Clive considered this prying person to have taken an unwarranted interest in them, not liking the idea. “When you think we ought to go?”
“Oh, long about dusk I guess.” Willum swiveled his shoulders one at a time, stretching before bending to his task once more. “After supper, when nobody’ll be lookin’ for us for a while.”
They went on with their work, the stalls slowly forming under their hands, enough of them for a considerable number of horses, Willum thought. More than this place looked like it needed, which was interesting. Where was all this new business going to come from? Somebody had to be figuring on increased traffic coming from somewhere, going somewhere else. Such as, perhaps, traffic between Ghastain and Woldsgard, once Woldsgard was taken over by the duchess and passed on to the king, if that was what all those soldiers were off to see to.
As the sun dropped over the hill, they stowed their tools and headed for the door, only to stop on the threshold, Willum muttering under his breath.
“Whatsay?” asked Clive from behind him.
“There he is! I be dinged.”
“Who is?”
“Loppy. On a horse, trottin’ off purty as pie, same direction the wagons went. Now that’s a puzzle. Do we head out now, like we planned, or do we wait until he gets back and see what he tells to who?”
“Or maybe stop his telling anybody.”
Willum puckered his forehead and thought hard. “If Precious Wind was here, she’d say accurate information is usual more important than what’s it . . . I allus forget. Arbitroosy what?”
“Ar-bi-tra-ry ex-er-cise of un-neces-sary belli-cos-it-y,” chanted Clive in march tempo.
“How’d you remember that?”
“Her and Bear, they both say it all the time.”
“Well, and they do, that’s right. So, we just wait and see what happens when that Loppy gets back.”
“We could, but Nettie says that woman’s coming. The one from Altamont. Prob’ly better she don’t lay eyes on us two so soon again, so stayin’ or leavin’, either one is what you might call troublesome.”
“She never laid eyes on Nettie. Nettie was in the carriage with Precious Wind, and she had her curtain down on her side. Far’s I know, she never saw the traveler man, either.”
“And what’s he doin?”
William laughed. “He’s got out his dye pots, makin’ napkins for Benjobz. Napkins with the royal crest on ’em, case some of those from Ghastain choose to spend the night. I swear, that Abasio could sell feathers to a goose.”
“Well then, it’s only you ’n’ me better find somethin’ to take us away from here from after supper ’til she’s gone.”
They decided on fishing. The upper reaches of the Wells were known as fishable waters, so Timmer and Hout took off after work, loudly announcing they were going fishing, giving Nettie something to complain of in the kitchen over her supper. “You’d think all the time they’ve spent, out there on the ocean, goin’ here and goin’ there, they’d have had their fill of fish!”
“How’d you do with the room for the lady?” asked Benjobz, interrupting her tirade.
“Clean as a new knife,” said Nellie with unfeigned pride. “All the closets dusted out, the mattress turned and fluffed and made up with those special sheets and new pillows. I got the spiders cleared out and six mouse holes boarded over after I talked Hout into lending me his tools.” Each time Nellie spoke, she felt deep in her innards a quiver of expectation that somebody would ask her a question she couldn’t answer. So far, she’d followed Precious Wind’s advice: talk too much about too little for anybody to be much interested. “I put the flowers in the vases you gave me,” she remarked, going on to list the dozen or so types of bloom both by their common name and what her grandmother had once called them, ending the panegyric with a final encomium: “They make the place smell real nice.”
Benjobz looked wistful. “Every time she stops here, I hope she’ll be satisfied, but it ha’n’t happ’nt yet.”
“Where’s Loppy?” asked one of the stablemen. “He owes me a pint.”
“Said he had to see about some new kegs,” Benjobz answered. “He gets ’em from old Whistle Snigg, him with the cooperage up the hill there toward the abbey. Told me he’d be back tomorrow.”
Nettie helped with the washing up, checked the duchess’s room one more time, and went out to the barn where she and her “cousins” had been sleeping in the loft, said cousins having headed upriver with great ado and furor before returning silently through the woods. Nettie gave them a sack of food she’d salvaged from leftovers in the kitchen.
