The King's Road

by Cecelia Holland

  “He’s dead,” the lord said casually, looking off. “This great search for him is only Diepold’s foolish way of staving off the inevitable. Marino, aren’t you done yet?”

  “Now, my lord.” Marino stepped back, pulled the skirts of the lady’s saddle straight, and went to his own horse, which stood, reins trailing, directly beneath the stone cross. He mounted, and the three trotted away along the road to Palermo. Federigo sighed in relief.

  “Who are you?” Maria muttered, looking down at him. “Who are you that you can’t walk openly into villages and you hide from lords and ladies?”

  Federigo drifted away from her. “What did they give you, Yusuf? A taren?”

  “No,” Maria called. “Wait.” She tossed her head to throw her hair out of her eyes; her face was flushed and her eyes shone. “The King is dead, they all say so, and that’s what those people were talking about—”

  “Be quiet,” Yusuf said. “Whatever you think, think it, but keep quiet.” He held out a small copper coin to Federigo.

  Maria put her hand out and touched Federigo’s hair. “Where did you get such hair?”

  “My father was a German.” They walked on, but Maria kept close to him, which made him uneasy.

  “So was the father of the King a German.”

  “I can’t help that.” He knocked aside her hand. “Leave me alone.”

  Maria hung back, whispering to Yusuf, who shrugged, looked away, and finally shouted, “Leave me alone — he’s just a boy of Palermo, that’s all, and he’s afraid of knights.” He ran to catch up to Federigo.

  “She knows,” Federigo said. “It makes no difference. We’ll be home by nightfall.” At the thought, he felt queasy; he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be safe back there. Maybe they’d still try to... Diepold now might want him gone, too. Buried in his thoughts, he strode blindly down the road.

  The rumble of hoofbeats behind him jarred him into sudden watchfulness. Whirling, he saw the dust cloud coming down the road after them, and without even thinking about it he jumped into the ditch along the seaward edge. Maria cried out, but Yusuf grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to the side of the road. Federigo heard him whisper, “Say nothing. Do nothing. Stand still.” In the ditch, Federigo hid himself under a drifted mass of branches and leaves. His blood thundered in his ears, blotting out the pound of hoofs, but he could feel the ground tremble under him.

  The horsemen raced down on them and reined up, and a voice Federigo knew called, “You. Boy. Come here.”

  That was Lothair. Federigo held his breath. If they found him — if they found him — he wondered what would happen. He wouldn’t be able to take Maria all the way home, and the witch had said—

  “Yes, Master?” Yusuf was saying.

  “How long have you traveled this road?”

  “From the — from the crossroads back there,” Yusuf said. To Federigo, his voice sounded as if he were lying, tight and too high, but Lothair might not hear that. He pressed himself against the side of the ditch.

  “Have you seen a boy about your age, a little shorter than you, with red hair? With pale eyes?”

  “No,” Yusuf said. “I’ve seen no one except a — a lord and a lady and their servant. They went that way.”

  One of the men with Lothair said, “Who would that be?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lothair said. “Boy, are you sure? Did you pass through a village called San Sebastiano?”

  “No,” Yusuf said, and Federigo silently applauded him for keeping his head. “I came down that crossroad, I’ve seen no village.”

  Lothair swore; abruptly the hoofs drummed on the ground, a terrific beating, and charged off along the road.

  Maria said, “He is the King. He is the King, and I never knew.”

  “Federigo,” Yusuf said, “you can come out now, they’re gone.”

  Federigo climbed up the side of the ditch. “Good. You did the right thing.” He hugged Yusuf. “They must have heard about me in San Sebastiano. Someone must have seen me.”

  Maria fell to her knees and grabbed Federigo by the shirt. “My lord, my lord.”

  “Oh, be quiet. You hated me when you didn’t know who I was. Come on. We have to be careful now.” He thought, Lothair knows I’m alive. When he catches up to the nobles, they’ll tell him there was a redheaded boy with Yusuf and Maria. He broke into a run, too excited to keep still, and realized that he couldn’t run all the way to Palermo. On the inland side of the road, the cliffs rose in a steep rise of rock. He looked up at them.

  “We have to go up there.”

