The Battle for the Castle (10 page)

“That's Calendar's cat,” William said. “The one who was the dragon.”

“Yes. He keeps me company,” Dick said. “The poor thing thinks I've gone quite mad this morning.”

“Well, you do seem to have regained some of your old spirit, sir,” said William. He hunkered down next to the cat and they stared at each other for a moment. “Same eyes,” William said at last. “I remember them from when I faced him as the dragon.”

“He's getting old now but he's still a good ratter. He keeps the castle free of the vermin,” Dick said as he sat down to his breakfast. “Will you join me?”

“I've already eaten,” William said. “But I'll sit with you.”

Gudrin had settled herself on the stone bench near the window. Her head was bent over a piece of embroidery but William felt her eyes on him.

“I find I have quite an appetite this morning,” Dick said. “ 'Tis good to get the blood moving a bit, I expect. I told Gudrin I wished to speak to you.”

“Yes,” William said.

“Although we have nothing to fear, we must be prepared at all times. I have spoken to the guards, but you and Jason and I should check on them regularly to be sure they have secured the watch. They have a tendency to slacken off when Sir Simon's away.”

“Yes, sir.” William glanced at Gudrin, who flashed
an unexpected smile at him. Her uncle's good mood must have lifted her own. Dick went on about checking the armory and keeping the horses exercised and William kept nodding and agreeing, all the while wondering how he could get Gudrin to hang out with him for the day.

“About the horses, sir,” he said suddenly.

“Yes?”

“Gudrin and I could exercise two of them. She could give me some riding instruction at the same time. That would be useful, I think.”

“Splendid idea, my boy,” Dick said, clapping him on the back.

“I have some work to finish here, Uncle,” Gudrin said.

“She always has work to do. Out roaming in the fields like a wild thing and then studying over those books night and day. I should never have allowed Deegan to teach you to read, my girl,” Dick said.

Gudrin did not lift her head.

“You will meet young William in the stables this afternoon, won't you?”

“If you insist, Uncle.”

“After the noon meal?” William asked.

“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. But she did not sound totally disappointed.

They made a deal. She would teach him how to ride a horse, and in the evenings when nobody was watching, he would teach her how to ride his bike. The first afternoon, she made him saddle her horse as well as his. She was a tough taskmaster.

“Poke him in the belly before you cinch up,” she said. “Sorrel likes to fill up with air, and before you know it, the saddle's slipped and you're hanging upside down.”

They rode down the castle path, and as soon as they were over the crest of the first hill, she dismounted, tied up her thick skirts, and swung her leg over the saddle.

“Alan, that red-faced guard on watch today, is a terrible tattletale. He tells my uncle when I do something unseemly. It is unseemly for a girl to straddle a horse,” she scoffed. “No use upsetting Uncle Dick any more.”

“He seems different this morning.”

“Perhaps he has been too long under Sir Simon's thumb,” she said. “I think he's happy to be in charge of the castle. You know, a lot of map snapping and plan making and busy preparations.” She grinned as she whipped Sorrel into a full gallop. “Come on now,” she called back over her shoulder. “No time for idle chatter.”

Without any warning, William's horse, a chestnut mare named Mandrake, followed suit. William
grabbed the mane and hung on for dear life until Gudrin reined in and shouted instructions to him from alongside. “Squeeze your knees. Lean forward. Tighten up on your reins.”

She was just as hard on herself. Every evening after supper, William took her out to a clearing behind the castle to practice on the bike. She didn't seem to have any natural sense of balance, and with her unwieldy skirts constantly coming undone and getting tangled in the pedals, ten wobbly yards were her limit. But she stuck with it. William was the one who called off the sessions because of darkness.

Jason knew that William was learning how to ride a horse but he didn't seem jealous. He was too involved in setting up Tolliver's training schedule and teaching him basic bike maintenance. Tolliver loved the attention.

“I've been timing him with the stopwatch,” Jason said one night when he and William were lying on their pallets in the darkness. “He's pretty good for a little kid. We should take him back with us and enter him in a few races.”

“No way.”

“Just kidding. But he seems to love the sport as much as I do.”

“Or else he's just stubborn,” William said. “Like his cousin.”

“Why does she keep her bike riding such a secret?”

“She says she has to or Dick will put a stop to it. Girls aren't allowed to do anything in this day and age. She doesn't even know how to swim. And she's probably the only girl in the whole kingdom who knows how to read and write.”

William and Gudrin fell into an easy way of being together. He cheered the first time she careened around the castle on the bike without taking her feet from the pedals. In the mornings, they took longer and longer rides. He brought along his binoculars and showed her how to use them and she pointed out the birds to him and named them.

“How do you know their names?” he asked.

“My grandmother taught me,” she said.

“Did she tell you to pick all those plants too?”

“Yes,” said Gudrin. “She taught me about herbs and their healing powers. I have already cured a young boy of his toothache and two women of boils on their backs. I know how to make poultices, and that bitter root cures dropsy and scrofulous disorders and—”

“Enough,” said William, putting up his hands. “I believe you.”

“Most boys aren't interested,” she said with a note of contempt in her voice.

“Listen, my mother's a doctor too,” he said. “I hear about this stuff all the time.”

“You've found your seat,” she said one morning as they pulled up to open a gate. She was looking into the distance the way she did when she said something nice.

