Chapter 9
Chapter
When the duchess and all those sparkling people rode into her ashy farmyard, Elesbed had thought they were angels and that she was being assumed into Heaven.
That sounded pleasant. Certainly, there would be good things to eat in Heaven, and her belly was swollen from eating grass and birds’ eggs and the last scrapings of scorched grain from cracks in the floor of the ruined barn.
And then she learned that the small lady with laughing eyes was not an angel but a duchess. That was nearly as good, because Elesbed was given food just as good as might be had in Heaven—broth and bread—although Hawiz would not let her have very much, so she would not hurt her stomach.
Then she learned the duchess was going to Brocéliande. Elesbed had not wanted to go to Brocéliande. All children who lived in the forest’s shadow knew the tales of that place.
There is a terrible lady there who dwells by a pool in the wood, and she sings and laughs and plaits flowers in her hair and is very beautiful. But she lies in wait for travelers, and when she finds one, he is hopelessly enchanted and lost forever to his own kin.
There is a sorcerer-king of monstrous aspect who is called the king of Comorre, and he takes wives, wife after wife, and when his wife gets with child, he kills her, for there is a prophecy that says he will die by the hand of one of his own.
They say Merlin the Enchanter lies somewhere asleep in the depths of the Lost Lands, with the roots of trees tangled up in his beard.
Once there was a city, the greatest city in the world, our city, a Breton city, in the bay of Douarnenez, and some say it was drowned by wickedness. But some say it was merely taken away, behind the veil, behind the rain, to the Lost Lands, and there it remains.
Beware the Lost Lands, my child. You will know they are near because lost things will start to come back, washed up from the shores of that far country.
No—the return of lost things is not so nice as it sounds.
What of folk who have died? When we see them, we call them anaon, the unquiet dead.
What if you meet yourself on a crossroads on a dark night?
That is called the fetch, and it is a harbinger of death that drives men mad.
It all comes from the Lost Lands.
For Elesbed, though, it had seemed better to go with the duchess—even to Brocéliande—than to starve to death in the ruins.
And the convent had not been so terrible.
It had given her back her doll. Still, Elesbed did not think much of this scheme of hunting in Brocéliande.
It seemed to her that it gave the korriganed a fine chance to lure you in. But no one had asked her.
Later, Elesbed thought that they should have.
After the hunt, when the hunters came at dusk to the tall house where they all were to pass the night, the duchess was not riding her own horse anymore, but double with the big man, her brother, the rosiness all gone from her face.
Even her lips were pale. Elesbed felt a hard jolt of terror that the kindly smiling duchess would die.
The child was forgotten, naturally, as the whole courtyard came to cluster round the duchess, and that was when Elesbed saw the stranger.
He had ruddy hair and he’d been bound to the horse with a rope between his stirrups, his expression sick and lost. He didn’t speak when they took him off the horse, and his legs folded beneath him, right there in the mud of the courtyard.
He was carried inside. He didn’t see her at all.
They brought the duchess indoors to a big chamber with a fire.
Elesbed crept in quite unnoticed and hid behind the biggest tapestry.
The chaos ebbed and it flowed, full of the incomprehensible French, but then finally Elesbed understood the words again, because the duchess and Hawiz had begun speaking Breton.
The duchess said, “I’d have taken a thousand more wettings for the sight of a unicorn.”
“If you don’t take a chill,” said Hawiz.
“How can I, with so many blankets and hot bricks?” The duchess sounded happy. Had she truly seen a unicorn? She added, “No one will wonder for a moment what I was doing in the forest. All they will remember is the unicorn.”
“I doubt the beast gave you a lock of its mane to make you great among men,” said Hawiz, and Elesbed didn’t understand what that meant.
The duchess said, “When our lands are secure, I will ask myself why. But until then, everything that comes is just a tool to survive with, my Hawiz.”
Hawiz made a dissatisfied noise. Elesbed found herself getting sleepy.
It did not seem that the duchess was going to die.
She curled up small behind the tapestry while the candles in the chamber were extinguished one by one.
The stone was cold and hard there, but her nights had been cold and hard in the ruined farm.
A stirring at the edge of the tapestry brought her heart into her mouth, and then a cat poked its head in to inspect her.
