The Princess, the Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight Page 11

  A moment later, a maidservant stepped out of the keep, carrying a bucket of food scraps, and Jean stopped her. "Please, mademoiselle, could you help us?" The maid curled her lips as if to retort, but then Jean smiled at her, and she stopped and blushed. "This lady is ill and needs to lie down," Jean said. "Could you show us to a bedchamber?" The girl blushed again and led them at once into the castle. Sarah glanced curiously at Jean, understanding for the first time how he might have been able to win the heart of the queen. He was so rough and scruffy that she had wondered about that, but when he smiled, his face had been enchantingly transformed. With a haircut and a shave, he might be quite good-looking, she realized.

  The maid took them to a dim room in which was a large bed. Jean carried Ariel, who could barely walk, to the bed and laid her on it. Spying a pitcher and some goblets on a sideboard, Jean poured a cup of wine for her, but Ariel shook her head. "No, no wine. I shall be well, I'm sure, if I can just close my eyes for a moment."

  Jean nodded. "Stay with her, Sarah. I shall find our host."

  Sarah felt a sudden panic. "Alone? But what if she needs something?"

  "Then help her," Jean said. "Have you never cared for someone who was ill?" Then he left.

  When Jean had gone, Sarah stood uncertainly over Ariel for a moment. No, she hadn't ever cared for someone who was ill. She had lived almost her entire life with her mother and Mordecai, and it had always been her mother who took care of others. And of course, since she had been alone, she had had her hands full just caring for herself. When would she have had time to care for another? Ariel closed her eyes and began to moan. She was definitely not getting better.

  Sarah sat on the bed beside Ariel, who began to thrash about with her hands. Sarah caught them and held them still. At Sarah's touch Ariel seemed to grow calmer. "If only my mother..." Ariel whispered. "She would have a cordial..."

  Sarah's eyes widened. She had a cordial, didn't she? Ariel had said that her mother's crystal bottle probably had a magic cordial in it. Stepping away from the bed, Sarah dug the bottle out of her cloak and quickly removed the top. While Ariel moaned and started to roll restlessly around the bed, Sarah poured one drop into the cup of wine that Jean had left on the sideboard.

  Then she stopped. What was she thinking? She couldn't give Ariel a cordial that she didn't know anything about. What if it was poison? What if it turned her into a frog or did some other horrid magical thing? Sarah pushed the wine away and went back to hold Ariel's hands. That helped, at least. It seemed that when Sarah was touching her Ariel breathed more easily. Experimenting, Sarah let go with one hand, and at once Ariel's restlessness increased; Sarah took her hand again, and she grew calmer.

  "I can do that much, at least," Sarah said, and she climbed into the bed beside Ariel, took her in her arms, and held her close. Almost at once, Ariel's eyes opened.

  "Sarah?" she said, her eyes focusing.

  "You seem calmer when I'm touching you," Sarah explained.

  Ariel nodded. "And you feel nothing? No oppression or heaviness in your heart?"

  Sarah hesitated. She always felt a heaviness in her heart. "I feel as I always do," she said at last.

  "It's a spell," Ariel said. "Something against the Seelie Court. You must take me out of this castle. Where's Jean?"

  "He went to find this Vavasour person," Sarah said.

  Then the door burst open and Jean entered the room, followed by the Vavasour and an old man in dirty gray robes who held a white basin filled with knives and other sharp tools. "Which one is the patient?" the old man demanded.

  "Lady Sarah?" Jean said, looking with surprise at the two girls lying side by side.

  "I was cold," Ariel said. "Sarah was warming me. It has done me much good. I feel better."

  "You still look very pale," Jean said.

  "I'd better bleed her," the man in the gray robes announced.

  "This is my own leech," the Vavasour announced. "Doctor Hermaphras. He'll have you right as a trivet in no time."

  "I don't need to be bled," Ariel said. She leaned forward to sit up, and Sarah sat up beside her, keeping her body close.

  "All my patients say that," Doctor Hermaphras said, setting down the bowl and choosing a knife.

  "I'm sure they do," Ariel replied steadily. "But as you see, I'm quite well." Her voice trembled, and Sarah put an arm around her back. Ariel nodded and sat straighter.

