Chapter Thirty
We found no easy luck. Nobody in the village had seen anyone who fit our description of Simeon and Elin, and I worried that we were headed in the wrong direction entirely.
But, in the late afternoon, at a lonely water mill set back from the road, Otto pulled over to talk to the miller and emerged triumphant.
I waited outside, with the horse, staring at the placid millpond.
It was already late in the day. We had stopped at every small town and hovel we passed and received only half assurances: One farmer had seen a man who fit our description but was alone.
Another had noticed a well-appointed coach, but not the travelers.
I was surprised the strangers talked to us at all, but Otto had a coin purse. And coins could be compelling.
Coins or no, it didn’t feel as though we had fortune on our side.
I knew I’d been reckless. For running off with Otto—alone, on his horse, the sun soon setting.
For marching into the viper’s nest of Sigrid’s castle, accusing her of all I knew.
Reckless, yes, which left me wretched: Whether I found Elin or not, I was on an excursion I did not know how to come back from.
The millpond—a small stream dammed with wooden planks—was torpid, covered in dead leaves and a darkened reflection of the blank sky above.
I wanted to pull the planks from the water, to see movement.
Instead, I threw a small pebble, which the pond accepted with no more than a sucking plonk, extending a few ripples in return.
“They saw them,” Otto called, emerging from the mill house. “Or the daughter did. From an upstairs window. A coach with two horses. Of fine make, she said. Except—it is why she remembered—she said there were scrapes along the side, as if made by a knife.”
“They were attacked?” I asked in alarm.
“He probably tried to scratch the insignias off so they wouldn’t be recognized.” Otto hoisted himself up onto the horse, offered his hand, and pulled me up behind him.
“Then we are on the right course.”
“Aye,” he agreed. And we started moving forward once more, leaving the motionless water, the somnolent water mill behind us.
“I fear that even if we find them, we will be too late. They’ll be married already. Or worse.”
“If the prince intends to follow through on his plan, then he will need to ensure she is not with child for at least nine months.” Otto looked forward so I couldn’t see his face. The thought was reassuring—though no guarantee.
We had not spoken much over the course of the afternoon, which had given me plenty of time to study the back of Otto’s head.
His dark hair, threaded with strands of silver, was still thick and grew in a small whorl at the nape of his neck, which itself was tanned from the sun.
Broad shoulders, and, I could feel from my hands on his sides, no lack of brawn, though he had the softness that also came from eating and aging well.
He was Sigrid’s advisor. Simeon’s. I wondered in what ways that might aid me, and in what ways he was putting himself at risk. We were both making bargains, but I did not know for what or with whom.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked, abruptly.
He glanced, briefly, back over his shoulder, and I saw the bridge of his cheekbone, a glint of his eye. “I was always helping you. Or trying to.”
I sank into the saddle, considering his words. Re-forming my memories—perhaps Otto was not ill-natured so much as protective. Perhaps he was not aloof, but steadfast. “Does the queen know?”
“That I was trying to help, or that I am here?”
“Both.”
He murmured some instructions to his horse—an animal that moved with twice Arno’s speed—and then was silent. After a moment, he said only, “Nay.”
“But—”
“But?”
“Why?”
He was silent again and I thought, after a long while, that he would say nothing. I could see only that small whorl of hair and the cords of his neck. But then, when I’d almost forgotten my question, staring off into the oak and ash trees lost in my own circling thoughts, he started talking.
“Before I came to this kingdom, I had a son.” His voice lowered. “He died when he was one. As did his mother.”
Except for the movement of the horse beneath me, I went completely still.
Otto continued, “He would have been the same age as Simeon. I didn’t know him well. I was a soldier then, and mostly away from home.”
“The pestilence?” I asked, quietly, thinking the timing was the same year as my own father’s death, when illness had swept its black hands across every kingdom, overstepping the boundaries as if they did not exist.
“I was a cartographer—a surveyor—for the army. Where I come from, the land, the people, are marked by strife and struggle. For power. Contested borders. Factions vying for influence, control. I was always sent to the edges of the conflict, to mark and remake maps as land changed hands. And it changed hands often.” His voice was marked by bitterness.
