Nobody's Son (15 page)

For the space of many heartbeats all four walked bareheaded. Rain slicked Mark’s hair and trickled down his cheeks, and the sound of it rolled in from every side, gusting through the trees and streaming into the ploughed fields around them. Their footsteps rang suddenly on a plank bridge; a streamlet hurried by beneath them and was gone. The air was heavy with a smell of wet earth.

“You’re right,” Gail whispered. “We aren’t everything. We’re so small we’re barely here at all.”

“No less than fox or marten,” Mark said. “And not much more.”

“A sobering thought for a Princess,” Gail laughed. “I’m not so sure I want to listen often to the world.”

Mark laughed with her, love and sadness strangely in his breast at once. “But that’s what Adventure is, Gail. That’s what it means, if it means owt at all.”

“And that means rescue!” Lissa cried, pointing down the road. There, at the top of a long, gentle rise, they could just make out a faint glimmer of light at the edge of the road. “Better than a palace!”

It would be a damn poor palace
, Mark thought,
that had less to offer than the Ram
. There was one rushlight over the bar, one embering fire in the big hearth. Long black cats of smoke, unwilling to get wet outside, skulked around the roofbeams. Mark hung his dripping cloak and hat on a peg by the door. The tables were knife-scarred and stained with spilt beer.

It was a small, sad, decent little inn, the sort of place a carter might stay on his way to Swangard. Not where Mark had imagined bringing the Duchess of Borders, his lady wife.

“Paradise!” Valerian said, slumping into the first chair he could find.

“I always pictured Paradise with windows,” Lissa remarked, brushing out her skirt and sitting down. “So you could watch God stroll by.” Her blue swallow-tail coat was splotched with rain and mud clung to the sides of her golden boots. Her blond hair was plastered to her skull. Mark guessed she was wearier than she had been in years. It was impossible she should look as elegant and stylish as ever, but of course she did.

Gail looked like a waterlogged gnome. “Told you we’d be fine,” she crowed. “I’m hungry enough to eat the Devil.”

“We only serve him Tuesdays,” said the innwife, coming out from behind the bar. She wore a kerchief around her head and her apron was stained with grease. “Is there owt else I can get to please your honours?”

“Anything hot would be a marvel,” Gail said. “Beef stew or baked potatoes, chicken pie or sausages; perhaps a roast of pork. Pan-fried fenceposts would do, or boiled rocks. Just so long as it’s hot!”

The woman laughed. “I hate to tell it, but you’re a mite too late! Kitchen’s closed, milady. We can heat you up some wine, if—”

“Closed! The kitchen’s never closed to Quality, you stupid woman!”

The innkeeper, a tall, thin man with a silver hoop dangling from his left ear, smiled apologetically at the table of gentry. “We’ve a pork roast we can do, or bacon if you’d like it quicker. Plenty to follow, and hot as you can stand it, I promise. Janey, fetch these fine folks two loaves and a dish of butter.”

His wife stood still a moment, fighting to hold her smile, and then did as she was bid.

The innkeeper rolled his eyes. “You must forgive the missus. A good soul, but she doesn’t deal much wi’ Quality.”

“You’re sure it isn’t any trouble?” Gail asked.

The innkeeper answered with a vigorous shake of his head. “No, madam, none at all. We hadn’t really shut down all the way; Janey just don’t like to do more work than she must, if the truth be known.”

“I wonder why,” Lissa said, so softly Mark could barely hear her.

Valerian peered wistfully through foggy spectacles. “Did someone offer us mulled wine?”

Soon Jane had returned with four cups of hot wine and two fat loaves of oatbread. “This is wonderful!” Gail said. “I didn’t know you could make bread from oats.”

“It’s good bread,” the innkeeper’s wife said defensively. “I make it myself and I’ve never had complaints.”

“No offense meant, goodwife. The Duchess is just too rich to know any better.” Laughing, Mark cut himself a slice. “I never ate white bread in my life before I came to the Palace, Gail. Real people eat oatbread mostly, and rye.”

Gail blushed. “I’m so sorry!”

Jane shook her head. “I didn’t have any call to get edgy. Just something in the air these days. I haven’t been myself.”

“Well, there’s worse could happen!” the innkeeper said, popping into view with a grin and a platter heaped with rashers of bacon. “Is she whistling about the wind? You’ve heard too many stories, our Jane.” He rolled his eyes again. “We’re no examples, to shiver at ghost stories at our time of life.”

