She reached out and found she was still holding the owl, which was still biting her. She unclamped its beak from her thumb and stuffed it into her jacket. Then she put both her hands, one of them streaming blood, on Florian’s forehead.
“My darling,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He sighed mightily and raised his head just enough to lean it on her shoulder.
FLORIAN
Beloved Anthea had nearly been killed.
She had trespassed in the herd stallion’s private paddock. But still …
Florian could not have lived if she had been killed.
And so he had defied his herd stallion.
It would have been within Constantine’s right to destroy Florian. It would have prevented him from losing his status among the other stallions. But the Soon King had gotten Beloved Anthea out of the way, and so Florian was able to show his submissiveness to the herd stallion. He had no desire to fight Constantine. He had no desire to replace him. All he wanted was for his Beloved Anthea to be safe.
Constantine had not said a word to Florian, but Florian knew the herd stallion understood. Florian would be dead now if Constantine had thought for even a second that Florian wanted to challenge him. No, Constantine had known that Florian only wanted to protect his Beloved Anthea, and so had spared his life.
But it hurt. His leg. His neck. His shoulder.
And his pride.
Florian had never been chastised by the herd stallion before. He would, of course, defend Beloved Anthea again, even if it meant his death.
Nevertheless, his pride was stung.
He limped to the barn with Beloved Anthea at his side, fussing over him. It made him feel marginally better. Until she pulled an injured ground owl out of her clothing and perched it on his water bucket.
17
ANOTHER LETTER
Florian didn’t like the little owl, but Anthea didn’t care. Its wing had been injured, and she felt responsible for it, so she was determined to nurse it back to health despite Florian’s sighs and dirty looks. She had explained to Florian, using words and images, that the reason why she had gone into Constantine’s paddock was to save the bird, and leaving it to die would render his own injuries futile, and she knew that he understood. But he still sighed whenever he saw the bird.
“Why Arthur, though?” Jilly asked.
“Look at his face,” Anthea said. “He’s clearly an Arthur!”
The little owl nipped lovingly (and much more gently) at Anthea’s fingers. She had a bandage around her left hand, covering the gouge where Arthur had bitten her during the incident the day before. She was worried that she would have a scar, but Dr. Hewett had given her an ointment that he said should make it minimal.
Then he had shown Anthea how to wrap the owl’s wing tightly to his body, though that was easier said than done. The little owl was almost but not quite spherical; his feathers were very slick. But Dr. Hewett, who was rarely excited about anything, was very excited by Arthur.
“I kept one as a boy,” he had told Anthea. “They make capital pets!”
Florian didn’t think so, but Anthea was still determined to nurse Arthur back to health. And the owl seemed to have no objection. He enjoyed being carried in the crook of her arm, surveying the world from such grand heights. He sat politely on her desk during morning lessons, and rode on Bluebell’s pommel during the afternoon. Bluebell didn’t mind him at all, or perhaps she was just ignoring him. Either way, they seemed fine together.
Anthea was feeling positively chipper as she went back to her room to dress for dinner. Until she saw the letter waiting for her there.
It was sitting in the middle of her desk, looking completely innocent and completely wrong at the same time. The thick red wax seal stared at Anthea from the backdrop of creamy linen paper like a baleful eye.
She needed to hurry and dress for dinner. She had taken extra care with Florian, having to groom around his bruises and bites from the fight the day before. But the sight of the letter stopped her dead. A glance at the unfamiliar seal was no more reassuring. A rose, with something above it. It could be from any Rose Maiden except Aunt Deirdre, who used a rose surrounded by a C for “Cross.”
When she picked up the envelope and studied the seal, Anthea felt her mouth go dry. The seal was a rose, and a crown. Anthea dropped into the chair, the letter shaking in her hand.
It took her three attempts with her letter opener to break the seal. She nearly stabbed herself in the wrist in the process, but she finally got it open. The stationery within bore a gold monogram so complex she couldn’t decipher it, and more crowned roses ran along the bottom of the first two pages. After that there were another two pages, on thinner paper and with no seal or monogram.
She read the rose-and-crown pages first.
My dear Miss Cross-Thornley,
We have never met but your aunt Deirdre Cross has shared your letter with me, and I have been gathering more information about you from her. I had no idea that Genevia Cross-Thornley, who was once my most trusted Rose Maiden, had a daughter. I wish that I had, because spending your childhood being handed from one distant relative to another cannot have been easy.
Of course, the fact that she had a child was just one of many things that Genevia did not tell me. For instance, she also did not mention that her husband had been guarding the last of the Leanan horses.
Anthea had to stop and get her breath. The queen. The queen. This letter was from the queen of Coronam. The queen now knew Anthea existed. The queen now knew that horses existed. But there was nothing in the words that told Anthea how Her Majesty felt about either of those things.
She read on, although her hands were shaking so badly it was hard to keep the paper steady enough to read:
This is all very problematic, for reasons that I don’t think it wise to share. At least not just yet. But I will tell you this, and I need you to tell your uncle Andrew Thornley as well. Before Deirdre showed me your letter, she showed it to her husband. And Daniel, I am certain, showed it to my husband.
