Winterwood, page 5
part #1 of Rowankind Series
She leaned slightly forward, and her gaze locked with mine. The force of it chilled me to the bone. I found myself choking on frosted air.
Then she was speaking again, and I could breathe freely. “You lose your magic on the sea. You must come to the land, to the forest, to gain your full power.” She stepped back and her shoulders rose in the smallest of shrugs. “And you must come to this quest, by yourself. Or not—as your conscience dictates—for you retain your free will in all things.” Free will. I held on to that thought. “But one thing I will lay on you: you must keep your half-brother with you, for he is part of this.”
“What’s in the box?” I asked.
She shook her head as if unsure. “The mistake of a foolish man. The sin of a nation,” she replied. “The fate of the world. Everything, and nothing. The contents are yours to discover.”
More riddles. Did magic folk always speak in frustrating riddles?
“If you would beat the soldiers on the road, you need to be swift.” The Green Man said. “I feel their hooves shaking my land.”
“Are they the hounds you speak of?” I asked.
The Lady shook her head and gave me a look that said plainly I was asking stupid questions. “Go now. Take your brother and your pirate. I will send Silverwolf as your watch-wolf and guide.”
She called the huge wolf to her and rested her hand on his head, speaking in tones so low that I couldn’t catch them.
He nodded his head, a curious gesture for a wolf.
“Be swift.” She turned back to me. “He will not wait for stragglers. When you need me again, you will find me here.”
The wolf, silver-coated and gray-eyed, stood a little way ahead of us. As we turned, he put his head on one side and regarded us with a steady gaze, almost human in its intensity and understanding. Then he turned and loped into the forest.
I needed no excuse to flee the royal couple and their entourage. My mind churned so much that I was thankful to lose myself in action. I flung myself into the saddle again and David scrambled up behind. Now that I knew he was my brother the burden felt different—more personal. With Hookey behind us, we followed the wolf at a lumbering canter. The carriage horses were neither fleet nor flexible, and whipping around trees and crashing through undergrowth was hard on them.
“Slow down, wolf,” I called.
On the next rise he paused, seeming to smile at me through sharp white fangs, then loped away again.
I swore under my breath. “He’s making sport of us.”
My horse pounded on, and David clung to my waist for dear life as we cleared a fallen tree trunk and slithered down a steep hill, across a shallow river strewn with boulders and up the other side.
A yell behind me and a riderless horse galloping alongside announced that Hookey’s rough horsemanship had failed him again. Damn the wolf. I’d rather lose the wolf than Hookey. I pulled up sharp and we slithered to a stop. The other horse stopped with us and David caught its bridle.
“Coming, Cap’n. Damn horse!” Hookey’s language trailed off into a line of seamanlike expletives. I smiled. I’d seen Hookey seriously hurt. He didn’t talk or yell. He limped up beside us, took the horse’s reins and gave it a mouthful of verbal abuse before flinging himself back aboard with grim determination.
“Have we lost yon wolf?” Hookey asked.
I looked around, surprised to find that he did wait for stragglers. “No, he’s still here.”
The wolf sat watching Hookey’s horsemanship. I swear he was laughing.
“Mind your manners,” I told him. “It’s no good escaping the Kingsmen if we all end up with our necks broken.”
He gave a little yip and set off once again, this time at a slightly steadier pace. We followed him as the sky lightened past dawn. At the edge of the forest he melted away into the undergrowth and was gone, but I could see the Bideford road down in the valley and no Kingsmen either behind or before us.
“I think we’re in the clear.” I’d been listening hard for sounds of pursuit along the road and heard nothing.
“You’re sure?” David asked.
Hookey laughed. “He hasn’t got your hearing, Cap’n.”
“He knows I’m your brother?” David looked from me to Hookey and back again.
“It weren’t exactly difficult to guess.” Hookey bunched his reins up in one hand and scratched his beard. “Besides, you’re already taller than most rowankind, though you got the looks, I’ll grant you that. But you and she got a resemblance—something around the mouth—an’ I know you got magic, ’cos you could feel hers working an’ I never can.”
“About that,” David said.
“All in good time. Hush,” I hissed between my teeth.
We dismounted, slipped out the bits, and let the horses graze on roadside grass for an hour that we could ill afford, but better to have them refreshed in case of pursuit. When we set off again, we did so at a sedate pace, alternating walking and steady jog-trotting, so as not to lather them unnecessarily. All the time I listened for pursuers, but the early morning remained peaceful. The road rolled across farmland. A lone ploughman turning winter-worn fields to straight dark lines pulled up his horse at the end of a furrow and looked in our direction. I gathered my magic and he gazed through us. In similar fashion I hid us from a shepherd and his dog.
David was obviously wrestling with questions. In truth, I didn’t know what I could say. To be brought up disenfranchised and then to discover you’re the mistress’s bastard son is one thing, but to also discover that you’ve inherited magic that has the potential to be dark and dangerous added a new twist.
I had my own questions, but there was no one to answer. Oh, Will, how I miss your wise counsel.
“The Lady . . .” David said at last. “She wants you to go to the forest. She says your magic is stronger there.”
