“Roger, what will you do if you find Lady Cecilia?”
I didn’t want to discuss Cecilia, not with Maggie. I said brusquely, “Serve her.”
“As her fool?”
“No!”
“As what?”
“You cannot ever let anything rest, can you?” I said angrily. “Lady Cecilia is in the Unclaimed Lands. She is not alone, but whoever is with her is only one person. Mother Chilton did not tell me who it is. Cecilia will need servitors, guards, a court.”
“You are neither a servitor nor a guard,” Maggie said, “and you are certainly not a courtier.” She stared straight into the fire, scowling.
“She trusts me. And anyway, you’re going to need a home, too, Maggie. You wanted to escape the palace, and you have. But what now? Lady Cecilia could maybe give you a place as her serving woman, or—”
“Be quiet!” Maggie said with such fierce pain that I was astonished. It did not seem to me a fall in rank to go from cook to lady’s maid, but I questioned her no further. I didn’t want any more arguments. Maggie lay down and rolled herself into a ball with her back to me.
I dreamed, that night by the fire, that I was back in the laundry at the palace. I was dying cloth green, but then—in the manner of dreams—I was dying people, and not green but yellow. All the people were female, and all of them were naked: the queen, Cecilia, Cat Starling, Maggie. “There,” I said, “now you are all fools.” I woke with such a powerful bodily response that there was nothing to do but creep off into the bushes and hope Maggie did not wake.
All fools
. Including me.
Maggie and I walked for several days while talking but little. She was sullen, seldom even looking at me. The Queendom was in soft spring, filled with new light and tender green, but the nights were still cold. The moon grew steadily until it was a full round circle, shedding a silvery glow over all beneath. The land around us became wilder, less fertile. Fields of new plantings gave way to pastures for sheep and then, as the ground became rockier and steeper still, to goats. Hills turned to mountains, with deep ravines and abrupt cliffs. Whenever anyone rode down the road from either direction, Maggie and I hid. But I realized that Hartah, with his gruesome stories of highwaymen and robbers and dangers to lone travelers, had lied to me. I saw no corpses gutted and rotting by the road. And each day, fewer and fewer riders appeared. We had reached the edge of the Unclaimed Lands.
“Our food is almost gone,” Maggie said.
“There’s an inn up ahead. We can get provisions there, and ask for information.”
“An inn? How do you know?”
“I know,” I said. And so we came to the last inn where I had ever stayed with Hartah and Aunt Jo. It looked the same, a rough place for rough people. Somewhere to the east lay the sea, and I noticed, as I had been too naive to notice before, the sheltered creek that would be so convenient for smugglers. Dense woods behind the inn would let a traveler approach or leave unseen from the road.
“A good place for information,
” Hartah had said. I took another of Mother Chilton’s silvers out of my boot and put it in my pocket.
“Maggie, you must do exactly as I say while we are inside this inn.”
She said reasonably, “What are you going to tell me to do?”
“Say nothing. You can maybe pass for a boy if you keep your hood up, with all that dirt on your face, but not if you speak. And when we take a room upstairs, you must stay there with the door barred until you’re sure the person knocking is me.” I hated that I was giving her the same instructions Hartah had once given me, but there was no help for it. In this, at least, Hartah had been right. This was no place for a woman. Aunt Jo had been old and shriveled, but Maggie was young and, if not exactly pretty—no one was pretty next to Cecilia—would still be in danger. And I, with my small shaving knife, could not defend her.
Who was defending Cecilia? It should have been me.
Maggie nodded. She pulled her cloak far over her face. I said, “Part the cloak at the waist so they can see your boots and breeches. They must think we are two boys.” She nodded again and did as I directed—a first.
Two men sat drinking in the taproom, with another carrying in mugs of ale from a room beyond. They studied us with cold eyes.
“We need a room for the night,” I said, holding out my palm with a silver coin on it. “My brother has fallen and hurt his leg.”
Maggie began to limp.
The innkeeper looked from my coin to my face to my thick, fur-lined cloak. His voice was genial and oily. “Aye, lad. I’ve a fine room for ye, upstairs. My best. And mayhap a bit of supper?”
“No, thank you.”
“As ye wish. This way.”
I followed him upstairs. The same tiny room under the eaves, the same sagging bed. Maggie limped behind me. The innkeeper said, “Thirty pennies for the night.”
That was outrageous, but I nodded. “Fine. My brother must rest his leg, but I’ll come down with you and have a mug of ale.”
His greasy smile broadened. “As ye say, sir.”
Maggie, looking frightened, hobbled into the room. I heard her bolt the door. I followed the innkeeper to the taproom, let him bring me a mug of ale from the back room, let him charge me a ridiculous three pennies. The remaining seventeen lay on the table beside my mug. The other two men sat across from me, saying nothing. They were neither young nor old, dressed in patched brown wool, and neither had washed in a very long time. Their smell would have been even worse, except that the room was cold. Wind off the sea whistled between chinks in the walls, turning the small fire fitful. We all wore cloaks.
They would make their move soon—robbery at best, murder at worst—and I must make mine first. “Warm in here, is it not?” I said.
No answer.
