Straw Into Gold

by Gary D. Schmidt

  "I do," she said slowly.

  "Then tell us," insisted Innes, "and we will take it back to Wolverham."

  "The answer is not for telling," she replied."I will take it back to Wolverham with you. We will stand together, the three of us, and we will see if the king truly wishes to hear the riddle's answer. We will see if he wants his happiness more than his fear."

  "He does," I said. "He would not have sent his Grip to guard us along the way if he did not."

  "The King's Grip brought you here? That is not possible."

  "No, Majesty," said Innes, and he told her the story of our last four days. She wept when she heard of the miller's decision to hold the King's Grip so that we might escape. And she laughed through her tears when he told of the sexton and the nurse who had hidden us. She watched us as though he were telling her her own life.

  "The king never understood the hunger that gold and power make. He could not understand that there might be some who thought these of less worth than other things," she said wonderingly when he finished.

  "Majesty," said Innes,"if he truly wants us to answer the riddle, then he knows." At this, the queen smiled.

  "When must we be in Wolverham?"

  "By dawn, three days from now."

  "Then we need not hurry. The abbey will lend us the horses we need, and we are only a long day's ride from the city. Innes, are you ill?"

  "No, Majesty. Not ill. It's just that..."

  "Horses are afraid of him," I supplied.

  "These are gentle horses," she said.

  "So I have been told more than once. Your pardon, but it is never so."

  She smiled, even laughed, and took him by the shoulders and drew him to her. She held him tightly, tightly. Then she bent down and kissed one eye, and then the other.

  A loud and insistent pounding upon the oak door of the abbey grounds. When it was not answered immediately, a louder pounding, so thick and so powerful that it seemed as if the door must spring open. The Holy Sisters looked up from their low prayers, and as the attendant hustled to the door, the queen held Innes's head against her. Scolding, the attendant opened the window, then fell back before the roar that careened in. A mailed arm reached through, fumbled for the bolt, and slid it open. With a crash the door was kicked back against the inner wall.

  And Lord Beryn strode into the abbey courtyard.

  He stood still and large, his arms angled against his hips. He seemed like one who had come to conquer. When the mother abbess came out to him, floating across the courtyard, he waited unmoving, his legs spread on the cobblestones. He looked down at her like a mountain upon low hills. "I will see the queen," he said. "No, Mother, there will be no denial this time. I will see her now. The men I promised have arrived. They are tired after a long night's ride, and cold and hungry. It is for you to say whether they will set up their tents on the common of Saint Eynsham, or whether they will find warmer lodgings here, among you." He looked around. "It seems a well-stocked place, and their comfort is much on my mind."

  Then he saw us.

  The smile that creased his face was the smile the demons wear when a new soul falls to hell.

  "Lord Beryn," said the queen, standing in front of us, "do not look so. One would think that you had eaten something foul."

  "Mistress Miller," he called,"I will not bandy words with you."

  "If you are ill, seek out Sister Margaret, who will provide the emetic you need." She turned away from him and held her hand out for me.

  Waving the mother abbess aside, Lord Beryn crossed the courtyard and stood under the cherry trees with us. His voice dropped. "Mistress Miller, I come for the boy."

  The queen's hands gripped us both."Indeed, you do not bandy words."

  "You know the Great Lords will not allow the succession to go through a peasant mother. We will not bow our knees to a peasant king."

  "My son is the king's son."

  Lord Beryn laughed. "If I had had my way, there would have been no son. The king would have had his skeins of gold to play with the livelong day, and you would have been dismissed for your troubles, with a bauble on your finger to entice some herdsman to wed you. But the king fancied himself in love."

  "And who are you to say what is fancy? Who are you to say that love of gold cannot quickly become as cold and dead as yellow metal, and that someone—even a king—can turn his love elsewhere?"

  Lord Beryn scoffed."It does not matter now whether his love was fancied or real. Let it be real, if you will. If so, chance was kinder to you than you deserved."

