The Marus Manuscripts (11 page)

“Now, how am I going to get in touch with Prince Edwin?” Darien muttered as he turned to go back inside the cabin. Suddenly, without warning, a loud shout seemed to come from all around them. Darien quickly reached for his sword, forgetting that he’d left it inside. It was too late anyway. They were surrounded.

“A man of your experience should be more on his guard,” a voice said. From the darkness of the woods, Colonel Oliver approached carrying a torch. Like phantoms bearing candles, almost 100 of Darien’s most faithful soldiers came forward.

“What are you doing here, Colonel?” Darien asked after briskly shaking his hand. He was amazed. “How in the world did you find this place?”

“The Old Judge sent the girl to me a few nights ago,” Colonel Oliver said.

“Anna?” Darien asked.

“Yes. She told us where and when to meet you. I got the word around to those I knew would want to come.”

“But
what
are you doing here?” asked Darien.

“We’re with you, sir,” Colonel Oliver said resolutely. “Wherever you go, we go. None of us desire to serve under any other commander, even if he
is
supposed to be a scoundrel and a traitor.”

Darien looked around at the faces of the men, knowing well what they were sacrificing for him. “I cannot ask you to do this,” he said in a choked voice.

Colonel Oliver nodded. “Nor do we expect you to ask,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which is why we’ve come of our own free will. Now, are we going to stand here all night or are you going to tell us what you need us to do?”

They spent most of the night discussing their options. Having so many men to help made all the difference in Darien’s attitude. He became a general again.

Kyle sat on the edge of the cot, knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep now. Instead he wondered about Anna—the bold errand girl for the Old Judge. Somehow she seemed so different from the whiny little sister he had wanted to desert before this adventure began. He hoped she was being well treated at the convent.

Sister Leona took care of Anna personally. She fed her soup and spoke gently to her while dabbing her forehead with a cool, damp cloth. Anna felt as if she was constantly drifting between her dreams and reality—to the point where she wasn’t sure which was which.

“The Ancient Fathers and Mothers had dreams,” Sister Leona said. Though they had only begun to talk, Anna had the feeling that they had been chatting for hours and this was a conversation in the middle of it all. “The Unseen One used dreams to speak to the chosen ones. Only a handful are left who have the dreams or know how to interpret them. These are the days of abandonment, when the leaders and their people turn away from the ancient ways and the Unseen One.”

“I don’t like my dreams,” Anna said through a voice like sandpaper.

“No. Few of us do.” Sister Leona wrung the cloth out, then reapplied it to Anna’s face. “To be a voice for the Unseen One can be a great burden. Sometimes it involves suffering—even sharing the suffering of others. But our faith in the Unseen One carries us through. Do you have that kind of faith, Anna?”

“I want to.”

“Then feed that faith with prayer and study, silence and solitude. Will you do that?”

Anna closed her eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

When she opened her eyes again, the room was empty.

She slept until evening. Sister Leona knocked gently on the door, then walked in. She wore a cloak, as if she were about to leave.

“How are you feeling, Anna?” she asked.

Anna took a deep breath. The burning in her eyes had stopped. She felt weak but much better and said so.

“Good,” said Sister Leona, taking Anna’s hand and sitting beside her on the bed.

“Have we been talking?” Anna asked.

“A little,” Sister Leona said.

“Then it was a dream. I dreamed we talked a lot.”

Sister Leona smiled and patted her hand. “I hope it was a pleasant dream,” she said. Then she stood up and explained, “I have to leave for a while. I’ve been summoned.”

“Summoned?”

“The king has come to Dorr and asked to see me.”

“King Lawrence?”

“There is no other king that I know of.”

Anna sat up quickly. Her head spun. “Sister . . . I had a dream about soldiers and swords and . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word
death. “
And danger,” she said.

“We’ll talk about it when I return,” Sister Leona said. “In a little while.”

“Will you also teach me?” Anna asked. “The Old Judge said you would teach me how to use my gift—and you’d give me something.”

“You have all you need,” said the sister with a knowing smile. She handed a small mirror to Anna and left.

Anna wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with the mirror. Was she supposed to say “Mirror, mirror on the wall”? She looked at her reflection. Her face was pale and gaunt. Her eyes sat atop dark circles.
Her eyes!
Her entire life she’d had brown eyes. Now they were two separate colors; one was blue and the other green. She put a hand to her mouth as if to stop her sudden intake of breath. She stared at them, unsure what to think.

After a moment, Anna lay back in her bed. The wheels of her mind spun wildly, and her heart raced.
What does this mean?
she wondered. She heard voices whispering in the hallway, and then a young girl walked in. She was pretty, with long, braided hair and freckles on her nose. She said her name was Dawn and that Sister Leona wanted her to sit with Anna for a while.

“I don’t need anyone to sit with me,” Anna said. “I’m all right.”

Dawn reached over and touched Anna’s forehead tenderly. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, I am,” she replied, and then she fell asleep again.

Her dreams were fitful. In them she saw Sister Leona walk down a dingy hallway and into a room with candles and lamps set up in odd places, as if the room normally wouldn’t have so much light. The walls were covered with cheap paintings and documents that looked like legal papers and diplomas. A rolltop desk, also covered with papers, sat in the corner. In the center of the room, King Lawrence leaned back in a large thronelike chair that didn’t belong in the office at all. On one side of him stood a short, bald-headed man who kept wringing his hands. On the other side, General Liddell stood as straight as any ruler. Sister Leona knelt out of respect for the king, then waited.

“Get up, get up,” the king commanded wearily.

Anna was surprised because this was the first time she’d had a dream about the king where she could hear him clearly.

“What can I do for you, sire?” Sister Leona asked when she stood up.