Please do not write any more letters about Leana and her horses to anyone. Not to your aunt and uncle, not to your cousins or school friends. Not even to me. It is safer for them that way.
I look forward to meeting you someday.
With all best wishes,
Josephine, Queen of Coronam
PS: I have enclosed a letter of your mother’s that came into my possession some years ago. I thought you might find it illuminating.
Anthea had to put her head down on the edge of the desk for a moment. The queen knew about the horses. The king knew about the horses. How bad was this? How much danger had Anthea put her uncle and Florian in by writing that letter?
She set the letter carefully aside. She needed to show it to Uncle Andrew immediately, but she also needed to see her mother’s letter. She needed to see that first and figure out what the queen had meant by her finding it illuminating.
Anthea had never seen a letter from her mother before. Her mother, the not actually dead, apparently no longer a Rose Maiden, possible spy.
My dear Custard,
Anthea read the greeting a few times, confused. Custard? Was that a nickname for Anthea’s father, Charles? It seemed so.
Although it greatly pains me to say it, I fear I shall not be coming home this winter. The reason for my delay cannot, naturally, be written. I know that you shall simply assume that it is everything to do with you and your little project, but I assure you that it is not. After all, you are not the only one in the family with their life’s work to protect these days.
Speaking of your life’s work: was your plan successful? Are the “foals” quite as close as you had hoped? I must say, again, that I still hold many reservations about your plan, but I suppose I can have no vote to the contrary. I did, after all, leave her in your care.
The dinner gong sounded, and Anthea leaped straight up out of her seat. She automatically began to take off the middy blouse
she was wearing with her riding trousers, but then she sank back down in her chair and continued to read.
I fail to see how this brainchild of yours will do anything to sway the minds of the Powers That Be. In point of fact, it may very well have the opposite effect.
Perhaps if you can tear yourself away, we might take a brief holiday in the spring. We could meet at the seaside at some halfway point.
Your loving Gen
Anthea checked the date on the letter. In two months’ time her parents … well, her father at least … would be dead. It suddenly struck her like a cold knife in the heart that the train had gone off the rails near Seatowne, in the spring. Had he been on his way to a romantic seaside holiday with her mother when he had died?
Where had her mother been? On another train, traveling north to meet him, Anthea supposed. She had assumed all her life that both her parents had died on the same train, that, like any good wife, her mother had been at her father’s side.
And where had Anthea been? She realized that she must have been here, at the farm. Anthea was no doubt the “she” who had been left in her father’s care. She had probably been playing with Florian when her father had died. She had no memory of that time, and she wondered if it had been Uncle Andrew who had told her the news.
“Thea?” Uncle Andrew’s voice came through the door.
Anthea dropped the letter. She felt like she had been caught doing something wrong. Before she called for him to come in, she shoved both letters under her desk blotter.
“C-c-come in,” she finally said.
Her uncle was dressed for dinner, looking quite handsome. Jilly looked a good deal like him, in a feminine way, of course. Anthea thought Jilly’s mother probably found that irritating.
“May I sit down?” her uncle asked.
Anthea waved him to the big chair by the fire. She sat back down at her desk, turning the chair with a great deal of ridiculous hopping, until she was facing him.
“Now that we’ve all had time to think,” Uncle Andrew said. “We were not expecting you to come to us with not only the revulsion you have for horses, but also with no knowledge of your past here or of your parents.
“And you, of course,” he went on, raising a hand so that Anthea wouldn’t interrupt, even though she had no idea what to say. “You have had a number of shocks since coming here. Everything from learning that your mother is alive to finding yourself seated across from a king at dinner.”
“Finding out that you all think my mother is a spy,” Anthea added.
“Precisely,” Uncle Andrew said. “And as much as I would like to lie to you and let you come to terms with your mother being alive before you had to worry about her being a spy, I’m afraid that I can’t. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Her uncle closed his eyes. He looked no less handsome, but a great deal more tired. He patted the breast of his jacket, and Anthea heard a crackle: there was a letter in the inside pocket. But he didn’t take it out.
“Hurry and change for dinner,” he said, eyes still closed. “We have a lot more to discuss.
“The Crown has discovered Last Farm.”
18
COUNCIL OF WAR
Anthea would have thought that only the adults would gather to discuss what this all meant, but it seemed that, like dinner, war councils were matters for the entire family. And they involved food, because Caillin MacRennie refused to hear bad news on an empty stomach.
So, in addition to Uncle Andrew, Caillin MacRennie, Jilly, Anthea, and Finn, they were joined at the big dining table by Miss Ravel, Dr. Hewett, Nurse Shannon, who brought Keth, and an angry man named Perkins, who seemed to hate everyone and everything, except horses.
As the maids brought in the food, Uncle Andrew took a letter out of his jacket and spread it on the table. He cleared his throat twice before speaking, while they all looked on expectantly.
“This letter is from—”
“The queen?” Anthea blurted out, before she could stop herself.
