The Starkin Crown

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘I don’t think that would be wise,’ Peregrine said. ‘I don’t mean to cast doubt upon your family’s loyalty to my father, but I believe we must remain hidden. If we went to your castle, there would be grown-ups there telling us what we should do. They’d probably forbid us to leave. I think we should go and find the spear, and then get back to the Stormlinn as fast as we can’.

  ‘There’s no blazing way I’m going to a starkin castle!’ Jack said.

  ‘But that’s so stupid! My brother’s not even there’.

  ‘No, he’s besieging Stormlinn Castle right now!’ Jack shot back.

  ‘Well, yes, but he did warn you about the ambush so you were at least prepared,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Probably to set up a trap for us all!’

  ‘Whether or not his intentions were good does not matter,’ Peregrine said placatingly. ‘It would be a disservice to the count to take shelter in his castle. If Vernisha found out about it, she would name him traitor and have him fed to her lapdog, limb by limb’.

  Grizelda bit her lip and said nothing.

  ‘We’ll need to be careful not to draw too much attention to ourselves,’ Peregrine said. ‘What disguise shall we adopt? What can be our excuse for riding through?’

  ‘Strangers are frowned upon,’ Grizelda said. ‘You may not travel without a licence, and the penalty is to be whipped through town. Each town you come to will do the same’.

  ‘That doesn’t sound too pleasant,’ Peregrine said. ‘I don’t particularly want my tail whipped. How do you get a licence?’

  ‘From the bailiff, but he doesn’t give them out lightly. Only to royal messengers, or merchants of the guild who must travel for trade’.

  ‘This isn’t getting any easier. Whatever happened to the good old days when a minstrel could stroll from town to town, singing for his supper?’

  Peregrine spoke lightly, but Grizelda answered him seriously. ‘Minstrels and troubadours are banned by law, for spying and spreading sedition. It’s even against the law to sing a song in a tavern, or any public place. The penalty is really quite nasty’.

  ‘Why? What happens?’

  ‘They strip you naked and tie you to a table and then they turn an iron tub filled with rats upside-down on your stomach’.

  ‘That is nasty,’ Peregrine said.

  ‘Oh, the nasty bit happens after they light a fire on top of the iron tub. As the iron gets hot, the rats get agitated’.

  ‘Urrgh’.

  ‘The rats try to gnaw their way to freedom through your entrails’.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Jack cried.

  ‘How barbarous,’ Peregrine said, creasing his brow. ‘Is that true? That’s the penalty for singing?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I beg you not to bring out that flute of yours where anyone can see you or hear you’.

  ‘We shall have to travel at night,’ Peregrine said decisively.

  ‘But what about food?’ Jack said. ‘What shall we eat?’

  ‘I doubt there are many wildkin to bring us food,’ Peregrine said wryly.

  ‘And your bird may not hunt,’ Grizelda said. ‘The penalty for poaching is—’

  Peregrine held up one hand, wincing. ‘I don’t want to know!’

  ‘They cut off both your hands,’ she finished. ‘That is if you hunt by day. The punishment for poaching during the night hours is immediate death by hanging’.

  ‘We will not get far without food’. Peregrine frowned. ‘Let me think’.

  After a few moments he pulled out his flute. He began to play a soft lilting tune that sounded like wind through leaves, water over stones.

  Grizelda stared at him in amazement, then smothered a scream as the undergrowth rustled and out crept a line of tiny brown mice, each carrying food to lay at Peregrine’s feet. Some brought seeds and grains, some brought chestnuts; two rolled a wrinkled apple, only a little nibbled around one side. Then a squirrel scampered out, carrying an acorn in its paws, another two making its cheeks bulge. It left the acorns at Peregrine’s feet.

  A white-tailed deer tiptoed out fearfully, with a mouthful of tiny mushrooms. A kingfisher flew down with a silver wriggling fish. Another fish was brought by an otter. A wild pig brought some black truffles, smelling richly of the soil from which they had been dug. A red fox brought a lean mountain hare, its coat white as the snow. A weasel dragged in a pheasant. Slowly the pile of food at Peregrine’s feet grew.

  Although the day was bright and still, they risked lighting a fire and cooking the hare, making a kind of stew from the grains and mushrooms and truffles. The fish they cleaned and gutted, and then smoked on sharp sticks. The pheasant they cooked and wrapped up in flat bread they made from grinding up the chestnuts and mixing the meal with water. There were enough chestnuts left to roast a handful in the coals.

