Margaret nodded but said not a word.
Bellinda expected a protest from another source entirely, but it never came. She looked around in growing alarm. “Where’s Alberta?”
Indeed, Princess Alberta was no longer among them.
Confusion registered upon Margaret’s face as well. “She was here just a moment ago.”
“She’s probably gone back inside already,” said King Edwin cheerfully. “She’s never cared one whit about this Goldmayne business. Come along, my darlings! I have a royal proclamation to issue and no time to waste.” He grasped his broken spear firmly and marched up the stairs into the castle.
The party disappeared within, just in time to miss Alberta entirely. She tore from the little side door, cloak in one hand and a bag in another, and ran for the stables as fast as her legs would carry her. Several knights were returning with their horses. Alberta chose one at random.
“Give me your mount this instant,” she snarled, and the man willingly obeyed. “Tell a soul you’ve seen me, and I’ll make certain your lives are forfeit,” she added to the group as she hitched herself up into the saddle.
Away she went, through the open back gate and across the fields toward the ruined abbey. Duncan had said he kept his armor there. It was the only place she knew to look for him.
“If he’s perfectly fine, I’m going to kill him!” she swore under her breath, and she urged her commandeered horse to run faster. There was no reason to get this worked up over a simple servant, she tried to tell herself. It was probably a mere scratch, and she would have to yell at him for coming so close to her father, for being so careless, for making her worry like this. Servants shouldn’t make their masters worry, she thought indignantly.
The abbey loomed in sight. Alberta kept her eyes open for any signs of Goldmayne, or for any movement at all. Terror coursed through her as she caught sight of the little grayish white horse. It stood riderless beneath a tall sprawling tree, and its nose prodded a dark shape hunched against the trunk.
The horse looked up as Alberta thundered forward. It seemed to beckon with its head. She slid to the ground and darted through the long grass toward the tree’s trunk, where she could now see a head of gold and a face as white as a sheet against plain, dark clothes. Pieces of silver armor littered the ground around him.
“Duncan!” she shouted as she dropped to her knees beside him. He looked dead. Surely he was not—!
She felt for a pulse and found it, weak and sluggish. He’d managed to get halfway out of his armor. One leg was still encased in its greaves. The other was tied with a bloody tourniquet around his thigh. From the looks of it, he had not dressed the wound beyond this. The spear tip was probably still embedded within.
“Wake up,” said Alberta fiercely, and she shook him by the shoulders. “Duncan, wake up! You have to wake up! You need a surgeon! You’re going to bleed to death if you just lie here!”
His eyelids fluttered, and he tried to focus on her face. “’lberta,” he said groggily, “he stabbed me.”
“I know. Can you stand at all—no! Don’t drop back asleep again!” Alberta lightly slapped his cheek, but there was no response.
“He’s lost too much blood,” said a voice behind her.
She turned and discovered, in wonder, the white horse. The creature spoke as though it was wholly natural for him to do so. “Hurry,” he said. “Get the rest of his armor off, and he’ll be easier to lift. I can kneel if you can manage to hoist him up into my saddle.”
Alberta stared.
“Oh, pull yourself together, Alberta!” he snapped. “Yes, I’m a talking horse! Yes, you thought Duncan was lying to you when he told you I was a talking horse! But you were wrong, and right now is hardly the best time for you to go into a stupor about it!”
His words snapped some sense back into her. Quick fingers worked at the buckles that remained of Duncan’s armor. Alberta stripped the plate-metal from him in no time and checked the tourniquet to make certain it was sufficient. She found the injury and packed it tight with bandages from her little bag of supplies.
“My father’s spear broke in his leg,” she told the horse. “We have to get the tip out—I know of a surgeon that can help, but he’s in Midd proper.”
“Just get Duncan and yourself on my back. I’ll get us there as quickly as possible, as long as you keep him from tumbling out of the saddle.”
The horse went down on his knees then and ducked his head. Alberta somehow managed to prop Duncan in the saddle, but his golden hair sparkled in the dwindling sunlight. “Where’s his wig?” she asked in growing alarm.
