The Fugitive Queen (9 page)

“No.” She shook her head. “They let me go. No one's after me. We needn't have come off the track to hide. It's all right.”

“Just what happened?” Ryder asked gently.

“We got to a house. A sort of farmhouse I think, but I couldn't see much, what with the mist. We went inside, into a passageway. There were oxen in a kind of barn on one side and a door on the other side that led into a room where there was a hearth . . . like the Grimsdales' farmhouse, only this was a different place . . .”

“Plenty of farmhouses like that, everywhere. Did they say anything to you? Or each other? Did you hear any names?” Ryder asked.

“I don't know. I mean yes, they spoke to each other but their mouths were muffled up with those scarves and they spoke—well, people up here almost speak a foreign language. I can't understand it,” Meg said. “But they took me into the room with the hearth and one of them pulled my hood off and looked at me and then another one pushed forward and stared at me.” A shudder went through her body and I held her more tightly. “I could only see his eyes but I didn't like them. He looked at me as if I were a
thing.
He got hold of my chin and turned my head this way and that and then he started shouting at the others. I understood some of what
he
said. He was saying I was too young.”

“Too young! Bandits with a conscience apparently!” I said. “And then?”

“There was a lot of talking and muttering. I just stood there. I was so frightened. I was crying. Then I was taken outside again. The ponies were still there. One of the men got onto one and I
was picked up and put in front of him, and off we went again, out onto the moor and onto the heather and then back onto a track—the one where you found me. I kept saying what was happening, where were we going, but the man wouldn't say anything until we got to the track. Then he stopped and put me down. He said something then. He pointed along the track and I
think
he said something like go that way in a straight line and I heard the words
last night
—I thought he might mean I'd get back to where I was last night. All I could do was run through the mist. I didn't know where I was. I was all alone and the mist was so cold . . . . Oh, Mother, I was so frightened . . .!”

“The bastards!” said Ryder. “Turning her out into the mist on her own! Anything could have happened to her! She could have wandered for hours; died of the cold; fallen into a bog!”

“Come,” I said, getting to my feet. “We have your pony safe and sound, tethered some way back, with the mules, and . . . oh, my poor Meg. I'm so sorry. We'll have to tell you. Harry—Harry Hobson—he's . . .”

“He was killed,” said Ryder somberly. Meg looked at him in horror and he put a gentle hand on her head. “We have to go back to where we left him. Then we shall have to take him with us, somehow. If we can wrap him so that his horse won't fret, we can put him across his saddle and I suppose then we'd better get on to Tyesdale if we can.”

“Yes, let's get to Tyesdale before anything else goes wrong!” I said.

 • • • 

We retraced our steps with care but it was quite easy because now, at last, the mist was really lifting and besides, before long, the animals we had left tethered scented our horses, their erstwhile companions, and whinnied to them. Soon we were back at the place where we had left Harry. We made no mistake. His blood was still on the heather.

But of Harry himself there was no trace. His body, and the sword we had left lying beside it, had gone.

“I knew I heard voices in the mist, when I first tried to go after Meg,” I said. “I knew it! They left someone here to try and get hold of the body, if we gave them a chance—and that's exactly what we did.”

“They weren't robbers in the ordinary sense,” Ryder said thoughtfully. “We left the mules unguarded and still they didn't help themselves to them. It's odd. What do we do now?”

“But why take Harry away?” Sybil asked, distressed. “What was the point?”

Dodd said stolidly: “Very likely they never meant killing. But since they'd gone and done it just the same, maybe they wanted to get rid of the corpse. Be a bit difficult to make the authorities believe there's been a murder if we can't show them a body.”

Sybil said: “But what
are
we to do? We ought to get Meg to shelter. She should rest.”

And Meg, sitting in front of me on Roundel and still shivering, pressed her face against me and said: “I wish we could go home.”

“There's no sense in going after them again, in search of Harry,” Dodd said quietly. “Because they won't have taken him where they took Meg—at least, I wouldn't think so. I wouldn't, in their place. It must be their base—where they live. If they want
to get rid of him, they'll bury him somewhere else, well away from anywhere that points to them.”

