The Queen's Secret

by Jessica Day George

  “The king was gone already,” Finn said, shaking his head. He located another book and opened it, but looked at it himself. “He took the herd stallion—or the head herd stallion, rather, because there was more than one herd—and went into hiding.”

  “He went into hiding?” Anthea couldn’t keep the scorn from her voice.

  Kings were supposed to be there for their people. They were supposed to lead. The Coronami Crown had always …

  Anthea let that thought trail away. She knew very well, now, that kings weren’t always good and virtuous, and that the Coronami Crown was certainly not the model of all that was noble and good, as she had been taught before going to live at Last Farm. It made sense that maybe, just maybe, some of the Leanan kings hadn’t always done the bravest, most noble thing.

  Of course, if he had stayed in the south and tried to drive the Coronami out, Finn wouldn’t be here.

  “Who … kept all this?” Anthea asked. “What is this place?”

  “We call ourselves the Last Farm,” Finn said. “And, well, this is the Last Village. They’ve been tucked away here for centuries!”

  “I know the queen said that in her letter, that they were all Leanan, but …” Anthea shook her head in disbelief. “It’s so … we’re so far south! Is the whole village really full of Leanans?”

  “Well, the queen is from here, and the queen is Leanan,” Finn said. He shrugged.

  “A lot of people are part Leanan,” Anthea argued. “It makes sense that—”

  But now Finn was shaking his head.

  “She’s full-blooded Leanan, like I am,” he said. “In her letter she also told me that I needed to come here myself because I would find things that I needed as much as the people needed medicine.”

  “What?”

  “There was a bit that I was supposed to keep to myself,” Finn said, turning red. “That was all of it, though, I swear!”

  Anthea fought down another stab of jealousy.

  “But how could the king … why would he marry someone from an all-Leanan village? He doesn’t like us!”

  They both stopped for a moment. A year ago, Anthea hadn’t even known that she was part Leanan. Eight months ago, she never would have called the Leanans “us.” But neither of them commented on this change.

  “He didn’t know,” Finn said. “She said in the letter she could never tell him.”

  “True, but I still can’t believe he didn’t … doesn’t know where his wife is from,” Anthea said.

  “But it’s true, he doesn’t,” said another voice.

  Anthea spun around, hand to her pistol again. She relaxed slightly when she saw that it was an elderly man in a tweed jacket, smiling kindly at her from the doorway of the library. His white hair was curly and his blue eyes twinkled.

  “Are you …? Do you know …?” she stammered.

  “Oh, aye,” he said, coming into the room. “I’m Josephine’s uncle.”

  Anthea sent a quick message to Florian to stand down. Her constant jumping and grabbing at her gun had put him on edge, and he was currently hovering near the corner of the wall that was closest to the house. She was worried that he would jump the wall and come barging into the house itself.

  I have just met the uncle of Josephine, Beloved of Holly, Anthea told him.

  A good uncle or a bad uncle? Florian fretted. His experience with her uncle Daniel had taught him to be cautious of uncles.

  He has her kind eyes! she assured him.

  That seemed to settle Florian, and then she realized that the queen’s uncle was watching her patiently. When her gaze focused on him again, he nodded.

  “Talking to your horses?”

  “Just … just the one,” she said.

  “You’re the full-blooded Leanan girl,” he said. “The one who rides stallions?”

  “I’m not full-blooded … but yes, I have a stallion,” Anthea said uncertainly. “His name is Florian.”

  It was a good thing that Leonidas couldn’t hear her. She was sure he would be offended to think that he didn’t count as one of “her” stallions. But still, despite his kind eyes, she didn’t think this man needed to know all the details about her and her horses, queen’s uncle or not. After all, she didn’t even know his name.

  “I’m the MagTaran,” the man said.

  “The … MagTaran?”

  Finn’s last name was magTaran, and so was the queen’s. Anthea was confused.

  “So, is everyone in this village a magTaran?” she asked.

  “Many of them are,” the MagTaran said. “My mother was, and I am actually a MacRennie.”

  “Like Caillin MacRennie,” Finn said, nudging Anthea as though she could have missed that connection.

  But Anthea was just blinking at the old man. “So, wait, you’re …”

  “The MagTaran is a title,” the man explained. “Rather like a lord mayor. The magTaran family founded the village, and I’m the oldest member of the family, so I’m the MagTaran.”

  “I just … there’s so much I don’t understand,” Anthea said helplessly.

  She sank back on the chair behind her, and a book fell off onto the floor. She looked down at it. It was a collection of Leanan ballads.

  “Jilly would love that,” Anthea said, almost absently.

  “She is welcome to come and look at it,” the MagTaran said, sitting across the table from her. “But it cannot leave this house. Part of my job is to collect, and protect, the knowledge of our people. This is all that is left, of our entire nation.” He gestured around the library.

  “But how could you all be here for so long, and—” Anthea began.

  She didn’t know how to end that sentence, though. How could they be here for so long without everyone marrying their cousins, which she knew from Miss Miniver was not a good idea? How could they be here for so long without everyone knowing they were here? Without King Gareth knowing where his own wife was from?

