Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over) Read online

  They be beasts already 'neath their furs.'

  ‘Don't talk like a halfwit! They wear furs but they be men.'

  ‘Jeffries be taking his family away tomorrow morning.'

  ‘Jeffries always was lily-livered.'

  ‘They don't touch common folk.'

  ‘Peter, Maggie, more ale!'

  I filled tankards from the cask and carried them, one by one in my good hand, to the two trestle tables. Maggie worked in the kitchen, washing tankards and setting tomorrow's bread to rise and sending Jee out to the taproom with whatever cold food was asked for. It was late when the last man left, drunken old Riverton, staggering out the door and crashing into the jamb on his way out. Perhaps I should have seen him home, but the night was warm and if he spent it snoring somewhere on the dirt lane, it would not be the first time.

  I shuttered the windows. Jee went upstairs. When there were no guests, we each took one of the three tiny bedchambers, as if we were nobility living in a great house. If the two guest bedrooms were occupied, Jee slept on a pallet on the floor of Maggie's room, and I in the taproom, ‘to keep the fire going'. In summer there was no fire and I slept in the sheep shed. The taproom was lit by only two rush lights stuck in holders along the wall and two fat candles on the tables. One candle had burned down to a guttering wick. In the shuttered gloom its odour seemed to thicken as much as the congealing tallow.

  As I moved to close and bar the door, the big grey dog bounded in. He licked my hand briefly and then lay on the stone floor beside the hearth as if he had slept there every day of his life.

  ‘Hey, boy, you just dance in and take over, don't you?'

  The dog wagged his negligible tail.

  ‘I don't think Maggie will approve.'

  She came through from the kitchen and sat on a bench.

  She didn't notice the dog behind the other table. ‘Peter, sit down. We must talk.'

  ‘The sheep—'

  ‘Bother the sheep! They're fine in their shed and you know it. Why did you tell Jee that we will flee Applebridge?'

  ‘Because we will.' I braced myself. In the dim light Maggie's face looked calm and weary, even vulnerable. In such a mood she was harder to oppose than when she was angry. She had taken off her cap and her fair curls straggled over eyes blue-shadowed with exhaustion.

  ‘But, Peter,' she said reasonably, ‘there is no danger in staying here. You heard what everyone said – the savage army is not harming common folk. Everybody said so.'

  ‘Fourth-hand gossip from someone's wife's cousin's sister-in-law!'

  ‘Lord Carush said it, too. I heard him.'

  ‘Maggie, I am not common folk.' It came out wrong, as if I thought I was nobility, a laughable idea. Nonetheless, my words were true. I was a hisaf.

  ‘Nobody here could ever connect Peter One-Hand, the innkeeper, with Roger Kilbourne, the queen's fool.'

  ‘The queen's fool who brought an army back from the Country of the Dead.'

  ‘Hush!' Maggie glanced around, as if she expected to discover a listener hiding in the taproom, where there was no place to hide. Instead she saw the dog.

  ‘What is that dog doing in here?'

  ‘It's my dog.' The words came out spontaneously, defensively. I hated arguing with Maggie. I usually lost, and her stubborn knowledge that she was always right acted on me like itchy wool. At the same time, I liked the dog. It asked nothing of me.

  ‘Since when do you have a dog?'

  ‘Since this afternoon. The dog lives here now, Maggie. It can eat scraps, or maybe it will just hunt its own food and—' a sudden inspiration ‘—it can help herd the sheep.'

  ‘It's not a herding dog. Look at it.'

  ‘Well, perhaps not, but maybe if I—'

  ‘Bother the dog!' Her face reddened, but she calmed herself – I could see it happen, like a feather bed being smoothed out by a rough hand – and resumed her reasonable tone. ‘Peter, we've worked so hard. To get this inn, to get the local people to spend their money here, to get the chickens and sheep and bees, to—'

  If I let her go on, she would name every single thing we had gotten, which was also every single thing I owed to her. I couldn't stand it.

  ‘You've done a lot, Maggie. I know it. I am grateful to you for ever, but—'

  ‘I didn't mean to say—'

  ‘I know you didn't. But—'

  ‘We'll lose everything if we leave now! And Lord Solek's son can have no idea who you are! Everyone thinks Roger Kilbourne is dead!'