“Under the tree, but there’s no time to worry about that,” said the horse. “Just cover his head with your cloak, hurry.”
She draped the cloak around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his golden head. Then, she climbed into the saddle behind him. “I’ve got him,” she told the white horse. “Hurry, please.”
The horse didn’t need to be told, but he also could not run as fast as he wished. Their travel to Midd seemed excruciatingly slow. As every minute slipped by, Alberta feared that they would be too late, that the boy in the saddle with her would die and it would be all her fault for sending him into danger.
She kept her head down when they entered the city proper, certain that the overburdened horse would garner stares from all corners. Luckily it was nearly dark and the streets were sparsely populated. The white horse clopped down cobblestone roads according to her directions. They stopped in front of an unmarked wooden door in a narrow street.
“Hold steady or he’ll fall off,” Alberta instructed as she jumped to the ground. She held one hand against Duncan to keep him in the saddle. With the other, she knocked sharply on the door. Inwardly she prayed for someone to be home.
After a second knock and what seemed like an eternity, the lock tumbled out of place and the door opened. A wizened face peered out into the falling gloom and recognized Alberta immediately.
“Your Highness?” said the man curiously.
“Help me, Ansel,” she pled, and she moved to shoulder Duncan down from the saddle.
The man, Ansel, realized the distress of the situation before him. Immediately he joined her, and with his greater strength and her help, they were able to maneuver the cloaked young man from the horse’s back and through the door. Alberta glanced back at the horse over her shoulder as the door shut, but she supposed that if he was smart enough to talk, he was smart enough to stay put.
“What’s happened?” asked Ansel as he helped her carry Duncan’s body down a narrow hallway to a back room.
“He’s fainted from loss of blood,” said Alberta. “He was stabbed in the leg, and a piece of the weapon is still buried there.”
“Have you given him anything?”
“There was no time! He was already unconscious when I found him. There’s a tourniquet to slow the bleeding, and I packed the wound with bandages, but then I brought him straightway here.”
Together they hoisted Duncan’s body onto a table. The cloak fell back from his head, and Ansel caught sight of the golden hair hidden beneath.
He gasped and looked sharply at Alberta.
“You mustn’t tell anyone,” she said firmly. “Please, I’ve brought him to you in good faith, Ansel. You mustn’t tell!”
He overcame his surprise and turned his attention instead to treating his patient. “Do you have any antiseptics in that bag of yours, or shall I send you upstairs for some of mine?”
She dug around and produced two bottles. Her hands were shaking. “I have calendula and some thieves’ oil.”
“Give me the calendula. Do you have arnica and cinchona?”
“Arnica, yes,” she said, and she dug through her bag to locate it. “What’s cinchona?”
“It’s a New World plant, helps with heavy blood loss. I’d be surprised if you did have it, actually. Give me the arnica and run upstairs. I have some powdered cinchona in my medical cabinet there. It should be pro
perly labeled.”
She didn’t question his orders. Obediently, she climbed a narrow staircase to the room above. A wide wooden cabinet occupied one corner, and within, bottles upon bottles of medicine stood neatly labeled. Alberta located the proper one, the only one of its kind. When she returned with it below, she discovered Ansel in the process of unpacking Duncan’s wound. Bloody bandages lay in a heap upon the table next to a set of gleaming surgical instruments.
“Here’s the cinchona,” said Alberta, her eyes fixed on Duncan’s ashen face. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not.
“Set it there on the side table and get out,” Ansel told her gruffly. She was going to balk, but he looked up with a stern expression. “I know what I’m doing, and it doesn’t require an audience, your Highness. Your time will be better spent elsewhere. Come back in an hour. That should give me enough time to stitch him up and assess his condition.”
She nodded and left, though it nearly killed her to do so.
Outside the white horse waited impatiently. “Well?” he demanded.
