Chapter Seven

Adriana’s throat tightened. “What?”

Host Martten shook his head, grasping his fleshy jowls with a large hand. “I dunno rightly, but these two men are staying here. They have good horses and a page with them, and they look like officials, or at least men of stature.” She exhaled. They had to be here—and safe. “After they dined, they lingered in the taproom and started asking young Jinny about a peddler herbalist, traveling with a young lass.”

So that was how they pegged her—a peddler! “Two men in dark capes, riding a tall roan and a gray, the boy on a dappled pony?” she asked.

“Aye!” He looked even more dubious.

“No call for uneasiness, Host. They are travelers we met on the way. They were lost and I directed them to the road.”

Relief softened his face. “Ah! I’m right glad to hear that, what with the trouble we’ve had in town. I don’t want any more.”

“What trouble?”

The crease reappeared between Martten’s eyes. His eyebrows all but met this time. “You missed a few rough days, mistress—be thankful. A band of soldiers arrived two days ago.” Her throat went tight. “They delivered a proclamation from the emperor. Seems illegal auditors are operating in his name.” 

Now she almost stopped breathing. She made herself inhale and exhale. “Indeed.”

“Aye! And then it turns out one is already here! He was tried yesterday. Swift justice, praise to the heavens.”

“He was found guilty?”

“Of course! No doubt about it. Why, I left the taproom to Jinny and sat in the council chamber myself. Oh, he protested his innocence he did, claimed he was sent by the emperor, even produced a sigil. That dammed him further. They then accused him of high treason and he will be hanged at sunset tomorrow.”

She heard Pait’s gasp, but dared not look sideways at him. Best treat this as casual news. “Any other happenings?”

“Not much. Still talk of a new bridge and schools, but I doubt the emperor has time for outposts like this. My lass Hanny is to be married come Michaelmas. She’s pledged to Gram, the butcher’s son…” Adriana let him continue, although impatient to meet with Carne and Drave.

Finally, Martten paused, then suggested, “Well, mistress, if you and the lass would care to sup, my wife has a good mutton stew…”

“Oh, please,” Pait interrupted. They had not stopped to eat all day.

“Yes, little missy.” Host Martten smiled. “We’ll send a bowl up here, and not forget you.”

It was how he always served Adriana, saving her from the stares in the taproom. “After supping, I would talk awhile with the other travelers. They were courteous, and…”

“Mistress, they cannot come up here!” Martten objected.

Oh dear, she’d outraged his sense of propriety. 

“Not that I doubt you, mistress, I know you of old, but there would be talk, and this is not the Wild Boar.” An inn of dubious repute near the garrison.

“I cannot enter the taproom.”

His plump mouth drew up like his brows as he pondered that one. “Tell you what. If they sat on my back veranda, and you joined them there for a wee while, ’twould offend no one, and you’d not be bothered by the company.”

Would work.

Her biggest stumbling block was insisting Pait remain behind. He begged to be included, but when she pressed the point that she needed him rested the next day he grudgingly acquiesced. After a full bowl of mutton stew and fresh barley bread, he was ready to drop. Adriana redressed his feet and fingers, put salve on his still-livid bruises and cuts and brewed him a tisane to ease the aches and help him sleep. 

Gathering the soiled bandages, she descended the back stairs. She stopped in the kitchen to toss her burden on the fire, and after a word or two with Martten’s wife Sarral, Adriana went out onto the veranda.

Both men rose at her approach. When she saw Allat was not there, she knew she’d done right to leave Pait upstairs. 

“You have heard the news, Lady Adriana?” Carne asked.

“That Mark of Windhaw is accused and condemned? Yes. Host Martten told me.”

“Ye Gods!” Drave muttered. “That villain Quel! He must have dispatched horse soldiers as soon as he’d wrung the knowledge from Pait.” He lifted the ewer, poured a mug of cider and offered it to Adriana. “We have nothing to celebrate, lady, but ‘tis a fine cider.”

She took the cup in both hands, nodding her thanks.

“What can we do?” Carne asked the world in general and the night around them. “If we had an army, we could fight, but no doubt we, too, are named traitor. I knew. We all knew there was opposition to the emperor’s will, but on this scale…”

“It is just one garrison, is it not?” she asked

“One garrison, half an army. What difference against two? I’d storm them myself but would not expose Allat or Pait to more ill-treatment.”

