The entourage moved indoors, and the servants returned to their duties. Duncan felt a little puzzled about the whole thing. Prince Perceval looked quite young, roughly his age or thereabouts, and far more pleasant than expected. He had assumed the prince would look more villainous. Then again, he had assumed Lord Briarly would look more villainous as well, but aside from a perpetual sneer, the man was fairly average.
Princess Alberta had left him alone for the past few days, for which he was grateful. That afternoon, though, as he hunched down to weed at the base of the garden’s hedge maze, he heard voices behind him. Princess Bellinda and Princess Margaret accompanied the two guests. Duncan returned to his work, hopeful that they would overlook him.
His hope was poorly founded. “Oh!” cried Bellinda loud enough for him to hear. “There’s Scurvyhead, the under-gardener! Wait here for just a minute, please. I have to speak to him about the flowers the gardeners bring to my room.”
Foreboding bore down upon him like a hawk. He wasn’t responsible for bringing flowers to the castle, so there was no reason for Princess Bellinda to speak to him on that matter.
She greeted him merrily as she approached. “Hello, Scurvyhead.”
Duncan sat back on his heels and brushed the dirt from his hands. He ducked his head humbly and hazarded a glance past her to the rest of the company. Princess Margaret wore a curious frown. Lord Briarly looked annoyed. Prince Perceval was the only one who watched with an open expression, guileless.
Bellinda positioned herself to cut them off from his view. She slipped a small bottle from her sleeve. “Bertie sent this for you,” she said in a low voice. “Lord Briarly’s room is in the corridor across from ours, the second door on the right, directly across from the window. She says to brush some of this on the knob, both inside and out, and not to get caught. She said to get his valet too, if you possibly could,” she added with an angelic smile.
Duncan reluctantly took the bottle from her, wordless in that act.
“She really did get you under her thumb,” said Bellinda in open wonder. “She refuses to tell me how. You weren’t part of that plot against her, were you?”
“No,” he said emphatically.
“Good. A couple of servants came to beg her forgiveness. She let them go on their way, but I punished them nicely. I’d’ve hated to add you to my list.”
Duncan stared up at her, wide-eyed.
Bellinda laughed. “Hydrangeas would be lovely, thank you,” she said in a slightly louder voice. “Don’t get caught,” she reminded him under her breath as she turned away.
Quickly he tucked the bottle into his pocket. He thought he would be allowed to continue working, but Bellinda’s voice called out to him. “Scurvyhead, shouldn’t you be off to report to Gardener? Honestly, these servants these days!”
He realized that she meant for him to go right now. He had no idea where George the valet was, but he would have to trust Princess Bellinda to keep Lord Briarly occupied while he carried out his task. He quickly stood, ducked his head in an apologetic bow toward the little group of nobles, and then scurried away to the castle. Luckily for him, the greenhouses lay in the same direction, or he would have had to make a circuitous route to avoid Lord Briarly’s suspicion.
Part of him felt resentful at getting caught up in Alberta’s little plans again, but in this case he chose to ignore that resentment. He didn’t understand her war against Princess Margaret’s suitors, but he had no charity toward the conniving Lord Briarly. Were it not for that man’s schemes, Duncan’s golden hair would still be a secret. That Alberta would use that secret to manipulate him did not surprise him in the least. That was simply her nature.
He made his way up the back staircase and into the corridor where the three princesses had their rooms. Unsurprisingly, Alberta stood within her doorframe waiting for him to pass.
“Mind you don’t get any of that on you,” she told him. “It’s pretty potent.”
Duncan scowled and continued on his way. Thanks to Bellinda’s instructions, he had no trouble finding Lord Briarly’s room. He knew that Princess Alberta was watching him from directly across the way, but he ignored her presence and knocked on the door. No one answered.
Duncan slipped into the room and looked around. No one was there. Upon the dressing table lay an ivory-handled hairbrush and matching comb. He quickly opened the bottle Bellinda had given him and, with the tiny brush attached to its lid, he applied some of the substance to both handles.
