Urchin and the Heartstone (21 page)

In the tower, Arran arranged and rearranged the chamber she shared with Padra by the Spring Gate. Restlessly she aired blankets and smoothed them over fresh heaps of moss and leaves, sprinkled the floor with rosemary, and swept ash from the hearth. When she had finished with their own chamber, she would open the door of the room next to it, which, this autumn, was always empty. But she liked to keep it dusted, with fresh moss in the bed and kindling in the grate, even though it hurt her to see the room always empty, and Urchin’s bed not slept in. She wanted it to be ready for his coming home.

In the workrooms, skeins of wool and reels of thread were heaped up on shelves. Rolls of canvas and fabrics leaned against the walls, rough homespun cloth the color of stone and rich scarlet and purple velvets. On the grimmest days, when autumn rains fell relentlessly and it was hard to keep hoping that Urchin and Juniper would come back safely, those brightly colored wools and satin ribbons gleaming like jewels seemed the only cheerful things on the island. Needle, Thripple, and the other workroom animals stitched and painted faithfully, finding work to do although everything for the coronation had been finished long ago. On the days when she felt most forlorn, Needle would sort out the ribbons because playing with the colors seemed to cheer her up a little.

Docken was an excellent tower hedgehog, but he looked as if he belonged in the wood even when he stood faithfully to attention at the Throne Room door. However, Gorsen seemed at home absolutely anywhere, on duty in the Throne Room, sharing hot cordials with the hedgehogs on night patrol, or reminding Needle not to play at the caves. Gorsen, Lumberen, and the rest of the Hedgehog Host would gather together and tell old stories of Mistmantle kings, usually hedgehogs. They often attracted young female hedgehogs, who decorated their spines with beech leaves and sat gazing at Gorsen.

“About time we got Gorgeous Gorsen married off,” observed Mother Huggen. “There’s no getting any sense out of the girls these days. If they’re not watching him, they’re staring at their own faces in the pools, turning this way and that and preening their prickles. And don’t tell me he hasn’t noticed, because he has.”

Delightful young female squirrels still turned up at the tower, their fur scented and gleaming, often carrying messages from Apple to the king. All were pleasant, many were bright and gifted, some were beautiful. King Crispin always received them politely, but that was all. Padra, reporting to the Throne Room after a swim on the first breath-misting morning of the season, saw Sepia’s sisters, Lichen and Auburn, curtsying their way out of the Throne Room.

“There can’t be many left,” Padra observed when they had gone. “You shouldn’t be so gallant about it, Crispin, it only encourages them.” He looked down from the window. “There’s Needle and Sepia trotting down to the woods. Give those two half a chance and they’ll rule the island. I wonder what they’re up to now?”

“Singing, I should think,” said Crispin. “According to her sisters, Sepia’s training a choir. She’s teaching them a new song to sing for Urchin when he gets back.”

Where rocky ground sloped away from the tower, bushes sprawled down to the woods. Their branches were wild and trailing, and at this time of year, gold and scarlet mixed with the deep green. Two hushed voices whispered from the undergrowth.

“I
can’t
!” whispered Sepia.

“Why not?” Needle whispered back.

“Because it’s a thornbush!” said Sepia. “I’m not hiding under a thornbush! It’s all right for hedgehogs.”

Needle tried not to sigh dramatically, but she felt like it. Urchin wouldn’t have complained about a thornbush. She had promised to help with Sepia’s choir, and in return Sepia had offered to help her find out exactly what Gleaner was up to. Needle wasn’t at all convinced that she could sing—whatever Sepia said—but she had agreed, though it meant she had to keep a lot of little squirrels in order when she’d rather be curled up with her own small brother. It was for Sepia’s sake, and Urchin’s. But for the moment it was much more important to find out what Gleaner was doing, and whether she was meeting a spy from Whitewings. And here was Sepia, complaining about a pleasantly dark, cool hiding place under a perfectly good thornbush.

“I’d be much better hidden in a tree,” whispered Sepia.

“The leaves are falling,” said Needle. “You wouldn’t be hidden at all.”

