Deanna sighed and restrained herself from sneaking a peek at her watch. After all, Oliver had to go all the way to the storeroom to get back his sword and knife, and Sir Henri had to explain the situation to Baylen. Surely she had a minute or two to spare. Algernon could handle the bishop at least that long. "All right," she said.
The goosegirl knocked on Lady Marguerite's door and Deanna walked in.
The room was just barely lit and Lady Marguerite was lying on her bed, the same as the first time Deanna had been here. But not exactly the same. Lady Marguerite had on her floppy sun hat and she stood when she saw Deanna. It was only then that Deanna noticed she was dressed entirely in her outdoor gear: high-necked, long sleeved gown, gloves. She even wore riding boots. "Deanna, dear," she said, "I'm so relieved, I was so afraid you'd gone."
"I wouldn't have left without saying good-bye," Deanna said. "Well, good-bye."
"I knew it: your quest calls you."
"Exactly. But I wanted to thank you. You've been so kind, so helpful."
"It was nothing. Here, do you think you can carry this—" She reached under her bed and pulled out a huge cloth satchel that looked rather like an overnight bag. "Or shall I call in some of the lads?"
"Ahmmm..." Deanna said.
Lady Marguerite picked up a second bag. "Personally, I think we can manage," she said.
"Ahmmm..." Deanna said.
"No need for us to call more attention to ourselves than we must."
"Ahmmm..." Deanna said.
"What is it?" Lady Marguerite asked. "Is something wrong?"
"I ... I..." Deanna licked her lips, swallowed hard, and tried again. "We?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"We?"
"Yes, we. Us. Together. I'm coming along with you. On your quest You, me, and Oliver. It'll be such fun."
"Lady Marguerite ... I don't know what to say."
"Well then, say you'll carry the bag, and let's get going." She was beginning to sound impatient.
"What about your family?"
She shrugged. "It'll take them a fortnight to even notice I've gone."
"That's not true—"
"Deanna, please. I hate to say this, but really that's none of your business."
"But," Deanna said, "but—"
"Perhaps I should send for the lads after all."
"Lady Marguerite, please listen to me. You can't come with us."
"Well." Now she'd done it. Deanna could tell. "I really don't think that's your decision. At least not entirely. How about if we talk to young Oliver and see what he has to say?"
Deanna tried to calm her down again, to get the ice out of her voice. "You don't understand. We're not coming back here. Ever. Where we're going, it's a different world entirely."
"I do understand."
"But you don't understand about Oliver." She hadn't wanted to say that, to hurt Lady Marguerite's feelings, to sting her pride.
But then Lady Marguerite said, "Please don't get impertinent, Lady Deanna. I know you're from Bretagne and all, but—"
"Lady Marguerite, he's not what he seems."
"What he seems, my dear—"
"He's a cat."
"He's...?" Lady Marguerite laughed.
Deanna just stood there and watched.
Lady Marguerite's laughter petered off. "No, he's not," she said, very quietly.
"I'm sorry. But think about it. Think about what you've seen, what you've heard."
"No, he's not," Lady Marguerite repeated. But she sat heavily on the bed. Slowly, she untied her sun hat. She took it off and stared dully at it. "He's not." She looked up at Deanna.
"I'm sorry. He's under a spell. When we get back home, he'll be a cat again. I should have told you before."
Lady Marguerite sniffled. "Well," she said. "My goodness."
Deanna sat next to her and put her arm around her shoulders. "I'm sure he's very fond of you, in his own way. He'll miss you, I'm certain. Here—" She stood up. "—let me get you a handkerchief."
"No, that's all right." Lady Marguerite gave another dainty sniffle and started to remove her gloves. "I'm not going to cry."
"Oh," said Deanna. "Well. Good."
"I never cry." She unlaced her boots. "It's bad for the complexion. Leaves one all damp and red and puffy. Causes wrinkles around the eyes. It's even worse for the face than laughing." She slipped her feet under the covers, without having taken off her dress. "I never laugh if I can help it," she said coolly. "And I never cry at all."
