“You’re dead, Your Grace.”
Memory took her. “Yes. I was . . . I was burned as a witch.”
“Yes.” And then I said the most futile words of my life—the most futile words of anyone’s life, ever—and those words both were and were not true.
“I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
Her fury focused. “You did this.
You
.”
“Yes.”
“You took my queendom. You
burned
me—”
“No, Your Grace. I did much, but not those things. You did them to yourself.”
Queen Caroline shrieked and launched herself at me. But she was no soldier, and she carried no weapons. I caught her flailing body in my arms. And then, a moment later, I was back in the secret room overlooking the west drawbridge, sliding into sleep. Mother Chilton had gone. All that remained of my last journey was the feel of Queen Caroline’s body against mine, that body calming, going quiet and still.
“Good-bye, Your Grace,” I had whispered to her just before my return, but I don’t think she even heard me. She had already been claimed by the eerie tranquility of the Dead.
32
WE WERE NOT SEEN
, Maggie and I, as we left the palace. Maggie led the way, following instructions she had been given by Mother Chilton. Secret passageways took us to an inner wall, where a low entrance gave way to Mother Chilton’s tent. The tent was completely empty. Gone were the potions, the feathers, the cloth bags of herbs and the poles they had hung upon, the brazier and the single chair. The entrance from palace to tent was so low that Maggie and I had to crawl through on hands and knees. After we did, the stone snapped shut, and nothing we did could open it again.
That must have been how Mother Chilton had helped Cecilia escape from the palace. It must have been, too, how Mother Chilton had come and gone from the palace whenever the queen summoned her. There had been some tie between them, something I did not understand and did not want to understand.
“Caroline studied the soul arts but she has no talent,”
Mother Chilton had said to me once. Which was why the queen had sought to use my talent.
Maggie and I stayed in the deserted tent a few days, me resting while she went out to gather food and information. The food was not, at first, easy to come by. This was not because we had no money; Mother Chilton had once more left me a pile of coins, silvers and one gold piece. I did not understand why Mother Chilton helped me. She was as much a riddle as the queen, and like the queen, took her own hidden gambles. But there was no food because there was no one to buy it from. The villagers, along with most of the servants, had fled the capital after the Blue soldiers died a second time.
Witchcraft!
people cried.
Sorcery! Run! Run! Save yourselves!
But there was nothing to save themselves from. No more witchery, no more fighting. The remnants of Lord Robert’s ragtag army, plus whatever was left of the queen’s Greens, were all the soldiers that remained. They were not witches and they were not fighting. They also needed to eat. One by one, the shopkeepers returned to the city, found it safe, and told others, who also returned.
Lord Robert had the good sense to take away and quietly bury the queen’s burned body. Few knew where the “witch-queen” lay.
He crowned Princess Stephanie, looking small and frightened in the many-colored jewels of the Crown of Glory. Lord Robert rules as regent until the princess comes of age.
When I could travel again, Maggie and I left the city. I was disguised as a farmer who had drunk too much, but I was so thin and sick, with such a bristly untrimmed beard that had quite suddenly sprouted in place of my former downy fuzz, that no disguise might even have been necessary. I now looked older than my fifteen years. Besides, no one was looking for me. The rumor was that I, who brought the Blue army back from death, had disappeared into oblivion when they did. It is possible Mother Chilton had something to do with such rumors. It is possible she did not.
The last thing I saw, as I twisted around on the back of our donkey for a final look, was the palace’s lone tower rising in the mist. Princess Stephanie’s purple banner flew lonely and distant against a foggy, gray sky.
