The King's Road

by Cecelia Holland

  “Maybe the bandits drove off all the other carts,” Maria said.

  Federigo shrugged. “Why expect the worst?” He stood up, looking down the road. Perhaps there was a village just around the bend, but he didn’t think so. It was a wild seacoast, and he doubted that anyone lived there at all. It was hard to think of what he should do. Yusuf was staring at his hands, his face grim.

  “Go on,” the voice in his mind said. “If you don’t, no one will.” He tried to resist it — he thought of talking Yusuf into going to look for something to eat. But he knew that Yusuf would only go a little way and come back almost at once, saying he’d found nothing. Maria was crying steadily.

  “All right,” Federigo said. “I’ll go look. Yusuf, stay here and keep watch on her.”

  Yusuf only nodded and stared off to sea. Federigo had an idea of how he felt — he felt lost and frightened, too. Walking fast, he started up the road toward the bend ahead.

  “Little Red,” Yusuf shouted, and he turned. Yusuf waved his arm. “Be careful.”

  Federigo waved back and walked on. Sea birds swooped and dove over the rocks ahead of him, and he tried to figure out a way of trapping them. But that would take nets, or a bow and arrow. And he’d need nets to fish. He wondered how far he should go before he turned back and told them he’d found nothing. A wild, tense urgency filled him suddenly. He had to find something. He had to. He broke into a run to the bend in the road.

  The road swept around in a long curve and ran on and on to another jutting headland, and there was no village. He’d known in his heart there would not be one. Only the blank sand and the sea and the barren cliff confronted him, ringing with the cries of the sea birds. He started down the little slope, scuffing up the dust with his feet.

  I wish I were home. I wish I were back in Palermo. The longing filled him, and he felt that, if he only wished hard enough, strong enough, he would be magically transported across the coastline to his own city. The slope turned steep under his feet, and he leaned back to keep from falling. Dust fine as flour squirted up between his toes. Just ahead, a gully cut through the cliff to the road, just a narrow alleyway in the natural wall of rock, full of weeds and brambles.

  He yelped. Wheel tracks flattened the heavy grass, and a pile of cow dung lying in the weeds looked still soft. A cart had turned down there recently — within the day. He trotted into the gully, following the tracks. Abruptly, he stopped, and his heart jumped up into his mouth. Who would be driving a cart off the road into a lonely, desolate gully — except bandits?

  What Maria had said came back to him. Maybe the thieves had taken the entire caravan — seized all the people to sell them into slavery — and driven all the carts up this gulley into the hills. But immediately he rejected that: the tracks he was following had been made by only one cart.

  Keeping close to the steep rocky side of the gulch, he walked through weeds high as his waist along the track. His ears strained to catch the slightest noise from up ahead; his stomach was fluttery.

  Ahead, the gully turned a corner, and he crept around it — and swiftly ducked back into the shelter of the bank. The gully had widened out into a tiny bowl of a valley, full of sweet grass. On it, an ox and a mare grazed, and near the far end was a wagon. A wisp of smoke rose from the fire burning near the wagon’s tail gate. It was somebody’s camp. He crawled nearer to investigate.

  Before the fire there was a woman sitting, kneading bread in a shallow wooden bowl; she had a red scarf wrapped around her head, but tendrils of dark hair escaped from beneath it and she kept brushing them back. A pot, braced up on two rocks, simmered on the fire. Even from that distance, Federigo could smell meat and broth, and his stomach cramped up with hunger. He lay down in the high grass to watch and wait.

  After a few moments, a tall man walked into the little camp, carrying two dead hares by their hind legs. He spoke to the woman, who nodded, and went off a little way to skin out the carcasses. A boy a little older than Federigo followed him, swinging a bow and two bloody arrows. Federigo murmured under his breath. He thought the man had spoken Italian to the woman, but he wasn’t sure — it sounded like a dialect. He’d never seen people like that before. Like all Sicilian wagons, theirs was painted in bright red, yellow, green and blue, but he recognized none of the patterns; they didn’t seem to make a story.

  The woman set out the bread to rise and began to make a kind of oven out of rocks — piling them carefully into a dome, with a place on the bottom for the bread and an open ring on top for hot coals. A colt appeared in the meadow, bumped its head impatiently against the flank of the mare, and drank. Obviously, the lower part of the meadow, which Federigo could not see, was fairly large, and probably there was water there, a spring, or maybe a brook. He was thirsty at the thought of it.

