The Safe-Keeper's Secret (7 page)

“He's a good king,” Damiana observed. “The roads are well mended, the taxes are fair, and there hasn't been war since his father was on the throne. Maybe we don't need someone warm as long as we have someone competent.”

“Maybe,” Isadora said rather doubtfully.

“Did he look like Reed?” Fiona asked.

Isadora laughed. “Not at all. He and his daughter are both dark, though she at least has a fair complexion. His is swarthy as a farmer's.”

“Princess Lirabel,” Damiana said. “What's she like? Isn't she all grown up now? Eighteen, at least?”

“Twenty,” Isadora replied. “She had a more pleasant face than her father, but she looked sad. I don't know why I say that, because she was smiling and waving with much more energy than he was. But I just thought she looked unhappy.”

“Perhaps her father has arranged an unwelcome marriage for her,” Damiana guessed.

“I didn't hear any talk like that while I was in Wodenderry,” Isadora said. “The rumor going around was that she wanted her father to acknowledge her as his heir next year, on her twenty-first birthday. But he will not do so—at least, this is what people were saying. I wasn't at court, you understand, and no one was confiding in me.”

“Why won't he acknowledge her?” Fiona asked.

The older women exchanged glances. “They say he doesn't want a woman on the throne,” Isadora said. “You know, he married again last year, practically the minute Lirabel's mother was dead. His new queen is quite a young woman, but so far she hasn't borne him any children. Daughters
or
sons.”

“I'll bet there's someone who would have been wishing hard for your services if she'd known you were in town,” commented Damiana. “The new queen.”

“Perhaps I should go back soon,” the Dream-Maker said with a trace of humor, “and introduce myself at the royal palace. I could live quite a life of luxury while I tried to do a favor for my king.”

“Maybe that's why you felt compelled to go there after all,” Damiana said. “Maybe in a few months we'll hear good news from the palace.”

Isadora gave an unladylike snort. “The man's been through two wives and who knows how many companions,” she said. “And he's only fathered the one child who lived to adulthood. That girl that he won't allow to succeed him to the crown.”

“And Reed,” Fiona piped up.

Again, the women exchanged startled glances. “There's no proof that Reed is the king's son,” Damiana said gently.

“You don't need proof,” Fiona said. “You
know.
”

“What I know might not be good enough for the king,” her mother responded. “Anyway, I'm sure the king would insist upon a legitimate heir. And so far Princess Lirabel is the only one he's got.”

Just then, Reed burst through the door, covered in mud and holding a coiling snake between his hands. “Look what I found in the garden!” he exclaimed. “Do we have a box where I can keep him?”

Isadora emitted a little shriek and fell back in her chair, fanning herself with her hand. Fiona hopped up to get a closer look at the sleek, sinuous body. Damiana smiled faintly.

“Well, let me just look for a box, and then I'll get dinner on the table,” she said. “Isadora, it looks like
Reed's
dearest wish has come true. Now you won't have to wonder why you came to Tambleham after all.”

After dinner, Reed and Fiona did the dishes, though Fiona felt that she was doing more than her share. Reed kept dropping his drying cloth so he could go inspect his new pet and see if it had eaten its own dinner of crickets and ladybugs. Damiana moved between them, humming a little, preparing gallons of tea, loaves of fresh bread, and platters of cookies, as if she expected company.

Sure enough, one by one, the neighbors started to arrive. Elminstra was first, her one-year-old granddaughter in her arms. “Isadora, I thought that was you!” she said, greeting the Dream-Maker with a kiss. “Tell me what you've seen in your travels.”

“Hello, Elminstra, how good to see you,” Isadora replied.

They had only exchanged a few words before the farmer down the road arrived with his two teenaged daughters, shy and beautiful. Next it
was Dirk and his father; after that, the blacksmith, then the carter, then the money-changer. After that, Fiona lost track. She helped her mother bring out trays of food and gather up the used dishes, offering unobtrusive hospitality. Though all of these people had, at some point, come to this very house to seek Damiana's services, none of them were here tonight to confer with the Safe-Keeper. They were here with sincere expressions of goodwill and well-being, but they had an agenda that was nobody's secret—they hoped some of the Dream-Maker's magic would rub off on them or those they loved. None of them said so, of course. They talked of the weather, the conditions of the road, last year's harvest, next spring's fair. Most of them brought some kind of small token to press into Isadora's hand—a glittering crystal stone, a braided leather belt, a pair of embroidered slippers. Thoughtful remembrances that said in turn,
Keep
me
in your thoughts. When the power takes hold of you again, remember me
.

It was past midnight before all the guests were gone, and Fiona was yawning over the sink. Reed, who was not about to go up to bed even if he didn't feel like being useful, was shuffling and reshuffling a dog-eared card deck, trying to teach himself a trick. Damiana wiped down the kitchen table one last time and peered into the big main room.

“I think they're all gone, for the moment,” Isadora said.

“Then let me fix up the bed for you,” Damiana said. “You two—go on upstairs. I'll be there in a minute.”

Reed, of course, protested, but without much credibility. Fiona washed her face and went upstairs without another word. She tried, as always, to listen to the adult conversation transpiring below, but she was too tired. She fell asleep before her mother had even come upstairs to kiss her good-night.

