The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [18]
Laughter drifted in through the windows as we rode by children who scrabbled in pools of dust along the roadway. They looked up indifferently as we passed. I was once like them, I thought rather bitterly, until the Council had taken a hand.
The carriage jerked suddenly to a halt, and the coachman dismounted. We had stopped outside yet another hostel called The Green Tree.
After a long time, he came back, unlocked a window, and threw a soft parcel to me. “Supper,” he grunted in a curious accent. Impulsively, I asked him if I could sit outside and eat.
He hesitated, then unlocked the door. “Out yer get, then,” he said.
Thanking him profusely, I did as he bade, and he relocked the carriage, muttering about children. I stood blinking at him. “Go round th’ back. Ye can eat there. Mind ye don’t wander.” Thanking him again, I hastened away, thinking many of the late-night callers at my father’s house had spoken like this, with a slow, singsong lilt. They had looked like this man, too, gnarled and brown with kind eyes.
There was a pretty, unkempt garden out behind the hostel, and I scoured it for a spot under one of the trees.
“Least you/Elspeth could do is share food/meal,” came a plaintive thought. I jumped to my feet in fright, dropping the food parcel. Maruman rushed forward and sniffed it tenderly. “Now look what you have done.”
I stared at him, unable to believe my eyes. “What … how did you get here?” Maruman gave me a sly cat-look and fell to tearing at the parcel. I sat back, my own appetite forgotten.
“I came with you,” he told me as he ate. “In the box with wheels, on the back. I am very clever,” he added smugly.
I burst out laughing; then I looked around in fright, because my laughter had sounded so loud.
“You took a terrible risk,” I sent. “What if you had been seen?”
“I had to come/follow,” he sent. “Innle must be protected.”
I looked into his eyes, but there was no sign of madness. “You won’t be able to come all the way to Obernewtyn,” I sent. “The carriage goes over tainted ground.”
“I will stay here, and you will come to me.”
I shook my head impatiently. “Obernewtyn is like a cage. I won’t be allowed to do as I please.”
Unperturbed, Maruman began cleaning one of his paws. “You will come,” he sent at last. “Maruman does not like the mountains. I smell the white there.”
“Well, how will you live here?” I asked him.
He gave me a scornful look; Maruman had, after all, lived a good many years before meeting me. Just the same, I reflected, he was not a young cat, and then there were his fits of madness. Finishing his ablutions, he curled in my lap and went to sleep.
I thought of what I had said to Daffyd, the boy in the Councilcourt. I had not meant it then, but now I seriously considered escaping. I could run off; it would be far easier here than it would have been in Sutrium. I could find work in some remote hamlet and keep Maruman with me. The thought of escape made me feel breathless.
My mother once had bought a wild bird from an old man who caught the poor things. We hadn’t much money, but she had a soft heart. He had given her the oldest bird, an ugly creature he had had for some time. She had opened the cage to let it fly away. But it was a poor half-starved thing and would not go even when prodded. It died there, huddled in the corner of the cage. My mother had said it had been caged for too long. Neither Jes nor I had understood then, but I wondered if, like that bird, I had been caged too long to contemplate freedom.
A voice called my name. Maruman woke immediately. He leapt from my knee and melted into the shadows just as the coachman and a woman came onto the porch of the hostel. The old man blinked, and I sensed he had seen Maruman, but he said nothing. The woman turned to him. “Just as well for you that she did not wander away.” She flicked her hand at me.