In Elesbed’s experience, cats lived in the cowshed and ate mice; she didn’t know what this cat was doing in this fine house.
It was very fat and yellow with stripes.
The cat stepped on her foot, then her leg.
Then it settled under her arm, as warm as the fire, its whole body rumbling softly. It didn’t bite.
Elesbed whispered, “What are you doing, cat?”
The cat didn’t even open its eyes. Perhaps it liked to sleep behind this tapestry and had decided she could sleep there too.
Sometime later Elesbed woke because the fire had gone out and the room was cold. The yellow cat sat upright next to her, growling deep in its throat.
“Are you possessed?” Elesbed whispered, and then she thought of a worse thing. “You’ll wake up the room and I’ll be in such trouble.”
Outside her tapestry, she heard a scraped footstep on the floor, and smelt gusts of the same smell that had filled the farm the night the brigands came. The smell of blood.
Elesbed froze. But the cat darted out, hissing, ears laid flat back on its head. Elesbed could not let a cat be braver than her; she leaped out too, swallowing a scream.
A lady stood in the room, facing the duchess’s great bed.
She was tall and beautiful and firelit, although the fire had gone out, and she dragged a bloody sword on the floor behind her.
Her throat had been cut and the blood rained down and dyed her rose-colored gown red.
Her mouth gabbled but no sound came. She reached out pleading hands and turned in a desperate circle.
Without thinking, Elesbed darted between the bloody lady and the duchess. “No!” she cried.
The cat hissed and swiped the air and Elesbed blinked and realized there was no one there. Just the shapes that the lady’s phantom light had left in her tired eyes.
There was an explosion of movement; the great bed like a wooden box swung open.
“What in God’s name—?” said Hawiz just as the duchess said, “Elesbed—”
But neither of them could finish. The room was suddenly choked with people: the maids-of-honor with the guard right behind, everyone confused, looking for danger. Elesbed ducked, trying not to be stepped on. Someone kicked her anyway and she bit back a yelp.
The duchess said something sharply in French that Elesbed didn’t understand.
A few of the people shook their heads or nodded and they began to clear the room again.
Perhaps Elesbed could slip out too, and that way the duchess would not be angry that she’d slept behind the tapestry.
The cat squirmed up to her shoulder, where it sat, its tail curled around Elesbed’s neck, claws dug into her new gown.
Elesbed gave up trying to pry it off and crept toward the door.
“Elesbed,” said the duchess. “No, come back, for heaven’s sake—were you sleeping behind the tapestry? It’s all right, someone should have looked after you. We’ll find you a pallet; Hawiz will rekindle the fire, and you may sleep on the hearth.”
Elesbed found herself saying, “It wasn’t nothing. There was a lady with a cut throat. The cat knew it. It was anaon. One that died badly. My mother said those are the worst, and they have powers. The cat saw her and I saw her.”
The duchess and Hawiz exchanged glances.
But all the duchess said was, “It was very brave of you to come and defend me. You and the cat.” The cat flexed her paws, sending prickles of pain through Elesbed’s shoulder.
Her tail remained wrapped possessively around Elesbed’s neck.
“In the meantime we are all tired, and some things are better discussed in daylight.”
Elesbed nodded vigorous agreement.
Hawiz rebuilt the fire and added a few logs crosswise so that the flames leaped high. Then she laid out a pallet beside it for Elesbed, whose eyelids were getting heavy.
As she lay in the flickering light, the cat curled beside her on the blanket, Elesbed heard the smile in the duchess’s voice. “I think you have a friend now. What will you call her?”
Elesbed blinked. “It’s a cat, Highness.”
“But will you give her a name?”
Elesbed was puzzled. “A name?”
“You are called Elesbed.”
“Yes, but—it’s a cat.” Her sleepy brain didn’t understand. She blinked her eyes open to see the duchess lying on her back in the deep dark of her great paneled bed. The duchess said, “You can give her a name. My palfrey is called Jonquil, for the flower.”
Elesbed thought she would like a name for the cat. Something nice and soft the way the cat was. “Butter,” said Elesbed. “I shall call her Butter.” And she stroked the yellow fur.
Elesbed wondered what her mamm would think if she told her she’d heard a duchess laughing. “It’s a fine name.”