The Lascar's Dagger (8 page)

He stared at her, shocked. “Regal Vilmar Vollendorn asked for it? For himself?” His tone was so hushed she barely heard him over the sound of the rain and the rattle of the wheels.

She nodded. “Ryce, he’s so
old
. And he’s buried three wives!”

“Oh, pox! Thilda, I’m sorry. But maybe it’s just a rumour. Vilmar was last widowed only a few months ago, so he can hardly wed again yet. It would be unseemly not to observe the mourning period. Besides, you’ve only just turned seventeen and he’s got to be fifty if he’s a day! Kenda Rosse is a silly ninny; she’s just passed on gossip as truth.”

“She said Lady Rosse told her—” Her words ended in a squeal as the horses were hauled to an abrupt halt and she was flung into Ryce’s lap. “Oh, vex it!” she said, pushing herself upright. “What now?”

Ryce, oblivious to the rain, pulled aside the leather blind and stuck his head out of the window. “I can’t see anything. I’ll go and find out.”

“Not if you want to ride with me, you won’t. I’m not having you coming back in here covered in mud and with your coat smelling wet! Besides, it’s – it’s inappropriate. You wait for the servants to come and tell you what’s happening, you don’t go to them.”

“Have I ever told you how irritating you are?”

She pulled a face, and he subsided, resigning himself to waiting. Nineteen years old, and he still didn’t know how to assert himself for more than five minutes at a time.
Oh, Ryce,
she thought,
if I were you, I wouldn’t listen to my little sister. I’d do what
I
wanted
…

But Ryce was Ryce. Swaying like a reed in the wind, following his pleasures without thought. It wasn’t
fair
. He was always addressed as “his highness Prince Ryce”, whereas all she merited was “milady the Princess Mathilda”. He was a prince, and one day he’d be king. She was a princess, and one day she’d just be someone’s wife.

But I’m the one who would make the better monarch
…

The sergeant of the Prince’s outriders, Horntail, rode up a moment later to inform them what had happened. “Naught to fret about, your highness,” he told Ryce. “A wench ran out on to the road straight under my horse like she had a wolf nipping at her heels. She was knocked down, but got up and fled through the hedge on t’other side of the road. The coachman has bad news, though. When we stopped so sudden like, a coach shaft cracked. The lads are binding it up now as a temp’ry measure, but we’re going to have to get it fixed proper in Melforn.”

Ryce grimaced before replying. “Is he sure it won’t get us as far as Redpoll Manor?”

“’Fraid not, your highness. There’s a coaching house on this side o’ the town, and they’ll be able to mend it proper. There’s a tavern nearby, with an oak shrine opposite. P’raps Lady Mathilda could rest there while we get the shaft fixed.”

How I loathe being spoken about as if I’m not here,
Mathilda thought.
As if I don’t exist. As if I can never have a say in my own life
.
And isn’t it just typical to pack me off to some horrible cold shrine while the men sit around a warm fire in a taproom and drink ale?

Just then the Sergeant’s mount plunged as a pack of hounds appeared out of nowhere, flowing around the coach and the horses, sniffing and snuffling and yipping. Horntail swore and yelled. “Away with you, you slubbering mongrels! Coachman, put your whip to the curs!”

“Fellhounds,” Ryce said in surprise. “That yipping means they’ve lost their prey.” He stuck his head out of the carriage to have a look, but hastily pulled it back in as the rain gusted. “Difficult for them to keep the scent in a downpour like this. There must be hunters around somewhere.”

“Over there beyond the stile,” said Mathilda. On the other side of the coach, riders were strung across the hillside, all of them angling to where a stile cut through the hedge.

“After a fox, I suppose,” Ryce said.

Mathilda blinked, surprised he was so obtuse. “No, Ryce. The woman.” She called to the Sergeant. “Tell your men not to say anything about the woman to the hunters. You didn’t see her.”

Sergeant Horntail switched his gaze to Ryce, raising a questioning eyebrow. Mathilda gritted her teeth and glared at her brother. For a moment she thought he was going to argue the point, but in the end he just gave a curt nod. The Sergeant rode off to issue his orders.

“It really is none of our business, Thilda,” Ryce grumbled.

“Hunting a woman down with dogs is none of our business?”

“We don’t know what she did.”

“I don’t care what she did; she shouldn’t be hunted like vermin.”