  Laughing and making jokes he couldn’t hear, the man and the boy hung the skinned hares off the tail gate of the wagon and went off down the meadow. Federigo crawled a little closer. If he could steal one of the hares, they’d find a way to cook it, back on the road. And meat would be good after all the cheese and bread they’d been eating. He waited in the grass for the woman to go out of sight.

  She looked over her bread, poked up the fire, and sat down to mend a shirt. Federigo hissed under his breath. Flashing in the sun, her needle dove in and out of the white cloth, and he put his head down, itching all over with impatience. Finally she was done, she shook out the shirt and inspected it, put it in the wagon, and took out a whole load of clothes. Federigo almost groaned with frustration. But these clothes, apparently, she meant to wash; she took a pail and started in the same direction the men had taken, singing softly as she walked. Federigo got up and dashed to the wagon. The hares hung by their naked heels from the tail gate, and he snatched one and lifted it off the hook.

  A horrible growl sounded right in his ears and turned him cold as ice. Whirling, he faced an enormous black dog that had been lying, all along, under the wagon. The dog was on its feet, its head lowered, and its white teeth showed in an ugly fringe beneath its curled lips.

  Federigo yelped, bounded to the fire, and grabbed a burning stick from it. The dog caught his shirt in its teeth. With a tremendous wrench, it nearly pulled the boy off his feet; he swung the branch with all his strength at the dog’s head, and embers rained down on both of them.

  “Aci, hold!” the man roared, in his odd Italian. Glancing over his shoulder, Federigo saw him racing up toward him, the boy behind him, and he smacked the dog with his fists, trying to run away. The dog growled and braced itself, hanging onto his shirt; the shirt tore, and Federigo twisted loose entirely and took three running strides toward the road.

  The fourth stride was as long and hard as the others, but he was no longer on the ground. The man had picked him up by the arms. Federigo kicked, shouted, flung himself around, and tried to bite the hands holding him. They’ll murder me, he thought. They’ll take me to Diepold. He struck out awkwardly with his fists, but the man was behind him.

  “Little tiger,” the man grumbled. “Boy! Boy, be still, or I’ll turn the dog on you.”

  “Let me go,” Federigo shouted. “Let me go or I’ll—”

  Something hit him so hard on the side of the head that his eyes lost their sight and his ears roared. The ground struck him on the side. He lay still, panting, trying to keep from losing consciousness. Gradually, the world stopped swinging around him, the ground stopped tilting under him, and he sat up, his hands to his face.

  “Thief,” the man said. “Do you know what happens to thieves, boy? Do you?”

  Federigo wiped his face on his torn shirt and said nothing. The smear of dirt and sweat on the ripped cloth embarrassed him a little; they’d think he was dirty all the time. Well, he was, actually. He thought of Yusuf and Maria; somehow, he had to talk his way out of this.

  “He was trying to make off with the hare,” the boy said. He hung up the carcass on the tail gate again and spoke to the dog, which wagged its tail and licked the boy’s
hand.

  “What did you want a hare for?” the man said. He nudged Federigo with his foot. “Talk.”

  “I was hungry,” Federigo said.

  “How could you be hungry? The coast is full of food.” The woman said quietly, “Maybe he doesn’t know how to get it, Simone. He’s a city boy — look at him.”

  Simone scratched his cheek, eying Federigo. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Durante. I live in Palermo.”

  “In Palermo? What are you doing here?”

  “I ... went to Cefalu for a while. Please, let me go, I won’t bother you anymore. Not with the dog there.”

  The woman took a wooden bowl from the wagon and ladled stew from the pot on the fire into it.

  Angrily, the boy said, “Mama, you aren’t going to—”

  “Be quiet,” Simone said. “He’s small, he’s far from home, and he’s hungry.”

  Federigo gulped. They were going to feed him, even though they’d caught him trying to steal from them. Suddenly he felt miserable and wicked. He put his hands up to his face.

  “There’s no sense being penitent now,” Simone said. “Here, eat some of this.”

