The Queen's Secret

by Jessica Day George

  “We need to get out the motorcar to fetch them,” Finn said. “That’s why I’m looking for Dr. Hewett. He knows how to drive.”

  “So do I,” Anthea said.

  Although she had no memories of the last time she had driven. She knew she had done something with a motorcar on a moving train, but there was a large blank spot after that, and Florian refused to talk about it. It was far too terrifying, he claimed.

  Still, her former headmistress, Miss Miniver, had insisted that all the girls learn to drive, and Anthea was sure she could remember the basics. Certainly well enough to drive down the lane and out to the train station to fetch a few scientists.

  “If you’re sure,” Finn said doubtfully.

  “You can drive?” Jilly sounded jealous. “You’ve never driven me anywhere!”

  “We have horses,” Anthea pointed out. “And no motorcar.”

  “Right, true,” Jilly agreed easily. “Finn, you want to go find Dr. Hewett? I’ll show Anthea the Thing.”

  “What thing?” Anthea asked nervously.

  “You know, Papa’s motorcar. The Thing.”

  “That … that thing Caillin MacRennie fetched me from the station with?”

  Anthea stopped dead as Jilly led her toward a shed that she had never noticed before, tucked between the Big House and the cottage where Nurse Shannon and Keth lived. Anthea remembered that motorcar, if it could even be called such. It looked like an old oxcart someone had strapped an engine to.

  “Yes, that’s why we call it the Thing,” Jilly said.

  She grabbed one of the doors of the shed without waiting for Anthea to follow and hauled it open. In the dimness within Anthea could barely make out the awkward bulk of the Thing. Maybe she should wait for Dr. Hewett.

  While she hesitated, Jilly grabbed the back of the Thing and tried to drag it out of the shed. Anthea heard a grinding sound and saw the way the wheels were locked and ran to stop her cousin.

  “Stop! There’s a brake on,” she said. “Just … I’ll do it.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Will there be room for us all? How many scientists did he bring? And will they have luggage?” Anthea looked doubtfully at the two rough bench seats and the little luggage space at the back.

  “Oh, fine.” Jilly pouted as Anthea tried to find the brake release. “I’ll saddle up Caesar and—”

  “Could you please get some rooms ready?” Anthea said. She released the brake and Jilly had to jump back as the Thing rolled backward and nearly went right over her foot. “Find out from Finn how many we need and just … play hostess, all right?”

  “Fine,” Jilly agreed, but she stayed to watch Anthea try and figure out the controls of the Thing.

  Anthea was convinced, after about five minutes, that neither Uncle Andrew nor Caillin MacRennie had ever seen an actual motorcar. Everything was sort of, but not really, in the right place, and they were sort of, but not really, the right shape and size.

  The Thing didn’t purr like her uncle Daniel’s elegant new motorcar: it coughed and spluttered and gasped. Jilly moved even farther away, which Anthea thought very wise. She cranked the steering wheel, which was not a circle but shaped like the number eight lying on its side, and managed to get the Thing pointed toward the lane without smashing into the wall of the shed, which she thought rather a triumph.

  Finn and Dr. Hewett came out of the Big House just then, but Anthea had the motorcar going and feared—from the noises that it made—that if it stopped it would not start up again. She waved with what she hoped was a casual air as she passed them and then turned her attention to keeping the Thing headed down the drive. It had the tendency to veer to the right, and she didn’t want to crash into the fence.

  As she made her loud, slow way to the Wall, Anthea thought how much easier it would have been on horseback. Of course, none of the scientists could ride, and if they brought large trunks they would be impossible to tie onto a horse’s back. She began daydreaming about ways that she could hitch an oxcart to a team of horses, using straps attached to their saddles instead of a heavy ox collar.

  Beloved? It was Florian, suddenly, in her thoughts. Where are you going? What is that thing?

  Oh no. She was almost to the Wall and Florian … she hadn’t told Florian what she was doing. He had probably smelled the grease and dust of the Thing as she went by the stable, and sensed her presence moving away from him.