“I think I’ll tell Horntail we’ve changed our minds.”

“Don’t you
dare
!”

The leading rider reached the stile, but his horse baulked at the coach drawn up so close on the other side and refused to take the jump. The huntsman circled around, yelling for the coachman to move the vehicle. Several other riders arrived just as the rain was beginning to slacken, and one of them spoke hurriedly to the first man, gesturing at the coach. The angry expression on the first man’s face disappeared into an ingratiating smile.

Sergeant Horntail spoke to him and then came to talk to Ryce. “They
are
hunting the woman,” he said. “She’s the wife of a landsman from a nearby manor. Apparently she murdered her husband last night. That’s the husband’s brother, Hilmard Ermine, leading them. They saw her cross the stile. I told him we didn’t see which way she went.” His expression was blank, but the set of his shoulders expressed his disapproval.

Mathilda ignored him and glanced again to where the riders in the field still milled around, waiting for the coach to move. They were wet and angry and too cowed by the coat of arms on the coach door to complain. She smiled. Perhaps she’d saved a life today. She rather liked the idea that a woman who’d murdered her husband was still running free because she, Mathilda, had intervened.

I’m not helpless,
she thought.
I’m not as helpless as everyone would like me to be.

A secretive smile curved her lips. One day she’d show the world what she could do. She was the daughter of a king, and she knew how to rule men, even if Ryce didn’t.

One day, one day
…

The Melforn shrine was outside the town limits, but not by much. The spreading branches of the oak shaded an area the size of a large farmyard, and the leaves – now turning yellow and orange – glistened wetly as wan sunlight poked through a gap in the clouds. The outer branches draped down to the ground, and the shrine, a circular building surrounding the trunk, nestled comfortably under the protection of the tree’s vast spread. Its outer stone walls, topped by a thatched roof, were pierced by a line of narrow, glassless windows. The trunk of the tree poking out of the centre of the roof was so huge it would have taken five or six men holding hands to surround the base.

Mathilda stared sourly at the doorless archway that led into the shrine, and shivered. Ryce and their escort cheerfully delivered her into the charge of the shrine-keeper and disappeared into the tavern on the opposite side of the road, while the two coachmen saw to the repair of the shaft. The tavern was busy; the hunters and their hounds were there already. Idly she wondered if they’d caught their prey and wished she could talk to them herself to find out. Va pox on’t, why did women always have to be so proper, while men had all the fun?

With a sigh she turned to the shrine-keeper, who’d given her name as Marsh Bedstraw. Tall and slim, narrow-hipped and broad-shouldered, she was dressed in a simple woollen gown. Her age was impossible to say. Forty? Fifty? But then, shrine-keepers aged slowly and lived, some said, for centuries. In Ardrone, they all had Shenat blood in their veins, without exception. It was said that the unseen guardians would not accept the non-Shenat. Not, Mathilda thought, that people from elsewhere complained. After all, what normal person would want to spend all their life under an oak tree?

Her spirits sank when she realised there were no servants at the shrine; she and Marsh Bedstraw had the place to themselves – along with the unseen guardian of the shrine, or so she assumed. She huddled into her cloak and gave another shiver.

Fortunately this was sufficient to goad Marsh into action, and in a short time Mathilda was seated on cushions piled on the shrine’s single bench, in front of a burning brazier of red-hot coals, with a feather-down quilt over her knees and a pewter mug of steaming fruit punch cupped in her hands. Ryce had said he’d ask the tavern to send over a hot meal, but Marsh had snorted at that, commenting that the tavern food was even worse than their rotgut.

“I’ll fetch bread and cheese from my kitchen,” she said, and disappeared into the only private part of the shrine, a tiny partitioned area which was evidently where she lived.

Mathilda glanced around. Although the shrine was built in a circle around the tree, the massive trunk in the centre was free-standing, towering through its central hole. Nowhere did the building come close to touching it. There was no inner wall to the shrine, just stone pillars holding up the beams of the roof, which meant that no matter where one stood, the trunk was always accessible and visible.

She’d never been impressed by shrines. Cold, windy places, with beaten earth floors and no furnishings except stone seats for those coming to pay homage. They might each have had an unseen guardian, but who could tell? This one, she had to admit, had an exceptionally impressive oak.