"I see," Deanna said.
"Have a good quest," Lady Marguerite said, not even looking at her, "You and What's-his-name."
"Thank you," Deanna said, backing away. "Good-bye."
Lady Marguerite removed two spoons from her night table and placed them over her eyes.
Deanna hesitated, but then closed the door quietly.
In the hallway, the goosegirl had gone, busy about whatever her morning tasks were. However, Deanna almost collided with another servant, who was coming out of Baylen's room. That girl was carrying a water bucket. When Deanna glanced in the room, she saw Leonard sitting on the edge of his brother's bed, a fur skin wrapped around his shoulders, his feet once again in a bucket of steaming water. He looked up at that same moment and saw her.
"Leonard," she said.
"A-a-choo!" His sneeze shook his whole body, and water slopped out of the bucket onto the floor.
"Leonard—"
He snorted and turned his back to her.
She sighed. Well, perhaps that was all for the best.
She went down the stairs, around the back way to avoid the Great Hall, and into the courtyard. The pigman was there, walking the pigs.
She went up to him and said, "Thank you for your help."
"Well," he answered, "pigs, they like music. I whistle to them every day and they get used to things real fast, pigs do. They connect music with slops in the evening and walk time in the morning. They thought the wizard, there, was going to lead them around the courtyard, they did. And they was ready."
Algernon wouldn't have liked to hear that "Yes, but you encouraged them. I hope you don't get into trouble."
The little man scuffed his feet in the dirt, bringing a flurry of feathers left over from the earlier scuffle and a scowl from the exhausted-looking Torrance who was still chasing after them. "Well, Sir Henri, he's a good man. You trust him, Lady, he won't lead you far wrong."
She showed him the watch. "Algernon's not so bad, either," she said.
The pigman's eyes widened, but then he gave a shrug as though to indicate he shouldn't have been surprised. "Well, pigs always kind of took to him even before this morning. And pigs, they usually know."
Deanna curtsied and he bowed, slapping his dusty hat against his dusty pants leg.
Coughing, she went to the stable to see if Baylen and Oliver were there yet.
EIGHTEEN
Going Home...
Oliver had made it there before her, but he hadn't gone in. He was half sitting, half crouching near the entrance, his arms around his knees, his back against the wall, which seemed made of little more than woven hay with a few wooden beams for support. If he was trying to make himself small and pathetic, he was doing a fine job of it He didn't look up as she approached, and she stopped beside him.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
He nodded, never turning toward her.
"They getting the horses ready?" She was beginning to worry about the bishop and what could happen if they didn't get out of here fast enough. Too close to fail now.
He shrugged.
"Well, did you tell them?"
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"Sir Henri told you to."
"Well then, I guess they aren't getting the horses ready." She stood up, annoyed. Then she stooped down again. "Oliver." She put her hand on his arm. "What's—"
He jerked away from her touch and whipped around to glare at her. His eyes were full of pain and reproach.
And were slit-pupiled, like a cat's.
He must have seen from her face that the transformation was becoming visible. He bit off whatever he had been about to say and turned his back to her again.
"Oh, Oliver," she said, sitting in the dirt beside him. She put her arm around him. He didn't like it, she could tell by the way his back and shoulders tensed. "Oliver, I'm sorry." Was she going to spend the rest of her life apologizing for things that were beyond her control? "If there was anything I could do, you know I would."
Did he feel what she felt? Were his concerns and needs and hopes the same as hers? Or was she superimposing her wishes onto him, making a problem where none—or one totally alien to her perspective—existed?
He gave her a sidelong glance and said nothing.
"Oliver," she said, shaking him. "What is it?" And, oh how this hurt: "You're a cat."
"I know that." He rested his chin on his arms.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No, I don't want to talk about it" But then, very softly, he said, "I don't want to go back."
"To Chalon?" she asked.
"To being a cat."
