Crossing Over

by Anna Kendall

  She had not named me, but I knew better than not to follow her. Still, I lingered as long as I could on the tower roof. The Blues were defeated. The great northern gate was already being raised to admit Solek’s army. And in the distance, on the plain, the first of the villagers were running from their hiding places toward the fallen, who were their husbands and brothers and fathers. I could hear the cries of the grieving women, desperate and frantic, like birds lost far out at sea.

  Inside the palace, there was a repeat of yesterday’s ceremony, gone terrible and bloody. Ladies, courtiers, advisors massed beside the dais. The queen sat tall on her throne. Lord Solek’s army marched in, chanting, led by a chieftain negligently holding his broken arm. When Solek himself arrived, Eammons translated Solek’s words, delivered as simply as if he had been announcing that water is wet: “We have won.”

  But this time he did not kneel, and so Queen Caroline could not tell him to rise. Their eyes, one silver under black water and the other blue as sky, locked so fiercely that I had to look away.

  “You have The Queendom’s deepest thanks,” the queen said. “And mine.”

  I could take no more. No matter what it cost me, I could not listen to her words dance around her calculations, which must be paid for in other people’s blood. Solek’s army to defeat the Blues, and Queen Isabelle’s army to defeat Solek’s if he did not march her line. To gain Solek’s help, the tiny Princess Stephanie sold into marriage before she turned four. And on the plain, hundreds of Queen Caroline’s own subjects dead or dying.

  For the first time ever, I slipped away from the queen without her permission, sidling back along the edge of the dais until I was behind the crowd of courtiers, all eagerly pressing forward to watch the ceremony. I would watch it no longer, would help the queen no longer, would accept no more kindnesses from her, except when I must do these things to survive.

  The wall behind the throne was hung with a tapestry of heavy embroidered silk. Noiselessly I slipped behind it, where a doorless arch gave servants access to the throne room. Someone followed me through, to the narrow stone passage beyond the tapestry.

  “Lady Cecilia!” I whispered. “You should not be here!”

  She caught my arm. “What will happen now, Roger! Please tell me!”

  “Nothing that will harm you, my lady,” I said. The light was dim, coming only from an alcove farther on. In the gloom I saw that Cecilia’s face was ashen. Her teeth chattered, from either cold or fear.

  “How can you know that? Will the savages take us all? All the women, I mean? Are we to be prizes for them?”

  “No, no,” I said. “The queen made Lord Solek promise that his men would leave our women alone.”

  “That was the village girls. I mean us, the queen’s ladies—are we to be marriage prizes? Like the princess?”

  This had not occurred to me. Before I could answer, Cecilia sobbed, “Oh, Roger, I am so afraid!” She threw herself into my arms.

  All thought fled my mind. She was so soft, so small, and she smelled so sweet. My arms were around her, her crying eyes pressed to my chest, and I held her. Just that: held her, and I wanted the moment to never end. Without knowing what I did, I lifted her face and pressed my lips to hers.

  A moment of shocked stillness, and she pulled away. “Roger! ”

  “My lady, oh, forgive me—” She could have me whipped, have me sent away from court—

  But she was smiling. Tearfully, but still my kiss had wakened the coquette enough for her to mock me through tears. “Really, I had no idea I was so irresistible.”

  “I love you, my lady. I have loved you since the first moment I saw you.” It was true; never in my life had I meant anything more. I was dizzy with her, intoxicated with her.

  Cecilia laughed. But a moment later she leaned close to me and whispered, “Then if a savage comes for me, will you hide me? Will you, Roger? You must know all the palace hiding places.”

  Would that I did! Were there hiding places, secret corridors? Of course there were, although I had never thought of this before. But this was a palace of secrets, of things hidden. Perhaps one reason the queen had kept me so close beside her was to keep me from discovering those hidden passageways, hidey-holes, escapes.

  “I will serve you always, my lady!”

  “How funny! You sounded almost like a courtier when you said that! You with that funny yellow paint on your face . . . Hide me now, Roger. Show me where I can go to be safe from the savages!”

