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Getting back to Leornian was even more miserable than the journey to Newshire. Snow had started falling in earnest in the higher passes of the Wislicbeorgs, and twice Robert had to double back and circle around because avalanches had swept away the paths he had chosen. He could only hope this turned out to be worth it.
He would never have opened Earl Aldrick’s message to the queen—not for a thousand Sovereigns. But he did wonder about it quite a bit. He wondered what the mysterious “price” was that the earl had demanded in return for his help. Another title, perhaps? Money and land? But Aldrick was already heir to one of the wealthiest duchies in Myrcia. Short of being king, what else could he want?
Hopefully the earl had written that he would be bringing his army east as soon as possible. But winter would be coming soon, even down in the lowlands, and perhaps Aldrick wanted to wait until spring.
Sometimes, as Robert lay shivering alone, and snow piled up around him, or sleet and rain hammered against the tent, he wondered if the earl was even going to send his army at all. If his lordship had meant to say, “yes,” then surely he would have said so immediately. He wouldn’t have made Robert wait a month.
Then, on sunnier days, when the air was crisp and clear, and Robert could see all the farms and orchards of the upper Trahern Valley spreading out below him, ripe for the harvest, he felt a little more optimistic. “The earl must have said, ‘yes,’” he thought, “because he’s King Edwin’s cousin. He’s my cousin, too, and the queen’s cousin by marriage, and he wouldn’t dare refuse.”
What really nagged at Robert, as he made his way slowly through storms and avalanches, was the thought of having to make this whole trip again when the queen wrote back to Earl Aldrick. He shuddered to think how awful conditions would be in November and December. But if the queen asked him to do it, he would say, “yes,” without hesitation.
“Because some of us,” he said to himself, “know our duty in this family.”
When he finally came out of the mountains into the rolling hills and farmland, he saw farmers and villagers everywhere busy with the harvest. It annoyed him to think all this would go to the Gramirens, but he quickly learned from chatty farmhands and shepherdesses that the food grown here, north of the city, was going to Leornian to be stored for the winter.
If he had taken a road that led him ten miles east or west, he would have come out in Gramiren territory. But it seemed the Sigor army had broken through the siege lines there a day earlier, and now there was a clear path for supplies—and messengers—to come and go.
He spent that night in Bullsley at an inn, enjoying a real bed for the first time in weeks, and the next day, he rode down through the Bishop’s Forest into the city, passing hundreds of soldiers building little wooden forts along the way.
Finally, at long last, he rode into the Bocburg, eighty-one days after he had left. At the stable, he let a servant take his horse and headed for the palace, carrying only Earl Aldrick’s message.
At the stable door, he was surprised to see his cousin, Princess Elwyn, sitting on a low stool with her knife in her hand. She had a sack of goose feathers and a pile of sticks to her left, and several large bundles of finished arrows on her right.
“Oh, Robert, you’re back!” she cried. “I’m fletching today. My mother wanted me to help some ladies sew a banner or something, but I’m hopeless at embroidery. So I’m out here doing my part for our army.”
“That’s very noble of you, your royal highness.”
She beamed at him. “Alicia will be thrilled that you’re home! She’s been so sad. Go see her right now!”
“First I have to deliver this message to the queen from the Earl of Wellenham,” he said, holding up the sealed letter.
Elwyn made a face. “Cousin Aldrick is a bit of a prick, isn’t he?”
“I probably shouldn’t say.”
“We both know you’re thinking it. Oh, well. You should take your message up to my mother.”
He bowed and turned to go, but she stopped him.
“When you see my mother, or if you happen to see Sir Alfred Estnor, tell them I was....” Elwyn sighed and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, never mind. They won’t care either way.”
He left her, moodily attacking a goose quill with her knife, and hurried to the queen’s study.
The queen was sitting near the window and appeared to be copying entries from one ledger to another. She jumped to her feet when she saw Robert, though.
“You’re back! Thank Earstien. I was beginning to worry.”
“I apologize for having caused you distress, your majesty.” Robert bowed.
“Don’t apologize. I’m sure the roads in the mountains must have been appalling.”
He approached and held out Earl Aldrick’s letter. The queen’s hand trembled slightly as she took it from him. Then she carried it around the desk and back to the window, where she had been sitting before, to open it.
She began reading eagerly, her eyes wide with excitement. After a moment, she squinted at the parchment, as if trying to make out an obscure passage. One of her eyebrows rose. Her lips became a thin, compressed line, and her cheeks turned pink. She let the hand with the letter drop to her side, and she looked out the window, rubbing her forehead with her other hand. Then she glanced back at the message, as if checking to see whether it had changed into something she liked better. Apparently it hadn’t.
“Well, then,” she said, half to herself. “Well, then!”
She hurried to her desk and started writing a reply, but she only wrote a few lines before she crossed out what she had written and threw this draft in her fire. After pacing around her desk for a minute, she tried again, but this time she barely got a single sentence before she hurled it into the flames.
“Oh, blast it all,” she said, rubbing her temples and smudging some ink on her face. “I’ll do this later. I don’t have time for this nonsense right now.”
Robert bowed. “If your majesty could arrange for me to sleep somewhere here at the castle, I will be ready to leave with your answer whenever you happen to—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I think I can take a little time composing my reply. And when I send it, I’ll send it with someone else. It’s not fair to make you go all that way twice for...for Aldrick.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
It seemed pretty obvious from her majesty’s reaction that Aldrick wouldn’t be joining them anytime soon. Robert knew this was bad news for the Sigors, but at the same time, he couldn’t help feeling enormously relieved at not having to go back to Newshire.
