by Kevin Sands
“And you mean to rescue them.”
“If I can.”
“You can’t. Have you not been listening? You are wholly unprepared to fight this kind of evil. Even I would not face it.”
“I wouldn’t have to go alone,” I said. “My man has a holy sword, handed down from knights of ancient blessing. And while I understand your affliction keeps you bound here, perhaps Señor Arias would be willing to—”
“No,” Álvaro said. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked scared. “Listen to Edmund. This is not a place for you.”
Sir Edmund shook his head in agreement. “I cannot permit it.”
I felt foolish arguing—I didn’t even want to go. Nonetheless, I let my voice go cold. You are the blood of Richard Ashcombe, I reminded myself. You do not require his permission. “You seek to command me . . . sir?”
Sir Edmund flushed. “Of course not, my lord. But you are my guest. I cannot, will not, send you to your doom. What would I tell your grandfather when he came looking for you? He would side with me, I think. If he does not, well, then it is for him to take responsibility.”
He sighed. “Please, I wish for us to be friends. My home, my grounds, my things are all yours, for however long you remain. But I cannot countenance any expedition to that cursed village. I beg you, my lord: Ask me no more.”
CHAPTER
30
SIR EDMUND DID HIS BEST to lighten the mood after our argument, but there wasn’t much I was interested in hearing. I pleaded weariness from a long journey, and he apologized for keeping me up. He had Cooper show us to our rooms and apologized once more for the dark turn the evening had taken.
“Think nothing of it,” I said. “It was improper of me to press you as I did.”
Cooper installed me in my quarters. Part of me—most of me, really—wished I could just stay here. The room was lavishly comfortable, appointed in damask and brocade. The bed, seven feet wide, was soft and inviting, drawn round by Oriental water-lily curtains. And I hadn’t been lying: I did wish for sleep. But I had work to do.
Poking my head out the door to see the hall was empty, I snuck down to Sally’s bedroom. She let me in, frowning. “If anyone catches you here,” she said, “we’ll be the source of endless gossip.”
I knew I should care about that, but I didn’t. I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, playing a role that didn’t fit me, with a mind that didn’t even remember who I was. I barely felt like I was real.
“What do you think?” I said. “About Sybil being a witch?”
Sally chewed her fingernail. “I don’t know.” I was a bit surprised at her reticence; downstairs, she’d pressed the man stronger than I had. “She said she wasn’t.”
“She’s not likely to confess it, though, is she? Especially if she’s really behind all this.”
“No, but . . .” She trailed off again.
“What’s going on?” I said.
Sally’s eyes flicked toward me. It seemed like she wanted to tell me something. Her room had a pair of high-backed cushioned chairs by the fireplace; I sat on one and waited.
She took the chair opposite. We remained for a while in silence, until she finally pulled her hand from her mouth and looked ruefully at her fingers.
“I’ve completely destroyed my nails,” she said.
She laughed a little, but it was forced. I just waited. And when she spoke again, there was no humor in her voice.
“There was a girl,” she said. “In Cripplegate. Alice Goodall. She was a few years older than me. She was beautiful. All the girls looked up to her, and the nurses thought she was God’s little angel. She might as well have been the queen. And she hated me.”
“Why?”
Sally shrugged. “Because I was half French? Because I was new? Because I was different?” She stayed like that, wondering, and realizing, maybe, that she’d never really know. “Alice tormented me. She’d bring me in, let me be part of her circle. Treat me like I was her friend, even her confidante. Then she’d be cruel to me. She’d shut me out, make the rest of the girls not talk to me.
“You and I met during one of those times. I had the flux, but none of my ‘friends’ would visit me. The nurses assigned you to care for me. You made me—”
soup, I thought
“—soup.”
My chest tightened. I’d remembered.
“Anyway,” Sally continued, “she did this over and over. I was always afraid—each day, I didn’t know if she was going to be kind or cruel. I think she liked that best of all.”
Sally trailed off, lost in her memories. “One night, it became different. Alice and I were supposedly friends again. I was in bed, drifting off to sleep, when suddenly she was standing over me. She leaned down and whispered, ‘I know what you are.’
“I didn’t know what she meant, and I said so. So she said, ‘I figured it out. You’re a witch.’
“I just froze. The nurses had told us about the witch-hunts. How so many girls had been caught up in wickedness, and hanged for it, and how we should run from the promises of black magic. And here this girl was, this angel, promising to tell everyone I was a witch. And I knew if she did, they’d believe her. She’d make them believe her.”
“You were children,” I said. “No one would have taken her seriously.”
“Are you sure? It was Reverend Glennon who told me, later, how many innocent girls—not just women, but girls—had been executed by outright lies. I was so scared, Christopher. Alice never threatened me with it again. But I remember. I always remember.”
She drew a breath. “I was innocent. What if Sybil is, too?”
I had my own doubts. And yet . . . “There is black magic happening here. The children are proof of that.”
“That doesn’t mean Sybil’s responsible for it.”
But she did lie, Master Benedict said.
About being a witch? I said.
About you.
I frowned. What did he mean?