“Now what?” she asked as they chewed their way through their makeshift supper.
“Now we wait until Loppy gets back, and you hang around inside there to see who he tells about whatever he has to tell.”
They rested in the hay, Clive taking first watch. He woke the other two when the duchess arrived, close on to midnight, and Nettie, still fully dressed, slipped over to the kitchen, where the cook, just roused and in her wrapper, was in a temper.
“She’ll have a bit of roast chicken,” the cook growled. “She’ll have some fresh greens and a bit of fruit. In the middle of the night she’ll have a boiled potato, with sweet butter! She’ll have my ladle up her thunder-shoot if she doesn’t let up.”
“I’ll take it up to her if you want,” said Nettie. “At least I’m dressed.” And, in Nettie’s opinion, they didn’t need a fuss over cookery with the Duchess of Altamont.
When the tray had been prepared, Nettie carried it up to the room she had cleaned and rapped on the door. When no one answered, she went in, unloaded the tray upon the table, went out, and closed the door behind her. It was strange the duchess was nowhere in evidence. She could have been in the privy, of course. Even duchesses probably had to go to the privy sometimes. And strange she was here alone! The word was she went nowhere without that big man on his black horse and half a dozen armed men or more.
She returned the tray to the kitchen, waited for a time to see if the duchess would show up, then took herself back to the barn, where she found Clive sound asleep and Willum on watch from a kind of crow’s nest he’d created across two rafters near the round window at the peak of the barn gable. Without bothering him, she rolled herself in her blankets and went to sleep.
Just before dawn, Loppy returned, the clip-clop of his horse’s hooves clearly audible in the early morning stillness, loud enough to rouse Nettie and Clive.
“Strange thing last night,” said Clive when Willum climbed down from the rafter top.
“What?” asked a voice from behind them. Abasio!
“You’re a sneaky one,” muttered Clive. “You finished with your napkins?”
“Finished and paid and ready to leave in the next two minutes. Told Benjobz I had to go on up to the abbey, where I’ve got an order for special draperies for the abbot’s own audience room. Now, what was the strange thing last night?”
“Not too long after the duchess got here, here she came out in fronta the barn, ’cross that stretch of paddock there, ’mongst the trees. Big old owl up in that tree. She stands there, starin’ at the owl; the owl takes off. I never saw her come back.”
“I did,” said Willum. “I saw her standin’ out there, like some kinna statue. I saw the owl, too. It came back and flew down into the woods where she was standin’. It was still too dark for me to see into the trees, but I saw her come stampin’ out of the woods in a fury, back into the inn.”
Nettie shivered. “That’s why she wasn’t in her room when I took her dinner.”
Clive muttered, “Whadduh you think happen to the owl? Foolin’ with owls is bad luck, Ma allus said.”
“That woman’s so much evil luck, ordinary bad luck would turn tail and run,” said Nettie on her way out the door with Abasio, who headed for his wagon.
She stopped at the pump behind the inn to wash her face and smooth her hair, an unnecessary neatening, for the kitchen was completely empty, the fir
e burned to a few embers. Nettie listened for voices, heard them, and went to stand behind the dining room door where Loppy and Benjobz were punctuating their conversation with the clink of glasses.
“I know what the duchess said, but naa, naa, it’s just the four of ’em,” Loppy declared. “Five, f’you count the dyer and his wagon, but there he goes now, so he’s a half day or more behin’ ’em. I got a good look inside his wagon, too, and there’s nothin’ there but his stuff: cloth and dyes and all. It’s just like the big driver told us. There’s no women there, and the wagons an’t carryin’ nothin’ but house stuff.”
“She’ll want to know,” said Benjobz. “First thing she got here, that was the question. Had we seen anybody headed for the abbey. Who and what was going there.”
“What’d she care? The abbey shoun’t be on her mind. Way I hear it, whas on her mind’s the kingdom. She’s gonna take it from King Gahls an’ her mama. Mebbe give it to her brother. Share it, more likely! Or keep it for herself.”
“Shhh,” Benjobz hissed. “Anybody hears you, you’ll have your head on the block! And he’s her half brother.”