  ‘We have enough food here to last us days,’ Jack said exultantly. ‘Well done, your Highness!’

  ‘I’d like to know why you didn’t do it days ago,’ Grizelda said, gnawing happily on a bone.

  ‘I didn’t think of it,’ Peregrine admitted. He stroked Blitz’s head and fed him another shred of roast hare. The falcon was perched on Peregrine’s knee, his eyes keen and fierce as he tore the meat to shreds with his sharp beak. ‘Besides, I’d feel bad about taking all the animals’ winter hoard. I wouldn’t like them to starve’.

  ‘So what’s our plan?’ Jack felt much better now he was warm and full.

  Peregrine got up and kicked snow into the fire, extinguishing it. ‘We ride on, as swiftly and silently as we can. We’ll ride till dawn, then find somewhere to hide during the daylight hours’.

  ‘You mean, ride all night?’ Grizelda was not impressed. ‘But I’m so tired. I ache all over’.

  ‘Jack has some heal-all salve,’ Peregrine said sympathetically. ‘Aunty Rozalina knew what she was about when she gave it to him’.

  Rather crossly Grizelda retired behind a tree to rub the salve into her saddle sores, taking her bag with her.

  Peregrine gazed through the sunlit forest. He felt uneasy and restless, his nightmare weighing heavily on his spirits. ‘If only Stiga was here to guide us!’

  ‘Maybe she’ll come back,’ Jack said.

  Peregrine shook his head. ‘It’s probably better that she doesn’t. Birds are shot down elsewhere in Ziva, remember. I must keep Blitz close to me at all times’.

  ‘So if we are not going to my castle, where are we going?’ Grizelda demanded, coming out from behind the tree and tossing the tub of salve at Jack’s head. He caught it easily.

  Peregrine looked at her in surprise. ‘Ardian, of course’.

  ‘Ardian?’ Grizelda cried, her face blanching. ‘But Ardian has been taken over by the rebels!’

  ‘No,’ Peregrine said sternly. ‘Ardian has been won for the true king. It is the pretender Vernisha who is the rebel, not my father’.

  ‘Yes,’ Grizelda said stiffly. ‘Of course. Forgive me’.

  ‘And don’t forget that Ardian is a land of bogs and marshes,’ Peregrine said. ‘It’s the most logical place for Prince Zander to have got rid of the spear. Perhaps Lord Percival will know where the lightning-blasted oak is’.

  ‘Is that the Marsh King?’ Jack asked in lively interest.

  Peregrine nodded but said, ‘He must not be called king. There is only one king and that is my father. He has thanked this rebel leader for his loyalty and allegiance and named him lord of the fenlands, but no true treaty has yet been signed. Still, I believe Lord Percival will help us if he can’.

  ‘They say he is a law unto himself,’ Grizelda said in a shaking voice. ‘That he has destroyed all the causeways into the marshes, and shoots anyone who comes near the fens. What is to stop him shooting us?’

  ‘He shoots any starkin that comes near,’ Jack said with satisfaction. ‘So his Highness and I should be safe enough. I guess you’ll just have to pretend to be a hearthkin’.

  ‘After a week without a bath, I’m certainly filthy enou
gh to be taken for a hearthkin,’ she answered bitterly. ‘I guess my smell will have to be my disguise’.

  CHAPTER 12

  Fallen to the Blade

  BLACK FOREBODING CAST A PALL ON PEREGRINE, DESPITE the brightness and beauty of the day. Snow should have been falling, wind should have been howling, if all was well with his mother. What did this sudden sunshine mean?

  He kept glancing behind, sure eyes were watching him. Once he thought he could hear horses’ hooves behind them, though Grizelda said it was only an echo.

  By the day’s end, they came to the edge of the forest. Patchwork meadows, brown and grey and white, rolled away to the horizon, edged with low drystone walls and thorny hedges. Small cottages could be seen nestled among small copses of bare-branched fruit trees. Far away, a white castle stood on a hill, its banners flourishing in the breeze, its thousands of windows shining golden in the last rays of the sun.

  ‘That’s my home,’ Grizelda cried, pointing in delight. ‘Look, it’s only a day’s ride away!’