“Christopher?”
Sally was looking at me strangely. I held up a hand. What had Sybil said about me?
You have everything you need—in fact, only you do. No one else who lives here can do what you can.
Not that, Master Benedict said.
Then what else did she say?
Think of it this way, my master said. What didn’t she say?
Now he was being utterly cryptic. How was I supposed to know what she didn’t say?
Think, Master Benedict whispered.
So I did. I told Sybil who I was. She said she knew. I told her what had happened to me. We talked about the missing children, and I showed her the mark. She refused—
The strangest image came to me then. A man . . . in a bird mask?
My chest tightened—the Raven!—but it wasn’t, and somewhere inside, I knew it wasn’t. I clung to the image, fighting off the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me, until I saw the man clearly.
He wore a wide-brimmed hat and a long leather robe with some kind of insignia on his chest—a cross? A triangle?—I couldn’t quite make it out. He held a silver rod. At the end of it was a grinning gargoyle’s head, its wings spread in flight. But it was that mask, that leather mask, that I couldn’t take my eyes off.
It’s not the Raven, I thought. It’s a—
Plague doctor. The man was wearing a plague doctor costume.
So why did it make me afraid?
“Do I know a plague doctor?” I asked Sally.
She went white. “Why?”
“For some reason, I see him in my head. He’s wearing a bird mask, and he has some kind of staff—”
“That’s Melchior.” Sally shuddered as she told me his story, what had happened between us during the plague.
I frowned. I felt like there was a puzzle being worked on in my head—and somehow this strange bird man was the answer. If only I could just remember.
Hold on to that feeling, Master Benedict said, and think of Sybil. Where is the lie?<
br />
What the plague doctor evoked was fear. What did he have to do with the cunning woman? I returned to my memory of the hut.
Sybil refused to tell me what she knew about the missing children. I got angry with her, and she got angry back—
That was it.
“Sybil,” I said slowly, “said the Spirits of the Wood told her I was the only one who could find the children.”
“Because you’ve solved problems like it before,” Sally said.
“How did she know that?”
“The Spirits must have told her.”
“Then why didn’t she know who I was?”
“What do you mean?” Sally said.
“Remember how she kept sneering at me? The way she said ‘my lord’? She hates the nobility.”
“So?”
“So I’m not nobility. I’m just pretending to be. If the Spirits told her what I’d done, who I was . . . why didn’t she know I wasn’t an Ashcombe?”
Now Sally paused, too. She didn’t have an answer.
Neither did I. That was the most puzzling thing. Sybil had been adamant she wasn’t a witch. She’d been equally adamant that I, and I alone, could solve this mystery. But she’d also thought I was Baron Ashcombe. So . . . was the geas a mistake? Could the Spirits even make a mistake?
There was something else going on here, something strange. And why was I seeing this Melchior?
Think about it, she’d said. Think of all the people you’ve met since you awoke. And you will have the answer.
The solution was there. It had to be in there.
But I couldn’t find it.
“What do you want to do?” Sally said.
I couldn’t tell who was right. Sir Edmund? Sybil? Neither? I pushed my thoughts aside, frustrated. At the moment, that didn’t really matter. The White Lady. She was the one we really had to stop.
And that meant we needed to go to Hook Reddale.
“Sir Edmund said he’d discovered it by matching clues in the story to the land,” Sally said. “Maybe we could work it out, too.”
I’d been thinking about that. Rawlin had told us Hook Reddale had a tower in its center. And when the White Lady signed her evil pact, she’d crawled from the tower into the river.
The river had to be the Axe. Which meant we could find Hook Reddale by walking its streams until we spotted the tower—which had to be still standing, or Sir Edmund wouldn’t have known it was the right village.
Of course, that left us with a different problem. The Axe was long. And, as my map made clear, it branched in several places. Sir Edmund had found Hook Reddale, but he’d been living here for years. He’d had all the time in the world to go exploring.
“Exploring,” I said suddenly. “That’s the answer.”
“You know where Hook Reddale is?” Sally said, surprised.
“No,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I know someone else who does.”
• • •
I stayed up, pacing in my room to keep myself awake, until I was sure everyone had retired for the night. Then I crept down the hall. The coat of arms on one of the doors—a yellow shield, a unicorn rearing in the center—made it easy to tell which were Sir Edmund’s quarters. I went to the door beside it, where a smaller shield was affixed, and knocked faintly.
A voice came from inside, high and fast. “Who is it?”
“It’s Christopher,” I whispered.
I heard the shuffling of bedsheets, the creak of the floor. When the door opened, Julian Darcy stood in his bedclothes, lantern in hand. “You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “Father doesn’t like it when I’m up late.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “Listen, I was planning on seeing some of the countryside tomorrow. I figured you must know the area well.”
He beamed. “Of course. I’ll show you the hamlets, and where the best hunting is—do you shoot? I can teach you. And there’s a cave by the river; I think people used to live there a long time ago. There’s some painted handprints—”
If I didn’t cut him off, he might keep talking until dawn. “We can do all that. But I was really hoping to see Hook Reddale.”
