The Waters Rising (24 page)

Midmorning, the three rode out, the two men in front, chatting and laughing, Nettie behind, regarding them both with unmistakable annoyance.

“Looks very natural,” said Oldwife. “The men ignoring their cousin until they need her for something. Her resenting it but not saying a word.”

“So Bear and I thought,” purred Precious Wind. “Their relationship must appear ordinarily familial: vexed, provoked, and exasperated.”

The wagon’s contents had been disarranged by the Farrier brothers. Those remaining behind repacked everything and tied it down under its protective canvas. After a time, Abasio got himself upon the road, after squeezing Xulai’s shoulder in farewell. She looked after him sorrowfully. The time passed much faster when Abasio was with them, with her. Bartelmy was a friend, an old friend, but he had nothing new to say to her, nothing to make her mind struggle out of the muck and look at the sky the way Abasio did.

Precious Wind and Oldwife went into the meadow where Oldwife had seen a ragged stretch of ripe grain along the trees, something left, perhaps, from some long-ago farm, the grain reseeding itself year after year. Among the tall stems of ripe wheat they found remnants of root crops, parsnips and carrots and turnips, some so huge they had obviously grown for years, but others first-year roots, young enough to be tasty. Black Mike went off into the woods, returning well before dark with a young boar over his shoulder. He skinned and butchered it in a clearing far enough away that the carrion eaters and flies would not be a nuisance before bringing it to the women. “It’s only half-grown,” he said softly. “Should be reasonable tender.”

Oldwife and Precious Wind had wrapped the grain heads in a canvas and beaten them with sticks to break them up, then laid the canvas flat and tossed the grain in the light breeze to blow the chaff away. Now they cooked a cauldron of mixed meat scraps, grain, and root vegetables to accompany the roast pork. The meat they didn’t eat would be rubbed with salt and herbs and dried beside the fire, or in the smoke, if they could find the right wood to do it. Pecky hunted for wood while Bartelmy and Bear took turns keeping an eye on the road. The only traffic was two men on horseback, headed down toward the falls at a leisurely pace.

Xulai spent the day playing with her cats, too tired to offer to help or to think—indeed, trying not to think of anything at all. Supper was eaten early, so everything could be packed, ready to go at a moment’s notice. At sundown, Mike, Bear, Pecky, and Bartelmy agreed upon the order of the watch. Pecky took first turn. Xulai fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down, the basket amplifying the purrs of the kittens next to her ear.

She woke in the night. Someone was speaking to her: the chipmunk, who had not spoken for days.

“Xulai, don’t worry about Justinian. He is well.”

Though the chipmunk was at her ear, the words came from somewhere, nowhere, anywhere in the night. She heaved a great sigh and was asleep once more.

Morning came. By midday, they were beginning to feel edgy. There had been no report from the inn and the only creatures in the valley besides themselves seemed to be a great many sheep that had materialized out of the folds of the meadows across the road, earth-colored blobs springing up out of nothing, like mushrooms. A lackadaisical shepherd and a weary dog with its tongue out, neither in any hurry, were moving them on toward the inn. None of them saw Nettie arrive until she spoke to them.

“I was sent out to pick flowers,” she said, holding out a considerable bouquet. “Some important woman is coming to the inn tonight and Benjobz wants flowers in her bedroom. I hung around while he talked. I heard him say Altamont.”

“The duchess,” said Bear, frowning, his teeth showing. “We move now. Nettie, go back, take your flowers, don’t rush, don’t give any appearance of hurry, but get your animals saddled and put them where they won’t be seen by anyone arriving at the inn. All three of you leave when you can without attracting notice. Same for Abasio. We’ll go past the inn without stopping. Did you find out about the first riders?”

“That first lot was from Wilderbrook,” she said. “Second bunch was as we thought, from Ghastain atop the palisades. Nobody knows why or where. I’ve got to get back with this bouquet.”

Bear summoned Precious Wind and spoke to her quickly. She nodded and ran, gathering up Xulai as she went. Everyone else was busy with harnesses. Only two horses were harnessed to the closed carriage, only two to the wagon, and only four mules to the dray. Bear drove the closed carriage, first in line; Black Mike the wagon; and Pecky the dray. Bartelmy brought up the rear with the light carriage, into which part of the wagon’s contents had been piled and covered with stout canvas. When they reached the road, the men ran back and raked the grasses up, as they had done before, paying particular attention to the verges, where they scuffed out the tracks the wheels had made.

