As Roderick strode out of the cell, Hendrug called cheerfully after him. ‘Do visit us again. We’re always open!’
CHAPTER 14
THE SCAR
That night at dinner Roderick scanned faces, hoping that the vague description Fendall and others had given him of the knight seen with Sonya would clarify itself into a real person. However, well over half the knights had thick dark hair, and the longer he looked, the easier it was to see how almost anyone’s face could be described as being, in some way or another, a bit odd. After dinner he returned to his quarters and wrote down the names of all sixty-eight knights.
Use your brain.
He concentrated on the names, waiting for some sort of clue, breakthrough or inspiration to appear. None did. His mind wafted about until he caught it thinking about Ruby. Of all the many words she had said to him, six kept returning: You need to find that letter.
What had it contained that so quickly changed Banfor’s mind? Every knight had received a presumably identical letter before they set out on the search. He wondered if any knights still had theirs or whether they had all been returned to Drouk.
Fromley had arrived back only two days earlier, and was not someone who always followed rules and regulations as closely as he should. Maybe he still had his. Even if he did, it would be sealed of course, but that would be the next problem to solve. Roderick left his rooms and trotted up one flight of stairs – for some reason Fromley, too, had recently been moved lower down the tower to improved quarters – and knocked.
‘Who is it?’ called Fromley.
‘Me!’ said Roderick then, realising that might not be enormously helpful, added, ‘Roderick.’
The door swung open and Fromley stood there, wrapped in a dressing gown. ‘Just got back from the bath. Had to make sure it wasn’t the Queen before I opened up the door dressed like this.’ He grinned.
He ushered Roderick in. Fromley, too, was now in a suite. It wasn’t quite as big and nicely decorated as Roderick’s, but it wasn’t far off. He disappeared into his bedroom, re-emerging a few moments later, still in his dressing gown but with pants on and carrying a singlet and shirt. They sat opposite each other on matching couches, a low tea table between them.
‘Nice room,’ said Roderick.
Fromley coughed. ‘Sure is.’
Roderick wanted to ask him what he had done to earn the upgrade, but didn’t quite feel comfortable doing so, so instead he lapsed into small talk about how good it was to be back. He tried to find an opportunity to gently ease the conversation towards the Banfor letter, but none came so eventually he just jumped in.
‘You know that letter we were given to pass on to Banfor? Ever wonder what was in it?’
‘Not enough to open it and risk a treason charge.’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Drouk made sure we handed them straight in when we got back.’ Fromley put his hand to his mouth and coughed. ‘The pompous little twit even checked the seals in front of us.’ He snorted. ‘As if we’d interfere with the Queen’s seal.’
‘So, no idea what was in them, then?’
‘None. Why so curious?’ Fromley stood, pulled off his dressing gown and raised his arms above his chest to put his singlet on. Roderick’s eyes fell to Fromley’s large but firm stomach.
His heart stopped. Then it started pounding. Fromley had a scar the shape of a crescent moon on the left-hand side of his stomach.
Use your brain.
Fromley pulled his singlet over his head and then noticed Roderick looking. ‘What is it?’
‘Your scar,’ he said hollowly.
The answers may be closer than you think.
Fromley rubbed it absently and coughed again. ‘Oh, that. Haven’t you seen it before? You’re lucky you never had a little brother. They’re far more dangerous than big ones. When I was eleven he pushed me onto a boiling-hot horseshoe that my father had just knocked into shape. I can still smell it. Burning flesh. Yuck!’
Roderick wasn’t listening. He was remembering the vision he’d had when he had taken glimpsing juice at the Forest of Gilderang.
He saw a boot. Dark green. He sensed fear. Someone was scared. A knife with a blue handle. A struggle. A girl. The fear was coming from her. It felt as if this was happening not far off. Not more than a few days away, maybe fewer.
Men were overpowering the girl. She was terrified. She needed help. She struck out, pulled at a shirt. It rode up, revealing the stomach of one of her attackers. On it was a curved scar, the shape of a crescent moon.