  Once again, the MagTaran seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. Afterward she would begin to wonder, uneasily, if he had the Way, but with people.

  “We have sent many of our people out, over the years,” he said sadly. “We had to. For work. For marriage. Sometimes they found husbands and wives who wanted to come back with them. Sometimes they did not.” He sighed heavily. “And sometimes we told them never to come back.”

  “You mean, they had to be exiled?”

  “For the good of the people, yes,” he said, looking at her squarely. “Like my niece. My Josie.”

  “What?”

  “We sent her away,” the MagTaran said. “On purpose. We wanted to have a Rose Maiden, someone placed near the Crown, who could perhaps whisper in the royal ears and tell the world of our village. Smooth the way for us to come out of the shadows. Find out if the rumors about horses surviving were true.”

  “The queen was sent away when she was even younger than we are,” Finn burst out, unable to contain the things he had learned any longer. Anthea couldn’t blame him.

  “We knew she could make it into the inner circles of the old queen,” the MagTaran said. “We just never expected she would rise so high.” He still sounded sad.

  “Aren’t you pleased for her? Or proud of her?” Anthea asked.

  “Of course! Of course I am,” he said. “But you realize that she has never been able to come back? The king himself, her own husband, thinks she’s from Brambleton.”

  “But she told me she was from a tiny village when I first met her,” Anthea protested. “Oh. Oh.”

  The queen had never said the name of the village. The queen had never lied; she just hadn’t told the whole truth.

  “Her own husband doesn’t know?” Anthea almost whispered it.

  The MagTaran shook his head. Anthea felt her eyes prickle. How lonely that must be! She had often wondered about the queen. She was such a bright, happy person, with her Rose Maidens and her four daughters gathered around her always. But so often now she was at Bell Hyde, away from Travert
ine. And the king.

  “Poor Josephine,” Anthea murmured. “I mean, Her Majesty,” she said, seeing their eyes on her. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Josephine. Poor Josephine.” She blinked her eyes rapidly.

  “Precisely,” the queen’s uncle said warmly. “We thought, as a mere Rose Maiden, perhaps the wife of someone highly placed, she might be able to open up channels between us and the rest of Coronam. But her life became even more restricted.” His smile broadened. “Until you and your cousin showed up on her doorstep with a herd of horses.”

  “The king was so angry,” Anthea whispered.

  “But not at Josephine,” the MagTaran assured her. “If he finds out the secrets she has kept, like this house and its library, he will be angry at her. And that is not good for a woman in her position.” His face tightened as he said it, and the corners of his mouth turned down.

  “What do you mean? What position?” Anthea looked from him to Finn.

  “They have four daughters,” Finn reminded her. “And no son.”

  “But he can’t do anything about that,” Anthea said. “And neither can she.”

  “He can put her aside and take a new queen,” the MagTaran said. “And there has apparently been some talk of that, according to one of our people.”

  “He would never do that!” Anthea gasped.

  Putting aside a spouse was almost unheard-of in Coronam. Anthea had heard of women leaving their husbands because they committed some terrible crime, but to get rid of your wife just because you wanted a son? Surely that couldn’t happen … not to a queen! The scandal would be far too great.

  “Who could have told you this, though?” Finn said. “I thought you had almost no contact with the outside?”

  “That is true, we mostly do what little outside dealings we have with the nearby villages,” the MagTaran said. “Post comes once a month, which is about how often any of us leaves to go to market.”

  Anthea relaxed. They were far from the reaches of actual court news. This was surely just nervous speculation on the MagTaran’s part.

  “But we do have a spy,” he went on. “And she does not think Josie will still be queen next year.”

  17

  THE LAST MANOR

  Anthea walked slowly through the manor. It was a strange place. It reminded her very much of the Big House at Last Farm. Although it was several stories tall, there was a low, wide quality to all the rooms and corridors, different from the high but narrow look of most Coronami houses. It wasn’t oppressive, though, and the windows were also wide, with clear panes that let in plenty of light, and there were plenty of lamps.

  But the manor had an odd feel because it was somewhere between a house and a museum. Some rooms, like the library, were set up to be used, but others were crammed with things that had been arranged as best they could be in the limited space. The sitting room, for instance, had four long sofas wedged into it, among the small tables and high-backed chairs, and none of them matched. There were knickknacks on every surface, too: balls carved of solid wood or stone, some of them painted with scenes of gardens or fields, sitting in low wooden holders to keep them from rolling away. There were horseshoes that had been gilded or painted or were carved of wood, and garlands made of intricately braided hair from horses’ tails draped across mantels.

  “We thought the horses were dead,” the MagTaran said, strolling along behind her. “When Josie got me the message, a few months ago, I couldn’t believe it. All my life, all my father’s and grandfather’s lives, we collected whatever artifacts we could.”

  He waved a hand at the walls of the corridor they were walking along. Portraits were hung from the ceiling down to the floor, a mixture of styles, the frames practically touching, and none of the people looking remotely related. There were little plaques on the frames with the name of the sitter and the artist, though many of them were blank or had a question mark after the name.

  “But we thought we’d never see a horse in the flesh. Many of our people were starting to think they never existed at all, that they were fabulous creatures like dragons. Or that we once worshipped them, instead of working with them.”

