Dark Mist Rising (2 page)

Where had such visitors come from, and what had driven them to travel on a night lit only by the thinnest of crescent moons?

'Good morrow,' I said to the youth. 'I am—'

He snapped something I could not understand through his thick, high-pitched accent.

'What?' I said.

This time I caught enough words. 'Be ... halfwit? Tell ... hurry ... My lady's breakfast!'

Hot words rose to my lips: I was the proprietor of this inn and he but a stable boy! But before I could lambaste him, the cottage door opened and Maggie rushed out.

'Peter! I need that lamb butchered now if I'm to have stew for noon dinner! They leave by mid-afternoon!'

She stood with her hands on her hips, her fair curls drooping from under her cap, kitchen heat filming her forehead with sweat. A white apron covered a trim grey gown of her own making. Maggie will wear grey or red or brown, but never green nor blue, the colours of the two queens for whom she had been a kitchen maid. Her foot in its neat leather boot tapped on the ground. She looked pretty, and determined and very competent: Maggie as master and commander.

As always, this brought out in me a desire to resist, to not be ordered about. All my life I had been ordered about: by my stepfather, by a head laundress, by a queen. In my own cottage I would not be ordered and scolded.

'In good time,' I said testily to Maggie. 'I'm talking to this man here.'

The boy ignored me and went on feeding the mules.

'Peter, we must have—'

'In good time!'

Jee appeared at the door of the cottage. 'Maggie, ye maun come! They want—'

I didn't wait to hear what they wanted. Already my stupid fit of pique had passed. Maggie was working hard for both of us; the travellers were obviously rich and would pay us well; I was a fool to not do as I was told. I started back towards the sheep shed.

But then an old woman emerged from the door in the back of the caravan. She stumbled on the one step and I leaped forward to catch her. Her considerable bulk lurched against me and we both fell to the ground, me underneath. It was like being crushed by a very large, very dense mattress. 'Thank you!' she cried, in that same strange accent.

'Are you hurt, mistress?'

'No, but ... Catch my breath, lad ...'

I led her to the wooden bench in front of the cottage. She plopped heavily down. And then she began speaking.

It is old women who are most willing to talk to me. And once again everything in my world changed.

‘Are you certain you are not hurt, mistress?'

‘I ... am fine ... well-padded ... Just let me ...'

‘I can bring some water. Or ale.'

‘W ... wine?'

‘No.' Wine was too grand for the inn.

‘Then ... no.' Her breathing slowed.

‘I am Peter Forest, proprietor of this inn. Where do you come from, mistress?'

To my surprise, she groaned. ‘Gone! All gone!' She covered her eyes with her hands.

‘Gone? What's gone?'

A torrent of words gushed from her, of which I caught every third word. ‘Manor ... fire ... baby ... my lady ... all that be left ... baby ...'

I put a reassuring hand – my only hand – on her arm. ‘A fire? There was a fire in your lady's manor house?'

‘No!' And again the spill of anguished words. This time I caught only three. ‘Destroyed ... army ... savages.'

Savages. A savage army.

I seized her arm so hard that the woman not only jerked her whole massive body, she also actually stopped talking. ‘An army? Of savage warriors in fur tunics? And you come from the west?'

‘Yes, lad
. Don't!'

I let her go. She stood up shakily from the bench, glaring at me, and I stood too.

‘I'm sorry, mistress. Your news startled me. You are ... you are sure? A savage army is marching from the west, from over the mountains, and destroying settlements on their way? Do you know who they are?'

She shook her head, still glaring, until a sudden high wail came from the caravan. A baby. The old woman waddled away. Once more I grabbed her with my good hand.

‘Please, mistress, just one more question and—' But she shook me off and climbed into the caravan, closing its door behind her. I had a glimpse of a dim interior rich with rugs and embroidered pillows and a carved wooden cradle.

The nursemaid had not told me whose army marched from the west. But I knew.

For a long moment I stared at the closed door of the caravan, not seeing it nor anything else in the stableyard. Seeing only the past. Then my vision cleared and I pushed open the door to the inn and went inside.

Our taproom is small, with two long trestle tables neatly filling the space between hearth and door. Two men sat there. This fine summer morning no fire burned in the hearth, although of course there was one in the kitchen behind, and the two windows stood open to the light breeze. A narrow staircase led to the rooms above. A girl descended the staircase, one hand steadying herself against the wall, as if she might fall. The younger of the two men, both richly dressed in velvets creased and soiled from hard travel, jumped up from the table to help her.

‘Joanna! Be careful!'

‘I'm fine.' She smiled at him, a tremulous smile, full of love. Their accent was easier for me to understand than were the servants' outside. The girl was plain of face and very thin, dressed in a brocade gown worn too loose at waist and belly. She might have been pregnant, but I guessed instead that she had very recently given birth and had not yet fully recovered. Her young husband guided her to the table, where the older man sat tucking in to Maggie's bread, cheese and ale.

The young man said, ‘Is that all there is? Joanna can't eat that!'

Joanna quavered, ‘I could try some bread.' Sweat glis-tened on the woman's pale forehead, although the room was not warm. Her eyes shone too brightly.

The young man said desperately, ‘The innkeeper's wife promised us spring lamb. You could eat that, couldn't you, sweetheart? It's so tender. It would slide right down, and give you strength.'

‘Yes, Harry.' Maintaining her sweet smile was costing her tremendous effort. All at once she clutched the edge of the table. ‘If I could just step outside for a moment ...'

