Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [120]
“Yes,” I said. “I brought the Blues back from the country of the Dead.”
“And . . . and Cecilia, too?”
“No.” I would never tell anyone what had happened to Cecilia. The spiked metal ball twisted in my chest. Those spikes were ones that no Mother Chilton could ever cut out.
Maggie looked away from me. Abruptly she said, “Jee is safe.”
I had forgotten Jee. “You can think about someone else,” Mother Chilton had said, but I had not thought of Jee.
Maggie continued, “He’s with me in the kitchen. He sleeps under the trestle table where you used to sleep.”
I said, “It was Jee who told me that the soldiers had taken you. They were looking for me?”
“Yes. The queen wanted you. I don’t know why, but if you are . . . that thing that you said, the thing that can travel to the country of the Dead ...”
“I am, yes. But I am not a witch.”
She nodded, not looking at me. Her hands loosened a little in her lap. I said, “How did you get that bruise on your face?”
“A Green hit me when I tried to escape. They had orders to bring me back to the palace if they couldn’t find you. The queen knew that we left together. I told her that you had left to find your mother—”
“My mother! ”
“You called out for her in your sleep, several times, when we were traveling to the Unclaimed Lands.”
Calling out in troubled sleep—my old problem, the thing that had brought me to Queen Caroline’s attention in the first place. But that answered one question: how Mother Chilton had heard of my mother. Maggie must have told her. I wanted to believe that, just as I wanted to believe that Mother Chilton was no more than a skilled healer. I was determined to believe those things.
Maggie continued, “The queen kept me with her, trying to make me an ally. When she saw that wasn’t going to succeed, she threatened me with torture, but she hadn’t yet sent me to the dungeon when your Blues arrived. I think she still had hopes of bribing me with silk dresses and green jewels.” Maggie’s voice turned scornful.
“Does your face hurt?”
“Not anymore. It just looks terrible.” She tried to smile, and failed.
“Where is the queen now?”
“In the dungeon. The Blues hold the castle.” She touched her blue gown. I saw now that it had been hastily and imperfectly dyed. Green streaks showed at the hem and neckline.
I said, “When I woke here, I thought maybe I was in a dungeon.”
She did smile then. “You’re in the dried apple cellar, Roger.”
“I don’t see any apples.”
“It’s early summer. The apples were all eaten over the winter. That’s what you do with dried apples.”
“How did I get here?”
“Joan Campford and I brought you.”
“Joan? The laundress? She was there?”
“She followed you from the laundry. She and I dragged you away. Your hand . . . There was so much blood . . . anyway. A Blue captain told us to take you away and hide you. I didn’t understand—I still don’t. You brought back the Blues, and yet there was such hatred for you on his face!”
I understood. In a soldier, fear comes out as hatred, and debt as permission to escape.
Maggie went on. “You were covered with blood and soap. Everything was chaos, with fighting in the palace and killing and shouting. . . .” She shuddered. “Anyway, Joan and I dragged you by your feet, with my petticoat wrapped bloody around your hand, to the kitchens, and then to this apple cellar. I ran for Mother Chilton.”
“And the queen? They will . . .” But I already knew the answer.
“They will burn her as a witch.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow at noon. Roger—is she a witch?”
“I don’t know. The queen recognized . . . she could tell . . . Do you think Mother Chilton a witch?”
“No!” Maggie looked shocked. “She’s a healer, is all. And she’s a good person. Not like the queen!”
The queen was not a good person. She had poisoned her mother, murdered her enemies, threatened helpless servants like Maggie and me with torture. But I also remembered the queen’s small and unnecessary kindnesses to me, remembered her desperation to protect The Queendom for little Princess Stephanie, remembered the