From the top of the ridge, the men could see miles in all directions. Bear raised his arm as though stretching, and the women emerged from the forest behind them: Xulai on Flaxen; Oldwife on one horse; Precious Wind on the other, leading the mule. Hidden by the ridge, the women rode swiftly across the road, splashed across the wide, shallow river, much diminished this far up the valley, then urged their mounts quickly up the sloped meadows into the forest along the south side of the valley. Once they were out of sight, Bear clucked to the horses and examined the view while they plodded down the far side of the ridge.

Benjobz Inn lay some distance beyond the pond, surrounded by green meadows and a clutter of pens, paddocks, and animal shelters of wood and stone, as well as a few carriages, including Abasio’s wagon. The pond itself was a shallow oval shield reflecting the blue of the sky. The road they were on, the so-called King’s Road from the King’s Highland, ran along the north side of both pond and inn. On the near side of the pond the road to the abbey, the Wilderoad, came down from among the rising hills to the south. Bear drove toward the crossing, hauling on the reins to turn right over the stout timber bridge at the crossing, slowly, breathing deeply, warning himself not to hurry.

As he could not, in any case, for from both sides of the road the sheep materialized once again, bleating lambs looking for their mothers, baaing mothers trying to find their lambs. The shepherd was across the pond, talking to someone at the inn, and the dog lay beside the road, nose on crossed paws, determined to take no responsibility for the shepherd’s inattention.

The horses stopped, stamping their feet, shaking their heads in irritation. The people at the inn looked up. Harnesses jingled; Bear allowed himself an epithet. The shepherd ran toward them, followed by half a dozen other men and women. Bear ground his teeth together, climbed down, made his way back beside the wagons, speaking to each driver. “No matter what happens, I want no appearance of surprise. Understand. Pretend you’re a hog in a mud pit, with no opinion about anything.”

Bear returned to his carriage. Help arrived to get in its own way and make the sheep mill about even more. Curious people moved along the wagons; one man in particular opened the door to the closed carriage, then shut it with a puzzled expression and walked very quickly away toward the inn.

The shepherd cursed his dog, who rose with excruciating slowness to curse the sheep before moving them off the road with one bark and several well-placed nips.

“I’m Benjobz,” said a cheery voice below Bear. “Where you headed?”

“The abbey up in the hills there,” said Bear politely.

“Heard there were people headed there. What’s all this transport?”

Bear shook his head in peevishness that held not one iota of pretense. “Furnishings and clothes and all sorts of whatnot for a child supposed to be going up to the abbey for schooling. She got frightened into hysterics back at the falls, scared she was going to go over the edge or something, so her nursemaids took three of the animals and hired some local’s wagon to return her to her cousin at Woldsgard until she settled down. They told us to take her baggage on where it’d be needed when the child finally learns to behave herself.”

“Ah, so that’s what’s left you short of animals,” said Benjobz. “It’ll be a hard haul for this few.”

“I know,” said Bear in genuine exasperation. “We may have to double-team the wagons one at a time over the steep places.”

“That’s a long journey made longer yet,” said Benjobz. “You want to come on over to the inn for a good meal? A little conviviality? There’s many a good game in our parlor after supper, and I’m told you’re a man who loves his cards.”

“Who told you that?”

“Don’t remember. Just some fellow you had a game with in Hay Town, said you were a good card player. Told me your name. Tingawan, aren’t you?”

Bear hesitated, tempted. But Precious Wind was out there on the hills and she’d . . . No. There’d be games at the abbey. He supposed he could wait. He growled, “What I want most is to get this job done so I can get home. Once the stuff is delivered, I’m headed for the islands.”

“Don’t like Norland, eh?”

“I just hate this cold.” Bear shivered. “Thanks for your offer, though. We may stop on the way back.” He beckoned with his whip hand, and the wagons moved slowly past the gathered sheep and the curious onlookers, over a rise, down into a swale, and up the other side, swinging right around a long upward curve and out of sight of anyone Benjobzish. They went on without stopping or talking about it until well after the sun had gone down.

As they unharnessed the horses, Bartelmy asked Bear, “When are the others rejoining us?”

“Variously, I should imagine,” Bear replied. “Tonight the man who was so curious about our carriages will tell the duchess what he’s seen. Then tonight or tomorrow she’ll send him or someone else on a fast horse to find where we’re camped and see if what her spy told her is true. After we’re sure she’s convinced, we’ll let the women rejoin us. They aren’t far. Precious Wind has good camp craft, and they have ample supplies.”