Uncle Andrew gave her a startled look. “No, why would the queen …? No, it’s from a school friend of mine, Mark Castellani,” he told them. “He works in the Home Office now. I always suspected that he knew what Charles and I were doing, but he’s never said a word about it. Now he’s written to say that the king has heard about our farm, and ‘what we have on it.’ He is quick to assure me that he has never said a word to the king, or anyone higher up, about us. He has no idea who did leak the information, and I believe him.
“And the king is, apparently, not happy.”
“So? I fail to see how that fat blowhard’s happiness affects us,” Perkins said. He turned his attention to his food.
Anthea gasped. Perkins looked at her and rolled his eyes. Finn put a hand on her arm and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“I know, I know, it’s hard,” he whispered. “But … you’ll be fine,” he finished lamely.
Anthea did not know if she would be fine, but she didn’t shake off Finn’s hand. After a moment, he removed it so that he could keep eating. She could still feel where he had touched her. And she had completely lost her appetite. But that had more to do with the letter that she had received, which she felt was glowing like a beacon up in her bedroom.
She had not yet shown it to Uncle Andrew. The letter said to show it to him, not to the entire family and all their associates. She didn’t want Jilly, or Finn, or Caillin MacRennie to know what she’d done. She didn’t want to see the hurt or betrayal in their eyes. She didn’t want to hear what Jilly would say when she found out it was Anthea who had told their secret. As soon as her uncle had said he was having a “council of war” over dinner, he had gone out to let her dress, and so she hadn’t had a moment alone with him to show him the queen’s letter.
Or so she justified it.
“Sir, what do you think the king will do?” Finn asked.
“That is an excellent question, and the one we most need to worry about,” Uncle Andrew said. “King Gareth is not a man who likes secrets, unless they are his. Finding out that there is a secret farm, full of horses, after believing them dead for centuries, will not please him.”
“But we’re not in Coronam,” Jilly said. “So it’s none of his business.”
“Very true,” Nurse Shannon agreed. “Beyond the Wall, what can he do?” A smile wreathed her freckled face, and she dug into her food.
Uncle Andrew looked at Anthea and raised one eyebrow. She nodded.
“We’re still in Coronam,” she said. “All the land is Coronam, north or south of the Wall.”
“I’ve never understood it,” Dr. Hewett said. “Could you explain, Miss Anthea?”
He was a quiet man who had once been a rider, but a bad fall from a horse had shattered his right leg, and so he had gone to medical college in the south and returned to be the farm’s doctor. Anthea had never exchanged more than a handful of words with him until he had helped her with Arthur, but he was staring at her now, waiting for an answer.
“If we’re exiles,” he continued, “doesn’t that mean that we are beyond Coronam’s borders?”
Anthea had never really thought about it. She blew her lips out, and caught Jilly’s laughing face.
“Sorry,” she said, blushing. “Too much time with Florian.
“Well, the Crown claims all the land from the Western Sea to the Ice Fields, which means that even though they call Leana the Exiled Lands, it’s still part of Coronam.”
“So there’s no real exile?” Dr. Hewett said. “You just get sent … north?”
Anthea nodded. It sounded very foolish, saying it aloud.
“But even if we are still in Coronam, it’s not illegal to keep horses,” Jilly pointed out. “I looked it up once, and there’s literally no law that says anything about horses.”
“That’s very true,” Miss Ravel said. “The king may be unhappy about it, but legally we are free and clear.”
“Do you think he cares about lega
lities? He can just change the law!” Perkins shook his head in disgust. “I’m sure it was the first thing he did!”
“We can just say that we have had horses since long before—” Finn began, but Perkins interrupted.
“Then they’ll probably find some long-lost sacred tablet that says that horses are the devil’s pets and we have to destroy them all or burn in hell!” he snapped.
“Language!” Nurse Shannon said.
She fluttered a hand toward one of Keth’s ears, and he flinched away, blushing and looking to see if Jilly had noticed. Anthea caught Finn’s eye and he blinked rapidly at her. She almost smiled, but then Caillin MacRennie picked up the letter, and any thought of smiling faded away.
“I want to know who did spill the beans,” Caillin MacRennie put in. “That will tell us a great deal.”
“I should think there was no question of that,” Perkins said. “It’s clear what happened, I’m only astonished it took her so long. That awful Cross woman ran out of secrets to feed her master, and so she finally blabbed. I just wonder how the witch covered her own tracks, since she’s known about us so long.”
Absolute silence greeted this.
Anthea was frozen with a forkful of roast beef halfway to her mouth. Looking across the table, she could see that Keth was, too. Her hand very slowly drifted down to the table, and she let her food slither off the fork to stain the clean white tablecloth. Nurse Shannon made another fluttering gesture as though wanting to cover Keth’s ears again, and reach across the table to Anthea as well.
Blood rushed up Perkins’s face until he was beet red. But he met Anthea’s eyes steadily.
“I’m sorry, I should have been more … polite. But I stand by my statement: your mother is the one who told the king.”
“Perkins,” Uncle Andrew barked. “We don’t know that!”
“Come now, man, why would she do it after all this time?” Caillin MacRennie argued.
“Does it even matter?” Jilly asked. “All that matters is that he knows.”
Anthea stood up. Everyone fell silent.