  "The king's riddle shows that it is real," said the queen.

  "And it is for that riddle, Mistress Miller, that I have come. I will take the boy now."

  The queen turned back to face Lord Beryn, and she stood as if a crown would be more natural on her head than the kerchief of a miller's daughter. The moment had made her larger, and almost I wondered if her head would scrape against the cherry boughs.

  "No," she said simply. "No."

  "Mistress Miller, I have told you that I would not bandy words, and I will not. I will not commit sacrilege in this sanctuary, but neither will I allow you ever to leave it, nor these two. It is your peril I speak of. Yield the child."

  And at the words, a slow smile crossed the queen's face, a smile so full of joy, so full of bright and absolute gladness that she could hardly speak. And when she did, it was in a low and halting whisper, and so she spoke through her tears of happiness."So there is design after all. How strange, Lord Beryn, that you should be the one to teach me this." She shook her head slowly. "This time I will not yield."

  Lord Beryn took a step toward us, then turned to Innes. "Boy," he said savagely, "I should have had you gutted, instead of holding you up by the ankles while the Grip did his work."

  "You blinded this boy?" said the queen."This boy?"

  "How else was the secret to be kept, the king with his damn pale eyes?" From his pocket Lord Beryn took out a wrought gold ring and fitted it on his smallest finger. He held his hand out to look at it himself, then showed it to the queen."I took this from around the boy's neck myself. Have you seen it before, Mistress Miller?"

  The queen, with widened eyes, said nothing. The ring glittered in the morning's light.

  "You did not know the boy was your son," said Lord Beryn suddenly. "You did not know."

  But the queen smiled. "I did know," she said quietly. "The heart has no need of proof."

  "Then know this too, Mistress Miller: Yield me this one, and I will let the other take the riddle's answer back to Wolverham."

  "I will not."

  He turned to me. "Boy, would you save the rebels or not?"

  "The choice is not his," said the queen.

  "Give him the answer and let him go," said Lord Beryn. And I knew then a terrible loneliness that I had never known before. To know truly that I was not the son, that was hard; to hear it spoken aloud, that was harder. To be sent away from her, that was hardest still. If the queen's hand had not been on my shoulder, I would have sunk with heavy loneliness. But she held me tightly.

  "I will not let him go," she said to Lord Beryn. "I will never let him go." She looked down at me, and the world was very still.

  "This boy is nothing to you or to me," scorned Lord Beryn.

  "Lord Beryn, he would not reach Wolverham alive with the riddle's answer," the queen answered.

  A long moment passed."No," agreed Lord Beryn finally, "he would not." He laughed suddenly and horribly. "You play the game well, Mistress Miller. Better than the king. He was right to send you from the castle."

  "To send me from the Great Lords."

  "Yes, to send you from the Great Lords."

  The queen said nothing.

  "As you will, then," he said, waving his hand as if to dismiss us. "There will be no answer taken back to Wolverham, the rebels will hang, and you three will never leave Saint Eynsham Abbey. Horses will sprout wings before any of you see the outside of these walls again."

 
"Then we'll be plucking horsehair from the clouds before long," I answered. Lord Beryn stared at me, then turned his back, crossed the courtyard, and crashed the door behind him.

  I shivered in the breeze that he left, but the queen stood like a warm fire, gladness still on her face. Though we had failed in the riddle, and though we were prisoners forever in this abbey, her holding seemed enough just then.

  When the sounds of shouted orders echoed into the courtyard, I pulled away and left the queen standing with Innes under the cherry trees, hand in hand. She looked at me, then turned again to Innes. I went back to Saint Anne's Chapel. I climbed into the loft to the deep, glassless windows and looked out over the common of Saint Eynsham. A line of Lord Beryn's Guard sat motionless in their saddles, while behind them servants scurried about, beginning the encampment that would surround the abbey. The stark white tunics of the Guard menaced like an avalanche.

  I stayed by that window as the day wearied itself into the afternoon, the sun slanting in a tight line across the far wall until it thinned to nothingness, and the loft darkening to shadow long before the day had ended.

