Authors: Tony Shillitoe
‘
I
counted more than fifty,’ Mykel announced between mouthfuls of mashed potato. ‘I counted lots.’
‘Fletcher Archer says that there are probably thirty thousand men in the big camp down the road,’ Daryn said with authority, his serious expression enhanced by the yellow lamplight. ‘He says they’ve drunk every single barrel of ale and almost all the whiskey, and that if we’re not careful they’ll eat every animal in the village.’
‘Hungry,’ Peter complained, banging his wooden spoon against the table.
‘Did you take the eggs and the chickens to Fletcher this afternoon?’ Dawn asked, while she scooped another dollop of mash into Peter’s bowl.
‘Yes,’ Meg replied. ‘And he gave me another promissory note.’
‘Fletcher Archer says those promissory notes aren’t worth anything,’ Daryn interrupted. ‘He says we’ll all be dead broke when the army goes to war.’
‘Fletcher Archer says lots of things,’ said Dawn.
‘Has anyone heard how long the army is going to be here?’ Meg asked.
‘Fletcher Archer says they’ll stay at least five days. He says they’ve trapped the Rebels and now they’re going to beat them.’
Meg looked at Daryn. ‘How come you know so much?’
‘He’s helping Fletcher and Saltsack Carter to take the supplies to the camp every morning,’ Dawn explained.
‘I wanted to help but I’m not allowed,’ said Mykel, glaring at his mother.
‘The ploughing’s finished anyway,’ said Daryn. ‘I’m not as slow as you,’ he added, pulling a face at Meg. ‘And you’re always going over to that old woman’s place.’
‘What’s the rat’s name again?’ Mykel asked.
‘Whisper,’ said Meg. ‘I hope you’re not annoying her.’
‘She’s funny,’ said Mykel. ‘She doesn’t like it in that cage.’
‘She stays in that cage,’ Dawn warned.
‘Sunfire likes her,’ said Mykel, grinning.
‘That dingo has gotten soft,’ Dawn complained. ‘You boys can wash tonight, and keep an eye on Peter. I want to talk to Meg.’ Daryn and Mykel raised an indignant chorus, but Dawn merely repeated her instruction and asked Meg to join her outside.
The evening air was crisp. The last vestiges of amber sunset were fading from the night sky and stars were glittering eagerly. In the distance, faint like a murmuring breeze, Meg could hear men singing. ‘It’s very still tonight,’ she noted.
‘And bitterly cold,’ Dawn replied, pulling her coat tight around her neck.
‘What did you want to talk about?’
‘What are you doing every morning at Emma’s?’
‘She’s teaching me to read.’
‘So? Emma believes you
do
have the Blessing?’
Meg had been avoiding this topic. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘She wants me to help her, that’s all.’
‘What’s reading got to do with helping her?’
Meg had to make an excuse. ‘She’s afraid of going blind and not being able to read her books. She thinks that if she teaches me how to read, I can read to her when she can’t see any more.’
‘That’s selfish. Surely she knows you have enough work to do without looking after her? She should have asked me first.’
‘I like doing it,’ Meg said. ‘She doesn’t have any family of her own.’
‘That’s by her own choice,’ Dawn said irritably.
Meg wondered at the unexpected bitterness in her mother’s tone, before she said, ‘Did you know old Samuel was related to us?’
The distant singing became raucous, and died away. Sunfire padded out of the darkness to press his muzzle against Meg’s hand. ‘Did Emma tell you this?’ Dawn asked.
‘Yes. She told me about Dad’s name change too. And why he didn’t want to know if I had the Blessing or not.’
‘What name change?’
‘Our real name isn’t Farmer. It’s meant to be Kushel.’
Dawn snorted. ‘Where in Jarudha’s name did Emma make that one up?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘Your father’s name was always Jon Farmer. He did tell me that old Samuel was his uncle when we were first married, but he said he wasn’t close to him. And he didn’t want you to know anything about the Blessing because he didn’t believe in it. He said it was an old family obsession.’
‘Then why are you so keen to find out if I have the Blessing or not?’
Dawn slapped her hands against her thighs, the report echoing across the farm. ‘Think about it, Meg.
If you have the Blessing, you could leave Summerbrook. You would be someone important. You’d probably even be received by Queen Sunset.’
