Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [52]
“Who are you? Where am I?” And then, a moment later, “I am dead.”
No use lying, not to this woman. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“And you are . . . you are my daughter’s fool! With the stupid yellow dye on your face!”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“What happened, boy? Are you dead, too?”
I thought quickly. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“And this is the country of the Dead.” She turned thoughtful, then, and I saw it begin: the contemplative remoteness of the Dead. In a few moments I might not be able to reach her at all.
Desperately I said, “Were you poisoned, Your Grace?”
That caught her attention. “What?”
“Were you poisoned by your daughter, Queen Caroline? Did any messenger visit you last night or this morning, was there any strange person in your chambers, did anything happen that might have been poisoning? ” I did not know what I was looking for.
“Caroline,” she said vaguely, as if trying to remember the name. It was happening, right before my eyes. She was detaching from the living. She was no longer subject to those loves, those hatreds, those ties.
“Your daughter, the new queen! Who may have poisoned you and now has your queendom! Your Grace!”
Gracefully she sat down on the grass and stared at a flower. I had lost her. This was one old woman I could not jar into jolly stories of childhood.
I smacked my fist against my thigh. To have taken this risk for nothing! I must get back, now. I must—
Two soldiers materialized a short way off. They wore Queen Eleanor’s blue. My body blocked her from their view, but one cried, “The whore’s fool! Seize him!”
He rushed toward me, sword drawn. The other, not so quick in mind, looked around him dazedly. I stepped aside and pointed. “Your queen!”
That stopped the attacking soldier. He fell to his knees and bowed his head. “Your Majesty! Are you safe?”
She, of course, said nothing. Not for a long moment. But then she looked up at me and said simply, “Yes.” A moment later she had relapsed into the calm of the Dead.
The second soldier came uncertainly toward me. “What is this place? What . . . they said Queen Eleanor was dead. ...”
I saw it come to him, then. He looked down at his own belly, as if expecting to find it run through with the sword of a Green, and then looked again at me. I couldn’t help but be moved by his bewilderment.
The kneeling soldier sprang up. “None of your fool’s talk, boy! Where are we? What witchcraft did the whore use on us?”
Here, then, was my story, handed to me like meat on a golden plate—the same story I had once told Bat. If I could use it to make these soldiers believe I was not Queen Caroline’s ally but her victim, they might not harm me. Swiftly I said, “You have caught me out! Yes, the young queen used her sorcery to bring us all here to Witchland—I saw her do it! She crooked her sixth finger and chanted her spells and . . . and flew through the air and brought us all here! Me, too, for daring to say fool’s rhymes that displeased her . . . And she has ensorcelled Queen Eleanor! Look, the queen breathes and yet cannot speak, cannot see—”
The soldier cried out in superstitious fear and outraged fury. He waved his drawn sword, but there was no one to run through—until three Green soldiers appeared beside the river.
There must be fighting in the palace. Men were dying. And now there would be fighting here as well.
The two Blues rushed toward the Greens, who drew weapons and counterattacked. And I saw what I had not thought possible: the Dead fighting each other to kill. Only it did not, could not happen. One soldier got the advantage and slashed brutally at another’s head. The blade passed right through flesh and skull and bone, and the man stood on his feet still, unharmed.
That stopped them all.
I dared not go closer. I could be harmed, even if they could not. From beside the queen I called, “In Witchland, no one can die. Look how many the witch has brought here! And she can summon us back whenever she chooses. . . . It has been done to me before!”
The Blue soldiers looked wildly around. The three Greens had already retreated out