Dejected was not the word for their mien. And she’d thought Astrians were always arrogant and insolent. She had learned so much the past few days. She sipped the cider—it was, as always, cool and smooth. Host Martten kept many of the old ways and a fine pressing was one of them. 

“We must do something. One of us approach the master and test the outcome. I’ll go,” Drave said. “If I, too, am accused, then flee with Allat and head for Fort Dalban. My cousin Gret is commander. He is loyal.”

“Dalban is three days’ hard ride away. Mark—and you most likely—would hang before we could get there.” Carne closed his fingers so tightly around his mug, she expected him to dent the metal.

“It can’t be hopeless,” Drave insisted.

Carne snorted with disgust. “What are our choices? Sit by and let him hang? Or join him?”

“There is a third choice.”

They both stared at her. “Indeed, what is that?” Carne asked. “Storming the garrison?”

“No…rescuing Mark of Windhaw.”

They’d looked less astounded when Pait had charged out of the forest at them. 

“Impossible!” Carne snapped. “Two against the garrison and half the assembled town!”

“Three,” she said. “Five, counting the lads.”

“Still suicidal,” Drave said. “And putting the lads at risk is criminal! It will not happen!”

They both all but snarled at her.

“If we had a detachment of loyal soldiers, yes,” Drave said, “but what can we hope to achieve but cause a few innocent bystanders to be trampled to death in the stampede to arrest us.”

“Lady, I know you mean well—” Carne began.

“You are both wrong.” While they stared, irritation and worry darkening their eyes, she went on. “We have more strength that you know.” She took a deep breath. She could be signing her own death warrant. If they denounced her, she’d swing beside Mark, but… “Pait spoke truer than he imagined when he asked if I were a witch.” Now that she had them stunned into muteness, she forged on. “I have power and knowledge that I can and will use to help. The scaffold is set up on the open ground by the river. I can raise a mist strong enough to obscure and confuse everyone. You can use the confusion to rescue Mark.”

“And then?” Drave asked. 

He was not discounting it. “Then you take him and Pait to safety, to the fort your cousin commands. Can’t he keep you safe and send a message to your emperor?”

“You make it sound like a simple task, lady. But there will be crowds at the hanging—soldiers, armed guards,” Carne said.

Simple? These Astrians had no idea! “Not simple, but not impossible. What other choices are there? Sending for help? You yourself said Mark would be hanged before the message arrives. Storming the garrison?” They both frowned at her. 

“Lady,” Drave began, “what you propose is blasphemy.”

“Maybe, but letting Mark hang is a greater one!” Carne said. “Seems to me the emperor was right in suspecting irregularities in these parts, and our commission was to note and report.”

“Yes.” Drave looked at Adriana. “Lady, can you truly raise a mist thick enough to hide us?”

“Yes.” It would leave her wan and exhausted, but she could hide until she recovered, and Mark would be safe. 

There was little else to say. Carne agreed to hire extra horses and meet her in the marketplace late afternoon.

 

 

 

Adriana spent the next morning selling herbs and potions from a hired stall in the market. To not set up shop would have caused questions about her early arrival, and the marketplace was the hub for news and gossip. 

And gossip there was. 

Her stall was squeezed between a tinker and a butcher selling sausages and hams. Just the smell of them brought back memories of the meal with Mark. Dear Goddess! Why had she fallen in love with a man she could never have? Or could she? Had he not promised to return? Mayhap he felt the same, or at least held a fondness for her. But how could she love what she’d sworn to destroy? How could she harm a man whose aim was to right wrongs? Why…

“Ye have a potion for the shaking sickness, mistress?”

Torn from her agonizing by the young man’s question, Adriana reminded herself why she was here. “Indeed I have. For a child or an adult?”

Minutes later, the young man wandered off with a quantity of ground glarraroot in a paper twist. But more to the point, she’d learned that the hanging at dusk was to be the spectacle of the year.

The sausage man to her left confirmed the news. “Aye, we’ll not do much trade once they bring him out. They’ll all flock down to the water’s edge.” He shook his head. “My son’s going down there to sell food to the crowds. It’s not every day we see a hanging.”

“Why this time?”

He shrugged. “It’s said he came as a spy, a scout for a revolt to overthrow the master.” He spat on the cobblestones by his feet. “So, to protect us, we have extra soldiers quartered in the town. True, the garrison will order more provisions from the merchants, but who’s to say when they will pay?” He broke off to turn to a housewife with a large basket over her arm.

