The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) (21 page)

s this what I think it is?” Vidal Verjouce’s voice was at once rich and revolting.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Clothilde responded. “It was in the cellar, overlooked by the sentries.”

“Such a gift! And how clever of you to have that pig of yours deliver it to me.”

“She remembers her way to Rocamadour,” Clothilde said knowingly.

Rowan swallowed, turning to Ivy. There was silence as they heard Verjouce skillfully sipping from a goblet. “A spectacular vintage. Well aged—eleven years?”

“Very good. What else?”

“Hints of oleander—the bees that pollinate the fruit enjoy fields of other flowers. There is, yes—mistletoe.”

“Mmm.”

“Fine apples for the wine. Apples, wouldn’t you say,
Clothilde, my darling, are a most interesting fruit? I do prefer grapes—more regal. But here we have something. Yes, a medley of apples. But from an old orchard—tended by an undisciplined orchardist. He has other things to tend to besides his fruit trees?”

Clothilde was silent.

“And rainfall? Oh. A good, wet year. But something else—”

“Yes?”

“I taste a stream—no, it’s a larger body of water. A river, yes! It flows by the orchard.”

“A river, Vidal? You astound me.”

“It runs over granite—no, limestone. A chalky taste. The willow rails occasionally dip in for a drink; those I taste distinctly. The cool night air brings a sweetness to the underside of the leaves. I know this river. I do. And I detect a slight char—the applewood smoke this man burned alongside the mill.”

“The mill?”

“Your gift is a map, really. I
taste
the mill house by a river, by a small walled orchard. All the information’s there; you just need to know how to discern it. It could be tended better, the trees, but the mistletoe that hangs alongside the apples and the ryegrass that is allowed to grow high on the copse floor give this little brandywine its distinct and very valuable flavor. Like music—a young girl’s song.”

There was a shuffling at the children’s feet—and Rowan
looked down to see a small plump hedgehog. Ordinarily, he might have welcomed this unusual distraction, stopping to admire his prickly sheen, but since Verjouce had ceased rhapsodizing and Clothilde was silent, the little fellow’s burrowing threatened to attract attention. Ivy cast Rowan a look that could only mean she expected him to somehow shoo the creature away—but as anyone knows, hedgehogs rarely, if ever, listen to what others want from them. It was, after all, his hedge.

But the two were relieved—if only momentarily—to hear Clothilde resume the conversation.

“Your powers of taste never cease to amaze me.”

“So I have described it accurately?”

“With perfection.”

“Can I assume, then, you have found the apotheopath’s tavern?”

Clothilde paused, while Ivy held her breath.

“I have, yes.”

“And the girl?”

“Yes.”

Ivy looked at Rowan, crestfallen.

“Wonderful—wonderful news!” Verjouce rasped. “You’ll tell me everything, of course. But first, let’s toast to the occasion! Where is she? With the child under my control, there is nothing to worry the Guild further. To the end of the Prophecy!”

“To the end of the Prophecy,” Clothilde toasted.

“And the beginning of the Golden Reign of Taste.”

Rowan, for his part, couldn’t help but be impressed by Verjouce’s tasting abilities—he had heard of his powers to discern the smallest notes in a morsel of food—but to
taste
the trees that dip into the stream? The very air filled with summer pollen? It was a wonderful talent given to an appalling man, and he found himself wishing for even the smallest fraction of that ability.

But it was not lost on Ivy, who had grown rather pale as the conversation continued, that they were discussing her uncle’s brandywine—the vintage of her birth, the orchards of her home. Cecil’s mill house, his cellars of dusty bottles: Clothilde had been there soon after the sentries and had used Poppy as a messenger. Ivy realized Poppy was probably returning from the dark and evil errand when they met her in Southern Wood.

Here was her home being described so accurately by such a wicked man. An inky darkness crept into her memory of the sun-drenched house and happy meadows, a sinister gloom that left the trees shriveled and air stale.

With the mention of the Prophecy, her heart sank, while everything else inside her told her to flee. Before she realized it, she had leapt to her feet and set off running, but the conversation had a disorienting effect on the young girl. To Rowan’s great horror, he turned just in time to see her slip further away into the king’s maze.

s she ran along the high walls of the hedgerow, Ivy cursed Aqua Artilla. Its garish scent, its beguiling decanter. She thought of the day she decided to copy it and cursed that, too. She wouldn’t be here had she just kept to her poisoning pastimes. Cecil wouldn’t have left her, that horrible Mr. Flux would not have been retained, and now—here was the ultimate betrayal. Her very mother delivering her into the hands of the enemy.

Ivy knew from Axle’s
Guide
that Templar was close, just down the other side of the mountain. She would finish what she set out to do. She would find her uncle. At once. And alone. Verjouce himself was searching for her, and that meant great danger to all she encountered. Rowan would lose his tongue if the Guild captured him.

The bettle, her bettle, beat a warm rhythm against her palm. She stopped, suddenly.

She had been running the wrong way, she realized, and had no idea which way was out. Every way she turned looked like where she had come, and finally, she collapsed where she stood—crying quietly at a great burden that suddenly felt quite heavy on her small shoulders.