The girl was pulled away. She was overpowered, a prisoner.
The scar he had seen in his vision was Fromley’s scar. Roderick didn’t understand. The vision had shown him Ruby being captured by the cave-dwellers on her way to the Circle of Mountains. How could Fromley have been involved? He was miles away, up north with Sir Shamus.
Or was he? Could he have circled back? But why? Or could one of the cave-dwellers have an identical scar?
He remembered that after he had rescued Ruby, she had mentioned that the cave-dwellers had threatened her with a knife with a grey handle. But the knife in his vision had had a blue handle. At the time he had paid it no mind, but . . .
Another thing. The dark green boot in his vision. Ruby’s, he had thought. He tried to picture Ruby in her cell. Her boots were green, but not dark green. They were light green.
Use your brain.
Then it hit him like a punch. He had misinterpreted his glimpsing juice vision. The knife he had seen had nothing to do with the cave-dwellers. The green boot was not Ruby’s. When he had sensed a girl, he had jumped to the conclusion that it was Ruby because he’d been thinking about Ruby. But he had been wrong.
What if the vision he had had was not of Ruby, but of Sonya? He tried to picture his sister heading out the front door of their home in Indinwick. He was almost sure she had a pair of dark green boots.
Could his vision have been of Sonya being abducted by the man with the scar? By Fromley? It was mind-blowing . . . but the knife, the boots, the scar . . . it all added up.
Roderick looked up at his friend, trying to keep his face neutral. Several people had said the man who had been seen with Sonya had something odd about his face. He studied Fromley’s. He had never noticed before, but Fromley’s eyes were slightly uneven. The right was a fraction lower than the left.
Fendall had said the man he had seen with Sonya had coughed as he rode past him on the bridge that morning.
And Fromley had coughed three times since Roderick had entered his room.
‘Got a cough?’ asked Roderick as casually as he could.
Fromley patted his chest. ‘Nothing much, just a little one.’
‘Where were you riding back from this morning?’
Fromley looked surprised. ‘Did you see me? I visited my parents. They’re not far away. Why?’
‘It’s lovely, this new room of yours. You must have done something pretty special to earn it. What would that have been, I wonder?’
Fromley looked uneasy.
The answers may be closer than you think.
Roderick stared at his friend. His enemy. ‘That’s why that last night we camped together – the night the rabbit stew disappeared – you went to bed as soon as I mentioned my family. You felt guilty.’
Fromley looked at him in confusion. ‘What are you talking about, Roderick?’
‘Where’s the blue-handled knife? The one you used to threaten my sister?’
‘Roderick, I have no idea what you’re . . .’
Roderick slammed his hand down on the table. ‘Where is she?’ he shouted.
Fromley recoiled. ‘Who? I don’t know what you mean.’
Roderick got up and walked into Fromley’s bedroom.
‘Roderick? What is it?’
Against the wall, u
nderneath the window, stood Fromley’s sword.
Be bold.
He picked it up and went back into the living room.
‘Roderick!’
‘I’m not good with a sword, but I’m good enough to cut an unarmed man in half, so you’d better tell me what you did with my sister.’
‘Your sis . . . Wha . . . ?’ Fromley raised his hands and backed into the couch. Roderick closed in on him, the tea table between them.
‘I don’t know anything about –’ Fromley began.
Roderick smashed the sword down onto the table as hard as he could. The blade went halfway into the wood and for an awful moment Roderick thought it was stuck. He heaved back and pulled. The sword jumped out, the momentum pushing the handle into his chest. He really wasn’t good with a sword, but his demonstration of effort, if not skill, had had an effect. Fromley was pale.
Roderick yelled into his friend’s face. ‘You do know! I know you know! SO TELL ME!’
‘All right! All right!’ exclaimed Fromley.
Roderick gripped the sword tightly, ready. ‘You were seen with her several times. What did you do with her? Where is she?’