  ‘The old road leads straight towards it,’ Peregrine said gloomily. ‘We’ll wait till it’s dark before we ride out’. He dismounted stiffly and stretched, his whole body aching. Blitz flew down to his wrist and Peregrine stroked his head. ‘Did you have a good fly, boy? Catch us any dinner?’ Blitz rubbed his master’s hand with his beak, then flew to a branch nearby, grooming his ruffled feathers.

  Jack dismounted too, and came to take Sable’s reins. Oskar whined and twitched his ears, glancing back into the forest. His tail wagged. Grizelda sat still in her saddle, staring at the castle. ‘I want to go home,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You can if you want,’ Jack said. ‘We’re not stopping you.’

  Suddenly there was an unearthly shriek. A huge white owl hurtled out of the twilight-grey forest, talons extended, straight for Grizelda. She screamed and flung up one arm, trying to protect her face. A bow string twanged from the shadows. An arrow sped out, piercing the owl through the breast. She tumbled down to land awkwardly on the ground, one wing bent and broken.

  ‘Stiga!’ Peregrine screamed. He flung himself on his knees beside the owl, who groaned and shimmered, changing shape into a frail old woman, an arrow protruding from her chest. Blood ran down and stained the frosty ground.

  ‘Your Highness, we must flee!’ Jack cried. ‘Get up, sir! Mount! I’ll pass Stiga to you’.

  Peregrine obeyed at once, numb with shock. He leapt into his saddle and bent so Jack could pass Stiga up to him. She was light, no heavier than a child. One arm dangled helplessly. Peregrine dug his heels into Sable’s sides. The stallion bounded into a gallop, Jack only a few seconds behind him. Blitz screeched and flew after them.

  ‘Ride, Grizelda!’ Peregrine shouted. ‘Quick!’

  She was close behind them, her hair tumbling free of her hood and whipping behind her. Heedless of any watchers, the three companions galloped down the old road, straight towards Swartburg Castle.

  Peregrine bent over the limp form of his old nursemaid. Her eyes were shut, her face blanched of any colour. He crumpled up her shawl to try to staunch the flow of blood. ‘Stiga,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find somewhere safe to stop and tend to you. Everything will be all right’.

  She opened her dark eyes and looked up into his face. ‘Stormlinn is betrayed, fallen to the blade’.

  The world spun around. Peregrine kept his seat with difficulty. ‘Mam? Father? Aunty Rozie and Uncle Zed?’

  ‘All you love is taken, the castle is forsaken’. Her voice was such a thin thread he could barely hear it.

  ‘Taken? Where?’

  She shook her head. Her face twisted in pain.

  ‘What happened? Can you tell me how?’ he demanded. ‘Please, Stiga. Who betrayed them?’

  ‘They came in through the secret way, all the guards they did slay’. Her voice failed her. She shut her eyes.

  ‘But how could they have known about the secret way? Who could’ve told them?’

  She did not answer. He felt a strange tingling in his hands and arms where he held her. Then she was gone, and he carried in his arms a dead owl.

  Peregrine buried Stiga under a cairn of rocks in a small copse of trees, saying in a low, choked voice: ‘Go easy, beloved Stiga, fly once more in the moonlight, fly across moor and meadow, fly across forest and field, fly across the bright sea, let the waters carry you to the sun. Be at peace, faithful Stiga, and know I shall never forget you’.

  Jack knelt beside him, passing the rocks to him in silence. Grizelda sat nearby, her arms wrapped about her knees, her eyes wide and fearful.

  ‘The arrow just came from nowhere,’ Peregrine said in a choked voice. ‘I heard nothing. Nothing!’

  ‘He must have been following us all the time,’ Jack said. ‘He must’ve crept up close, to hear what we were saying, maybe’.

  ‘Why did he shoot her? Why, why?’

  ‘She was attacking Grizelda,’ Jack pointed out.

  ‘But why?’ Grizelda said in a small voice. ‘I’ve done nothing. I warned you the soldiers were coming!’

  ‘Perhaps it was enough that you are of starkin blood,’ Peregrine said. ‘Perhaps, in her simple way, she thinks you brought the attack upon the castle’.

  Grizelda’s voice shook. ‘She always hated me’.

  There was a long silence. Peregrine rested his head on his arms. He felt so sick and weary he just wanted to curl into a ball and never move again.