  I had known even before Lord Beryn arrived that the queen was not my mother. I had known it as soon as I saw Innes's face so close to her own. And there was in me a certain gladness for Innes. There was. But there had been that short moment in time when a place that had never known hunger before had filled. But now that it was empty again, a dull hunger remained.

  A haunting hunger.

  And it was Innes who came to try to fill it. Innes shuffling up the loft stairs, his fingertips gliding on the stone walls. It was Innes standing beside me near the window as the cooler air came in between us. It was Innes who knew how hot my silent tears felt on my cheeks. It was Innes who knew what it was that I longed for.

  And it was Innes whose head cocked suddenly, and who shoved me back from the window just before an arrow sliced its way in, followed by a guffaw from one of Lord Beryn's Guard. I sat on the floor, breathing my heart out.

  "We've already had enough bloody arrows," Innes said.

  I stood up, panting, trying to keep some air in my chest. "I hear ... I hear that they don't hurt so very much," I said.

  Innes swiped at me, and I took him by the elbow, and for a long time we stood still. "You are a prince," I said.

  "A blind fool," he answered, and let me lead him down from the loft and into the late golden light of the abbey.

  Later the queen herself fixed our bedding in the outer room of her chambers. She sat, a blanket over her knees, and sang the same lullaby that the nurse had crooned to us in what seemed so long ago, until the melody sank into a soft humming. Then she snuffed out each of the candles, so the only light came from the reddening fire. The dark stole in slowly and comfortably. The song had lulled Innes into instant sleep, but I lay awake until she left, almost afraid to sleep, the dread of a dream I could not remember hard upon me.

  And when I finally did sleep, the dream did rush in, only this time I knew whose arms were holding me: the queen's. But again the thickened air and the terrible light separated us, and when I thrashed about, I was still alone.

  But this time the dream did not end there. This time there was another pair of arms, rough and jerky, that grabbed me and carried me upward into a cool and windy place. I was very, very high, and there was nothing beneath me but air, but that air was as solid and safe as living rock. I woke, sweaty but strangely peaceful.

  The next day the Holy Sisters did not seem to realize that they were under siege. The routine of the abbey went on as if Lord Beryn's Guard were a universe away and all that mattered was that the old rituals be carried out, as they had been for who knew how long. The bells followed the hours with their ringing, the sisters chanted from the high tower of the abbey church and floated their prayers down upon us like soft snow. Every ritual was as it had been for day after day after day, as known and anticipated as the rising dawns.

  "It is only to be expected," said the queen that evening in her rooms. The night had cooled with the clear sky, but in the small chambers the fire blazed the air and warmed the tapestries hung upon the walls. The flowers on them—brighter and stranger than any that even Da had fancied—seemed to swell in the heat, as if summer had suddenly come to their threads. "The Holy Sisters live more in the world of spirit than of flesh, and they can hardly be concerned with the politics of Wolverham when it is the politics of heaven that call to them."

  "But they are besieged."

  The queen took Innes's hand. She had held his hand, touched his shoulder, rumpled his hair all through the day, as if she had to feel him to keep proving to herself that he was there."Perhaps the Holy Sisters know. Perhaps they do. But tomorrow morning will begin as it always has: with prayers, with silence, with the quiet matter of breakfast, with the gathering of water, with—"

  "The gathering of water?" asked Innes.

  "Each morning the sisters bring in the day's water."

  "Where is the water gathered?" I asked.

  And the queen answered with a broad smile.

  We spent the rest of the evening planning the escape to Wolverham. The queen sent me with a message to the mother abbess, who directed the sisters to provide us with everything that we needed. Since we would not be able to take horses—Innes was the first one to point this out—we needed food for two days, warm clothes for the queen especially, and coins to perhaps smooth the way into Wolverham.

  On the morning of our escape, I was awake when Innes sat up, clasped his arms around his knees, and turned his face to the east. "It's not quite dawn yet," I said.