  ‘If the Young Chieftain thought that, he would not be searching for me.'

  This was unarguable. I pushed down my triumph. The candle flickered one last time and went out, leaving Maggie's face lit only by the rush lights on the wall.

  She said, ‘It's your safety I'm thinking about. And – yes, I admit it – mine and Jee's. Applebridge is remote and unimportant. What makes you think that you'd be any safer anywhere else in The Queendom? The road from the west goes along the Apple River, and once they're through the mountains that's how the savage army will travel too. It's the road to the capital. You would be far more likely to be captured on the road than here.'

  ‘If I left now, I would be ahead of the army.'

  ‘And you don't think they'll send out scouts and advance patrols? Lord Solek was a fine soldier – you told me so yourself – and I'm sure his son is too.'

  She was right again. I felt the ground grow slippery beneath my arguments. ‘I can ... I can travel off the roads.'

  ‘Where would you even go? If, as you claim, the Young Chieftain knows you're alive, then where in The Queendom would be safe for you? Nowhere!'

  ‘I would have to go to the Unclaimed Lands.'

  ‘And the only way to get there is by travelling through half The Queendom.'

  She was right. But then she caught the meaning behind my words.

  ‘The Unclaimed Lands. You mean you're going there. To search for her.'

  She meant Soulvine Moor. She meant Cecilia. She meant search in the country of the Dead. But Cecilia, though no longer living, was not in the country of the Dead. Cecilia was nowhere and never would be anywhere again, and I would never tell Maggie any of that terrible story.

  ‘No,' I said, ‘I'm not going to search for Cecilia.'

  ‘Then why go?' It came out a wail, which shocked me so much that I stood, clumsily knocking over the trestle. Maggie does not wail. Maggie does not sob. Maggie does not lose control. But she did so now in a manner that I had not seen for over two years. She put her head in her hands and cried, her fair springy curls shaking with each gasping sob. She cried as if she would never stop.

  ‘Oh, Roger—' she never called me Roger ‘—it's so unfair! You want us to give up everything, and I did it all for you! I worked only for you and tried so hard with the inn only for you, and you won't bed me or love me or ... The savages will find you out there on the road, and even if they are looking for you it wouldn't occur to them that Roger Kilbourne would be in a place like this, not after a palace and a queen, and ... they'll kill you!'

  I did it all for you.

  You won't bed me or love me.

  We'll lose everything if we go now.

  Each sentence was a stone in my mouth, gagging my throat, lying heavy in my belly. Each word was true, and next to their granite solidity my desire to leave seemed insubstantial as fog. I didn't really believe that we were in danger here, or that the Young Chieftain knew enough to seek me in Applebridge, or to recognize Roger Kilbourne in Peter One-Hand. I wanted to leave Applebridge because I was so bored and restless here. Because I was more discontented with what I had than grateful for what I had been spared. Because I was still, and for ever, a fool.

  ‘Don't cry, Maggie. Don't cry.' I couldn't make myself walk around the table and put my arms around her. But I could make myself force out my next words, and I did so. ‘You're right. We'll stay here.'

  On the hearth, the dog suddenly raised his huge head and howled.

  5

&n
bsp; That night, the dreams were particularly bad. As vivid as real life – no, more vivid.

  A flat upland moor, with a round stone house. There is the taste of roasted meat in my mouth, succulent and greasy. In the shadows beyond my torch I sense things unseen. Inhuman things, things I have never met in this land or in that other beyond the grave. Moving among them is a woman's figure, and the voice coming to me from the dark is a woman's voice, and I can see the glint of a jewelled crown: ‘Roger. Hisaf .'

  ‘But you're dead,' I say.

  ‘ Eleven years dead,' she says, and gives a laugh that shivers my bones.

  I woke in the sheep pen, to the pungent smell of the ewes and the bleating of one of the lambs. Outside lay another fine summer morning. Down the hillside, Jack Lambert's pretty daughter walked their goats to pasture. She waved to me. I waved back, the dream still on me, and picked straw off my clothing. The chickens squawked in their coop. Jee came out of the inn to draw water from the well.

  Everything as usual, everything normal. Nothing indicated that somewhere to the west a savage and invading army was on the move.