“Half brother. Ha. Two boys, one girl, the queen’s got, and I’ve seed Duke Hulix, and the Duchess of Altamont, and I’ve seed Prince Rancid, and ever’ one of them with the same nose, the same jaw, and I’ve even seed Queen Mirami, ridin’ in a carriage, and there wuz her chamberlain grinnin’, with the same nose and jaw as on all three. You’re the only one hearin’ me say that, and if you’re plannin’ on turnin’ me in to King Gahls as a spy for the Sea King you’ll get turned right back!”
“You don’t know she’s working for the Sea King.”
“Well, if not him I’d like to know who. Stands to reason; the Sea King wants all the seaside lands held by his people, don’t he?”
“He’s got the whole ocean! Hasn’t been a ship cross the sea in years.”
“Which is just the way he wants it, so I hear.”
Benjobz growled in his throat. Nettie slipped out of the place and back to the barn, seeing Abasio’s wagon already some distance up the Wilderbrook road.
Willum and Clive had dismantled their crow’s nest at the gable. Within a few moments, with the sun barely showing above the eastern tree line, the two of them and Nettie rode southward, inside the edge of the forest, staying hidden and away from the road until they had rounded the ridge and knew they could not be seen from either the inn or the King’s Road itself.
“They’ll know which way we went,” said Nettie when they had achieved the road. “They knew where we were headed.”
“We didn’t make any secret of it,” said Clive with an evil grin. “And just to reduce suspicion, I left a thank-you note for Benjobz nailed to that last stall. I said the fishin’ was good up along the Wells, but now the horses were rested, we had to get on up to the abbey to see Ma, and thank you for the good food and the comfortable barn loft.”
“What’s this all been for, anyhow? All this splittin’ up and mixin’ up the trail?” Willum asked.
“Confusion,” said Nettie. “That’s what Bear said he wanted. He’s been real strange lately, but he was clear on that. He wanted us to spread as much confusion as possible.”
Across the valley, Precious Wind, Oldwife, and Xulai had traveled well inside the tree line while keeping the Wilderbrook road more or less in sight to their left. Precious Wind rode first, leading the mule, with Xulai and Oldwife behind her. They didn’t hurry. The forest was an old one with little undergrowth to hamper the horses. The ground was deep in dried needles and old leaves; the tall conifers and vast oaks shut out most of the light. The only young trees grew where ancient trees had fallen, heaving up their roots to leave wide, soft patches of disturbed soil, now exposed to the sun and sprung with sapling groves.
They heard birds but seldom saw them. They both heard and saw many scurrying fluff-tailed tree rats, flicking around trunks and chattering at them from branches above piled middens of dismembered cones. Some middens were yards deep around the trunks of old trees, testaments to untold generations of cone eaters who had lived and died in those particular trees.
It was a gloomy place, or would have been, Xulai thought, without the sunlit valley to their left. The nearness of light made it feel almost cozy, like an alcove in a great church, a natural chimney corner, the kind of place to which one could retreat peaceably without being disturbed. Since they had separated from their fellows a little after noon, there would be some hours of travel before they made camp, and Xulai resolved to enjoy them. During the journey, she had not ridden Flaxen at all, for Bear had not wanted her out of reach of her protectors. Even at Woldsgard, she had not ridden for several weeks before they left. Now she resolved to let Flaxen do all the work of following while she herself thought of nothing but the fragrance of the forest, the clean crispness of the air, the gleefulness of the little rivulets that chuckled their way down the mountain toward the Wilderbrook.
After a time they heard the creaking of wheels and saw the others approaching on the road below. Precious Wind clucked to her horse and they walked a bit faster, keeping up with the wagons but going no nearer them. They saw only one habitation during the afternoon, evidently a cooper’s house, for his cooperage lay all about the dwelling: piles of split oak, sheds stacked with hoops and staves and the round cut tops and bottoms of barrels. Smoke from the untended forge drifted into the air among stacks of finished kegs. Of the cooper himself, they saw no sign, though Xulai thought she heard tuneless, possibly drunken singing coming from the house.
