Queens of the Sea Read online

  A little hand shook her awake some time later. Ivy opened her eyes. Morning light struggled through the cracks around the shutters. Usually she was up at dawn, but she had slept late, kept awake by ill thoughts the night before. Edmund, her littlest boy, stood at the side of her bed looking at her with round eyes. She was aware she was naked, and pulled her covers up to her neck.

  ‘Edmund?’ she said sleepily. ‘What is the matter, precious?’

  ‘Gudrun won’t wake up and we can’t find Goldie.’

  Ivy’s skin prickled with gooseflesh. ‘Eadric!’ she called, struggling to sit up and keep her breasts covered.

  ‘Is Gudrun all right?’ Edmund asked.

  ‘Don’t you worry. I have a special chore for you and your brother.’

  Eadric appeared at the door. ‘Mama,’ he said. ‘Goldie is gone.’

  ‘Take Edmund and run to the hall,’ she told him. ‘Find Captain Crispin and tell him to come immediately.’

  He nodded, took Edmund’s hand and ran off. She heard the door close and leapt out of bed, quickly pulling on a linen underdress and pinning a warm day dress over it. She didn’t bother with her hair or even with the pot. She went to Gudrun’s side and lowered herself to her knees.

  ‘Gudrun?’ she said.

  No answer.

  Ivy didn’t want to touch her. She sobbed once, a sob of fear rather than grief. With a hesitant hand she reached out, touched her shoulder.

  Cold as stone.

  Goldie must have found her first and run. Ivy thought about the wharf, the water … The child had to be found quickly.

  Ivy returned to her room and finished her morning routine, emerging in time to see Crispin arrive with the boys trailing him.

  ‘Gudrun has died,’ Ivy said.

  He nodded perfunctorily. ‘Would you like me to organise a preacher to come for her prayers?’

  ‘No, Crispin. I have another task for you. Goldie has run off and I want the city guard to find her. Look everywhere in the city and around, but do start down near the water.’

  ‘My lady, the city guard is trained for more important business than finding little girls. Surely you and the boys can take care of that task.’

  ‘But I want her found quickly. She could drown.’

  Crispin looked at her, wordlessly, expressionlessly, and she knew he was thinking, What did it matter? Ivy hadn’t even known the girl existed a week ago. But he wouldn’t say it in front of the boys.

  ‘She is family,’ Ivy said forcefully. ‘My stepbrother’s child.’

  ‘And you are determined to be a mother to her?’

  ‘No. I simply want her kept safe. It is the right thing to do.’

  Crispin raised an eyebrow. ‘You are no expert on “the right thing to do”,’ he said, but then the tension between them seemed to slide away and he continued, ‘I will get my men on it. I will have her back to you within an hour, I’m certain.’

  The boys watched him go. Edmund, as always, followed him with adoring eyes. Crispin had not yet noticed how thoroughly her younger boy was under his spell. Eadric, old enough to sense tension between his mother and the captain, was wary of Crispin, and would not be left alone with him.

  ‘Mama, I think we should help with the search,’ Eadric said.

  ‘Good idea. Take your brother and go to all the places you ever played with Goldie. Every tree you climbed, every alleyway you chased a cat down. Off with you.’

  Ivy pulled on her own cloak and slipped out the secret door of her bower. A thorough search around the house, in all the hedges and behind every tree. No sign of her. Ivy was in no hurry to return to the dead body in the house, and she headed out to the town square and down towards the wharfs. She could already see Crispin’s guards combing that area, so she ducked her head into a few of the chapels, alerting the preachers that the little girl might appear. Then she headed towards the far edges of the walled town, and she thought about how Goldie was already so hardy and capable. If she’d got out of Sæcaster, they wouldn’t find her. Perhaps that would be for the best. Ivy needed an uncomplicated life, and Goldie was a complication. If Ivy could be sure she was safe and well, she’d be able to let the girl go a bit more easily. It wasn’t that Ivy didn’t like her niece: she was a sweet little thing. But she felt far from maternal, as Crispin had suggested.