  I would have given my left eye to be able to do that now. But I could not. So instead I tried to look important, and ended up merely feeling stupid. “I . . . I have an errand for the queen. I can’t delay! But you will be safe, my lady, I promise you that! If it takes my life, I will keep you safe!”

  She cocked her head to one side. “I believe you, Roger.”

  “Thank you, my lady!”

  Why was I thanking her? I didn’t know what I meant. Her nearness addled my brain. I blundered away down the corridor, toward the kitchens.

  Maggie sat at the trestle table, her head in her hands. Only a few other servants remained in the kitchen. The fire was nearly out; nothing had been done about dinner. I stood beside her. “Maggie?”

  She looked up. No tears, but a depth of quiet suffering that Cecilia’s hysteria could never match. That thought came, and was banished. “Maggie?”

  “My brother, Richard,” she said. “With the Blues.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe he escaped to—”

  “Maybe. The others have already gone out onto the field, all the servants, to find their dead. In a minute I must . . . I thought that first I should . . . What do you want?”

  I didn’t know what I wanted, why I had come here, had come to her. Before I could summon a fresh set of lies for yet another girl, Maggie’s eyes grew wide at something behind me, and she leapt to her feet. I turned.

  The boy with red twigs in his hair, the first singer, stood in the doorway. Unarmed, he nonetheless stood without fear. The few servants in the hall stiffened, and a middle-aged cook hissed loudly.

  The boy walked to Maggie, who was closest. He said in a heavy guttural accent, “Food. For Solek and queen.”

  “We have nothing. No food,” Maggie said. And, indeed, the kitchen looked as bare as if overrun by ravenous rats. The siege, plus yesterday’s feast, had all but emptied the larders. Yet I guessed there was some food left in hoarded stores. Queen Caroline planned too carefully to let her capital starve.

  “Food,” the boy repeated, but not demandingly. Up close, he was extraordinarily handsome under the red paint on his forehead and cheeks. Dark hair, eyes as blue as Lord Solek’s. He was taller than I, and broader. Did Maggie notice that?

  “No food,” she said. How did she dare?

  The blue eyes searched her face, which had gone white with defiance. His hand reached inside the shaggy fur tunic to draw out something, which he held out to her. “You eat,” he said gently.

  It seemed to be a kind of dried meat mixed with berries. The thing actually smelled good. Maggie stared at him.

  “No food,” he said. “You eat, girl.”

  Something pounded behind my eyes. “She doesn’t want your stinking savage rations!”

  His gaze measured me, and I saw the moment he dismissed me. Laying the food on the table beside Maggie, he raised his voice loud enough for the rest of the frozen servants to hear. “No food? We bring food. You eat.” He looked again at Maggie, then strode from the hall.

  A man ran in from the opposite side, from the courtyard where the barges docked. “The savages are letting us take our dead for burial. Walter . . . I didn’t find him. Maybe he got away! ”

  A middle-aged cook who’d just entered the hall spat, “He was avenging Queen Eleanor, the true queen, and yet now he must run! Shame scars this day!”

  Another woman shushed her, with a quick glance at me. Of course. The servants had all taken the oath of fealty to Queen Caroline, but not all of them had meant it. Som
e of the former Blues were blue still, despite their green tunics, and even some of Queen Caroline’s most loyal servants had relatives among the Blues. Like this man, like Maggie.

  The cook snapped, “Begin work, all of you! Before long the queen will send someone for her dinner, and here the fire is nearly out! Bestir yourselves!”

  I went out of the kitchen, leaving Maggie to her grief. I could do nothing to ease it. But I did not want to return to the queen, who had caused that grief. So I spent the entire afternoon prowling the palace, trying to discover secret passageways or hiding places. But, of course, if they were that easy to discover, they wouldn’t be secrets. I found nothing.

  But I learned much.

  I wore my cloak, hood pulled low over the yellow dye on my face, and sat quietly in alcoves, pretending to wait for someone. In courtyards, pretending to weed spring beds. At docks, where barges held downriver by the siege were once again arriving with their loads of goods for the palace. In the guardroom of the Green army. Even in the laundry, where Joan Campford gave me more yellow dye and treated me with a confused deference that upset us both. “I never thought my laundress boy would be fool to the queen,” she said, shaking her head. “Now get away with ye.”

