The Lost Stories (18 page)

“Why don't you run away?” Alyss asked.

Hilde looked at her as if the question was insane. “How? Where would I go? I've got nothing. If I tried to run away, they'd come after me and drag me back. Old woman like me can't run fast. Nothing I can do. I'm stuck with the Roamers and I'll have to make the best of it.” Her voice was heavy with the inevitability of her predicament.

“Hilde,” Alyss said slowly, “if you could get away from the Roamers, would you want to?”

“Well, of course!” Hilde replied eagerly. Then reality claimed her once more. “But how? I can't run. And what would I do if I did get away? No, it's foolishness to even think of that.”

“We'd help you,” Will said, and she looked at him suspiciously.

“Why would you do that?”

“Let's just say we have a score to settle with these Roamers,” Will told her.

She wavered. The idea of escaping her current life was an attractive one. “But what would I do?” she asked.

Alyss answered this time. “We have a friend who owns a restaurant. I'm sure you could work for her. It'll be a lot easier than what you're doing and nobody would kick you or curse you.”

“But you'd have to work,” Will warned her, and she turned her gaze to him.

“I'm not afraid of work,” she said. “I don't expect handouts. But pay me a little, let me have a little to eat and give me somewhere warm to sleep . . . that'd be like heaven.”

“I'm sure Jenny would give you plenty to eat,” Will said. “And she's an excellent cook.”

“We'll give you some money for now,” Alyss said. “And Will can take you to another village to wait for us. We have horses, so he'll take you far enough to be safe from the Roamers.”

Hilde wavered still. “You're sure this friend of yours will give me a job?”

Alyss nodded emphatically. “If we ask her. Yes. It'll be light work and you'll have a good life, Hilde. And, to seal the bargain, you can have this fine dress of mine.”

Hilde's eyes opened wide at her words. The dress was a simple enough one, but it was made of good quality wool, soft and warm to the touch. And it was unpatched and clean and in infinitely better shape than the rags she was wearing.

“But what will you wear?” she asked.

Alyss gestured to Hilde's ragged skirt, blouse and shawl. “I'll trade for your clothes.”

Hilde frowned, puzzled by the idea. “Why would you want to wear these?”

Alyss allowed herself the ghost of a smile.

“Believe me, I don't want to. But it's sort of necessary for what we have in mind.”

EVEN THOUGH HE HAD SEEN ALYSS'S SKILL WITH DISGUISES before, Will was startled by the transformation. She had cut her hair shorter to match the length of Hilde's. Then she'd rubbed earth and ash into it so that it was matted and gray and tangled. Her face was darker and it was lined and worn, seemingly with age. It was only when he looked closely that Will could see it was the result of skillful makeup. Alyss, like all Couriers, never traveled without a makeup and disguise kit. It was one of a Courier's most valuable tools of trade.

But the most telling part of the deception was her perfect adoption of the older woman's body language. Alyss had observed her closely throughout the morning and she had copied Hilde's crouched, subservient body position exactly. She moved the same way, hobbling bent over, eyes down and with a sideways, shuffling skip. It was in their favor that Hilde rarely made eye contact with any of the Roamers. But even if Alyss did, Will was almost certain they would never notice the substitution.

In addition, she was wearing Hilde's stained and tattered clothes and that completed the picture. She smiled at Will as she emerged from behind the screen of bushes where she had changed. She held the ragged clothing out, keeping it away from her body as long as possible.

“This is the part I like least of all,” she said.

Hilde, for her part, was delighted with her new green dress. She paraded around the small clearing in the forest, muttering admiring phrases to herself. Will guessed she'd probably never owned such a fine piece of clothing in her life.

“Now,” said Alyss, “I suggest you take Hilde to that village we passed through yesterday morning. Put her in the inn and come back here. In the meantime, I'll take her place in the camp.”

But Will shook his head. “I'll do that tonight,” he said. “First I want to be sure that your disguise holds up. Hilde and I will be watching from the trees, just to make sure you're all right.”

“I'll be fine, Will,” she reassured him.

“Then there's no rush to get Hilde away. If they fall for your disguise, they won't go looking for her, will they?”

She smiled. She liked that he was concerned for her safety, even though she was totally confident in her ability to carry off the impersonation. She reached out a dirt-stained hand and touched his.

“You're right. And I'll feel safer knowing you're watching.”

 

Alyss's confidence turned out to be well founded. When she hobbled back into the camp a few minutes later, laden with the firewood that Will had collected while she changed and disguised herself, none of the Roamers showed the slightest interest in her.

As the day wore on, they would shout at her from time to time, setting her to some menial, difficult or unpleasant task that they didn't want to do. On several occasions, when she was intentionally tardy in carrying out their orders, she was punished with kicks or cuffs to the head. She reacted exactly as she'd seen Hilde do— cowering away, whimpering in pain and fear and trying to cover her head with her bent arms.

It was a masterful performance. Watching it, with Hilde dozing contentedly some meters farther back in the forest, Will felt his lips compress into a tight line each time Alyss was struck. He marked down the Roamers responsible. Once this was all over, he thought grimly, he would be carrying out a little retribution for those careless blows.

As the afternoon passed, he realized that Alyss had carried off the deception and he began to relax. He woke Hilde as dusk drew in. The old woman had not had such a long, uninterrupted rest in years and she woke reluctantly.

“How's the lady managing?” she asked, and he smiled reassuringly at her.