‘She’s safe. I promise.’ Fromley was trying to sound calm and reasonable. ‘She’s under guard somewhere. She is in no danger.’
‘Where?!’
‘I don’t know.’ He cringed as Roderick raised the sword. ‘I promise I don’t! I handed her over to others.’
Roderick felt like this wasn’t really happening and that he wasn’t really there. But it was and he was. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Fromley opened his mouth but nothing came out.
Roderick smashed the sword on the table again, flat side down this time so it wouldn’t get caught. ‘Why?!’
Fromley waved his hands about as if grasping for the answer. ‘I was just following orders,’ he said weakly.
‘Whose?’
Fromley coughed once more and then looked around desperately, perhaps weighing the threat Roderick posed against that which he would face if he disclosed the name.
‘I’ll be dead if I tell you.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Roderick, pushing the point of the sword closer to Fromley’s neck. ‘But you’ll be dead right now if you don’t! You might think I’m not a killer, and normally I would agree, but this is my sister!’
‘All right!’ Fromley took a deep breath. ‘It was Sir Lilley.’
Roderick blinked, then gulped. ‘Go on.’
Fromley hesitated. Roderick flicked the sword closer to his chin. ‘Talk!’
‘Okay! First he told me to pose as a farmer visiting from eastern Baronia and befriend your sister. That was easy enough.’ Fromley’s eyes didn’t move from the sword. ‘I went to their stall and struck up a conversation with her. We arranged to meet again. Lilley wanted me to talk to her about herbs, and suggest to her some new and better ways of farming. He didn’t care what, as long as it sounded convincing. He gave me some books about herbs so I’d have some idea of what I was talking about. For the life of me, I didn’t have the foggiest what was going on, but Lilley said it was important. I had to do what he said.’
‘What then?’
Fromley looked up at him. ‘He told me to suggest to Sonya that she come away with me to “my farm” for a couple of days so that I could show her some of the farming techniques I had talked to her about. I was told to persuade her not to tell her mother, because she might not have let her come.’
‘She wouldn’t have,’ said Roderick. He tried to put it together. Fromley, steered by Lilley, had played on Sonya’s frustration at being stuck on the farm and her rapidly growing desire for independence. By suggesting new ways of farming to her, he had set her on a collision course with Gwenda. Because Sonya’s suggestions had made no sense, Gwenda had refused to try them, and Sonya’s frustration had increased to the point where she had agreed to go away with Fromley without telling her mother.
Lilley had been clever. By manipulating Sonya to go with Fromley willingly, he had avoided the risk of anyone seeing her being abducted, or of her escaping.
But why would Lilley want to abduct his sister?
‘Tell me what you did,’ said Roderick.
Fromley cleared his throat. ‘We arranged to meet near Indinwick in the early afternoon on the day before we left to search for Banfor. I brought two horses. Lilley had given me directions to take Sonya to a farmhouse about an hour’s ride east. When we arrived there were three men there and she realised that I had betrayed her.’
‘There was a struggle and your shirt got pulled up.’
‘I can’t remem . . . how could you know that?’
‘Where’s the farmhouse?’
Fromley looked uncomfortable. ‘I could find it again, but they weren’t going to stay there with her. That was just the handover place. They were going on.’
‘And you don’t know where, because why would they tell you?’
Fromley coughed and then nodded. Roderick’s head was boiling. ‘Then you came home, and the very next day you and I rode away side by side, all chummy chummy.’
‘I didn’t know we’d be travelling together. Lilley promised me nothing bad would happen to your sister . . . I’ve felt so terrible about what happened. I swear. It’s been the worst thing ever –’
‘Poor you. Did Lilley say anything about why? Anything?’
‘Just that it was important that Sonya was kept somewhere safe for a while.’
‘She was somewhere safe. She was at her home.’
‘He meant somewhere where he could –’
‘Control her?’
‘I guess so. He just wanted her . . . away for a while.’
