Summers at Castle Auburn (40 page)

I had handed him the stacks of counted bills, and he pushed one of them back across the table at me. More than I usually took home at the end of the week, but I did not point this out. Darbwin never miscounted dollars; this was a deliberate gesture.

“Though I do wonder,” he said in a casual voice, “how long you'll be staying. Don't you usually go up to Auburn in the spring?”

I stood up and shook the crumbs out of my apron. “Used to. Not anymore.”

He leaned back in the booth and watched me move around the tables, straightening chairs and blowing out candles. “So, you're planning to be here the rest of your life? Year in, year out?”

“I haven't made any plans,” I said. “I suppose I'll go visit my sister now and then. You'll give me a little time off if I ask for it, won't you?”

He nodded vigorously. “Sorry to see you go, but happy to see you back. You've got a job here as long as you like it.”

I smiled at him in what had become the near-dark of the tavern. “Glad to hear it,” I said. “But I'll be here for a while yet. Not to worry.”

“Through solstice, anyway, I hope,” he said. “That's my busy time.”

“Solstice I can guarantee.” I took off my apron, laid it across the back of the booth, and smiled at Darbwin again. “See you tomorrow night,” I said, and left.

It was a short walk home through the quiet streets, though the air was chillier than I expected. Winter before long; solstice before we knew it. I would have to write my uncle Jaxon and see if he was inviting Elisandra to Halsing Manor for the holidays. I could think of no reason he would not allow me to join them for a visit—once the actual celebration was over, of course. I could not abandon Darbwin during his busy season, after all.

But there was a letter waiting for me on the table outside my room, and it obviated any possibility of visits during the winter holidays. It was from Elisandra, and it was the longest one I had received from her yet. Also the most frank; she must have written it in secret and sent it out by a trusted hand.

Corie: The strangest news has just arrived today from the steward on Jaxon's estate. It seems Jaxon and Rowena have left—vanished. They were there one night and gone the next, all their clothes removed from the closets and all their personal effects missing. The servants say they heard nothing in the night, that Jaxon and Rowena retired to their room as usual, but in the morning, they were both gone. The steward says he made discreet inquiries at various inns and posting houses in the neighborhood, but no one remembers seeing them. Oh, and none of the horses are gone. Only Jaxon and his wife.

Is this not odd? What are we to make of it? I have only gotten one note from Jaxon since he left last summer, saying he was not sorry Bryan
had died though he hoped it had not caused me any sadness. I burned it immediately, of course, for I did not want either my mother or Lord Matthew to find it. He said nothing about any plans to travel—or disappear!—and I feel quite disturbed and shaken. As if we might not ever see him again.

And I cannot help but wonder about Rowena's role in all this. She is the queen of Alora, after all, and the alora have gifts and powers that I do not believe we have ever understood. She made a strange bargain with Jaxon a year ago. Could she have come to regret it? Could she have done anything to harm him?

I have told Matthew that I would like to go to Halsing Manor to see for myself how the situation has been left, but he told me flatly that I was not to leave the castle. I was quite astonished, I assure you, and asked him with some hauteur what right he had to attempt to confine me anywhere. And then he told me—it was a day of shock piled upon shock—that I was the widow of the true prince and any children of my body would be considered the next heirs to the throne, and that until nine months had passed from Bryan's death, I must be carefully watched. Otherwise I might in secret bear a child that was either Bryan's, and thus rightful heir, or that I pretended was his, and attempted to put on the throne in Kent's place! Can you believe this? I was never more amazed. I told him that he could consult with Daria, who would inform him that I had had four monthly courses since my wedding night, but he said maids could be bribed and such signs could be misleading, and in any case, the law required a nine-month waiting period and he would observe it to the last day.

So this answers all sorts of questions that I have had, though I have not raised them—one being why he has not insisted Kent be crowned immediately, and another being why he has not shown more active interest in finding me a new suitor. I must confess, I still have no taste for another beau of Matthew's procuring, but I was surprised at his slowness in this area. But now I understand. I understand everything.

Oh, Corie, I miss you so much! I think so often about what you said to me, about living in some small cottage in a tiny village, raising herbs and earning enough to feed ourselves. How I would love that life and the chance to be near you always. Matthew has vowed that you shall never return to Castle Auburn, but I shall not let that keep us apart. I will come
to you, or you must meet me somewhere, as soon as my nine-month sentence is lifted. Till then, think of me often, write me whenever you can, and know you are always in my thoughts. Elisandra

This was a letter that needed to be read more than once, and I did so, standing beside my bed and holding the paper to the candlelight. Jaxon and Rowena vanished! But there was no mystery there at all. She had taken him back to Alora, that place of rest and delight for which he had hungered ever since he spent that one brief, fateful visit inside its borders. Or perhaps for even longer—since his first glimpse of one of those frail, exotic creatures; since the first time one of them touched a wondering finger to his cheek and set in his heart that inescapable, inexplicable desire. I remembered what deep longing Cressida's touch had fired in me, that night I released her from Castle Auburn. Even now, months later, I would wake sometimes in the night weeping and wretched, homesick for a place I had never seen. I knew where Rowena and Jaxon had disappeared. We would not be seeing them again.

I skimmed the letter a third time, frowning as I came to the second half. Yes, indeed, the possibility that Elisandra had become pregnant on her wedding night would have loomed huge in Matthew's mind. Though even he must realize it was a slim chance, considering how sick Bryan had been. And nine long months for Elisandra to wait before she could make any moves, any changes in her life! Nine months of limbo Kent would have to endure as well, treated as the next king though still without any real power. Nine months of waiting for me before I could see my sister again.