“And that’s why we’re camped out here in the open? So anybody can look us over.”

Bear began to unharness the horses. “It may be too late for somebody to come after us tonight, but I’m betting on it. And even supposing no one comes until tomorrow, he’ll find us by noon at the latest, right? And he’ll follow until he sees only four of us. So it’s either tonight or tomorrow night.”

Bartelmy sighed, sharing a glance with Pecky and Mike. “And of course one of us is always lying up there in the trees, wide awake, to see when he does show up.”

“Of course,” said Bear absentmindedly, as though he didn’t care very much whether the duchess’s spy turned up or not.

Chapter 4

Becoming Xulai

N
ettie Lean and the two Farrier brothers had saddled their mounts and tied them out in the forest. While they waited for darkness, they kept up the appearance of earning their keep by working for Benjobz, Nettie doing housemaid duty and the brothers putting together a row of stalls in a newly built barn. Through the barn’s open door they saw the encounter between the flock of sheep and the Woldsgard wagons, particularly noticing the lopsided fellow who walked by each equipage and opened the doors into the closed carriage though the windows were wide open for him to see inside.

“Who is that?” asked Clive.

“Fellow called Loppy,” said his brother around a mouth full of nails. “Says he’s the cellarer. Ast me all kinds of questions about our mama, up there at Wilderbrook.” He spat nails into his hand and jingled them nervously. “I told him we left her young, and that was a long time ago, and we didn’t know what she’d been up to since we left. When he ast about where all we went on those Port Lord ships, I told him we warn’t allowed to talk about where we went or what we stowed for fear of pirates and any of us talked about it got our tongues chopped out.”

Clive considered this prying person to have taken an unwarranted interest in them, not liking the idea. “When you think we ought to go?”

“Oh, long about dusk I guess.” Willum swiveled his shoulders one at a time, stretching before bending to his task once more. “After supper, when nobody’ll be lookin’ for us for a while.”

They went on with their work, the stalls slowly forming under their hands, enough of them for a considerable number of horses, Willum thought. More than this place looked like it needed, which was interesting. Where was all this new business going to come from? Somebody had to be figuring on increased traffic coming from somewhere, going somewhere else. Such as, perhaps, traffic between Ghastain and Woldsgard, once Woldsgard was taken over by the duchess and passed on to the king, if that was what all those soldiers were off to see to.

As the sun dropped over the hill, they stowed their tools and headed for the door, only to stop on the threshold, Willum muttering under his breath.

“Whatsay?” asked Clive from behind him.

“There he is! I be dinged.”

“Who is?”

“Loppy. On a horse, trottin’ off purty as pie, same direction the wagons went. Now that’s a puzzle. Do we head out now, like we planned, or do we wait until he gets back and see what he tells to who?”

“Or maybe stop his telling anybody.”

Willum puckered his forehead and thought hard. “If Precious Wind was here, she’d say accurate information is usual more important than what’s it . . . I allus forget. Arbitroosy what?”

“Ar-bi-tra-ry ex-er-cise of un-neces-sary belli-cos-it-y,” chanted Clive in march tempo.

“How’d you remember that?”

“Her and Bear, they both say it all the time.”

“Well, and they do, that’s right. So, we just wait and see what happens when that Loppy gets back.”

“We could, but Nettie says that woman’s coming. The one from Altamont. Prob’ly better she don’t lay eyes on us two so soon again, so stayin’ or leavin’, either one is what you might call troublesome.”

“She never laid eyes on Nettie. Nettie was in the carriage with Precious Wind, and she had her curtain down on her side. Far’s I know, she never saw the traveler man, either.”

“And what’s he doin?”

William laughed. “He’s got out his dye pots, makin’ napkins for Benjobz. Napkins with the royal crest on ’em, case some of those from Ghastain choose to spend the night. I swear, that Abasio could sell feathers to a goose.”

“Well then, it’s only you ’n’ me better find somethin’ to take us away from here from after supper ’til she’s gone.”

They decided on fishing. The upper reaches of the Wells were known as fishable waters, so Timmer and Hout took off after work, loudly announcing they were going fishing, giving Nettie something to complain of in the kitchen over her supper. “You’d think all the time they’ve spent, out there on the ocean, goin’ here and goin’ there, they’d have had their fill of fish!”

“How’d you do with the room for the lady?” asked Benjobz, interrupting her tirade.

