Now she was standing alone and exposed outside the tiny backroad alehouse, Ivy couldn’t remember quite how the thieves had managed to persuade her to be here.
‘Look more lost than that,’ Vex had said. ‘Lost and sad.’
Lost and sad. Ivy adjusted her expression, her eyes on the road out of the woods as though she were waiting for somebody. The thieves had cleaned her up and pinned her hair, so she looked once again like a pretty noblewoman, the perfect bait for their trap. Perhaps that had been the tipping point: they’d appealed to her vanity. ‘We will never have a chance to do this again, because we will never meet somebody as beautiful and golden-haired as you again,’ No had said, right before she hustled the children away somewhere safe.
‘It has to be you in front of the alehouse,’ Wander had explained. ‘Einhard knows our ugly faces.’
They had answers to all her objections: it was low risk; in the service of good; she didn’t actually have to steal anything herself. All she had to do was lure Einhard into the woods and then run away. Vex and Wander would take care of the rest: they had history with him, and taking this route to Æcstede had given them an opportunity to settle an old score.
Perhaps she was stupid for saying yes. Crispin would tell her that. Thinking of Crispin made her straighten her spine in defiance. She could do what she wanted now, even if it was helping thieves get revenge on other thieves. Ivy waited. Soft rain dampened her curls. She wondered if it made her look more fetchingly miserable. Vex was clear that this Einhard preyed on miserable, beautiful girls.
Her stomach itched. She didn’t want to be stalled here at this barely-a-village in the woods, surrounded by dripping, overgrown trees and the faint smell of dog shit, she wanted to be with her family. She yearned for a hot bath and for clean clothes and for the inside of a house. They made good time now they were with the thieves: there were more backs for whining children to be carried on, more meals that satisfied, more knowledge of the best routes.
The door to the alehouse opened and she stiffened, waiting to see if it was Einhard. They’d said he was tall and bony with a completely bald head. ‘He looks like an egg,’ No had said.
But the short, round woman that moved past her with a curious glance was certainly not Einhard.
Ivy untensed her body. Eyes on the road. Looking sad in the drizzle.
‘Good afternoon there, lovely.’
Ivy risked a glance over her shoulder. Standing at the door to the alehouse, leaning in the threshold, was a tall, thin man. Whether or not he had a head like an egg was a mystery to Ivy, as he wore a thick hat. Ivy smiled coyly and turned her eyes back to the road. Her heart sped a little.
He was at her side a moment later. ‘Are you lost?’ he asked.
‘I was meant to meet my father …’ she said, eyes on the road, hoping she sounded uncertain.
‘Would your father want you to stand in the rain?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I did not want to go inside alone. Father said there are … rough men in this alehouse.’
‘There are that.’ He stood close enough for Ivy to smell him. Smoke and body odour. ‘Your father,’ he said. ‘Was he coming via the woodland road?’
Ivy pointed down the road. ‘Yes, this way. From the north.’
‘On foot?’
‘On his horse.’
‘His horse you say? Why some of the folk inside the alehouse have said a horse threw a rider on the woodland road earlier this afternoon. What does your father look like?’
Ivy turned frightened eyes on him. ‘He’s fair like me.’
‘They said it was a fair-haired man. Richly dressed.’
‘I hope it isn’t Father!’ Ivy exclaimed.
‘They say a healer took him in. I know where to go. Will you let me take you?’
Ivy was careful not to look too stupid. ‘I … I don’t know. Father said I should wait here.’
‘How late is he?’
‘An hour.’
‘More than an hour has that rider lain injured, without his loved ones around him. I hope he will live.’ Then Einhard made a brushing-away motion. ‘But of course it might not be your father at all, only he was fair-haired and it did happen precisely when you were expecting him.’
Ivy pretended to take the bait. ‘How far is the healer’s house?’
‘Ten minutes along the road by foot. I can show you.’ His eyes dropped momentarily to the brooches holding up her dress. He was sizing her up, but whether to steal her jewellery or remove her clothes, Ivy was not sure.