I supposed that that made sense. Holding Meg close, I realized that I too was shivery, with shock and exhaustion. I too longed to go home. I thought of Hawkswood and Withysham, and above all, of Hugh. Then I thought of Pen and the Brockleys and Tom Smith, who were still with the Grimsdales.

“Should we go back to the Grimsdales?” I said. “If they sold information about us to someone then perhaps the others aren't safe there without us to back them up.”

“If whoever did this killed Harry by mistake,” said Dodd, “and stole his body to hide what they'd done, I'd reckon that they'll be a deal too scared to try anything else for a while. But I'll go back to reinforce Brockley and young Tom, if you like. I don't think that you ladies or little Meg should go back there, though. You should get to Tyesdale as soon as possible. Besides, the others are expecting to travel there tomorrow and find you there and the house ready.”

“I agree,” Ryder said briskly. “Yes, Dick, go back and make sure that the others are safe. But with your permission, Mistress Stannard, we'll press straight on to Tyesdale. It's our proper destination and once we're there, we're on home ground, so to speak. There's a lot to be said for that. That's my advice, anyhow.”

I took it.

 • • • 

While we were talking, the mist had finally lifted, swept suddenly away by a strong, cold wind. Suddenly, there was blue sky above and we could see about us. Moorland spread in all directions, bathed in clear sunshine, though not as yet in warmth. The wind was chill and not in the least summery.

“I'll be on my way,” Dick said. “I trust I'll be joining you at Tyesdale with the others tomorrow morning. I can find my way back to the Grimsdales, never fear. It must be less than three miles and I reckon I can see their hearth smoke from here.” He pointed, and by shading my eyes, I made out the thin spire of
smoke that he meant. He turned his horse and in a moment was cantering back the way we had come. He glanced back once to wave, and then was gone, over a crest of moorland and out of sight.

“We go the other way,” said Ryder. “Mistress Meg, can you manage on your pony? The rest of us will each have to lead an animal—we've two mules and Harry's horse to cope with.”

Meg nodded mutely and I set her in her saddle. The familiar feel of the reins in her hands seemed to encourage her, however. She sat up straight and gave me a pale smile. I took charge of one mule, Sylvia took the other, and Ryder took the reins of poor Harry's horse. We set off.

I hoped that we were going in the right direction, but fortune, at last, decided to smile on us. After a mile or so we encountered a couple of men, dressed in britches and sleeveless jerkins, tramping along with shovels over their shoulders. For some reason their clothes were dusted and their faces, hands, and arms were virtually blackened by what seemed to be soot. Ryder, coming up alongside me, said that they were miners. “That's coal dust. I've been north in bygone days and seen the like before. They'll be local. They'll probably know the way to Tyesdale.”

They did, and once both sides had penetrated the difficult barrier of our respective dialects, they were able to tell us that we had only two miles to go and were on the right road. Soon after that, as we rode through a deep fold in the hills, we saw signs that the land was in use. Sheep were grazing on the slopes, and on the nearest hillside, I noticed old diggings, possibly attempts at mining, although by the look of them they had been abandoned some time ago, for the rounded humps of dug-out earth were covered now in grass.

Pressing on, we passed the mouth of a narrow vale that led away southwest and was filled by woodland, a solitary patch of thick green fleece in an otherwise open landscape. Then we were riding through cultivated land, with fields of oats and barley, divided by stone walls. The stone walls were sadly dilapidated and I clicked a disapproving tongue as we passed a barley field in which a broken plow was rusting in a corner.

If this were part of Tyesdale, then the place was sorely in need of a resident landlord, I thought. I was relieved, when at length we came in sight of a house, to see a paddock in which a gray cob and a mule were grazing and I noticed that they at least looked healthy. And then we were at the house itself.