“Yes, I would, because lots of leaves are still up and they’re squirrel-colored,” said Sepia. “There’s something sharp sticking into my paw.”

“That’ll be me, sorry,” said Needle.

“No, it’s a bramble,” said Sepia, and hopped away to run up a tree trunk before Needle could argue. Needle was peering up into the branches, trying to see exactly where Sepia had gone, when the rustling of leaves nearby made her crouch in absolute stillness, her bright, black eyes watching the forest floor as Gleaner ran into sight.

She came rather slowly with a lopsided tilt, carrying something in one front paw. It was affecting her balance and slowing her down, but in her face there was fierce determination. Whatever she planned, nothing would prevent her from carrying it out. She paused to look back along the way she had come, glanced around in all directions without seeing Needle, then hopped under the twisted thornbushes called the Tangletwigs.

Keeping a distance, Needle trundled after her. Thorns tugged her spines in a way that didn’t hurt but was furiously irritating. When she glanced up, she saw Sepia springing lightly from one treetop to another. That was annoying, too. She had expected Gleaner to jump over the bushes, being a squirrel, but she was threading her way underneath, and Needle, huddling her spines close to her body, shuffled on after her and found the path leading under the Tangletwigs was well worn. Gleaner must come this way frequently.

She had imagined Gleaner meeting a Whitewings spy. What if it wasn’t just one? There might be a whole pack of them, waiting at the heart of the Tangletwigs, plotting against the king! Inside her spines, Needle tingled with fear. Well, she’d come this far. If she was caught, Sepia could run away and raise the alarm. She hurried on, biting her lip when a thorn caught in her paws, squeezing under impossibly low branches, running farther into a place completely unknown to her, until she found herself in the open so suddenly that she had to shrink quickly under the nearest bush and hope that she hadn’t been seen.

Following Gleaner had brought her to a clearing of uneven, mossy ground with a small cairn of stones in its center. Dead flowers lay before it, and something gleamed among them. Needle couldn’t see what it was, but she had seen enough to know what the cairn must be. Gleaner was visiting a grave. Needle shrank back, watching.

Gleaner trotted to the cairn, laid down the parcel she carried—it was something wrapped in leaves—and with her paws on the cairn, pressed her cheek against the stones as if she wanted to hug them. With a sniff she sat back, rubbing tears from her face.

That moment of tenderness was soon over. Gleaner scrabbled at the moss, tidying away dead flowers and shriveled berries, and opening her parcel of leaves to reveal fresh rowans, autumn daisies, and oak leaves. She arranged them fussily, talking to herself all the time. Burning with curiosity, Needle inched forward.

“That’s better, my lady,” Gleaner was saying. “You’re all nice now. I’ve brought you fresh flowers and tidied up.” She picked up the gleaming object, and Needle thought, though she couldn’t be sure, that it might be a badly dented bracelet. “Let me polish up your bracelet, my lady.”

Needle crept nearer. Gleaner rubbed the bracelet hard on her fur, held it in both paws, and pressed it against her chest.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been for a while, my lady,” she said. “You know how it is, this time of year, winter coming. I’ve brought you something special, though it’s only your due.”

From the parcel of leaves she lifted something else that glittered. As Needle stretched forward to see, Gleaner looked up.

“You!” she cried tearfully. “What are you doing here? Spiky, flea-bitten, pincushion!”

With a flash of fur and outstretched claws, she sprang at Needle, who tucked in her head and curled up. There was a squeal of “Ow!” from Gleaner as she struck out, then Sepia’s calming voice.

“Sh, sh,” Sepia was saying to Gleaner. “We didn’t mean any harm. We were worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” snapped Gleaner, nursing a prickled paw. “Go away.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll go,” soothed Sepia as Needle uncurled. “But I don’t like to leave you so unhappy.”

Gleaner tilted her chin proudly. “My Lady Aspen should have been buried in the tower vault with the queen,” she said. “She was the queen’s best friend, and she was beautiful. Whatever Captain Husk did, it wasn’t my lady’s fault. She was buried out here in the Tangletwigs, and who comes to visit her grave? I do. I’m the only one who cares about her. I won’t forget all about her, like everyone else!”

