Meg didn’t think anymore because all hell broke loose in the house as the maid Penella came running into the room to tell her ladyship that one of her daughters had just caught herself on fire.
“Wait for me here,” Alida said, then gathered her skirts and ran from the room.
For a moment, Meg sat where she was, not moving, too sleepy and heavy to move. Wearily, she rested her head against the back of the chair and for just a few seconds she dozed.
She was dreaming and she knew she was dreaming but it didn’t make any difference. There seemed to be something she had to remember, but couldn’t. She and Will and the children were running, running through the woods at night, allowing no one to see them. In the dream, Meg was in a daze, the two babies clasped to her in a sling Will had rigged for her. He wanted to carry one child while she carried the other, but the babies screamed so when they were apart.
“Come, Meg, we must go,” he whispered to her after one very short rest. “She will come after us soon.”
With a start, Meg awoke and she was as clear-headed as she could be, considering the amount of wine she had consumed. She, Will had said. “She will come after us soon.” Quite suddenly, Meg understood everything. It was Lady Alida who had set the fire that night, trying to kill the boy who threatened her own children’s futures.
Suddenly, things that Meg had not remembered for years began to come back to her, things that had been said that night when she’d first come to the children. Now she understood why Will had insisted on secrecy all these years. Meg remembered all the times she had argued with him, saying it wouldn’t hurt the children to go into the village now and then. Will rarely allowed them to go into the village except on market day and then only because he needed the help. Talis was great at selling produce, while Callie had a talent for displaying the wares so everyone wanted to buy from them.
Now Meg understood. She understood why no one had come for the children, why no one was ever going to come for them. These people thought she and the children had died that night in the fire. And Lady Alida had set the fire.
Maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was a mother’s instinctive protection that made rage run through her body. In that moment, Meg learned how to hate. This woman, this…this lady had tried to kill one innocent child and had not cared that her own daughter would be killed in the process.
Standing, Meg knew that she must get out of this place and get home. And what is more, she was convinced that Lady Alida owed the children for what she had done to them.
Without another thought, not even for her immortal soul, Meg took a short, heavy silver candlestick off the mantelpiece and secreted it inside her skirt.
The next moment she was running down the stairs, her face red with fear, her heart pounding. She had not gone three steps when a woman came running up to meet her with orders from her ladyship that she was to stay the night.
What would Callie say to this? Meg thought. If she had Callie’s clever brain what would one of her story princesses say to get herself out of this mess?
“Stay the night?” Meg gasped. “Have you not heard? This house is on fire.”
“No, Lady Joanna fell against a log and her skirt caught on fire.”
“I was there. I heard Lady Alida say that is what people are to be told. She is worried that everyone will run away and there will be no one to help put out the fire. But I do not want to risk being burned to death. Let me pass!”
Within ten minutes the whole household was in chaos and, easily, Meg escaped through the shouting people. Twice she saw men looking about as though they were searching for her, but she had an advantage in that she looked like every other village woman.
Meg traveled all that night, moving in the opposite direction of home. If she were caught, she did not want her captors to have any idea of the direction of the farm.
On the second day she was walking past a stables when she heard two men wearing the arms of John Hadley asking for a woman of her description, accusing her of thievery. There was a reward offered for her that was at least twice the value of the silver candlestick. To hear the men tell it, Meg had stolen half of all that his lordship possessed. Meg knew that her time alive was limited—if she did not do something. No one could turn aside from the huge reward offered.
What would Callie’s princesses do? she thought since that had worked before. She would disguise herself, was the immediate answer.
Two hours later, Meg was gone and in her place was a crippled old woman with only one arm, with blackened teeth and a limp that made walking very slow. To keep people from coming too close to her, she filled her pockets with fish so old the cats wouldn’t touch them. Wherever she walked she cleared a wide path; children threw clumps of mud at her and told her to get away from them.
She tried her best to stay off the roads, but it was hard going traveling across fields and through woods with heavy underbrush. At the end of the first week two Hadley knights stopped her and started to ask her questions, but Meg’s fear was so real and her supplications for mercy were so exaggerated that they could get nothing out of her. Her hysteria combined with her smell was enough to make them sick. They left her to her walking, muttering that she was crazy.
Being so vile that people would not get near her made getting food difficult, so Meg spent the last three days of her journey without food.
When, at long, long last, after close to a month’s absence, she arrived home, at the sight of her beloved farm, she collapsed on the doorway.
Will was the first to see her. He came running from the barn, swooped her into his arms and carried her into the house.
“You will hurt your back,” Meg managed to murmur.
“You’re as light as the day I married you,” he said, his voice thick with tears he was trying not to shed.
“I stink,” she whispered.
“You smell of roses and nothing more,” he said as he carefully laid her on the bed.
No one in her family asked where Meg had been. They were all too glad for her to be back to ask any questions. Talis made Callie tell a story that had Meg captured by gypsies, but due to her heroic nature and her superior wisdom, she had escaped and come back to her family.
