Dark Mist Rising (5 page)

Evidently Maggie was not reminded of Cecilia, for which I was grateful. She said, ‘I've seen a cat with eyes that colour, but never a dog. You could call him Greenie.'

It was the stupidest name I'd ever heard. ‘No, I don't think so. It doesn't ... fit him.'

‘Captain?'

‘No.'

‘Rex?'

‘No.'

‘Hunter?'

‘No.'

‘Bandit?'

‘No.'

‘Are you saying no because you don't like those names or because I'm the one suggesting them?'

I didn't answer her right away. A strange sensation rose in my mind, as if a dream had flitted lightly through my skull and then dissolved like smoke in a strong breeze. I said slowly, ‘Shadow. His name is Shadow.'

The dog looked up at me. His eyes were clear green water.

‘That's a fine name,' Maggie said warmly. ‘And by coincidence it's naming that I wish to talk to you about. I think we should choose a name for the inn.'

‘A name?'

‘Yes. And have a sign painted and hung.'

‘A sign?'

‘So people will know where they've come to.'

Nearly all our custom was local folk, who knew very well where they'd come to because this was the only inn for five miles around. All at once I noticed things in the taproom that I had scarcely paid attention to before: a tankard of daisies on the other trestle table, a small bit of weaving hung on one wall, a carved wooden rabbit on the broad windowsill – where had Maggie got that? And did all women feel this need to nest, to transform what had been perfectly adequate before?

She gazed at me with hopeful, shining eyes in which I nonetheless saw something determined, even ruthless. But then if she had not had those qualities, she could not have rescued me from death in the last days of Queen Caroline's reign. I could not deny her a sign for the inn, no matter how much I disliked the notion. And why did I even dislike it? I didn't know.

‘That's a good idea,' I said with as much enthusiasm as I could force. ‘What shall we call the inn?'

‘I thought perhaps the Red Boar.' She pointed at the weaving, which, I now saw, depicted a boar stitched in red wool.

‘Fine.'

‘Unless you prefer something else.'

‘No, that's fine.'

‘If you prefer something else, Peter, just say so.'

‘It's fine!'
Now leave off about it!

‘Good. Then let me show you something.' She went into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a wooden board painted with a red boar and the words ‘Red Boar' written below.

I can read. Maggie taught me. I recognized her bold letters from the patient instruction she'd given me on winter afternoons. She had had this sign ready before we even discussed it.

She said, ‘Jee painted the picture. I didn't know he could do so well; nor did he. Do you think you can make a bracket and hang it over the door?'

‘Yes.'

‘Today?'

‘Yes.'

‘This morning?'

‘Yes, yes, yes!'

Maggie is not without perception. She said quietly, ‘You think I'm pushing you.'

She
was
pushing me. But it wasn't Maggie that was wrong. I was wrong, in some deep way I didn't understand. This life was wrong.

‘I'm sorry, Maggie,' I said, and I meant it. ‘It's a perfect sign, and I'll hang it this morning.' I walked around the table and did something I rarely do: I kissed the top of her head. She went still. Before she could desire – ask for, compel, quarrel over – anything more, I was out the door, Shadow at my heels.

Piss pots!
I hadn't eaten more than a few bites of her elaborate breakfast.

I took the sheep to their usual pasture, first tying up Shadow in the stable yard. Ten minutes after we left, Shadow came bounding after me, his rope broken in two. I had not realized the dog was so strong. Immediately the sheep began to make shrill, terrified noises.

‘You're a bad dog,' I told Shadow, who wagged his tail.

I tied him to a tree by what was left of his rope and took the sheep far enough away that they stopped bleating. A few minutes later Shadow broke his rope and raced after us. The younger ewe broke away, and both of us ran after her, leaving the others bawling behind. I tripped over a bayroot. Shadow caught the ewe by leaping on its back.

‘No! Shadow, no!' He would maul the sheep, kill it, eat it – I stumbled to my feet.

But the dog had not hurt the ewe. He stood casually beside her, and every time the stupid animal moved, Shadow moved to block her escape. I blinked. I had seen dogs herd sheep before, but not Shadow's breed (whatever that was). And he had not exhibited this behaviour yesterday.

The sheep still bleated and wailed. In this state of mind – if the silly things even have minds – they were not going to feed. I sighed, led the errant ewe back to the others, slung her lamb over my shoulders and started back to the inn. The rest of my small hungry flock followed. Another futile excursion. And what awaited me seemed equally futile. Muck out the chicken yard. Weed the kitchen garden. Hang the new sign. Help with the laundry.

Only it did not happen that way. I entered the inn through the kitchen. Maggie wasn't there. She and Jee stood in the taproom, both staring at the hearth. Maggie pointed. A rock sat on the cold stones of the empty hearth.

‘It ... it came down the chimney,' Maggie whispered. Her face had gone white as her smock. ‘A moment ago. And ... there was no one on the roof.'

Jee clutched at Maggie's skirts, as if he were five years old instead of ten.

Gingerly I approached the rock. It was a perfect disc, a full hand-span across and flat on top and bottom, heavy on my one palm. What I could see was featureless, an even grey, but as I picked it up I saw flecks of green in the stone, malachite or chrysoprase. I turned the stone over. On the other side, as flat as the first, the green flecks formed letters, not bonded on but an integral part of the rock itself. Maggie, reading the impossible lettering over my shoulder, gasped.