She bent her head over her paws and rubbed her eyes, but when Sepia reached out a paw she pushed her away.

“Go away!” she snarled tearfully. “This is my queen’s place!”

“Your
queen
?” said Needle, and glanced again at the grave, where something sparkled with a glint of gold thread.

“My
queen
,” insisted Gleaner, “and yours. You didn’t know that, did you?” She lifted the bright object so that Needle and Sepia saw it at last. Green stems and rowans were woven with gold and silver threads into a crown—a lopsided crown, but made with great care.

“It’s beautiful, Gleaner,” said Sepia. “Did you make it yourself?”

Gleaner seemed a little soothed. “Of course I did,” she said. “Nobody else would, because nobody else ever knew she was a queen.” With all the dignity she could gather, she placed the crown on top of the stones, stepped back as if paying her respects, then turned to them with a smile of triumph.

“You think you know it all,” she said. “You and your hunt for the Heartstone. I can tell you something about the Heartstone, something you didn’t know, cleverclaws. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Oh, yes, please,” said Sepia.

“It was one morning shortly before the Spring Festival,” said Gleaner haughtily. “I’d polished my lady’s jewelry and I was bringing it back to her, but when I knocked I didn’t get an answer, so I opened the door anyway, to go and put it all away, but there she was, and she hadn’t heard me. She was sitting on the little chair by the fire, looking at something in her paw. And the thing in her paw was a very pretty pinkish stone with gold in it, sort of heart-shaped. I didn’t know then what it was. Then…” She widened her eyes and slowed down. “I swear to you that it lay on her paw perfectly still as anything could be, all that time I was watching. It was such a beautiful sight that I forgot to tell her I was there.”

Needle opened her mouth to comment and shut it again when Sepia stepped on her paw.

“And then what happened?” asked Sepia.

“Then she looked up and saw me and wasn’t a bit cross, she just smiled, sweet as ever,” said Gleaner. “She popped the stone into a little bag and never mentioned it again. But when you started talking about the Heartstone going missing, when the tower animals were all strutting about telling us what it looked like, I knew that was what I’d seen in my lady’s paw. I saw it with my own eyes, how still it lay on her paw. I know what that means,” she finished triumphantly. “It means she was the true queen of Mistmantle.”

Sepia pressed Needle’s paw as a warning to stay quiet. “Thank you so much for telling us,” she said. “Do you know what Lady Aspen did with it after that?”

“I never saw it again,” said Gleaner. “Suppose it might be in her chamber, though nobody would think to look in there, would they?”

“Oh, but that’s where—” began Needle, and stopped as Sepia pressed harder on her paw.

“Where what?” asked Gleaner. A suspicious light had come into her eye. “What have they done with it?”

“Nothing!” said Sepia.

“Nothing?” repeated Gleaner. Her eyes gleamed.

“Well, the thing is,” said Sepia carefully, “it’s such a lovely room, and you and Lady Aspen kept it so beautifully, they only use it for very special guests.”

“What guests?” demanded Gleaner. “That lot from Whitewings?”

“Only for the Lord Ambassador himself,” said Needle. “Lord Treeth. So—”

“Lord Treeth?” spat Gleaner. “He throws things around and breaks them! Everybody knows that!”

“But I’m sure they’re not—” began Needle, but Gleaner elbowed her way past and sprang away through the bushes.

“Oh, dear,” said Sepia.

“Let her get on with it,” said Needle. “She can go and storm about it if she wants to. There’s no point in trying to keep the truth from her. Lord Treeth is in Aspen’s old room and that’s that. Brother Fir’s always telling us we should learn from our past. We shouldn’t let her go on thinking Aspen was so good and sweet, and as for holding the Heartstone…”

“Yes,” said Sepia. “We haven’t found the Heartstone, but now we know who made the fake one. Aspen had probably just finished smoothing it down, and was admiring it when Gleaner saw her. We should go and tell the king.”