Cecile had been dubious about him at first. They were undertaking a perilous journey and he was a forty-year-old knight hampered by a bad knee. Sir Ander had recommended Sir Conal and since Sir Ander was one of the few people in this world Cecile trusted, she had taken Sir Conal into her service.
During the long, exhausting, and sometimes seemingly hopeless journey, she had come to appreciate the knight’s cool and confident demeanor. He dealt with each crisis swiftly and calmly. Best of all, he was invariably cheerful, enlivening the journey in the rattling and uncomfortable post chaise with stories of his childhood growing up among the Trundlers and tales of his adventures as a member of the Knight Protectors.
“You are staring me out of countenance, my lady,” said Sir Conal, grinning.
“I am sorry,” said Cecile. “Please continue. You were saying something about the monks.”
“No one in the village knows much about them or their monastery, except that it is very old,” Sir Conal continued. “Two monks drive a wagon to town twice yearly to pick up supplies. The monks have been coming to the village as long as anyone can remember. They never engage in idle chatter. They speak only as they find it necessary to convey their needs.
“As for the road itself, the stable hand tells me it is winding and narrow, used mostly by sheep and goat herders. Their shelters are scattered along the way. They’ve moved the flocks down out of the mountains for the coming of winter, so we should find the shelters available for our own use.”
Cecile sighed deeply. “They left with Sophia days ago…”
“Take heart, my lady,” said Sir Conal, patting her hand. “We know the princess is alive and that these two monks are taking pains to keep her safe and unharmed, even letting her keep the little dog.”
“They are using the dog to control her,” Cecile returned bitterly.
“That is a good sign, my lady,” Sir Conal said. “Wherever they are taking her, for whatever reason, they want her alive and unharmed.”
Cecile understood what he meant. Threats against Bandit would make Sophia far more tractable than threats against herself. Because she was subject to painful, debilitating headaches, the princess appeared fragile and frail. Living with chronic pain had given her a core of strength and fortitude. Witness the fact that she had dared to try to flee her captors.
To keep up appearances, Cecile and Sir Conal returned to the inn and ordered supper. Once they had eaten, Sir Conal left to purchase horses. Cecile shut herself in her room. She bathed as well as she could, considering the washbasin itself was none too clean. Then she wrote a letter to D’argent, wondering even as she wrote it if D’argent was still alive.
She had urged him to leave the doomed palace. He had refused as politely as one could refuse a countess, saying she would need him to remain at his post. When the letter was written, she went downstairs and slipped it in the mailbag to leave with tomorrow’s post. Returning to her bed, she lay down on it, fully dressed, and worried about Sophia until weariness overtook her and she fell asleep.
* * *
Cecile woke to a quiet knock on the door. Moonlight had managed to make its way through the dirty window, casting a pale glow around her room.
“I have the horses, my lady,” Sir Conal said softly.
Cecile gathered her things and joined him. The hour was late, the inn quiet. The innkeeper had retired to his chambers in the back and the servants had gone to their beds. Cecile and Sir Conal slipped down the stairs as silently as they could.
“The horses are not much to look at,” Sir Conal warned her, as they walked into the stable yard. “But they will suit our needs admirably. My lady, may I introduce Jean and Pierre.”
The two were mountain ponies, short and sturdy, with shaggy manes and rough coats. They were outfitted with odd-looking high-backed saddles made of wood over colorful blankets with ropes for bridles. The ponies appeared to be in good health, bright and alert.
Cecile was an experienced horsewoman, having ridden since childhood. She bred her own horses and regularly rode to the hunt with the king, as well as riding for her own pleasure and exercise. Her favorite horse, Warrior, was a proud, fiery stallion, black with a white blaze, who stood sixteen hands. She smiled at the contrast.
“I am pleased to meet you, Pierre,” said Cecile, feeding the pony an apple.
“They are sure-footed, bred for the mountain trails. Just what we need,” Sir Conal said as he rubbed Jean’s shaggy forehead. “I’m a bit dubious about the comfort of the wooden saddle, but the owner assured me we would grow accustomed to it. That loop of rope is the stirrup, my lady. I am afraid you must ride astride.”