No two thoughts about it, rescuing Mark would be just the beginning. Had Quel sent extra troops to take over the town? Was he in collusion with the master? She had no doubt about her ability to raise the mist. That, to her mind, was the simple part. Getting away would be harder. But hadn’t Drave and Carne agreed to take care of that?

It seemed they trusted her to do her part…

Waiting was hard. Waiting and keeping Pait’s spirits up was harder still. And waiting and behaving as if this were any ordinary day to trade was nigh on impossible. But she had to do it. She set Pait to measuring out portions of herbs and roots and sealing them in twists, and resolved to shut up shop early. If trade would slack off as the sausage seller predicted, why stay? Leaving early would not occasion much comment, and she needed time to pray before performing magick of such dimensions.

 

 

 

The shouts of the soldiers could be heard across the market square as they ordered townspeople to clear the way. Bodies jostled each other and several pushed toward Adriana’s rented stall. The sausage seller grabbed Pait and lifted him behind the stall. “Best not let the soldiers see her,” he said. “Even a crippled girl’s not safe from some of them.”

“Stay behind the stall, Pait,” Adriana said. It would be even worse if someone grabbed him or pushed him over and saw he wasn’t a girl.

Pait sat down on an upturned box and leaned against the stall. He looked tired, and despite her best efforts, Adriana was sure his wounds still pained him. She slipped him a sliver of andine, and he smiled as he put it in his mouth.

The noise grew worse, the crowd rowdier. But they parted for the approach of a double file of soldiers and a cart. Seeing the man in the cart, Adriana thanked every Goddess in creation that Pait was out of sight. These people were fiends. Each turn of the squeaky wheels brought the cart closer, but even half a market square away Adriana saw the dirt and dark in the fair hair and the livid bruises on his face and shoulders. As they reached level with the old tinker’s stall, a handful of dirt hit Mark in the face. The force caused him to turn away. And as he glanced up, his eyes met Adriana’s. She should thank Rache for the gaze devoid of all recognition, but instead it ripped at her heart. He knew her not! Of course not, she’d taken that away! It was for the best. If Mark recognized her, who knew what trouble might ensue? But her heart tore as she watched his naked back disappear in the crowd and nothing, ever, would erase from her memory the bloody whip marks cut across his back. 

Why? Why ask? To force information as they had from Pait. Had they burned his feet too? Ripped out his toenails? She shuddered at the thought. Please, Rache, not. He was still standing, wasn’t he? But what if the rest of him was as beaten and bloodied as his chest? 

“Let it not fret you, mistress! It is only an old wife’s tale about meeting a condemned man’s eye!” She smiled at the butcher’s concern. The honest trader had no notion, praise the Five Goddesses!

“I know.” She forced herself to nod and smile while her heart twisted and tore. She gave another glance to the departing crowd. “You spoke truly about customers leaving.”

“For some of us, mistress.” He nodded toward Carne who stood in front of her stall.

“Sir?”

“Mistress, I came to enquire as to your supply of pain easers.”

He’d seen Mark’s beaten body too! “I have a goodly supply, sir. Whatever your needs may be.”

He looked at her, a furrow between his brows. “Lady, if you would bring an ample portion and come and see my horse, I would be in your debt.” Did she look like a horse doctor? “Lady, I beg you. Mere minutes are all I need…”

It had to be about Mark! “I will come, sir.” Stopping only seconds to ask Pait to watch the stall, she walked with Carne round the corner. As she expected, his horse was nowhere in sight. “Lady Adriana, they have changed the execution.”

Mercy? Commutation? No! Not from the look on Carne’s face. The flicker of hope extinguished. “How so?”

“I think the gathering crowd alarmed the master of the town, and after a group of youths set a fire in the river meadow, he ordered the hanging proceed as soon as the hangman and the priest could be fetched.”

Dear Rache! She had no time to pray or meditate or prepare. Not now! “We must get Pait! What about the horses?”

“Drave and Allat have them beyond the bridge. Lady, can you do this?”

“Is the river still accesible?” He nodded, his eyes dark with worry. “Then I can work a spell, but we have no time to tarry. And let us hope the hangman is delayed.” 

She ran back to the stall and found Pait talking earnestly to a fat housewife. “Mistress,” he said as Adriana approached, “this good wife needs a potion for…”

She didn’t pause to listen to the good wife’s ills. “Pait, we must go!” While he stared, she turned to the woman. “A pardon, good wife, but I have an urgent call—a man is dying!” Carne picked up Pait, looked at Adriana, then the stall. “The stall matters not!” What use were any of her potions if she failed to help Mark?

