Plenilune (68 page)

She put down the brush and made her way to the window. Through the bars she looked out on a little lonely patio, sunwarmed and ringed with potted cypress trees and old, pot-bound roses. One rose was growing right up against the wall beneath the window. Margaret could reach it if she wanted to; small beads of dew, swelling with silver and the closeness of the thing, shone on a Lancaster-red petal. Her fingers ran against the wooden sill. Living with Skander and Dammerung had given her balance and better spirit; two weeks on the march had given her strength. She could pry the wood away if she had to, if she wanted to. She could put her elbow through the glass and twist her shoulders through the iron-work. She could do it...

But not yet. She turned from the window and looked over her prison. Give it a day, maybe a little more. She needed to eat and bring down her fever, and she needed to know where she was.
Patience.
Her lips twisted in a wry smile.
I’ll find a break in the wall. For now I’ll run beside it.

“Art taking over for me? I just arrived.”

A man’s voice came muffled through the door.

“Nay, just sitting,” said another man. There was a pause. “So...hast seen her, then?”

“I should hope: I brought her in. Maddish, I think: she was laughing and crying a moment ago.”

The second man scoffed. “Dost not have a woman? They are all like that, laughing one moment and crying the next, and somehow or other ’tis all thy fault. So hast seen her?”

“Surely! Tall, young, not so badly endowed, too. If ye gave her a bit of a wash and some clothing, she would look fetching. But we’re not allowed in. Anyway, chit has the look of a biter.”

The second man, who probably had a woman, grumbled indistinctly for a moment. Margaret tilted her head to hear better. “Well endowed or nay, I shouldn’t go in there. Biter besides, I heard she was a powerful witch and raised the War-wolf from the dead.”

“Th’art gammoning me.”

“An’ sure I’m not, sirrah! However it did happen, the War-wolf is flesh-and-blood alive and
she
had something to do with it. So!” he added defensively.

“Fwoosh,” murmured Margaret, and swept her hand toward the lamp.
A powerful witch. Perhaps some part of us is legend after all.

“Say, oh! is that for us?”

A new voice spoke up beyond the door: a brisk voice belonging to a woman who seemed to know their type. “Gish on wi’ye! ’Tis like to spill and burn the flowers out of ye laps—and shouldn’t I howl of laughter to watch ye dance. Give way—and do ye unbolt the postern, as my hands are muckle filled!”

There was a metallic clatter as someone untangled his sword from his stool, and a rattle as the bolt was pulled back. Margaret, conscious that she had been spoiled by Aikaterine’s careful attention and pleasant demeanour, steeled herself against the rough nature of the serving woman bustling through the doorway. She caught a blurred glimpse in the gloom of the hallway of the two guards: they peered round at her and she looked back at them with fever-flushed eyes and cheeks, her head up, her torn and fiery gown hanging about her squared shoulders and thin, weary body. The two heads ducked back round the doorframe and the serving woman, short of stature and nearly as round as she was tall, kicked the door shut with her ankle.

Wordlessly she bustled to one of the many little tables and plunked down a tray full of broth and bread, an egg in a cup, something in a glass, and a bowl of cut fruit. It was a fully decent breakfast—Margaret was pleasantly surprised—but the serving woman straightened immediately, unceremoniously, and turned at once to go. A swift rush of hot rage flooded into Margaret’s cheeks, but she bit her tongue; the woman was not
her
servant, nor did she have any particular desire to suffer the sight of her for long.

The woman swung toward the door but stopped halfway, her attention snagged on Margaret’s stance, and looked at her as if just seeing her standing backlit in the light coming through the window. “Well!” The woman put her hands where her hips should have been. “I see tha’ thinkest very highly of thaself!”

Lady Spitcat’s lips pressed tight together. After a count of ten she said quietly, “You speak very freely to a lady.”