  At dusk, as the lanterns and candles were being lit in the palace, I made my way back to the queen’s rooms, bracing myself for punishment for absenting myself. That was when I learned the most astonishing thing of all: There would be no punishment. The queen had not called for me, had not asked after me, had not even missed me. The presence chamber was empty except for the guards. In the outer chamber were no courtiers, only a little knot of the queen’s ladies, sewing with a sobriety and earnestness totally foreign to all of them except Lady Margaret. With her sat Lady Sarah Morton, Lady Jane Sedley, two others. And Lady Cecilia, who did not greet me, but whose eyes had lost none of their fright since this morning. No such fright, however, twisted the face of the wanton Lady Jane. She wore a small, sly smile as she stitched away on a chair cushion, or what was supposed to be a chair cushion. Lady Jane, like Cecilia, was no needlewoman.

  “Fool,” Lady Sarah said to me, “what news?”

  “It is nightfall,” I said in my role as fool.

  “I know that, idiot!”

  “Then if you know, you don’t need ‘new.’”

  “No silly wordplay! Are the savage soldiers still in the palace or have they gone back to their camp?”

  “Well, one is certainly here,” Lady Jane breathed, and rolled her eyes at the closed door to the privy chamber.

  I said, “Savage is as savage says.”

  “He knows nothing,” said Lady Jane, her voice full of disgust. “He’s a fool, Sarah.”

  Lady Margaret said, “That’s enough nasty chatter.” The others ignored her.

  Lady Sarah said, “The fool has eyes! And while we’re stuck here, on guard—”

  “Aye,” I said, “I have I’s, and you have you’s, and they have theirs! Alas!”

  “He knows nothing,” Lady Jane repeated, and turned her back on me.

  She was wrong. I had learned much in my afternoon of prowling. No secret passages, but much else. I knew that Lord Solek’s younger and handsomer soldiers had walked through the castle, learning it well but also making themselves agreeable. They had given away food—of which their army, on the move, could not have had very much. They had offered help. They had gestured admiration for much, and looted nothing. In the narrow ring of the city, to which shopkeepers were returning, the savages had bought items, paying in gold. Outside the palace, savages had helped carry the Blue dead to burial grounds, whenever grieving kin had permitted them to do so.

  “Well, they aren’t so bad,” reported the villagers and merchants loyal to Queen Caroline. “Not as bad as some.”

  “Their gold’s as good as any.”

  “They can fight,” said a young Green guard, not without admiration.

  “Good discipline.”

  “Fair dealing, at least so far ...”

  I saw a serving woman gaze after a tall young savage, and her admiration was not for his fighting or his gold.

  But the queen’s ladies, stuck all afternoon in the outer chamber, knew nothing of all this. They sewed and they speculated, equally badly. Cecilia’s eyes were round with fright. When the outer door swung open, she jumped, gave a little cry, and pricked her finger.

  Lord Robert strode in, dirt and sweat and blood on his clothing. His boots rang on the stone floor as he made straight for the privy chamber.

  Lady Margaret, the ranking lady-in-waiting, leapt up and said, “Lord Robert!”

  He neither looked at her nor broke stride.

  “My lord!” she said desperately. “You cannot see the queen just now!”

  He stopped then, turning on her a look that made Cecilia shrink against the back of her chair. I would not have liked to face that black temper. Lady Margaret, usually so composed and acerbic, paled.

  Lord Robert said, “And who are you to tell me when I can or cannot see the queen? ”

  “She . . . she left orders. That no one is to disturb her.”

  “Really.” He took a step closer to Lady Margaret. She stood her ground beside the frozen group of seated women, the hem of her green skirt trembling on the floor. Lady Margaret, trembling!

  Lord Robert said, “And what is the queen doing that she does not desire to be disturbed?”

  “I . . . she did not tell me, my lord.”

  “And whatever it is, is Her Grace doing it alone?”

  Lady Margaret conquered her trembling. She looked straight at Lord Robert and said, “Her Grace is not obligated to tell me what she does.” The unspoken half of her statement was clear: Nor tell you, either.

