I nodded, still half asleep.
"And one thing more. The Grip is not in the mill."
I was no longer half asleep. I shook Innes awake.
"His body has been moved?" But the sexton only shrugged his shoulders.
The nurse had three packs ready for us and our dark cloaks on her arms.
"There's more than one time we've taken a secret walk at night when Lord Beryn's Guard have been about," the sexton explained with a sly wink,"and we've enjoyed the venison for it all the next winter."
The nurse draped the cloaks around us and crushed each of us in turn—even the sexton.
"Be safe, be safe. And when you reach the queen, may you find her well, poor dear." She clasped us closely once more, then doused the lamps and shushed us out the door. The touch of her hand on my back stayed with me through the night.
And a dark night it was. As dark as we would have wished, and darker. Innes held on to my cloak and I followed the sexton, though it was not easy. His thin self scurried like a rabbit, the stars alone giving him enough light. We did not speak, nor did we ever slow our pace. We moved like the shadow of an owl, and as quietly, while the wind crackled together the icy branches over our heads.
Long before any light even hinted at the dawn—the beginning of our fourth day—the sexton stopped us. "A short rest," he whispered. "We'll be there soon enough, and it's then we'll see the Guard's fires."
I nodded and sat down, my back against the rough bark of a tree. Almost immediately the heat from the walking left me and the ground frost began to work its way up my back. I held my cloak close, while Innes paced back and forth, beating his arms against his sides.
"Heaven only knows how you'll find the queen," the sexton whispered."It's been eleven years and more since I last saw her, and then she seemed like one who had fallen into herself, what with her sadness. What more years of brooding might do to her..." He shook his head at the thought. "She came to Twickenham once, you know, soon after she was crowned and on her way to visit the abbey nuns. Our maids danced for her, and they put flowers in her hair and she danced with them, round and round about. It seemed that hers would be the sweetest reign. Then a year later she came again, alone and at dark. On a night just as cold as this, I saw her ride into Saint Eynsham Abbey with my own eyes."
"She was alone," said Innes. It was not a question.
"She was with my own dear wife, her nurse, sent off with her, never to return to the castle. But at the king's command, the king's loving command, she was turned away at the abbey doors, and the queen walked in alone and unattended, like a peasant in search of a night's shelter. At the gate I found her nurse weeping and weeping, and there was no way to comfort her, the child being gone and the queen walled away. And so I brought her here"
"How is it the queen lost her baby?" I asked.
A long moment of silence."You haven't heard the story?" Innes asked."Tousle, it's one I've heard over and over again, and me just an orphan shuttled from horse stall to horse stall. How the queen bore the king's heir, and how he disappeared after a year, probably murdered. How the king banished his queen to Saint Eynsham Abbey, there to live the rest of her life unless called upon."
"I never heard the story," I said, standing and rubbing the chill out of my legs. "My da never told it."
"And now is not the time for the telling of it," said the sexton. "Not if we hope to pass Lord Beryn's Guard while the dark is still with us." And so we started again, trudging forward with numbed toes.
And the dark was still with us when the trees thinned out and showed Saint Eynsham and the abbey beyond, a low dark mass against a low dark sky. I would have not seen it if it had not been for the pale lights that flickered feebly in three of its windows.
There were no fires in the clearing between us and the village, and no sign of Lord Beryn's Guard. Still, the sexton was cautious," Steady now, steady now," he said from the last grouping of trees. "The Devil himself would be in it if we were to come so far and be caught at the very doors." Slowly he stepped out, stepped back in again, and then out once more. Three steps and he motioned to me to follow.
And so slowly, crouching, sometimes breaking into a run, we crossed the open ground and reached a small stream. "There," said the sexton, pointing. "Put your feet just there." But I could see almost nothing in the darkness, and though the sexton leapt from stone to stone, Innes and I were soon wet up to our knees, until we both finally simply waded across most of it."There used to be a ford here," said the sexton.
"There isn't anymore," replied Innes. We went on, the frigid water squishing out of our shoes and our toes starting to pain as though they could crack off.
