by Anna Kendall
Then I saw her.
Beside the purple caravan Princess Stephanie – no, Queen Stephanie now, although I could not think of someone so small as a queen – sat hunched on a low stool beside a bright fire. She was crying. Two women crouched beside her. I could see the firelit face of the nurse who had rushed at the Young Chieftain's throne during the marriage ceremony. The nurse patted Stephanie reassuringly, then took her into her arms. The other woman, whose back was to me, shook her head.
The two seemed to be arguing. The other must have won, because the nurse, frowning, replaced the princess on her stool and the little girl straightened her back and tilted her face up at the second woman, who turned enough for me to recognize her.
Heedless of my guard, I rushed forward pell-mell, hurtling into the circle of firelight. Six men pulled knives. My guard shouted something and the men retreated, but not very far. I cried, ‘Lady Margaret!'
She blinked, then smiled. ‘Roger. I thought you dead.'
‘So did I.' I was absurdly glad to see her, this older woman who thought of me, all at the same time, as a saviour, a murderer, a deceiver, a witch and still and always Queen Caroline's fool. I was glad that such a practical, principled woman was the little princess's guardian.
The child looked up at me curiously; her nurse frowned.
Stephanie said, ‘Who are you?' Her voice was thin, high and fearful. She wore not the purple she was entitled to, but a grey gown of sturdy weave, well made but without ornamentation. Lady Margaret and the nurse wore the same.
I knelt. ‘I am Roger Kilbourne, Your Grace. I ... I served your mother.'
‘Oh.' She looked away, without expression. I could not tell if she remembered her mother, now two and a half years dead. Certainly she did not resemble that fiery and sensual queen, neither in temperament nor beauty.
The nurse said, ‘Your Grace, it's time you were in bed.'
To me Stephanie said, ‘This is my last night in the caravan. Tomorrow I shall have to walk, and it will be very tiring.'
‘No, Your Grace,' I said, ‘you will not have to walk. I have seen your ... your conveyance. It is a chair with little curtains all around it, and you will be carried in it very high and secret, and you can pretend you are an invisible bird.'
‘Really?' For the first time she smiled. Her eyes, red-rimmed from crying, lit up, and I saw that she had her own charm. Not her mother's passion nor her grandmother's dignity, but a gentle and childish sweetness.
‘Nana, Lady Margaret, did you hear that? Roger says I shall not have to walk! And I can be an invisible bird!'
‘A good notion,' Lady Margaret said. ‘And now to bed, Your Grace.'
Stephanie obeyed, rising from her stool. Graciously she raised her little hand to me. ‘You may rise, Roger. I like you.'
‘I am Your Grace's servant.'
‘But I don't like them,' Stephanie said, pointing to the poisonously green caravan. ‘They're bad.'
Three girls climbed down from the green caravan. Although they wore more clothes, I recognized the three half-naked savage girls who had ‘attended' the princess at her marriage. Now they laughed and chattered to each other, but I was too far away to catch the words. The savages' customs were strange, and I did not know what these girls were, although I knew what Tom Jenkins would have considered them to be. But surely not even savages would have whores attend a queen-to-be at her wedding? They must be something else, but I had no idea what.
The nurse said, ‘Come along now, lambie.'
‘Goodnight, Lady Margaret. Goodnight, Roger,' the child said. She was led away by the nurse. My guard, who still never touched me, motioned for the sixth or seventh time for me to follow him. I ignored the gesture and said quietly to Lady Margaret, ‘The princess is well?'
‘She has nightmares. Sometimes they seem like more than just dreams.'
My blood froze.
‘What is it, Roger? Do you know something about these nightmares? Are you causing them?'
‘No.' But I guessed who was. Was that possible? ‘ Caroline studied the soul arts but had no talent,' Mother Chilton had once told me, ‘ but her grandmother did.' Did that mean that Stephanie had possibly inherited ...