She looked over her shoulder at the alehouse, then back at Einhard. She bit her lip.
‘I understand, my lady. There are cut-throats and thieves lurking at the hems of every woodland. But it is yet daylight and I am a good man.’ He bowed slightly, his big hand spread across his chest. ‘We will stay on the road.’
Ivy nodded, keen for her part in this adventure to be over. Vex and Wander would be watching from the woods, and would follow them until they were all far enough from the alehouse that the trees would swallow the commotion. Then Ivy was to run back to No and the children, and that was that. She didn’t care what they did to Einhard. Thievery was not her business and he seemed an awful, rough sort of fellow.
‘This way,’ he said, and for a few hundred yards she followed him in silence as he pointed out landmarks and noted the sounds of the robins and pretended to be a genial fellow.
Then he said, ‘You know, if we cut across the woodlands here we can come out directly behind the healer’s house.’
Ivy stopped, and for a moment had a genuine flicker of fear. What if this wasn’t Einhard? What if she had followed the wrong man? What if Vex and Wander were nowhere near? She hadn’t heard a single footfall, and she had been listening for it. Her eyes went to the woods. Mossy rocks and damp leaf-fall.
‘I give you my word,’ Einhard (if it was Einhard) said, and theatrically dropped to his knee with a smile.
Ivy was about to say yes when Vex burst from the trees and bore down on Einhard, a knife gripped in her right hand. Wander came from the other direction, but slower, with his bow drawn. Ivy turned to run away, as she had been instructed, but Einhard leapt to his feet and, rather than engaging with Vex, made to close the distance between him and Ivy. He flailed out a long arm, got his fingers around her wrist and brought them both to the ground. The shock of the fall slammed through her. A second later he had dragged her to her feet, her face pressed suffocatingly into his chest, his arm pinning her. She struggled against him, wondering why Vex and Wander weren’t saving her. Then she felt the point of something sharp at the back of her neck. She went very still.
‘I should have known this was bait!’ Einhard spat. ‘What makes you think you can outwit me, Vex?’
‘We want what is ours,’ Wander cried. ‘Let the girl go. She is nobody.’
‘Nobody? In these clothes?’
‘She’s a whore we paid to play the part,’ Vex said.
Ivy almost laughed. A whore. Again. She managed to turn her face a half-inch to grab a breath. Einhard moved his arm up to pin her more closely, not realising he had eased the pressure across her right arm. She remembered a conversation she’d had with Crispin once. He’d had her in a similar body lock, angry with her. But as his anger released and his guilt kicked in, he had pretended this was some kind of lesson for her safety.
‘Every woman thinks they should punch a man in his balls to take him down,’ Crispin had said. ‘But if you can get a clear shot at his throat, you should take it.’
Ivy drew back her arm. Einhard tried to shift his grip but it was too late. She slammed her fist with all her might into his throat. His arms flew wide, she slipped them and began to run – blood hot, heart pumping – and only stopped when she could hear Vex and Wander had him on the ground, begging for mercy.
Ivy ducked behind a tree and peered out, curious. Vex sat astride him, a knee on either arm, while Wander held his head with a knife at his throat. Vex was feeling him up and down, then produced a little pouch from one of his pockets. She held it aloft and shouted at him some of the most inventive curses Ivy had ever heard.
Ivy didn’t wait to see what would happen next. She took to her feet again, and ran back to the camp behind the village, where No and the children waited.
It was late afternoon by the time Vex and Wander finally returned. Their clothes were wet, indicating they had been in the stream, but Ivy could still smell the faint metallic tang of blood on them.
The camp was well off the main road in old forest, under a rocky overhang. No and the children had stoked the fire and were roasting rabbit. Vex peeled off her clothes down to her shirt, hung the wet things over a rock and sat close to the fire. Wander stayed in his wet gear, easing off only his shoes to dry them by the flames. Goldie had taken a distinct shine to Wander, who was gentle and patient with her, and loved to listen to her stories. The little girl sat next to him and began to speak quietly to him.