  I have to take this motorcar to the train station, she sent back. I have to pick up some men who cannot ride.

  Motorcar? Florian’s mind filled with panic. Her motorcar?

  Anthea realized that the only motorcar that Florian knew was her mother’s. Even if her memories of it were few, his were not. He hadn’t been sick; he had been the one who had gotten her safely away from her mother.

  No, no, she assured him as she slowed down within sight of the gates of Kalabar’s Wall. It’s Uncle Andrew’s motorcar! Caillin MacRennie used it to bring me to the farm. To you, my love! Do you remember? I will be right back. Jilly is home, and Finn.

  She had thought this would be reassuring. She was wrong.

  You are alone?

  Don’t you dare try to break out of the stable and follow me! she replied swiftly.

  She had finally brought the car to a creaking, coughing halt at the gate, and she was sure that the guard would think she was daft. She had her face screwed up and was holding up a finger for silence to make sure that she sent the right combination of words and tone to Florian. The last thing she wanted was for him to injure himself trying to bash down the door of his stall and come to her, and she told him so.

  I will be back tonight, she said firmly. And you will wait there for me. I am sure that Finn and Marius are coming to help me. Finn did not take off Marius’s tack. I am sure they are riding out again.

  A tangle of worry was still coming from Florian, but the Wall guards were now staring at her. She had a hard time talking to Florian and humans at the same time, so she just sent her horse a reassuring pulse of love and smiled charmingly at the guards.

  The chief guard recognized her, but his eyes went immediately back to the Thing. He looked far more shocked to see her driving a motorcar than riding a horse, and came over to the side of the vehicle with a worried frown.

  “Miss Thornley, is something wrong at the farm?”

  “No, no, it’s just that I have to fetch some people from the train station,” she assured him.

  “You alone, miss?”

  He was just as bad as Florian, Anthea thought. And so she used the same technique on him. “I am indeed alone,” she said. “But I know how to drive, and I am quite capable.”

  “My next question,” the guard said, “is, are you sure this thing is safe? For anyone?”

  “That’s a grand deal o’ smoke,” the other guard observed. “I’ve ne’er seen a mo’orcar smoke so much.” He hesitated. “Even this one.”

  “Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Anthea said. “May I?”

  “Well, all right, but you be careful,” the guard sergeant said.

  He and his fellow guard undid the bar and slid back the heavy iron gates that guarded the four-foot-thick gray stone wall. Anthea managed to get the car into gear again and moving, but it was a near thing. She wondered if she should drive slowly past the train station and tell their guests to just jump on. The sergeant was still shaking his head in worry as she passed.

  “He is worse than Florian,” she muttered to herself.

  Although it was certainly a nice change from the way they had come and gone through the Wall before the king had acknowledged them. It used to be that you had to use papers to get through, and there was a check of your luggage, and they didn’t dare bring the horses through at all. The guards had suspected that the animals at the Last Farm were … unusual, but had turned a blind eye to it. Anthea suspected that her uncle had bribed them. She had been confused, too, when she had first arrived last year that she hadn’t needed some sort of documentation
to travel past the Wall, but it turned out that that was because she had been born in the north. The next time she had passed through that gate, on a mission, going from the north to the south, she had had to show her Leanan birth certificate and state her business for the official record.

  But then, the last time she and Jilly had gone through, with several of the other riders, they had gotten a friendly wave from that same sergeant, and nothing more. Things were certainly very different now.

  She made it to the train station without the Thing stopping or exploding. It was past sunset, but the lamps around the station were lit and she could clearly see a group of adults standing around the edge of the platform with a large cluster of trunks. She would have to make several trips, or they would have to see if the station master could hire them an oxcart this late in the day.

  “About time,” someone said as she pulled up next to the platform and slipped on the brake without turning off the engine.

  “At least they’ve sent a woman this time,” another voice said.

  Anthea looked up at the group gathered on the platform and saw that they were all women. She blinked rapidly. Women scientists? Were they real? She barely kept herself from saying it aloud.