Although Meg never told anyone the truth, after that day she was a changed woman. In a way she listened to Will less, but she also listened to him more, listened to what he was not saying. She now knew that he was aware that the children’s lives were in danger, and instead of being the naive little wife who knew nothing, she worked with him in protecting them.
But Meg also knew that the future of the children was very important. She was not going to allow that evil woman to deprive the children of what was their birthright. When she told Will she was going to hire a teacher for the children, he started to argue with her, but he took one look at her face and gave in. “I will find someone,” he said and she knew he would.
Will always kept his word. He found Nigel Cabot in a ditch beside the road. When Nigel got drunk he stood in the front of the town and gave pretty speeches to try to earn more drinks. His clothes, despite the fact that they were worn ragged and filthy, were the clothes of a gentleman; his speech was like the boy Edward’s. One of the things he bragged about was that he had been a tutor in several noble households.
When the town got tired of his cadging drinks, tired of his arrogant ways, they threw him out. Picking him up by the scruff of the neck, Will lifted him from a gutter filled with mud and various animal manures.
“Can you read?” Will asked and had to shake the man to get him to answer.
“Of course I can read. I’m no country lout who uses paper only to wipe his—”
“I don’t care about the country folk. I want you to teach my son and daughter to read.”
Nigel’s eyes opened wide. He had a keen sense of humor and to see this stolid country farmer asking him—him!—to teach his stupid, ignorant children their ABCs made him forget the muck on his face. Hauling himself up to his full height
, making a valiant effort not to reel about on his feet, he said, “And shall I teach them to count too?” At that he thumped his foot on the ground as though he were a horse that had been taught tricks, implying that Will’s children were of the same intelligence as a horse.
Will, for all his country background, was intimidated by no man, be he king or scholar. “I will make a bargain with you,” he said. “If my children are clever enough to learn all that you can teach them, as fast as you can teach them, then you will give up the drink.”
After a moment’s stupefaction, Nigel put his head back and roared with laughter. The reason he had lost so many good positions and had not been able to secure references for other positions was that he told the parents the truth about how utterly stupid their sons were. He’d once told a duke that a monkey could more easily be taught to read than his son.
So now here was this farmer offering him a challenge of learning. Nigel had no hope of finding intelligence in a farmhouse, but he did hope for a few free meals. He accepted Will’s challenge and after he met Callie and Talis, he never took another drink. He was too busy to drink, for those two children’s hunger for knowledge was inexhaustible.
23
Sixteen Years After Birth
1587
What do you know of babies?” Talis asked haughtily.
“The same as you know of knights and great deeds,” Callie said, then looked away from him. Lately, she seemed always to be thinking of babies and marriages and a home of her own. She and Talis had always laughed at such things, thinking that courting couples were a ridiculous sight, but in the last few months it was as though everything about her was different.
Today they had escaped Will’s never-ending chores, and Nigel had escaped his always-questioning pupils, so she and Talis had gone to their favorite place on the side of a hill under a huge, spreading copper beech. The branches of the tree hung so close to the ground they almost formed a room, a place where she and Talis could be alone.
Now, she was standing with her back to the tree, watching him as he thrust about with the rusty old sword Nigel had found for him. Over the years the physical disparity between them had grown. Talis was only sixteen years old but he looked twenty. Already he was six feet tall, broad shouldered, and was developing more muscle with each day. Nearly a year ago, his voice had abruptly changed. No months of cracking, squeaking tones for him. He just woke up one morning and had a deep, and quite gorgeous, voice—the voice of a man.
Talis had not been humble about the good fortune of his maturity. He lorded it over Callie at every opportunity, for adulthood seemed to have passed her by. For all that she was also sixteen years old, she had no curves of a woman. Talis was taller than most adults; Callie was inches shorter than girls her own age.
Her height was not Callie’s only worry, for there were no other signs of maturity on her. She told Meg that bread could be kneaded on her chest, since it was as flat as a bread board. And Will could use her body for a straight edge to build the new chicken coop. One night at supper Callie said that her stomach was so flat that if she swallowed a cherry pit it would show. She said that other girls had red lips and pink cheeks but her face was so pale that if she closed her eyes no one would be able to see her. When Will was planing a narrow, flat board of pale new oak for a bench, Callie said, “I think she’s my twin sister.”
Meg tried her best not to laugh whenever Callie made one of her self-deprecating remarks, but the men howled. Even Will couldn’t keep from laughing when she made one of her disparaging remarks. At least Nigel and Will had the courtesy to make no replies to her woeful comments. But not so Talis. He was a monster; never passed up an opportunity to remind Callie of her little-girl looks.
Handing Callie a mushroom one day, he said she could use it to shield her from the rain. Pea pods were boats. On market day, he once persuaded (he could persuade anybody to do anything) a six-year-old boy to kiss Callie on the cheek and ask her to marry him. Once Talis was arguing with Nigel (a common occurrence), talking about a toy boat Nigel was making. Talis said the bottom of it wasn’t straight but Nigel said it was. In the heat of the argument, Talis held the boat against Callie’s chest. “There, I told you,” Talis said. “Measured against an absolutely flat surface, you can see that it’s not level.”