  The dog had spent the night lying outside the sheep shed, although it was unclear whether this was to protect the livestock or to eat it. For the first time I noticed that the dog wore a collar, a thin strip of leather the exact colour of his short grey fur. Burned into the leather was a meaningless design of squiggles. I traced the squiggles with my fingers while the dog tried to twist his head to lick me. ‘Do you belong to someone else, boy? Do you?'

  He wagged his tail.

  With the dog here, the sheep would not leave their shed. I pushed and pulled and smacked the lead ewe on her flank and then on her stubborn head, but she would not budge. All I got for my pains was a boot-sole of sheep dung. This thwarted my idea of taking them directly to pasture, thus skipping breakfast and avoiding Maggie. Cursing, I closed the sheep inside the shed – maybe Jee would do better with them later – washed my boot at the well and went into the kitchen, hoping desperately for no more tears.

  There were none. Maggie smiled at me and said, ‘I have your breakfast ready in the taproom, Peter. I'm sure you're hungry.'

  The trestle table, freshly scrubbed, was set with a wooden trencher and tin tankard. Cheese, new eggs, wild berries with clotted cream and small cakes dusted thickly with sugar. Maggie must have been up since before dawn, cooking this compensation prize for the loser in our quarrel. Noblesse oblige.

  All at once I was not hungry. But to not eat would only make things worse. ‘How fine!' I said heartily, sat down and ate a strawberry. Maggie sat across from me. She wore a fresh smock, tightly laced black stomacher and skirt of red wool hiked up over a striped petticoat – her best clothes. Her light curls, freshly washed, were tied with a red ribbon. All this looked dangerous.

  ‘Peter, I've been thinking.'

  Maggie was always thinking. I nibbled at a cake. It tasted wonderful. ‘Oh?'

  ‘Yes. We need ... Good morning, dog.'

  He had followed me inside and now sat on his enormous haunches, eyeing the food. I gave him a sugar cake and waited defiantly for Maggie to protest that sugar was too expensive to waste on a beast. She did not. Instead she said brightly, ‘What will you name him?'

  I hadn't thought of that, but of course he must have a name. And Maggie was trying to please me. I said, ‘I don't know. Do you have any ideas?'

  She studied the huge grey dog. ‘His eyes are so strange. I don't think I've seen that colour eyes on a dog before.'

  I hadn't noticed the dog's eyes. Now I did, and was startled. They were the same colour that Cecilia's had been: a clear bright green. But surely I would have noticed that yesterday? Hadn't the dog's eyes been a different colour, or less bright, or ... something? But that was impossible. It must have been the difference in light that had made me not notice how green they were. Light can play tricks on the eyes.

  Evidently Maggie was not reminded of Cecilia, for which I was grateful. She said, ‘I've seen a cat with eyes that colour, but never a dog. You could call him Greenie.'

  It was the stupidest name I'd ever heard. ‘No, I don't think so. It doesn't ... fit him.'

  ‘Captain?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Rex?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Hunter?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Bandit?'

  ‘No.'

  ‘Are you saying no because you don't like those names or because I'm the one suggesting them?'

  I didn't answer her right away. A strange sensation rose in my mind, as if a dream had flitted lightly through my skull and then dissolved like smoke in a strong breeze. I said slowly, ‘Shadow. His name is Shadow.'

  The dog looked up at me. His eyes were clear green water.

  ‘That's a fine name,' Maggie said warmly. ‘And by coincidence it's naming that I wish to talk to you about. I think we should choose a name for the inn.'

  ‘A name?'

  ‘Yes. And have a sign painted and hung.'

  ‘A sign?'

  ‘So people will know where they've come to.'

  Nearly all our custom was local folk, who knew very well where they'd come to because this was the only inn for five miles around. All at once I noticed things in the taproom that I had scarcely paid attention to before: a tankard of daisies on the other trestle table, a small bit of weaving hung on one wall, a carved wooden rabbit on the broad windowsill – where had Maggie got that? And did all women feel this need to nest, to transform what had been perfectly adequate before?