“I generally ride astride. I cannot abide sidesaddles.” Cecile kilted her skirts, thrust her foot into the loop, and pulled herself into the strange-looking saddle. She glanced down at her skirts that were hiked to her shins. “I trust your sense of propriety will not be offended by seeing my ankles, Sir Conal.”
“God made the ankle as he made the moonlight, my lady—for us to admire,” Sir Conal returned gallantly.
He loaded the supplies—blankets, food, water, powder and ammunition—dividing them between both ponies. When they were ready, Cecile gave Pierre a gentle kick in the flanks and the pony obediently ambled off, his pace unbearably slow. When she gave him another kick to encourage him, he shifted his head to look back at her in mild rebuke, letting her know he knew his business. He continued at his same deliberate pace.
“I could wish they were faster,” said Cecile, thinking of the many miles that lay between them and the princess.
“We can’t help Her Highness if we break our necks, my lady,” said Sir Conal. “Or if the ponies break theirs.”
Cecile gave Pierre a pat on the neck in apology and counseled herself to be patient.
With the moon to light their trail, they rode far into the night, stopping when they came upon a shepherd’s hut. Sir Conal slept outside the hut with the ponies. Cecile wrapped herself in her cloak and slept inside, thinking, as she did so, that the hut’s dirt floor was cleaner than her room in the inn.
The next morning, Cecile performed her ablutions in a cold, clear mountain stream. She sat on the creek bank, minding the ponies while Sir Conal searched the road ahead for signs of the princess and monks. Every muscle in Cecile’s body was sore, especially the parts that came in contact with the wooden saddle. Sitting down was painful, but then so was standing.
Sir Conal returned and called out a cheerful good morning. Cecile carried water back to the campsite and mixed it with dry oatmeal in a tin pot. Sir Conal ate with relish. Cecile had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat the lumpy, congealing mass to keep up her strength.
“You are a born campaigner, my lady,” Sir Conal said in admiring tones, watching her choke down the cereal. “You make the best of what God sends and no grousing.”
“If it was God that sent this oatmeal, I may never forgive Him,” said Cecile. “What did you find?”
“Nothing, I fear, my lady,” said Sir Conal. “The ground is too rocky.”
“We don’t know they came this way,” said Cecile, discouraged.
“We know they started out on this road,” said Sir Conal. “I see no reason why they would leave it.”
The journey into the mountains was slow and treacherous. Cecile came to bless the sure-footed little ponies and even to admit the usefulness of the wooden saddle. The high back supported her when the trail seemed to ascend straight into the sky, and the high pommel kept her from falling over the pony’s neck when they rode straight down.
No one had purposefully constructed this road. It had been ground into the mountain by centuries of hooves and boots and it was pitted and gouged, strewn with rocks and sheep droppings. Well-worn trails used by the herders branched off from the main road, meandering over grass-covered slopes. Shepherds must have tended their flocks here back in the days of the Sunlit Empire.
Despite the uneven terrain, the ponies kept their footing, nimbly pick
ing their way among the rocks and climbing the steep grades with ease.
The plodding rhythm and swaying motion lulled Cecile, made her drowsy. She must have nodded off, for she came to herself with a start when Sir Conal suddenly brought Jean to a halt.
“What is the matter?” Cecile asked, tugging on the reins. “What is wrong?”
“Wait here, my lady,” said Sir Conal.
He climbed off the pony and walked over to the side of the road. Cecile leaned forward in the saddle to try to see what had attracted Sir Conal’s attention.
The road curved around a stand of pine trees, then made a steep plunge down into a gorge where a small stream trickled over the rocks. The road crossed the shallow water and continued crawling snakelike up the side of the mountain.
Near the pine trees, Sir Conal bent down to examine something. Rising, he walked a short distance among the pines, keeping his gaze on the ground. Cecile lost sight of him. She sat on the pony, her hands tightly clenched over the reins. He reemerged and went down to the stream, still searching the ground, then left the stream and walked back up the steeply sloping road to meet her.
