Straw Into Gold Read online

  "A burned tongue is hardly something to laugh at,"complained Innes, blowing at his bowl.

  "No," she answered when she could stop the cascade."A burned tongue is hardly something to laugh at. But as Saint John of Saxony says—bless his holy name—when we laugh, we escape the Devil. And you'll notice that there's no Devil in here, though God knows there is more than one devil out and about in Wolverham this day."

  "If there are devils about, they haven't brought their heat with them. We had a cold enough night of it."

  "But this one had a warm enough afternoon yesterday, from what I hear tell," she said, pointing at me. "Is it true? Did you stand before the king and defy him?"

  "I stood before the king, true enough."

  "Well, then, you have the heart of Saint Catherine, and you shame us all who will not stand there with you. By the look of the welt across your face, the king did not take your boldness kindly."

  "I don't believe he struck me because of that."

  "Why, then?"

  "Maybe he was afraid."

  "Afraid of you?"

  "Not of me."

  She nodded knowingly. "Well, there is still the welt to care for anyway." From the pocket hanging at her belt she plucked a finger of herbs, their purple pale with drying. She crushed them in a bowl and poured in a thimble of water, and their scent filled the cart. "Would you flinch if I told you this will sting?"

  "No."

  "So." And gently, softly, she rubbed at the bruise, washing away the dry clots until clean blood showed, then stopping it with a cloth. Gently, softly, she rubbed the herb lotion into the wound. It did sting, and I did not flinch.

  Then she sat on the cot beside Innes, drew me to her, held us both, and sang a sweet song to us, a song about the moon, about a faraway kingdom, about the sea. The words were waves that washed against us warmly.

  "I may have heard that song once," Innes said quietly.

  "No, no. You haven't. It's my own dear song, and I've sung it only to my babies."

  "Where are your babies now?" asked Innes.

  "Out into the wide world, who knows where, who knows how. If Saint Caedmon himself were to sing that song to them, there's not one of them who would remember. Well, perhaps one. But he has been gone this many a year, and there's no bringing him back."

  "Which one?" asked Innes.

  "Time was when I was the nurse living in the castle in the days of the old king, when the king that is now was ever so much smaller than you both. Before gold meant more to him than sunshine. I dandled him on my knee for a year, I did. And when the time came for him to marry and have his own son, I dandled that one as well. There was a baby who was a pleasure to tend. His laughter could cheer the whole of the castle. But it was a castle that no longer wanted cheering."

  "I'm sorry," Innes said, but she was not looking at us anymore. She was looking out beyond the canvas of the cart, into another place. Then she shook her head as if to clear it.

  "But that is all over now. No pining over that. And if I hadn't left the castle, then I never would have met my husband, would I? And him a sexton, no less."

  "Mother," I asked, "if you were the king's own nurse, perhaps you could answer the riddle he set."

  "Mother," whispered Innes. She turned to him. "Mother," he whispered again. She placed her hand against his cheek. It covered most of his face.

  "I was never the clever one to answer riddles," she said. "And it's been too, too long, eleven years, since I was in his service. And he is not the child he was when I knew him."

  "If we cannot answer the riddle," said Innes, "everyone who was arrested will die."

  She stared at Innes, stared at him as the king had the day before. Then she waved her hand in the air, as if to brush aside sadness. "If it's the king's riddle you want answered, you might try the queen. But then you'd need to ride yourself to Eynsham and the abbey. Now there's a journey."

  "Would you come with us to see her?" I asked, and the woman's face turned into a smile.

  "To see the queen again. It's something I had never hoped to do. Poor dear, it's not the life she would have chosen. And as Saint Ethelred himself would say—"

  But we did not discover what Saint Ethelred himself would say. Three soft raps struck the side of the cart. "You are discovered!" came a loud whisper. Immediately she quieted, put her finger to her lips, and moved forward to peer out. The sounds of the square had stilled, and when I saw her shoulders stiffen, I knew that there was a reason.

