Spindle's End

  Gorse said, We animals talk when we have need. This, now, what is happening, this is need for all of us. You do not expect a colt afraid of the blacksmith to tell you everything he knows; what need have you of it? It is only one colt, one fear, one blacksmith.

  Rosie said slowly, Fwab told me once that we humans live too long.

  I do not know. Humans talk. It is the way humans are. Perhaps the talking fills the years; perhaps the years stretch to hold the talking. In winter I like the warmth of the barn humans have built us with some of the things they talk about, and the sweet hay, and the corn. The merrel tells stories because it is alone and lonely, and talk is all it has left, talk and memory. Come to me in my paddock, when I am old, and we will talk.

  I—said Rosie, but she had nothing to say.

  Tell us again to go, and we will go, said Gorse. But remember who you are. And that if you have need of us, you must ask.

  I will remember, said Rosie. Her hiccups were gone. Go. And I will come to you in your paddock, when you are old. We will come through this time, because I want to see you sunburnt and dusty.

  She stirred, and found Ikor watching her. “I believe your horses will go with you now,” he said, and Rosie smiled faintly as the grooms bowed to him respectfully and disappeared from the doorway. There was a subdued tap of hoofs, and a faint smoky trail of disappointment from Fast, who had hoped for action, hoped for an enemy to trample or to outrun. I will remember what Gorse says, she said to his fading presence. Remember I am not old yet! Fast replied.

  “Quickly now,” said Ikor. “Close the doors and windows!” Rosie, looking round, realised that she had been half aware that the beasts had been spreading through the house and finding places to settle down, for the night, for the companionship, for the news, to be near her, and (in many cases) out of sight of the villagers; and somehow Ikor had put this to them as well, that there was some last virtue in secrecy till they decided what they would do; this night, they were going to decide. And so there was a kind of patchwork quilt or carpet or drugget of animals upstairs and down, several sheep and a badger in Jem and Gilly and Gable’s room and a goat and twin kids in Katriona and Barder’s with a few geese; a small heifer and six otters, two hedgehogs and a dozen voles in Rosie’s; a fawn and its mum at the top of the stairs, and a stag, antlers conveniently shed only a few days before, at the bottom, rabbits on the landing, and a small bear in the shed with Poppy and Fiend and the chickens; and birds and mice (including a few sleepy dormice tucked behind the shutters) and cats and three dogs, several half-grown piglets, and a fox cub in the kitchen. Most of the robins were in Aunt’s lap, and Flinx was now in Katriona’s. The owl on Ikor’s shoulder had returned to its shelf, but Fwab had half tucked his head under his wing and was pretending to doze on Ikor’s shoulder, a pretense belied by the quiver that went through him every time Ikor gestured with the seed-producing hand.

  They had talked all night. Rosie could remember how long a night it had been, and yet how surprised she was when she saw dawn leaking through the cracks in the shutters, as if dawn was not going to come again until they had met Pernicia and defeated her, or she them. Rosie had to keep jerking herself back from thinking it was all a long pitiless dream: Ikor, the news he brought, the news that Pernicia was not merely their country’s problem, like a drought or an invasion of taralians, but their problem, her problem, her own particular enemy who knew her name and sought her life—her, hers, Rosie’s, because she was a princess and not Katriona’s cousin and Aunt’s niece, which she could not forget, because Pernicia would not, and because she had promised Gorse she would remember who she was.

  Nor had she ever been surrounded by so many and different animals all intent on the same business—her business—before; and the churn and roil of remarks and opinions (and requests for repeats of what had just been said: Rosie was by far the best human translator, or conduit, and Aunt’s robins, who were fluent with Aunt, tended all to talk at once) made Rosie dizzy. And so she missed some of Ikor’s description of the last year, of how everyone close to the king and queen sensed that what they had been waiting for, and dreading, and hoping to avert, had not been averted at all (unless they could take some credit for the last twenty-one years) and was approaching the culmination it had always been moving toward.

  “The magicians and we fairies had it the strongest, of course, but even the scullery maids and the stable lads could feel it advancing, like a bad storm makes the hair on the back of your neck prickle.