  “What?” Yusuf turned to look up. “Why?”

  “They’ll come back looking for all of us. Let’s go.”

  He jogged along the cliff’s foot, looking for a way to climb up. For a moment, looking hopelessly at the unbroken stone, he thought, let them find me. They’ll only take me where I want to go anyway. But they’d come this far alone. And the witch had said he had to take Maria home. He found a place where the rock was cleft in a long fissure and started to climb.

  “Hang onto me, Maria. It won’t be as hard as it looks.”

  He felt her hand take hold of his shirttail. Ripped as it was, old and worn, it wouldn’t hold if she fell. But he needed both hands to help him climb. He scrambled up to the end of the fissure and reached behind him.

  “Here, hold my hand.” Ahead, a narrow ledge ran a little way farther up. He crept out on it, clinging with one hand to the knobs and hollows in the rock. The ledge was barely wide enough to put both feet on at once. Glancing down, he saw the road already far below them, and he thought of falling and shut his eyes a moment. “Don’t look down.” Edging his way along the ledge, he searched for a way up.

  “Little Red, there’s a chimney—” Yusuf caught his breath, and Federigo heard pebbles bounce down the side of the cliff in a tiny avalanche. He looked up over his head. There, the rock had split into a narrow gap that widened as it reached the top — a chimney, as Yusuf had called it. He let go of Maria’s hand and she whimpered.

  “Ssssh.”

  The chimney began well above his head. When he reached up, he could just touch the bottom of the crack. He pressed himself against the face of the cliff and groped with his toes for a foothold. The ball of his foot found a tiny flattened place on the cliff, and he pushed himself carefully up, reached into the chimney, and found a knob of rock to hang onto. Pulling with his hand and pushing with both feet, he scrambled up into the bottom of the chimney. The harsh rock scraped his knees and elbows, and his blood dribbled across the stone, following a minute scratch like a tiny river. He wedged himself into the chimney and reached down for Maria’s hand.

  “I can’t,” she sobbed. Tears slobbered her face. “I can’t — I can’t—”

  Yusuf was holding the baby. “Go up a little, Federigo — give her room.”

  With his feet against one side of the crack, his back against the other, Federigo slid up a little way. “Now I can’t reach her.”

  “Maria,” Yusuf said, “here.” He braced himself on the narrow ledge, cradling the baby awkwardly, and slapped his thigh. “Stand on me.”

  “You’ll fall,” she said. “And my baby—”

  The baby let out a howl. Federigo shut his eyes. This was almost funny. It was the kind of thing that would be uproariously funny once it was over, but while it happened he wanted to explode with frustration. He leaned down, trying not to see the road so far below, and grabbed Maria’s wrist.

  “Push! Come on, girl, climb.”

  She began to pray again; clawing at the rock with her free hand, shoving her feet against the stone, she dragged herself up into the chimney and landed square in Federigo’s lap. Her skirts covered his face, and she managed to kick him in the knee. He grabbed her and pushed her away from him, deeper into the chimney.

  “Get away from me, you — Maria, can’t you do anything? No, I’ll get the baby. There, see all the footholds and handholds?” He put his hands on her rump and shoved, a
nd with a squeal Maria started to climb wildly toward the top of the cliff. Inside the chimney there were small ledges, little bushes, knobs and protrusions — she found them all in one mad scramble along the face of the rock, like a spider going up a wall. Federigo shook his head.

  “Give me the baby.”

  Yusuf held the baby up toward him — it was wiggling and screaming as if it wanted to throw itself off the cliff, and Federigo laid it on the rock beside him, with his body between it and the long drop. The baby’s roars re-echoed against the rock.

  “My baby,” Maria howled, up on the top of the cliff.

  “Shut up,” Federigo shouted. “Yusuf, here.” He reached down for him. Yusuf glanced up, caught his wrist, and pulled himself easily up into the chimney. He paused just long enough to grin at Federigo, snatched up the baby, and climbed swiftly up to Maria. An instant after he’d reached her, both her screams and those of the baby cut off in the middle.

  “He threw her off,” Federigo muttered. Aching all over from the scrapes and bruises and being stepped on, he made his way to the top and lay down flat in soft, sweet grass.

