‘LET ME GO!’ Elizabeth tried to breathe, but had a man’s heavy palm over her mouth, stifling with the smell of dirt and flesh. Panicked, she tried to kick and get free, but her captor held her with frightening ease.
Across the courtyard, Sarah was being dragged from her horse by the hair. ‘They’re not here!’ Elizabeth heard the men around her saying. ‘They vanished!’ There were shouts and chaotic movement by the gate.
She saw Violet kneeling next to the woman called Duval, and that was all wrong. Violet wouldn’t kneel. Violet would fight.
‘No!’ Elizabeth said, or tried to say, the sound muffled. As she had charged back through the gate, all Elizabeth had been thinking was that Sarah was being stupid and didn’t know how to ride Ladybird. You couldn’t tense up or yank on the reins when Ladybird was spooked, you had to relax and stay as calm as possible. She had been going to tell Sarah that. But then the men had closed in, pulling her off Nell, and the gate had winked shut, and the awful feeling came that they were cut off here.
Get up, Violet. Get up. But Violet didn’t get up. Something about Mrs Duval was stopping her.
‘They haven’t vanished into thin air,’ said Mrs Duval. ‘They went somewhere.’ A few of the men had reached the gate and passed harmlessly through it, out beyond the outer wall and onto the empty marsh, where they looked around with confusion. Without taking her eyes off Violet, she said, ‘Brother, find out where they went.’
Brother?
A man stepped out in front of Sarah. He had the same dark hair, but in his case the strong features were caved in by three claw marks, scars running diagonally across his face. He carried a cane and leaned on it when he walked, which he did with a pronounced limp. ‘Your friends. Where are they?’
When Sarah didn’t answer, he hit her across the face with the cane. ‘I said, where are they?’
Sarah didn’t speak, just curled in on herself. Elizabeth’s hands became small fists. Get up, Violet. Get up, get up—
‘Are you protecting them? They left you here.’ He hit her again.
Sarah made a sound of pain but didn’t speak.
‘Tell me, or I promise you—’ The cane lifted.
‘Leave her alone!’ Elizabeth sank her teeth into the hand covering her mouth and stomped down on her captor’s foot. ‘Ow!’ said the man. His grip loosened, enough for a small girl to slip.
‘Stop it!’ Elizabeth flew at Mrs Duval’s brother, pummelling him with her fists. ‘Stop hitting her!’
He didn’t react beyond a single swear word, so she snatched the knife that she saw under his black coat and stabbed it into his thigh, and he swore again and grabbed at his leg. ‘You little—’
Elizabeth kept swinging the knife as Mrs Duval’s brother made a garter out of his fingers, blood welling up from between them. ‘Somebody deal with her,’ he ordered, and Elizabeth didn’t have a plan after that, but maybe Violet would get up, maybe the others would come back, maybe Sarah would—
A pistol shot, like the sound of a branch cracking.
Everything stopped.
In the silence that opened up, Elizabeth found herself panting, slippery knife in hand. The men had fallen back from her, but it took her a long moment to see why.
A mousy-haired man on the edge of the skirmish was holding a pistol pointed right at her. It was smoking. He had fired it. Deal with her, Mrs Duval’s brother had said.
But she wasn’t hit.
Sarah, Elizabeth realised as her hands began to shake. Sarah had torn herself free to throw herself in front of the shot. She was collapsed on the ground in front of Elizabeth, hands on her abdomen.
‘Hold your fire!’ said Mrs Duval, and only then did Elizabeth see that there were many men holding pistols at the ready.
Elizabeth found herself standing next to Sarah in a little cleared circle, the knife clutched in both her hands so tightly it was shaking. She could see Sarah’s blood spreading out on the ground. The man had been aiming low, for Elizabeth. The bullet had hit Sarah in the stomach.
‘Put the knife down, or I kill the Lion,’ said Mrs Duval.
Elizabeth looked up to see Mrs Duval holding a pistol of her own right at Violet’s temple. Please get up, Violet. Sarah looked hurt. Badly hurt. And there were pistols pointing at Elizabeth too, men ready to shoot her from all points of the yard.
‘It’s all right, please,’ Sarah said, though she didn’t look all right, she was bleeding, there was so much blood. ‘Please, Elizabeth, put down the knife.’
Elizabeth let the knife drop from her fingers.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
Immediately, she was grabbed again and pulled away from Sarah, who was also taken in the grip of one of the men and hauled to her feet, with no care for her red-stained tunic.
‘Throw the girls into the wagon,’ Mrs Duval said. ‘The Lion comes with me.’
Elizabeth hit the wall of the wagon with a jarring burst of pain in her shoulder.
The wagon was stuffed full of as many bits of the Hall as the men had been able to grab at short notice, and Elizabeth pushed up from where she found herself sprawled over bags full of lumps, with her hands tied in front of her. And Sarah—
Sarah was already inside, lying in the far corner.
‘She’s hurt,’ said Elizabeth, but the man ignored her and just slammed the door closed. ‘She needs a doctor. She needs a doctor!’
Silence answered her. A second later the wagon jerked into motion.
‘I’m sorry.’ Sarah’s voice was barely there, as if she was using all her strength just to whisper. ‘If I hadn’t lost control of my horse—’
Sarah wasn’t getting up from where she lay. She was pale and breathing shallowly and there was so much blood on her blue tunic.
Simon kills women, Katherine had said, but those words hadn’t been real to Elizabeth.
The morning after the Shadow King’s attack, Sarah had taken Elizabeth’s hand and shown her courtyards and gardens with strange and beautiful flowers, a pond with carp in it, a tiled mosaic of a lady. She had told Elizabeth about a time when the Hall had been a place of knowledge and learning, drifting chants, and the simple, ordered life of the Stewards.