Julian went quiet, just like at the dinner table. He looked at me, scared. “I don’t know where that is.”
“I think you do,” I said. “In fact, I know you do.”
“No.”
“Your father told us you like to go exploring.”
That confused him. “So?”
“So your father knows where Hook Reddale is. He wouldn’t want you stumbling into such evil; he would have warned you to stay away from it. But he can’t warn you off if you don’t know what you’re supposed to avoid.”
Julian sounded desperate. “You can’t go. You can’t. The White Lady lives there.”
“That’s why I have to find it. We have to stop what’s taking the children.”
“You can’t. You shouldn’t even try. Please, please stop trying.” He changed his tone. “Look, there are lots of great places to see around here. The land’s beautiful. And we can spar! Your man Tom can show me how to use a sword, and I’ll teach you the bow, and—”
“No,” I said coldly.
“But—”
Inside, my spirits fell. If Julian was too scared to tell me where Hook Reddale was, I’d have to force it out of him. I knew how to do that. It’s just that it would be cruel.
“I will not train with you,” I said, “because I do not spend time with cowards.”
His face fell. “What?”
My heart sank along with his. Still I pressed. “Children are missing, Julian. Not soldiers, not men. Children. And you can’t even speak a few words?”
He bowed his head. “You can’t stop the White Lady. If you keep investigating this, you’ll die.”
“At least I won’t die a coward.”
Julian leaned his head against the door. I don’t think I’d ever felt so wretched.
“Two miles north,” Julian said, “the river branches. Take the path to the northwest. After another mile, a stream branches southwest. Follow it, and you’ll see the tower.”
I drew a breath. “Thank you. Listen . . .,” I said awkwardly. “I’m sorry about . . . You’re not a coward.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.” And he shut the door.
I heard the key turn in the lock. I knocked, even more softly than before. “Julian?”
He didn’t answer, so I went back to my room. I changed into the bedclothes Cooper had left for me—Julian’s old things, I imagined—then lay in bed, alone, afraid, and ashamed.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1665
Ni i tem p t m es q d n r ve e r;
equ b co d um qu d on sc u
CHAPTER
31
WE LEFT BEFORE THE DAWN. I didn’t want anyone to see us, especially Julian, who might already be regretting giving me the location of the abandoned village and thinking of telling his father my plan. I did speak with one of the servants—I had to order a girl to collect Tom, Moppet, and Bridget from the quarters below—and no doubt the maid would tell her master that we’d left. But she’d wait to do that until he’d risen, too late for him to stop us.
Sally suggested I not even tell Tom where we were going. After the shameful way I’d extracted Hook Reddale’s location from Julian, I refused to keep Tom in the dark.
“It’ll be easier,” she warned me.
“He deserves to know,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Which one of us has no memories?”
That was a low blow. Regardless, once we’d begun following the river north, I told him.
He stared at me like I’d gone mad. “We’re going where? To do what?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” I said.
Tom looked up at Moppet, sitting on his shoulders as usual. “He got worse,” he said. “I thought if he lost his memories, he’d be more sensible. He actually got worse.”
This didn’t seem all that different from t
he things Sally had told me I’d done in the past. Tom disagreed. “The cemetery, in Paris? That was bad. But at least there the dead stayed dead. How are we supposed to fight a wraith?”
“Actually,” I said, “from Sir Edmund’s description, I’m wondering if the White Lady’s a revenant.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s like a wraith. But with a burning sense of vengeance.”
Tom stopped speaking to me. He marched ahead through the snow.
Sally shrugged. “Told you.”
• • •
The natural route the river carved led us straight to the village.
The fluttering in my stomach almost made me wish it hadn’t. The weight of where we were going seeped into our bones with each step. Tom went silent, and Bridget, who’d flapped away from Moppet’s arms at the first branch of the river, was nowhere to be seen. Even Sally’s songs faded with the gray of the day.
Sybil had said the storm that brought me here was cursed. I could feel it lingering in the sky, the thick, heavy clouds its curse made real. As I looked into the gloom, I realized I hadn’t seen a single second of sun since I’d awoke. I wrapped my coat around my body, stamping my feet to fight the chill.
But it wasn’t until we saw the tower that I began to shiver.
Hook Reddale was as gray as the sky overhead. What few buildings still remained among the ruins were the ones built of stone, and those had mostly crumbled into half houses and shapeless heaps, overlain by a thick blanket of snow, unmarked by any sign of people.
And in the middle of it all stood the tower. The tower the knight had built for his love, the tower she’d thrown herself from, the final step into the darkness that had turned a murderess into the White Lady. Stained and weathered, it rose four stories high. Shriveled, blackened vines curled around its base, crawling over the rocks into the arrow slits, all the way to the battlements at the top. A single iron-reinforced door of cracked wood and rusted, crumbling metal faced the trees, offering the only way in.
I had no doubt the tower was the most likely place to find any remaining artifact of the White Lady. Yet I shuddered when I thought of walking inside. Sally suggested we look in the surviving houses first. “We might find something useful,” she said.