Will got angry once when a wagon load of gypsies stopped in the village on market day. Talis was astonished when a lushly endowed girl started flirting with him. For a moment he stood gulping in air, his eyes as big as horseshoes as the girl came to stand very close to him, her breasts almost touching his chest.
When she saw them, Callie went into a blind rage, ran at the corner post of Will’s produce stall and with amazing, even unbelievable, strength, knocked the entire booth down on top of Talis. Ignobly, he went sprawling to the ground in the midst of a load of cabbages and tomatoes. To Talis’s mortification, the whole village, and especially the gypsy girl, had a long laugh as he sprawled amid the ruined vegetables.
Talis, hating the laughter at his pride’s expense, took after Callie with murder in his eyes. She further humiliated him by escaping each of his attempts to catch her, finally seeking safety behind Will, who was furious at what had been done to his stall. When Talis demanded that Callie be severely punished (not that he’d actually allow anyone to hurt her, but at that moment he thought that’s what he wanted), Will further angered Talis by taking Callie’s side. “If you’d been tending to business instead of panting after girls twice your age, none of this would have happened.”
Both Callie and Talis were shocked by this statement, but the truth was, Will was worried about Talis’s adult looks. His body was near to being a man’s but his mind was still that of a boy. That was not a good combination. And in spite of his laughter, Will felt sorry for poor Callie with her thin, straight body. In his opinion, the children were the same age and they should look the same age.
The villagers thought the whole episode was enormously entertaining and thereafter teased Talis so often about his gypsy “girlfriend” that he began to be nicknamed “gypsy.” It started out to be a derogatory name given him by the jealous boys, but, much to their dismay, the girls of the village thought the nickname suited Talis’s dark good looks, so they kept calling him that.
Now, Callie and Talis had run off to their favorite place under an enormous copper beech tree; it was where they could be alone, away from others. Here they could be themselves; here they were equal. It didn’t matter that their bodies were so different, for when they were alone, they were the same.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Callie asked seriously. Lately everything seemed serious to her.
“I don’t know. Maybe I can apprentice to a knight and become like Lancelot.”
“Pssph!” Callie said. She hated it when Talis mentioned stories not created by her. Many of her stories were quite as good as that thing about a man who had fallen in love with another man’s wife. She was glad the illicit lovers had both been punished. Talis, however, thought the story was grand. What really bothered Callie about the story was that Lancelot got his strength from remaining a virgin, from never marrying anyone.
Callie glanced down at her flat chest, not so much as a ripple showing in her clothes. Every morning she looked at her body, hoping it had changed into a woman’s body during the night, but it hadn’t. In the village there were girls her age who were married. More important, there were girls in the village older than she who openly said they wanted to marry Talis.
She saw the way he looked at them, watching them as they sauntered by him on market day, their hips twitching, their heads turned away as though they weren’t aware of him. But Callie knew that their sole purpose in life was to get Talis’s attention.
She tried to make jokes about her lack of feminine curves, because she made jokes about everything that hurt her. The truth was, she was worried. What if Talis fell in love with one of them?
She’d tried to talk to Talis about this, but he would jus
t look at her blankly, then start talking about knights and armor and swords. She tried to talk to Meg about girls her age who were married, but Meg wanted Talis and Callie to remain children, so she wouldn’t answer Callie’s questions. She was terrified that the two of them would leave her. Talis joked that if it were left up to Meg she’d still be spoon-feeding them.
Will was the most understanding of Callie’s “problem.” He’d smiled at her and said, “You and Talis are mixed up. In here,” he said, tapping her forehead, “you’re a woman, but nowhere else.” He was too polite to look down at her shapeless body. “Talis is the opposite. He looks like a man but he still thinks like a boy.” When Callie looked sad at this, Will smiled at her. “It’s often this way. Don’t worry, your body will catch up with you and when it does, Talis’s mind will be ready.” He tweaked her under the chin. “One day he will look at you and he will trip over his tongue.”
Callie giggled at this thought and it had sustained her for days. But nothing satisfied her for very long. She always seemed to feel restless. If she was sitting, she wanted to stand, if she was standing, she wanted to walk, if walking, she felt desperate to run. Nothing pleased her. Sometimes she wanted to climb onto Meg’s lap; sometimes she wanted to push Meg away from her.
The worst of everything was the way she had come to look at Talis. He had always been Talis, the person who was always with her. She could not imagine a day without him. They always seemed to want to do the same things at the same time, go the same places. Sometimes she’d be feeding her rabbits and she’d hear Talis “call” her. Within seconds she’d start running and be able to find him wherever he was, whether it was on the banks of the river or even hiding in a tree.
But in the last months it was as though she could only look at him. He was so very, very beautiful. She looked at the way he moved, the way his hair curled. Sometimes when she looked at him, she could feel her blood rush hotly through her body. It was as though she had too much blood for her body to contain.