Harry helped her outside. The older man looked at me. ‘Go ask if—'

‘I am Peter Forest, the proprietor of this inn,' I said, as I have said so many times before, never without faint disbelief. He took me for a servant, and so I often feel.

‘I beg your pardon, sir. Lord Carush Spenlow. When will the lamb stew be ready? We must get back on the road as soon as possible.'

The lamb stew was still on the hoof. I said with as much authority as I could muster, ‘Stew takes time, my lord. And I was told that you need to rest both yourselves and your mules at least half a day.'

‘True, true.' Lord Carush stood, his sword clanking against the side of the table. He looked around, sat down again, stared at his bread and cheese. Abruptly he blurted, ‘My daughter-in-law is not well. Is there an apothecary in the village?'

‘No, I am afraid not.'

‘Where is the closest physician?'

‘Probably Morsebury, two days' hard ride east.'

‘Have you a midwife?'

‘Yes. Mistress Johns. She is very skilled.'

‘Send for her at once, please.'

‘Yes, my lord.'

We looked at each other. Shadows moved behind his eyes. He knew, as did I, that if Lady Joanna had childbed fever, there was precious little even the most skilled midwife could do for her, nor a physician either. Young Harry Spenlow would be a widower soon enough, and the baby in the gilded caravan would be motherless. I said, ‘Sir, you are travelling hard by night. What news from the west?'

‘You haven't heard? I've tried to tell everyone we met along the way. There is an army marching over the mountains. They are pillaging estates as they go, slaughtering our animals for food, carrying off our goods, burning our manors. An army of savages – they scarcely look human in their furs and feathers – and they have terrible weapons they call
guns
. The weapons shoot bits of metal with great speed and force. Sir, you have never seen anything like it, or like them!'

Yes. I had.

Lord Carush continued, ‘They burned my manor to the ground, and we barely escaped with our lives. My unfortunate cook ... The savages burned out my neighbours as well, or so I heard, although we mountain nobles live far apart and only runners informed me. But don't look like that, sir. Everything I've heard says that the savages are not burning villages, nor harming common people. Only the nobility.'

‘Why?'

He shrugged with the frustrated helplessness of a man used to having his orders obeyed. ‘Perhaps they are all mad, or halfwits. But more likely they intend to send a warning to the palace: “We will destroy your nobility until we get what we want.”'

‘And what is that?' My heart had begun a slow thud, painful as stones being dropped on my chest one by one by one.

The provincial lord was becoming impatient with talking to a country innkeeper as if to an equal. But he answered me. ‘Don't you know? The savages were promised the Princess Stephanie in marriage to their chieftain's son. Three years ago, before Queen Caroline was burned for a witch. Now they are coming for the princess. The army is led by Lord Solek's son, the Young Chieftain.'

‘But—'

‘Please see to the lamb stew!'

‘Yes, my lord.' I turned to stumble back to the sheep shed, and Carush Spenlow's last words caught me as I walked out into the sunlight. Their tone was apologetic; he regretted his rudeness to me. He was a good man.

‘The runner from my neighbour's manor said, too, that the savages seek someone else besides the princess. They questioned servants, including my cook. Who knew nothing, of course. Brutes!'

My heart stopped all motion.

‘Who ... who do they ...'

Lord Carush shook his head. ‘I don't know. Now, please, that lamb stew.'

‘That girl, Lady Joanna, will die,' Mistress Johns said.

‘There was nothing I could do.'

Maggie nodded. She had tidied her hair and changed her apron. She wore her master-and-commander look. I tried to avoid looking at her.

‘'Tis a pity, really,' Mistress Johns said. ‘She seemed a nice enough little thing. No strength, though. Not made to bear children. Now you, Maggie, you could bear a dozen and still run the inn besides.'

I ate faster, my eyes on my plate.

Mistress Johns chewed regretfully on her last chunk of lamb and smacked her lips. ‘You're a fine cook, Maggie, my girl. I daresay you could cook for such as that there lord. Did you know his own cook died on the journey here?'

‘No,' Maggie said. She stacked the empty plates.

‘Just beyond Applebridge, at Two Forks. They paid the Smallings to bury the poor woman – no time to do so themselves, with poor Lady Joanna so ill.'

‘What did the cook die of?'

‘Burns. In the fire she tried to save her special spices.

All the way from Benilles, they was.'

Maggie made a face. I knew she had seen too much of death and danger to risk a life for spices, no matter how exotic or expensive they be.

‘But the cook was old,' Mistress Johns added, with the comfortable tone of one who had barely reached middle age. ‘I daresay her time would have come soon anyway. We all must go eventually, and that is no more than stone truth.'

Jee looked up. Recently Maggie had cut his hair, and short soft strands blew in the fresh breeze from the open door. His dark eyes turned to Maggie, whom he wor-shipped. And with good reason: she had rescued him from hunger and poverty and a father who beat him. He said, ‘Maggie, be we fleeing the savage army, like those travellers?'

‘No,' Maggie said.

‘Yes,' I said.

Mistress Johns looked from one of us to the other. She drained her mug of ale. ‘Well, I am not leaving Applebridge. My cousin at Starbury, she heard from
her
sister-in-law at Buckhurst, who had it direct from a villager where the savage army passed through, that the western warriors be not harming country people. Didn't touch so much as a hair on any virgin's head, not so much as a single hair. No burning, no thievery. It's just the nobility they're revenging themselves on. Nothing to do with us.'