Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [78]
Why did everyone always abandon me?
I leaned over the parapet and screamed, “I’m here! I’m here!”
And then, “I’m here, you bastards! I AM HERE!”
Nothing.
I don’t know how long I stood there, clinging to the stone railing, shivering and cursing, my arm pure agony. Stars moved overhead, I know that. I grew light-headed, maybe feverish. And then, on a rooftop below the tower, two figures emerged. It was forbidden to all but soldiers to go onto the roofs at night. These were not Greens. In the starlight I could see their silhouettes clearly: a soldier of the savages and a woman. They embraced.
My voice was hoarse, but I called down, “Help me, please! I am Roger, the queen’s fool, and I am trapped on the tower by mistake! Please, send for help!”
Instantly the woman vanished, perhaps unwilling to be identified. The savage came to the edge of his roof, peering upward at me. He looked a tiny figure, no more dangerous than a small pet dog that stands on two legs. Distance deceives, promising safety where there is none.
The savage called something that I of course did not understand, and then disappeared from the roof. Several minutes later—it seemed like hours—the door to the tower roof opened and a man emerged.
Lord Solek himself.
Behind him was Eammons, the translator, who said, “What are you doing here?”
“I was forgotten! The queen—” I gasped as a wave of dizziness hit me.
Eammons said sharply, “What about the queen? What did she say to you?”
There was something wrong with his tone. It held not only sharpness but fear. Of what? Something was wrong here, very wrong. With every last shred of strength in me, I summoned what wits I had. They were all that had kept me alive until now. They counseled caution, counseled evasion, counseled lies.
“Nothing. I . . . Her Grace left and . . . I wanted . . . I wanted to be alone. So I came here. But I fell asleep and the tower was locked at dusk; I guess that is the usual way. And by now the queen must be looking for me. ...” I tried to look befuddled, foolish, out of my depth. It was not hard.
Lord Solek said something, and Eammons replied. Translating my words, I guessed. The savage chieftain gazed at me from cold blue eyes. Up close, he was even more terrifying: huge, hard, full of suppressed energy, like an enormous boulder about to fall and crush me. Then he shrugged, turned, and strode off.
“Go back to where you belong,” Eammons said irritably. “If you do this again you will be flogged, queen’s fool or no. If she doesn’t order it, I will.”
He will? Did Eammons, who now trailed Lord Solek and not the queen, have that much power? It was clear that Solek did; he now kept as close a watch throughout the palace as Queen Caroline had once done.
I, on the other hand, had no power, not even to stay upright. I staggered down the tower steps, far behind Eammons, who had hurried after his master. Every few steps I stopped and rested against the stone wall. Then, at the bottom, I collapsed.
Sometime later—that same night?—a page bent over me, shaking my good shoulder. “Fool? Fool? Are you ill?”
“Mag . . . Mag ...” I couldn’t get the word out for the chattering of my teeth: Maggie. She was the only one I could think of who might help me, cure me, care what happened to me. But, of course, the page didn’t know Maggie. He was only nine or ten, a scared little boy in royal service to a palace gone mad.
He said, “Who?”
“Mag ...”
“I’ll get her!” And he was off, running into the courtyard, bringing the only person he knew who served the queen and had a name like what he thought he had heard. When next I opened my eyes, Lady Margaret bent over me, a green velvet cloak over her nightdress.
“Fool? Are you sick?”
“H-hurt,” I managed, and then I fainted, and knew no more.
22
I WOKE ON a nest of blankets on the floor beside a strange hearth. A fire burned brightly. The room was small but richly decorated in green and warm brown, with a table between me and the door. Sunshine streamed