The Safe-Keeper's Secret (2 page)

“My sister is Safe-Keeper here. I am Safe-Keeper in Lowford, thirty miles over that hill.”

He stepped forward again, instantly reassured. Any Safe-Keeper was to be trusted, no matter where he or she could be found. “Where is your sister? I must speak with her.”

She gave him the tiniest of smiles. “My sister cannot come to the door now. She is in labor and will soon be delivered of a child.”

Now he backed off again, turning away as if to shield the package in his arms from anyone else's sight. “Is she—is there a midwife in the house? Another woman from the town to aid you?”

The young woman shook her head. “No. Just my sister and me. I have delivered plenty of babies in Lowford. I know what to do.”

He stood there a moment longer, undecided, but it was clear from the set of his shoulders that he was weary almost beyond imagining. “I can go no farther,” he said at last, seeming to speak to himself more than the woman at the door. “I have ridden as long and as hard as I can. I must leave my secret with you.”

Just then there was a wail from inside the house, the long, indignant moan of a woman who was not enjoying her circumstances. “Quickly, then,” the woman said. “I must go to her.”

With one abrupt movement, the man thrust his bundle through the open door. “Take the baby,” he said baldly. “The child is not safe in anyone else's hands.”

With a soft exclamation of surprise, the woman placed her candle on a nearby table and accepted the infant into her arms. “But whose child is this?” she murmured, looking down into the small sleeping face and beginning to rock slowly back and forth on the balls of her feet.

“I will whisper the name into your ear,” the man said, coming near enough to do just that. “It is a secret.”

She nodded, and he brought his mouth so close to her face he might have been kissing her on the cheek. She listened, nodded again, and looked him directly in the eyes as he straightened up and drew back.

“I will tell my sister,” she said.

“And no one else,” he said.

“And no one else,” she repeated.

“Will she keep the baby? Will you?”

“Or we will find a home that is safe,” she said gently. “Your secret is ours to keep now.”

“Then I must go back,” he said.

There was another cry from the back of the house, this one a little sharper. But the young woman lingered at the doorway, her worried gaze on her visitor. “What will become of you, when you return to the city and this one is missing?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I know what I must do next. Have no fear for me.”

A pitiful cry came from the back room. “Angeline! Where have you gone?”

“Who are you?” she asked. “I will tell no one. Just so I know.”

For the first time since she had opened the door to him, he smiled, a rather grim expression. “I am the Safe-Keeper to the king,” he said.

“Angeline!”

“Safe passage home,” she said.

“My deepest thanks,” he replied. Finally relieved of his burden, he lost some of his desperation and acquired a certain courtly air. He gave her a deep, flourishing bow, and kissed his fingers to her as he swept upright.

“When should the secret be told?” she asked.

“You will know,” he said. “But it will not be soon.”

“Angeline! I need you!”

“Good-bye, then,” she said.

“Good-bye,” he said. Turning with a swirl of his cloak, he headed back to his horse. By the time he had led the tired animal through the gate and climbed back into the saddle, the door to the cottage was already closed. There was no sign of either woman or baby.

In the morning, Elminstra was the first one to come knocking on the Safe-Keeper's door. She had a loaf of fresh-baked bread in one hand and a bucket of milk in the other, for she was sure Angeline had had no time to be thinking of food, and Damiana was in no condition.

“Hello?” she called, pushing the door open when no one responded to her knock. She was the nearest neighbor, living a mere quarter mile down the road, and she and Damiana quite freely walked into each other's houses. “Angeline? Damiana? Has the baby come?”

Just as Elminstra stepped into the big main room, Angeline came in from the kitchen, cradling a child in each arm. “In fact, two babies have come,” Angeline said, smiling.

With a little shriek, Elminstra dropped both her loaf and her bucket to the floor. “Twins! I would swear she was not big enough to be carrying two—are they early? Are they healthy? Let me see them, the precious little ones—”

“Not twins,” Angeline said, handing one of the children to the neighbor. Elminstra was a grandmother herself, though she looked more of an age to be a mother, and she had handled more babies in her time than Angeline and her sister put together. “This little girl was born around three in the morning. But this young man”—and she glanced down into the face
of the baby she had kept in her arms—“he arrived a few hours earlier when a strange rider brought him to our door.”

Elminstra, who had begun cooing into the blankets she held, looked up sharply at this statement. “So I didn't dream it!” she exclaimed. “I thought I heard a horse go by late last night, very fast. It was someone coming here?”

Angeline nodded. “And leaving a package behind.”

The baby girl made a sound halfway between a whimper and a cough, and Elminstra began to jiggle her absently. “But—who was he? And whose child did he bring to you?”

Angeline merely smiled, and Elminstra nodded. Being neighbor to a Safe-Keeper for so long had taught her not to expect answers to all her questions. Not that many of those answers would surprise her. She was a healer and herbalist—some called her a witch—and people often came to her for medicines and remedies that some other woman might find shocking.

“Will she keep this baby, then? Or will you?” Elminstra asked.

“I was willing to take him back to Lowford, but Damiana is determined to keep him,” Angeline said. “She says it's easier for one person to raise two babies than for two people to raise one apiece, though I'm not so sure that's true. But she thinks these two will be company for each other as they grow older.”