“He said to come back in an hour,” Alberta reported with a quivering voice. “Ansel knows what he’s doing—he was the castle surgeon before he retired and has tended enough battle wounds in his time. He—he’s been overseeing my training as an herbalist, helps me sell some of my concoctions through the local apothecaries.” She was babbling, she knew, and to a horse, of all creatures. “He can keep a secret. He shouldn’t tell anyone about—”
“Duncan’s in as good a pair of hands as any,” the horse told her gently.
If it was meant as consolation, it didn’t work. She couldn’t stop shaking. Certainly she had known that sending Goldmayne into battle put him at risk, but she had never believed he would actually be injured, and certainly not at her father’s hands. People who were ensorcelled were practically indestructible in all the stories.
“I shouldn’t have sent him,” she murmured. “I shouldn’t have told him to go.”
“Just as I shouldn’t have run him past a determined old goat with a spear,” the horse replied. “Come on, Alberta. There’s no point in lingering here. You’ve left your horse at the abbey, and Goldmayne’s armor is scattered about. We can pass the time putting it away.”
She nodded mutely, grateful to have a task before her. “Do you have a name?” she asked as she climbed astride the beast. It was ludicrous to ask this of a horse, but it seemed a logical enough question after the conversations they’d already had.
“Duncan calls me Wildfire,” he replied easily. “We met at Dame Groach’s estate.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I just didn’t think you could actually talk.”
The horse grunted, and away they went, back to the abbey. They said very little on the ride there, each lost in thoughts too troubling to speak aloud.
“Your horse is wandering afield,” said Wildfire when the abbey came into sight. In the falling darkness Alberta could just make out the creature as it cropped the grass at its feet.
“It’s not my horse,” she replied dully. “I stole it from a knight who was returning it to the stables.”
“All the more reason not to let it wander off.”
“Bossy thing, aren’t you,” she said as she slid to the ground. She caught the errant horse and led it to the large tree, where she tied its reins to a branch.
Wildfire instructed her on how to pack the pieces of Duncan’s armor together tightly and where to stow them. She felt around clumsily in the darkness and wished more than once for a lantern or a candle. “Starlight and a silver moon aren’t very much help,” she complained, but she was secretly grateful to have something to complain about. It kept her mind from dwelling on the pale body that lay on Ansel’s table and the array of surgical tools that had gleamed nearby.
“There’s a bottle under there as well,” said Wildfire as she shoved the pile of armor into the hollow beneath the tree. “Be very careful you don’t upset it.”
“Why? What’s inside it?”
“Goldwater.”
Alberta didn’t quite comprehend. “You mean…?”
“Duncan took it from Dame Groach’s underground fountain, with hopes that we could find someone who could reverse its properties. That’s impossible, of course. Goldwater is the stuff of alchemists’ dreams, but it’s very dangerous. The cork is held in place by a wax seal, but I don’t want to take any chances with it. Don’t upset it, all right?”
“After that warning, I’m certainly not about to reach my hand in there to make sure it’s still upright,” she replied archly. “If you’re so worried about it, have Duncan come and check it once he’s well again.”
Wildfire chose not to argue. Alberta pushed the pack of armor into the hollow far enough that it would be out of sight. “What now?” she asked.
“We return to the castle,” said the white horse. “It’s best if I’m in the stables before long, or else Duncan’s absence will be noted. It’s probably best that you don’t vanish for too long either.”
“You don’t want to go back to Ansel’s with me?” she asked.
“It’s not as though I can go inside,” Wildfire answered. “Just come to the stables after you’ve seen him and tell me the worst.”
“You think the worst is going to come about?”
“I just want to be ready for it. You know,” he added in a curious tone of voice, “I’ve treated him rather poorly, but he really is a good fellow, perhaps the best I know. He’s taken remarkably good care of me, even when I didn’t really deserve it.”
Alberta made no reply to this, though she thought she could have spoken those very words herself.
Chapter 26
Pain pulsed through Duncan’s leg. It was his first waking sensation, before the smell of herbs around him, before the press of sunlight against his eyelids, before the rustle of movement nearby. In that brief, first moment of consciousness, there was only pain.
