Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [84]
Of its own will, and without mine, my hand drew out of my pocket and laid both ring and gold piece on the table.
“How did you—”
“Here, lad.” She gave me a handful of silver pieces; I was too dazed to count them.
“How did you—”
“Hush. Go to the alehouse by the east gate and drink there all night. In the morning, when the worthless alehouse louts stagger out of the city to do what they call ‘work’ in the fields, go out with them.”
“But how—”
“I said to hush!”
But I could not, even though I could barely get out my next words. “I never . . . never believed in witches. Are you . . . a witch, mistress?”
“Get out before I kick you out, lad. Your stupidity shames us all.”
“But I—”
“Get out!”
“Will you tell me just one more thing? How did Cecilia know about you in the first place, for the milady posset I mean, and why are you now helping her to—”
“Such stupidity will destroy us all yet,” she said despairingly, and then all at once I stood in the dark alley, and the tent door was laced tightly shut behind me. I blinked, and a shudder ran over me. So it was true and I had never known it; witches existed in the world. Or maybe Mother Chilton had merely babbled, and I had walked myself from her tent. Or maybe—
“Hello, Roger,” said a voice behind me in the darkness. I whirled around. There, wrapped in a gray cloak and somehow sounding scared and furious and determined all at once, stood Maggie.
23
“WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” It came out harsh and accusing, my tone born of my own fear, my own unsettling doubts about what I was doing here.
“I’m going with you,” Maggie said in an un-Maggie voice, humble and beseeching. Nothing was as it should be.
“You’re not. Go back inside the palace.”
“I can’t let you go lurching around the countryside alone. You’re too ignorant,” she said, and that sounded more like Maggie. But she was the second woman in two minutes to tell me how stupid I was, and I lost what remained of my temper.
“I have ‘lurched around the countryside’ since I was six years old! With people you couldn’t imagine, doing things you couldn’t imagine! Damn it all, Maggie, leave me alone!”
She started to cry.
Her tears were not like Cecilia’s, stormy and clutching, tears a man could comfort. She stood there in the starlight with her hands hanging limply at her sides, tears sliding silently down her face. Her nose began to run. But she didn’t move, didn’t go back to the palace.
“Maggie . . . I can’t take you.”
Finally she said, “You understand nothing.” Which was not true, and certainly didn’t help. She added, “I mean, nothing about me.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“Anything!”
I stalked off, toward the alehouse by the east gate. I could feel Maggie following me. There was a pocket in my new cloak, and I put my hand into it and fingered the coins Mother Chilton had given me. Ten silvers—more than I had ever seen together in my life. Five hundred pennies! I was a little afraid of so much money. Just before we reached the alehouse, I bent over and under cover of my cloak, I slipped nine of the silvers into my boot.
The alehouse was half tent, half newly constructed wood. A brazier burned brightly in the center, warming all but the farthest corners. Queen Caroline had undone her mother’s edict that tradesmen must leave the city at night, and the two long tables on either side of the brazier were full of people drinking and talking and laughing. Maggie and I took one of the small, cold, corner tables. Keeping my cloak and hood on, I laid my silver coin on the table, and the serving woman looked hungrily at it and so not at us. She brought two mugs of ale, two bronze coins, and seven pennies.
Maggie said in a low voice, “Where did you get the money, Roger? ”
“That’s my concern.”
“Then where do you think Lady Cecilia has gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how will you—”
“Maggie, you’ve been very good to me. Helping me, feeding me, nursing me. But I must do this alone.”
“No,” she said simply.
“Who are you to—”
“I’m coming with you. I’m dressed as a boy, Roger, under my cloak. I have cut my hair. I’m coming with