  "Well, what's all this botheration, then?" demanded the Vavasour of Jean. "You made it sound as if she were on her deathbed, which I never believed, and here I find her all well."

  "Indeed, sir, I am as pleased at her recovery as you are," Jean said, his voice calm.

  "I should bleed her anyway," the doctor said. "Just to be safe, don't you think?"

  "No," Ariel said to him. "I don't want you to bleed me."

  "All my patients say that," the doctor replied.

  "If you're well, then let us go eat," announced the Vavasour.

  "No," said Sarah.

  "Eh?" the Vavasour asked.

  Ariel had said she needed to get out of the castle. Sarah thought furiously. "We cannot. Jean ... I mean Sir Jean here ... didn't want to tell you, but we're ... we're fasting. It's a vow we've taken: no rich food or wine, only dry bread and water. That's why we have to leave at once, you see. We have to finish our quest quickly."

  Jean and the Vavasour both stared at her, for which she didn't blame them at all. It did sound pretty stupid. Jean's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. The Vavasour, however, burst into raucous laughter. "But you can't go questing without real food!" he said. "No wonder your lady is burnt to a socket! Come, break your vow and have something to eat, or you'll all be ill!"

  "Shall I bleed them all, then?" asked the doctor.

  Jean looked at Sarah, who put an entreaty in her eyes. Jean said, "I'm sorry, sir, but we cannot. A vow is a vow."

  "But how can you fight without food to give you strength? Where will you find courage without wine?" the Vavasour demanded. He nodded at the sideboard, where the cup of wine with Sarah's cordial in it still sat, and laughed. "Don't you wish you could do this?" And then he took up the cup and drained it in a gulp.

  Sarah held her breath, watching the Vavasour, wide-eyed. He made a face and put the cup down, but he didn't turn into anything unpleasant, and he didn't die, and after a second, she let her breath out slowly.

  "Nasty stuff, that wine," the Vavasour said in a quiet voice. "Must be spoiled. I'm sure it will give me indigestion again." Then he turned back to Jean and spoke, again in his normal, hearty tones. "Come, then. What do you say?"

  Jean started to answer, but before he could speak, the Vavasour said in his quiet voice, "They can't really expect me to believe this silly tale about fasting. Laying it on much too thick! Surely they don't know that I'm supposed to delay everyone who comes looking for Logres. But if they do know, then they might suspect poison."

  "I assure you, sir," Jean said sternly. "It is no such thing."

  "Eh?" the Vavasour said in his hearty voice. "What such thing?"

  "We do not suspect poison, sir."

  "Who said anything about poison?" the Vavasour bellowed. Then, in the quiet voice, he added, "How did he guess what I was thinking? Is he a wizard? No, no, he couldn't be. Meliagant said no wizard could enter these walls. Wizard or not, poison's not such a bad idea, though, now that I think on it."

  Sarah stared in astonishment at the Vavasour, who saw her gaze. "Now what's she looking at?" he wondered in his quiet voice. "Demmed rude girl, I'd say. Some washerwoman's whelp in a fancy gown, she looks like. Deuce it, there comes the indigestion. I shouldn't have had that wine."

  He turned back to Jean, who was also staring. "I told you," he said loudly, "it is the custom of this land to take hospitality seriously, and we don't poison our guests, whatever may be the custom where you are from." Without a pause, he continued in his quiet voice, "Wish I knew where that was, too. Fellow looks like a peasant. Dung cart, indeed! What sort of a basebo
rn creature would ride in a dung cart? He's no more a knight than that silly ass Hermaphras."

  "I beg your pardon?" quavered the doctor.

  "Eh? I wasn't speaking to you, good doctor. I was talking to this knight."

  There was an awkward silence. "We ... really should go, now," Jean said at last. "Our quest—"

  "Quest, indeed!" the Vavasour said in his quiet voice. "Making trouble for Meliagant, more like. How can I keep them here? Poison it shall have to be. Or I could have that dashed fool Hermaphras bleed them. Either way, they die." The doctor clucked faintly, but the Vavasour ignored him and bowed to Jean. "Very well," he said in his normal voice. "I suppose you have to keep a vow. But let me at least give you fresh water bags before you go. I'll bring them to you in the courtyard." Then he added quietly, "That should give me time to add poison. Now where did I put the poison? Deuce take this indigestion! I shall tell the cook to leave off vegetables from now on; they make me gassy. Now is the poison in the chest under my bed?"