  Federigo looked up. The woman was holding out the bowl; she smiled encouragingly and nodded to him. He took the bowl and sniffed the blended aromas of herbs, broth and goat meat, tiny wild vegetables, and the bit of bread she’d put in the bowl along with the stew. He swallowed the saliva that filled his mouth.

  “No,” he said. “I tried to steal it, you shouldn’t give it to me.’’

  The boy made a sound in his throat. Squatting, Simone cocked his head to one side and stared at Federigo.

  The woman said, “Don’t be silly. You’re hungry. Eat. We have more than we need.”

  Simone said mildly, “If it will make you feel better, city boy, I stole the goat.”

  Startled, Federigo had to laugh, and smiles appeared on the faces of the three people watching him. He ate quickly, although it was so hot he burned his lips and tongue, but the bread he saved to take back to Maria. Immediately he felt guilty about not saving some of the stew for them, and he wondered about asking these people if he could bring his friends here.

  But Simone was wrapping the hare in a large leaf. When Federigo put the bowl down, the woman took it and quietly put it in a pail to be washed, and Simone held out the hare.

  “If you had asked, I would have given it to you. There are thousands of hares here, you should learn to trap.” He shook his head; he looked angry again. “You shouldn’t steal, boy.”

  Federigo stood up, the hare in his hand, and the dog growled again.

  Simone said sharply, “Aci, be quiet.” Turning to Federigo again, he said, “Go back to Palermo. You’ll never survive out here. There are very few people to steal from.”

  “Who did you steal the goat from, Master?” Federigo said.

  Simone grinned. “God.”

  Federigo stood watching him a moment, a little awed. He wished he knew how to live off the land, like these people. They looked so content. Finally, he bowed. “Thank you.”

  They said nothing, only watched him, and he trotted back across the meadow toward the mouth of the gully. When he reached it, he turned and waved, and to his surprise the boy waved back. Simone was already going on down to the lower end of the meadow again. He thought of how free they were. They could go anywhere, they had no need to stay in one place. The memory of Hadji-Mustafa, leaning against the stern of his ship watching the stars, came into his mind. He jogged down the gully to the road, carrying the hare.

  *

  “He can steal anything,” Yusuf said to Maria and tore flesh from the roast hare with his fingers, wincing at the heat.

  “I told you, I didn’t steal it. I met some people who gave it to me.”

  Yusuf frowned at him; clearly, he didn’t believe that. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re eating. How far is it to the village?”

  “There is no village,” Federigo cried. “I told you.”

  Maria licked grease from her chin and rocked the baby gently in her arms. “Now what do we do?”

  “Walk some more.” It was already late in the afternoon, and the heat of the day was subsiding. “It’ll be cooler, at least.” He sucked on a bare bone. The hare had been delicious, what little he’d eaten of it. Yusuf and Maria had devoured almost all of it. But of course Federigo had eaten with the wanderers. He poked at the fire, which Yusuf had made; Yusuf was revealing surprising abilities. Federigo had had no idea of how to build and start a fire.

  “Can’t we rest a little before—”

  “You rested all day,” Federigo said. “If we rest all the time, we won’t get anywhere. Come on.” He stood up. After eating so much, he was drowsy, but he tried to act lively and energetic, an example for them. It was hard. All he wanted was to lie in the sun and doze. With Yusuf, he kicked apart the fire, while Maria sighed and fussed and settled the baby in its sling on her hip. The baby was gurgling and waving its fists around.

  “Is that a girl or a boy?” Federigo said, looking at it.

  “A boy. His name is Raffaello.” She stroked the baby’s cap of dark hair.

  “That’s nice.” Federigo started down the road, swinging his arms. Calling to him to wait, the others pulled themselves together and rushed after him, but he didn’t wait; it was still a long way to Palermo. Thinking about that lost him some of his confidence. He lengthened his stride.

  They walked until well after midnight. The road had risen all the way to the top of the cliff. At the top Federigo was sure that they were near a village — several times, he thought he smelled smoke, and up ahead of them, on the coastline, lights gleamed on and off, like fallen stars among the rocks. They found a wide field and went to sleep under a tree in the middle of it, all curled up together because the night was chilly and they had no way to get out of the constant, cold wind.