“It’s true I always feel its heat inland. It’s cooling now the sea’s in sight.” It was easier to talk to him when he was behind me. I didn’t have to look into his eyes.
“So you won’t take up the quest or return to the forest?”
“The Lady’s not even human. How can I begin to guess at her motives? Besides, if people hunt me on land, what better place to be than the ocean?”
“What about Philip?”
“It’s been seven years. We were close once, but in later years . . .” I shook my head. “We grew apart. I hardly know him now. Besides, I have a life. People depend on me. A crew, a ship.”
“A husband?”
“Life doesn’t always turn out the way you expect it to.” I spoke almost to myself. “I hadn’t expected to be a widow so soon.”
“That was Redbeard Tremayne—the spirit back on the road?”
“Yes, that was Will. After he died, I, well, let’s just say I took his place.”
He was silent for a while and then he said, “You never went back to see your mother.”
Anger flushed through me. “After the circumstances of our final parting? Why should I?”
“She’s your mother. Was your mother, I mean.”
“I’ll bet she never spoke my name.”
His silence was answer enough.
“See.”
“Once, a few days ago. She said you’d be here soon. I thought her mind was wandering.”
“Too much laudanum.” I didn’t speculate further. How could I begin to say what I felt about the woman who gave me life? I didn’t even know myself. Right now all I wanted to do was to get back to the safety of the Heart.
“Was it magic that parted you from your mother?”
“Yes, in a way it was, though other disagreements as well. Philip, you see, was her shining boy. A girl will always be a drain on family finances, and Father had mentioned more than once that when I married one of the ships would be my dowry.”
“Did your father know—about your magic, I mean?”
“It was one of the things my parents argued about. My father said Mother should not worry, that I could suppress it. I—”
Words failed me as I remembered my father’s exact words. She can learn to suppress it. You can help her.
5
Bideford
BY THE TIME WE GOT TO BIDEFORD we were close enough to the sea that my magic sank safely back to its usual manageable levels. While Hookey went down to the docks to look for a likely ship I sold the poor tired horses on the outskirts of town, for far less than they were worth, but the dealer asked no questions and required no provenance. I regretted abandoning the beasts, but the dealer’s yard was clean and orderly, his horses well cared for.
As we walked down the hill into the town I offered David the proceeds from the sale. It seemed only fair.
He looked at the small pouch of guineas in my hand.
“Take it,” I said. “The horses were your only inheritance.”
His hand twitched toward the pouch and then he pulled back.
“What’s the matter? You’ve handled money before.”
“The household money, yes. Never my own.”
“Not even a few shillings at Christmas?” There had always been silver for the rowankind at Christmas.
“That’s what Evy said, but Missis—our mother—” He corrected himself awkwardly. “She sent what she could to London, to Master Philip, and there wasn’t much left after that. That’s why she let the rest of the rowankind go. Evy was the last, then there was only me. When she took to her bed, I managed what there was as well as I could, but we’ve left a debt behind us at the butcher’s.”
“Don’t think of paying off our mother’s debts with this.” I pushed the money into his hand. “Whatever you decide to do, it’s yours. It’s little enough. I fancy Philip had the best of her fortune. I wonder what he spent it on.”
“I heard mention of gambling debts.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
Philip had always had a way of wheedling what he wanted, even as a boy. The thought of Philip troubled me again.
Lord knows we had not been close as children, yet we had shared a sibling bond.
When Mother had taken it into her head to travel alone, Philip and I had shared a sense of abandonment that brought us closer together. If only we could have retained the camaraderie that we felt in those few short months, but Mother’s return reminded us both that Philip was her firm favorite. I can’t blame Philip for taking advantage of her indulgence, though I don’t know what hurt more, my obvious second place in her regard, or Philip’s defection from our little cabal of two.
Dwelling on the past? Will floated in the air by my side, keeping pace as we walked. Hookey’s on the dockside, eyeing up a barquentine.
Bideford town was a collection of twisting, narrow streets lined with pastel-colored cottages clinging to the hillside above the wide river Torridge, only recently contained by a new embankment.
Once a major port in the area, handling cargoes of cotton and tobacco from the New World, Bideford had lost much of its trade to Bristol and had had the rest curtailed by the war with France. The ships that docked here were mostly coastal vessels carrying ball clay out and lime in, but there was still a fishing fleet. And if you knew where to look or who to talk to there were those captains who specialized in the import of certain goods, mostly French, under the noses of the Excise men.
As we walked the length of the quay, Hookey was waiting by a barquentine, the Alessandra, a neat, three-masted vessel, square rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft rigged on the main and mizzenmasts. She’d just taken on cargo and looked almost ready to sail.
Hookey scowled at me. He’d never liked barquentines: said they were a poor compromise between a barque and a ship.
“She’s a bastard vessel, Cap’n, but she’s seaworthy. The word on the dock is that her master is canny but fair. He might charge you through the nose, but his word’s good.”
Barque, barquentine, or fishing smack, I didn’t mind what we sailed on—I’d probably be spending the next few days heaving up my insides and wanting to die. Why, oh why, did I have to be the only captain on the ocean who was thoroughly and miserably seasick?
