Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [108]
Not that she complained. She never did that. But she was so weak, so helpless, that I spent most of my last coins on better food, on a few nights’ lodgings in an inn, on an enameled comb for her hair and on a cup so that she would not have to drink from the water bag. Now there was not enough money left to rent any cottage, anywhere.
We had come to the edge of The Queendom, where the seacoast began to turn flatter and fishing villages appeared. Perhaps I could find work here? But I knew nothing about fishing, and how would I explain Cecilia? If she would just stay quiet, I might have passed her off as my sister, or even my wife. But Cecilia never stayed quiet. A constant, desperate chatter was how she kept memory outside the fortifications of her mind, and her chatter marked her every second as court bred.
“My lady,” I said, “who was Hemfree?”
An expression of complete terror crossed her face, quick as lightning before it vanished. Had I, in fact, seen that expression at all? Her words came too swiftly and too loud. “I don’t remember that name.”
I believed her. Her memory had immediately discarded what she could not bear to remember. I tried something easier.
“When did you first come to the palace?”
“Oh, very young, a little girl! The queen herself sent for me. She knew my mother.” But then something must have threatened to breach her mind, because she threw me a roguish, desperate smile and laughed. “Why, Roger, are you questioning my age? Don’t you know that you must never ask a lady how old she is? Shame on you, naughty fool!”
If she had had a fan, she would have rapped me with it. But I was no longer a fool. I turned away, but then she surprised me.
“I could get work as a lady’s maid, I think,” she said.
I jerked my head around to gaze at her. “A lady’s maid . . . but, my lady, there are no courtiers here!”
“Oh, not here, not in a fishing village!” She laughed. “Somewhere nicer . . . or, at least, I think I could, somewhere there is a need for . . .” A puzzled expression crossed her face. Memory, or at least realization, was very close. She pushed it away.
“Oh, silly me! Of course I couldn’t do that! Really . . . you shouldn’t let me prattle on so, you naughty boy!”
I said quietly, “I am not a boy, Lady Cecilia.”
And she was not a lady. Not here, in this place. I could not take her anywhere that she could be a lady, because Queen Caroline would have her arrested, tortured, killed, even though Lord Solek still held the power at court; I had learned as much from overheard scraps of conversations as I bought Cecilia her comb, her food, her cup, her lodging, her donkey.
Probably Cecilia and I shouldn’t even stay in these remote fishing villages for very long. Fishing villages brought travelers, both by sea and land, and travelers carried news to and fro. Inevitably, someone would notice the presence of a woman as beautiful and out of place as Cecilia. That traveler would mention it elsewhere, and the news would make its slow way to the queen.
So what was I going to do with my lady, my love? How were we going to live?
If we went farther inland, not toward Glory but rather to remote villages where the chance of recognition was less and the old ways were stronger, I could do as Hartah had done. I could sell my services as a visitor to the Dead, bringing false comfort at the summer faires that would soon begin. My flesh writhed at the very idea. However, I could come up with no other. The money was gone, all but a few pennies. We had to eat.
Moodily I walked along the rocky beach, watching the boats set out in the early morning for a day of fishing. I had left Cecilia asleep in the village’s only inn, a snug wooden structure with a taproom below and two tiny bedchambers above, both smelling of fish. Cecilia and I shared one of the chambers, she on the bed and I on the floor. The innkeeper’s wife, who ran the place while he fished, was much younger than he, and frankly curious about Cecilia and me. But she asked nothing, and she ran her little establishment with a tolerant competence that reminded me of