Vex caught Ivy’s gaze. ‘I’m sorry that happened,’ she said. ‘If I’d’ve known he’d go after you like that, I never would have asked you.’
Ivy shuddered, thinking about all the other ways the incident might have ended. ‘No more adventures before we get to Æcstede,’ Ivy said. ‘I am done with adventures.’
Vex shifted over so she sat closer to Ivy, and pulled from her pocket the pouch she had taken from Einhard. ‘Would you like to see my treasure?’
Ivy had to admit she was curious. She nodded.
Vex grasped Ivy’s hand and turned it palm up, then tipped the contents of the pouch into it.
Ivy had been expecting coins or jewels, but all that fell out was a tiny string of wooden beads, tied into a circle.
‘It was my boy’s,’ Vex said gruffly. ‘A bracelet my aunt made for him when he was born. After … it happened … when he was gone …’ Vex’s voice gave out. She shrugged, as though shifting the weight of the burden. ‘When he was gone, for a long time I thought I could still smell him on the beads. I realised of course I couldn’t. I just wished for it. I wished for him with every bone in my body. I would ache at night from it.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ivy said. ‘How old was he when he died?’
‘You mean when my husband drowned him? Not quite a year old.’
Ivy’s eyes went to little Edmund, still new enough to remember as a one-year-old. How vulnerable he had seemed then. How vulnerable he still seemed.
Vex plucked the bracelet from Ivy’s hand and dropped it back in the pouch.
‘How did Einhard come to have it?’ Ivy asked.
Wander took up the story. ‘Einhard and his gang raided us one night when we were camped right here,’ he said. ‘They took everything we had. We are thieves. We had no illusions that the things they stole were ours to miss.’
‘But this was a treasure that could not be replaced,’ Vex said. ‘I have tried to reason with him, to bargain with him. Every time we come to this part of Thyrsland, I have tried to take back what’s mine. He laughed at me, taunted me with it.’
Ivy shivered. ‘If Einhard knows that you camp here, are we safe? Won’t he come to take revenge?’ She remembered his smell, when she was pressed up against him.
Vex and Wander exchanged glances.
Gently, Wander said, ‘No, Stupid, he won’t be coming here.’
‘Or going anywhere,’ Vex added, much more offhand. ‘Or doing anything. Like standing up. Or breathing.’
Ivy sought out the children with her gaze, wondering how much of the exchange they understood. Goldie was staring into the fire, not giving any indication that she was listening. The boys were at the edge of the camp, finding stones that looked like eggs. They had become so taken with Goldie’s stories about stonebirds, and always looked for the best stones for her wherever they stopped. Goldie’s apron was quite weighed down with them.
No, who had been carving the rabbits, finally spoke. ‘Let’s forget him now. Tomorrow we should get to Æcstede, and Stupid here has promised us a good purse for the favour. We are lucky to have each other and our freedom.’
Wander stood to help her serve the meals and Vex leaned into Ivy. ‘That was a good punch, by the way,’ she said, her voice low.
‘One useful thing Crispin taught me,’ Ivy replied.
‘No person is all bad,’ Vex said. ‘That’s what makes them hard to leave.’
Ivy nodded. Thoughts of Crispin had made her sad. Frightened. She wanted all these bad feelings to stop.
Vex, who seemed to intuit what Ivy was thinking, said, ‘He hasn’t followed you.’
‘How do you know?’ She realised her pulse was flicking hard at her throat.
‘We know.’ She laid her hand on Ivy’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. We can make ourselves disappear.’
Ivy fought with her feelings. If he hadn’t come looking for her, did that mean he didn’t love her? Was he glad she was out of the way so he could take charge of the city? The answer hit her with full force. Of course he was. Power was what he wanted above everything.
‘Did you miss your husband after you left him?’ she asked Vex.