  Ivy made her way down the cobbles, checking in hollows in the wall and gaps between houses. She went a little further to the remains of an old chapel, one she’d had burned four years ago when she took charge of the city. While others had been rebuilt – some with Ivy’s own money to say sorry, and some by the trimartyrs in the city themselves – this one was located near abandoned buildings and left roofless. Lichen had taken it over, and birds had nested in the beams.

  She heard soft crying.

  She rounded the empty threshold and saw Goldie sitting on the damp floor with her legs straight out in front of her, crying into her hands.

  ‘Goldie?’ Ivy said softly.

  Goldie looked up. ‘I came to look for Maava to ask Him a question, but He doesn’t answer me.’

  Ivy crouched in front of her. ‘Gods never do. What did you ask Him?’

  ‘If there was any way I could have Gudrun alive for a few more years until I am old enough to look after myself.’

  ‘Once somebody is dead they are dead forever, I’m afraid,’ Ivy said, feeling the chill weight of the words. ‘But I can look after you until you are old enough, my dear.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘And yet we are related. I am your aunt. The boys are your cousins. They think you are great fun and would love to have you stay with us.’

  She smiled a little. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. I would too.’

  Goldie’s smile faded. She looked around uncertainly. ‘I feel lost in the world.’

  Ivy pulled her to her feet and folded her in a hug. ‘Everyone does from time to time.’

  Goldie allowed herself to be held and sobbed against Ivy’s ribcage. Ivy rubbed her back and said, ‘There now,’ and her heart ached for the poor little thing.

  Then Goldie stood back and looked up at Ivy with big eyes and said, ‘Will the crow mother find me?’

  Ivy shook her head. ‘I promise she won’t. She cares nothing for me and the city has withstood her army before.’

  Goldie seemed to consider these words for a moment before nodding once, decisively. ‘Then I shall stay,’ the girl said, as though she had ever had a choice.

  A windy day in Marvik was a special kind of misery. It wasn’t the cold so much as the movement, the swirl and suck of the cloudy sky. Willow, as always, tried to embrace the hardship, but had to admit that praying in the stone chapel on the hill, with no fire and a loose shutter, was probably more hardship than was necessary. The pines around the chapel roared, and at first she didn’t hear Hakon call her.

  Then, faintly, ‘Wife!’

  Willow rose and went to the door of the chapel, peering out curiously. Hakon stood there, his straggly beard blown sideways in the wind. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come to the hall.’

  ‘I’m praying.’

  ‘Come to the hall,’ he said again, and turned to stalk away.

  Willow shut the door of the chapel behind her and followed after him, gulping the wind and failing to pull her cloak close about her.

  She’d had a stone staircase cut into the path up to the chapel after slipping in mud one autumn and cracking her wrist so she couldn’t lift a sword for months. But these too were now slippery with moss because they rarely saw the sun. She took her time on the way down, and Hakon was waiting patiently at the front of their mountain hall. He opened the thick, carved doors and ushered her in.

  ‘To the throne room,’ he said.

  She went ahead of him, down the narrow torchlit passage, and found a man standing in the throne room. He was rudely dressed in the manner of the Ærfolc, with a chequered cape pinned over one shoulder and rough breeches. Atop his he
ad he wore some kind of head dress fashioned of twigs.

  ‘Why is this heathen in my throne room?’ Willow demanded.

  Hakon closed the door and took his seat on the heavy wooden throne on the riser at the back of the room. ‘Come sit,’ he said to Willow. ‘And listen.’

  Willow joined him on her throne. His was carved with crows and triangles; hers was scarred from being bashed against the wall. ‘Unless this man has come here to accept the holy triangle, he is unwelcome. He is dangerously unwelcome.’

  The man smiled at her. ‘All gods are one god,’ he said. ‘We believe in the same thing, merely under a different name.’

  ‘You come here and insult me with these lies? With this –’

  ‘Wife!’ Hakon roared. ‘Listen.’

  Willow fell silent, held her tongue.

  ‘My name is Rathcruick of the Gwr-y-Derileor. We live in the woods.’

  ‘Which woods?’