The queen stood again, tossing her pen on her desk. “Come upstairs with me, if you please. There’s someone you should talk to.”
Up on the third floor, the queen took Robert to the Silver Parlor, which was now apparently Sir Alfred Estnor’s office. In the past day, thanks to the brilliant maneuver that had broken the siege, Sir Alfred had gone from being one of many brigade commanders to being the chief of staff of the entire army.
The queen had Robert tell Sir Alfred about his trip to Newshire and back. Granted, Robert had done his absolute best to avoid the enemy whenever possible, but he had still heard plenty of rumors, and he had seen troops on the move here and there at a distance. Sir Alfred took notes on everything and then went over to a large map, where he shifted some little wooden markers around to reflect the information that Robert had given him.
The queen watched it all like a fond parent. “I think we’ve made more genuine progress in the last two days than we did in the past two years,” she told Robert. “Alfred has a way of seeing possibilities where other people don’t.”
“You’re too kind, your majesty,” said Sir Alfred, still moving the wooden markers around the map.
When he was finished, the queen apologized to Robert and said that she and Sir Alfred needed to go see Sir Presley Kemp to discuss the grain reserves and rations for the army.
“Oh, and tonight, Sir Alfred, the king will be naming you a Knight of the Order of the Girdle. There will be a small feast, of course. You’ll come, too, won’t you, Robert? Or, no. You’d rather be home with your family, I’m sure, after being away so long.”
“I would, yes, your majesty.”
“You are excused then,” she said, smiling. “Give my regards to Alicia and tell her she needn’t bother coming to court tomorrow. I release her from all her duties for the day. But Alfred, of course, has no such luck. There are a lot of people who want to meet him tonight.”
“I look forward to it,” said Sir Alfred.
Robert watched the queen dote on Alfred like a favorite son. Ten years ago, he might have been jealous. All he had wanted in life, as a boy, had been martial glory, rank, and fame. And here was Alfred Estnor winning all of those things—a true knight in service of his queen. But Robert didn’t want that, anymore. He served his queen, too, even if he did it in small, quiet ways that no one ever heard about. It was a different kind of service, but no less vital.
“Was there anything else you needed, Robert?” the queen asked.
“Oh, there is one other thing,” Robert said. Quickly, he mentioned that he had seen Princess Elwyn fletching arrows by the stables.
The queen shook her head. “That’s very...enterprising of her. But I wanted her to work with some of the ladies in the castle. It’s important to build relationships with the leading noble families who are helping us in this siege. I don’t know why she doesn’t understand that.”
Robert refrained from further comment. He liked the princess, but he trusted the queen to always do the right thing. And he knew from experience how annoying it was to have outsiders tell one how to raise one’s children.
“She’s down by the stables?” said Sir Alfred. He glanced out the window. “It’s a bit chilly out there today, and there’s rain coming. If you don’t mind, Sir Robert, ask her if she would like to come up here and work by my fire.”
The queen beamed. “You see, Robert? Alfred thinks of everything.”
As the queen and Sir Alfred went to the council chamber, Robert went out to the stable. He told the princess about Sir Alfred’s offer.
“He said that? Really?” She smiled and played with a feather in her hands.
“Yes, your royal highness.” He gestured to the arrow shafts and bags of feathers. “I could help you carry these things if you wanted to move up there.”
“Oh...oh, I’d better not.” She dropped the feather and watched it fall. “I don’t want to cause anyone any trouble. You should get home, now, Robert. Don’t keep Alicia waiting.”
He offered again to help, but she seemed adamant, so he left her there and walked home. The sky had grown overcast, and a stiff wind sent fallen leaves swirling through the streets. Robert got home as the first drops of rain started falling.
Alicia was thrilled to see him. She hugged him close and wouldn’t let him go, even as he sat and tried to take off his boots and overcoat. Little Bryan came in and jumped in his lap, giggling and tugging at the long stubble on his face that was starting to become a proper beard.
They looked in on little Susan in the nursery, while the servant girl ran down the block to buy cakes at Sharman’s for everyone to eat. They sat around the kitchen together—the family and the servants—eating their cakes as everyone tried at once to tell Robert what had happened in his absence. Bryan said he had seen fairies by the water pump, and the servants talked about all the sewing and preserving they had been able to get done in his absence.
Alicia only finished half her cake, though, passing off the rest to Bryan. Then she gave Robert a look of definite intention, so he gave the remainder of his cake to their son, as well, and followed her quickly upstairs.
Later, when they had their breath back and they were curled up naked together under warm, heavy quilts, she said, “People at the castle think we’re winning the war. Are we?”
“We are...doing better than we were,” he said.
“That’s good.” She snuggled up closer to him. “We’re safe, then.”
He thought of Earl Aldrick Sigor, and about that big army in Newshire that almost certainly wasn’t coming to help. He thought of the queen and her faith in Sir Alfred Estnor, who wasn’t much older than Robert himself, and had never commanded an army before.
“Alicia, what would you do if I said we might want to think about finding a place in the country?”
“In the country?” She rolled over and looked at him, astonished. “You mean outside the city? Outside our perfectly good city wall?”
“Yes. It’s nothing urgent. It’s...just in case. Somewhere you and the children could hide, if things don’t go as well as we hope.”
She put a hand to his face. “Are you serious about this?”
“Yes.”
She kissed him. “Very well. I’ll ask around and see if anyone knows about a little cottage we could rent.”
“Be discreet. Try not to let too many people know.”
“Oh, I’ll be discreet.” She kissed his neck, and her hands started to wander. “Discretion is my middle name, my dear.”