No. I was being fanciful. No one's dreams but mine, a hisaf, were invaded by anyone from that other realm. ‘ Eleven years dead–'
I watched Stephanie mount the step to her caravan, followed by the nurse. In the doorway she turned and waved at me and at Lady Margaret, perhaps a last attempt to delay bedtime. Children used as weapons in war: the princess, my mad sister, the giggling half-budded girls by the other caravan. At least my own unborn child, who was never far from my thoughts, was not being so used. He or she was safe with Maggie in The Queendom.
‘ Klef! Klef! ' my guard insisted; finally he was worked up enough to lay a hand on my arm and pull me forward. The hand felt like iron closing on my soul. I was taken away.
‘Roger, help Her Grace,' Lady Margaret said urgently. But then she had no idea how little I could help myself.
As the guard closed the door of the caravan behind me, Tom let out a whoop. ‘You're back then. Nobody hurt you?'
‘No, no. I'm fine.' I was not fine.
‘Where did they take you? Look, there's ale, not just that piss-pot wine. Are we going to start walking tomorrow, like you said? By damn, I wish George was here to help us with the you-know-what. George is the man we need. Where did they take you, Peter?'
‘To see the Young Chieftain.'
Silence. Tom paused with a tankard of ale halfway to his lips. Jee, always quiet, somehow went quieter, like a mouse within scent of a cat. Finally Tom whispered, ‘Did you—'
‘I had nothing with me.' Tom would never learn dis-cretion. How did we know who would hear if he mentioned the mythical poison?
‘No, of course not. But ain't you ... you are going back?'
‘Yes. Listen, Tom, Jee. I am to give instruction every day to the Young Chieftain, about how to bring soldiers back from the dead, which—'
Tom snorted. ‘That nonsense again!'
Jee gazed at me without blinking.
‘—which of course I cannot teach him to do.' That would mean one thing to Tom, another to Jee. ‘But if I pretend to do so, it will—'
‘Say no more!' Tom said. He winked, and said more. ‘That will give you the chance to ... but say no more!'
‘ You say no more. I mean it, Tom.'
‘Yes.' He beamed at me, made happy by our supposed plot to poison Tarek. ‘What do you want me to do?'
I dropped my voice to a whisper. ‘I want you to do nothing, Tom. Keep those knives sheathed, fight with neither savages nor traitors to The Queendom, say nothing to anyone. Nothing at all. Can you do that?'
His face fell. ‘Nothing?'
‘Nothing. Only walk.'
Tom brightened again. ‘Well, at least we'll be walking again, instead of being cooped like chickens in this rolling pen. And who knows? George and his rebellion might—'
‘ Tom!'
He nodded, smiled, and pantomimed using a key to lock his mouth.
Jee said, ‘Did ye see the princess?'
It was rare for him to ask anything, and still rarer in that wistful tone. But Jee was only a few years older than Stephanie. What images of royalty, about as far removed as possible from the lives Jee had led in the Unclaimed Lands and in Applebridge, filled his boyish mind? A princess, captured and prisoner only fifty feet away. Where I saw a pathetic child, Jee might see unimaginable glamour.
Think of others, both my father and Mother Chilton had told me.
‘I did see the princess, Jee. She was sitting by her caravan with her women. And perhaps you shall see her tomorrow, when we begin walking over the mountains. She will be carried in a wonderful throne by four stout men, and if she parts the curtains around the throne to look out, she may smile at you.'
In the night gloom of the caravan I could not see his face. But I heard his soft indrawn breath as he imagined this.
�
�Well,' Tom said, oblivious, ‘I hope they're giving her enough food and a warm cloak and a bath. No, wait. Not a bath. If she smells bad enough, maybe that bastard Tarek won't go near her. I wouldn't mind a bath myself, believe it or not. And Jee, you look filthy and smell like horse turds. No princess better catch sight of you or she'll void her stomach.'
‘Tom,' I snapped, ‘go to sleep now.'
‘Why do you sound so testy? I only said—'
‘Go to sleep!'