  “And so we had to find you first, for if she met you, touched you, grasped you, before we did—well—there would have been nothing left we could have done to stop her.”

  Rosie remembered the voice in her head: Found! But she did not want to tell anyone about it—especially not Ikor; and she had a fuzzy sense that describing it aloud would make it more real, and she did not want it to be real.

  “You truly didn’t know where we were,” said Katriona.

  “No,” said Ikor. “That was Sigil’s decision, although I agreed with it. Knowing leaves marks, however faint. We would have liked no marks at all, but Sigil had to speak to you, and you had to take the princess away from the place where . . . from the name-day. But at least those were the faintest of traces, and we did what we could to confuse them. If we had known in what direction to channel our thoughts—or even what direction not to channel them—No. That would have brought disaster, not safety. The royal magicians, of course, did not agree, but they could do nothing about it.” He made a faint dry huffing noise that was almost a laugh. “Sigil had made up her mind.” He paused and the humour left him. “There has never been any consensus among us on whether the curse could have been . . . brought off . . . early; Sigil and I both believe that even if it could not, Pernicia would have enjoyed . . . having the princess under her hand . . . before she closed her fist.”

  “How did you find us?” said Aunt.

  “I followed the track my amulet had left, one-and-twenty years ago. Oh yes, it was a very pale and faded track indeed! But I could follow it, and perhaps, no one else could, since Pernicia never found you. It was why I was chosen for the journey, although”—there was another brief pause—“I would have vied to be chosen anyway. But my . . . situation . . . was also uniquely persuasive; the forgotten godparent who had nonetheless inadvertently given . . . something.”

  Rosie could feel his eyes on her, but she kept hers resolutely on the floor. She was still periodically shaken by deep tremors, and had chosen to sit on the hearth, with her back to the fire; her shirt was so hot that sometimes when she moved and it touched her skin it burned, and she jerked where she sat, but she did not move away. Some of the younger animals were falling asleep. The fawn on the landing had stopped saying But I don’t understand, and the kids in Katriona’s bedroom had stopped saying But why would anyone want to do that? and various other little ones had stopped saying But that’s so mean. Why is she so mean? Ralf had curled up, nose under tail, and gone to sleep in her lap; Peony sat next to her, a little way along from the intensest heat of the fire, but they were still holding hands. The fox cub, also asleep, had his nose under Peony’s elbow, and his long fuzzy cub’s brush drooped over her knees. Katriona kept glancing at them, as if to reassure herself that they—or at least Rosie—was still there; Rosie would meet her eyes when she felt her looking, but not Ikor’s.

  Her mind wandered again, thinking of the embroidery spell. It would have been one of the gifts from her fairy godmothers, she thought. She remembered that there had been fairy godmothers, and that Katriona had not thought highly of them, although she couldn’t remember ever having heard what the gifts were. If they were things like embroidery, no wonder Katriona hadn’t been very impressed. What else could she do? Darn like the wind? Spin straw into gold? She caught her breath suddenly: My awful, horrible hair. Princess’ hair! Golden curls! I wonder—? She glanced sidelong at Peony’s long golden waves; yes, but they suit her, she thought. She put one hand up to her head and gave her
hated hair a yank. It was quite firmly hers, whether it should have been or not.

  I wonder what Ikor would have given the prin—me?

  “—when Rowland disappeared, that’s when we really began to worry,” Ikor was saying, and Rosie felt the shiver run through Peony at his name. Rosie saw “Rowland” shape itself on her lips, but she did not speak aloud. What had a blacksmith’s apprentice to do with anything—even a good blacksmith’s apprentice? It couldn’t be the same Rowland. Even a good blacksmith’s apprentice with a funny vow in his family that would stop him marrying the girl he loved . . .

  “Cold iron,” said Aunt thoughtfully. “I have thought there was something odd about that boy, but I was so sure there was nothing wrong with him I was willing to let it—and him—be. There has been so much going on this year. . . .”