Vex said, ‘No,’ very quickly, then paused, eyes on the fire, and said, ‘I missed who he had once been. Who I thought he was. But one cannot go on believing the best of somebody determined to do their worst.’
Ivy said nothing more. She was tired and heart sick, but tomorrow, in Æcstede with her family and with her comfort restored, it would all be different.
At least, she hoped it would be.
Long before the refugee camp came into view, Ivy could hear it and smell it. Shouting, crying, hammering, singing; human waste, smoke, rotting food scraps. It ran counter to what she had imagined, which was people waiting clean and peaceful to return to their homes. She didn’t need to see their faces to know that these people despaired of ever seeing their homes again; the air for miles around seemed infused with feverish anxiety. Life seemed turned upside down to Ivy then; impossible things had happened and to know it was one thing, but to be confronted with its aftermath in all its visceral misery was quite another. She dragged her feet until she was at the back of their party, walking alongside Wander, who had Goldie on his back.
‘Are you well, Stupid?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid to look,’ she said.
The trees began to thin, the road widened, and Æcstede and its surrounds came into view at the bottom of the hill.
There was much activity around the fields where the escaped citizens of Blicstowe were camped. Drivers with blankets, kindling and oilskins unloaded to rows of helpers. Other people were upending clean water from buckets into a trough, or walking from the trough and the stream, which Ivy knew was a mile away from town. The latrine pit – where the worst of the stench was coming from – was being tended by two brave souls with scarves tied over their faces: one burying the highest filled end of the furrow, the other sprinkling the rest with lime. Beyond, laid out in untidy rows, were makeshift tents, the ground between them churned and muddy from rain and many feet. People clung to these miserable temporary homes. Some children played, others – the older ones who were able to understand fully their circumstances – sat still and drawn with their mothers, perhaps wondering, as Ivy was, where their fathers were.
She hated the feelings she had looking at them, and hurried back to Vex to say, ‘Take me to the town. Not … not down there.’
‘Your sister?’
‘She’ll be in the town.’ Ivy swallowed hard. Soon the thieves would find out she wasn’t Stupid from Nowhere. They’d know she was a princess, a duchess, connected to the most powerful family in Thyrsland. By then she would be safe, though. They couldn’t snatch her children and demand money for their return.
They skirted the field and took the road into town. Soldiers everywhere, mail ringing. Wander placed Goldie on the ground and she moved closer to Ivy, grasping her hand.
‘The crow mother won’t be here, will she?’ Goldie asked.
‘No. This army is here to protect us from the crow mother, if she tries to get close.’
Goldie did not look reassured, and glued herself to Ivy’s hip.
They made their way across the crowded town square, where the misery was less muddy and thus less severe, and Ivy led them to the alderman’s house and pushed open the door.
The room was full of soldiers, but the more important-looking ones with sashes and clean hair. Maps lay on tables. People spoke in hushed, urgent voices.
Before Ivy had a chance to search the room with her gaze, a guard had stepped in front of them and said, ‘You can’t come in here.’
Vex stiffened, as though ready to bolt from authority. Ivy stilled her with a gentle hand on her elbow.
Another voice then, from the table at the centre of the room: ‘Princess Ivy!’
‘Who is your sister?’ Vex managed in a strangled voice.
Sighere approached, waved the guard away and took both of Ivy’s hands. ‘I am so relieved to lay eyes on you,’ he said. ‘We had word from Sæcaster that you had disappeared, feared dead.’
‘I am alive,’ Ivy said. ‘I fled from Sæcaster after the Captain of the Guard threatened me and the children.’ She almost didn’t dare ask. ‘Has he … is he here?’
Sighere frowned darkly. ‘No, my lady. Nobody has come from Sæcaster. Your captain sent word that he will send no soldiers. He is no friend of Ælmesse.’ He glanced over her shoulder at her party, gave them an imperious look.