  “Well, a girl,” the scientist said when she got a good look at Anthea. “But at least it’s a start.”

  7

  SCIENTISTS IN THE BARN

  All the scientists were indeed women. They claimed they had been sent by “the Crown,” but in the little time that Anthea had spent with them, she heard them all mention Queen Josephine several times, but never the king. It didn’t surprise her at all. Though she had grown up thinking that the queen and her Rose Maidens’ activities mainly included tea parties and poetry readings, Anthea had since learned that the queen had a lot of quite varied interests and that her Rose Maidens’ skills ranged from being exceptional at styling hair to being versed in Coronami law to spying on the king’s ministers.

  Although that last was largely speculation on Jilly’s part. The queen had hinted about such things, but never said it outright.

  Jilly, however, was quick to point out that Anthea’s mother had been a Rose Maiden, and now she was definitely a spy. Which Anthea could hardly deny.

  The Crown, in whatever form, had charged the lady scientists to find a cure for the Dag. They were from the queen’s newly founded Science Academy for Women. Some of them had trained as nurses before the academy opened, and now they were going back to study more of the things they were passionate about, like the workings of the brain or the spreading of diseases.

  “Diseases?” Jilly asked in disbelief as she helped unpack one of the crates. She looked at the titles of the books she was putting up on a makeshift bookcase made of planks and bricks. “You like to read about diseases?”

  Anthea honestly thought that the woman, who was called Dr. Rosemary and who was the group’s leader, was going to smack Jilly. Anthea hurried to intervene, taking the last book out of Jilly’s hand and putting it on the shelf with great care.

  “What else do you need?” she asked quickly.

  “Plenty of light, water, and quiet,” Dr. Rosemary told her.

  “We can do that,” Anthea said. “Anything else?”

  She still could not understand why the women had been sent all the way beyond the Wall to do their research. Surely the building where they usually worked was better equipped than this barn? And there had been no letter of explanation for Uncle Andrew, nothing but what Finn had said about being told to escort them north, and what Dr. Rosemary said about being told to come here by the Crown.

  Dr. Rosemary looked at Anthea, and Anthea wished for the hundredth time that the Way allowed her to understand what people were thinking. The woman’s face was absolutely blank, and although Anthea was sure that Dr. Rosemary didn’t like her, she told herself that that was impossible. The woman had just met her, and Anthea had tried her best to be helpful. Why would she hate Anthea? When Anthea had picked them up at the train station, they had all seemed pleased to see a young woman driving and giving orders. But just moments later, Dr. Rosemary had gone stiff and stopped speaking to Anthea unless absolutely necessary.

  “Light, water, and quiet,” Dr. Rosemary repeated, her tone repressive.

  “You won’t be bringing any patients here, though?” Dr. Hewett asked from the doorway. He came limping into the barn. “We aren’t really equipped for more than a handful, unless you want to move your laboratory into the Big House?”

  “We don’t need patients,” Dr. Rosemary said. “We went to a hospital in the capital before we left and took plenty of samples.”

  She nodded toward another scientist, who was carefully unpacking glass jars and tubes from a wooden chest full of straw padding. The other scientist looked over, questioning, then went back to carefully setting out her equipment.

  Anthea took an involuntary step back. Samples? Samples of the sickness that was killing so many people? She saw that Dr. Rosemary was watching her and put her chin up, but she didn’t step forward and she kept her hands behind her back.

  “They’re perfectly safe as long as no one tampers with them,” Dr. Rosemary said, and she looked pointedly at Anthea as though tampering with her samples was something Anthea had been caught doing before.

  “What are they?” Anthea asked, choosing to ignore the accusatory look.

  She was still repulsed, but a sort of fascination had sunk in. How did one take samples of a cough?

  “We have blood and saliva as well as sputum from several patients, male and female, and different ages,” Dr. Rosemary said.

  “Sputum?” Anthea asked, against her better judgment.

  “Ew,” Jilly said, putting out a hand to stop the scientist.