“What does that mean?”

“You and the horse move as if you are one.”

“Yes,” he said. “That's just the way it feels.”

“Does it ever happen with the bicycle?”

William leaned over to undo the gate and backed Mandrake away to let her through. “You'll have to ask Jason that. It never happened to me with the bicycle. Only with gymnastics.”

“Gymnastics?”

“Tumbling, I mean.”

“Oh yes. I remember. I saw you following Deegan around the courtyard.”

Did she think he was good? he wondered, but he didn't dare ask. He kicked the gate closed with his foot and she fastened it. “Come on,” she called as she dug her heels into Sorrel. “Today we'll go all the way to the harbor and back.”

It was a wild and wonderful ride. The sun lay warm on William's shoulders and the wind streamed through his hair and the sea of blue cornflowers stretched away as far as the eye could see. He urged Mandrake up next
to Sorrel, and the two horses matched stride. Gudrin glanced over at him, then threw her head back and laughed wildly in a way he had never seen her do before. For the first time, she looked carefree and playful but also a little crazy, and he was reminded of Calendar and the look in her eye the day she turned Alastor to lead. He was scared suddenly at how far he had come from home. He felt as if he were riding away from everything that he knew before, from everything that was familiar. His parents and the attic and school and gymnastics, they all felt like some hazy dream that he had dreamed in another life and that he might never be able to dream again.

Gudrin reined in above the small curve in the shoreline that she called the harbor. They slid off their horses and led them down to the little strip of beach where the fishermen pulled up their dories to sort the day's catch.

All the boats had put to sea except for one. An old man sat on its gunwale mending his nets.

“Good day to you, sir,” said Gudrin.

“And to you, miss,” he said without looking up. There was a surly tone to his voice. “If the day is good to you, then you would do well to move away from this place.”

“The day is not good for you, sir?” William asked.

“Lady Luck has turned against me. My nets rip, the
boat leaks. It's been that way for some days now. Ever since that death ship floated in on the tide.”

Gudrin and William looked at each other.

“But that was some time ago,” William said quickly. “Sir Simon had it towed away.”

“Yes, well, my good boy, he did not tow it far enough. It's come back. Two nights ago. On the high tide.”

William scanned the horizon.

“It's down east a league or two and it's getting closer every day. The tide that brought it in will not take it out again. And the ship is not beached. It floats in the deepest water close into shore. Just around there,” he muttered with a nod over his shoulder. “It's from the headlands you see it. Ever since the nasty thing came back, the nets come up empty. We are fishing much farther out to sea than we usually do but it does no good. And some of the men never come back at all. I do believe the very ocean has been poisoned.”

Gudrin led William back the way they had come and then took a left through a thick stand of gorse bushes. From there they followed the steep rocky path that climbed the headlands.

“You brought the binoculars?” Gudrin called over her shoulder as she reached the top of the rise.

He patted his belt pack.

“Better get them out,” she said, pointing straight down. “There it is. In the lee of the shore.”

At first glance, the ship looked like any other. It was a one-masted vessel with what had once been a square sail and high turreted edges at the bow and stern.

But this ship had an unnatural look about it. The breeze and the current seemed to have no effect on it at all. The sail hung in long dirty strips like hair ribbons, and the rudder flapped idly back and forth on its own irregular schedule. The sea did not lift this vessel or shift its position in any way.

“Give me the binoculars,” Gudrin said, and he handed them to her without even looking through them first. He wasn't sure he wanted to see what was down there.

Gudrin sat still for such a long time that Sorrel put his head down for a snack. He curled his long lips around some tufts of brown grass and ripped them from their roots. Mandrake snorted and blew, searching for thistles. Only Gudrin's head moved as she slowly scanned the decks of the ship from bow to stern and back again.

Finally William couldn't stand it anymore. “What is it? What do you see?”

“Bones,” she said without lowering the glasses. “Some connected, some just scattered around. And odd bits of clothing and debris.”

“There were bones and garbage in the river that day. Are you sure?”

“The skeleton ship. See for yourself,” she muttered and handed over the binoculars. “Come to ravage / Come to kill / Bones will crack / Blood will spill.” At the lilting chant of her voice, Mandrake stirred uneasily and briefly lifted her head to look at the girl.

The binoculars were lightweight, small enough to fit in William's belt pack, so the magnification wasn't particularly strong. But he could see enough. Sometimes the bones of the sailor were laid out in perfect formation as if the man had fallen in his tracks and his flesh and organs had been sucked away in one single instant, leaving the skeleton undisturbed. But in other places on the deck, William could see a skull here, a foot there, as if whatever had stripped the meat away had tossed the bones aside like so many pieces of trash.

He yanked the binoculars from his eyes. For a minute he thought that he might be sick, but he had never thrown up and he wasn't going to do it now in front of a girl. He forced himself to breathe deeply, to the diaphragm, as Coach would say, once, twice, another time. The feeling of nausea passed and he busied himself with putting the binoculars away. Mandrake was up to her neck in a gorse bush, and with a gentle kick and a tug on the reins, he backed her out. Still Gudrin said nothing. She sat on Sorrel and stared down at that ship as if she had nowhere else to go, nothing
else to think about, as if by sheer force of will she could make the ship disappear.