“You had best come see this, my lady.”
“You found something!” Cecile dismounted and hurriedly accompanied him to the pines trees.
Sir Conal pointed to the ground, indicating a blackened patch on the stone and a few bits of charred wood. “People camped here recently. You can see where someone built a fire. If you will water Jean and Pierre, I will keep searching.”
Cecile led the ponies to the stream and filled her own water skin. She walked a bit to ease the stiffness and soreness and to marvel at the breathtaking beauty of this wild and desolate land. She had entered a world of sharp angles and stark contrasts: bright sun and chill air, blue sky above and gray and green below, patches of snow in the midst of summer. The world had never seemed so vast as when viewed from this close to heaven, or so small. The air was thin and brittle and tasted of pine.
She was roused from her musings by a low whistle indicative of astonishment. She turned to see Sir Conal examining his boot. He began to laugh and motioned her to join him.
He looked up at her with a smile and pointed to the bottom of his boot. “You will be pleased to know I just stepped in dog droppings, my lady.”
Cecile stared at him a moment, wondering what he was talking about. Then she gasped in understanding. “Bandit!”
“The little dog was here, my lady,” said Sir Conal with satisfaction. He pointed to a patch of mud. “These are his footprints and those of his mistress.”
He conducted a wide-ranging search, walking all around the campsite. Cecile watched tensely as Sir Conal shoved aside sticks and pine needles with the toe of his boot.
“This campsite is old,” he said. “Probably a favorite resting place for shepherds and monks traveling to and from the monastery. Trees provide shelter. There is a stream nearby. Down through the years, people have built fires in this location. You see how they rolled boulders near the fire to use as benches— Ah!”
Sir Conal must have caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, for he picked up an object and brought it over to her, holding it in the palm of his hand.
Rubies set into leather sparkled in the sunlight.
“Bandit’s collar!” Cecile said softly. She added, with a catch in her throat, “I gave this to Sophia to help her keep track of him. He was constantly getting lost—”
And now Sophia was the one who was lost. Cecile pressed her lips together and held fast to the collar. “What a pity this cannot tell us where to find her!”
“In a way, it has, my lady,” said Sir Conal. “Note that the collar was unfastened. It did not come off by accident. Her Highness took it from the wee dog and left it here deliberately.”
“I am certain you are right, Sir Conal,” said Cecile. “This means she is alive—”
“And that she is free to move about. She is still with the monks, apparently. I found their tracks in the mud as well. Both of them are wearing boots that have been recently patched, if that is of any interest.”
Cecile rested her smooth white hand on Sir Conal’s rough, broken-knuckled, sun-browned hand.
“You are a good and true friend, Sir Conal,” she said, pressing him warmly. “I bless Ander every day for bringing you to me in my time of most desperate need.”
“I am proud to be able to serve you, my lady.”
Cecile thought he would kiss her hand as would any courtier. Instead, to her pleasure and surprise, Sir Conal shook her hand—a frank, firm handshake as between two comrades.
Cecile kilted her skirts, mounted the shaggy pony, and they continued on their journey. She held fast to Bandit’s collar and promised him an entire tray of iced cakes the moment he and his mistress were safely back home.
5
My duty is to work in the shadows so that the light may shine more brightly on those in the sun.
—Dubois
D’argent was in the office of the Countess de Marjolaine, waiting to receive the king’s letter of pardon for Stephano and Rodrigo. Once D’argent had the letter in his possession, he would leave in haste to deliver it personally to Monsieur Dubois—the grand bishop’s confidential agent and one of the few people who could gain immediate access to His Eminence.
D’argent had tried to distract himself from worry by working on the accounts—noting down figures in a massive ledger, adding, subtracting, moving numbers from one column to another. Cecile’s holdings were extensive, her wealth immense, her business affairs complex. D’argent couldn’t keep his mind on his work, however, and after his third mistake, he gave up, shut the ledger and put it away.