Ivy gestured to them with a forced, bright smile. ‘I need to pay these good people who gave me safe passage all the way here.’
Sighere’s expression softened. He nodded and waved over a portly man whose fighting years were behind him. ‘Pay these folk,’ he said. ‘Generously.’
‘Where is Bluebell?’ Ivy asked.
As the portly man handed the astonished thieves a handful of coins each, Sighere said, ‘Bluebell is not here. She has gone west to assemble a force that can defeat Willow.’
Goldie shrank even closer against her.
‘When will she return?’
Sighere frowned. ‘I had expected her back by now. Everyone had expected her back by now. The situation is becoming intolerable. The refugees are on the verge of revolt. They won’t listen to my reassurances any more.’ He suddenly brightened. ‘Ivy, would you go to them and help them? Would you fetch water and hand out kindling? If you could reassure them, as a daughter of Blicstowe, that might help.’
‘Help them?’ Ivy wanted help. Ivy wanted a warm bath and a soft bed and a full belly.
‘We will all help,’ No said to Ivy. ‘If Wander can stay here with the children, Vex and I will go down to the camp with you.’
‘I will come too,’ Goldie said, in her soft voice.
Something shifted inside Ivy, and days of fear and exhaustion rolled over her. Tears pricked her eyes. These thieves, who had nothing, who had just been given enough money to keep away hardship for a year, would willingly go directly to the camp to help. Goldie, who was little and must surely be tired, also thought nothing of offering to pitch in. Ivy, who had everything, had only thought of her own comfort. They were so good. She was so bad.
Maybe she could be better.
She sniffed back her tears. ‘I would be honoured if you would come with me,’ she said to Vex and No and Goldie.
‘We’ll send a guard with you, in case,’ Sighere said. ‘If they ask about Bluebell, tell them she will be here very soon.’
‘Will she?’ Ivy asked.
Sighere’s eyes clouded over. ‘I wish for it most passionately,’ he said. ‘All we have now is hope.’
Every second that Wengest made her wait was a second Rose feared the worst. He had taken one look at Linden, shaken his head with a cruel smile, then ordered the boy and Rose carried off in different directions. Rose had screamed at him, but he had refused to answer. She only heard him say to the guard who held a confused-looking Linden, ‘Be gentle with the boy!’
Last time she and Wengest had encountered each other, he had taken away her first baby. Now he had her second.
She paced the tent, her stomach cramping with panic. Two guards stood at the entrance, ignoring her pleading and crying. Hours passed, and the shadows grew long. Night fell. A young soldier came to her with food, stoked a fire and rolled out a mat for her to sleep on, but would not answer any of her questions. He handed her some blankets.
‘As if I can sleep, not knowing where my son is,’ she said.
Then a commotion at the entrance to the tent. A big man with a straggly grey beard appeared and thrust Linden towards her. ‘You are both to wait here and travel with our train to Æcstede in the morning,’ he said.
‘Where is Wengest? I need to speak to him!’ Rose said, her hand so tight around Linden that he wriggled.
But the man said nothing. He and the younger soldier left and the flap at the entrance to the tent was closed. She could hear them tying the leather straps that threaded through the front of it, and knew she and Linden would not be leaving.
Rose fell to her knees in front of Linden. ‘Did he hurt you?’
Linden looked back at her with big eyes, but said nothing. He looked neither happy nor sad.
‘Wengest is your papa,’ she told him. ‘I am sorry I never said so until now.’
A slight tilt of the head.
‘I thought it safer if you were both unknown to each other. Maybe I was wrong to do so …’ She trailed off, despair and fear washing over her. She pressed Linden against her and held him until he began to fidget. The fire was warm, but cold wind licked under the hem of the tent.
Finally she released him. ‘Have you eaten? I don’t suppose you have.’
Rose was reminded that, no matter how distressing the circumstances, she still had to make sure her boy ate and slept. She sat him on the grass by the fire and together they picked over the bread and cheese that had been brought in, then she prepared him for bed, accompanied only by the sounds of the wind and distant voices.