Valerian looked curiously at the innkeeper’s wife. “What sort of stories?”

“Nothing worth mentioning. You know how it is,” the innkeeper said. “‘The awd wives have nowt to do all day but chatter, and an innkeeper’s wife gets more chances than most to listen to any lie that comes along.” He looked around anxiously to make sure their cups were full. “Carter’s Kev, I am. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, just ask it. I’m having the girl make up our best rooms.”

“Pray,” Lissa murmured, “If it please you, we would like to hear your goodwife’s tale.” There was the slightest edge to her voice, so faint Mark barely caught it.

Their host was better used to dealing with Quality. He snapped to attention. “Of course! Well, Jane? Don’t just stand there! Tell their worships!”

Jane reddened and stared at the floor.

Lissa glanced at the innkeeper. “I do not have to tell you, Carter’s Kev, the Princess does not care for lumpy mattresses. Make sure a ewer of hot water waits in both our rooms. You will find my purse as open as your feet are swift, and your fingers diligent.”

“Prin- prin-… the Prinsssss!” the innkeeper gasped. He started forward, peering in the gloom at the black tunic just visible beneath Gail’s weather-beaten cloak. “Oh, yes ma’am. Thank you, ma’am!”

Discovered, Gail winced and shrugged off the dripping cloak, letting it hang over the back of her chair.

Lissa turned back to the innwife, doffing her grand manner like a pair of gloves. She smiled a warm, conspiratorial smile. “To tell the truth, Gail here adores a lumpy bed.”

Jane chuckled in spite of herself and then bit her lip. “He means well, miss. We… we don’t often see such fine people as yourselves at the Ram.”

Lissa looked down at her mud-spattered boots and laughed. “Well, we’re not so fine as we were this morning, but the Duke in truth is generous, and his lady wife. Weary as we are, I’m sure we would not notice were our beds but blankets over boulders. I pray you, do not be offended. I dearly wish to hear your stories, but it seemed they were not like to come, with our good host a-hovering by.” Lissa glanced at Mark and Valerian. “If it please you, I can make these fellows disappear: there are some things only silly women can really understand.”

Jane laughed out loud. “Oh, ‘tisn’t much, miss. Last moon I started having funny dreams. I soon found out I weren’t’t’only one. We started hearing stories in here. Someone said there’d been a spook in High Holt three nights running. ‘Like a sojur on the battlements,’ they said, ‘Only awder, and dressed up for a funeral.’ Then too, folks have been… remembering. Remembering things as we’ve worked hard to forget,” she added quietly.

Sadness settled on them, soundless as snow falling into water.

Then Jane blinked, and sucked in a big breath, and smiled, all business. “Kev’s right; there’s nowt to it. Just spring turning. Make a start on your bread and bacon, and I’ll have you some fried taters in a minute.”

Gail shivered with satisfaction as the innwife left. “Ghosts! It must drive Richard mad, to have something at High Holt he can’t boss around.”

“Now we know the real reason the Duke chose not to join the celebration of your nuptials at Swangard,” Val mused. “A spirit! Think what it must be like to breathe, and know before you stands one whose chest rises with air ten centuries old.”

“I think Richard had his own reasons for not coming to the wedding,” Lissa said.

Valerian took another sip of his mulled wine. “Last moon, the innwife started having her strange dreams… About the time that you, friend Mark, your mighty deed all done, strode forth from out the Ghostwood eaves to claim the prize you had by heroism won.”

Mark nodded. “You said it would change things, didn’t you?… You know, of all of it, t’Awd Man is the thing that bothers me,” Mark said softly. “All the rest was like a dream. But I’ll bet he lives there still, sitting in the kitchen, stirring in his ashes, looking for some horrible secret.”

“Don’t!” Gail cried. “You’re just trying to scare us now.” She shivered. “You told me you took that old dagger you wear from the Red Keep—I asked because I wondered why he kept a knife so dull—” she explained to Lissa. “But why didn’t you tell anyone what it was?”

“The man who’s robbed at the door, leaves by the window,” Mark said drily.

“Oh. I guess you’re still mad about Sweetness, hunh?”

Mark grunted.

“Dearly would I love to look upon Queen Lerelil’s gift,” Valerian said. “I have a passion for all ancient things.”

Mark took the medallion from around his neck and passed it to Valerian.

“It’s a magic charm,” Gail said decisively.

Mark scowled. “Don’t play the peasant, Gail. We don’t believe in charms nor magic spells nor’t’evil eye neither, even in the country.”