Then, there was an unfamiliar voice. “Are you going to wake up, or do you intend to sleep all day?”
He dragged his eyelids open to stare at an unknown room and the unknown face that hovered above him. He blinked languidly.
“Well, at least you’re responsive,” said the gruff old man. “I was starting to wonder. No, no, don’t try to move. Your leg’s been sewn up nicely, but you still lost a lot of blood. You need to stay down for a day or two at the very least, Goldmayne.”
In sudden terror, Duncan felt at his head and discovered the wiry mess of gold beneath his touch. He lay propped against a downy pillow on a comfortable bed. He tried to remember if he had ever met this old man before or how he had come to be in this unfamiliar room, but his mind drew a complete blank. In fact, only one thought stood out in the muddle.
“I was stabbed,” he croaked.
“That you were,” said the old man with a nod. “You very nearly bled to death, too. I pulled the spear tip from you last night, though. It’s there on the table beside you—it’ll bring you some good luck, if you know how to use it right.”
His eyes traveled to the small wooden table next to the bed. There on a white napkin lay the metal point of King Edwin’s spear. Duncan frowned at it. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Ansel,” said the man. “I used to be the castle surgeon. Princess Alberta brought you to me last night.”
“She did?” said Duncan sharply.
“I expect she’ll drop by sometime this morning to see you.”
“She will?”
The old man wryly smiled. “Calm down,” he said. “The last thing we need is for you to get overexcited and open that wound again.”
Duncan wasn’t sure he would call his feelings “overexcitement.” Abject terror was more like it. He had caused an inconvenience to Princess Alberta yet again. He had no idea how she would react this time, but he imagined it would involve a lot of errand-running to repay her. While he didn’t mind running errands for her, he still wished he could be the dashing hero every
so often instead of the incompetent dog.
“You’re probably hungry,” Ansel remarked. Duncan wasn’t, and he looked at the man in confusion. Ansel scowled. “Well, you still need to eat. I’ve got a pot of bone broth on the stove downstairs. I’ll get you a bowl and be right back. And you’re not to move from that bed in the meantime.”
Duncan made no promise, because he didn’t think it necessary. Of course it was tempting to sneak away, but since he didn’t have his wig or a coat to cover his golden head, such an attempt would only invite trouble. He let his eyes travel to the window, where sunlight spilled through thin white curtains. It was probably only mid-morning at best. He had no idea where Ansel’s house was located or how to get back to the castle. Someone would have noted Scurvyhead’s absence by now, but he supposed that didn’t matter. As soon as he was able, he and Wildfire needed to get away from Midd. Otherwise, King Edwin could very well be the death of him.
The bowl of broth was savory and soothing. Ansel allowed him to sit up and feed himself, but after only a few spoonfuls, Duncan’s eyelids began to droop.
“Drugged?” he said aloud, lethargically.
Ansel had busied himself sorting items in a large cabinet in the corner. “Of course it’s drugged,” he said plainly. “Right now you need rest and something to kill the pain. Oh, finish it up like a good lad and you can sleep it off. I’m not some dastardly villain plotting to keep you prisoner. The sooner you heal, the sooner you’re out of my hair.”
Duncan eyed the bowl warily. He had no reason to trust Ansel, but Alberta obviously did, and—for whatever reason—Duncan trusted her. He cupped the bowl between his hands and obediently drained its contents.
When he looked up again, he found Ansel staring at him in wonder.
“That’s the first time a patient of mine has ever followed an order like that without putting up some sort of ridiculous protest,” Ansel marveled. He retrieved the bowl then and left.
Hours later, Duncan stirred and opened his eyes to late afternoon sunshine. He felt better, though still lightheaded. He shifted his gaze from the window to the bed in which he lay. Shock coursed through him. A figure sat in a chair at his bedside, her body draped against the mattress. Her face was turned away from him, but Duncan recognized Alberta’s brown curls well enough. Her steady breathing, too, showed that she was asleep there.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 31