  “Yes,” said Ikor. “Cold iron. We knew when he disappeared that he must have gone as a blacksmith—the irony of it (if you will forgive the term) is that it had been my suggestion that he take up smithing, because of the vow. He was of apprenticeable age, and his father came to us for advice. You know that every heir-prince of Erlion makes a vow on his tenth birthday? Of course he knew the story of our princess, but there was no guessing. . . . The vows usually run along the same lines, dedication to the princedom and to the realm, and so on and on. It’s been more of a form than a vow for generations—but the power’s still there, which is one of the reasons that the Erlion princes are such good friends to our monarchs. Young Rowland thought he would do something a bit grand; although my impression of the boy was that he wasn’t thinking about the grandness of it so much as of the poor lonely princess with no friends, and no one, presumably, willing to marry her, which would be a terrible thing for a future queen.

  “Rowland shouted it right out at the ceremony. No one had thought to ask him what he was going to say because they assumed he would say what his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather had said. His poor father, when he came to us, said that he had remembered to ask Rowland if he had got the words of his vow by heart, and Rowland had said that he did, but his father hadn’t asked what those words were: he wanted Rowland to know that his father trusted him not to make a mess of it. And there we were.

  “So, since the Erlions always apprentice their children—they think it builds character—I suggested that he learn to work iron. By the time old Erlion got back to his palace, there’d been a hippogriff seen, and he’d set out to us the day after the ceremony which was, for a mercy, private, so at least we managed to block up most of the gossip. He found a smith to accept the boy at once; and fortunately Rowland took to the work. All that iron was the best warding charm we could have come up with, and—it left no track to follow. Including, of course, for us, when he disappeared, most of a year ago. Didn’t that cause an uproar! Maybe worse even than the ceremony of the heir’s vow. Because we all knew that the likelihood was that wherever he thought he was going, and for whatever reason, the power of the vow would pull him to the princess.”

  Peony was shivering uncontrollably now. Rosie, half stupid with her own troubles and half grateful for the distraction of someone whose troubles might be even more oppressive than her own, put an arm round her. Ralf grunted and stretched in his sleep, laying his head on the fox cub’s back as if there had never been any thought of dispute between them. The fox cub opened one eye and closed it again. Peony put her face against Rosie’s shoulder, and Rosie felt a few tears damp through the cloth to her skin.

  “. . . so I wasn’t very surprised when I picked up Rowland’s trace, too, the moment I reached Foggy Bottom. My princess,” he said, turning to Rosie, and obviously having to make an effort not to drag her up off the low hearth or prostrate himself at her feet, “I suppose you have met Rowland?”

  A brief desire to laugh washed through Rosie again, making her feel rather sick. She had felt too many things in too short a space of time. “I know him,” she said. “I suppose I know him rather well, since I often work with him. I’m the horse-leech here. The blacksmith, Narl, that Rowland has apprenticed himself to, is—was also my master, and is one of my best friends.”

  Ikor looked at her, and Rosie could guess that he was trying to decide how to phrase his next question. “Are you aware of any—connection between you?”

  Peony was holding herself so rigidly she felt like iron herself, except she was warm. Rosie tightened her arm round her and said, firmly and truthfully, “No. I—er—we have nothing to say to each other. He likes—pays attention to animals, and his manners are very nice. That’s all.” She tried to think of something to say that would comfort Peony, but nothing came to her. “He is very clever with iron. Narl enjoys teaching him.”

  “You need not marry him if you do not wish to,” said Ikor. “We’ve studied that for the last eleven years and—with both of you present and willing—we can dismantle the bond.”

  “Well, isn’t that grand news,” spat Katriona. “Better than strawberries in January. That’s the sort of announcement I would expect out of a magician, not a fairy. Ikor, what are we going to do now?”

  There was a silence, and it grew upon Rosie that she knew what Ikor was going to say, knew what was in Ikor’s mind, what had been forming in his mind since Peony had first looked through the door with the fox cub in her arms.

