‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Marcel. You weren’t like this before. If anyone was the stubborn donkey, it was me. Then you go and flood those farms just so you can be in Elstenwyck a day ahead of time. It’s like you’re so full of magic you can’t tell what’s right and good.’
Marcel was still trying to get air back into his lungs but he managed to croak, ‘It’s for Bea.’
‘You’re not the only one who wants to help her.’
Marcel felt the weight of his cousin’s hands pinning him against the post. He was more of a match for Fergus these days but he knew better than to break free by force. His breathing returned slowly and with it some less frantic thought. ‘I’m sorry about the farms.’
‘That’s enough, you two. Fergus is going with you, Marcel, and that’s the end of it,’ said Nicola in a voice that expected to be obeyed. ‘I’d come too, if I could, but my life is different now.’
They started towards the moonlight that traced thin lines around the edges of the stable doors. When Fergus went ahead with the horses, Nicola took hold of Marcel’s arm. ‘Stop here a minute. There’s something else I want to talk about.’
‘I know what my magic can do and —’
‘Will you shut up and listen, Marcel. This isn’t about magic, it’s about Bea. You two haven’t seen each other for a long time. I could feel all sorts of emotions in that pigeon’s egg, not just fear for Long Beard and the rest of her kind. Ever since those days in Mrs Timmins’ house you two have always cared for each other in a special way. You’re older now and there are lots of things that caring can turn into. If anyone knows that, it’s me,’ she said sadly. ‘When I held that egg in my hand, well … Bea was worried about a lot of things, of course she was, but one of them was meeting you face to face again.’
‘She’ll be happy to see me, I know she will. And I can’t wait to see her.’
‘Yes, but, Marcel …’ Nicola couldn’t find words for what she was trying to say. Or perhaps she didn’t think Marcel would understand no matter what she told him. She sighed in defeat and spoke the only words she was sure of. ‘I wish I could go with you.’
WHEN THEY CAUGHT UP to Fergus, he opened the doors and led the horses into the courtyard where the clatter of their hooves on the cobblestones rang out louder than they’d expected. Three guards hurried towards them from the palace gates.
‘We have orders that the prince is not to leave the city,’ said their captain.
‘Ah, we weren’t the only ones to guess what you’d do,’ Nicola whispered to Marcel. To the guards she said, ‘And my orders are that he can leave whenever he likes.’
The captain stared silently at the princess for a few moments, then twisted round a little to look up at a window in the palace, the window of the chancellor’s private chamber. He was weighing up which of the two he dared disobey, Marcel realised.
‘Go get the chancellor,’ the captain called to a young soldier, who hurried away, his boots making as much noise as the horses in the still evening air.
‘Is there any order against me?’ asked Fergus.
The captain thought for a second or two. ‘Er, no, sir.’
With that Fergus gave a little bow and sauntered off, leading a horse behind him.
What’s he up to, thought Marcel. Fergus wouldn’t go off to the mountain without him, would he? By then, the chancellor was on his way across the cobblestones. The night wasn’t going quite the way Marcel had planned and now he would have to endure a stormy lecture and explain himself before his father.
Just as the chancellor reached the stables, a frightened shout cut into the quiet of the courtyard. It seemed to come from the ground floor of the western tower. Then a scream, this time from a serving girl on the first floor.
‘Go and see what the matter is,’ the chancellor snapped at the captain.
More cries of alarm drew their eyes towards the tower where a horse’s rump appeared in one of the windows. It was climbing the spiral staircase and when it appeared again in a window on the second floor, Marcel could make out the legs of a rider.
‘Why is Fergus taking his horse to the top of the tower?’ he asked Nicola.
She didn’t seem sure herself until she had watched the commotion inside the tower for a few moments. Then she had an answer. ‘It’s not his horse, it’s yours.’
The chancellor followed the captain shouting, ‘After them! Bring that young fool to me,’ and left Marcel and Nicola unguarded behind him.
‘Wings! But there’s no Book of Lies any more. Gadfly’s flying days are over — I told him that.’
‘Maybe Fergus has been listening to you more than you think. A spell for everything. Isn’t that what you told Father?’
‘Yes, but I’ve never conjured magic like this before.’
‘Now would be a good time to start. Look, they’re on top of the tower.’
And the soldiers would reach them any minute, he saw, his eye following the light of their torches in the narrow windows as they worked their way up the spiralling stairs.
A spell for everything. Yes, that had been his boast. But to give a horse the wings of an eagle … Could he do it? He’d commanded the wind and the seas, even the river currents, to be where he stood now. Was there anything he couldn’t do?
The hint of a smile crept along his lips. He knew one of the players in this game would be glad to see those wings again, the wings that lived in her imagination, part of her heart’s desire. A horse who fancied herself an eagle. He swept a hand before his face, bringing all his concentration to bear, picturing the pristine white feathers in his mind, the hard bone of the outstretched wings, the muscles that gave them force.
‘It’s working,’ Nicola cried from beside him. Looking up, he saw Gadfly calmly examining the wings as they emerged from her flanks; mere fledgling buds at first, but they quickly grew larger than an eagle’s, for no bird was ever meant to be the size of a horse. What wings they were too, as white as the moon and unmarked by the speckles that dirtied the rest of Gadfly’s hide.
