Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [17]
We stayed close to the coast, heading always downhill, away from the mountains. In the early dusk of autumn we reached a large inn on the coast. A rider had been sent ahead, and we were met at the inn by a large party of men who had ridden hard and fast to arrive just as we did. These, it turned out, came from Captain Conyers’s brother’s estate, somewhere farther inland. The queen’s Blues left us then, perhaps to make their own camp for the night. With them they took the other survivor from the Frances Ormund. With relief, I watched the soldiers ride away. These new men were armed and booted like the others, but they had no reason to hate me. Not unless Mistress Conyers should give them a reason.
Should I slip off now, disappear into the gathering night? To go where, to eat what, to live how? Here I was being well fed, for the first time in a long time. My head still hurt where I had thrown myself against the table in the cabin, but I had a clean bandage for the wound. And I remembered all too well Hartah’s stories of highwaymen, robbers, lone travelers gutted and left to die.
So I stood in a dim corner of the stable yard, a place where the wooden side of the inn met a high fieldstone wall, and watched the commotion. Men carried chests from the Frances Ormund into the stable; I had no doubt they would be well guarded tonight. The corpses stayed on the wagons, which were drawn behind the inn. Among the new arrivals a woman dismounted, having ridden as hard as the men. She carried a cloth bag into the same door where Mistress Conyers had been taken. All the horses trembled with hard use, lathered with sweat. They were watered, rubbed down, fed, and housed either in the stables or, when there was no more room, in a paddock. The well winch creaked continuously as bucket after bucket was drawn. Inn servants rushed about, calling to each other. No one noticed me.
Eventually good smells of cooking wafted on the soggy air. By now it was full dark. I made my way to the kitchen, stood behind a table, and bent my knees to look shorter.
“What d’ye want?” a harried servant snarled at me.
“I am Mistress Conyers’s page,” I said with as much dignity as I could manage. Certainly my clothing looked no worse than the widow’s: just as torn, just as covered with dried salt.
Instantly the woman’s expression changed. “Oh, I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t know—won’t you step into the taproom? Matty will bring ye something to—Matty!” A bellow that could startle rocks.
“I prefer to eat here,” I said loftily, “away from the soldiers.”
“Yes, of course, just as you like, sir.” She dropped me a curtsy. Pages in rich houses usually came from quality. The woman scurried to set a small table by the fire. On it she put a meal such as I had not had since . . . No. I had never had such a meal.
Thick soup with little meatballs floating in it. Warm bread with new butter. Golden ale. And an apple tart, the crust rich and flaky, the apples sweetened with honey and spices. I ate it all. When I finished, my belly felt full and my blood swift in my veins.
“Sir,” the serving woman said timidly, “if ye’ve finished, perhaps ye’d like to take your mistress’s dinner up to her? It’s ready, finally. Matty will light the way.” Another curtsy.
I took the heavy tray, and saw that my own dinner, which I had thought so wonderful, wasn’t a button on Mistress Conyers’s. Roasted goose, the skin crisp and the scent so rich I could barely notice the currant jam, the red wine, the dozen other dishes, most of which I could not even name. It didn’t matter; I had had mine.
I followed Matty, who held a lantern high through dark corridors and up stairs. At a heavy door with an unsmiling man in armor seated outside, Matty knocked. The door was opened from within by the serving woman I had seen riding in with Conyers’s men.
Mistress Conyers sat in a carved oak chair beside the fire. She wore dry garments, a plain gown of dull black and a black cap: mourning clothes. She had been crying but