‘But that’s all you know.’ Contempt dripped off Roderick’s tongue.
‘I’m sorry.’ Fromley put his head down. ‘I was just following orders.’
Roderick looked at him like he was poo on a shoe, then dropped the sword and walked out the door.
Back in his room, Roderick sat on his bed and tried to figure it out.
Why would Sir Lilley want to take his sister prisoner? Could it have something to do with her involvement with CAKE? But according to Sven she had only been to a few meetings. Or maybe Sonya had somehow stumbled on some information that made her dangerous to Lilley? But what? And how? Could she be some sort of a hostage, taken prisoner so that Lilley could pressure someone else into doing something? But she was just a poor farm girl and Sir Lilley was one of the most powerful people in the kingdom. That didn’t make sense either.
Roderick’s brain hurt. He slumped back, missed the pillow and whacked his head on the wall. Ow! Now it hurt more.
What to do? Take a sword to Sir Lilley? No chance. As one of the Queen’s top advisers, he had guards with him almost all the time. Besides, it wasn’t as if Roderick had suddenly become a brilliant fighter. He hadn’t got the better of Fromley through his superior swordsmanship. On the other hand, he thought with a measure of satisfaction, for the first time ever he had been in a conflict with someone else and they had been more scared than he was. True, that someone else was half-naked and unarmed, but it was something.
The contents of the Queen’s letter to Banfor also continued to nag at him. He was confused, troubled and fidgety, and eventually that’s the sort of sleep he fell into.
CHAPTER 15
A TREASONABLE ACT
The next morning as Roderick dressed, a plan to get hold of the Queen’s letter arose in his mind. After a breakfast of two and a half walnut and apricot muffins, he made his way to the stables where he found Jonas brushing a horse.
‘Morning, Jonas.’
‘A busy one as always, sir.’
‘Jonas, have all the knights returned from their mission?’
‘Still three horses out, sir.’ Roderick remembered the Baronian chain mail Ruby had seen in t
he cannibals’ cave. One of the three would not be returning.
‘Any idea when they are expected back?’
‘Could be ten minutes, ten days or never.’
Roderick pulled three gold coins from his pocket.
‘Perhaps you could send word to me as soon as one of them gets back.’
Jonas palmed the coins. ‘That I can, sir. I’ll send one of the stableboys.’
‘Another two coins for you if you can delay the knight here in the stables until I get here.’
‘I’ll do what I can, sir.’
Roderick spent the rest of his morning doing some knightly training; sword-fighting and unarmed combat. Despite the fact he had saved the kingdom by saving Banfor, nothing had changed. Once again, he ended up bruised, beaten and bashed.
He returned to the castle after lunch. A few minutes after he got back to his room there was a rap at the door. It was a stableboy. Two knights had returned from their search.
When Roderick got to the courtyard he circled around and approached the stables from the front gate, as if he was just coming back to the castle. As he walked past, over the stable wall he pretended to suddenly notice Sir Egmont and Sir William unslinging their packs from their horses.
‘Sir Egmont. Sir William. You’re back! Thank goodness. People were worried.’
‘Roderick,’ said Sir Egmont, a tall, unsmiling, senior knight whose buck teeth and long, dour face made him look a bit like a sad rabbit. ‘Are we the final ones?’
‘I think so. You must be exhausted. Why don’t you go straight up to your rooms and I can arrange for someone to carry your bags up.’
They looked uncertainly about, tempted by Roderick’s offer but unsure about leaving the belongings that had been their constant companions for the past weeks.
‘How long since you had a bath, gentlemen? A hot one is only moments away. Someone did the same for me when I got back.’
That convinced them, and they shuffled off with the bow-legged gait of those who have spent too long on horseback. When they were out of sight Roderick deposited another two gold coins into Jonas’s palm. ‘If you see that I am undisturbed for the next five minutes it will be doubled.’
The Adventures of Sir Roderick, the Not-Very Brave Page 15
