The Book of Forbidden Wisdom

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  Jesse laughed as he got off his horse. He came and knelt at Niamh’s feet, and she gave him the parental blessing. Then he got up and gave her an informal embrace that lifted her off her feet.

  “Well,” said Niamh to Jesse after he put her down. “Have you found anything worth seeking?”

  Jesse looked at Silky, and then at his mother, and then back at Silky.

  I didn’t like it.

  When Niamh saw Trey, her smile faded. She started to lift a hand as if to touch his face, but he flinched.

  “I’m sorry, Trey,” she said. She lowered her arm and began speaking with Jesse. It was as if she had given Trey a shield.

  Niamh understood pain better than anyone I have ever met.

  The second rider was heavily veiled. She sat her small horse awkwardly, as if she wasn’t comfortable, and she was holding the reins in such a way that the horse must have wondered what she wanted of it.

  Her gauzy crimson veil fell to her stirrup and was embroidered with pearls and small glinting bits of mirror. She had made some concessions to practicality by wearing pants rather than a dress, but the purple silk, just visible when she moved, was not the sort of material that would hold up well to travel.

  I was surprised Niamh had agreed to be seen in her company—­as a guide for women on the run, Niamh couldn’t afford to be stopped or questioned, and this decadent garb was unlikely to pass other travelers without attracting attention.

  I tried to imagine this woman as one of Niamh’s clients, and I failed.

  While Niamh was off to one side, speaking with Jesse, the woman stayed mounted, although she was shifting uneasily. I attempted not to stare at her clothing. Silky and I spoke together in carefully lowered voices.

  “Look at her costume,” said Silky. “We used to play dress-­up in stuff like that.”

  “I doubt she thinks of it as a costume,” I said. “She’s standoffish, don’t you think? Although it’s hard to tell with the veil.”

  Silky examined the stranger.

  “She looks like a giant candy,” she said.

  Niamh, who momentarily seemed to have forgotten about the woman, now introduced her.

  “This is a Lady of one of the Great Houses in Shibbeth,” said Niamh. “I’m escorting her to Southern Arcadia.” Niamh smiled, almost with affection. But not quite.

  The woman didn’t speak.

  For Niamh’s sake, I put on my best manners.

  “I’m the Lady Angel Montrose,” I said. “And this is my sister, Lady Silky Montrose. And this is Lord Trey, and Renn, who is, who is—­“

  “A bard,” Renn finished. I looked at him with gratitude.

  No reply. The veil made it impossible to determine whether or not she was rude or shy or—­

  Niamh spoke so that only I could hear. “She’s difficult. And a stump’s got more sense.”

  We waited politely for the woman to say something.

  “They’re not going to bow to you,” said Niamh, “if that’s what you’re waiting for. We’re all equal now. Why don’t you just take off the veil? It must be stifling in there anyway.”

  The woman delicately lifted the veil. Under the gauzy crimson was another veil, this one in some kind of yellow satin. She really did look like a candy.

  Then she removed the yellow veil.

  “Oh.” said Silky. “My.”

  For my own part, I could say nothing.

  I was looking into the face of Charmian.

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said. “You actually could bow. I’m a Great Lady, and I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t killed Garth.” I realized my mouth was open. She smiled at me. “Yes, I know you killed him,” she continued. “Who else? I had to get out of there after. His son and heir is a pig. He’s also my half brother, so that makes him an incestuous pig.” Charmian gave an unladylike snort.

  “The women of The Village of Broken Women let us through,” said Niamh. “They’re used to my comings and goings. They were just celebrating a victory when we were there.”

  “They killed the troops Garth’s son sent,” said Charmian. “Now I’m safe.”

  So Charmian was the third woman the troops had been looking for.

  “Why’s Garth’s son after you?” asked Silky. “If he’s your, well, your brother?”

  “Half brother. And he wasn’t interested in being my brother—­he wanted me to be a concubine,” she said. “Plus, without Lord Garth, I was nobody.”

  “I’m so sorry, Charmian,” I said.

  “That’s ‘Lady Charmian’—­to all except you, Niamh.” Charmian was looking at her face in one of the fragments of mirror that decorated her veil.

  Niamh sighed. “Get off your horse,” she said. “We’ll take a rest here and exchange greetings with my son and his friends.”

  Charmian dismounted, without grace. Her pants caught on the saddle’s pommel and almost pulled right off. We were treated to a display of flesh. Renn, Trey and Jesse carefully looked away. Silky was clearly shocked. I wanted to laugh.

  Once on the ground, Charmian turned to Silky and to me.

  “I still don’t understand why you wanted to leave,” she said. “Lord Garth was powerful. You could have become Great Ladies of Shibbeth. You, Angel, could have married my-­half-­brother-­the-­heir—­the money would have made up for a lot. Think of it. Endless baths of roses and milk. Now he wants you dead.”

  Silky shuddered—­not, I knew, at the death sentence, but at the thought of bathing in bruised roses and lukewarm milk.

  “Enough, Charmian,” said Niamh. She turned to us. “We’re picking up the Long Straight Road not far from here. We’ll turn south there and then east; we’ll seek safe haven in the heart of Arcadia. I know a place.”