Well, four and a half months had already passed. We were halfway there. I sat up another two hours, writing letters, before I sought my bed that night.

 

T
HE SEASON ADVANCED
; the sun grew small and ungenerous, parceling out a few watery hours of light every day. The nights turned long, bleak, and frigid. Companionship and firelight were the only weapons we had with which to combat desolation. The tavern was
crowded every night, and no patron ever seemed to want to go home, back out into that black and icy silence.

Even Darbwin, habitually cheerful, often seemed lost in melancholy thoughts from which he could not be easily shaken. I suggested we hire another barmaid, then began looking about for suitable candidates. My choice was a middle-aged widow with a curving smile and an ample body who knew how to handle herself around men. She was warmhearted, filled with laughter, and had turned away four offers of marriage that I knew about since her husband died five years ago. I was not surprised when she and Darbwin immediately struck up an easy, bantering friendship. In fact, when I had the chance, I used illicit seasonings to spice up their food—and their relationship.

I tried to spend a couple of evenings a month out at my grandmother's, where the turning of the season had little real effect. She and Milette were busy drying herbs and bottling up mixed potions. All the long nights meant to them were a few more hours to study by candlelight. Since I had moved into the village, Milette had grown a little friendlier to me, and we actually spent a few evenings consulting on some more arcane texts and discussing what the elixirs could possibly have been intended for. My grandmother watched the cessation of hostilities with a small smile, though she said nothing.

The three of us celebrated the solstice together, though I did not get to the cottage till midnight, since I waited tables at the tavern till eleven. Then I hurried down the frosty roads under a grinning quarter moon to arrive, shivering and grateful, into the bright heat of my grandmother's house. The three of us stayed up till dawn on that longest night of the year, tossing herbs into the fire and chanting the rituals that would ensure an early spring and a bountiful year. We slept till noon, then hiked into the village for the festival going on there—games, feasts, songfests, fortune-telling, and bazaars. The day was cold but exceptionally clear, and the wind had whipped color into everyone's face, so that the whole village appeared to be full of vital, jovial folk. Indeed, Solstice Day was generally my favorite of the year for that very reason—it put everyone into a good
mood, a mood of hope and expectation. From this day forward, till the very green heart of summer, the light would stay longer and the days would stretch themselves, one minute at a time, into the night. That was something to celebrate indeed.

In the evening, I returned to my rented room, too exhausted to stay up as late as usual. There I found two packages and a letter awaiting me. The letter was a short solstice greeting from Angela with no real news. One package came from Elisandra and contained several yards of ocean blue silk. Too fine for my daily use, living as I did, but I would use it to line my new cloak and it would make me feel deeply loved.

The other package was from Kent and contained a gold locket set with a sapphire that matched the one in the ring. His solstice greeting was also short and very traditional, wishing me health and a light heart. I looked at the locket a long time and did not know what to do with it. Ultimately I put it in a small silver box which also contained his ring, and hid the whole collection in the back of my dresser drawer. I scattered a few grains of siawort around the feet of the dresser—to distract thieves and make them turn their eyes elsewhere—and then told myself to forget the whole thing.

 

W
INTER PASSED WITH
its usual, creaking slowness, an arthritic old lady whose only delight was to inconvenience others. Just when we thought she had been routed by the playful infant spring, she regathered her strength and blanketed us all with a wet, messy coverlet of snow. It took two days to dig out; the tavern did not even open that first day. I went into the streets with the village children and played cannonballs and targets. We were all soaked and freezing when we went back into our respective houses, wet and chilled but happy. I fell into bed early that night and slept with profound exhaustion.

The week that spring truly arrived, we had a wedding in the village. Darbwin and the new barmaid spoke their vows in the tiny chapel, then invited all the residents to come celebrate at the tavern. I had had the responsibility of catering the dinner, which was to feed at least three hundred and for which I had enlisted the help of
ten other women. The celebration went on for two full days and was followed by a week's vacation as Darbwin closed the tavern and took his bride on a honeymoon journey. I spent the week at my grandmother's cottage, sharing with Milette some of the recipes I had been taught for the wedding banquet. I still was not much of a cook, but the other women in the kitchen had been willing to share all their secrets. Milette, I learned from my grandmother, had been courted by a young man who lived three villages away, and she appeared to be considering what dishes she might set forth at her own wedding.

“A boy from so far away!” I exclaimed, staring at my grandmother. She hushed me impatiently and glanced out the doorway, for she had imparted this news while she and I were inside building up the fire. Milette was in the garden, pulling weeds.

“Well, thirty miles. It's a trip he can easily make in a day.”

“But—if she marries him—have you thought what will happen? All this time, you have expected her to take your place!”

“Oh,
that's
settled,” my grandmother said comfortably. “He wants to hire on at the stableyard and be an ostler.”

“I didn't know they were hiring at the stableyard.”

My grandmother grinned wickedly. “Well, if they're not, they soon will be,” she said. “Milette has no ambition to move from this village. I've no fear of her leaving.”

And indeed, two weeks later, I learned that a new man had been hired at the stables. Milette's future appeared to be settled.

Spring brought a bumper crop of new babies. I was kept busy more nights than I could count, rushing herbal mixtures to the midwives who were hovering over panting young women in painful labor. Darbwin bought the property next to his and began building an inn to attach to the tavern. The chapel spire got knocked over in a storm and had to be rebuilt in a community effort that caused equal amounts of dissent and satisfaction.

And nine months and one week after her wedding, my sister Elisandra rode into the village looking for me.