He could hardly make a mistake sorting mail, though, so he began to go through Cecile’s massive amount of correspondence, answering those missives that required immediate reply, putting away those that could wait, and reading those that came from her network of agents around the world.
The news from her agents was universally bad, almost all of it regarding the Bottom Dwellers. D’argent was forced to admire the genius of their strategy. With only a few ships and a limited number of troops, they had managed by a series of carefully calculated strikes to spread fear and panic among nations, hamper trade, cripple economies. All the while, if Father Jacob was right, they were using their contramagic to destroy the magical constructs that kept buildings standing and ships aloft.
As he was working, a kind of shudder went through the palace, tilting the floor and sending a miniature porcelain shepherdess sliding off the table. A crash came from the balcony, a thud from one of the interior rooms. D’argent grabbed the desk, his heart beating fast. He had become so involved in his work he had forgotten that the palace might at any moment crash into the lake below. This time, the palace settled, righted itself. D’argent breathed a little easier and hoped the king would hurry with that pardon. These shudderings and lurchings were growing worse.
He made a quick inspection of the countess’s rooms to see what had been damaged. A rose tree on the balcony had tipped over, a painting in the music room had fallen off a wall. He righted the rose tree and left the painting on the floor. No sense in rehanging it when the palace was only going to shake again.
He returned to the office to find Marie Tutolla, Cecile’s lady’s maid, waiting for him. Marie had been with the countess forty years, Cecile having brought Marie with her when she came to the palace at the age of sixteen. Marie was agitated, unnerved. She stood at the edge of the desk, clutching something in her hand.
“Marie, are you all right?” Dubois asked, concerned. “Did you fall? The shaking was quite bad that time.”
In answer, Marie glanced uneasily at the door. “Are we alone, sir? Is the young secretary here?”
“I sent the viscount home on extended leave. What is it?” Dubois asked, suddenly tense, alert. “What is wrong?”
Marie held out a trembling hand. “A letter, sir.” She paused, drew in a breath, and added
in a husky voice, “It’s from her ladyship. For you.”
D’argent’s pulse quickened. He took the letter, sat down, and examined it. He recognized the countess’s handwriting immediately. The paper was plain, the sort carried by a dry goods and sundry store, such as anyone traveling might purchase.
“Did you open it?”
“No, sir,” said Marie. “I wanted to show you. Someone else did.”
D’argent could see what she meant. The sealing wax had been loosened, probably with a hot knife, and then replaced. A clumsy job by someone obviously unfamiliar with such delicate work.
D’argent scanned through the letter and smiled. Whoever had opened the letter must have been thoroughly bored by the contents. The letter gave D’argent instructions for Cecile’s dressmaker, her hatmaker, her glover, her cobbler, her jeweler. She placed orders for a dozen silk stockings, three new hats in the latest Estaran fashion, seven pairs of silk gloves, emerald earrings as a gift for the princess. Cecile was chatty in her letter, interspersing her orders with details of her journey.
The letter was long and difficult to read, for the countess was a careless writer, crossing out paragraphs, amending others, scratching through words. He showed the letter to Marie.
“What do you make of it?”
She read through it. “This is all wrong, sir. My lady writes a neat, pretty hand. This looks to have been written by some silly schoolgirl. And here, this cobbler my lady names. She said she would never again do business with him. And she wouldn’t be caught dead wearing the ‘latest Estaran fashion.’ This is code, isn’t it, sir?”
“A very simple code,” said D’argent.
He didn’t tell Marie, for he didn’t want to add to her worry, that this was Cecile’s emergency code, used only in the most dire circumstances since anyone with moderate skills in code breaking could solve the cipher with relative ease. She hadn’t had time to devise anything more elaborate.
The first items the countess requested him to purchase were four silk handkerchiefs. D’argent searched through the letter and copied down the fourth word in each of the first four paragraphs. He stared in astonishment: Freya, Eiddwen, Henry, warn.
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