  Until that moment I had never really known the kind of fear that freezes in the gut. Da had never let there be a moment when I could have been afraid. If I even whimpered in a dream, the lanterns in my room would spurt into a bright glow and the dying embers in the fireplace flare into brilliance. As for the battering thunder that came off the mountains, Da could call it out of a clear sky with a wave of a finger, and set folks down below us looking wonderingly at the blue sky. There had never been anything to fear.

  But I was afraid now. My stomach tightened and my legs weakened. I hoped I wouldn't heave up the oatmeal.

  "We did not laugh enough," the woman said. "Come see."

  I peered out from the edge of the canvas. At first it seemed that nothing was unusual. Geese still squawked as buyers held them upside down, and pigs squealed in blood terror. But all the hawkers were still, almost every face in the square downturned. Except one. Half hidden behind a black hood, one face was moving around the square, looking behind barrels, under carts. He strode his brawny self cockily, and no one stood in his way. His mailed hand held the hilt of a short, stabbing sword tethered to his side.

  The nurse pulled me back under the cover of the cart."If there's laughter in you, now is the time to use it—but very quietly." Innes asked no questions. He sat still, waiting for the nurse to tell him—to tell us—what to do. She took Innes by the shoulder and stooped him beneath the cot, draping the burlap over the side so that it might cover him. Then she looked around to see what to do with me.

  "Old woman," came a voice loud and sudden from the back of the cart. "Old woman, I am told that you entertain guests."

  With a great shove of her hand she pushed me forward. I slipped out from the front canvas and across the seat, and leapt down between the harnessed horses, rubbing their sides to keep them from whinnying.

  "Is it a law then that guests are not to be entertained?" she called.

  The cart tilted back suddenly. "You. Nurse, you should not have returned to Wolverham."

  "I am come to the market only."

  "You are come to meddle, as you always did. Your meddling banished you from the castle. And almost worse, at my word."

  "I have never doubted that it was at your word. But I am alone here, as you see."

  "Those in the square say you were not alone."

  "Those in the square are eager for rewards."

  "And you are not."

  "I am not." I heard the scraping of things moved about. "By Saint Ciaran himself, I tell you that you will find no one here with me."

  "A saint whose name I have never heard."

  "The wonder of it is that there is any saint whose name you have heard."

  "Nurse," and here the voice came low. "Do not meddle again. Remember what I am called now." A jolting down the back steps of the cart. I hunched lower between the horses until I saw the nurse wave to me.

  "Quickly," she whispered. I leapt inside and knelt by Innes beneath the cot. "That will be enough marketing for today." She clambered down the steps, then began to throw pots, tongs, and piles of turnips into the cart, finishing by swinging the steps up and tying them to. Then she climbed up the front and sat down heavily.

  "Nurse," asked Innes,"what is his name?"

  She bowed her head. "The King's Grip. He has no other name now. But by Saint Catherine he'll have no blood on his sword today."

  "The king promised us seven days," I said. "Seven whole days."

  "'The king promised,'" she snorted angrily. "'The king promised
.' What this king promises and what he gives are fish and fowl. He must believe that you can solve the riddle and so sends his Grip to stop you." She turned back and looked at me, a smile pushing up her cheeks. "Tell me, are you always this offensive to royalty?"

  "But I saw his eyes when he gave us the riddle. I don't believe that he does want to stop us."

  "I have seen the results of the tasks he sets," she answered.

  A sharp slap of reins, and we felt the first reluctant turn of the wheels, jerking over the cobblestones. I willed them to roll faster, faster, though I knew their clatter might attract the eye of the King's Grip.

  More cobblestones rolled past, and more, the cart swaying back and forth, the wheels slipping some on the rounded stones. I thought of the soft pine-needle path that stretched through the woods, the sure steps of the Dapple. And then the wagon lurched to a halt, both horses whinnying. "By Saint Alban's eyes," the nurse bellowed, "you'd do well to lay your hand aside from that bridle."

  "All carts leaving the square are to be searched, in the king's name."

  "For criminal turnips?"

  "For two young rebels. Step down."

  "I'll not. I've been searched already once this morning, and I'll not stop for it again."