“Clean as a new knife,” said Nellie with unfeigned pride. “All the closets dusted out, the mattress turned and fluffed and made up with those special sheets and new pillows. I got the spiders cleared out and six mouse holes boarded over after I talked Hout into lending me his tools.” Each time Nellie spoke, she felt deep in her innards a quiver of expectation that somebody would ask her a question she couldn’t answer. So far, she’d followed Precious Wind’s advice: talk too much about too little for anybody to be much interested. “I put the flowers in the vases you gave me,” she remarked, going on to list the dozen or so types of bloom both by their common name and what her grandmother had once called them, ending the panegyric with a final encomium: “They make the place smell real nice.”

Benjobz looked wistful. “Every time she stops here, I hope she’ll be satisfied, but it ha’n’t happ’nt yet.”

“Where’s Loppy?” asked one of the stablemen. “He owes me a pint.”

“Said he had to see about some new kegs,” Benjobz answered. “He gets ’em from old Whistle Snigg, him with the cooperage up the hill there toward the abbey. Told me he’d be back tomorrow.”

Nettie helped with the washing up, checked the duchess’s room one more time, and went out to the barn where she and her “cousins” had been sleeping in the loft, said cousins having headed upriver with great ado and furor before returning silently through the woods. Nettie gave them a sack of food she’d salvaged from leftovers in the kitchen.

“Now what?” she asked as they chewed their way through their makeshift supper.

“Now we wait until Loppy gets back, and you hang around inside there to see who he tells about whatever he has to tell.”

They rested in the hay, Clive taking first watch. He woke the other two when the duchess arrived, close on to midnight, and Nettie, still fully dressed, slipped over to the kitchen, where the cook, just roused and in her wrapper, was in a temper.

“She’ll have a bit of roast chicken,” the cook growled. “She’ll have some fresh greens and a bit of fruit. In the middle of the night she’ll have a boiled potato, with sweet butter! She’ll have my ladle up her thunder-shoot if she doesn’t let up.”

“I’ll take it up to her if you want,” said Nettie. “At least I’m dressed.” And, in Nettie’s opinion, they didn’t need a fuss over cookery with the Duchess of Altamont.

When the tray had been prepared, Nettie carried it up to the room she had cleaned and rapped on the door. When no one answered, she went in, unloaded the tray upon the table, went out, and closed the door behind her. It was strange the duchess was nowhere in evidence. She could have been in the privy, of course. Even duchesses probably had to go to the privy sometimes. And strange she was here alone! The word was she went nowhere without that big man on his black horse and half a dozen armed men or more.

She returned the tray to the kitchen, waited for a time to see if the duchess would show up, then took herself back to the barn, where she found Clive sound asleep and Willum on watch from a kind of crow’s nest he’d created across two rafters near the round window at the peak of the barn gable. Without bothering him, she rolled herself in her blankets and went to sleep.

Just before dawn, Loppy returned, the clip-clop of his horse’s hooves clearly audible in the early morning stillness, loud enough to rouse Nettie and Clive.

“Strange thing last night,” said Clive when Willum climbed down from the rafter top.

“What?” asked a voice from behind them. Abasio!

“You’re a sneaky one,” muttered Clive. “You finished with your napkins?”

“Finished and paid and ready to leave in the next two minutes. Told Benjobz I had to go on up to the abbey, where I’ve got an order for special draperies for the abbot’s own audience room. Now, what was the strange thing last night?”

“Not too long after the duchess got here, here she came out in fronta the barn, ’cross that stretch of paddock there, ’mongst the trees. Big old owl up in that tree. She stands there, starin’ at the owl; the owl takes off. I never saw her come back.”

“I did,” said Willum. “I saw her standin’ out there, like some kinna statue. I saw the owl, too. It came back and flew down into the woods where she was standin’. It was still too dark for me to see into the trees, but I saw her come stampin’ out of the woods in a fury, back into the inn.”

Nettie shivered. “That’s why she wasn’t in her room when I took her dinner.”

Clive muttered, “Whadduh you think happen to the owl? Foolin’ with owls is bad luck, Ma allus said.”

“That woman’s so much evil luck, ordinary bad luck would turn tail and run,” said Nettie on her way out the door with Abasio, who headed for his wagon.

She stopped at the pump behind the inn to wash her face and smooth her hair, an unnecessary neatening, for the kitchen was completely empty, the fire burned to a few embers. Nettie listened for voices, heard them, and went to stand behind the dining room door where Loppy and Benjobz were punctuating their conversation with the clink of glasses.