  ‘All and any. The woods behind the woods. We are rarely seen.’

  Willow looked to Hakon, who pointed one long finger at the man and said, ‘Keep talking. Tell her what you told me.’

  ‘We share an enemy,’ he said. ‘Your sister, Bluebell, ruler of Ælmesse. She nearly has Renward of Bradsey under her thumb, and the tribes are looking to follow him. Soon she will have the entire west of Thyrsland, and our Ærfolc ways will be erased entirely. My tribe and I could simply fade into the forest and never return, only I thought of a great trick we could play.’

  ‘A trick?’ Willow said. ‘I am not interested in tricks.’

  ‘Not even if we trick her into giving up Blicstowe to you?’

  The words struck Willow in the heart. Blicstowe. If she took Blicstowe, she would be placed to take all of Thyrsland as she had promised Maava she would. I am sorry, she said to Him in her head. I am sorry I must stoop to heathen help. But she knew He wouldn’t care. As long as the job was done. As long as the promise held.

  Willow leaned back in her throne. ‘My apologies,’ she said. ‘I am listening now.’

  Eight

  ‘I don’t think your uncle Robert likes me.’

  Ash flipped back the blanket so Sighere could slide into the bed beside her. ‘Because he put us in separate rooms?’

  ‘That was my first clue.’ He nuzzled against her neck in the dark. ‘Will he cut my throat if he finds me in here with you?’

  ‘He won’t know. It’s the downside of having such a large estate. What goes on in the bowerhouses is forever a mystery.’

  ‘We have been here more than a week. When will he warm up to me? I’m likeable, aren’t I? You like me. Even those wretched hunting dogs like me.’ He slid his hand up her nightdress and stroked the curve of her hip. ‘He’s very protective of you.’

  ‘I look the most like my mother. His sister. He’s said it enough times. She died when she was a few years older than I am now. I think it’s hard for him.’ Perhaps that was all, but Ash suspected, too, that she aroused protective feelings in too many people, even Sighere. Sometimes she wanted to stamp her foot and shout that she had survived four years living in holes in the ground with an undermagician, that she could control the tide.

  Or at least, she had been able to, in the past. She closed her eyes as Sighere stroked her, listening to the soft waves of the bay lapping in the distance. ‘I came here when I was a child,’ she said. ‘I had a cough that would not go away, and Father thought I would be better here where the weather was warmer and more humid. Ivy and Willow came with me, newborn and motherless. With two little babes to mind, nobody in the household cared much if I came or went and I ran quite wild. Then one day, they seemed to realise I wasn’t sick any more and sent me back to Blicstowe.’

  ‘Ran wild?’

  ‘Yes. Climbing trees, swimming naked, spending hours on the beach in the long summer evenings building cairns from the big flat rocks, seeing how many I could balance before it all toppled over. I found an injured gull once and brought it back and kept it in my room, but it died overnight. I was young so I slid it under the bed to hide it and got the rough edge of Myrtle’s tongue when it started to stink.’

  Sighere’s hand had closed over her breast. ‘Swimming naked, eh?’

  She pushed his hand away, laughing. ‘That’s all you heard?’

  He sat up, threw back the covers. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Sighere, it’s autumn. It’s night time. We’ll freeze.’

  ‘Then we’ll come back here and warm up afterwards.’

  Ash smiled up at him in the dark, then stood and kissed him. ‘Let’s go.’

  They slipped out of the bowerhouse barefoot in their nightshirts and Ash immediately regretted her decision. The air was mercifully still, but the dew on the grass was icy. Strike and Stranger, the two little dogs who had belonged to Skalmir Hunter, followed them a little way down the path then wisely turned back to where it was warm. Ash and Sighere made their way down the path out of Robert’s estate, and then down the short but muddy road to the rocky beach. The stones were large and round, and they picked their way over them to the sand. The water was calm, shushing softly against the shore, and a half-moon refracted across the waves a long distance out.

  Ash closed her eyes and inhaled. The smell of salt and seaweed, and inside her the smallest stirring of her magic, stiff and weak. But it was still there.