  I heard the scraping of a sword being pulled from its scabbard. "This search is in the king's name, and there will be no asking again."

  The nurse gave a long, long sigh. "So you'd see my turnips. Then come around back and I'll lower the steps." I shoved Innes beneath the cot again and scooted beside him; a burlap blanket was all that hid us, and capture meant ... What capture meant was not to be thought of. We pushed farther beneath the cot, back into the shadows.

  But there was no need. With a sudden cry the nurse struck the horses to a gallop, and the wagon reeled back and forth, rolling us both from under the bunk. What with the battering of the cobblestones, the clanking of pans, and the overturning of a barrel of turnips, it seemed that Chaos itself had erupted all about us. A sudden iron clang, and four arrows puncturing through the canvas told us the guards at the city gates were not glad of our leave-taking.

  "That last arrow," I yelled,"came just past your ear."

  "They aim well," Innes shouted back. "Perhaps it would be best to keep low."

  It would have been impossible to stand in any case. The cart was running smoother now that it had come out of the square and off the cobblestones, but the careening speed kept us both on the floor so that we would not be tossed through the canvas.

  A sudden thunk as another arrow came through and bit into the wooden frame. Out the back flaps I saw three horsemen, two with bows. Another arrow came in, just over our heads.

  "Those horsemen are holding on with just their legs," I called back to Innes.

  "They must have horses that are not afraid of them. Do you think you could knock them off?"

  "If I had something to throw."

  He groped around, found a turnip, and handed it to me. "Throw it at the horses' heads," Innes said.

  I took it from him and paused, weighing it in my hand. "I hardly want to throw one at a horse."

  "Tousle," he said patiently,"those are not turnips coming our way."

  I rose to my knees, steadied myself against the roll, and threw the first one. It smashed against the back frame of the cart.

  "What luck?" Innes called.

  "A near miss. I'll try another." And I did, and though I got it out of the cart, the turnip landed far off the mark.

  Again and again I threw the turnips, Innes reaching about and then handing them to me one by one. And again and again they missed wildly as the arrows came thwacking in. Finally, half desperate, I threw as the cart leapt over a ridge in the road, and the turnip rolled and tumbled in the air until it met the tender tip of the front horse's snout. The effect was astonishing, and as I ducked an arrow that streamed in ferociously just above my shoulder, the horse jolted backward, reared up, and dropped its rider.

  "Innes, the first one! The first one is down with one of your wicked turnips. Innes!"

  But he did not answer. When I looked about, he was lying in the cart, his face as white as a cloud, his shoulder bright red with the blood spurting from an arrow shaft.

  I turned back to the horses. I weighed a turnip, then threw it with all the hatred that had ever been behind the heft of any weapon. It smashed against the second horse's eye and turned him sideways, so the horse behind rushed into him with flailing hooves. Even the wild riding of the cart did not drown out their screaming.

  Or mine.

  Chapter Four

  "Tousle!" The nurse was calling, her voice desperate. "Tousle, you need to come forward."

  "Innes has an arrow in him, just above the shoulder."

  "Come forward now," she called.

  The nurse never turned away from the racing horses. Their breaths came in great snorts, and the white sweat that coated their bodies spattered back to us in gobs. "They're all done in with this. Listen to me." A ridge in the road lifted her nearly off the seat, and one of the horses stumbled. "Listen to me. Find the queen at Saint Eynsham Abbey and ask her the riddle. She'll know the answer, if anyone is to know it."

  "You've got to stop for Innes," I called back.

  "There's no help for him if we stop now," she screamed back at me."Go back. Draw the arrow out, quick and sharp, and then press his hand to it."

  "The three horses are down."

  "By Saint Brendan, it's not the horsemen we're to worry about. Now, you've got to pull the arrow out. And straight, with no twist at all to it, and no up and down."

  "But I never—"

  "Do it now. And by Saint Margaret, pull it straight."

  I went back to Innes and looked at the blood and sweat on his chest.

  "You're to pull it out," he said.

  "I am."

  "Then do it," he said.