They’d appeared none too soon either, because the soldiers had reached the top of the stairwell and came rushing into the open space behind them. Marcel didn’t know if Fergus had nudged her with his ankles, or whether Gadfly simply couldn’t wait for the last of the feathers to appear. Whatever the trigger, the horse bounded forward to the edge of the tower and leapt into the night air.
The cruel forces of nature sent horse and rider plummeting towards the ground. If Gadfly had tried to beat her wings frantically, they would have fluttered and broken in the fearful updraught. But she knew these wings as though she had been born a bird, and like a bird she stretched them as wide as they would reach and soared away from the tower. Was it enough, though, to save them from becoming a crumpled mess of bone and blood? They were still sinking lower and the ground seemed to jump up towards them with a deadly hunger. The graceful gliding would level out eventually, but would it be in time?
There was nothing more Marcel could do except shout along with his sister: ‘Pull up, pull up.’
They both flinched as Gadfly straightened her legs ready for the terrible impact. Then a jolt and they were surrounded by stars. Was this how it happened? Marcel had seen death before but he’d never seen stars come to escort the dead into the heavens.
The stars disappeared as quickly as they’d showered the air around the horse. They weren’t from the sky above at all. They weren’t even stars, but sparks ignited when Gadfly’s hooves scraped across the cobblestones — just a single touch, for they were still in the air and those wondrous wings were beating now, carrying them higher, higher. All Gadfly had to do was lift her legs and they would clear the palace wall.
Marcel was mesmerised by the easy grace of it all. It took away the sting of being left behind. At least one of them would reach Bea by the morning, and if he had to find another way to join her, he would.
But what was this? Gadfly was banking, turning away from the wall. And Fergus was
calling to him. Something about the stable.
‘He wants you to get on the roof,’ Nicola said.
Marcel was already on the move. But his legs were weary after he’d stood all night on the ship’s deck and it seemed he didn’t have enough left in them to climb up the pole. Then he felt solid support under his shoe.
‘Keep trying,’ Nicola hissed from beneath him. Her bare hands were supplying the step he needed. He lunged higher and caught hold of a rafter supporting the roof. More acrobatics and he was on top of the thatch, looking for Fergus in the air above him.
He searched one way, then another. The moon in his eyes made it difficult to scan the sky and he raised his hand as a shield. Suddenly that hand was grabbed out of the air and his arm wrenched so hard he thought it would surely pop out of its socket. To make matters worse, he found his feet dangling free above the courtyard, which was now a long way beneath him.
‘Swing onto the horse,’ a voice gasped from above his head.
Looking up, he saw Fergus straining to keep steady on Gadfly and realised what had happened — he’d been plucked from the stable roof and only Fergus’s grip around his wrist was stopping him from falling to his death.
The shock was enough to act. Swing, his cousin had urged. Marcel let his body move away in the wrong direction, bringing a grunt from Fergus but it had to be this way. Judging the moment, he waited until the outward swing was spent and then used the momentum of his return to make a desperate lunge.
One foot caught onto Gadfly’s back. Then the other, followed by his calf, and finally a knee hooked over that unsightly hide. He tugged in with his leg and felt his bottom make contact.
‘At last!’ Fergus cried.
In the final moments before they cleared the palace wall, Marcel looked down into the courtyard to see Nicola near the stables still, her orange gown shimmering in the moonlight and reflecting its colour faintly in her upturned face. She didn’t wave or call out in farewell; she simply stood alone and watched them flee.
Then they were over the wall and gone.
‘To the west!’ Marcel shouted in triumph. ‘To Bea’s mountain!’
CHAPTER 10
Fingertips on the Tapestry
DARKNESS.
Then a crack of light as a heavy door opened and a figure slipped through.
When the door closed again, as soundlessly as the figure could manage, a candle brought a tiny island of light to the vast hall, some of its pale glow falling on orange silk. The figure hurried along the left-hand wall until she reached the last images. Here she held her candle higher to shed as much light onto the battle scene as possible. She saw her brother, she saw her cousin, she saw herself encased in armour as she fought alongside the men, but when she found the figure lying dead it wasn’t enough to use her eyes. A hand reached up to let her fingers caress the silken thread.
‘Finn,’ she whispered as tears spilled down her cheeks.
Nicola had grieved for more than a year now, and always in darkness, always alone. Sometimes it felt too lonely to weep in her room high in the royal tower and, waiting until the rest of the palace was asleep, she would steal her way down to the Great Hall, where she could see, touch, remember.
Tonight there had been a great disturbance in the palace. Marcel and Fergus had defied the king, who had ordered courtiers and soldiers about in a fury, but there was little he could do and after an hour the torches had been extinguished and the night returned to quiet. It had been safe for her to come — or so she thought.
With her hand still touching the tapestry, she was interrupted by a sound: the opening of the same heavy doors she’d entered by. It was too late to hide, for whoever it was had surely seen her light. By the glow of the intruder’s candle she could see it was a man, powerfully built like her father. Was it the king? He was coming towards her.