  No, she thought. No. I’ll run away first. If I run away, it—they—she—will come after me, and it’ll leave everybody else alone. But even as she thought this she knew it wasn’t true. She knew it was not just the princess’ life—her life—at stake. She’d known that when she was still just Rosie, village horse-leech, who, when she thought of the princess, pitied her, for carrying a doom that stretched over her entire country.

  Peony sat up, and released her grip on Rosie’s free hand. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I will.”

  “You will what?” said Ikor softly.

  “Ikor—” began Rosie, furiously.

  “Rosie, no,” said Peony. “It’s my idea. I don’t say he wouldn’t have tried to give it to me if it weren’t, but he didn’t have to.” She turned back to Ikor. “I’ll be your princess for you. I’ll be the princess everyone looks at while you and Rosie do—do whatever it is you have to do. That’s what you want to ask me, isn’t it? But you will have to teach me how. I don’t know any more about being a princess than—than Rosie does.”

  “Peony—” began Rosie again.

  Peony turned to her swiftly. “It’s all right,” she said, patting Rosie’s hand. “It’s all right.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. Peony’s were blue and clear and steady, as they always were. Rosie groped for some concept of how Peony could accept such a burden. “Can you—can you do it for Rowland?” she said at last.

  “For your country and your queen,” said Ikor.

  Peony gave a squeak, halfway between a laugh and the sound someone makes when they’ve closed their fingers in a door. “No, I can’t do it for Rowland, or—or for my country and my—my queen. But I’ll do it for you, Rosie.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Ikor returned from his interview with the Gig’s lord, on the day after his storm-escorted arrival in Foggy Bottom, with the information that the princess and her lady would remove, and welcome, to Woodwold, and the sooner the better; let us say—tomorrow. Lord Prendergast was insisting on sending his best travelling carriage.

  The news went like wildfire round the Gig; Ikor made no attempt to disguise himself, nor his presence at the wrights’ yard, nor the reason for it. “We have nothing to spare for such minor glamours,” he said, grimly, when he set off the morning after his arrival for his appointment with Lord Prendergast. “It is better to say—what we are saying—at once.” And so—according to the story that flew back to Cairngorm’s pub faster than Ikor’s feet could bring him—when the Queen’s Messenger had been formally announced at the door of Woodwold’s Great Hall, he gave his business in a cool voice that was nonetheless heard by everyone in t
he huge room: “I come, Lord Prendergast, to crave the favour of your hospitality for our princess, the king’s heir, who is free at last from her long concealment.” In the hush that followed, Lord Prendergast was the first to move, stepping forward to indicate to the Messenger a smaller room where they could speak privately. He had a dazed expression on his face, but his manners, and his loyalty to the king and the king’s heir, were perfectly in place.

  There was a crowd gathered round the wrights’ yard by the time Ikor returned (having refused the lord’s carriage for himself), to congratulate, to stare, to wonder, to question. Barder and Joeb and Cantrab were trying to get on with business, though their hands were slow, and they shook their heads a lot—not only in response to their neighbours’ remarks.

  The women were in the wheelwright’s kitchen. Aunt was spinning, soft thump thump thump and even softer whrrrrr, as if it might have been any morning of any day. Katriona was brewing a serenity-restoring tisane. Peony, her colour very high, was trying to comfort her aunt, who was weeping, Rosie thought, in bewilderment, because she didn’t know what she should be doing; Rosie recognised this in another because she felt that way herself, although she shed no tears. But Rosie felt something beyond bewilderment: she felt trapped. Trapped, suddenly, by the people she had known all her life. But now they were the audience, and she—she and Peony—were the spectacle.

  Jem and Gilly were trying to play on the kitchen floor, but their hearts weren’t in it. Gable, the most equable of babies, was inclined to fuss; Rosie picked him up and began to play pat-a-cake with him, less to soothe him than herself. She went on playing pat-a-cake even as Ikor told them they were leaving the next day; but still the message passed through her, and she heard the mice in the walls taking it up, and a few minutes later Zogdob howled, a long, despairing wail: only Rosie really understood about scratching a dog’s spine properly, and she was going away. I wish I could howl, Rosie thought.