Only to draw with. “I’d write to my mother if I could, and tell her I am safe, but a letter from me would only endanger her. There’s no way to send her one anyway.”
He joined me at the window. “You’re right to protect her.”
Even if her worry over me is breaking her heart?
He was standing close enough for me to catch the scent coming off his skin and clothes, a mix of wood smoke, horses, and evergreens. A goodsome smell and not at all like my singed, ale-breathed father. New beard growth darkened his cheeks. I’d shadowed his face to show this in my drawing. He’d skipped his morning shave to ride out early after the leech.
“I’ve meant to thank you,” I said.
“For letting you use a little parchment?”
“For fetching Mistress Aisling.”
“A fine healer,” he said. “I hope we’re not too late.” We were quiet a moment, thinking of Tom. Garth pointed above the trees. “Look.” He opened the window. “There.”
Stars hung shining over the wood.
“Stars are jewels, my mother used to say. Heaven’s treasure free to anyone from prince to peasant if they have eyes to look.”
I liked his mother for saying that. They were free for anyone who cared to look. No one owned them, yet even as I gazed up I felt the need to capture the heavens on parchment as I drew other things I loved, to hold the vision and keep it with me always—a kind of ownership, I supposed. Perhaps I was not as generous as Garth’s mother.
“Free to all,” I agreed. “And these jewels can never be stolen.”
Garth frowned. No doubt he’d been asked to look for the king’s stolen treasure. All woodwards had to scour their sections of Dragonswood. He gripped something in his hand. Seeing my curious look, he spread his fingers. A thin gold chain coiled in his palm with a single pearl on the end.
A large pearl. “Does it belong to the king?” I whispered. Garth handed it to me. His fingers brushed my palm as he let go. I trembled near him, framed at the window, the fire behind him, darkness outside, and wind. I tried to give the necklace back. “I have never touched anything belonging to the king.”
His brows went up. “Haven’t you? The dishes here, Tess, the quill you used just now, the chairs by the fire.” He nodded at the chairs behind us with their finely patterned needlework. “The feather beds—”
“The king slept in our room?”
“His sons did.”
“The princes?” I stepped back. Well, that explained the rocking horse at least, though Prince Arden and Bion were grown men in their twenties now.
“The hunting lodge is not as big as a castle, Tess. Not many slept in these walls. Servants and men-at-arms stayed in the outbuildings beyond the barn.”
“Why didn’t you put us there?” I accused. “Won’t the king—” I checked myself. “Won’t the princes be angry?”
He shook his head, smiling a little. “I think not.”
“Do you know them that well?” I still had the pearl held out. He seemed reluctant to take it back.
“As well as any boy raised at Pendragon Castle. I am a nobleman’s son, not eldest but a second son, so I was a castle page before I became a knight, and served here as His Majesty’s huntsman.”
The pearl felt cool and silky. “How did you come by this?” Such a slender gold chain might have been lost under a bed and the huntsman would have opportunity to thieve it, I supposed.
“You’re quite inquisitive, aren’t you, Tess?”
He laid his hand across mine, the pearl shelled between our palms. I looked up at his face quite close to mine, then glanced away, dizzy with lack of sleep or too long a journey in the woods or…
“You think I stole it?”
My mouth went dry.
“I didn’t, Tess. It was my mother’s pearl.” His throat sounded thick with emotion, and I guessed his mother was dead. Perhaps the black armband was for her and not for the king as I’d first supposed.
He took the pearl, closing his hand around it so even the chain was hidden. The night wind from the open window blew my hair against his arm where the sleeve was torn. If it tickled through the tear he did not move to draw his arm away. I could not think what to say to comfort him. I’d nearly lost my mother many times to the perils of childbirth, but each time she’d strengthened and recovered.
He broke the silence. “Why were you accused of witchcraft, Tess?”
I looked at the hunched willow by the garden wall. “Why do you want to know that? You’d have turned us in by now if you planned to collect the fee.”
“There, so now you trust me that far at least,” he said.