“That ought to get the valet,” he muttered. Then, he opened the door, brushed the inner knob, slipped back outside, and shut the door. The substance Alberta had supplied smelled herbaceous, but in a sickly manner. He applied a couple of swipes to the outer doorknob and quickly screwed the lid back on.
She was still in her doorway when he came back around. Wordlessly he proffered the bottle to her.
“Thank you,” she said, and she received it with a gloved hand. Duncan looked down at his own bare hands with sudden misgivings. She saw that look. “I wouldn’t intentionally poison you, Goldilocks,” she remarked as she stowed the bottle safely in a drawstring bag. “Neither am I going to take any chances with myself. You don’t look like someone who would do a sloppy job, but I don’t really know for sure, do I?”
“What’s that stuff do?” he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer already.
“It affects the lower intestines,” Alberta replied. “But then, I’m sure you already know what a dire state Coachman John is in. Lord Briarly should’ve learned his lesson the first time he tried to get rid of me.”
Duncan wracked his brains to recall this story and came up with a horrifying recollection. “You really did make that man go blind?” he cried.
“No,” said Alberta innocently. “Poison ivy made him go blind. I merely told him he had something on his face when I knew he’d gotten the stuff on his gloves. It was only temporary blindness. He was such a domineering old brute,” she added, totally unrepentant of her misdeed.
Duncan stared at her helplessly.
She smiled. “Bella’s right—you really are like a puppy. Back to work with you.”
Then, she shut the door in his face.
Duncan told the whole story to Wildfire that evening.
“I really don’t understand her,” said the horse.
“That’s because she’s twisted,” Duncan replied logically.
Chapter 19
The following morning, Lord Briarly did not appear in the gardens. In fact, neither did Princess Margaret. Bellinda and Prince Perceval came down alone, and she walked arm-in-arm with him for a full hour, chattering and smiling and laughing delightedly. He shyly received her attention, overwhelmed by such seeming favoritism. From afar Duncan surmised that Alberta must have deemed this suitor unworthy of a pestilence and was allowing Bellinda to seduce him away from Margaret instead. The plan was working quite nicely, too.
Everyone in the castle knew that Lord Briarly and his valet were both indisposed. Many made the connection between their illness and that of the handful of sick servants, too. Princess Alberta’s reputation as a curse-bringing witch grew, but so did the collective reluctance to speak out against her. Only a handful of servants seemed to remain unconcerned. Duncan suspected that these were the ones she kept in her pocket, and that he was numbered among them now.
He thought that the act of lacing a nobleman’s door with poison should have absolved him from any debt toward the middle princess, that she would leave him alone henceforth. He underestimated her manipulative ways. The day after Lord Briarly’s intestinal illness struck, as Duncan knelt weeding in the garden, a shadow fell over him. He looked up in dismay at a rather confused Princess Bellinda.
“Bertie sent me to tell you that there are marauders in the woods just north of here,” she reported.
Duncan nearly sighed in frustration but managed to hold it back. “Why is she telling me?” he ventured to ask. Alberta had been pretty adamant about keeping his s
ecret from her sister, but he never knew when she might change her mind.
“She said you were going to visit your sick mother this afternoon,” said Bellinda. “Is your mother sick again? It hasn’t even been two weeks since her last illness.”
“She has a very sickly constitution,” said Duncan in a clipped voice. He tossed his gardening gloves on the ground and rubbed his forehead. At first he wondered how Alberta had known to relay this particular message to him along with the news of marauders, but then he realized that it had been the excuse he’d used the last time Goldmayne had fought a cluster of miscreants. Of course she would simply use the same one. He decided to embellish. “I had word this morning that she was sick. I hate to see her like that.”
Bellinda hummed sympathetically. “It’s never nice when your mother’s sick,” she said. “What time were you planning to leave?”
He looked up at the sky, to the noonday sun overhead. “Soon, probably.” Wildfire would want to go sooner rather than later, he thought.