Her tears! Pelham would see her reddened eyes and wonder why she was crying for the dead knight. What could she do?
‘Who’s there?’ called a deep voice.
The chancellor! But that was even worse.
Moments later, he joined her at the tapestry. ‘Nicola. It’s you,’ he said uncertainly. ‘And you’re crying.’
He moved his candle closer to the wall, holding it high. ‘Lady Ashlere. Of course. You still feel the pain of her death.’
The princess let out a breath. In the last seconds before he’d reached her, she’d managed to slip a few steps along the tapestry to the scene where her mother lay poisoned.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he said, and fell silent. Before an angry crowd, he could thunder out a speech that would make them cower. Called to advise King Pelham, he would find the perfect words to put his case. But confronted with Nicola’s tears, his tongue failed him. The awkward moment seemed to stretch on and on. It ended only when the chancellor moved past her to the images of Cadell.
Only Nicola knew they had come for the same scene, that they shared the same grief. She went closer until they were standing side by side. Her tears returned, but it didn’t matter now if he saw them because he would assume they were for her murdered mother, not the man she had loved.
When he did turn towards her, his face made up for all that he hadn’t been able to say. Here she found the grief he couldn’t put into words; a father who missed his son every day, as keenly as she did. The chancellor had never been an easy man to like, but there, before the tapestry, she sensed a bond tying them, whether he realised it or not.
She wished she could tell him; that this gruff-tempered man could become someone to share a hug with when neither could bear to think of what they had both lost.
But, no. Her secret must remain so. The king and the chancellor would scoff at her, call her too young to love at such an age. That would be like losing Finn a second time.
‘Good night,’ she said, moving off.
At the door, she looked back. There was just enough light from the distant candle to see that the chancellor had reached up to touch Finn’s prone figure, just as she had done.
CHAPTER 11
A Lone Figure Standing in the Bracken
IN THE DAYS AFTER the pigeon had flapped away towards Elstenwyck, Bea had spent as much time as she dared wandering far from the Hidden Village, straining her elf eyes and her elf ears, even dropping to her knees to feel for heavy human footsteps on the ground. If Marcel came, he would approach through the forest using the trails that Starkey had found during their desperate escape from Fallside, and she wanted to be the first to sight him. So far, however, there’d been no sign of a human in the forest, not even a woodsman who’d wandered too far.
Life on the mountain had been strained since the tragedy of Baden Dark. That was what some of the elves were beginning to call it, as though the story of her grandfather would soon become part of elvish folklore. There was no new leader yet, although a day had been set for the measuring of beards and after that there would a different elf called Long Beard. This was how it was supposed to be. If every leader carried the same name, it would seem that he had always been there, reigning with the wisdom that came with the ages. It was a sensible way to do things, but cruel too, because past leaders must be quickly forgotten and that seemed to be happening all too soon for her grandfather.
‘He might still be alive,’ Bea had said to Nerrinder only the night before.
Nerrinder had looked up from the fire, the sadness of loss lined in her face, for Long Beard had been her uncle. ‘Believe that if you want, Bea.’
Bea’s only ally in this hope was Kertigan, who argued daily with the elders about what to do. She was grateful to him, even though he couldn’t get Ebert to change his mind any more than she could. At the same time, a new uneasiness had begun within her. With her grandfather gone, she had lost the special position that came with being the leader’s granddaughter. Seated on her solitary rock, she’d asked herself how much she was part of the elves. Perhaps she should worry more about whether they counted her as one of them.
When she’d finally become convinced that the enchanted pigeon had fallen prey to a hawk, an elf named Anders hurried into the Hidden Village shouting as elves never did. ‘Humans, two of them, in the forest not far from here.’
‘Not so loud!’ came the complaints, but the urgency in his voice quickly drew an audience around him. ‘How can they be so close? We should have heard of them long before this.’
‘They climbed the escarpment, judging by where I saw them. The odd thing is, they have a horse with them.’
‘A horse! Your eyes are playing tricks. It’s hard enough to scale that escarpment with hands and feet. A horse, never!’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Anders, who was enjoying telling his tale. ‘These are special humans. I waited until they had wandered down into a little gully still heavy with morning mist. Eerie it was, just the right moment to make the noises, but they barely stopped to listen, as though they heard ghostly sounds like that every day. When they stood under a tree to shelter from a shower, I used my best trick. You know the one, with the rainwater.’
‘Yes, Anders, we know about your trick,’ said Ebert, who’d joined them and now stood frowning at every word.
Anders wasn’t going to miss his chance to tell it again. Avoiding the weary elder’s eyes, he searched out younger faces who would be more impressed. ‘They didn’t see me above them in the tree, of course. I’m too clever for that. I collected rainwater in my hat and dripped it onto their heads. Then I turned the drops to red, using the juice of crushed berries. Like blood, it was, splashed all over them. I’ve never seen it fail with the woodcutters and hunters who come too close. Off they go, bellowing like frightened elk, but not these two.’
‘What colour was the horse?’ Bea asked.
‘What difference does that make?’ snapped Anders, who didn’t like being interrupted. ‘It’s the humans we need to worry about, not their horse.’
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