"Will we be able to get into the abbey?" I whispered.
"Will there be a fire to welcome us?" asked Innes.
The sexton held up his hand to quiet us. "If it's heard that you two have reached the abbey, it's not the getting in that you'll need to be worried about. Mind you move quiet as the tomb here, or we'll have every dog and rooster and pig in Saint Eynsham barking and cackling and squealing."
We moved past a row of houses—all dark, all sleeping—and to the commons. It was too cold for any cows to be tethered there—winter still holding on as it was—so we ran across it, startling only a few of the larks that had begun to gather. Past another row of houses, and then we stood at the top of a vale that sloped down between two rounded hills. And in the very center of that vale stood Saint Eynsham Abbey.
"Now, the way you'll want to be going..." began the sexton.
"A moment," whispered Innes urgently. The sky that had grown pinker and pinker as we crossed Saint Eynsham showed brighter, brighter, and then yielded to the white sun that rolled over the world's edge. And in the utter quiet, Innes stood with his face to it, rapt, still.
"Whatever is he doing?" asked the sexton.
"God's gift," I said.
The sexton nodded his head and waited patiently. "It's yours to hear the dawn, then," he said when Innes turned back to us.
"It is," said Innes surprised."How would you know that?"
The sexton leaned forward and mussed his hair. "You're hardly the only one God is giving gifts to. How do you think that I'm able to find my way through the woods on the darkest night?" Then, as the larks began to sing, he pointed down the vale to the abbey.
I felt alone. In all this wide world, was everyone so sure of his gift but me?
The path out of Saint Eynsham meandered to a stone-arched door, the only opening in a wall three times as high as a man. The wall rounded the abbey in gracious curves, heading up a rise and curling at the top of the gorge, then coming back through lowland and around again up a bare hill, finally closing its loop at the end of a sturdy limestone church, the cross on its roof like a key locking it all together.
"That over there is the abbey church," said the sexton pointing, "and a finer one you'll never see this side of Wolverham. Follow along the wall there, and you see Saint Joseph's Chapel, Saint Mary's Chapel, and there, the smallest, Saint Anne's. If I were to make a guess, it would be to Saint Anne's that the queen goes to say her prayers.
"Now, follow the line of these cherry trees across the court. The cherry trees, Tousle, not the pear. Right. At the far end is the abbess's house. The grand one. Just to the south of it—no, to the south, boy—there's the abbey hall. It's where the Holy Sisters will be when they are not at prayers. It's where they do most of their living."
"And that is where the queen will be?" asked Innes.
"It may be that she would be there. But, Tousle, if you look back to Saint Anne's Chapel, you see where there has been new building? It's my guess that those are the queen's rooms."
I stared down at the abbey grounds. The first sunbeams had already scampered past the ordered fruit trees—pear and cherry—and clambered all around the chapel steeples, and finally lay against Saint Anne's, where they were beginning to dry the dew from the dark slate.
"Then I'll be leaving you here, Tousle, and you, Innes. You'll find an attendant at the door, and she'll welcome you, though I'm of a mind that she'll not take you to the queen. You'll need to find that way yourselves. But if you do come to meet the queen, if you do, give her a blessing from me, and tell her that I well remember the sad night that brought her here."
A pause.
"And I'll be remembering you both as well."
"And we you," whispered Innes.
"We'll be back," I said. "When the riddle is solved and we've taken it to Wolverham, we'll be back."
The sexton raised his hand in blessing and farewell, and left us looking down on Saint Eynsham Abbey.
The sexton was wrong about the attendant. Though all the limestone apostles smiled down from their cozy niches, the iron hinges on the oak door did not creak open with a welcome. Instead, a tiny window jutted open at our third knocking and a face thrust out, a face as solid as the rounded stones that arched the door. It might almost have been made of rock itself.
"As if we haven't had enough visitors these last three days," she shouted. "As if all I have to do is to unbolt and unbar the door to any wretch who comes along and chooses to knock."
"Isn't it to the wretched that the abbey doors should open?" asked Innes.