They ran toward the lower end of town, leaving behind a perplexed tinker, a curious butcher and an irate good wife.

Halfway down the hill, Adriana slowed. Carne stopped. “Why delay, lady? Do you tire?”

She shook her head to save her panting breath. “You must get Pait to safety. We can run, but he cannot.” And there would be the chase to end all chases when Mark’s escape was discovered.

“I’ll put him and Allat on a horse together.”

Pait looked dubious, but it was more from rebellion than fear. “I had hoped to help save my lord.”

“You will by obeying orders,” Carne said. 

And at that, Pait gave no more argument. “I’ll be back at once,” Carne told Adriana, and disappeared toward the bridge. 

She was alone with only her well-honed powers to aid her. Were they enough? Raising a mist and sending it across the forest edges was one thing, calling up a river to engulf the town in fog was another. And what if her actions angered Rache? No, they would not. This was true revenge against the marauders. Mark’s hand would strike the blow, but only if she freed him.

She followed the knot of people down the hill and out the city gates. The gibbet stood like a gaunt skeleton in the early afternoon sunshine. Below the town, the wide Merri meandered across the fertile meadows. Adriana elbowed her way though the crowd, hoping that Drave had Pait to safety and that they would all meet, as agreed, just below the bridge. With the amount of mist she hoped to raise, the river would be shallow enough to ford. Did she have the skills for this? Dear Rache! She had to! 

She did not want to look at Mark again. She dreaded meeting his eyes that were utterly devoid of recognition, but she needed to see exactly where he was. So she edged her way toward the platform. Soldiers surrounded him, but she saw enough to see the contusions on his face and the marks of beating on his naked chest. Before today, she’d seen that chest naked and had rested her head on the warm skin to listen to the beating of his heart. Now her own heart twisted in sorrow, hankering for her lost love and the man who would never again look at her with passion.

“Lady?” Carne whispered from behind her. He was there, with Drave.

“Aye,” she whispered.

“We are ready,” Drave said.

“Pait and Allat?”

“Are mounted, waiting below the bridge with the horses.”

She looked up at the fair-haired man standing by the gibbet like a graven statue. “I doubt he can walk that far.”

“No need to, lady,” Drave said in her ear. “We have horses nearby and just wait for your effort.”

Then they should have it. She turned and looked at them—honorable, noble Astrians. And with her back to the finest one of all, she nudged her way through the crowd toward the riverbank, stopping just paces from where the two boys waited. 

A few paces out in the river, there was a large rock. Taking off her shoes and tying them to her girdle, she gathered her skirts in her hand and waded out. She was surrounded by the Merri’s sweet, swirling water. Rache’s own cool stream fed into this river. Adriana felt the magick flow around her feet and prayed, summoning all her power and strength. As the mist rose around her feet, she drove it toward shore and called up more and more. 

At first, it was mere swirls of vapor, but as her concentration grew, mist turned to fog. Then the fog became a great cloud that rolled toward the town, toward the crowd, toward the gibbet, and the man she loved who would never know her again.

She kept up the fog, pouring it thicker and heavier toward the town until the river slowed and cries of consternation reached her from the soldiers and the crowd. 

She had done her part. Now it was up to Carne and Drave. But could they find their way in the fog?

Dear Rache! If they got trapped in the town! She waded toward the horses. The mist agitated them, but she sang them calm. She wished she had her pipe to call the other horses. There was the sound of hooves, muffled by the mist, and then Pait called, “Mistress, you must mount. They come!”

Mount a horse? Impossible! “No, you go.” She had thought to double back to the town and reclaim Hareth and her belongings. But…

Hooves thundered down on them. Mark rode behind Carne, with Drave leading. “Lady, mount!” Drave called. “We must away—already the fog thins.”

“I cannot ride!” she called. “I will—” But her words ended in a gasp as Drave reached down and swept her up behind him. Her words of protest were silenced as they thundered across the river, Pait and Allat a little ahead of them, the water splashing around the animal’s hooves like a great cold tide. Adriana clung to Drave’s back in terror, forcing her mind to maintain the fog behind them.

They galloped across the meadows, leaping hedges and ditches, until the uproar behind them died. Adriana glanced back as they entered the forest. The mist was clearing but still thick enough for them to enter the trees unseen. 