When evening came, the wagons pulled off the far side of the road onto a grassy flat and the men made camp near Wilderbrook itself. Precious Wind took her group farther into the forest, found a fallen tree with a hollow beneath it, and set up a camp of her own before starting a seemingly purposeless wander among the trees, muttering to herself.
“What are you looking for?” Xulai wanted to know.
“A place to tether these animals where they can lie down if they want to, but where they can’t be seen from the sky . . .”
“From the sky?”
“Did Xu-i-lok never speak to you of watchers in the sky?”
Xulai stood with her mouth open. Yes, the princess had done that. “She had me put mirror on the windowsills . . .”
“I know, but we can’t attach mirrors to the horses, even if we had mirrors, which we don’t.”
“Then we need to make the horses seem to be something else,” Xulai said in an imperious voice, totally unlike her own. “Tie them, and I’ll take care of it.”
Precious Wind was moved to laughter that reached no farther than her throat. No matter how ridiculous the words had sounded, laughing at that particular voice was utterly impossible. Instead, she moved the animals into a copse of closely set trees, tied them loosely, and provided them with some of the hay and oats the mule had carried before moving away and standing, like a puppet waiting for someone to twitch her strings. It was not a role Precious Wind enjoyed or was accustomed to.
Xulai left the campsite and went into the copse to speak to the horses in earnest tones.
“What did you tell them?” breathed Precious Wind when Xulai returned to her.
“I told them they did not want to be horses, because there’s a monster in the woods that eats horses. The monster doesn’t bother deer, so they think they are deer, three does and a fawn.”
“Deer. Why not rabbits?”
“Night eyes in the sky probably eat rabbits,” Xulai replied in the imperious, unfamiliar voice. “Better a hunter not be tempted down.”
“What if they whinny?”
“Don’t be silly,” Xulai said sharply, haughtily. “Deer don’t whinny.”
Wordlessly, Precious Wind led the way back to the campsite. “No fire,” she murmured. “We might hide the light of it, but not the smell of it.” She waited momentarily for Xulai to say something like “Nonsense, of course we can hide it,” but no such words came. Perhaps, Precious Wind thought, o
ne might find it easier to convince horses they were deer than to convince firewood it wasn’t burning.
They ate cold sandwiches and apples. Precious Wind announced her intention of going into the woods to keep watch.
“Up a tree?” asked Xulai.
“Possibly.”
“Remember what you said about watchers from the sky. In Altamont, that night of the wolves, there were hunting birds in the sky. Wherever you climb, do it a considerable distance from where the men are. Whoever watches them won’t look far for us.”
Again, that urgent, lofty voice. Precious Wind, not trusting her own, merely nodded agreement.
Oldwife and Xulai, with the cat basket between them (while the secret chipmunk explored the intricacies of the half-rotted trunk), curled up in blankets under the fallen tree and went to sleep, though not until Xulai had spoken earnestly to the tree trunk above them, the grasses, and the neighboring trees. As Oldwife later told Precious Wind, “It was something about nothing being here but cats. Wildcats.”
From her perch up a tree, well-hidden by higher branches and a good way back down the road they had just covered, Precious Wind could not see the men’s camp in the meadow below, but she imagined Bear rolling a blanket into his bedroll to resemble a sleeping person before he sneaked across the brook and into the woods on the far side of the road. It was no great distance. The valley narrowed as it steepened, and at this point the edges of the forest were only about a hundred yards uphill on either side of the Wilderbrook road. Remembering Xulai’s request, Precious Wind surveyed the sky, thinking it unlikely she would be able to see a flyer above her and as unlikely the flyer would see her. The last of the light had gone.
It was not long, however, until the green moon rose to cast a ghoulish light on everything. The human spy arrived on foot around midnight, a shadow barely visible against the pale packed soil of the wide wheel tracks as he crept silently along the grassy verge. Precious Wind watched as he crawled around Bear’s camp, looking at it from all sides, then among the wagons, where he lifted canvas and looked under sacks of oats. He did not go near the sleeping men but turned back the way he had come.