She sighed. "I have no say in that, Oliver." Her heart was beating so hard it hurt. She didn't want to lose him, but she would in any case. She said: "If you stay here in this time, maybe you'll be all right. We'll explain to the fair folk—"
He turned away, angry.
Yeah, sure, the fair folk. Right. "Oliver—"
"Do you think I can go back after this? Be happy with what I was: rubbing against people's legs for attention, coughing up hairballs, eating mice in the barn? After this? Or won't I even remember? Will it be as though I never existed?"
That, in another form, was what the fair folk had predicted for her. She shook her head. "I don't know."
"I wish we'd never found it. I wish we could have stayed like this forever."
"But the fair folk said the world changed for the worse. And I would never get back home."
Before Oliver had a chance to answer, Baylen's voice carried over as he crossed the courtyard: "Deanna! Oliver!" He came, grinning all the way as though he had never tricked them and abandoned them and lied about them to get himself out of trouble. He stopped, standing close enough that his shadow fell across them. "Why the serious faces, you two?"
"Deanna was just explaining to me," Oliver said, getting to his feet but keeping his face tipped so that his eyes wouldn't show, "how her life is more important than mine."
"No," Deanna protested, scrambling to her feet, "that's not what I meant. Oliver!"
But he had already gone into the stable.
Baylen shrugged. "Strange," he said. "Very strange, that one."
Deanna bit off her answer, which was rude and wouldn't have helped the situation anyway, and followed Oliver.
The horse stable was large and well kept, which meant the smells of fresh straw and hay kept the more objectionable odors to a tolerable level. Stable boys were bustling about tending a half dozen richly caparisoned horses that had just been brought in: the mounts of the bishop and his retinue, Deanna realized, as she watched the boys remove brocade saddlecloths and harnesses hung with tiny silver bells.
The master of the stables had seen them come in. "More horses to be readied?" he asked Baylen, shouting over the confusion of feeding, watering, and currying.
Baylen held up three fingers.
"Justin!" the master called to a young boy who was sweeping out the stalls. "Three horses."
"Yes, sir."
"Ahmmm..." Deanna said.
"You don't ride?" Baylen guessed.
"No, I don't."
"Justin!" he called. "Two horses."
"Yes, sir."
"Oliver doesn't ride either," she pointed out.
"Of course he does," Baylen said. "Father taught him yesterday. He learned in no time."
Oliver learned a lot of things in no time, she thought.
"Still, it'd probably be best if you rode with me rather than with him," Baylen said, "since I do have a bit more experience." He grinned.
Oliver was busy ignoring them, so she nodded. It made sense.
The stableboy, looking hardly big enough to manage, got two of the horses harnessed and ready.
Baylen stuck his head out the door. "All clear," he announced. He swung onto his horse and held a hand down to her.
The animal looked a lot bigger than she'd imagined from seeing them on TV or grazing in far-off fields. It had large yellow teeth, and it snorted at her, watching her warily out of the corner of its eye, which did nothing for her confidence. The stableboy came up behind to help her on.
"Put your foot here," Baylen told her. "No, this way. Give me your hand. Don't lean that way. No. Deanna. Wait This way. Keep your foot straight."
The stableboy, who had managed to lug around those huge saddles without any trouble, tried to lift her by the waist and shove her up the side of the horse, while Baylen grabbed her under her arms and tried to haul her up. Nobody touched Deanna under her arms. Even the thought of it was enough to tickle, to make her squirm. The Lone Ranger never got on Silver like this, she thought, aware that her rear end was sticking up in the air while her face pressed against the horse's scratchy neck. "There." Baylen gave a great heave and got her up in front of him and facing in the right direction, but sitting sidesaddle.
"I'm going to fall."
"You're not going to fall."
"I'm going to fall." She clutched at his arm.
"You're not going to fall. Here, lean against me."
She did, which made her feel slightly more secure. Just slightly.
"Relax, I've never lost a lady yet."
How reassuring.
Oliver had mounted already and was waiting patiently. Occasionally Deanna would catch a glimpse of his face, his eyes, and there was still pain there. She hated to see him go through this.
