Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [107]
“Roger? ” she said, so softly that I barely heard her. And then, “I died.”
I couldn’t bear the look in her eyes. Pain, bewilderment—she was like a small animal that cruel boys had hurt for sport, a kitten mewling and beseeching Make it stop, oh please make it stop. . . .
I lied to her. “It was a dream, my lady. You had a bad dream.”
For just a moment some hardness flashed over her face, some glint of a Cecilia I had never seen. Then she seized what I had offered her.
“Yes, of course, a dream! A silly, bad dream—silly me! And we’re here because we . . . because we . . .” Frantically she glanced around the clearing. “A picnic! Yes, of course, I remember now, a picnic—a bad dream—really, Roger, what are you doing? You must not hold me like that! Bad Roger!” She sprang up and took a few steps away from me, hysteria and flirtation mixed horribly on her face.
“Cecilia—”
“You must remember who you are!” She wagged a finger at me, stopped the gesture halfway. Again panic twisted her face, and again she drove it away. With coquettishness, with silliness, with sheer granite will. “You must remember who I am! Even on a picnic, it is not fit for you to touch me, you know!”
An enchanting smile, covering terror.
“My lady—”
“I think I want to go on now, Roger. Oh, flowers! Are those for me? Oh, you naughty boy—you shouldn’t! But so pretty ...”
She snatched up the bouquet I had picked for her and held them to the sodden bosom of her gown, smiling at me like a desperate child.
A thought came to me, unbidden and unwelcome: Maggie would have had the courage to face the truth.
But Maggie had never died, had never gone to that other country. And if Cecilia was a child, she was still as enchanting as ever. It was easy—so easy!—to slip back into being the humble servant I had been with her at the palace. I knelt and said, “The flowers are nowhere near as lovely as you, my lady.”
She laughed. “Oh, you do overstep yourself! What a courtier you are becoming, Roger. . . . I think perhaps I am hungry, after all. What a lovely spot for a picnic, here above that sweet sea!”
I gave her what I had: stale bread and wild strawberries. I spread my cloak for her on the grass. I passed her the water bag. She prattled on, covering the strangeness of the situation with silly chatter, the only defense she had. I saw that she would never speak of what had happened to her on Soulvine Moor, nor of the weirdness of finding herself alone in the far reaches of The Queendom with me. Whatever poverty or hardship we endured, she would laugh and prattle and say nothing and rely on me utterly to take care of her, pretending that this was normal because anything else was too terrible to think about.
A child.
When the lovely spring afternoon faded, I led her—without taking her hand this time—away from the cliff. The sun had dried both our clothes. We slept in the clearing, she wrapped without comment in my cloak, I shivering on the bare ground. The cloak would have held two, but to Cecilia that was not possible. My dreams in that cursed place were terrible, but I didn’t mention them. Not then, not ever. Cecilia would not have known how to comfort me—even if comfort were possible, for one who had done, seen, been such as I.
28
IT IS ONE THING to love a child in a palace, surrounded by comfort. It is another to travel with a child through rough country, trying desperately to think where to go next.
I had three silvers and seventeen pennies left of Mother Chilton’s coins. Maggie’s scheme of renting a cottage for a cookhouse might still be possible if I could earn just a little more money. However, I had trouble visualizing Cecilia as a serving maid. And then I had to spend two silvers on a donkey, because Cecilia could not walk very far or very long. I had to leave her hidden in a grove of trees to find somewhere to buy this donkey, and the balky animal cost me more time and money than I had expected. By the time I returned, Cecilia was curled into a quivering ball of terror in my cloak. It took me hours to soothe