The Accidental Highwayman (14 page)

“That will do,” said Morgana, modestly, and Gruntle raised his lumpen hat and fell silent, his face red. She continued, “The remainder of the tale thou may easily guess: That unpleasant man pursued me, and I ducked through the very gap in the hedge through which you came, and there was the bull. I ran to the tree, the ruffian ran after me, and then we perched like mockingbirds until you arrived.”

“You think he was not a common bandit?” I asked when the tale was finished. “The ways are infested with such folk.”

“After I had spoken hastily to him, he called me ‘your Royal Highness,'” Morgana said. “Not in a satirical way, but most contemptuously; I think he knew me for what I am.”

“We'll ride together, then, for Midnight can bear us both with ease. It makes a strange sight, a foreign girl and a waterlogged squire sharing a champion horse, but there's nothing else for it. We must get away from here.”

Before she mounted, the princess, seeking the best disguise for herself, threw her strange cloak on and off a number of times, on each occasion changing her appearance: First the pig-nosed woman, then a plain yellow-haired girl with freckles, followed by a very old nun, a very tall washerwoman, a Turkish dancing girl, and a Gypsy. It was the last incarnation we settled upon. It changed her appearance the least; her dark looks and almost-green olive skin remained the same, if a trifle less vivid, but now she wore somber over-stitched skirts, silver hoops in her ears, and a red kerchief about her head. Gypsies being an alien race at that time, any strangeness in her comportment might be forgiven as part of the Travelers'
*
customs.

So it was; we boarded Midnight and trotted away, and there was no further talk of separating the party that day. Princess Morgana had proved to herself how little she knew of the ways of men, and I had proved myself a fool.

 

Chapter 14

THE UNLUCKY LUNCHEON

O
N WE
rode. It was not gallantry on my part, pray understand, that caused me to ally my cause with hers. I found myself enchanted with the princess, it is true. But she was an enchantress, so that was to be expected. Rather, I understood after our separate misadventures that we would be better served together, at least for a short while.

It was my intention that we should part as soon as it was practical—and hers, as well. Having learned that Ireland was a free Faerie state, my plan to emigrate to France,
not
Ireland, was cemented in place. (I didn't know then that France had six such free states within its borders, but that's another story.) My own flight must wait. Knowing the risk the princess faced, and having seen how quickly she got into trouble, it was unthinkable that I should leave her side before she was delivered into friendly hands. It was simply good manners.

We had gone but a few miles when Willum returned, accompanied by a third feyín, who would not show herself to me. Her name was Violets, and she spoke only once or twice in my presence, always from a place of concealment. She was determined not to break the Eldritch Law any more than she must. Gruntle addressed her as “cousin,” so these creatures had families much like our own.

First Willum spake to the princess in some other language, presumably the Faerie speech, with much pointing this way and that. Presumably he was telling her what he'd learned of her pursuers, and where we would meet with allies, and so on. She listened closely and interjected questions at certain points, also in the strange tongue. Then it was my turn.

“Captain Sterne, what wants to stretch your neck, has gone haring off eastward,” Willum reported to me. “My mates are following him, and they'll dash off a bee if anything changes. Apparently the captain thinks you're so cunning you'd double back and return to your original route, knowing he'd follow thee to the west because he
thinks
you'd go east, and therefore west, but east, and so forth. North and south didn't come up. Which goes to show you're more cunning than he because you're not actually cunning at all. Which is clever.”

I took him at his word. Then he, Gruntle, and Violets flew off ahead to scout the road for dangers. For a while we rode in peace.

“How does that cloak of yours work?” I asked the princess, after a long silence.

At first she didn't respond to my question. “I wonder—” said I.

“Forgive me,” she replied. “Thou didst not use the correct form of address, so I did not realize to whom thou spoke.”

“My apologies,” I said. “But I can't very well call you HRH Morgana, Princess of Faerie, can I? Somewhat gives the disguise away.”

“Call me Morgana, for the nonce.”

“And you may call me Kit.”

“It's all very new to me,” she said, sounding regretful. “I scarcely know my own privilege. I've never had to do anything for myself. Even magic. Unlike my feyín companions, I must use enchanted objects to achieve my caprizels—that's our word for magical effects.”

“So the cloak is a bit of portable magic, then.”

“It's called a jaguundi. I was given it for serpicore hunting many years ago. As you must know, the serpicore is slow to fix upon a target for its venom, so merely changing your appearance is enough to baffle it.”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“And now my cloak provest useful for disguises in the First Realm. But the best disguise for me will be a change of habits. Prithee tell me when I betray my upbringing. I shall not take offense.”