  “Matter coughed up from the lungs of the sick person,” Dr. Rosemary said, arching an eyebrow at Jilly.

  Anthea felt her skin crawl. She wanted to take another step away from the samples but felt like Dr. Rosemary was challenging her. The woman had been challenging her since Anthea had met her at the train station, and Anthea didn’t particularly care for it. Nor did she understand the reason behind it. Dr. Rosemary seemed to take it as a personal affront that there were only two female riders in the Horse Brigade, and that they were so young besides, but that was hardly Anthea’s fault.

  Anthea had perhaps spent three hours in Dr. Rosemary’s presence that day, and she was already coming to dislike her, which made her feel rather sad. A woman scientist! Why did she have to be so … impolite? Dr. Rosemary had turned up her nose at sweet Miss Ravel’s offer of help, since she was merely a Rose Academy–trained schoolteacher and not “a real scientist.” She refused to speak to Finn, preferring to direct all her remarks to Dr. Hewett, and all her demands to Anthea and Jilly, though she didn’t seem to care for them any more than she cared for Miss Ravel.

  The girls had tried to excuse themselves from unpacking by saying that they had lessons, but Dr. Rosemary had informed them that they would learn more helping her. Anthea hardly thought that stacking books on shelves and trying not to touch anything that might be infected with a sick person’s spit was the same as their very well-regulated school lessons. But she didn’t argue.

  Jilly nudged Anthea and then cleared her throat. Anthea excused them by pointing out that it was time for them to take care of their horses. Dr. Rosemary looked sour at this, but Dr. Hewett waved them away with a smile.

  The girls hurried off before Dr. Rosemary could find something else for them to do. As soon as they were out of earshot, Jilly started to ask the questions she hadn’t been able to before.

  “Have you talked to Finn? Did he tell you?”

  “Tell me about what? I’ve been with you the whole time,” Anthea said. “Except when I was driving to and from the train station.”

  “Well, I managed to corner Finn this morning after breakfast,” Jilly said. “And it’s bad.”

  “What is?”

  Anthea stopped, and then noticed that Arthur was stal
king across the gravel in front of the Big House toward them. She crouched down and held out her hands, and the little owl walked into them. She straightened and tucked him into her jacket, where he settled down to sleep at once. The housekeeper and her girls were scrambling to get all the spare rooms aired out and Anthea reckoned that they must have cleaned her room a little too vigorously and woken up the owl.

  “The Dag, Thea,” Jilly said. “The Dag is very, very bad.” She took a deep breath. “A lot of people are dying.”

  “How many?” Anthea’s voice was suddenly hoarse.

  “They … they don’t even know. It’s spreading so rapidly, and it’s so hard to keep track now. There’s been over a hundred, though. I mean, there were when the queen asked Finn to bring her scientists here. So I would guess there’s been a lot more.”

  “So it really was the queen? And not the king?” Anthea grimaced as they stepped into the dimness of the stable. “All these years of revering the Crown,” she muttered. “It’s not the Crown, it’s—”

  Jilly stopped her outside Bluebell’s stall with a hand on her arm.

  “Now, you know that I don’t have any particularly fond feelings toward the king, or the Crown,” she said. “So when I say I think he’s trying, you know it means something.”

  “You think he’s trying?” Anthea unlatched Bluebell’s stall and set Arthur on the mare’s hanging net of hay. “Trying to do what, though?”

  “He’s … well. According to Finn,” Jilly said, “he’s …”

  “He hasn’t denounced us yet,” Finn said grimly, coming out of another stall, leading Marius. “Despite the fact that everyone blames the horses for the Dag.”

  Beloved, are you all right? Florian stuck his head over the door of his stall, anxious at the burst of emotion that had just come from her.

  They speak of death, Bluebell told him. Is this war?

  The smells from the foals’ barn are worrisome, Leonidas said. It smells like the place where Domitian is herd stallion now.

  Anthea wasn’t sure what he meant. Unless he wasn’t used to so many women being around. But he had never had a problem with it before.