Baylen moved their horse to the stable door. "All cl—Oh-oh."
A tall man had just come out of the castle's front entry.
"The bishop?" she whispered, noting his fine clothes and the gleam of a huge gold cross hanging halfway down his chest.
Baylen nodded.
Algernon and Sir Henri followed close on the cleric's heels. One of them said something which made him turn away from the stable.
"We'll take it nice and slow and easy," Baylen said, urging the horse out into the courtyard and toward the front gate. Oliver's horse followed. Just three boring people out for a morning ride, their demeanor was meant to proclaim.
Sir Henri was pointing out some feature of the castle's roof to the bishop so that his back remained to them.
Their horses' hooves clattered on the wooden drawbridge, then thumped on the grass on the other side of the moat. Deanna didn't look back lest she draw attention to them by appearing anxious. Baylen checked over his shoulder as though to make sure Oliver was keeping up. "The bishop doesn't seem interested in us," he announced.
Deanna let out the breath she had been holding and glanced at the watch. 10:43. Had the fair folk been speaking literally when they'd said midday?
Baylen dug his heels into their horse's sides, and the animal leapt forward.
"Don't do that," she yelled at him, scrambling for a better hold. She was going to bounce right off, she knew it. Whoever had invented horseback riding as a mode of transportation had to have been a maniac. She flung her arms around Baylen's neck, because he seemed like the only steady thing in the world. The ground underneath her feet sped by dizzyingly and the wind whipped her hair against her face. The beating of her heart and the horse's hooves seemed to be keeping time. "I'm going to fall off," she yelled to be heard over the sound of both.
"You're not going to fall off," Baylen assured her once again and urged the horse on even faster.
Deanna peered around him sure that Oliver would never be able to keep up. What was Baylen doing, trying to lose him? But Oliver was staying with them nicely. She closed her eyes to
protect them from the stinging tendrils of hair, and to protect her stomach from the sight of the lurching countryside.
Eventually—only about as long as ten or twenty trips up, down, and around on Space Mountain at Disneyland—she realized that they had slowed, and that the sun wasn't beating down so fiercely on her head. She opened her eyes gingerly, ready to shut them at the slightest hint of tipping landscape. But as she did so, Baylen pulled the horse in even slower, into what was probably called a trot. There were trees all around. They had entered the forest.
She craned to look around Baylen. Oliver had managed to stay with them. Now, if she could just refrain from throwing up, she'd be all set.
The clearing where she'd first met Baylen and his family was just inside the forest; they'd be there any second now. She tried to do some mental calculating to see how long it would take after that. She and Oliver had walked ... what? about an hour between the fair folk's clearing and the one where the joust had taken place. Figure about a mile every fifteen or twenty minutes, that made approximately three or four miles. Okay, now how fast were the horses traveling?
She couldn't concentrate. First, there was the ever-present fear that she would yet bounce right off and land on her face in the underbrush. But also, now that she was thinking about that first day, she was remembering her first conversation with Baylen, and how unenthusiastically he had reacted to her request for help. What a coincidence that now he was helping her. Unexpectedly, Algernon's voice came back to her. Algernon's voice said: I don't believe in coincidence, do you?
She'd been holding on around Baylen's neck, but now she let go. Instead she clutched the saddle for support.
They broke through the trees into the first clearing. Two men were there, waiting on horseback. One was Baylen's squire, Vachel, the other someone whose face was vaguely familiar from the castle. That should have meant that they were friendly, that Deanna had nothing to worry about.
Should have.
It took all her courage to release the saddle and to let herself slide down under Baylen's arm and off the horse. The thing was still moving, and she had a perfectly vivid picture of catching her foot and getting dragged under and trampled, something along the lines of the chariot scene in Ben Hur. None of that happened, of course. Sitting sidesaddle, she was facing off to the left anyway, and she started walking as soon as her feet touched the ground. The horse kept going, and Baylen was too surprised to react for at least a couple seconds.