  “I would think more people would come to see them, then,” Anthea said. She had had no message from Florian that he had seen another person, and there was no challenge from Constantine.

  “Too many are ill,” the MagTaran said heavily. “The rest are ordered to stay at home at all costs. I have distributed the medicine, and the instructions for inoculating and taking samples, but …” He sighed. “It is so strange. We had heard only the vaguest rumors of illness, keeping to ourselves as we are. There have been only a handful of sick in the nearby villages, but still we cut off contact with them.

  “And then suddenly one day, a dozen were sick.”

  They stopped and peered into one of the bedrooms. It was the one Finn had slept in, the bed was a mess, his saddlebags were on the floor, and Anthea blushed to see some anonymous bit of boy underclothing straggling across the floor. There were three washbasins in the room, she noticed when she quickly raised her eyes, and four water pitchers. They moved along.

  “You can stay here,” the MagTaran told her.

  They opened the door to another bedroom. This one had a long, low padded bench running along the end of the bed, and two huge upholstered chairs crowded against the window. The bed was also enormous, bare except for the mattress, and there was a large chest between it and the far wall.

  “The linens are in that chest,” the MagTaran said. “It might be a bit tricky getting the lid up to reach them,” he added ruefully.

  “Thank you, but I think first I had better ride out of the village and see if my Florian can’t get a message to my cousin and her horses,” Anthea said, her eyes longingly on the bed. The mattress was very thick, and there was an enormous pile of pillows.

  “That is so strange,” the MagTaran said. “We never knew the stones were anything special. Of course, we never knew if the Way was real or not, either, until Josie. And now Prince Finn, and you.”

  It was odd to hear Finn called a prince. In the back of her head, Anthea was always aware that he was a king, but no one ever addressed him as such. At least, no humans did. But something else bothered her more.

  “So Josie—Queen Josephine—has never come here with her horses?”

  “Oh, naturally not,” the MagTaran said. “She hasn’t been back since she left us as a wee girl! Even getting a letter here directly is difficult. She has to send it through a network of those who have moved out of the village. Some of them keep in touch with family, and will pass on a letter that cannot be sent through the post.”

  “Do a lot of people who leave come back?” Anthea asked. “I mean, to stay?”

  They were continuing down the corridor and he was showing her other bedrooms. They were all tidy, and unlived in. Someone obviously dusted and swept regularly, though the MagTaran insisted that no one lived here.

  “It’s rare,” he said sadly. “One of the few who have ever come back is our great lady,” he said, pointing to a room at the end of the corridor. “She’s the one who has brought many of the things here, especially the books.”

  “Your … great lady?”

  Something cold slithered down Anthea’s spine.

  “Her mother left, very young. She had wandering ways,” the MagTaran said with faint distaste. “When her daughter came back to us, a fine lady, highly placed among the Coronami, well, we were very shocked. But also very grateful. She always brings us lost things: books, paintings, bits of information.” He gestured around the hallway. “The collection in the manor has doubled, if not tripled, thanks to her.”

  “Did she know about Last Farm?” Anthea kept her voice carefully neutral.

  “She would have told us if she did,” the MagTaran said. “I cannot wait for her to return; she will be so delighted! She has traveled a great deal, but never beyond the Wall. A woman in her position cannot, you know. Not without the proper reas
ons, or a chaperone.” He shook his head at Anthea as though she should know this.

  Anthea put one hand on the doorknob of the room. The MagTaran sucked in a breath.

  “That’s the lady’s room,” he chided her. “It would be rude to disturb it.”

  “I—I think I—I have to see,” Anthea stammered. “I think … I know her?”

  Anthea’s heart was hammering. She was praying rapidly and silently that she didn’t know their great lady. She twisted the doorknob. It was locked.

  “Only the lady has a key,” the MagTaran said. “And it’s quite impossible that you would know her: as I said, she has never been north of the Wall.”

  “Oh, of course,” Anthea said. She turned away, putting her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I’m very sorry.

  “But would you tell me: What is her name?”

  “Lady Vivian,” he said at once, in reverent tones.

  Anthea’s racing heart began to slow. The cold sweat stopped trickling down her back.

  “Ah,” Anthea said. “You’re right. I don’t know her.”

  “She could return at any time,” the MagTaran assured her. “I would like you to meet her. And I know she will be thrilled to meet you and your horses!”

  Anthea followed him downstairs again, declining his offers to wash, to rest, to have help getting her room ready. She waved a hand through the door at Finn, but wasn’t sure he saw, he was so intent on the book he was reading.

  “I must tell my cousin what’s happening,” Anthea said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  She hurried down to the enclosure and climbed the wall. Florian came to meet her, and she stood atop the wall to more easily slide onto his back.

  Beloved?

  Something is wrong, my love, Anthea told him.

  The Woman Who Smells of Dying Roses?

  That was Florian’s name for her mother. He could see it in her mind, her fear that it was her mother whose room was at the end of the corridor. But Lady Vivian? And why would her mother gather these things, the Leanan books and furniture, and bring them to a safe place? No, it was irrational. This couldn’t be her mother.