  "No. It will be in just a bit." I rose to build up the fire, and when I started the embers, they gave off their last fruity scents. Then I held still while Innes listened to the dawn. When he finished, we stood in front of the fire and put on the warm clothes the mother abbess had provided, then waited for the queen and for the routines of the abbey to lead the hours. We did not speak.

  The bells rang for early prayers, and then again for the time of silence. From the queen's chambers we could see the morning rituals of Lord Beryn's Guard, who were interested in neither prayers nor silence. The night had been a frosty one, and they stood beating their arms against their sides, pushing in for places at the fire, shouting for the first hot food of the day. Their cries echoed against the quiet abbey walls and stirred their horses to nervousness.

  All was so quiet within that we both startled when the door opened and the attendant brought in our own meal. "The queen fancied you might like—"

  "Oatmeal." Innes grinned.

  "—what with the journey you're about to take. And she said that it might be proper for me to be finding her own cloak about now."

  "She has already set it aside." I pointed.

  "Sister," said Innes, "we do not know your name."

  She looked at him as if he had done her a great kindness. "Alyson," she said, and she spoke her name as if she had not said it for a long time.

  "Then, Alyson, you will be careful while wearing the queen's cloak? You will stay out of the range of the arrows?"

  Alyson leaned down and kissed Innes on top of his head, then blushed, half amazed at what she had done. She grabbed the queen's cloak and rushed to the door, turning back to look at us. The blush had not left her cheeks.

  We ate the oatmeal—it was the same as the nurse had stirred, with cinnamon swirled into it—and drank the milk hot from the cows."Innes," I said,"you realize that you are next in line to the king himself?"

  He took a long drink. "Tousle, do you mind much?"

  "That you will be king?"

  "No." A long moment passed with no sound but the crackling of the fire.

  "That the queen is your mother?"

  "That she is not yours."

  I set the bowl of oatmeal down. I had almost finished it anyway."I was happier than I could have thought for those few minutes in the chapel," I said.

  Innes nodded.

  Then the door opened and t
he queen appeared. She was dressed in the long robe of a Holy Sister and held two more robes across her arm. "The attendant is walking along the abbey walls now," she said. "It is time for us to fetch the day's water."

  Chapter Nine

  Our robes must have been for Holy Sisters taller than us; they reached the ground and dragged over the frost. I held one end of a long pole, Innes the other, and we balanced it on our shoulders, careful to keep the buckets in the middle from sliding and knocking one of us in the head—and even more careful not to trip on the hems of our robes. The queen, her head low, walked just behind us. "You walk like two boys," she whispered. "You are Holy Sisters now. Keep your feet low to the ground, and your knees in, not out. Low, Tousle."

  It was not an easy thing, to walk like a Holy Sister and balance a load of buckets, jerking our way across the commons and past the houses of Saint Eynsham.

  "Keep the buckets balanced," whispered the queen again. "And your face down, Tousle."

  "How can I keep my face down and the buckets balanced at the same time?"

  "Lord Beryn's Guard is just ahead. Perhaps you might ask them," she replied.

  Above us on the abbey walls, the attendant—Alyson—walked regally back and forth in the queen's cloak, as if taking the early-morning air. Beyond us the Guard stood grouped around their fires, watching the procession of twelve Holy Sisters come down to the brook. They quieted with our coming, and as we got nearer, I kept my face to the ground, even when I felt the bucket slide backward and clunk into Innes.

  "The fresh morning of the world, sister." Lord Beryn.

  The sister at the head of our procession said nothing.

  "Sister," came Lord Beryn's voice, mocking, "shall we allow a mere siege to disturb the day? If I were as rude as you, I might forbid you this water."

  "This water is befouled," the Holy Sister announced.

  "Even the best of horses will do that, I'm afraid."

  A snort from Innes behind me. A silencing whisper from the queen.

  "We will go farther," said the sister, calling back to us. "Into the woods there."