Just then she heard again the baying of excited fellhounds and turned to look out of the main entrance. It was no longer raining, and the dogs were pouring out of the tavern yard. A woman was clambering over the stone wall of the field adjacent to the shrine. Bedraggled and filthy with mud, with her hair loose, and not even wearing a cloak, she looked like a mad bawd, some poor village lackwit cast out into the streets. When she saw the stream of dogs bounding her way, she raced for the shrine, lifting her muddy skirts like a wanton.

The murderess. This has to be her.

Mathilda knew she ought to be frightened. She knew she should call Marsh Bedstraw. The fugitive was desperate; she might also be crazed and dangerous. Instead, Mathilda revelled in the thought that she was about to have a real adventure at last.

The woman was terrified. She was closer to the shrine than the dogs, but they were bred to run and eager to reach her. Fixing her gaze on the shrine archway ahead, she flew across the yard. The first of the hounds nipped at her heels. She was crying, tears streaking dirt on her cheeks. The hound grabbed the back of her skirt, its teeth ripping through the cloth as she lunged away. She made one last desperate leap for the shade of the oak, as if even its shadow could save her.

Her feet hit the yellow carpet of autumn leaves. A mere breath behind her, the leading hound wailed in pain.

Startled, the woman looked over her shoulder. The animal skidded to a halt, the leaves banking up under its feet. It yelped. The hounds behind tried to bypass it, but the moment they trod on the fallen leaves, they lost all interest in their quarry. They leapt and twisted and howled. Then, as one, they tore away, tails down, in abject distress.

The woman halted by the shrine entrance, staring back at them, her face a picture of amazement. She’d not expected this.

This is better than any theatrical
, Mathilda thought, jumping to her feet and clapping her hands in her own excitement.

Roused by the hounds’ fervid barking, the men from the tavern poured across the road. Not just the owners of the fellhounds, but Ryce and the royal guards as well.

The woman took one look and dived into the shrine. She raced past Mathilda and brushed Marsh Bedstraw aside as the shrine-keeper emerged from her dwelling, mouth agape. Her headlong dash took her through the covered area to the base of the trunk. She laid her hands on the rough bark and said in a firm, clear voice, “I, Sorrel Redwing, beg sanctuary from the guardians of oak and field, from Va above. Should my plea be answered, I pledge service to Va from this moment forth.”

Turning to press her back to the trunk, she placed the flat of her palms to the tree on either side and fixed her gaze on the main entrance. Fear blazed in her eyes, and she shrank back as if she could disappear into the bark. Her chest rose and fell like bellows and she dug her fingers into the oak so ferociously Mathilda winced.

“Va, in the name of oak and field, save me. Save me and I am yours,” Sorrel said.

Marsh Bedstraw laid a warning hand on Mathilda’s elbow. “Say nothing. This is in the hands of the Way of the Oak.”

Mathilda looked towards the men now at the door. Two of them stepped inside, and once they were no longer backlit by the sunlight, she recognised one as the leader of the hunters. What had Sergeant Horntail said his name was? Ermine. Hilmard Ermine. Behind the landsman, Ryce and Horntail came running up.

“Are you all right, Thilda?” Ryce asked, his face a ludicrous mix of remorse and alarm.

“Of course I am,” she said.

Hilmard Ermine concentrated on the shrine-keeper, apparently not noticing his quarry against the tree. “We’re looking for a runaway, a criminal. She committed the foul murder of her husband, my brother, and then fled his home. We’ve had the hounds after her half the night, nearly caught her several times, but lost her an hour ago. We know she entered the shrine just now.”

“Rest assured,” Marsh Bedstraw said, inclining her head in polite deference, her voice low and husky and calm, “no one of black heart is ever sheltered by the shrine, or by Va. Search if it please ye, and if y’find the person y’seek, she has no place here.”

Mathilda turned to look at the woman to see how she reacted, but there was no one there. She stared at the trunk, her mouth gaping. There was no way Sorrel Redwing could have moved without drawing attention to her presence. Marsh Bedstraw’s hold on her arm tightened. Mathilda shook her off, torn between scolding the shrine-keeper for daring to lay a hand on a member of the royal family, and asking her what in Va’s name had just happened.

Hilmard doffed his cap and made a sweeping bow in her direction. “Forgive me, milady, I’d not disturb you if it weren’t urgent. The miscreant we seek needs to be apprehended for your safety, and to see justice served.”