Chapter 16 #2
‘I wish to look at his room,’ I say and nod at the serving maid before her mistress can think twice and gainsay me.
The girl is swift, leading me to the staircase and up, along a landing and into a large room filled with toys and books; wooden swords, carved horses, cast metal soldiers gaily painted in uniforms few military men would wear; I palm one for scrying.
An enormous bear sits in a rocking-chair in one corner.
I check the windows, find them all locked – the room stuffy and warm – and look at the bed, pulling back sheets lest there be a sign of blood or violence there.
In the ceiling, no trapdoor or skylight that might be used as another entrance or exit.
Nothing under the bed either, and the floors are solid when I stamp on them; same with the walls, no secret panel, nor passages.
Tapping a finger to my chin, I ask the girl, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Cylla.’
‘His room’s not locked at night, Cylla?’ I ask.
‘No.’ She adds hastily, ‘I sleep downstairs, next to the kitchen. For his first three years I slept here, on a pallet in that corner. Then, a few months back, Master said it was time the boy learned to be on his own because we women were making him soft.’ She bites her lip.
‘The mistress loves him, only – she’s tired.
She’s older for a mother and well, tired.
So, I put him down in the eve and get him up in the morn, but she’s with him the whole day, otherwise. ’
I understand what Deva is going through, her time of life is the same as mine, except hers is complicated by a young child demanding attention when she’s barely able to meet her own needs.
I’d wondered, when she came to me, whether it was a blessing or a curse to help her bear a child at that age – but I wasn’t prepared to make it easy for Thaddeus to set her aside, marry a mistress and write to the Archbishop of Lodellan begging a declaration of legitimacy for the relevant offspring.
At the time, it felt like I was saving Deva from a precarious enough existence, that the child might just buy her some security.
I didn’t need to like her to want to help her.
‘Cylla, return to your mistress, tell her I will have other questions in a moment.’
The girl’s obedient and she goes. I’ll likely only have a little time; from my pocket, I pull a long lozenge-shaped clear crystal on a string, something I retrieved from the workroom this morning, and hold it up, swinging the crystal in ever-increasing circles.
If something magical and malign has been in the room, the crystal will become a dark purple.
I hold the crystal high so it catches the rays of sun from the windows, then chant, a thing that’s as much a prayer as a spell (I’ve never been entirely sure of the difference between the two).
Walking slowly around the room, the crystal echoes me, calling back softly and a little sadly it seems. While a pale green rises in its depths, there’s no sign of the deep purple I was expecting.
Finally, I give up. The green mist fades as does the song of the crystal.
The colour means nothing but contentment.
A contented child inhabited this room. So, he wasn’t taken.
He walked out – toddled – under his own steam.
He’s so little, but I’ve never seen that stop a child.
If he wanted to leave, if he thought something interesting waited outside?
He’d have made his careful way down the stairs and out.
He’s tall enough to reach the doorhandles, big enough to turn them.
Of course, it’s entirely possible something called to him from outside – just as it did me – didn’t need to enter the house to lure him forth, didn’t need to pass under the gaze of the green woman that hangs from the tree branches in the front garden.
I make my way to the bottom of the stairs, where Deva is waiting, the other women a frozen wave behind her. I touch the older mother’s arm.
‘Nothing came into your house. So, Mattias left by his own will. Tonight, I’ll scry, see what I can discover.
’ Even as I say it I shudder at the idea of undergoing that ritual again.
Briefly, I consider going to the Black Lake this time, then I recall the things in the woods, the blood the lake will demand, that Rhea will need to get me back to the cottage on her own – or with the aid of the summer husband, which irks me quite irrationally.
‘I’ll return in the morning as soon as I can with any news – and if the child is found in the meantime, I expect to be advised as soon as possible. Am I understood?’
She nods, a short sharp gesture, and Cylla opens the door for me.
I push my way through the crowd of women, and they part reluctantly as if letting me go is not what they wish to do.
I’m down the front steps from the verandah and almost at the garden gate when I see a small brown bundle curled in the base of the ash tree, beneath the green woman that twists and turns in the breeze.
Camouflaged a little, but I swear I’d have noticed it when I arrived!
My heart leaps towards my mouth and it’s all I can do to keep my stomach from following it.
I swoop on the bundle, mind filled with thoughts of the red cloak, the red-wrapped parcel, that slab of child left on my doorstep.
I reach out and grasp at the thing, more roughly than I should, and it gives a surprised squawk.
I lift it up and the brown blanket falls away to reveal Matthias Peppergill in blue pyjamas, very grubby, a little smelly, clutching a knitted bear of golden-brown wool, but very much alive.