“When I was away, those same wars came to my village. My wife and son were both killed. I do not even know by which faction. Or how. Or who buried them. But I came home to two mounds. It was a kingdom of sides. And I soon lost sight of which one I was on. Could no longer understand which one was right. So I left.”
“And came here.” I didn’t have the right words. I worried that perhaps in acknowledging the calamitous part of what he had shared, I might discourage him from sharing further. But it also might have been the careful decision of a coward.
“My skills were in high demand. Your king—the king—hired me. And, over time, my advisory extended from maps to other matters.”
“Watching Simeon?”
“Leaders that try to impose their beliefs on those around them are dangerous. I came to your land because your royals have little ambition beyond their tiny world, and that keeps people safe. If you keep those that steer the ships and direct the armies calm, there is less blood. Fewer mounds. And so I’ve made that my purpose—made the kingdom my responsibility.
When it comes to Simeon…” He released his pommel and ran a hand through his hair.
Glanced back at me. “I did not know. Or I did not understand the extent of it. I did what I thought I could. It wasn’t enough. So I am trying to do more.”
“I am sorry,” I said, when he was finished.
“For what?”
“Your wife. And child.” I had to push the thought of those two mounds away.
“They are at peace,” he said, after a long moment.
I envied his certainty.
When we lost the light, we stopped to sleep at a monastery. As we knocked on the massive gate, Otto turned to me: “It will be easier if we say you are my wife.”
“I will not,” I replied, mildly offended.
“Then say nothing and let them assume.”
I complied. The abbot gave us a little thatched hut to sleep in, with earthen floors, along with a jug of warm beer and two small loaves of cold cheat bread. When Otto and I were left alone, we sat on two overturned crates, holding our individual loaves and sharing the jug.
“I am sorry for the room,” Otto said. “I thought we might get to an inn before nightfall. I will sleep outside.”
“You’ll freeze,” I protested. Whatever damage was done with us sharing a room had been done already, and I did not believe he would touch me. “Do you think they’re nearby?”
He knew who I meant. “They’ve got two horses and will be faster. They have a head start. But near enough.” Otto watched as I tore off a hunk of my bread and chewed it. “Which is it? Are you the mud-covered huntress from the woods or the lady of Bramley?”
“Both. Neither. I’m a brewer’s daughter. And this is a sorry excuse for beer,” I told him, holding up the jug that held a murky liquid that had gone sour. “They fermented it too long.”
He shook his head at some unspoken thought. “Do your daughters really know how to paint?”
I took a swig of the beer from the jug and did not meet his eyes, remembering how, at our picnic, he had reached for the canvases as if to test the wetness of their pigment. “Any accomplished young woman takes up an art.” It wasn’t an outright lie.
He smiled at me. “You mothers preen your daughters like racehorses.”
“Better a racehorse than a dog’s dinner.” I looked away. “We’re all just looking for some stability.”
“There’s nothing stable about life at court.” He shook his head. “What about all the options in between? Cart horse? Plow horse? Respectable pony?”
“Because the world is so plentiful with options?” I scoffed.
“What are Elin’s options? What are Hemma’s?
” I did not say: What are mine? Thinking of the princess reminded me of why I was sitting in a strange hut in the first place and soured me against Otto.
I glared at him. “Would you really just thrust her child on someone so unsuspecting? Even if you did not know it was Simeon’s? ”
Otto’s expression clouded, his face tightening.
“Hemma is an innocent girl, even if, as I errantly thought, she’d made a mistake.
There are worse outcomes for a baby. It was not my plan, and I did not like it, but it seemed to me—with the information I had—an all right outcome.
Provided the mother was accepting. So many women would happily raise another’s child. ”
“But not the noble ones. So the ball was arranged. And all the second pickings were invited.”
“Aye—not the royal cousins. Or the great families. They care too much about bloodlines.”
“Second pickings,” I reiterated. “Tell me. Did Sigrid intentionally exclude my daughters from the ball?”
“Initially, yes.” Otto spoke plainly. “Them and plenty others that suited her, or offended her somewhere along the way, or that she didn’t like the look of.”
“It’s illogical. She was trying to saddle someone with her erratic, dangerous son. Who better than an enemy, or someone she dislikes?”
“But they’d still gain. Though I suppose that’s the reasoning she looped around to, in the end.” His jaw tightened. “I tried to discourage her.”