  Lord Robert said, “The queen will see me,” and started toward the door.

  I called out, “Lord Robert! She is with Lord Solek!”

  Slowly he turned to face me. The ladies all stared, aghast. I said, “She told me, too, that they must not be disturbed. They are settling the future of my lord’s army. It is a . . . a delicate negotiation.”

  He sneered, “And what does a fool know of negotiations?”

  “Nothing, my lord. I only repeat what I was told. They are discussing the army.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Lord Robert was, supposedly, the head of the queen’s army. In three strides he was at the door and yanking on the handle. The door was barred from within.

  Lord Robert’s hand flashed to his sword. But a sword is no good against heavy oak. He kicked the door and bellowed, “Caroline!”

  I said in a low voice to the five women, “Get out. Quickly. She will never forgive you for witnessing this, if she knows.”

  Lady Margaret, oldest and quickest-witted, said, “Yes! Come now.” She had to pull Cecilia to her feet, but the last of their green skirts disappeared through the door to the presence chamber, with Lady Margaret closing it behind them, a scant moment before the queen flung open the door on the opposite side of the room.

  Her gaze swept quickly around the room, found only me, and rasped, “Go.”

  I did not have to be told twice. I scampered from the room, hunched over, trying to look as much as possible like some small animal, harmless and mute. In the presence chamber, the queen’s ladies huddled against the far door, too afraid of the savages to risk the open courtyard beyond. As I approached, Lady Margaret said sharply, “Well? ”

  What to say? “She . . . sent me away.”

  Lady Jane said, “Was Lord Solek there?”

  “Of course he was there,” Lady Sarah said. “We already knew that. Only—why didn’t Lord Robert challenge him? No, wait—Lord Solek must have already left the queen.”

  “We would have seen him go,” Lady Jane argued. “Unless . . . Oh! There must be a secret passage from the queen’s bedchamber! ”

  “Enough,” Lady Margaret said, and not even those two dared disobey her tone. Lady Margaret looked at me with new, reluctant respect. “You did well, fool.�
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  Lady Sarah said, “But did you see him? Will the savage and Lord Robert fight over her . . . later, I mean?”

  I said, “Lord Solek and the queen had matters of The Queendom to discuss.”

  Lady Jane snorted with delicate lewdness.

  Lady Margaret said, “The fool is right. Lord Solek had to discuss the army with the queen, and that is what we will say to anyone who asks. Do you all understand that? Do you?”

  One by one they agreed. Lord Solek was there on affairs of state. It was a meeting of negotiation, to which Lord Robert arrived late because he had been pursuing the retreating enemy. The three of them had discussed matters of The Queendom, such as the princess’s betrothal to Lord Solek’s son. The meeting among the three was about important affairs of The Queendom. Lady Margaret rehearsed them over and over.

  But it was Cecilia who knew what really to ask. As the ladies finally dispersed, under heavy guard, to their chambers until next sent for, Cecilia caught my arm. “Roger—what was the queen wearing when she opened the door?”

  “Go to your chamber, my lady,” I said. She pouted and flounced off, escorted by two Greens.

  The queen, barefoot, had been wearing nothing but a short shift, and her dark hair had tumbled loose around her bare shoulders.

  The next day Lord Robert rode from the palace on his magnificent black charger, gone to his estate in the country, and did not return. He had gone, Queen Caroline announced to her court, at her behest, on an important mission of state.

  21

  “ROGER, I HAVE work for you,” the queen said.

  That could mean only one thing. My spine froze.

  Weeks had passed since the battle. Spring flowed into early summer, with roses budding in courtyards and crops pale green in fields. Lord Solek’s savage soldiers were everywhere—how could so few of them seem like so many? They directed the Green guards, they marched through the spider-net of villages around the palace and secured them for the queen, they supervised the barges arriving at the palace, they controlled everything that happened in Glory. A few had learned some words of our language, but most managed with gestures and demonstrations of what they wanted. They were tireless, superbly disciplined, courteous in their rough way. They were—always, everyplace—there.