  The first crack of thunder brought Federigo leaping out of a sound sleep, with every hair on his head standing on end. It was still dark, but the wind had risen to a roar. For a frozen moment, he stared into the sky above the branches of the tree, tossing wildly like sea waves; lightning flashed and flashed and flashed again, so that the sky was never darker than a pale, evil silver, and the thunder split his ears. The stink of lightning close by reached his nostrils.

  He was soaking wet; gradually, he realized that rain was drenching him, pouring down over him from the wild sky and streaming along the ground and through his clothes. He drew a deep breath, still startled. His arms were trembling. Suddenly, through the tremendous bellowing of the thunder, he heard a strange whimper, and the howl of the baby.

  “Maria,” he shouted. “Don’t let the baby get wet.”

  “I’ve got him, Little Red,” Yusuf said, in a frightened voice. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a thunderstorm, idiot.” The last two words were drowned in a clap of thunder that stopped up his ears. Lightning forked through the sky, tearing across the wild, heaving clouds. The constant flicker of light made the trees look grotesque, like inhuman hands printed against the sky. Federigo got up and stumbled toward Yusuf and Maria. The soggy ground squished under his feet.

  A flash of brilliant light filled his eyes and seemed to penetrate into his head; at the same time, like two huge boulders smashing together, thunder rolled, hurtful to hear. He held his breath, terrified. It had hit somewhere close, very close. He thought wildly that the ground might heave open and swallow him, but gradually he was able to see again — the trees thrashing helplessly under the savage wind. He knelt beside the girl huddled on the ground.

  “Maria. Maria.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. She was praying in a broken voice, her hands clawing her face, and her hair hung in strands all over her cheeks and in her eyes. Yusuf was bending over the baby to keep the rain off it, and it was screeching at the top of its lungs.

  “Little Red, we have to get out of the trees.”

  “I know. Run. I’ll bring her.�
��

  “God is punishing us,” Maria sobbed. “Holy Mary, save me. Saint Peter—”

  Yusuf got up and ran, carrying the baby tenderly in his arms. Federigo swiped his sodden hair out of his eyes. “Maria, come on, God isn’t punishing anybody. Why would God send a storm like this just to punish us?” He pulled her onto her feet and dragged her out toward the open. Yusuf was already halfway to the road.

  Lightning flashed right above them, and the thunder nearly knocked them down.

  Maria screamed. “Oh, Jesus in Heaven—”

  “Shut up,” Federigo roared. “Come on.” He hauled her off into the mud and streaming water of the open meadow. The sky was bright, bright white, constantly white, from the incessant lightning. Federigo fell into a hole and landed on his face in the mud. Scrambling up, he looked for Maria.

  She was kneeling, babbling prayers, while all around the storm crashed and raged. Out of the shelter of the trees, they were exposed to the full, slamming violence of the rain, and Federigo had trouble getting up. He took Maria’s hand.

  “Run!”

  Her eyes shut tight, she ran, calling the names of saints. Straight ahead of them stood a strange, forked tree — he couldn’t remember seeing it before. Blue fire ran up and down the fork, and he understood: the lightning had struck it. Frightened himself, he ran slipping and sliding over the mud, dragging Maria behind him, to the side of the road.

  Yusuf was crouching over the baby, his back to the wind. Federigo sank down beside him. The rain poured down the road in a river, in a tide, and just beyond it, at the edge of the cliff, he could see the white foam of spray. The waves were breaking so hard they reached all the way to the top of the cliff. He gasped.

  Maria was panting, silent for once, and with Yusuf she bent over the baby to protect it. Tiny and weak, the infant’s shrieks barely reached Federigo’s ears over the gigantic cacophony of the storm.

  Getting to his feet, he walked toward the cliff’s edge, pushing against the wind that shoved and buffeted him. From the rim of the cliff, he could see the waves surging against the rocks so far below, boiling, pounding. It was beautiful. As far as he could see, the wild water tossed and heaved up into giant waves, crested and ridged with foam. The lightning ran in jagged fingers down the sky; beneath it, the sea ran glittering and smoking. He took a deep breath — the wildness of it delighted him, the uncontrollable action. Sitting down, he watched the sea and the storm all the rest of the night, until, with the dawn, the last flicker of lightning and the last mutter of thunder faded and were gone.