At that moment, the little hedgehog made his way in front of her—hardly noticing her there, carrying on as hedgehogs do in their very slow and methodical way. He snorfled and snuffled as he busied himself with a carpet of moss. Ivy thought she had nothing better to do than to follow him, and that she did.

Being at home in the maze and being at home among hedges, the little creature was impervious to confusion. He ran the maze every day looking for edible tidbits or good scraps of nesting material to take home. Today was no different, except he had company.

So with his help, Ivy was soon shown the way from which she came, and although she tried, he would hear nothing of her gratitude (nor would he have understood it). How thankful she was to be at the maze’s entrance and back in the hanging gardens!

But instead of looking for Rowan, she began looking for a door out of and away from the Abbey. A door! She thought suddenly of the Doorway to Pimcaux from Axle’s thick book. Just off to the right, past a lovely collection of twisting vine and an ancient apple tree, she spied a small exit. What would this one lead her to?

Rowan was not easily going to break a promise to a trestleman. He had seen Ivy emerge from the maze and followed her quite hurriedly onto the outer stone terrace and into the bright white. There, to his great delight, he found Poppy at home in the deep snowdrifts. But as he looked around, his heart sank—everything was the same stark, scorching white, and Ivy was nowhere to be seen against it. He thought better of shouting out—he feared more than anything inviting Verjouce and Clothilde along on his search.

“Where is she, Poppy?” Rowan demanded, whispering into the boar’s velvety ear.

The beast, well trained with her nose, took no time in
bounding off after Ivy, leaving Rowan to follow her tracks. The drifting snow and rush of winds were nothing to the bettle boar. She soon caught up with her, and it was here that her instinct and enthusiasm for bettles got the better of her.

If asked—if such a thing were possible—the bettle boar might say that she had only meant to nuzzle Ivy’s hand gripping the crimson bettle. But this is sadly not at all what happened. What happened was much more of a disaster, one that Rowan, as he was still running to catch up, was powerless to prevent.

Poppy’s sudden appearance startled Ivy, and caused her to release her grasp upon the bettle. Were that the end of it, that would be a sufficient tragedy. But no. Poppy was, after all, a trained bettle boar. A beloved and beautiful one, too. And as the red bettle bounced once, then twice, then careened into an icy chasm, Poppy bounded after it and was lost to the snowy-deep cavernous belly of the mountain’s core.

t was nothing short of a state of pure annoyance in which Sorrel Flux found himself currently. The damp of the castle was such that it crept into every corner and aggravated not only his sinuses, but his temper. He had almost given up hope of breathing through his nose while he slept—something about his bedding provoked him into fitful sleep, so that he found himself rising every hour or so through the entire night. He had been ever so successful in ingratiating himself to the queen—it was, after all, his best talent, to make himself needed—and even her gift of a hand-combed flannel nightdress and matching cap did nothing to resolve his insomnia. He found himself with a lot more time on his hands, time in which he was truly in a foul temper.

He had taken to wandering the corridors late at night.

Admittedly, his disposition was never one of sunshine and rainbows, so for the entire castle’s staff, the days that Sorrel
Flux was most unhappy were their misfortunes, too. But on a good day, when one was to be found, Sorrel Flux would readily concede that his time had been well spent in the castle. Flux found it quite ironic that his former master, Vidal Verjouce, had meant this position as a punishment—when almost immediately the potential for real, true accomplishment made itself known (not the kind that Verjouce promised, the kind that never seemed to materialize). For Flux was a man privy to all of Verjouce’s secrets and therefore all of the Guild’s as well. And he knew many things, many more things than his master might like him to know.

Simply by being gifted with sight, unlike his master, he had been able to keep to himself little tidbits of information that came along over Vidal Verjouce’s vast leather-topped desk. He had perfected his signature—this, with Verjouce’s blessing—and often signed Guild-related documents when his master was indisposed. He had free access to his drawer of wax and his special seal, so with his signature and crest Flux might send off even the most secret of messages representing himself as his employer.

And it was in this drawer—or rather, behind it, in a hollow void that served as a secret cabinet—that Sorrel Flux had made himself familiar with some very old and cryptic documents he had found while exploring. The sheets of paper were hastily folded and quite enormous, as it turned out. They had been ripped from their binding; he could see on one side a ragged border.

Flux needed to put them on the floor to make them out—and then, to his great chagrin, he was greeted with some sort of ancient impenetrable script. But spending a little time with the pages, he suddenly (accompanied with a severe feeling of light-headedness) felt that he could perhaps read a phrase or two. It was as if his eyes were twisting the old handwriting into the proper shape; the sepia ink wriggled and collapsed upon itself in knots, and was born again—briefly—as legible writing.

It took tremendous concentration on Sorrel Flux’s part to discern that he was reading the location of some sort of doorway, and after the event he was left with a blinding headache—so much so that he found the whole experience nauseating, and never again attempted to translate the remaining papers. But he took with him the knowledge that this must be something of some import, since his master had never once mentioned the existence of these documents, nor had him chronicle them for him, as was his duty.

So it was that this experience of his came back to him one late night as he tossed and turned in his servants’ quarters. And he realized something. Something that disallowed sleep for him for the remainder of the night—and for once he cared not at all. He realized that he had been privy to an important piece of information.

He knew where the Pimcaux Doorway was to be found, and he knew he was very, very near it.