  It was the cordial, Sarah suddenly realized. Somehow the potion in the wine had broken down the barrier between what the Vavasour thought and what he said aloud. Now he spoke every private thought aloud, yet didn't know he was doing so. "Oops, there went one," the Vavasour announced calmly. "Deuced vegetables. I'd best go stand by the doctor. If anyone notices, they'll think he did it."

  Jean gave Sarah and Ariel a piercing look and casually put his finger over his lips, then turned to the Vavasour. "I thank you for your generous offer, my lord, but we have more than enough water for our journey. There is one way that you could help me, though. The dry bread that we've been eating has been giving me indigestion."

  The Vavasour's face was instantly filled with sympathy, but his lips softly said, "Bah! You don't know the first thing about indigestion, I'll wager. The pains I suffer every night!"

  Jean ignored him and continued. "Do you think that it would help my indigestion to be bled by this good doctor?"

  "Eh? Why, yes, of course!" the Vavasour declared heartily. "Nothing better for indigestion than a good bleeding!" He started to add something in his quiet voice, but he had no chance. Jean bashed him on the back of the head with the pitcher of wine. Wine spattered all over the room, and the Vavasour fell on his face on the floor.

  "Forgive me, friend," Jean said to the astonished doctor. "I mean your master no harm, but I could see no other way to help him."

  "Help him?" the doctor asked weakly.

  "But of course, good doctor. You heard how he suffers with his digestion. He needs to be bled—why he as much as said so himself!—but he is one of those people who does not like to give himself over to a physician. Is that not so?"

  "Yes. Yes, that's very true," the doctor said, a trace of whiny indignation creeping into his voice. "He never lets me bleed him."

  "That's just what I thought," Jean said smoothly. "Your master is far too sanguinary and must be bled at once. It is why I felt that the best thing I could do for him would be to give him into your learned care. Surely it is worth a knock in the head to be healed from a life of pain."

  "Yes," the doctor said dubiously. "But when he awakes—"

  "When he awakes, he will see how much good your art has done him, and he will never resist you again," Jean said. "You will be so honored in the court, then!"

  The doctor's face grew dreamy for a moment. Then he nodded with sudden decision. "It is for his own good, after all," he said. "Help me get him onto the bed."

  A minute later Ariel, held tightly by Sarah, stood by the bed, and the Vavasour was stretched out in her place. "We must go on our quest now, good doctor," Jean said. "But you no longer need our help. Farewell, and do not spare your tender mercies to your master. Remember that he has not been cupped in years."

  The doctor nodded pensively. "Yes," he murmured to himself. "I'd better get a second basin." He was choosing a stained blade from his collection when the three travelers left, with Jean carrying Ariel and Sarah leading the way. A few minutes later they had retrieved the mare and were all outside the castle walls.

  Jean put Ariel in the saddle, and Sarah walked beside her, one hand resting on the faery's leg, but Ariel no longer needed a human touch. Away from the castle, her color began to return at once. "It was an enchantment," Ariel said after a few minutes. "A spell against the Seelie Court. I've heard of such charms, but few can do them."

  "What is this 'Seelie Court'?" Jean asked.

  Ariel hesitated, glancing between Sarah and Jean, but then said, "I am not supposed to speak of it openly, but you have saved my life, the two of you, and I have to trust you. The World of the Faeries is divided into two parts, the Seelie and the Unseelie Courts. The Seelie Court is made up of those who live honorable lives and bear no ill will to their neighbors, especially to those in this world, the World of Men. The Unseelie Court—they are the others."

  Jean looked stunned, then he looked at Ariel. "And you? You are from this Seelie Court?" Ariel nodded. "You are a faery, then, like in a tale for children?"

  Ariel smiled apologetically. "I don't really know the children's stories of this world. I haven't been here very often."

  Jean looked at Ariel doubtfully. Sarah knew what he was feeling—she had felt the same mixture of resistance and confusion when Terence had first told her of the World of Faeries—but they had no time now for him to grow used to the idea gradually as she had. She said, "So you think that there's some enchantment on the Vavasour's castle that works against faeries?"