After she had told him a story, curled up on her side around him in the blankets, she kissed his ear and said, ‘Goodnight, L inden. I love you.’
He took her wrist in his hand and squeezed it tenderly. Rose choked on a sob. He closed his eyes and she watched him drift off by the light of the fire, too exhausted to fight sleep.
As the fire burned low she remained curled around Linden, but she could not sleep. She was on the verge of losing something so precious to her. Did she dare do what it took to protect herself and her boy?
When she heard low voices outside the tent, and the laces being drawn, she sat up.
The flap lifted and Wengest crouched there. Rose let out a little gasp.
Wengest lifted his hand and said, ‘Please. Do not wake him.’
Rose placed a protective arm over Linden. ‘Leave me be, Wengest.’
‘Come away. Come talk to me.’
‘I will not leave him here without me. I do not trust you.’
Wengest nodded, then ducked under the opening and into the tent. ‘Then we will talk in here, but softly. The lad needs his sleep.’
Rose wanted to explode with violent words. What would Wengest know about what ‘the lad’ needed? He had never been Linden’s father in any real sense. He had provided nothing but a seed, and that received by Rose reluctantly, she was sure.
Wengest settled next to the fire and added another bog brick, without asking her if she was cold. As the flames crept higher, Rose finally left Linden’s side and came to sit with Wengest.
‘Please don’t take him from me,’ she said.
‘He’s mine, isn’t he?’
Rose thought about lying, but realised Wengest wasn’t asking for confirmation. His eyes had already told him the truth.
Rose nodded, tight-lipped.
‘And why should I not take him? A male heir. The thing I need most in the world.’
‘Because you took our first child,’ Rose said. ‘And it would be too cruel to take the second.’
‘Ah,’ he countered. ‘But Rowan was not mine.’
Rose tried to keep the shock from her face. Wengest knew about Rowan?
‘Yes, yes, Rose. From the moment your infidelity was confirmed, I knew.’
‘Then why did you take her? Why did you go on with the lie that she was of the blood of both Ælmesse and Netelchester?’
‘Because it was easier,’ he said. ‘Because I already loved her. Because I knew she was Heath’s daughter, and he is my nephew and thus of Netelchester too, no matter what ragged tribe he has now joined.’ Wengest’s eyes flicked down and he said in a quieter voice, ‘Because I wanted to punish you.’
Rose fell silent.
‘I’m not proud,’ he said.
‘Nor am I,’ Rose conceded. ‘So you knew it was Heath?’
‘I had seen the way you looked at each other. The rest I guessed. He disappeared. Then you did.’
‘And would you have killed him if you had found him?’
‘He’s my nephew. No. I wanted you to think I would.’ He shifted. His voice grew gruff. ‘I loved you, Rose. Your betrayal … it cut me very deep. Admitting Rowan was not my child would have made a fool of me on top of that. But having her there was torture; her smile, all her mannerisms, reminded me of you. I sent her off to the Howling Wood with Skalmir Hunter. When she returned to me, the worst of the pain had passed. It was easier to love her. I have been a good father to that girl. I suppose you know she ran away from me?’
‘She ran away to us.’
‘I heard. I was on my way to fetch her when Blicstowe fell. I was ready to forgive you and Heath, too.’ He shrugged a little, and the jewels pinned on his cloak rattled against each other. ‘I had no idea about Linden.’ He fell silent a moment then said, ‘Why does he not speak?’
‘He never has.’
‘And have you tried to teach him? I can’t have an heir that can’t speak.’
‘Of course I’ve tried.’
‘I tried too, but with no luck. Perhaps he is wilful. Did you punish him? I don’t suppose you did. You were always too soft on Rowan too.’
‘Punish?’ Rose shook her head. ‘Please don’t take him,’ she said again.