I knew at once what kind of place it was. I had seen such buildings on my earlier visit to the north. This was a small northern manor house that had been built in bygone days with defense in mind. It had an encircling wall beyond which rose a lookout tower with a crenelated top, as though it were part of a miniature castle. The place even had a moat. We smelled it before we saw it, for it was stagnant, the surface more green weed than water. The drawbridge that must have been there originally, though, had been replaced by a permanent stone bridge, leading across to the gatehouse. This too was like a miniature castle entrance though the gate stood open, and no one came to ask our business. We rode straight in.

We found ourselves in a courtyard facing a solid, uncompromising house, with a windowless undercroft for animals and fodder storage, and steps up to the main door. The upstairs windows had been modernized, however. Once, they had probably been little more than slits, but now they had mullions and glazing, and were leaded in neat squares. The living rooms would be well lit.

Despite the lack of a porter, we were announced more than adequately by loud cacklings from the poultry in the yard and the noisy barking of two leggy gray dogs with menacing yellow eyes, which came galloping round the side of the house to inspect us. This brought a woman down the steps. She stared at us and then shouted at the dogs to be quiet, which they instantly were. She was small of stature and brick-red of face, with gingery hair escaping from an untidy cap, and her frankly grimy apron was tied on over a gown of a color that no one with a choleric complexion and ginger hair ought ever to wear, for it was crimson.

“Would this be Tyesdale?” Ryder called. She stared at us for a further moment before replying: “Aye, so it be!” and turned to dash back up the steps. She vanished inside, shouting: “Master
Whitely! Master Whitely!” A moment later, she reappeared with a man on her heels.

“There!” she said to him dramatically, pointing at us. “I told thee that my lord of Leicester 'ud be here one of these days and catch thee napping and now it's happened! Don't thee ever say I didn't warn thee!”

“I'll not say
that,
Mistress Appletree,” he told her as he descended the steps, taking us in as he came. “It's been once a week at least these last three years.”

This, presumably, was Magnus Whitely, the steward. He was a small man, plainly dressed in buff. He crossed the courtyard beside the woman and halted in front of us, brows raised inquiringly. He removed his cap courteously enough but his nondescript features—he had the kind of face and eyes that slip out of the memory the moment their owner is out of sight—were unsmiling.

“This is Tyesdale right enough,” he said. “And who might you be?” His gaze traveled over us. “
Not
the Earl of Leicester, I fancy.”

“No. Quite right, though I do have a letter of introduction from the earl.” I had the letter ready in a pouch at my belt and now I drew it out and handed it to him.

The ride had calmed me. I still felt shaky, and the loss of Harry, whom I had gotten to know and like during the journey from Richmond, was like a dull ache inside me, but I was now able at least to appear normal. “We are sorry to arrive unannounced,” I said. “The—er—decision to make the journey was taken at short notice and we had no time to send word ahead. My name is Mistress Ursula Stannard, and as you will see from the letter, Tyesdale has now changed hands. Ownership has been transferred to my ward, Mistress Penelope Mason. Mistress Mason was unwell on the journey and is resting at a farmhouse a few miles from here. We hope she will join us tomorrow. These people are my gentlewoman, Mistress Jester, my daughter, Margaret, and our escort, Master Ryder.”

Whitely broke the seal on the letter and studied the contents. He looked up. “I
see.
” He had one striking characteristic and that
was a mincing way of speech, with a trick of emphasizing words here and there, as if to make up for his unremarkable appearance. His accent was local but educated. “You all want to stay here, I take it?” He glanced at us as if counting heads and arriving at an unwelcome conclusion.

“Certainly,” I said, allowing a slight chill to enter my voice. “The house is big enough, surely? When Mistress Mason arrives, there will be five more, as it happens. My tirewoman stayed with her, and three of our men to protect them when they follow us. This appears to be a lawless place! We were attacked on our way here!” I heard my voice quiver and controlled it with an effort. “And one of our number, a young man called Harry Hobson, was killed.”

“
Attacked
?” Master Whitely looked astounded. “
Killed
?”