DANGER – LEAVE NOW – MC

Maggie said, ‘It's from ... from ...'

‘Yes. Jee, were you outside when this stone fell down the chimney?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you see?'

‘Naught.' The boy touched each of his eyes and squeezed them shut, the country folks' charm against witches. And yet he knew what I was.

‘Nothing?' I said. ‘Think hard, Jee!'

‘Naught. Except ...'

‘What?'

‘There be a hawk, circling high up.'

I hefted the stone – too heavy for a hawk to carry, especially ‘high up'.

Maggie had recovered from her shakiness. She had always respected Mother Chilton, the ‘great apothecary', and now her fear of Mother Chilton's message catapulted Maggie into what was most natural to her, getting things done.

‘We can leave within the hour, Peter. I'll pack food. Jee, fill that old water bag from the cupboard under the stairs, and mind that you rinse it out three times first. Then roll up our winter cloaks as tight as you can and bind them with the string from the peg in the kitchen. Peter, you should— Oh, what about the animals? I don't think we can take them with us, although maybe if you kill a chicken – no, two – I'm sure there's time ...'

I put my one hand on her shoulder and turned her to face me. No avoiding this battle. As Jee ran off to do Maggie's bidding, I took a deep breath.

But she was there first. ‘No, Roger,' she said quietly, using my true name. ‘You can't leave me behind. Nor Jee, either. There are savages in that army who will recognize me. They captured me once before in order to get to you, remember? If the Young Chieftain is as smart as you say he is, then he will use those men again. I am in as much danger as you. And so is Jee. You can't leave us behind, even though—' and being Maggie, she could not leave off the last phrase ‘—even though you want to.'

Yet last night she had argued that none of us would be recognized. Still, she was right on both of today's points. The Young Chieftain would use her, as his father had, to get to me. And I wanted to leave her and Jee behind.

Her face had the crumpled, defiant look it got whenever we alluded to our living arrangements. Not for the first time, I wished that Maggie did not feel so compelled to name hard truths. I capitulated – for now.

‘Maggie, you said yourself that we have little time. We are all three going, and within the hour. Pack the food and I'll kill the chickens. We must be away before anyone comes to the inn.'

She nodded vigorously and sped into the kitchen, where I could hear the rattle of pots and slamming of keeping-box covers. I strode outside, caught two chickens, killed and blooded them. All I could do for the sheep was open the door to their shed and hope that they would wander to pasture and into some farmer's flock, or that an inn patron would find us all gone and take them, along with the rest of the chickens.

Within the half-hour we had left the inn, slipping into the wooded slope behind the cottage. Shadow followed. When we were deep enough into the woods to not be seen, Jee stopped and said, ‘Where be we going?'

A reasonable question. The child looked at me expectantly, and with some pride. Jee, snarer of rabbits and gatherer of nuts and berries, knew the countryside for miles around. Wherever I said we were going, Jee knew he could guide us there.

I hoped that Maggie had exhausted her week's supply of hurt outrage. But I doubted it. I said, ‘We head towards the capital, Jee. But not along the river.' Along the river ran roads, villages, armies.

Maggie said, ‘Towards
Glory
? But that's where the savage army will go, to claim the princess!'

‘We're not going into Glory, Maggie. Just near it.'

‘Now she was suspicious. ‘Near it where?'

There was no help for it. I wouldn't lie to her. ‘Tanwell.'

‘You ... you want to leave me and Jee with my sister.'

I said nothing.

‘My miserable piss pot of a sister, who will use me like a slavey and Jee like a dog.'

At the word dog, Shadow wagged his tail.

‘No,' Maggie said.

Despite myself, I was impressed. No arguing, no crumpled face, no hurt tears. Just a simple no, smooth and hard as the stone that had inexplicably fallen down my chimney. I said nothing.

‘We can travel south, staying in hills and woods,' Maggie said, ‘and still reach the Unclaimed Lands by a longer route. Settle in some rough farming village on the border between The Queendom and the Unclaimed Lands – that would be safest. We can get work as labourers until we can start over. Jee, lead on.'

Jee looked from Maggie to me and back again. Silently he picked up his pack and led off. Maggie followed him, I followed her, and Shadow followed me. For now.

We spoke only of the journey, never of the reason for it. When Jee went into a village to buy bread and cheese, he brought back little news. These remote villages heard even less than Applebridge, which at least had travellers along the river. No one mentioned an army of savages invading The Queendom, and neither did we talk of it among ourselves. It was almost as if that fortnight was detached from the rest of the world, holding the three of us in a moving bubble, transparent and softly coloured as the soap bubbles a child will make on wash day. There was no rain, no high winds, no storms. The nights were clear and warm, scented with wild thyme and woodland flowers. I did not dream. We had, however falsely, a kind of gentle peace.

The Queendom is a vast plain, circled to north, west and south by mountains and to the east by the sea. The northern mountains are little more than hills; beyond them lies the queendom of Isabella, kin by marriage to little Princess Stephanie. The Western Mountains are high and jagged. To the south lay neither hills nor mountains but a wild country all its own: high plateaux and deep ravines and tiny valleys, rough and infertile, inhabited only by hard-scrabble farmers and hunters who barely wrested a living from the grudging earth. The Unclaimed Lands. Jee had been born there.

And beyond the Unclaimed Lands lay Soulvine Moor.