The men had thrown Sarah in here like a sack into a warehouse. Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. There was so much blood. Elizabeth took Sarah’s hand and held it.
‘We’re going to Ruthern. They’ll have a physician. And they’ll have—’ She thought about what Katherine would like. ‘Cream meringues. And jellies. And apricot ices.’
‘That sounds nice,’ Sarah said softly. ‘We don’t have those in the Hall.’
Sarah was like Katherine. She liked nice things, and making things nice. Sarah had tended the Hall’s flowers. She had liked the simple pleasures of planting them, and watering them, and sketching them. We have flowers that grow here that don’t exist anywhere else in the world, she had told Elizabeth. Then the look in her eyes had turned sad. Had.
Katherine had never done well when bad things happened, like when the goat Mr Billy had gotten into the laundry, and Katherine had cried about her dress and not seen the funny part. Katherine didn’t like blood. Katherine didn’t like guns. She would have been very frightened, in a wagon in the dark.
‘Don’t frown,’ said Sarah, softly.
‘I’m not frowning.’
‘I know I’m not very brave. But I won’t tell them what you are. I’ll die first.’ She was so hurt the words were a whisper.
‘Shut up. You always think you’re going to die. You’re not going to die. Shut up.’ She was holding Sarah’s hand tightly.
‘All right,’ said Sarah, with a small smile.
He was shooting at me, she didn’t say, in the dark. He was shooting at me. You didn’t have to.
‘I’ll make it so that things are nice,’ said Elizabeth in a rush. ‘I won’t frown. I won’t mess things up. I’ll find you a – a dress of the first water. And I’ll, I’ll let you ride Nell, she goes nicer than Ladybird.’
‘Did you know,’ said Sarah softly, ‘I was a janissary because I failed my test, but I always wanted to be a Steward.’
‘Sarah,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Look up,’ whispered Sarah. ‘Do you see? Even in the darkest night …’
Her fingers in Elizabeth’s went slack, and the light in her eyes went out. There were no stars above, just the wooden covered wagon. Elizabeth held her hand until it went cold.
She cried for a long time. Then the feelings inside her became a kind of tempest. ‘Hey, help us! Help us!’ She kicked the door, but it didn’t do anything. They just rode on with Sarah in the corner. They rode for long enough that Sarah stopped being a person and just started to be a body, a thing that would have to be carried out when the wagon stopped.
She pressed herself against the wood of the wagon. She thought of the Tree lighting up, and tried to will something to happen. Light up! She tried with all her might. But nothing changed in the dark, enclosed space of the wagon. Sarah had died protecting the Blood of the Lady, when that didn’t matter. Light didn’t matter. The Lady was useless.
Finally, the carriage stopped.
They had travelled for hours. They might be in London, or further.
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. What would Violet do? She fixed the idea of Violet in her mind. Her short dark hair and strong profile. The way she had drawn a sword from its back strap in one smooth motion. Violet was strong. Violet did things.
Violet would get out.
Elizabeth drew in a breath. The men outside were shouting, and probably unloading the other wagon. It was still dark. And it was raining. She thought that was good. By the time they were finished unloading, the men would be wet and tired, and she would be fresh and rested.
First she had to free her hands.
Violet would simply snap her bonds, but Elizabeth couldn’t do that, so she shifted around and tried to wiggle her fingers into one of the sacks. Groping, she felt something round and flat and made of porcelain, which she smashed, wedging the edge and using it to saw through the rope tying her wrists.
Now she had to get past the men outside. How would Violet get past them? She remembered Violet swinging her shield in the courtyard. Elizabeth groped around more deeply in the sack until she found something heavy. It was a firedog.
She crouched in the dark with it, while the men moved around outside. After a while, the activity and the voices faded, along with the clinks of harness and the sounds of horses. Then the door opened.
Elizabeth swung the firedog.
She used two arms and threw her whole body into it, half expecting it to hit knees or a stomach, but the height of the wagon meant that it hit the man in the head. He made a sound, staggered and collapsed, a slow, almost comical keeling over. He didn’t get up.
She ran, ducking to avoid the grabbing of hands that never came, unseen as she ran through the stable’s double doors and into a courtyard. Without breaking her stride, she saw the way out.
The courtyard was wide and dark, and she was running through the wheels and undercarriages and legs walking around near the inn door. There was a set of gates leading out, guarded by a watchman dressed in a shabby long tailcoat, his matted hair hanging in hanks about his face. If she kept running fast, she could get past him, because he wasn’t very good at his job. He was talking to a kitchen maid and not looking at the gate.
As she ran, a door opened towards the rear of the inn. Men were rushing out with lamps and gesturing to move quickly, greeting a newly arrived carriage, shiny and black with three black hounds painted on the doors.
Elizabeth stopped running.
A young lady’s shoes were stepping down from the carriage. She knew those shoes. They came from Martin’s, white silk with a pink embroidered rose. She’d had every detail of them pointed out to her: the quality of the silk, and how the rose even had tiny green embroidered leaves, and how extremely they were à la mode, which meant in fashion.
Elizabeth’s eyes grew wider and wider.
It was like a scene out of memory. That was Mr Prescott offering his hand to help the young lady disembark, just as he had done at the inns on their journey from Hertfordshire to London. Those were the pearls and gloves Simon had sent on their engagement, sending the whole house into an uproar. That was the hairstyle Annabel had taken five weeks to learn, singeing her fingers on hot irons as she curled wet hair around strips of paper.
And the young lady, wearing a primrose dress and a new bonnet from which golden curls spilled, framing an oval face and wide blue eyes that Elizabeth would know anywhere.
Elizabeth said, ‘Katherine?’