  Maria was feeding the baby, her face smooth and unclouded. Yusuf said softly, “We should have given her to the knights to take home. One of them was that big German who chases you around all the time.”

  “I know.” Federigo got up. “Well, we’d better get moving.”

  From the top of the cliff, the view was much different. He could see more of the sea and much, much more of the land — enough of the land to see that Lothair and the knights were still galloping up the road away from them, far, far down the coast. They dragged Maria to her feet and started off.

  *

  “Here they come,” Yusuf said. “I’m hungry again.”

  “So am I. I can’t remember ever not being hungry.” Federigo shaded his eyes and saw the dust cloud boiling hack down the road. “They must have met the nobles.”

  Yusuf nodded. They walked back away from the edge of the cliff. After they could no longer see the knights coming, Federigo got an unbearable urge to go back and yell insults and taunts at them, to show them that he’d gotten away from them again. He kept craning his neck to see. The cliff cut off all the sound; he had no idea how close they were. Finally he told Yusuf and Maria to keep on going and crept back to the edge of the cliff.

  The knights were almost directly beneath him. He watched them slow — he watched Lothair stand in his stirrups and look down the road. Lothair had seen that they weren’t around, that they were no longer where he had seen them last. The knights milled around. Seen from above, they looked odd — the horses broad at the hips and narrow at the shoulders, and the men apparently no taller than children. Lothair turned and gave orders, and two of the four knights rode off down the road toward San Sebastiano. Federigo thought they were going to check the crossroads. He lay down on the edge of the cliff and laid his chin on his folded arms, grinning.

  Abruptly, Lothair looked straight up at him. Federigo turned cold. But Lothair didn’t see him; he looked out toward the sea, shook his head, and thought. One of the remaining two knights dismounted and ran his hands over his horse’s forelegs.

  Swinging his arm, Lothair spurred his horse into a gallop along the foot of the cliff. Federigo pushed himself up on his knees, frowning, trying to see what they were doing. They disappeared around a bend in the road, but a moment later were visible again when the coast curved out to sea, back where Federigo had climbed the cliff. Lothair slowed his horse to a canter; he was looking up at the cliff. Federigo’s opinion of his intelligence began to rise.

  Jerking his horse to a stop, Lothair leaned out from the saddle and touched the cliff. Apparently he picked something off the rock; he settled back into his saddle, looked at his fingers, and showed them to another knight, who nodded. Lothair stared up at the top of the cliff. Turning his horse, he started back toward Federigo at a lope, his eyes on the cliff.

  Federigo murmured under his breath. Leaping up, he ran back toward Yusuf and Maria, who were already far down the cliff. The sky was clouding over, and a chilly wind blasted him, fluttering his shirt out from his body. When he reached them, he was too short of breath to talk, and he walked along beside them, panting, while Yusuf watched him and waited for him to speak.

  “He knows—” Federigo gulped air. “He knows we’re here. I don’t know — whether he can get up here. We have to hurry.”

  “We’re not that far,” Yusuf said. “We’ll have to go down the cliff again soon, onto the Conca d’Oro.”

  Federigo nodded. Immediately, he knew what Lothair would do: he’d ride along the cliff until he found the most likely place for them to descend onto the plain around Palermo, and there he’d wait. Obviously they couldn’t go down the cliff at the most likely place. He fidgeted. He wanted to get back, and it was going to take time. Looking up at the sky, he willed it to rain, and hard.

  Chapter Eight

  “BE CAREFUL, it’s slippery.”

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Just follow me, it’s not hard.” Federigo’s bare foot skidded on the rock, he nearly fell, and he caught himself just before he would have gone off the cliff. The rain pounded down on his head and shoulders and sluiced over the stone his feet and hands rested on. It was so dark he could see nothing more than an arm’s length away, and the wind kept trying to pluck him off the cliff. He wondered how close they were to the bottom. The cliff wasn’t high, and it wasn’t steep, but it seemed that they’d been climbing down for hours. He clenched his teeth and slid around a lump of rock that beetled out over the road. Maria, as usual, was praying and crying; and Yusuf was carrying the baby.