She glared at him. "Boy, there's a warm hearth and a hot rum I've left for your knocking. I'm thinking it a trial and a tribulation to have done so."
"Mother," I called quickly, when I saw her hands move up to close the portal,"we've traveled through the night and are only looking for a bit of warm fire."
"A bit of warm fire," she repeated."And some bread to go with it?"
"Well, yes."
She nodded. "Some stew perhaps, steaming for all it's worth? Maybe some of my hot rum?"
"Yes, again."
"Beggars," she spat, and reached to pull the window shut.
"Wait!" I shouted."We're not beggars. We've come all the way from Wolverham to see the queen."
Innes groaned.
"Ah, the queen," repeated the attendant. "And perhaps you'd wish to see the mother abbess after you've made your royal visit."
"No," I said.
"And then you'll be off to bless the Holy Father in Rome?" she asked sweetly.
"We must see the queen," said Innes urgently. "We've come from the king himself."
"So a troop of Lord Beryn's Guard claimed only yesterday morning, but she would not see them—and the door stayed closed. So another one, rougher than you've ever seen the likes of, said yesterday evening, but she would not see him—and the door stayed closed. The queen has seen precious few these last eleven years. She'll not be changing her ways simply to see beggars looking for a fire."
"She might," said Innes, drawing himself up tall. "Tell her that her son is here to see her."
If the clouds had suddenly turned leaden and dropped with a clang onto the abbey, I could hardly have been more surprised.
"She will be displeased should you keep me from her," added Innes.
The attendant slanted her head and peered down at us warily."And where's the proof of this?"
"The heart has no need of proof. Tell her."
For a long moment she stared at Innes. "Is there a likeness?" she muttered to herself, and leaning back, she closed the window and was gone.
"The queen's son?" I asked.
Innes shrugged. "If she wouldn't open the door to Lord Beryn's Guard, what chance did we have as beggars?"
"The queen will know that you're not her son."
"But we'll be in the abbey, face to face. At least we can ask her the riddle."
"The queen will dismiss us as soon as she sees us."
"Tousle, you needn't always leap to point out the difficulties. This might be the only way to find the answer to the riddle."
"Well, then," I said,"you should look the part." I took off the square-linked chain that Da had put around my neck and secured it around Innes's. He put his hand up to feel its cold metal.
"Does this make me look the part of a prince?"
"Not much."
Innes grinned as the door to the abbey swung slowly open and the attendant beckoned us in. She led us across the courtyard, turning now and again to eye us suspiciously, as if we were there to make off with the abbey's treasures. And she must have told others of Innes's claim, for though Holy Sisters glided past with downcast faces, some murmuring prayers, they all turned their faces up at the last moment to catch a glimpse of us.
Across the courtyard a stand of cherry trees had already started to bud. It seemed impossible for this time of year, yet there they were, their branches supple and starting to swell, as if in that protected corner of the world, the sun shone warmer and the cold winds swirled away. I imagined the scent of them blossomed out, and the shower of soft petals they would yield soon. I kept the thought close when we came to Saint Anne's Chapel and the attendant opened the door for us, then stood aside to let us in—still suspicious.
I took Innes's elbow and led him into the sweet half darkness of the place. Slants of sunshine colored through the windows, but the sun was still too low for the beams to angle down to the floor. They floated high, a rainbow of light, like a canopy over us. Beneath them the air was heavy with the waxy scent of glowing candles and the spiced tinge of incense.
At the far end of the chapel a wooden statue of Saint Anne paused above rows and rows of candles, her arms outstretched and open as if to welcome the Holy Child. And beneath her, just rising and smoothing her gown, was the queen.
She stood, a dark pillar in front of the candles, her hands clasped in front of her, not moving. I could not see her face in the dimness of the place, but in her solemn stillness she bespoke royalty, and I knelt, pulling Innes down with me.
"Come closer," she said, her voice low, almost husky.
We did, passing through slices of colored light. Kneeling before her, I could see that she was not young. She had been beautiful, but no longer. She looked like someone who had cried until she found that crying brought no relief, and she had stopped not because the sadness was past, but because the sadness had no remedy.