My small shiver made him shut the window. We moved to the fire. Garth pocketed the pearl. The room closed in the way a flower folds its petals at nightfall. We did not take the chairs but stood in the circle of the red glow.
“You were there in Harrowton that day. I saw you.”
He nodded.
“What were you doing so far south of here?”
“You evade my questions, Tess.”
“I have questions of my own.”
He smiled, looked away. “I’d come to see your woodward. We check in with each other time to time. I found him sleeping on the job. The man is too lax to notice intruders in his part of Dragonswood.”
I’d been one of the intruders he was too lax to notice.
Garth added a log to the fire and poked it into place with the tongs till it spat sparks. “I came to speak with your Sheriff Bollard about him, to ask that he be replaced with another man more watchful at his post.”
It made sense, I supposed. Though it was less dramatic than the wicked role I’d cast him in before I’d come to trust him, when I’d imagined him to be one of the witch hunter’s spies, first showing up in Harrowton the day she arrived, then at the harvest feast just before she rode in.
“The midwife accused me.”
“Hmm,” he said. “After she herself was captured by the guards, as I remember.”
I nodded. “It was my father who’d accused her.”
He raised a brow. “Then you were tried.”
“At my trial the fishmonger said I hexed his pregnant wife so his boy was born with a harelip.”
He laughed. “What powers you have, Tess.”
I put my hand on the stone hearth. Recalling the trial did not bring me to laughter. “May I go now?”
“I offend you,” he said. “I’m sorry for it. Go on with your story if you would.”
I’d not talked about my trial to anyone but my friends, who blamed me for all their misfortune, so it was a burden and not a release when I’d told them. But I told him all. I do not know why, perhaps because he’d let me hold the pearl and spoken so tenderly of his mother, or because he had asked and was willing to listen. The fire warming my skin, the huntsman at my side, I went on.
“Tidas Leech said he’d spied me in Dragonswood dancing with Satan.” I shifted on my feet. I would not mention his accusation that I’d danced naked and kissed Satan’s arse, as he’d put it. I nearly choked when I recounted Joan Midwife’s chilling lies that I’d murdered my mother’s infants one by one that I might suck powers from their tiny bones.
Would Joan have said so at the trial if I hadn’t blamed her for Adam’s death and called her a witch myself? She’d pointed at me in order to take the charges off her own back, so all was a tangle of lies.
Last I told him how the witch hunter had me hung up by my arms for hours, and twisted the agonizing thumbscrews while I was strapped to the witch’s chair. I caught him staring at my thumbs. This time I did not try and hide them.
“Go on,” Garth said in a gentle tone. He could see this was painful for me.
I did not speak for a long while. At last I confessed in a low whisper how I’d betrayed my friends to the witch hunter.
“You named them?” he asked, astonished.
I nodded miserably.
The room fell silent.
He’d asked. I’d told.
Garth’s face was hard. An odor filled my nose. Rotting meat. My skin. My clothes. The smell of what I’d done to my friends. Garth would not speak nor look me in the face.
I left.
The next morning the huntsman was gone.
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS A full week before he returned. Mistress Aisling stayed with us and doctored Tom. He was still fevered, but she said he was ever so slowly improving. I made meals, minded the kitchen, and when my work was done, walked alone in Dragonswood.
I did not feel as constricted in the musty hunting lodge as I had at home. Still, I am a girl who prefers trees over walls, the sky over a roof. I breathe more freely in the wood, so I took my chance and left to explore a part of Dragonswood I’d not been in before. The forest was all mystery in October. Long moss bearded the branches. Through the greenery I spied a family of deer. The underbrush crackled as they sped away. The buck had brought his good wife with him and a little fawn. I saw the white flick of the doe’s tail. How I love the deer. Their quietness and quickness is like the water, placid and cool until stirred, then they rush and rush.