“You don’t believe in magic! How do you explain everything that happened to you!”

“I think there was magic once,” Mark said slowly. “But I’ve never felt it, outside the Ghostwood. And I think… I think you’d know, somehow, if there were any in the world. I guess I wrecked the last magic left in the kingdom,” he said with a little laugh. But inside Mark’s heart was pierced with longing, and great grief.
What if that were

true? What if you broke the last spell there was? Now no sunset will ever be so beautiful, no song so sweet, no story so grand as it had been once.

He felt again the great, dry, empty drift of years behind him.
What if you’ve broken the last bridge there was between the present and the past
?

Lissa said, “I don’t believe in magic either.”

“Lissa!” Gail cried, hurt. “You used to believe.”

Lissa raised her cup and sipped her wine. “Yes I did. Once.”

“Do you believe in magic?” Mark asked Val.

Val looked up from the medallion. Carefully, he said, “I believe in poetry, and I believe in God. Is magic something different from these two?”

“You’re the only man I’ve met that truly believed in God,” Mark said, wondering and strangely envious. For the first time in his life he wanted to believe, but that well within himself was dry, empty as the Red Keep’s ruins.

“Nobody believes in God,” Lissa said. “Not even Bishop Cirdon.”

Valerian shrugged and handed back Queen Lerelil’s charm. “I know it’s not in fashion, lady. But years of peering through these spectacles have made me marvel at the confluence of things, and left me with a wonder that will not go away. There is little bit of everything in all. At certain moments, staring through my scrying glass, or looking at a sunset, or listening to the brook that runs behind my father’s house, for an instant I forget myself, and lose the thing I’m thinking on, and catch a tiny glimpse of everything instead. There is a place the soul goes, between one thought, one time, one heartbeat and the next…” He faltered, as if embarrassed to have said too much.

Lissa said, “You are eloquent.”

Mark cut himself a thick slice of bread and covered it in butter. When they had first stepped into the Ram, with its embering fire, its low chat and beery, smoky smell, he thought he’d left the wind and rain behind.

But now the night came creeping back into his heart; a darkness of rain falling on abandoned fields, forgotten houses. Things lost, or buried, or left behind. He could feel it pressing against the tavern’s thin walls.

After washing down a piece of bread with a gulp of wine he said, “I’ve felt it. The memories. Like she said. All my life I’ve pointed straight as a signpost: Ghostwood, 3 miles. And after I went, it would just be, you know,”—he smiled at Gail—”happily ever after.”

“Hah! I am no man’s happily ever after!”

Lissa coughed.

Gail scowled at her. “What I mean is, this is just the beginning! I expected I should be married to some dull Duke and keep house and practise needlepoint and be generally dead from the moment I married. But you! You rescued me from that.” She shrugged and laid three strips of bacon across a slice of buttered bread. “But I know what you mean. You never thought of life after your trip. For a woman, it’s marriage you can’t see to the other side of.”

Valerian fluffed himself, and a quick smile flashed within his beard. “I fear no woman’s vision extends even to this side of the nuptial river: not with me standing on the bank, that is.”

“You were a great disappointment to us,” Lissa suddenly remarked.

“Eh?” Val looked up, a square of bacon impaled on the end of his fork. Mark, caught sucking his fingers, glanced around at the others. A sick feeling roiled in his belly.
They eat bacon wi’ knife and fork
?

Shite.

A strange expression was on Lissa’s face, mixed from memory and mischief. “It is not permitted for young ladies of the Court to mingle with young gentlemen, of course. But no father’s word, nor wizard’s hand, ever yet has stopped determined maids. We used to watch you very closely. You and all the other gamecocks strutting through the Palace.”

“I confess I don’t remember you,” Val said, colouring slightly.

“We were children,” Lissa said. “Little girls are by young men infallibly ignored, if there are bigger girls around. But my tale was saying you surprised us when you fell in love.”

Gail grinned, licking her greasy fingers. “I’d forgotten that. He had a crush on Teris, didn’t he?”

Lissa ignored Val’s strangled squeak. “We were disappointed, sir. Every coxcomb’s heart was tangled in the lime she placed so artfully on her cheeks, or caught in that crevasse of bosom Master Bolt’s dresses kept showing off. We guessed that you would fall for Willan, who had a finer mind, though smaller breasts. But you were dull and loved her not; we thought you very stupid, and swore to think of menfolk nevermore.”