The serving woman’s face, which years of standing before a hot oven had done no justice to, reddened further. On a sudden impulse Margaret wanted to laugh, for the rotund, unlovely creature, fluffing like a grouse, was no match for Rhea’s sleek, witching beauty. The other opened her mouth to speak, and some kind of preambling sound came out, but Margaret did not wait to hear what the sharp-tongued creature had to say. Moving quickly to keep herself from losing her balance, silks rustling angrily among the cushions and her legs, she crossed the room and swept past the serving woman to the door. Her hand on the latch, she jerked it open.

“Look! If any man desires to be first, he shall be the servant of all. Have you read that? I read that once, years ago. I can’t remember where. Give my regards to Bloodburn: I hope he didn’t put poison in the soup, because I know a cure for that.” Her eyes followed the waddling, puffing woman to the doorway. “And furthermore,” she added—the woman turned back, her tongue bit, her eyes alight with insult. “I recommend a bit of cold cream and snitching less of your lord’s victuals; then perhaps you, too, might bear yourself like a lady and think highly of yourself.”

With a smart shove she swung the door to and listened with a heady flush of satisfaction as it crashed into the frame. There was a splutter of confused voices and then the serving woman’s, raised angrily over them all, pushing through to get away. A laugh startled out of Margaret’s mouth before she could repress it.

The bolt sliding to on the other side of the door helped to steady her. She eased herself into a chair, her back still throbbing—but not as sharply as before—and, picking up a spoon, began to test the broth. It was thin and full of little green flakes of onions, and smelled strongly of chicken. Pulling the scent of it in through her nose, Margaret felt healthier on the instant.

If it kills me
, she thought
, at least I will die healthy
.

But it did not kill her. She wet the bread in the broth and ate that—it seemed to settle decently—drank the broth, and tentatively dug into the egg. The egg needed salt so that it was tasteless and uncomfortable, but she found she could not complain. She washed it down with the spiced wine that made the sweat stand out on her skin, and after that she was overcome by a profound lethargy; after a brief and fruitless struggle to stay awake, she drifted off to sleep in the chair.

She woke later to the thump of the door shutting again. Starting out of sleep, she found the tray had been replaced with a fresh one containing the same foods so that Margaret had the curious feeling that she had gone to sleep and dreamed about eating, and had not eaten at all. But her head was noticeably clearer and, save for a crick in her back and neck, she felt almost herself again.

“The lady be sound asleep,” said one of her guards. There was a rattle of metal against wood. “I say as thou and I fetch ourselves a bite to eat; guarding women is petty work.”

“Even if she is a witch,” said the other, “she makes poor sport of guarding. I almost wish she would give a show of trouble and put our arms to better use. Still, she sleepeth, and my hunger does not. After thee…”

They tiptoed away so quietly Margaret could not be sure they had gone. She waited a moment, still, listening for the least sound that would prove they had only been fooling her. No sound came. When she was nearly certain she was alone, she moved at once: she drained the bowl of broth so quickly she hiccupped once and followed it with the fruit downed in three bites. The bread and the egg she wrapped in a napkin to be eaten as she went along; the wine she did not touch for she was sure it would put her to sleep again. For a cloak she dragged a heavy, dark rug off the bed and wrapped it round one fist. Going to the window she looked out, craning round to see as much as possible, but the landscape was empty.

How I wish I could use the Dragon’s spell
. She pulled back her arm.
But I do not know where I am going, and how do I know where it would drop me, or if it should accidentally pull me apart?

Her fist struck the pane. The glass broke in several large shards, singing out in reproof, and crashed to the stonework at the base of the window.
Everyone heard that!
Without hesitation she tore off the rug and laid it over the ragged glass, then began gingerly to thread her way through the rough square of opening like a camel trying to coax his way through the eye of a needle. She miscalculated her design and ended up rolling headfirst out the window into the rose-pot—which wrapped its thorny arms around her shoulders and held her for several precious seconds in painful check before she could delicately extricate herself. Panting, stinging, trying to suppress the urge to run, she got to her feet and threaded the rug out the window and rolled it up in her arms.

Which way? She looked to the right and left. The sun was nearly directly overhead, affording her little sense of direction; she could see a low range of hills and a wood beyond the house meads, but were they the piedmont of the fell country or were they foreign hills of Hol-land that she had never seen before? She sniffed: there was no smell of salt in the air.