  Jack watched the landscape behind them. The moon sailed high in a sky of piercingly bright stars. It was almost full. Nothing moved but the wind in the branches. ‘He does not seem to be following us,’ he said. ‘Shall we ride on?’

  Peregrine did not answer.

  ‘Your Highness? Shall we ride on? I don’t feel safe here. We’re too close to the castle’.

  Still Peregrine did not answer, his face hidden. Jack squatted beside him, one hand resting on his shoulder. ‘My lord?’

  Peregrine shook his hand away, standing up abruptly. ‘Yes. We’ll ride on. What else is there to do? My only hope now is to find the spear. We’ll find the spear, we’ll rescue my parents, and we’ll wrest the crown from that malevolent old hag, I swear it! Come on, let’s ride!’

  They rode all night, keeping to the hedgerows, letting the tired horses plod. Once or twice Peregrine almost fell asleep in the saddle. He was jerked awake by the harness, which kept him from falling. Each time at the moment of awakening he remembered with a rush of black despair. Stiga dead, Stormlinn Castle fallen, his family taken captive. Surely he could rescue his parents if he found the spear? If only the spear was still there to be found …

  As dawn approached, they hid in a small copse of trees in a valley, bounded on both sides by wide bare fields. It was odd to hear no birds singing. It seemed to unsettle Blitz, who was hunched on his perch, his hooded head turning this way and that as he strained to hear. Peregrine stroked him between his wings and gave him a small gobbet of meat from his wallet, then tied his jesses to the perch. He dared not risk a falcon being seen flying in these birdless skies.

  They ate, then huddled themselves in their cloaks to sleep, taking turns to keep watch. Even though the daylight hours were so short that they did not need to hide for long, Peregrine still found the waiting difficult. He wanted to be up and moving. The road was busy this close to the castle, however, and it would not have been safe to ride on. Farmers’ carts trundled up and down, a girl walked past with a flock of geese, a battalion of soldiers in silver armour marched by. Once a wedge of sisika birds flew over, and Peregrine shrank down beneath his grey cloak, hoping no betraying piece of metal from the horses’ tack would catch the sun.

  He slept for a few hours while Jack kept watch, but the sun stabbed through the thin, bare branches and his dreams were restless. At last Peregrine sat up, hunched in his cloak, and watched a farmer working nearby, laboriously mending a broken wall. He was a poor stick of a man, tattered as a scarecrow, with feet bound with rags. Once he
came close enough for Peregrine to see that both his ears had been chopped off, leaving only ugly red scars. Peregrine flinched, sick with pity and horror. When he woke Grizelda in the dusk, he demanded to know what crime could possibly result in such a dreadful punishment.

  She shrugged, her blue eyes unable to meet his. ‘He could have listened to seditious songs or stories, or to slanderous lies about the queen’.

  ‘They would cut off his ears for listening to stories?’ Peregrine asked. When she nodded, he continued furiously, ‘It is evil! This is your county, Grizelda! Your brother is Count of Zavaria, he is responsible for justice in this land. How can he be so cruel?’

  ‘It is the law,’ she said unhappily. ‘The queen makes the laws’.

  ‘I bet she would not lose her ears if she listened to gossip,’ Jack cried.

  ‘Shhhh!’ Grizelda looked around her. ‘Be careful how you speak of the queen,’ she said in a much lower voice.

  ‘Why? Will I lose my tongue if I say something nasty about her?’ Jack said sarcastically, then stared in disbelief when Grizelda nodded.

  A shrill, triumphant scream right overhead made them all jump as another wedge of sisika birds flew over. At once Peregrine and Jack froze, hoping their hooded cloaks were enough to hide them from view. Peregrine’s heart was beating so hard it bruised the bones of his chest. The giant birds kept on flying, though. Peregrine gazed after them and then cried out in shock.

  A net was suspended between two of the birds. People were crammed, struggling, inside. Peregrine saw arms, legs, bodies, heads, pressed hard against the crisscross of rope. Hundreds of wild birds soared around the net, screaming in distress.

  His legs gave way. He sat down.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jack whispered.

  Peregrine nodded.

  ‘What?’ Grizelda said. ‘It’s only a load of prisoners being taken to the castle’. Then she realised. ‘Oh no! Do you think … I’m so sorry! They’re prisoners from Stormlinn Castle, aren’t they? Those sisika birds belong to the soldiers that attacked you’.