Meg didn’t say anything after Dawn’s outburst. Why would she want to leave Summerbrook anyway? She knew everyone. Her family was here. ‘Do you miss Dad?’ she asked.
‘I miss him.’
‘Do you think he’ll ever come back?’
Dawn was silent. Then she said, ‘Do you know what I’ve been doing these past three days? I’ve been talking to every soldier I can, asking if they’ve seen your father, or knew Jon Farmer. I thought he might have even come here with the Queen’s army. No one seems to have heard of him. One man yesterday said he knew Jon Farmer, and he took me to him, but it wasn’t your father. It was someone else, someone not much older than Loaf Baker, who just happened to have the same name. I’ve been told he could be in any one of the other three Queen’s armies in the land. But if he’d known an army was coming to Summerbrook, he would have come with it. And he’s not here.’
Meg thought she heard her mother stifle a sob. She remembered her dream and what Emma had said, and knew her father wasn’t going to come back. She hugged her mother in the darkness.
Sunfire was growling softly. The noise came again. Tapping. At her window shutter. ‘Who’s there?’ she whispered.
‘Meg? It’s me.’
She hushed the dingo and ushered him off her bed. ‘Treasure?’ she asked at the window cautiously.
‘Yes. Open up.’
Meg opened the shutter. Moonlight lit Treasure’s features. He climbed through the window, and peered
out briefly before closing the shutter. ‘Sorry. I needed to see you,’ he whispered.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
‘I have to leave. The army is moving out tomorrow morning.’
‘You’re going with them?’
‘Not exactly. I have to leave now. I’ve some important scouting to do.’ His hand touched her cheek. ‘I couldn’t go without seeing you.’ And he was kissing her.
She pulled away. ‘Wait,’ she said, and climbed off her bed. He heard her door open and close again, and she was back on the bed, kneeling beside him. ‘Sunfire,’ she whispered. She sank into his arms, her warmth against his chilled skin, and his soft lips and stubble teased her cheek, her neck, her arms. His hands gently opened her nightgown, and a moment later she was pressed against him, feeling his strength course through her.
The dream was more vivid than ever. She saw the armour glinting in the early morning sunlight and she could feel the dew kissing her eyelashes and cheeks. War horns sang in a distant verdant forest and a flock of birds flashed into flight. She was standing with soldiers in the front rank of an army. She was holding a pike and she could feel its chill metal handle in her palm. She was afraid like she had never imagined possible. And she knew why. Treasure was going to die here. And then out of the forest came a warrior in shining blue armour, battleaxe rolling in his hands as he swept towards the rank where she stood. And the sky was filled with a storm of arrows. And then it was as if she’d taken flight and was just above the turmoil as the battle erupted, and she was watching a melee where a young soldier struggled to his feet just as the warrior in
blue armour turned on him, axe raised. And in an instant she was looking down at a dead man’s face, a handsome man with blond hair and odd-coloured blue and grey eyes.
Grey light filtered through cracks in her shutter. Feeling the morning chill, she reached for her green nightgown that was lying on the floor and slipped it over her head, and sat back against the wall by the window. Treasure was gone. Her heart stirred at the memory of his touch on her skin and his smell, and his lean, passionate desire, and she drew her fingers slowly across her lips, down her neck and across her breasts, catching fleeting sensations of Treasure’s caress. She looked at the impression in the pillow where his head had lain and saw a dark smear on the cream linen. Dried blood. Her heart sank. The dream flooded in. She opened her shutter and looked outside. Mist drifted between the trees and outbuildings. Treasure was gone.
She dressed quickly, and headed into the village with Sunfire. When she passed Archer’s Inn there were no horses tethered to the hitching rail, and the stables were empty. The mist was evaporating as she crossed the bridge, heading along the southern road towards the army camp. The soldiers were on the march. She hurried, hoping there was a chance that she might see Treasure; that he might have actually decided to go with the main force despite what he’d told her. She followed the road to the open plain where she knew the army had been encamped and stopped when she reached the site.
The entire army was in motion, dismantling tents, loading wagons, forming ranks and marching onto the road in relatively orderly fashion. Dogs barked. Men shouted brief orders. She had never imagined what
thirty thousand soldiers would look like gathered in one place. The organised chaotic movement spread across the entire space from the road to the edge of the surrounding bush, almost for as far as she could see, moving like a sluggish river. Riders, mounted above the general throng, pushed the men towards the road, and the bleached canvas tarpaulins of covered wagons heaved in the flow. The rising sun glinted on thousands of metal surfaces, reminding her of sunlight glittering on the river.