  “Road with us, Niamh,” I said. “Even if only to the Long Straight Road.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course.”

  Jesse smiled.

  Charmian frowned.

  We mounted up and kept riding.

  That evening, while Trey and Renn built the fire, Niamh took Silky and me aside.

  “We were stopped by two armed men,” she said. “They were looking for you two. They thought we were you.”

  “Oh, no,” said Silky.

  “Troops from Garth’s heir?” I asked. I wondered if he had, perhaps, sent out more than the eighty soldiers we knew about. And yet nobody from Shibbeth had made it past The Village of Broken Women—­of that I was sure.

  “They weren’t soldiers,” said Niamh. “And they didn’t recognize Charmian when they made us take off our veils. One of them had a leopard embroidered on his cloak.”

  “Ugh,” said Silky.

  “Leth,” I said. “The leopard is the sign of his House. He’s the man I almost married.”

  “You have poor taste then,” said Niamh.

  “I used to,” I said.

  Niamh smiled at me.

  “I bet Kalo was with them,” said Silky, and I nodded at her.

  “We told them nothing,” said Niamh. “I don’t think they followed us.”

  “How did you keep Charmian silent?” I asked.

  “A very harsh look.”

  I was laughing as we joined the others.

  Later that evening, Jesse and Silky sat on a nearby log at exactly the right distance apart to please a chaperone—­a fact that in itself worried me. They were deep in conversation and seemed oblivious to the rest of us. Occasionally Silky laughed, almost nervously, and I wondered what they were talking about. Silky wouldn’t have tolerated anything inappropriate, but that left a lot of topics that I probably wouldn’t approve of.

  I’m not sure when I realized that Charmian was missing, but when I did, I checked for the little digging stick we kept by a mound of dirt.

  Initially Charmian had expected to have her own chamber
pot, and it was somehow left to me to explain the facts of camp life to her. For quite a while she had thought I was making a dirty joke, and, until light dawned, she had enjoyed the humor hugely.

  Any anxiety I might have had about Charmian’s absence evaporated when I saw that the digging stick was indeed gone. I doubted Charmian was far. She wasn’t much concerned with modesty.

  I sat down to clean one of the saddles, keeping half an eye on Jesse and Silky, when the noise started.

  It was breathy little screaming. The sort one might get from a woman who was wearing a corset set a ­couple of notches too tight.

  We all converged at the same place.

  Charmian stood in a clearing. She ceased screaming when she saw us.

  “A spider.” Her bosom heaved. “I saw a spider. A really big one.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Charmian,” I said.

  “I hate the outdoors,” she cried. “I want Garth’s son to die. I want to go home.”

  Niamh bothered to try and comfort her.

  The rest of us went back to the fire.

  But even as I went to my bedroll, I realized something about Charmian. She was not what I would normally think of as a survivor, but she had managed to increase her chances of success by winkling her way into our group—­through her association with Niamh, of course. We didn’t want her. We didn’t like her. But, until she and Niamh turned south, she was one of us.

  Chapter Twenty-­Seven

  The Road Diverges

  Charmian was excruciating to ride with. In our first hour on the road together, she was far more annoying than she had ever been in the restricted women’s quarters of Garth’s palace. She rode at a snail’s pace and only kept up at all because she was afraid of being picked off by road scum, the lawless who preyed on travelers.

  “I’m tired,” she said. First day together. First hour. First ten minutes.

  “Come on, Charmian,” said Niamh. “We have a long way to go.”

  “Everything jiggles when the horse moves.”

  I saw Trey raise an eyebrow.

  “Don’t you dare say anything,” I hissed at him.

  “I’m innocent,” he said.

  “Not in front of Silky.”

  “I didn’t say anything,” he protested.

  “She’s got a lot to jiggle,” remarked Renn.

  Renn would never have said anything like that in my hearing had we been at home, and I thought Trey would task him with it.

  But they were both smiling like idiots.

  Charmian’s complaining didn’t stop.

  “Maybe I should have stayed in Shibbeth,” she said.

  “Remember when you came to me?” asked Niamh.

  “Yes.”

  “You had no doubts then.”

  “I’d never ridden a horse then. Not to travel on. Now I have. I don’t like it.”

  “You told me your half brother was going to rape you.”

  “He was.”

  “You told me you thought he might poison you.”

  “That doesn’t stop my ass from hurting.”

  It was my first clue to something new I was to learn about Charmian. Under all her courtly manners and her layers of fine face paint and her elegant clothes, she was a rather coarse little thing. Although little wasn’t the right word for her. She was short, but she had a beautiful and ample figure.

  “It’s going to be all right, Charmian,” said Niamh.

  “I suppose I believe you,” said Charmian. “I trust you, Niamh. Nobody else. But you, yes.”

  “And I won’t betray that trust.”

  Short silence from Charmian. Then—­

  “You’re the only person I’ve ever trusted, Niamh.”

  “I understand.”

  “You’ll take care of me?”

  “I’ll take care of you.”

  It was like listening to a child clinging to its mother.

  Over and over and over.

  And then, a scarce ten minutes later, the Charmian I knew was back.