“Very warm.” I made a great show of wiping my forehead and neck. And I waited.
Finally one growled, “Where ye bound, boy?” His teeth were broken, brown as his cloak.
“I’m looking for my lady mistress.”
That got both their attention, and the innkeeper’s as well.
“She fled her father’s estate a few days ago, and forgot to tell me where to meet her.”
“Forgot? What d’ye mean, boy? Speak plain!”
“I am speaking plain.” I opened my eyes wide, looking as guileless as I could, and then clutched my stomach.
“You sick?”
“No, no, just something bad that I ate . . . Yes, she forgot. And she never forgets me. I’m her musician, you see, and she is very musical. Shall I sing for you?”
“No,” he growled as I knew he would. “What’s your mistress’s name?”
“Lady Margaret. Although I think she might ...” I scrunched up my face, like a half-wit trying to remember something. “I think she might use another name. I forget what.”
The innkeeper said, “Your lady mistress runs away—”
“Not runs away—flees.”
“—
flees
from her father’s home to the Unclaimed Lands? Not likely, lad.”
The other man at the table was now watching me more closely. He had as yet said nothing at all. I spoke directly to him. “Have you seen her? She’s small, with brown hair and green eyes and she’s very, very pretty.”
There was a sudden silence among the three men. Finally the innkeeper said, “She does not travel alone.”
“No.” Mother Chilton had told me as much, and then had not told me whom Cecilia was with, calling me stupid for even asking.
The man with broken teeth said, “You’re a fool, boy.”
“I am told that often,” I said with a big sunny smile. “But in her haste my lady forgot me, and my brother and I must follow her. Do you know where she went?”
They all glared at me now. I knew I had not much time. The one with broken teeth said, “She went inland, of course. Where else should one like her keeper go? She went toward Soulvine Moor, toward Hygryll. But you—”
I cried, interrupting him, “Oh, thank you! You see, I—” I knocked my pile of coins to the floor, dove under the table after it, and pulled a hair in my nose as hard as I could. When I rose again, staggering and without the coins, my eyes watered, my face had gone red, and I was sneezing violently. “Oh . . . oh, I’m afraid I . . . Help me, please, my lady fled her estate because of the plague there and my brother. . . . Help us. ...”
The men froze. The innkeeper breathed, “Plague!” Then all three scuttled away from me.
“Help ...” I collapsed against the table.
One man drew his sword. The other said sharply, “No! Don’t go near him!”
“The coins—”
“Leave them, you idiot!”
All three left the inn, striding out into the night.
I went upstairs, collected Maggie, and we slipped away, making camp a few miles down the road in a deep thicket. First, however, I took food from the inn and another old, patched, but still serviceable blanket. It would be cold going over the mountains to Soulvine Moor.
Where my mother had died. Where Cecilia had fled, in the company of . . . whom? Where I might, at last, find the truth of both my past and my future.
24
“WE CANNOT GO
to Soulvine Moor,” Maggie said. “We
cannot
.”
Morning, and Maggie and I faced each other across the embers of our campfire. Last night she had been too frightened to ask me much, but this morning she was herself again. Still afraid—if anything, she was more afraid since I had told her our destination—but since she was also Maggie, her fear led her to fight rather than cower.
I retorted, “At least you said the name. In the palace you would not even utter ‘Soulvine Moor.’ As if the words alone could somehow harm you.”
“Not the words, you idiot! The people who might overhear them!”
That made sense. I had not known then how the palace was riddled with spy holes, with spies, with factions. I knew now. But we were not now in the palace.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me what Soulvine Moor is.”
Despite the beautiful morning, she shuddered.
It
was
a beautiful morning. Overnight, spring had turned to the first taste of summer. Golden light lay on the half-budded trees. Hawthorne leaves unfurled with that tender yellow-green seen only once each year. Birds sang. The woods smelled fresh and expectant, spawning life.
She said, “Soulvine Moor is death.”
“No riddles, Maggie. Tell me true. Who lives on Soulvine Moor?”
“The ones who never die.”
“Witches?” I still wasn’t sure what had happened to me at Mother Chilton’s, or what I believed about it.
“No. They burn witches there, as everywhere else. But they also . . . they ...”
“Tell me!”
She shuddered. But no one could say that Maggie did not have courage. “They don’t die, because they take the life from others. They murder them and steal their souls to gain their strength to add to their own. And so they live forever.”
“Nothing lives forever.” I, of all people, had cause to know that! “How do they steal the souls from others?”
“I don’t know. The ceremony is secret, known only to them. There are rumors . . . but no one really knows.”
“Are you sure this is not just a folktale? A story meant to frighten children into being good, like the hawk-man or the monster under the mountain?”
Her temper flared. “How should I know? Do you mean, have I ever gone to Soulvine Moor to find out? I have not, and I am not going there now. If Lady Cecilia is in the Unclaimed Lands, then I will stay with you until you find her, but not afterward. Do you hear me, Roger? Not afterward! I will not stay as a serving woman to Lady Cecilia, as you so charmingly suggested days ago. I would rather live as a scullery maid, a pig tender, even a whore! Do you understand me?”