Chapter Four

A
t first, it seemed like nothing in particular came of Isadora's visit. No one found gold in his back yard in the week after she'd left; no extraordinary babies were born. Classes were not miraculously canceled, so Fiona and Reed trudged out to the schoolhouse every day, kicking their way through the first curled brown leaves of early autumn. Fiona did not suddenly with a touch of the Dream-Maker's hand understand the intricacies of math; and Calbert Seston did not seem to have any greater awareness of her existence. Her deeper, darker wishes, of course, did not come true—but then, neither did anybody else's.

Until Madeleine Herbrush's mother died two weeks after the Dream-Maker left town.

Madeleine, a pretty, reserved girl about four years older than Fiona, hadn't been at school that day, but Fiona hadn't particularly remarked on that. The schoolhouse was small enough to have only two rooms and two teachers. Just this fall, Fiona and Reed had been moved up to the room where the ten- to sixteen-year-olds were taught, and Madeleine was in this classroom, though she was often absent. Many of the students were. The farmers' children had duties at planting and harvest times; children from large families were frequently required to stay home and help their mothers take care of sick siblings or handle other chores. Damiana was a firm believer in education, and so she rarely succumbed to any arguments that Fiona or Reed put forward when they tried to convince her that they needed a day off from school. But they were among the few who could be found regularly in the schoolhouse.

It was only after she got home that Fiona heard the news. Reed had skipped alongside her down the road to home, then continued on toward Elminstra's to see if Greg was available to play. Elminstra herself was seated in the Safe-Keeper's kitchen, sipping tea. Damiana stood with her back against the cabinets, holding her own steaming mug. She wore that expression that Fiona liked least—the one where she tried to show no expression at all.

“What's going on?” Fiona said, because clearly something was.

Her mother tried a smile. “Hello, sweet girl. How was your day?”

“It was all right. I didn't do so badly in math. What's wrong?”

“Birdie Herbrush died last night. We're talking about what we might do for her family,” Damiana said.

Fiona was instantly sorry. “Madeleine's mother? Oh, the poor thing! Doesn't she have three little brothers and sisters? And a father that travels all the time?”

Damiana nodded tightly. Elminstra said, “Well, I hate to see anybody leave school before they're done, but she just might have to. Stay home and take care of those younger ones.”

“Her sister's thirteen,” Damiana said. “Old enough to be some help when their father's gone.”

Elminstra made a sympathetic noise. “Still. Four children and no mother. It's got to be a nightmare for Dale Herbrush.”

“Well, it's a dream come true for Madeleine—for all the children in that house,” Damiana said quietly. “Isadora's visit did some good after all.”

For a moment, no one in the kitchen spoke. Damiana had said the words so calmly that they didn't instantly register; and when they did, both Fiona and Elminstra stared at her.

“What do you mean,” Fiona said, “a dream come true?”

But Elminstra had figured it out more quickly than a ten-year-old would. “Oh, my,” said the older woman, shaking her head and gazing down at the table. “Oh, my lord. Once in a while I thought—and there would be those bruises—but I thought, well, children play. They fall, they get hurt. I suppose this was a secret you've been keeping a while?”

“Five years,” Damiana said.

“What secret? What are you talking about?” Fiona demanded, though she had already guessed part of the answer. Why would any child be happy to learn that her mother had died? Fiona shivered and hoped, just a little, that her mother would tell her this was one of those things she was too young to know. But her mother looked straight at her and replied.

“Madeleine's mother was a violent woman. She would go into rages and beat her children—Madeleine—all of them,” Damiana said. “And Madeleine was afraid to tell anyone, because her mother had threatened to do more harm to her brother and sisters if she did. One day Madeleine came home from school to find the other three children tied to the door and bleeding. She stayed so she could protect them—and she told no one for the same reason.”

Fiona felt her lips trembling as she tried to shape the words. “But she—she told you,” she whispered.

Damiana moved her shoulders in a gesture that might have been a shrug. “She had to tell someone,” she said. “And I could keep her secret safe.”

Elminstra looked up at last. “But you need not keep it any longer? She does not fear the pity they will all receive when the story is told?”

Damiana shook her head. “She said she wanted the world to know that her mother was a cruel woman.”

“She had a lot of friends here,” Elminstra said hesitantly. “You are the Safe-Keeper, of course, but will everyone believe you?”

Damiana smiled somewhat grimly. “If they do not, I will call Thomas to town. No one disputes him.”

Fiona had listened to these last few exchanges in silence, feeling like her head was about to burst open. “But how could you!” she finally exclaimed. “How could you keep such a secret?”

Her mother looked at her with eyes as shadowed as ever Thomas's could be. “Because that's what I do,” she said gently. “Keep secrets.”

“But not such dreadful ones!”

“Sometimes,” Damiana said, still in that gentle voice. “I know secrets that are worse than this one.”

“But you—but you—but things like that should be
told!
”

“Maybe,” her mother replied. “But not by me.”

Fiona shook her head. Inside, it felt like her brain was buzzing with a convocation of angry bees. “But surely Madeleine came to you because she thought you could help her—”