Well, I must move anyway,
she determined,
and if I go amiss, they will not look for me deep in enemy territory. I may even meet Centurion’s folk if I go far enough. Now, for it—

She dashed across the patio, down a little stair onto a circle of lawn, and bent close to the perimeter of box-woods so that she could not be seen from the house. For a few yards the world was quiet and full of small shadows and the blaze of summer light, then she found herself slipping down a gentle swell of turf, coming dangerously into view from some of the windows before slipping back into the box-wood lee. The sound of falling water began to ripple in the quiet. People were talking somewhere, too, quietly, tentatively; their voices pattered on the stonework and mingled with the echo of the falling water.

She stopped at a break in the box-woods and looked into a water-garden, with a pond only a stone’s throw away and, up a rise and under the shade of the house, another patio with a wrought-iron table and chairs where Bloodburn and his lady sat. Bloodburn was attending to some papers and did not look up; the lady was speaking, quietly, determinedly, as if the knowledge that her husband was not listening gave her just enough spark of indignation to give some courage to her voice. They would not look her way. The gap was barely two people wide: Margaret could make it easily.

A stir of motion in the foreground drew her attention. The little man-cub, which she had seen only once before clearly, came waddling on all fours through the grass and low shrubs, padding inexorably toward the side of the pool. Margaret’s stomach tightened.
Someone will come fetch him. His nurse must be close about
. The child crawled on, unsteadily but determinedly, his noble, round, babyish face screwed up in acute concentration.
Surely someone must come. Where is his nurse? The devil and his unholy angels take that nurse!

The child stumbled out of the grass, recovered, and padded across the slate border of the pool. There was no sign of the nurse.

“
Damnation!” hissed Margaret. She vaulted to her feet and rushed across the distance, propelled by panic and the rage of being disappointed. She caught the child just as his paw wavered out into space and he began to tip wildly over the edge. With a groan she swung the heavy child into her arms and reeled back from the pool, panting, out of breath. He looked at her with surprise and she looked back at him with despair. He was obviously puzzled by her rushing out of nowhere and swooping him from earth like a goddess snatching up a poor mortal; his brows thickened and clenched, forming two perfect imprints of shadow over his nose. Not an unhandsome face, she thought, as babies’ faces went. If he smiled he might avoid looking like his father.

“I hope you know you have ruined all for me,” she told him severely. Hefting him onto her hip—which made the leather of her bodice rub hard into her skin—she marched up the walk between the shrubs and pencil cypress trees to the patio. Neither parent saw her coming until she was nearly on top of them, her short shadow falling across them, her voice stinging with a sense of insult which she could not justify but keenly felt.

“Here is your son. You had better keep a closer eye on him. He nearly pitched himself into the pool and drowned.”

And she put him down on his back on the tabletop.

The crushed sapphires of the woman’s eyes leapt from the baby to Margaret; the pale, disused hands snapped out instinctively and wrapped the child up into them. Margaret’s heart twisted for the poor woman. There was an awful dread, not merely of what had almost happened, but of Margaret herself: she met those eyes only a moment—that was all the time she could afford—but in Kinloss’s face she saw a pang of regret and a sweep of horror at the instantaneous recognition. Margaret’s mouth jerked wryly but that was all. She had Bloodburn to attend to.

“Perhaps you adhere to pedobaptism?” she suggested.

He was not amused. For a full minute he sat motionless in his chair, turned a little with his hand on the arm of it, his eyes squinted into the sunlight to look up at her face. The warm summer wind pattered quietly at their clothing and stirred the loose ends of Margaret’s hair. A new, quieter rage swelled inside her: she wanted, very simply, to strike his face with the crown of her knuckles and see if that made him any prettier in her mind. The silence arched and bristled like a cat’s back, but curiously Margaret found she did not care. Perhaps the fever lingered still in her brain. She wondered: if she reached out, could she stroke the silence down as one might soothe a tom? But she was too angry to speak. If Bloodburn, to whom she left it to break the silence, said anything she did not like, she could always hit him and see where things went from there.