“Very kind of you,” said I, and offered an immediate suggestion. “Here's one for starters: you might try speaking in a less … archaic manner. I mean no criticism, naturally. But it does stand out. ‘Thee' and ‘thou' went out with King James.”

“Shouldst discourse in
common
speech?” said she, amazed.

“It does have the virtue of being more common.”

“Thus shall it be.”

This brief conversation left me feeling light-headed. At first I thought it was the effect of hunger; I'd eaten little enough the past couple of days and was altogether gutfoundered. But instead, I began to realize Morgana was exerting some sort of charm upon me, as I had suspected. I found her every word delightful and interesting, her every gesture graceful, from the inquiring tilt of her head to the feather-light tread of her foot. I resolved to resist this effect. It must be, I reasoned, like the warming influence of a hearth that lulls the drowsy person to doze, soon to tumble into the embers of the fire. Morgana's company was warming, but I must not be lulled to sleep.

The journey to the Irish Sea would take weeks on foot and horseback. We were headed roughly northward. For some miles our way was uneventful; it seemed that the ruffian had not reported directly back to Morgana's father, or if he had, the pursuit had not yet caught us up. Presumably Captain Sterne continued on his way to the east.

Once, when I chanced to look at butterflies flitting above a cottage garden, I thought I saw Violets in the foliage for a moment, dressed like the other wee people, with the addition of a flower on her head—but it was impossible to be sure.

The weather was changing, for there were blue-gray clouds on the horizon and mare's tails above, which warned we could be in for a soaking before long—by then, I hoped, Morgana would be with the sympathizers to her cause, and I'd be on my roundabout way to Dover.

“I'm going to ask you another question, if I may,” said I, after we had gone another mile or two in silence.

“Pray do,” Morgana said.

“Willum keeps mentioning bees. It's my impression you use them to send messages.”

“That's right. I don't know why you manlings don't do it.”

“Do you tie a small message to its leg, or do you write directly upon the bee?”

Morgana laughed at this. In fact she laughed until bright tears ran down her face and we had to dismount from the saddle lest she fall from the horse.

Willum and Gruntle returned, alerted by some mysterious instinct, and demanded to know what was the matter.

“You've made her cry, you bounder!” Willum shouted, and pointed at my feet. A moment later I was covered in stinging ants.

“I'm laughing,” Morgana said, and laughed all the harder because I was leaping up and down, shrieking and beating at my legs.

Willum called the insects off; they flowed back to the ground and returned to their ant business as if nothing had happened. “My apologies,” said Willum.

“You might learn to control your temper,” I suggested, deeply embarrassed by the spectacle I had made. “Is anyone hungry?” I added, because Gruntle was walking around in the middle of the road, eating the ant casualties.

*   *   *

I took us down a couple of obscure lanes and found another road to throw off any persons, natural or supernatural, who might be tracking us. We sat to lunch outside a tavern by a river, in a place concealed among lavender bushes. We could not eat within the public house; in most respectable establishments, Gypsies were not permitted to enter. I first suggested Morgana change her appearance to something else, but she insisted she would stay a Gypsy for the duration of the journey, regardless of what people thought.

Willum delighted in the meal—game pie, cheese, and biscuits—of which he ate an extraordinary amount despite his size; Gruntle wasn't having any of “that fancy foreign muck” and contented himself with wood lice from beneath the log on which we sat. Violets did not show herself. Gruntle claimed she was eating something she brought with her.

Across the river, storm clouds were piling high, but it was sunny on our side. A couple of fishermen walked past, and the feyín vanished, as was their habit. Morgana said this was called “doing a ruckins,” and couldn't explain how it was accomplished. It was a sort of instinct, like blinking of the eyes. Upon his reappearance, Willum said the age at which feyín infants
*
learned the trick was a nightmare, because they would sometimes disappear for weeks on end.

Morgana's feet required tending before we resumed our journey; I would have bound her blisters with a bit of cloth, but Gruntle had some sort of healing comprimaunt that solved the problem. This magic was performed with hand gestures. While her shoes were off, I saw that Morgana's toes were not entirely human in configuration—as with the feyín's feet, her first toe started much farther down the foot than her other toes, almost like a thumb. This sort of thing was what made her so fascinating—in the greatest of beauties there is always a touch of the uncanny.

Not being required, I strolled a little distance away and took the opportunity to examine my master's map. There upon the route was the frog, which could stand for my encounter with the bull's pond, or collectively for all the plunges I'd taken that day. In the latter case, the frog represented
me.
The next illustration showed a flower with an arrow through it, and the one after that a horse with a spear through it. I rather hoped this last wasn't meant to indicate Midnight. I'm not much for riddles.