  When she opened her eyes Sighere had already left his nightshirt on the sand and was wading out, his white buttocks catching the starlight. She laughed, pulled off her own clothes, and ran in after him. Every inch of her rose in goosebumps, her nipples pulled into peaks. She caught him around the middle and turned him to kiss her. She was waist deep in the unforgiving water; he up to his hard thighs.

  ‘Just don’t look down,’ he said with a laugh. ‘I’m not at my most impressive at this temperature.’

  Then she leaned on him so they both fell into the water up to their necks, and then it became apparent that this was likely to be the stupidest thing they had ever done.

  ‘Sighere, I’m sure I’m going blue.’

  ‘Let’s go back inside.’

  He was first out of the water, she withdrew slower, turning to consider the moon and the stars and the waves and feel that stir again. Her eyes went to the west. She thought about Linden’s map.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Sighere said.

  She ran to catch up with him, scooped up her nightdress and took his hand. ‘Have you ever been to the Brencis?’

  ‘Why would anyone go to the Brencis? Nothing there but bones and birds.’

  Naked and icy and dripping with autumn water, they quietly returned to Ash’s bower.

  The Barrow’s End alehouse in the centre of town was heaving with drunkards as midnight approached, and Bluebell and her hearthband were among them.

  The evening had started out solemnly, remembering their fallen colleagues and telling soft stories about them into the bottoms of their mead cups. But then the stories grew funnier and more outrageous, and the new members of the hearthband – Frida, Hroth and Hregen – struggled to keep up with the truth. When Hroth, the younger of the two brothers, asked Bluebell earnestly if Lofric really had successfully battled six men with a sword in each hand while drunk, she put away her smile and nodded slowly. ‘Why would you doubt my word?’

  Intimidated, he shut up and believed her.

  The night of drinking was also a way of welcoming her new thanes. Hroth and Hregen were tall enough to have to duck under the roof beams. They had gigantic feet. Hregen, the older, was dark-haired and scowly faced, while Hroth was almost pink-cheeked with sweetness. All that mattered to Bluebell was that they fought like champions, and they fought together well, their four arms becoming as effective as eight on the training field. The other was Frida, only daughter of a southern farmer, who had resisted every path set out for her and taught herself how to wield a blade so well that her father finally offered her to the Ælmessean army. Bluebell had watched her for over a year, and knew she had the strength,
the skill and the intelligence to be part of the hearthband. With her mousy hair cropped short and nearly a full foot shorter than Hregen and Hroth, she almost looked like a young lad. If an enemy underestimated her, all the better. Sal had been moved into Kara’s position as third-in-command – second now that Sighere was away (and damn, didn’t Bluebell miss him: he was the one who always stayed sober enough to make sure she didn’t start a fight).

  They were young. Sighere was the same age as her, and some of the lost thanes not much younger. But not a single member of this group had seen a twenty-fifth birthday and it made her, now in her thirties, more alert to the autumn’s chill.

  Mead. She needed mead.

  Over by the blazing hearthpit, a drunken young couple danced to a harpist, and bodies bumped up against each other on their way to and from with cups and plates, their shadows making the firelight wheel and flicker. Bluebell could taste the peat smoke on her tongue, and the room was hot enough with fire and people to make sweat trickle between her breasts. Her companions’ faces were shining and flushed. The warmth and the noise whirled around her happily. These were the best of times, drunk in the company of her hearthband. Her very young hearthband.

  Then somebody started shouting something about the fire. The voice came from the other side of the room so Bluebell felt no alarm. She assumed somebody had dropped something into the hearthpit. But then the panic began to spread and Bluebell stood, and could see no fire.

  A round-cheeked woman stood at the open door of the alehouse. ‘Fire!’ she cried, and over the din Bluebell finally made out her words. ‘At the gatehouse!’

  Bluebell was on her feet, her thanes in her wake, elbowing through the crowd. Outside, the bells were clanging in the dark. Sobriety and chill night air were on her all at once, and the blaze of firelight and smell of smoke drifted from across the square. Shouting and confusion, armed men running to and from the well to the gatehouse stairs. Bluebell ran towards them.