  She gazed at me with hopeful, shining eyes in which I nonetheless saw something determined, even ruthless. But then if she had not had those qualities, she could not have rescued me from death in the last days of Queen Caroline's reign. I could not deny her a sign for the inn, no matter how much I disliked the notion. And why did I even dislike it? I didn't know.

  ‘That's a good idea,' I said with as much enthusiasm as I could force. ‘What shall we call the inn?'

  ‘I thought perhaps the Red Boar.' She pointed at the weaving, which, I now saw, depicted a boar stitched in red wool.

  ‘Fine.'

  ‘Unless you prefer something else.'

  ‘No, that's fine.'

  ‘If you prefer something else, Peter, just say so.'

  ‘It's fine!' Now leave off about it!

  ‘Good. Then let me show you something.' She went into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a wooden board painted with a red boar and the words ‘Red Boar' written below.

  I can read. Maggie taught me. I recognized her bold letters from the patient instruction she'd given me on winter afternoons. She had had this sign ready before we even discussed it.

  She said, ‘Jee painted the picture. I didn't know he could do so well; nor did he. Do you think you can make a bracket and hang it over the door?'

  ‘Yes.'

  ‘Today?'

  ‘Yes.'

  ‘This morning?'

  ‘Yes, yes, yes!'

  Maggie is not without perception. She said quietly, ‘You think I'm pushing you.'

  She was pushing me. But it wasn't Maggie that was wrong. I was wrong, in some deep way I didn't understand. This life was wrong.

  ‘I'm sorry, Maggie,' I said, and I meant it. ‘It's a perfect sign, and I'll hang it this morning.' I walked around the table and did something I rarely do: I kissed the top of her head. She went still. Before she could desire – ask for, compel, quarrel over – anything more, I was out the door, Shadow at my heels.

  Piss pots! I hadn't eaten more than a few bites of her elaborate breakfast.

  I took the sheep to their usual pasture, first tying up Shadow in the stable yard. Ten minutes after we left, Shadow came bounding after me, his rope broken in two. I had not realized the dog was so strong. Immediately the sheep began to make shrill, terrified noises.

  ‘You're a bad dog,' I told Shadow, who wagged his tail.

  I tied him to a tree by what was left of his rope and took the sheep far enough
away that they stopped bleating. A few minutes later Shadow broke his rope and raced after us. The younger ewe broke away, and both of us ran after her, leaving the others bawling behind. I tripped over a bayroot. Shadow caught the ewe by leaping on its back.

  ‘No! Shadow, no!' He would maul the sheep, kill it, eat it – I stumbled to my feet.

  But the dog had not hurt the ewe. He stood casually beside her, and every time the stupid animal moved, Shadow moved to block her escape. I blinked. I had seen dogs herd sheep before, but not Shadow's breed (whatever that was). And he had not exhibited this behaviour yesterday.

  The sheep still bleated and wailed. In this state of mind – if the silly things even have minds – they were not going to feed. I sighed, led the errant ewe back to the others, slung her lamb over my shoulders and started back to the inn. The rest of my small hungry flock followed. Another futile excursion. And what awaited me seemed equally futile. Muck out the chicken yard. Weed the kitchen garden. Hang the new sign. Help with the laundry.

  Only it did not happen that way. I entered the inn through the kitchen. Maggie wasn't there. She and Jee stood in the taproom, both staring at the hearth. Maggie pointed. A rock sat on the cold stones of the empty hearth.

  ‘It ... it came down the chimney,' Maggie whispered. Her face had gone white as her smock. ‘A moment ago. And ... there was no one on the roof.'

  Jee clutched at Maggie's skirts, as if he were five years old instead of ten.

  Gingerly I approached the rock. It was a perfect disc, a full hand-span across and flat on top and bottom, heavy on my one palm. What I could see was featureless, an even grey, but as I picked it up I saw flecks of green in the stone, malachite or chrysoprase. I turned the stone over. On the other side, as flat as the first, the green flecks formed letters, not bonded on but an integral part of the rock itself. Maggie, reading the impossible lettering over my shoulder, gasped.

  DANGER – LEAVE NOW – MC

  6

  Mother Chilton. She must have known where I was – for how long? That fragile web of women who ‘studied the soul arts' with varying degrees of skill, how far did it extend? Was there someone here in Applebridge, someone I saw every fortnight ...