  “I feel as if my breasts were about to fall off,” she said, and in a voice loud enough for all of us to hear. I set my lips in a line. I can stand this, I thought. Jesse quickly began speaking about the scenery to Silky. Renn, who had been about to speak with me, turned away. But Trey—­Trey started laughing, and he didn’t stop until tears came from his eyes.

  In the evening, Niamh left Charmian muttering to herself and joined Silky and me.

  “You look like you’ve been through a lot,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin, Niamh,” I said. “I really wouldn’t.”

  “You could try,” said Silky.

  Niamh looked across the camp. I followed her line of sight and realized that she was examining Trey.

  “It’s the disease of the flesh,” I said.

  “I’ve tried to treat the disease before,” said Niamh thoughtfully. “And I’ve seen worse cases.”

  “He was a worse case,” said Silky. “He was a mouth and a ­couple of eyes. And some nose.”

  Niamh looked puzzled. ­“People don’t just get better on their own,” she said.

  “I finally tried the Aman fungus,” I said.

  “Tricky,” said Niamh. “You need enough to cure, but not enough to poison. Do you think he’d let me examine his face?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt shy. “I can ask.”

  Trey looked surprised when I went over to him.

  “What is it, Angel?”

  And I told him.

  “If that’s what you want, Angel.”

  “It’s not what I want that matters—­it’s what you want.”

  “It rarely feels that way,” said Trey.

  Trey sat still while Niamh inspected his face. She was careful not to touch him. Finally she sat back on her heels.

  “You were lucky Angel thought of the Aman fungus,” she said, “or you could have lost your whole face. How often have you put the Aman fungus on?”

  “Once.”

  She stared at me. “If you poultice it one more time,” she said, “some of the effects may be reduced considerably.”

  “Silky—­“

  But she was already running for the herb basket.

  Trey smiled at me. It was a very small smile, and it was hard to see. But even though Niamh was still there, I knew it was just for me.

  When the poultice was ready, I had Niamh and Silky oversee me during the application process. I patted the weak solution on every part of his face and on the inside of his lips and nose and eyelids. Nothing had been left unaffected.

  Later, after we all ate, I went and flopped down on my bedding. Niamh’s bedroll was next to mine, and she came and sat with her arms around her knees. If she had said something, anything, I would never have spoken the words that followed, but something about applying the poultice had made me unhappy.

  “I don’t like to feel, Niamh,” I said.

  Niamh looked at me silently for a long moment. Finally she spoke.

  “Feeling is scary, Angel.”

  “Loving Silky is hard enough,” I said. “When she’s in danger my whole world is like an eggshell. How could I possibly have room for anybody else?”

  But it seemed the conversation was over. Because at that, Niamh laughed.

  Silky was slow getting up the next morning. She was still rolling her bedding when all of us but Charmian were standing by our horses.

  “Come on, Silky,” I said.

  “Coming.”

  “We’ll leave without you,” said Trey.

  “No,” said Jesse. “We won’t.”

  “If Charmian’s not mounted yet, I have at least twenty minutes,” said Silky. “Charmian has to mount from a stump and arrange all her scarves and swirling things and
put on her veils and make sure her earrings show and then use her little mirror to put more stuff on her face. After that we leave. I’ll be ready and mounted in less than a minute.”

  Charmian was too busy trying to apply something blue to her eyelid to listen to Silky. Which was just as well. Charmian was long-­winded when she took offense.

  We started off.

  We had gone maybe twenty yards when we went around a curve, and the road suddenly narrowed. There was a tree lying across it. We came to a halt. All I could think of was that there must be a way to move the tree without allowing Charmian to dismount, or we would be there all day. But I didn’t foresee any real problems.

  A tree, a road, an unread book.

  I was Seeing. The feel of coming events moved in fast and close. I actually reached out with my arm, but it was my mind feeling forward. The future.

  We were in danger.

  Silky was trying to say something to me, but I had to shed her; I had to shed all of them to concentrate.

  The tree was wrong. In a moment, we would be under attack.

  Trey’s voice penetrated the aura around me.

  “Odd,” he said. “The tree looks like it’s been propped there.”

  I broke out of the Seeing.

  “Crossbows,” I yelled. “Charmian and Niamh in back. Silky, flank Trey.”

  I had to send Silky into danger; there was no help for it—­she could handle herself, but even more, she could save us all.

  None of them questioned me.

  We were almost in formation when they fell on us.

  Road scum. Clothes taken from corpses; sores on their faces; ink engravings pressed deep into the flesh to mark how many they’d killed. Matted hair. And the smell.

  Their smell overwhelmed my other senses until I could barely think for the stench.

  But I cleared my thoughts long enough to see that only one had a crossbow; the others had big Arcadian grooved knives—­wicked weapons that left a wound that couldn’t properly close, that would be open to infection.

  As the one with the crossbow lifted his weapon and aimed at Trey, Silky took him down. As she refitted a bolt, one of the road scum ran to Squab and drew back his grooved knife, ready to drop the pony under Silky.

  It was Renn who reached Squab and Silky. He grabbed the knife out of the man’s hand and then turned it on him. When he had finished, Squab was splashed with blood.