Hearing hoofbeats from behind, she stepped to the edge of the road, and three riders reined in beside her. A short, thin-faced bearded man leaned forward, and asked, ‘Can we help at all?’
‘No,’ she replied cautiously. ‘I—I just came to watch the army leave.’
‘As you wish,’ the rider said, straightening up in his saddle. He urged his mount forward, and his two companions followed, smiling at Meg as they left.
I should have asked if he knew Treasure
, she silently scolded herself.
But that would have been a silly question because Treasure works secretly as a scout.
‘So many,’ she muttered despairingly, gazing at the river of soldiers. ‘Even if he was here I’d never find him.’ She observed the departing army for a long time before she abandoned her hope.
At the path to Emma’s cottage, she diverted from her homeward course, and found the old woman sitting in a chair outside her door. ‘You struggle with coming on time,’ Emma said, shaking her head.
‘I watched the army leave,’ Meg explained. She checked Sunfire, who was snuffling inquisitively through Emma’s garden.
Emma held out a hand and waited for Meg to help her rise. ‘We’d better begin today’s lesson,’ she said. ‘Every minute is precious.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Meg asked, as she followed the old woman through into her cottage.
‘It’s the truth,’ Emma replied. ‘We have no idea how long we have been given to live, so it’s important that we live every moment to its fullest. Once a moment is gone, we can never get it back again.’
Meg tried to fathom the explanation, but while it seemed appealing she didn’t see its relevance. Her thoughts were on Treasure and her dream. When Emma opened the book on the table, Meg took a breath and said, ‘Is part of the Blessing being able to see what might happen?’
Emma’s brow furrowed and she gazed at the girl, before saying, ‘Explain why you ask that question.’
‘You asked me once if I ever had dreams,’ Meg replied. ‘Well, I do. I dream almost every night.’
‘Everybody dreams.’
‘But I dream strange things. I dream of battles and warriors. I’ve even dreamed of dragons. Lately, I’ve been dreaming about someone I know.’
‘What exactly?’
Meg described her dreams of the rider in blue armour, and how she saw the face of the dead soldier.
‘And you know who this soldier is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your father?’
‘No. It’s someone I know, but you don’t. He’s a scout for the Queen’s army.’
‘Where did you meet him?’
Meg described how Treasure first found her when Nightwind injured her in the storm, and how he’d begun to teach her to ride. ‘But he left last night to go ahead of the army because that’s what he does. I wanted to warn him about the rider in blue armour, but I couldn’t find him.’
‘What other dreams have you had?’ Emma inquired, as she sat on a stool beside Meg.
Meg described the dreams of her father falling in battle, and of her grandchildren on the battlements of a city wall, and of the warrior with a sword of flame fighting a dragon. ‘I don’t know why I dream these things,’ she said. ‘I can’t even imagine such things when I’m awake, but they come in my dreams, and sometimes they feel as if I wasn’t asleep or dreaming at all.’
‘Have the dreams always been so clear?’
Meg went to answer immediately, but she paused to reflect on her experiences. Finally, she said, ‘No. They’ve only become clearer since—since you gave me the amber necklet.’ She saw Emma’s expression change and asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
Emma shook her head. ‘Nothing is wrong.’
‘But I’m scared. Treasure is going to die, and if that’s true, then if I can warn him I might be able to save him.’
Emma leaned back in her chair and scratched her cheek. ‘Have you had any dreams before now that have come true?’
Meg nodded. ‘I dreamed that a boy was drowning in the river.’
Emma’s face remained implacable. ‘Woodchip Treecutter?’
‘I didn’t realise at the time that he was the one in my dream.’
‘You knew about Samuel’s prediction though?’
‘No. Not until after, when people started saying that Samuel had foreseen Woodchip’s death. That’s when I realised I’d dreamed it too.’
‘Any other dreams?’ Emma asked.
‘I dreamed that the wool was falling off the sheep, and then there was that disease that killed all the sheep not long after.’
‘Three years ago. Yes, I remember.’ Emma looked out of the window at the boughs of a wattle tree that grew in her garden. ‘Samuel was a very gifted man,’ she muttered, and returned her attention to Meg. ‘You have a lot to learn, girl, and we need to hurry.’