‘I will take him, Rose, but the details are yet to be clear,’ he said. ‘There is a battle to be fought. Your sister Bluebell calls in a heavy debt from us. Once all is restored to how it was, we will talk at greater length about Linden’s ties to Netelchester. My new wife, Marjory, has failed to fall pregnant and …’ Here he laughed bitterly. ‘I am tired of trying with her.’
‘Linden belongs in Druimach.’
‘He’s seven. Past the age where he might be sent out to apprentice.’
‘But Linden is different. You see for yourself, he does not speak.’
Wengest raised his hands. ‘I will not discuss his future now. It is not the right time. He only needs some strong discipline to break his strange ways.’ He climbed to his feet. ‘At first light we are marching to Æcstede. Will you and Linden go on foot or do I need to empty a cart for you?’
Rose thought about the shirt, folded neatly in her pack. Despite all the care she had invested in the stitching, she remained unsure whether or not she wanted to give it to him. What a coward she was after all. ‘We can march,’ she said.
‘Good.’ He adopted a stern expression. ‘Don’t try to run away, Rose. I will always find you. Every king in Thyrsland will report to me, as Tolan did.’
Rose did not meet his eye.
He stood and opened the flap. Then he turned back, struggling with his words for a few moments. Finally, he said, ‘I still love you, Rose.’
Rose was shocked into silence.
His face worked. He was embarrassed. He dropped his head and left.
By mid-morning the next day, Wengest’s army had reached Æcstede, the closest town to Blicstowe. The noise and smell from the refugee camp made Rose’s head and heart hurt. She was grateful to be ushered ahead of the army, who would have to make camp nearby, and into the town, where the alderman Cadwell’s wife Nettie awaited them at the edge of the crowded square. Word had been sent ahead that they were coming.
‘Princess Rose,’ she said, pulling Rose into a brief embrace. ‘It has been many years since I’ve seen you, and then you were little more than twenty.’
Rose had a brief impression of the woman’s bony spine and a soft middle, then was gently pushed out at arm’s length. She had no recollection of the woman at all, and felt guilty for it. ‘It is good to see you too,’ she managed. The wind was high and blew leaves in a swirl across the square, catching on people’s clothes and in their hair.
‘I am so sorry that we meet again in such terrible circumstances,’ Nettie said. ‘But with you and your sister Ivy in Æcstede, I could not in good conscience let you sleep among soldiers or desperate folk. I have made room for you in my house. Please follow me, the little fellow too. My, but you’re a handsome young fellow.’
‘Ivy is here?’
‘Well, I have Ivy’s children here,’ Nettie explained, leading her to a nearby building and pushing open a wooden door. ‘But Ivy herself is out in the fields, hauling water for the refugees, I believe.’
‘Ivy? Hauling water for refugees?’
‘Yes, she arrived two days ago and seems determined to do good, although I caution her that she must rest. Her little ones are delightful. Two boys and a girl about your lad’s age.’ They entered a small, low-roofed room that smelled of smoke and lavender. Rose pondered the identity of the little girl: she knew Ivy’s children, and they were both boys.
Linden followed wordlessly as they passed under a threshold and into a cramped sitting room. The furniture had been moved to the edges of the room, and a series of mattresses laid out on the floor. Here, among the blankets, played Eadric and Edmund – she would have recognised them anywhere; they both looked so much like Ivy – and a fair-haired girl with a hesitant laugh and one eye on the door. She saw Rose and her body tensed.
Rose tried to smile, pushing Linden ahead of her. ‘Hello,’ she said to the girl. ‘Who are you?’
‘Who are you?’ said Eadric, the older of the boys, with a suspicious raise of his eyebrow.
‘I’m your Aunt Rose,’ she said. ‘This is your cousin Linden.’
Linden hung back, clinging to her hand, but Nettie grasped his shoulder and pushed him forward. ‘Come, kiss your cousins,’ she said.
Linden allowed himself to be embraced and kissed by the boys, then the girl approached him and said softly, ‘I am Goldie. I am your cousin too.’