“Father and Prince Percy are riding after the marauders in an hour,” said Bellinda. “You might want to wait until after they leave—it would be safer for you. What would you do if you were caught, you and your little horse?”
“Run like mad,” he answered with a shrug. “Don’t worry about me, your Highness. Marauders have no interest in scurvy-headed peasants.”
She frowned at this. “Do be careful. I mean, Alberta was kind enough to warn you, which is curious enough in its own right, so you really should try to stay safe. I hope your mother feels better soon.”
“She always feels better when I go to see her,” said Duncan. “I’ll bring her your well-wishes if you’d like, though.”
Bellinda nodded her assent and then retreated. Duncan picked himself up from the ground and trudged his way to the stables. He didn’t bother making his excuses to Gardener. That man was growing accustomed to Duncan’s frequent abandonment of his post, but because Princess Alberta always seemed to be behind the abandonment, he could say nothing.
Wildfire looked up in surprise to see him so early in the day.
“Mother’s sick,” said Duncan dully. “Princess Alberta says to be careful while we travel to see her, because there are marauders in the area.”
The horse whinnied with laughter.
“Princess Bellinda says we should wait to leave, because King Edwin is riding out against the marauders in another hour and we’ll be safer after he gets them,” Duncan added with a crusty glare.
Wildfire immediately sobered. “What’re you waiting for? We have no time to waste here if that’s the case!”
He had thought as much. Resigned to his fate, he saddled the horse and away they went to the ruined abbey. Duncan dragged his armor out from the hollow beneath the tree, but then belatedly recalled the halberd he’d left in the chapter house.
“I’ll be right back,” he told Wildfire.
When he returned, halberd in hand, he stopped short in dismay.
“We’re red today!” cried Wildfire and indeed, his coat was a fiery shade of that color. The armor, too, already bore the same bold hue. “Fayet-thu-reod,” the horse said to the halberd, and the deep color blossomed across it.
Duncan swallowed his annoyance and put on his armor. He would stand out like a beacon, dressed from head to toe in such a vibrant hue as this, but he supposed that was the point. Once again, only the long tassel of gold atop his helmet remained its original color; it fluttered in the wind as he rode like a red streak through the countryside.
The treasure-hunters had increased in number. They rode in bands of five and seven, and much closer to the capital city than before. Wildfire lost them easily, just as he had the last time, but they began to cluster together far more quickly as well. Soon, he was outrunning groups of twenty horsemen at a time.
They rounded up at least fifty of the miscreants before King Edwin and his small posse appeared. Wildfire decided it was time to face the villains head-on. He charged through the small group of Meridian soldiers and past Prince Perceval. He slowed enough for Duncan to bow to the king, then zipped forward like a flaming projectile.
The treasure-hunters this time were better prepared in number, but not so in weaponry. Duncan leveled his halberd and barreled through their ranks, tumbling many of them to the ground. The brightness of his armor and the ferocity of his movements struck fear into their hearts, as it had before. In the terror of that moment, rogues and treasure-seekers alike turned tail and fled from the fiery warrior. King Edwin’s men thundered in right behind him and, as before, began to arrest those who did not flee quickly enough.
The leader of the ruffians shouted for them to pull together, to fight back. Duncan threw him from his saddle. The man landed flat on his back; the oath upon his lips left in a whoosh of air from his lungs, and his underlings scattered like insects.
Wildfire turned to escape then but stopped in confusion. Through the grate of his visor, Duncan looked around to discover that they were surrounded by the king’s men on all sides.
“Sir Goldmayne!” King Edwin called, and he raised his hand to gesture the knight’s approach.
Duncan barely had time to brace himself. Wildfire suddenly broke into a run and bodily leapt over one of the king’s soldiers astride his horse. The soldier ducked in the saddle as they sailed over his head. Wildfire hit the ground running as shouts for him to stop sounded behind him.