  I nodded. I grabbed the arrow with both hands.

  "Do it!" Innes cried, and I jerked it out from him, and jerked out a cry from his throat as well, and a fountain of blood from the wound. Quickly I held his hand to the spurting, then tore off a long strip of the burlap and wrapped it around him, all the time blood running down. So much blood running down. Innes's skin was the yellow-white of old clouds.

  "Is it done?" called the nurse, looking back."Then settle him onto the cot, with his shoulders high. No, higher."

  Innes groaned with my fussing and with the charging of the cart across ruts that seemed as large as ditches. I changed the burlap strips again and again, but the red stains sprouted across them like impossible blossoms, and I pressed my hands against them to hold the life inside.

  "Is he still bleeding, then?" cried the nurse.

  "Still bleeding."

  "And if you hold your hands against the bandage?"

  "It still bleeds through."

  With a rough pull the nurse hauled back on the reins, hefting the horses back into a trot, then a snorting walk, their heads whisking about to toss the lather from their mouths. "Take the reins," she called to me.

  "I've never driven a cart before."

  "Neither of the horses will know that. Keep them to a walk. If they want to take their head, pull them like so. Just so." She handed the reins to me and went back to Innes. "And as Saint Leoba says, 'Let the eyes of the unjust be blind.'"

  After the rush and speed of the wagon, the gait now seemed horribly slow, and I kept turning my head to see if pursuit had caught us. The nurse bent hugely over Innes, crushing so many green herbs into his wound that the scent of damp moss filled the air. She sang her low lullaby as she worked, and it seemed to me—though this must have been impossible—that she was suddenly happy. Her face had taken on a kind of straight and efficient smile, her lips opening at the words of the song, then closing as the song descended to a hum. Her rubbing hand moved in time to its rhythms.

  "The bleeding has stopped," she soon called to me softly. "But it would take only a rock against a wheel to start it again. He's got to
be still for the wound to close. And this cart is not the place for a body to be still."

  "It is also the very thing that the king's soldiers will be looking for."

  She nodded slowly."Not far away, on the river side of the road, there is an old mill."

  "I passed it just yesterday morning."

  "Well," she said, "I have known the miller there and his wife. It would be a place to hide Innes until the wound closes. Or at least for the night."

  "I passed the mill yesterday morning just by chance," I said, half in a whisper.

  "Nothing is ever quite by chance. Go along now. And keep the gait slow. Mind the black horse most especially."

  Nothing is ever quite by chance.

  I minded the black horse most especially, but he was too tired from his run to cause mischief. We plodded along slowly, while everything in me wanted to whip the horses to a gallop. Slowly the houses started to spread themselves out, slowly the gardens and fields grew larger, and slowly, slowly the mill finally slouched into view. From this side the mill seemed to lean out over the water, its wheel about to tilt in.

  "There," the nurse called. "Stop just there."

  "The house is on the far side."

  "There are reasons for not telling the miller and his wife that you are here. Now help me. I'll see that the wound is fair and clear and then be off with the cart."

  "It would be warmer in the house."

  "Warmer than you'd like, if the King's Grip comes."

  "No reason for him to stop here, of all places."

  "Reason enough. Now," she said, gesturing,"there will be bandages there, and two blankets just there. No, by your other hand. Bring them along. And that pouch of herbs there too. And you might as well bring the rest of the oatmeal, if the crockery is not all smashed." While I gathered everything up, she reached under Innes and tucked him to her, all the while crooning her soft lullaby.

  The sunlight glinted off the rimy stones of the mill as we carried Innes across, keeping ourselves out of sight of the house beyond. The wheel creaked slowly about as if it were hardly aware of what it was doing. Water sloshed lazily from its troughs and ran over the icy coating that the winter had built up along its edges. Inside, it was warmer but dark as dark. The mill's innards groaned with the crabbed turning of the wheel outside, almost as if it were groaning with Innes. I waited for my eyes to pick out shapes and found myself rubbing the grain dust away from them. It filled the air so thickly, I wondered for a moment if I could drown in it.