Hookey professed that he could gut a quart pot, so he took David in search of a hospitable tavern while I went aboard to negotiate passage. For a guinea apiece, the captain, Joshua Haggerty, a tough old cove with a face that looked as though it had been carved out of a slab of mahogany, agreed to take us around the coast to Harper’s Inlet. It was an extortionate price, but we didn’t have much choice and the captain knew it. I found Hookey and David in a likely looking drinking hole and directed them to be on the dock within two hours.
I had a bit of business to attend to in the meantime.
The Kingsmen couldn’t be far behind us. I had a couple of hours before the Alessandra sailed, and with luck it might be long enough to check on what Philip was up to. Or had my mind been playing tricks? Was it really Philip? And if it was, were he and the dark-coated Mr. Walsingham both working for the Mysterium?
Bideford was famous for being the place where the Mysterium had been founded following a notorious witch trial and burning. By the licensing of approved witches, the Mysterium, now run from London, had established itself as the single authority on magic in the land. Those who knew no better supported them, believing that a regulated witch was a safe witch.
More fool them.
Even so, the Mysterium would have me swinging on a rope if they ever caught me, just for the crime of being an unregistered witch. They’d have to catch me first, of course. The less contact I had with the Mysterium, the better, but I needed to know whether Philip worked for them. If I waited to see the Kingsmen arrive I might find out whether the Mysterium was their first port of call. I had nothing better to do with my time.
The Mysterium’s regional office on the junction of Bridgeland Street and the Quay was in an elegant old building which had once been one of Bideford’s merchant’s houses, part residence, part place of business. I needed someplace that would let me see it without being seen, so I settled upon an inn opposite, which boasted a coffee room that was all smoke-darkened paneling and dingy leaded windows. I ordered coffee from a sullen rowankind girl—you could see the resentment if you were looking for it, though I suspect most people didn’t look—and settled on a bench close to the window, hidden from full view by the height of the bench back.
I’d finished my coffee, a bitter brew and not much to my liking, when the clatter of hooves on cobbles made me duck instinctively. Lucky I did. The Kingsmen rode straight down the street, their horses lathered with sweat and the riders’ jackets, green with red facings, dusty from the road. They ignored the Mysterium office. That answered my primary question.
At their head rode a lieutenant, and immediately behind him were two dark-coated men, one older and broader than the other, but hard, without an inch of flab on him. His face was pockmarked; otherwise it might have been brutishly handsome, with a straight jab of a nose and strong, dark brows. Walsingham. The younger man was Philip, seven years older than the last time I’d seen him, but unmistakably my baby brother. I could see why my mother had mistaken me for him. He was as slender as a woman, his features still boyish and unmarked at twenty-one.
As I studied him he looked in my direction, and our eyes met through the glass. I jerked my head back behind the stout mullion of the window and heard hooves break the regular pattern of the troop. The Kingsmen didn’t stop, but I heard another horse join Philip’s right outside the window.
“What’s the matter, boy?” The voice was deep and resonant.
“My horse is going uneven, Mr. Walsingham. I think he’s picked up a stone in his shoe.”
Walsingham gave a disapproving grunt. “Come straight to the White Hart as soon as you’ve cleaned it out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember you are still on parole. I have your poppet with me at all times. Don’t play me false, Mr. Goodliffe, or you’ll regret it.”
The back of my neck prickled with the menace held in his words.
“I won’t forget, sir. How could I?”
I heard Walsingham’s horse clatter off after the troop at a trot, and Philip jerked his head toward the alley by the inn.
I left my coffee cup and made my way casually outside.
Philip stood fumbling with his horse’s rein in both hands. He glanced over his shoulder so many times it almost looked like a tic.
I wanted to rush and hug him, but he stepped back, his attitude a cold slap.
“Goddamn, Ross, it’s true then, you are a counterfeit man. I’d heard rumors, but I hardly believed them. You were always such a girly-girl.”
If that was the way he wanted it between us, I could play at that game. “Except when I fought a duel against Josh Clemmow to save you from a thrashing.”
“I’d almost forgotten that. You used sticks for swords. You won but you got the hem of your dress so muddy that Ruth made you change it quickly and took it for washing so Mother wouldn’t throw a fit, but Mother realized you weren’t in the same dress and got the truth from you. You were always such a bad liar, Ross.” He managed a rueful smile. “You were sent to bed without supper.”
“You sneaked a slice of bread and jam out of the kitchen for me.”
He laughed. “I wheedled it out of Ruth. Didn’t take much wheedling, actually. Ruth had it ready prepared.”
“Ruth always looked out for me. But how about you? You look quite lively for a corpse. This is a reunion I hadn’t expected.”
“Listen, reunion be damned. I don’t have much time.” He was suddenly serious again.
“What are you doing here, Philip? Are you working for the Mysterium?”
Philip shook his head. “The Mysterium dances to Walsingham’s tune if he needs it to. He takes his orders from much higher up. As high as you can go without talking to God in His Heaven.”