The king rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and his hand against the side of his face. “Tell me about General Darien,” he said.

Sister Leona looked puzzled. “General Darien?”

“Don’t play innocent with me,” he said. “General Darien came to see you last night. Or should I say earlier this morning? What did he want? Why was he here?”

Sister Leona glanced around nervously. “Your Highness should know better than I would.”

“Indeed? Tell me what I should know.”

“General Darien is on a secret mission. That’s as much as he said. I assumed it was a mission for you.”

“Were you not aware that he is suspected of being a traitor?” the king asked.

“The newspapers hinted at the idea, but I haven’t seen any official papers or warrants for his arrest. I’d be a fool to believe everything I read in the newspaper. Besides, General Darien denied it.”

“He would deny it, wouldn’t he?” the king scoffed.

“He would if he were a liar,” Sister Leona said. “But I have no reason to think he’d lie.”

The king jerked forward in his chair. His eyes were aflame, his face twisted into a scowl. “Yet you would believe your king to be a liar!”

“Why would you say such a thing to me?” said Sister Leona indignantly. “I’m a loyal subject.”

“Are you?” the king bellowed. “Then explain to me what you, my loyal subject, did for General Darien!”

“Did for him? I don’t know what you mean.”

The king waved his hand. “Oram!”

A tall, hairy man dressed in a vest of sheepskin stepped from a corner behind Sister Leona. “Yes, Your Highness?” he said.

“She doesn’t understand me. Please enlighten her.”

“Eh?”

“Say what you know!” the king commanded impatiently.

“Oh,” he said, shuffling his feet like a small child. “Well, like I told you, sire, I was walking this morning with my flock, and I saw General Darien and a boy walking from the sister’s convent. We said hello in a friendly manner. I knew it was Darien but acted like I didn’t because I read in the paper how he might be plotting against you. And then I saw that he was wearing a long gold sword. So I thought,
Hold on, that’s the sword that was in the sister’s study, ’
cause I seen it there myself when I had business in the place once or twice. I was then wondering if maybe the general didn’t rob the sister of the sword. So I ran to Phipps here, our magistrate—”

With this acknowledgment, the bald-headed man nodded.

“—and he told me he’d contact you if I went to the convent to see if it’d been robbed. Well, I happen to know one of the girls there—she’s one of the few girls who’ll give me the time of day, the rest being holy snobs and all—and I asked her right away what was up with General Darien. Did he come in the night to rob them? And she said that the sword wasn’t stolen but
given
to General Darien by Sister Leona, along with some food.”

The king gestured to Sister Leona as if to say, “Well?”

Sister Leona said firmly, “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Apart from giving food and a weapon to my sworn enemy, then no, I don’t suppose I am!” the king shouted ironically. His face had turned bright red.

Sister Leona didn’t flinch, and her voice remained calm. “General Darien has been an honorable and dutiful servant to you. I had no reason to think he was otherwise. What I did for him, I did
because I believed him to be on a mission for you. If there were more to know or reasons to distrust him, they are beyond me.”

“
Beyond
you? I thought you prophets for the Unseen One knew everything!”

“We don’t.”

“That is truly unfortunate.” The king sneered. “Now get out of my sight.”

Sister Leona said in a stern voice, “Your Highness—”

“Go!” he screamed at her.

She bowed slightly and walked out.

The king leaped out of his chair and prowled around the room. “These people—these believers in the Unseen One—will all side with Darien against me. I know it!” he said. “We have to send a message to them. They have to understand that I will not tolerate their treason!”

“What kind of message, sire?” General Liddell asked.

“I want those sisters killed. Every last one of them.”

General Liddell stared at the king in disbelief. “Killed! No, sire, that would be extreme,” he cautioned.

“Did I hear you say no to me?” the king asked menacingly. “Is that what I heard?”

General Liddell changed his tone. “Sire, as your loyal general, I can only say that such a move would be disastrous. If anyone saw members of the Royal Guard committing such an act, the entire nation would turn against them—and you. It could spark an uprising that none of us could contain.”

The king clasped his hands behind his back and growled, “Then get somebody else to do it! I want it done, and I want it done by tonight!” The king left no time for answers or questions as he stomped out of the room. Phipps the magistrate followed anxiously.

General Liddell folded his arms, his face a frozen mask. He then looked at the shepherd. “Oram?” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“The convent owns a lot of the land around here, doesn’t it?”

“Too much, if you ask me.”

“You’d like that land for your sheep, wouldn’t you?” Liddell’s voice was oily with opportunity. “Imagine all the grazing they could do.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve imagined it. Even talked to the lady—that one in charge—but she wouldn’t agree.”

“You’ve heard what the king wants done. Can you do it quickly, in exchange for the land?”

Oram’s expression didn’t change. “Me and the boys can do it right away. Never cared for those women and all that nonsense about the Unseen Thingy watching over us anyway. Dangerous superstition, I figure.”

“Dangerous—yes,” the general said.

Anna woke up. Dawn sat next to the bed, reading a book. Her lips moved ever so slightly. She was praying.

“Dawn,” Anna said with a parched throat.

Dawn put a finger to her lips. “Wait. I’ll get you something to drink,” she offered.

“No,” Anna said. Her voice rose as the panic within her grew. “Something awful is going to happen.”

The door opened slightly, and Sister Leona peered in. “Ah, you’re awake,” she said.

“Sister Leona! I just had a dream,” Anna said quickly. “You were with the king.”

Sister Leona began to take off her cloak. “You knew I was going to see him,” she said.

“He accused you of helping General Darien,” Anna said.

A shadow crossed Sister Leona’s face. Her voice took on a tone of urgency. “What else did you see in the dream?”