We were farther from the coast in this part of the wood, but when I climbed a tall pine, I thought I caught a scent of the sea. From on high I took in snowcapped Morgesh Mountain, the northernmost point of the refuge. The fairy castle DunGarrow was somewhere at the base of that mountain. I tried to imagine the fey kingdom. Did the fairies dance in the high meadow under the stars like the stories said? I’d seen only a few fey patrolling the refuge on dragonback. Now I was in their wood by day, the part Garth Huntsman watched over for them. Perhaps they had no need to patrol the woods here.
My longing to be alone in the wildwood increased. The second day I rushed through my chores, scrubbing the flagstone kitchen floor with such speed, Poppy stood in the doorway laughing. “Why in such a hurry, Tess?” she asked.
“I’m not,” I said, not bothering to look up. I could not explain my longing even to her. I did not understand it myself. I planned to explore a little farther my second day out, and could not wait to leave.
At last I pocketed an apple and quit the lodge. At midday, mist still hung over Dragonswood. I ran and ran until my lungs ached, then stopped to eat my apple. Taking secret paths, I crossed a crooked stream. All along I noticed my surroundings so I could find my way back. Climbing a hill, I followed a songbird, hopping branch to branch like the girl in “The Whistler.” My cauliflower ear began to hum like a hive of honeybees, or was the sound coming from somewhere deeper in the forest?
As I climbed, the humming turned to a whisper. Tessss…
I looked about in the wavering shadows.
Come away.
The boughs seemed to pull me farther in. Tess. Come north.
“Who calls me?” I whispered, though the voices came only to my crippled ear, and they weren’t likely to be human. My feet followed a narrow path where pale sunlight patterns fell.
Tessss…
Prayers whispered in church sounded thus, but this was not God’s holy house. Were fairy folk moving invisibly through the woods? In my wandering, I might have passed beyond the huntsman’s domain. I was alone. Trespassing. Would I be drawn in only to be fey-struck or turned into a Treegrim as Meg feared?
“Show yourselves.”
Sounds like stray breezes hissing through grass, blowing in me and through me. Tessss. Skin tingling, I could not disobey the call, but followed. I willed it so and could not turn. Tessss. On I walked, damp ferns wetting my skirts.
The voices faded. My ear went deaf again and I found myself alone. My body ached, full of strange longing. Why would the fairies tempt me only to leave me alone again?
I brushed against a hunched crabapple tree, bare and fruitless. Not a Treegrim. Still, I was frightened. I turned and ran back toward the lodge, fleeing from myself or the wilderness or both.
THAT NIGHT WE ousted Cackle from the kitchen and boiled water so we might take turns bathing in the great metal tub. “I’ll go last,” Meg said, preferring to sit at Tom’s bedside with Aisling.
It took a great deal of boiled water to fill the tub. Poppy and I added just enough cold to get the temperature right. I washed Poppy’s hair while she hummed, poking and popping the bubbles.
“You have gentle hands,” Poppy said.
I was still stung by Garth’s rejection, still shamed by his silence and by his leaving the very next morn. He rode off to be apart from me. Poppy’s kind remark touched something raw.
“I’m sorry I dragged you away from home,” I whispered.
“I know,” Poppy said. I poured a cup of warm water over her tipped head to rinse her soapy hair. Her eyes were closed. She did not see my tears.
The tub had cooled when she was done. We added more hot water. Poppy did not offer to scrub my hair, but stayed in the kitchen to talk, the steam rising between us. I had a deal of trouble getting the dirt off my arms.
“Like trying to remove dragon scales,” Poppy said.
I scrubbed at the dirt till my arms were cherry red.
Poppy gave a nod. “Scales gone. I wonder what the princes’ arm scales look like?” she mused. “They can’t just scrub them away, you know.”
“Grandfather said the Pendragons’ scales are a mark of their power and their bond with dragons.”
Poppy frowned. “Not everyone admires them.”
Was she expressing her own opinion? I wasn’t sure. “I wouldn’t mind scales so much.”
“Tess. You don’t mean it. Think of… Princess Augusta.” With the whisper of her name, shadows moved along the kitchen wall. Queen Lucinda’s last babe—the one that killed her.
“Do you think it’s true what they say about her?”
“It must be.”