“Perfectly. The Roamers have no idea you're gone. Want to see?”

He led her carefully forward through the trees and she crouched in the shadows watching as Alyss hobbled around the camp, dumping stacks of firewood by each fireplace, then lighting the fires for the evening meal's preparation. Hilde was fascinated to observe her alter ego at work. On one occasion, when one of the Roamers threw a piece of firewood at Alyss, hitting her on the leg, she winced in sympathy. Eventually, Will touched her arm and they withdrew into the trees, heading to the spot where the horses were tethered. She hopped along beside him, bent-backed and awkward. But after a while, she looked up at him, a hint of a smile on her lined face.

“Lucky they haven't noticed how she's not as pretty as me,” she said, then cackled.

Will stopped to look at her, eyebrows raised. “You think you're prettier than her?” he said incredulously.

She cackled again. “Of course I am. After all, I've got a fine new green dress!”

There was no answer to that, he thought.

Alyss spent an uncomfortable night, shivering under one of the caravans, wrapped in Hilde's threadbare blanket. She tried not to think of the small creatures that undoubtedly shared the blanket with her, but by morning she was covered in red bites and scratching miserably.

“All part of the disguise,” she told herself.

She had quizzed Hilde as to what duties she would have to carry out. She lugged water and wood, fed the goats and chickens from the swill bucket and scoured the cooking pans clean with sand and water. If Roamer women were reluctant cooks, they were even more reluctant cleaners.

From time to time, the men or women would summon her to carry out some other menial task—cleaning boots that had been soiled with cow or dog droppings, beating the dust from a rug taken from a caravan.

Around eleven o'clock, she saw the boy Petulengo approach Jerome's caravan and wait expectantly outside it. This was the opportunity she had been waiting for. She hurried to the caravan she slept under and fetched the big firewood basket. As she did so, she heard Jerome's caravan door bang open and his heavy footsteps clumping down the steps. She glanced furtively in his direction. Once again, he was carrying the heavy, bloodstained sack. Once again, he had to shoo the camp dogs away from it.

He nodded when he saw Petulengo already waiting for him.

“Just as well for you,” he said. “I don't like to be kept waiting.”

The boy said nothing but fell into step behind the heavily built Roamer. They headed off in the same direction they had taken the previous day. Alyss, the firewood basket slung over her shoulder, hobbled slowly after them. She knew that while Petulengo was there to prevent any strangers from following Jerome, Hilde would be a familiar and unthreatening figure. Chances were, the boy would ignore her and she could discover where Jerome had Ebony hidden. And while she was following the two Roamers, Will would follow her, keeping well back. That was the plan they had agreed to on the previous day.

She had left the caravan compound, heading in the same general direction as Jerome and the boy, when a shrill voice stopped her.

“Hilde! Where are you going, you worthless crone?” It was one of the younger women from the camp. She was leaning over the railing at the rear platform of her caravan, beckoning urgently to Alyss.

Cursing under her breath, Alyss stopped and held up the basket for the woman to see. With a crack in her voice, she called back, “Fetching firewood, mistress! We're getting low!”

The woman considered the answer. For a moment, Alyss thought she was going to call her back to the camp. But eventually, she merely nodded. “Collect some redberries while you're there!” she called. “Lots of them. Camlo wants me to make redberry wine and I'm out of them!”

Alyss heaved a sigh of relief. This would actually work to her advantage. She could wander all over the forest searching for the berries. If her path happened to cross that of Petulengo and Jerome, all the better.

“Yes, mistress! I'll fetch a good batch!” she shouted. Then she turned and scuttled toward the trees before the woman could think of another task for her.

She bent and picked up some of the lighter branches as she went, keeping an eye out for Petulengo. She followed a random zigzag path through the trees, allowing the concentrations of deadfalls to determine her movements. But she managed to stay in touch with the two Roamers. Occasionally, she saw flashes of Petulengo's yellow shirt among the trees. If he was even half awake, she decided, he must have noticed her. She decided to put her theory to the test and changed her path, heading more directly toward where the boy was seated on a tree stump. By pure fortune, there was a redberry bush a few meters past him. She shuffled up to it, eyes down, pretending not to notice the boy. With an exclamation of pleasure, she began to strip the berries from the tree, dropping them into the wood basket.

“What are you doing, Hag Hilde?” His young voice had an unpleasant note to it.

She feigned surprise and jerked around to face him, keeping her eyes lowered, as Hilde would have done. She guessed that a display of subservience would feed his young ego, and she was right.“Fetching redberries, master,” she said, showing him the wood basket. “Mistress Drina wants to make wine from them.”

“Bring them here,” he demanded, and she shuffled toward him, holding out the basket. He grabbed a large handful and began to eat them, the red juice flowing down his chin.

“Not bad,” he said, grinning unpleasantly. “But if you want to pass by me, you'll have to give me more. There's a toll, you know.”

A narrow track ran away through the trees behind him. She guessed that this was the path Jerome had taken, and Petulengo was keeping watch at this junction to make sure nobody could follow him without being seen.

As she'd hoped, Petulengo didn't see her as any threat. He was obviously willing to let her pass down the track for the sake of a handful of berries. She nodded subserviently, hiding the sense of exultation that rose within her.

“I'll fetch you some more,” she said, and hobbled back to the tree. She stripped a sizable quantity of the sweet berries from the tree, reaching as high as she could to get to them. Petulengo watched her incuriously, then leaned forward as she returned with the basket held out to him.