The fiery red horse outran his pursuers quite easily, but he took a circuitous route back to the abbey just as before, until he was certain they were not followed.
“That was close,” he remarked to Duncan. “I forgot what a stubborn old goat King Edwin could be.”
“If he’s going to chase these treasure-hunters, why do we need to keep doing it as well?” Duncan asked. “And why did you wait for him to arrive before we attacked them?”
“Maybe you didn’t notice how their numbers are increasing,” Wildfire replied sarcastically. “They’re banding together and getting bolder. I don’t know what for—there’s not that much gold on your head.”
Duncan recalled the offer Dame Groach had given Lord Briarly. “Maybe she’s promised to pay them off with solid gold,” he said.
“She—? Oh!” said Wildfire. “You may be right. She may be in the process of building up an army. If that’s the case and the exile ends with summer, you and I are going to be in a lot of trouble.”
If Dame Groach came after him with an army of mercenaries, thugs, and marauders, he was as good as dead. “What should we do?” he asked.
“We’ll stick it out here for now,” said Wildfire. “We can decide where we want to run at the end of the summer.”
The only reason they had been safe from Dame Groach for the last two years was because she could not enter Meridiana. It would do them no good to run from the country before that protection elapsed, and once it did, there would be nowhere safe enough for them. The only protection they would have then was the by-the-road charm, but Goliath was still faster than Wildfire any day of the week.
“But why do we have to stick it out in Midd?” Duncan persisted. “Princess Alberta knows who I am, and she’s using it against me.”
“She’s doing a lot of shady things,” Wildfire replied. “I told you I was curious as to why. This ‘for Julian’ nonsense doesn’t satisfy my curiosity in the least. It piques it, actually.”
“Well, I guess I’m happy to put my neck on the line to satisfy your curiosity,” said Duncan sarcastically.
“She seems to know quite a lot about Dame Groach’s curses, too,” Wildfire retorted. “Perhaps you don’t care about freeing me from this shape anymore, but I’m not particularly keen on dying as a horse, and so far that’s the only cure we’ve been offered.”
This statement served its purpose nicely. “Of course I still care,” Duncan said in little more than a whisper. “I swore an oath I’d help you break your curse, remember? If Princess Alberta knows any means of doing so, of course we
should stay and discover it.”
Wildfire made no response, and they went on to the abbey in silence.
It was after dark when the pair slipped back into the castle grounds, once again arrayed as Scurvyhead and his little grayish-white horse. They headed directly for the stables. Beneath the trees alongside the pathway there, a throat cleared loudly.
Duncan whirled. He expected to see Princess Bellinda amid the shadows. Instead, Princess Alberta moved into sight. “Well?” she asked archly. She had her arms folded in an imperious stance.
“My mother is much better, thank you,” said Duncan in a flat voice.
“Good,” Alberta replied. “I suppose you’ve heard that they spotted Sir Goldmayne again today, completely swathed in red like a bloodthirsty warrior. Bella is beside herself with envy that Prince Perceval got to see him and she didn’t, and Father has doubled the reward. He still wants to marry him off to Mae, and he’s absolutely furious that he escaped. What a troublesome knight this Goldmayne is.”
“You have no idea,” said Duncan dryly. He trudged onward, exhausted from his afternoon’s adventure.
To his surprise, the princess trotted forward and joined him. “I will admit I’m curious about how this knight accomplishes such changes of color,” she remarked.
“Magic,” Duncan replied tersely. “How else?”
She hummed.
His fatigue emboldened him enough to blurt, “I thought you wanted nothing to do with me, your Highness.”
“I don’t,” said Alberta. “Still, when I command someone to his potential death I do like to check whether he survived all right.”
He stopped and stared. She arched her eyebrows. “You have something to say?” she asked, as she always did.
“No,” said Duncan as he always did.
She smiled wryly. “That’s a lie, but I’ll let it slide. I’ve caused you enough trouble already for one day.”
“It was my responsibility anyway,” he said impulsively.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 23