No one on Wilde Island had ever seen Queen Lucinda’s youngest child. But it was said that she had scales on her face, dragon eyes with slit pupils, and clawed hands. Folk said Augusta killed her mother, scratching her insides with her claws as she was being born. That very night four years ago the babe was whisked away to Dragon’s Keep. She’d been there ever since.
The bathwater was chill when Meg came in, worn from tending to Tom’s needs. Her skin pallid, dark rings around her eyes. Poppy and I said not a word, but boiled up more water, that Meg might bathe in warmth as we had. Together we washed her hair.
Meg slept after her bath. Poppy and I dried our long hair in the study by the fire.
“Do you think Queen Lucinda ever came here?” Poppy asked.
I held my damp hair close to the fire’s warmth. “It’s a man’s refuge.”
“And a boy’s,” Poppy said.
I thought again of the rocking horse in our room and nodded. Soft light spread through the study. There were a few poetry books on the shelves. “She might have come here, I suppose.”
“Ask Garth Huntsman what the queen was like,” Poppy said, fluffing her hair.
I shook my head. “You ask him when he returns.”
“He talks to you, not so much to me.”
Not anymore he won’t.
Poppy sighed. “They say she was beautiful, with flaxen hair and deep green eyes. Sad to think she died in childbirth.”
“Even a queen is a woman like anyone else,” I said with a heavy heart. So many died that way. I thought of how strong Mother was even though she appeared so frail.
Prince Arden left for the crusades right after his mother died. Broken-hearted, people said. We were all sad to lose her.
We roasted chestnuts in the fire.
“I dreamed of the fairy kingdom last night,” Poppy said. “I often dream of it. All your stories you’ve told me, I suppose, but this time…” She paused to pull a steaming chestnut from the fire. “The dream was brighter than ever before. The fairies were dancing. I heard no music, only the soughing wind through the trees, and there were beasts circling, owls in the sky, deer and foxes down below. A black bear came right up to me,” she said.
“And then?”
??
?That was all.” Her large blue eyes were on me, questioning.
“We’re closer to DunGarrow here than we’ve ever been before. Maybe that’s why you dreamed of it.”
Poppy offered me a nutmeat. We ate by the hearth, the fire tilting with the night wind blowing down the chimney.
GARTH RETURNED A few days later and went straight-away into Tom’s room to see how the man was improving. He was cold when I came into the room, and would not look at my face.
He avoided me all the next day and the next. One morn he came in from the chicken coop with straw in his hair and fresh eggs crooked in his arm. He did not say a word when I thanked him for the eggs.
I was familiar with a man’s anger and knew how to duck a fist. This chilly silence was new, and baffling. God’s teeth. If he does not speak with me soon, I’ll shout.
We breakfasted in the kitchen; all but Tom, who was still too weak to join us. Meg’s head drooped over her platter. “Alice dearly loved an egg,” she said. Her lip trembled and her eyes welled up.
“Now, now, Meg,” said Poppy. “You are overtired. Let Tess seethe you some chamomile tea.”
I’d just sat down to my breakfast, but as the one who’d separated Meg from her little girl, I sprang up to make the tea. When it was hot I filled Meg’s cup. Her eyes were still puffy from crying when she left the table.
“Come, Poppy.” The leech threw on her cloak and took her helper out to search for herbs, nettles would be my guess. I was glad to see them go, but once they were out the door, I felt Garth’s eyes on my back, and was loath to turn around. I filled his ale mug, sloshing some on the table. When he’d seen me as the hero who’d rescued Tom, he’d enjoyed my company, and even let me hold his mother’s pearl. Now I was a low worm, a betrayer who’d given my friends over to the witch hunter. I’d likely never live it down. Why had I told him? I’d have given anything to take it back now.
The bowls needed scrubbing. Tying on an apron, I pulled the wash pan from its hook.
Garth said, “Tom is better. I’m glad for it.” So we were speaking again? I stood with the wash pan. Suddenly dumb as a toadstool.
He drummed the table. “Is Meg always so tearful?”