“Company for each other, and enemies with each other, and mischief-makers who incite each other to even greater mischief,” Elminstra said with feeling. “She could be right! But on the other hand, it is not such an easy thing to raise a child all by yourself—and to raise two children”—Elminstra shook her head. “I don't suppose,” she added delicately, “this makes her any more interested in contacting her daughter's father and seeing if he would be willing to help her out?”

Angeline grinned. “No, nor has it made her any more interested in divulging the identity of her daughter's father.”

Elminstra sighed and continued bouncing the baby in her arms. “There is some talk about Damiana already, you know, choosing to have a child all on her own and telling no one who the father is. Oh, everyone loves her, of course—”

“Everyone loves their Safe-Keeper,” Angeline interrupted. “She knows too many secrets for them
not
to love her.”

“But now with
two
children in the house—well, it will cause even more talk.”

Angeline shrugged and patted the child's back. “Such things don't bother Damiana. I think she'll raise both children and she'll be happy and they'll be happy, and there won't be any more talk.”

“Until the secret about the child's parentage comes out,” Elminstra said.

Angeline laughed. “Which one?”

Elminstra was still in the Safe-Keeper's house when the next visitor came calling, and the next, and the next. To each of them, Angeline told the same story, of the boy delivered to the house at midnight and the girl delivered to the bed three hours later. Everyone was agog with curiosity—but, like Elminstra, they knew the futility of questioning a Safe-Keeper. Angeline would reveal no secrets now, and Damiana would reveal no secrets later. In fact, Damiana appeared likely to stay in her bed sleeping the entire day through, waking up only enough to nurse both infants whenever they started to wail.

“You'll need milk,” Elminstra said briskly. “She won't have enough for both of them. I'll bring you a bucket every morning.”

“How long are you staying?” Lacey asked Angeline. She was seamstress in Tambleham and friendly with everybody. “I imagine they'll be wanting you back in Lowford very soon. I can come once a day to help with dinner.”

Other women chimed in with similar offers, and Angeline accepted them all on behalf of her sister. Damiana was the kind who could manage entirely on her own; but Damiana also had the ability to accept aid with great grace and sweetness. It was one of the reasons everyone in Tambleham liked her so much. That and her ready smile and her sweet face and her gift for silence. She was just the sort of person you would want to have for your friend, no matter what you needed a friend for.

It was past lunchtime, and Elminstra had taken over the kitchen to prepare a meal for everyone, when running footsteps could be heard coming up the walk. All the women glanced at each other—there were eight of them by now, enjoying the chance to gossip and in no mood to go back to their own uninteresting chores when there were babies to be played with—and wondered aloud who might be approaching in such a hurry.

It was Dirk, the tavern-keeper's son, a promising and very large young man of about eighteen. “Have you heard?” he demanded, bursting into the house with all the vigor of youth having an exciting story to tell. “They've found a dead man on the road, not ten miles south of town.”

All the women cried out in worry and alarm. “Who is it?” “No one from Tambleham, I hope!” “What happened? Bandits?” “Oh, please tell me the poor man simply fell from his horse.”

“What happened?” Angeline asked, raising her voice enough to be heard over all the other women. Dirk turned in her direction.

“A man. A stranger. He was dressed in fine clothes and wearing a black cloak lined with red silk,” the boy said. “His horse was tied to the side of the road, and there were twenty gold pieces in one of his saddlebags. Jewels on his fingers, expensive leather shoes on his feet.”

The women exchanged glances. “He was not killed for his possessions, then,” Angeline said.

“But—a rich man like that—what was he doing alone on the road—here by Tambleham?” Elminstra said. “And who would have had reason to kill him if not to rob him?”

Dirk was shaking his head. “My father says that no one killed him,” he said. “My father says he put poison in a cup and drank it down. There was a silver goblet lying on the ground not three feet from his hand, and my father said the smell of wine was tainted.”

“But then—but who—” one of the neighbor women said.

But Elminstra was staring at Angeline, who was taking a sip from her own cup. “A rich man riding alone at night a few miles outside our village,” the witch said slowly. “Could this have been the man who came to visit you last night, leaving a baby at your sister's door?”

“I suppose it could be,” Angeline said.

“But why would he do such a thing?” Lacey demanded. “If he knew he had left the child in safe hands, why would he then take his own life?”

Angeline said nothing, but Elminstra was still puzzling it out. “Because he wanted no one to find out where he had taken the child,” she guessed. “He wanted no one to question him so ruthlessly that he might accidentally reveal where the child had gone.”

“But what child would be so special that a man would have to give his life to protect it?” Dirk demanded.

And then suddenly, everyone in the room fell silent as they all stared at Angeline.

“The man was on his way back to Wodenderry,” said Dirk slowly. “The royal city.”

“Do we have a king's bastard in our village?” Elminstra asked in a very faint voice.

Just then, one of the babies began a slow, mournful howling from the other room. Angeline smiled at them all, giving away no secrets. “Royal
bastard or village bastard, someone is calling me,” she said cheerfully. “Let me go see what my niece and nephew want.”

And she disappeared into the room where her sister lay, tending to two infants. Dirk and the women were left staring at each other, their faces pale and their hearts scampering madly in their chests. What a tale to be told tonight over garden fences and barroom tables! What magic had visited their village last night—indeed, come to live with them, nestled into the corners and alleys of their town! A king's bastard! Who would have believed it? Everyone would know by nightfall. This was a Safe-Keeper's house, of course, but this was surely one secret that would not be kept.

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two