  "It's the only explanation," Ariel said. "I grew ill the moment I stepped inside the gates and began to get well as soon as I was out, but neither of you was affected at all."

  Sarah added thoughtfully, "And you felt stronger when a human touched you, as if we were some protection against the spell."

  "That's right," Ariel said, nodding slowly.

  "And," Sarah concluded, "the Vavasour himself said something about the spell. Remember? He said that Meliagant had promised that no wizard could enter the castle. He must have been talking about the enchantment."

  Jean shook his head, as if he had walked into a spider's web and was trying to shake it off, then said, "That means that Meliagant, or someone with him, is a sorcerer."

  "Or sorceress," Ariel said. "When my mother told me about this enchantment, she said only the great enchantress Igraine had ever grown strong enough for such a thing. But that was not dangerous, because Igraine was a friend of the Seelie Court."

  "Igraine?" Jean asked. "The old Duchess of Cornwall?"

  Ariel nodded. "Yes, she who's been dead for more than forty years of this world's time. Someone else must have grown strong enough for that spell ... I should tell my mother."

  "Is your mother also an enchantress?" Sarah asked.

  "No," Ariel said. "She is the Lady of the Lake."

  Even Sarah had heard stories of the Lady of the Lake, though of course she had never believed them, and she blinked at Ariel in amazement. As for Jean, he looked as if he had been hit with a cudgel. "The Lady of the ... she really exists," he whispered in an awed voice.

  Ariel, growing stronger with every second, pressed on. "But that wasn't the only enchantment in that castle. My wits were not at their best, but what was wrong with the Vavasour? Did I dream all that?"

  Sarah said nothing, but Jean said, "No, you did not. Something happened to him. He was speaking his thoughts aloud, and never knew it. Good thing, though. If he hadn't told us he was planning to poison us, I would have accepted his water bags."

  "And if he hadn't told us about his digestion, you couldn't have handed him over to the doctor," Sarah said. "That was very clever of you, by the way. Do you think the Vavasour will survive the doctor's care?"

  "Me, I would not wager a groat on it," Jean replied with a shrug. "But what do you suppose happened to the Vavasour? He was not speaking his thoughts at first." Jean glanced warily at Sarah. "Are you, par chance, an enchantress, too?"

  Sarah felt sorry for him. "Not that I know of," sh
e said reassuringly.

  "Maybe it's part of the larger spell that is on that castle," Ariel said. "In any case, I suppose we should just be grateful, even if we don't know."

  Sarah dropped her hand into her cloak pocket and closed it over the crystal bottle. A part of her wanted to tell her companions about the bottle and the cordial, but she couldn't. Now that she knew what effect the cordial had, it gave her a sense of power, and she had lived too long a powerless orphan, nursing vain dreams of revenge, to give that up. Now, with a faery sword and a magic potion, she might be able to serve her enemies as they deserved after all.

  But, even as she decided to keep her potion secret, an uneasy twinge of conscience disturbed her. Why should she feel guilty about keeping a secret from Ariel and Jean, though? Sarah glanced at them again, allowing her gaze to rest on Ariel's face for a long moment. Ariel must have felt eyes on her, because she looked down from the mare and smiled back.

  Sarah blushed and looked away, her heart swelling with unaccustomed feelings. When Ariel had begun to thrash about back in the bedchamber, something had changed in Sarah. At that moment, and through all the time that she had lain beside Ariel, holding her close, Sarah had thought of nothing but of Ariel and how to help the faery. For those long minutes, frightened on someone else's account, Sarah had not thought of her mother, of Mordecai, of the night of the fires, or of her thirst for vengeance. Everything had been subsumed by her frantic desire to help Ariel.

  Sarah wasn't sure how she felt about this change. It seemed disloyal to the memory of her mother, to have thought first of another person, even for a few minutes. But as she peeked again up at the faery girl, she realized that she was still doing it—solicitously watching Ariel's movements and complexion to make sure she was truly well. It was odd—warming and yet frightening—to discover that her own peace of mind depended partly on someone else's well-being.

  They traveled east. They had received no directions from the Vavasour, of course, but the trail that they had followed from the Dividing of the Ways had never veered from an eastward direction, and so they went that way. Before going a mile, they were rewarded by coming upon a clear eastward trail.