Rose was still perplexed, but did not want to reveal a complicated family situation in front of Nettie.
‘Will you play with us?’ Edmund asked. ‘We are assembling an army of birds.’
Linden looked down at their collection of smooth round rocks, and seemed not to mind that they looked nothing like an army of birds. He sat, and played.
‘You may leave them with me if you wish,’ Nettie said. ‘The very next door along will take you to the hall where they have set up a war room.’
‘Is Bluebell there?’
Nettie shook her head. ‘Captain Sighere will explain. He asked me to send you over as soon as you arrived.’
Rose’s eyes went to Linden. ‘If King Wengest comes, don’t let him take my boy. Come and find me if he tries,’ she said quietly.
Nettie looked taken aback and blinked rapidly. Then she took in Linden’s face and seemed to understand. ‘I won’t let anyone in but you or Ivy,’ she promised.
Rose crouched next to Linden to kiss his cheek. He didn’t look up from the game.
She was ushered into the war room moments later, and greeted by Sighere, Bluebell’s longest serving and most trusted thane. She had not seen him for four years, and it seemed a weight had settled on his broad shoulders. His beard was streaked with white.
‘Where is Bluebell?’ Rose said. ‘What is happening?’
Sighere explained about Bluebell’s plans to persuade giants to join the army, about how the longer they delayed, the worse the outcomes for the people remaining in Blicstowe.
‘I want to ask you, as her closest sister in age,’ Sighere said, ‘what would you do next, for I am torn apart with indecision.’
‘She will come back, won’t she?’
‘It is my most fervent wish,’ Sighere said. ‘For my country and for myself, for she has Ash with her, and she and I had intended to marry.’
Rose smiled. ‘Well, there’s a bright spot in all this horror. Ash married? I cannot even imagine it.’
This was entirely the wrong thing to say, because Sighere closed his eyes with a barely audible groan. ‘As the days pass, I can imagine it less and less.’
Rose sat at the large desk. Maps were spread from one side to another and candles burned almost to their holders lit the scene. Occasionally a gust of wind crept through the cracks under the shutters and sent the flames guttering. ‘Let us imagine we are Bluebell,’ she said. ‘What would she want us to do?’
‘It becomes impossible to know. Your sister, our king, was conflicted herself before she left.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Bluebell.’
‘Losing Blicstowe shook her to her foundation, Rose. In all the years I’ve known and served her, I have never once felt pity for her. What she has to endure, the gods gave her the strength to endure. But on this occasion …’ He trailed off, evidently upset. ‘So I wait, and every morning I hope she will be back, with her army of giants, and Ash with all her powers restored to her. But it grows harder and harder to believe it is true, and the refugees and many of the soldiers grow doubtful.’
‘You have no ideas then?’
‘I have ideas,’ he said. ‘Though you will not like them.’
Rose frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I had word yesterday that a united Ærfolc army are on their way, in the company of King Renward’s army. They ought to be here by tomorrow evening. Ærfolc are cunning, can make themselves invisible, and their archers are without peer.’
Rose thought about Rowan, about the speed and precision of her arrow shot. She grew uneasy. Rowan couldn’t go to war.
‘If we could somehow slip their best archers into Blicstowe, position them on buildings – they are well able to make themselves unseen – then any attempts to light the murdering fires could be thwarted. We have a large army now. We can march on every gate of Blicstowe. Surely one will fall.’
Rose shook her head, protective of her daughter. ‘I cannot advise you. If it doesn’t work, so much may be lost.’ She spread her hands on the table, looked at the maps, each of them representing in abstract the very real fates of men and women, whose hearts yearned and whose minds wished. ‘Heath will know what to do, and the Ærfolc trust him.’
A pause. The sound of wind and crackling fire. Then Sighere said, ‘Heath is not their leader.’
‘Then who?’
‘The Ærfolc army march here not under Heath,’ Sighere said. ‘They are led by your daughter, Rowan.’