38
And so we walked. The horses were gone, taken back to The Queendom, sold to some unseen local folk or abandoned in the mountains; I did not know. Supplies had been repacked onto a few donkeys or onto the backs of servants. The caravans were left in the upland meadow. Soldiers marched ahead and behind, and in the middle were carried the two chairs-on-poles, one for Lady Margaret and the other for Princess Stephanie with her nurse. Beside the bearers walked the captured folk of The Queendom, including Tom and Jee and me. Tom's ankles were tied with a foot of loose rope between them so that he could walk but not run. He hated this. I was left free, but my savage guard never left my side. Jee was still ignored. Perhaps the savages hoped he would just disappear, a magic illusion gone back to Witchland. I talked to none of the common soldiers, only to Tarek each night in his tent.
‘Begin instruction,' the Young Chieftain said at our first session.
Never was there an atmosphere less conducive to instruction. The tent was full of people. Two guards in full battle armour stood on either side of Tarek, who lounged on a three-legged stool while I stood before him on the bare ground. The guards pointed their guns straight at me, the witch who had some terrible magic at his disposal – who knew what he might do to their leader?
A log blazed in the fire pit, sending weird shadows over the guards' scowls and Perb's nervous face. Outside, it rained, a steady drumming on the hide roof that sounded for all the world like hooves from beyond the natural sky. Even Tarek's lounging looked uneasy, a cover for nerves stretched like lute strings.
But I had prepared. ‘My lord.'
He scowled and would have spoken, but this too was part of my preparations. I would be in control here, no matter what I must do to become so.
‘I know you use no such titles, my lord. But this is instruction from my realm, not yours. We must follow the discipline of my art. Its discipline.'
Perb translated. I had chosen the word very carefully, had even memorized it in Tarek's speech. The day before Perb had said that the savages' most important value was discipline.
Tarek nodded. He did not look belligerent. I pressed on, and now I spoke in Tarek's language. ‘My lord, no other person must hear my lesson – only you and I. Dismiss your guards and translator. My discipline. I am antek.'
If he was surprised that I spoke his language, he concealed it well. For a long moment he gazed at me. Then he waved at all three men: ‘ Klef.'
The guards obeyed instantly, although the stare they gave me could have wilted mountains. Perb burst into passionate speech I could not follow. Tarek repeated calmly, ‘ Klef,' and the look in his blue eyes made the guards seem like house cats. Perb kleffed.
‘ Jad,' Tarek said to me. ‘Begin.'
I took a stone from my pocket, clutching it to keep my fingers from trembling. So far I had succeeded. It was not very far. But he was obeying me. The savage leader of a great army and an unknown kingdom, obeying Roger Kilbourne, the Queen's fool. I sat cross-legged on the ground and gestured for Tarek to do the same. He did so without hesitation. Partly this must be due to a life of discipline – that superbly conditioned body had not happened by chance – but partly it was his own nature, so self-confident that he did not have to insist on the trappings of rank, nor try to impress others. In another life, it occurred to me, I might have liked him.
Tarek was shorter than I but longer in his muscled upper body, so that our heads were at the same height. I set the stone on the ground between us. Earlier in the day we had marched past a mountain stream, and my guard had indicated that Tom and I should strip and bathe. Jee had joined us. The cold water had stung like needles, and it had taken an hour of walking to return sensation to my frozen limbs, but from the bottom of the rocky stream I had pocketed this stone. Half the size of my fist, it was white, shot through with veins of some pink mineral and smooth from years in the water.
In my halting Tarekish (I had to give the language some name) I explained that this stone was a link between here and Witchland. To use it, one must train the mind: discipline. The first step was to learn to gaze at the rock and think of nothing else – nothing at all – for a full minute, while chanting a magic word.
‘What is this word?' Tarek said. His tone remained cool but eagerness flickered in his eyes.
‘The word is George.'
It took us five minutes before I declared myself satisfied with his pronunciation. I had chosen the word deliberately: The savages had trouble saying the ‘j' sound. Five minutes of instruction time were thus used up.
‘I begin,' Tarek said. ‘George, george—'
‘You are not saying it with the right beat,' I said, tapping my fist on the ground. ‘Magic words must be said exactly.'