  “It’s ending,” Yusuf said softly. “Little Red—”

  “I know.” The rain was letting up, and he could see more. He tried to move faster. The knights were probably ahead of them, and he needed the rain to hide them when they sneaked past. He slipped and sat down hard, and pebbles and dirt rattled off down the slope. Getting up, he groped with his feet for a way down.

  It was getting lighter — he looked up at the sky and saw, past the windy rain, the clouds running pale gray. This was bad. He sidled along a ledge and, to his own surprise, stepped out onto level ground.

  “We’re down.”

  “The rain’s stopping.” Yusuf came up beside him and handed the baby back to Maria. “How are we going to get past the knights?”

  “Come on.” Federigo ran across the road to the ditch on the far side. It was running water, muddy and deep, dragging branches along with it. Federigo let himself carefully down into it. The water swirled up to his waist; it was cold, and he gasped.

  “It’s deep, watch out.”

  “We’ll catch cold and die,” Maria wailed. She stood on the bank, looking down. Yusuf slipped into the ditch and held up his hands.

  “Give me the baby and come on.”

  “I won’t.” She stamped her feet. “I won’t; I can walk back now.”

  “No,” Federigo said. “The knights know you; they’ll take you prisoner. They’ll question you. Come with us. It’s not bad.” His teeth were chattering, and he tightened his jaws.

  “Oh — oh—” Maria gave the baby to Yusuf and started into the water. Suddenly she lost her balance and fell with a splash between them. Yusuf held the baby up out of the water, laughing, and Federigo pulled Maria to her feet.

  “It’s cold,” she screamed. “Let me out.”

  “No, you don’t.” Federigo shoved her. “Start walking.” He looked up at the sky; the rain was settling into a steady drizzle. No one would be riding on a day like this, he hoped. He kept one hand on Maria’s shoulder to make sure she didn’t try to climb out of the ditch, and they waded on toward Palermo.

  Federigo’s legs and feet started to get numb. He waded as fast as he could to keep warm. The level of water in the ditch was falling, fortunately, but the ditch was getting deeper; where before their heads had been even with the top, now the road was far above them.
A dead branch slithered past him, and Maria screeched.

  “It’s a branch.”

  “A snake — it’s a snake — he bit me—”

  Federigo pulled the branch out of her skirts and threw it up toward the top of the ditch. “Keep going, or I’ll beat you up.”

  Maria stared at him, open-mouthed. When he raised his fist and made a horrible face at her, she whirled and scrambled on, pushing Yusuf ahead of her. Federigo grinned, wondering why it had taken him so long to think of that. The water was down to his knees now, and while he walked he rubbed his thighs to get them warm again.

  Tiny streams joined the water in the ditch, and they crawled under a little stone bridge, holding hands to keep the suddenly fierce current from towing them off. The baby wailed constantly. A little beyond the bridge, they passed a tavern. From the roar of noise it was packed full of travelers caught in the rain. Federigo dragged Maria and Yusuf out of the ditch and let them sit on the mud while he sneaked up to the back of the tavern.

  It was a long, low building, half of stone, half of wood. The back stank of horse manure, and he could hear horses stamping and kicking in the lean-to just the other side of the manure heap, which was steaming under the light rain. Ducking between two wagons, he found a window and peeked in. All he could see was a fireplace with half a dozen pots hanging over it, and servants rushing back and forth. But he could hear men laughing and shouting, and someone, off to one side, was playing a lute and singing. He thought of the warmth and food inside and started to shiver. Creeping around the corner, he stuck his nose over the sill of another window.

  There, at the far end of the room, drinking morosely, stood four knights. They were all sopping wet — one stood in a puddle, his cloak dripping steadily into it. Lothair wasn’t with them. Federigo saw a plate of roast pig and his mouth watered.

  He thought he knew where Lothair was — waiting at the foot of the cliff a little way from the tavern, in a place where a landslide had made the descent far, far easier than the place they’d actually come down to the road. Lothair would have no reason to wait anywhere else; he wouldn’t know that Federigo knew the knights would he waiting for him. Federigo turned and went back through the yard of the tavern, circled the manure heap, and trotted over the beaten grass to Yusuf and Maria.