“Guide us here, lady,” Carne asked. “You know the way.”

“Let me down first!” The feel of the forest earth under her bare feet was a joy. Here she was safe and anchored. She untied her shoes from her waist and put them back on her feet. The others dismounted, all except Pait. Even Mark stood, a cloak now covering his marks and scars. 

“Lady,” he said, his voice tight as his chest rose and fell. “I know you not, but I owe you my life. I will be forever in your debt.”

“No, sir. Bring justice to this land, establish your university where Astrian and Baremes share knowledge and you will have repaid me a hundredfold.”

“Why would you risk yourself for this? You did call up that mist, did you not? You wrought magick to aid my friends in their endeavor.”

“Yes, I used magick. I could not conjure up a battalion of armed men, but mist I could call.”

He stared at her, his blue eyes all but piercing her heart at the utter lack of recognition. “Lady, such graciousness for a stranger.”

That, unfortunately, caught everyone’s ears. 

“But, Mark—” Carne began.

“We thought—” Drave said.

“But sir, you did meet her. In the forest,” Pait said. “She had your seal— look.”

She’d thought her heart could twist no more. She was wrong. Pait turned the pocket of her cut-down cloak inside out and revealed the silver button. Her fingers clasped the ring under her shift. That he must not see.

Mark stared at the silver button, incomprehension still clouding his face as a crease appeared between his eyes. He reached for the button, pulled it off the cloth and looked at the polished silver in his hand. “Indeed it is mine. It bears my family’s oatlen tree.” He looked back at Adriana. “How came you by this?”

“I found it on the rocks by a stream near where I live. After I found Pait, he recognized it as his lord’s. We went to find you, met Drave and Carne and Allat and,” she shrugged as if to make light of all this, “we found you.”

“Snatched me from the hangman, in truth and substance. I had the rope around my neck when Carne’s knife cut the noose.”

“I thank the Five Goddesses he was in time.” And would until her last breath.

Pait was obviously confused; this did not quite jibe with what she’d told him. She prayed he would not contradict. “We must move on,” she said. “I will show you the way through the forest so you will emerge close to Fort Dalban.”

It took hours—they followed slowly as Mark was injured. Darkness fell, but at her insistence, they continued until near dawn, emerging at the far rim of the forest. “The fort is but a few hours along that way,” she said, pointing to road stretching over the meadows where wild beast grazed in a widespread flock. “May Rache speed your work.”

“Lady,” this time it was Carne of Carne who spoke, “will you not come with us?” 

Go with them and suffer the blank, unknowing eyes of the man she loved more than life itself? She shook her head. “No, sir. I belong in the forest. My mission is to serve Rache.” Though she’d have to find a new way to honor the Goddess. Never could she let another man touch her now. “As you’re sworn to serve your emperor. Go with the blessing of the Five Goddesses and your Five Gods.”

Mark stepped forward and grasped her elbow with his hand—it was the way Astrians greeted each other—and accepting the honor, she grasped his elbow. The touch of his flesh sent memories rushing like a bitter flood. Never could she forget him! To the end of her days, she’d remember the sweet caress of his mouth on her lips, on her breasts, on her skin, between her legs. Blood rushed to her face as her body remembered his hard cock inside. She swallowed and looked up into his unknowing eyes. “I wish you the speed on your journey, Lord Mark of Windhaw, and may justice ever be your loyal servant.”

He nodded. “At your behest, lady, I will pursue justice in my emperor’s cause.”

“And build that university?”

“If I have to lift the stones with my own hands.”

Tears pricked behind her eyelids as the weight of his ring hung heavy round her neck. She rejected the temptation to draw it out and declare her love, offer him the proof of what they’d shared. To what avail would that revelation be? He had no memory of her. Her lover knew her not. 

Carne and Drave offered her the same farewell salute. Allat bowed and Pait made the best effort he could with a crutch and his still bound foot. 

“Lady, I owe you my life,” he said.

“Use it wisely then, Pait. Life is precious.” She smiled to conceal the misery inside.

Parting was not that easy, but at last, with her insistence that speed was of the essence, they left. She stood in the rim of the trees and watched them go. Pait turned at a distance and waved. She waved back, knowing he could not see her among the trees. From Mark, there was no sign. How could there be? He did not know her.

That thought carried her a distance into the forest before misery engulfed her. She knelt on the loam and wept, praying the forest floor would open up and swallow her and her sorrow.