‘Tell me again.'
Another five minutes. Tarek did not show annoyance. Discipline.
‘Good. Now look at the stone. Think of only the stone.'
‘George,' Tarek murmured, ‘george, geor—'
‘You are thinking of something else, not only the stone.'
For the first time he looked surprised. ‘You know this?'
‘Yes.' Of course I knew that: no one can think of only one thing for a full minute. Other thoughts inevitably wander in.
‘You can see into my thoughts?'
‘No. I know only that your thoughts are not solely on the stone.'
‘How do you know this?'
‘I am a witch.'
He nodded and returned to staring and murmuring. Time and time again I interrupted him to say his thoughts had wandered. Each time he admitted to this, and without anger. My admiration for him grew.
‘Enough for tonight,' Tarek finally said. ‘I will keep this stone.'
‘No. It must stay with me.'
He nodded, accepting my judgment. All at once I knew what antek meant: one who produced something both valuable and difficult. Defence and conquering from soldiers; children from mothers; learning from anteks. An antek ruled in his own realm.
Roger the scholar.
‘Goodnight, my lord,' I said.
He accepted the foreign title. ‘Goodnight, antek.'
Back at our fire, Tom inched himself closer to me and whispered, ‘Did you do it?'
Poison Tarek, he meant. I whispered, ‘No. George wishes us to wait until we have a sign from him that our rescuers are nearby. For our escape, you know.'
He nodded. Everyone here – unlike in The Queendom – seemed to accept my judgment. Everyone but me. With my nonsensical instruction, I was effectively making a fool of the leader of a great army, one who already had ample reason to kill me. How long could I sustain this travesty?
The answer turned out to be longer than I had dared hope. Perb had told me that we would reach Tarek's kingdom – the word felt unnatural on my tongue; queens should rule and men defend – in ‘two more twelve-days'. For six nights I kept Tarek staring at the pink-veined white stone and murmuring, ‘George ...' I interrupted him constantly to say his thoughts had wandered, thereby ensuring that his thoughts would wander. The days' marches grew shorter as the terrain became rougher. The weather turned even colder. In the mornings frost lay on the ground, on the princess's tent, on us. I dreamed every night of Maggie, pregnant with my child. Often I woke with tears frozen on my face. No rescue came from my father.
‘George is taking his own sweet time getting here,' Tom grumbled.
‘George, george,' Tarek murmured, and then on the seventh night, ‘I think I have done this, antek. For a full minute.'
‘Yes, you have.'
The warning in his blue eyes said that I must move forward with my instruction. And perhaps he had been able to keep his thoughts on the stone for a full minute. Discipline. ‘You are ready for the next step, my lord. Tonight, you must dream about this stone.'
All calm vanished. Tarek stood so quickly that the unused three-legged stool behind him was knocked backwards. Instantly a guard strode into the tent, gun pointed at my head. Tarek demanded of me, ‘What do you know of dreams?'
‘I ... I ...'
‘Are they the pass to Witchland?' He used the word for the high mountain pass, through which we had marched wearily that very day.
‘Sometimes,' I said. What answer would save me? Desperately I searched Tarek's face for some sign of what to say. In turn, his blue gaze raked my face, and almost I could feel it, sharp as knives.
Then he relaxed. ‘ Klef,' he said irritably to the guard, who left. Tarek paced a bit – unusual for him – then abruptly returned to sitting on the ground. ‘Tell me when dreams are a pass to Witchland.'
‘Only for anteks,' I groped even as my mind filled with images of my mad sister, speaking to me in the terrible dream that, mercifully, had not recurred for many nights.
‘Only for anteks,' Tarek repeated. ‘Good.'
‘My lord,' I said, trying to regain control, ‘are you troubled by dreams?' I had to use the word for ‘attack'; Tarekish did not seem to contain any other words for trouble.
‘Not I,' he said. ‘But my queen.'
Stephanie. Attacked by dreams. And Lady Margaret had also mentioned the princess's nightmares. I got out, ‘What are these dreams? Who comes in them?'