We live now in a village called Applebridge. It’s far upriver, west of the capital, past where the flat valley has turned to hills, and almost as far as where the hills turn to mountains. Somewhere over those mountains is the realm of Lord Solek’s savage people. The River Thymar is swift and shallow here, and barges or ferries cannot navigate the wild waters. But there is an ancient stone bridge connecting the west bank to the east, and so local farmers from all around come to Applebridge as a market town. Besides apples, the area grows corn and some other fruits, which also brings custom to the alehouse Maggie and I bought with Mother Chilton’s money. The alehouse isn’t much to look at: a rough taproom, a kitchen, a storeroom where I sleep, and three tiny chambers above, one for Maggie and two to house travelers. Most of our money went to buy the cottage, which despite its plainness is sound and snug. With the rest of Mother Chilton’s coins, we bought a good stock of ale, which Maggie serves along with the meals she prepares. She is an excellent cook, a hardworking business partner, a saving manager.
When these nights of late summer are soft and warm and the tiny drops of moisture form on Maggie’s full breasts and on her forehead under the springy fair curls, I am amazed all over again that I live in this snug village where there is peace and enough to eat, and no life-shattering surprises. Everything, in fact, that I once wanted when I lived with Hartah.
“Peter,” Jee says in his high child’s voice, “Maggie says ye maun come to sup now.”
“Tell her I’m coming,” I say, and Jee runs off. I pick up the bucket with my one good hand. I have learned to live with one hand: to keep the cottage in repair, to pour ale. The village children call me “Peter One-Hand.” That is the name I use now, “Peter Forest,” chosen at random. It is as Peter One-Hand that I throw the slops to the pig we have recently bought and watch it root eagerly in its wooden pen for something more than what it knows is in the slops.
Something more than what it knows
.
Only once have we had a visitor from my old life. One night long ago, as I closed and shuttered the taproom for the night, she appeared in the doorway. I had not heard, not seen her approach. In the gloom, lit only by rushlights in their holders against the wall, her face was in shadow. But I knew immediately who she was.
“Mother Chilton.”
“Hello, Roger.”
“How did you come here without—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She walked in unbidden, and just as she had done a year ago, took my face in her hand and looked into my eyes.
“You have given it up, then.”
I didn’t know how she knew. I had never understood her, no more than I’d understood the queen. But I was aware of what she meant. “Yes,” I said, “I have given it up. I no longer cross over.”
“Not even to find your mother?”
I pictured her again, my mother in her lavender gown with lavender ribbons in her hair, felt again the remembered tenderness of her arms around me. But all I said was, “No. It would do no good.”
Mother Chilton nodded, as if satisfied. “You’re right, Roger. You could not rouse her even if you found her. But know this—she is at peace now, even as are the country of the Dead and The Queendom.”
“And Soulvine Moor?”
She looked away, shadows from the rushlights changing the planes of her face, like stones shifting shape under water. “The Moor will never be at peace while they seek what no one can have. There is no living forever, Roger. But I have come here to set your mind at ease about one thing, at least.”
Despite myself, and even after all that had happened, hope surged through me.
Cecilia
. . .
“No, not she,” Mother Chilton said. “That cannot be undone, as you well know. But now that you’ve seen what happens at Soulvine Moor, I want to tell you this: What happened to Cecilia did not happen to your mother. Hers was a natural death, and you can stop dreaming about her now.”
“How did you know I—”
But Mother Chilton was gone. It seemed that the room dimmed for a moment, and when I could see it more clearly, she was no longer there. I ran outside; I saw nothing unusual.
“Peter!” Maggie called from above. “Is the taproom shuttered?”
“Yes,” I said, closing and barring the door. Where had she gone? How?
“I thought I heard voices.”
“No,” I said. “There is no one here but us.” I took the rush-light from the wall and lighted my way up the narrow stairs. At the twist of the stairwell was a small, barred window, flooded by moonlight. Silhouetted against the full moon flew a black swan, at a time of night when swans do not fly, higher than any swan ever flew. It beat its wings in a great powerful swoop, and then it was gone into the darkness.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much gratitude to my editor, Sharyn November, for her valuable contributions to this book, and to my agents, Ralph Vicinanza and Chris Schelling, for theirs.
ANNA KENDALL
was born in Ireland and emigrated with her parents to the United States at age twelve. For several years she taught fourth grade. Anna lives in Seattle, where she plays a lot of chess. This is her first novel.