“I know what the duchess said, but naa, naa, it’s just the four of ’em,” Loppy declared. “Five, f’you count the dyer and his wagon, but there he goes now, so he’s a half day or more behin’ ’em. I got a good look inside his wagon, too, and there’s nothin’ there but his stuff: cloth and dyes and all. It’s just like the big driver told us. There’s no women there, and the wagons an’t carryin’ nothin’ but house stuff.”

“She’ll want to know,” said Benjobz. “First thing she got here, that was the question. Had we seen anybody headed for the abbey. Who and what was going there.”

“What’d she care? The abbey shoun’t be on her mind. Way I hear it, whas on her mind’s the kingdom. She’s gonna take it from King Gahls an’ her mama. Mebbe give it to her brother. Share it, more likely! Or keep it for herself.”

“Shhh,” Benjobz hissed. “Anybody hears you, you’ll have your head on the block! And he’s her half brother.”

“Half brother. Ha. Two boys, one girl, the queen’s got, and I’ve seed Duke Hulix, and the Duchess of Altamont, and I’ve seed Prince Rancid, and ever’ one of them with the same nose, the same jaw, and I’ve even seed Queen Mirami, ridin’ in a carriage, and there wuz her chamberlain grinnin’, with the same nose and jaw as on all three. You’re the only one hearin’ me say that, and if you’re plannin’ on turnin’ me in to King Gahls as a spy for the Sea King you’ll get turned right back!”

“You don’t know she’s working for the Sea King.”

“Well, if not him I’d like to know who. Stands to reason; the Sea King wants all the seaside lands held by his people, don’t he?”

“He’s got the whole ocean! Hasn’t been a ship cross the sea in years.”

“Which is just the way he wants it, so I hear.”

Benjobz growled in his throat. Nettie slipped out of the place and back to the barn, seeing Abasio’s wagon already some distance up the Wilderbrook road.

Willum and Clive had dismantled their crow’s nest at the gable. Within a few moments, with the sun barely showing above the eastern tree line, the two of them and Nettie rode southward, inside the edge of the forest, staying hidden and away from the road until they had rounded the ridge and knew they could not be seen from either the inn or the King’s Road itself.

“They’ll know which way we went,” said Nettie when they had achieved the road. “They knew where we were headed.”

“We didn’t make any secret of it,” said Clive with an evil grin. “And just to reduce suspicion, I left a thank-you note for Benjobz nailed to that last stall. I said the fishin’ was good up along the Wells, but now the horses were rested, we had to get on up to the abbey to see Ma, and thank you for the good food and the comfortable barn loft.”

“What’s this all been for, anyhow? All this splittin’ up and mixin’ up the trail?” Willum asked.

“Confusion,” said Nettie. “That’s what Bear said he wanted. He’s been real strange lately, but he was clear on that. He wanted us to spread as much confusion as possible.”

A
cross the valley, Precious Wind, Oldwife, and Xulai had traveled well inside the tree line while keeping the Wilderbrook road more or less in sight to their left. Precious Wind rode first, leading the mule, with Xulai and Oldwife behind her. They didn’t hurry. The forest was an old one with little undergrowth to hamper the horses. The ground was deep in dried needles and old leaves; the tall conifers and vast oaks shut out most of the light. The only young trees grew where ancient trees had fallen, heaving up their roots to leave wide, soft patches of disturbed soil, now exposed to the sun and sprung with sapling groves.

They heard birds but seldom saw them. They both heard and saw many scurrying fluff-tailed tree rats, flicking around trunks and chattering at them from branches above piled middens of dismembered cones. Some middens were yards deep around the trunks of old trees, testaments to untold generations of cone eaters who had lived and died in those particular trees.

It was a gloomy place, or would have been, Xulai thought, without the sunlit valley to their left. The nearness of light made it feel almost cozy, like an alcove in a great church, a natural chimney corner, the kind of place to which one could retreat peaceably without being disturbed. Since they had separated from their fellows a little after noon, there would be some hours of travel before they made camp, and Xulai resolved to enjoy them. During the journey, she had not ridden Flaxen at all, for Bear had not wanted her out of reach of her protectors. Even at Woldsgard, she had not ridden for several weeks before they left. Now she resolved to let Flaxen do all the work of following while she herself thought of nothing but the fragrance of the forest, the clean crispness of the air, the gleefulness of the little rivulets that chuckled their way down the mountain toward the Wilderbrook.