The Forest Queen Page 3

  “But that wasn’t the worst part,” I said.

  The worst was how in a way I thought less of me, too. Not of my failure to kill my brother—​of course not—​but of my failure to . . . to have subdued John somehow, to have stood up to him at some point before he brought us both to this moment, to this hunt, to this ball. To this revelation that I was not even a prize, which was enough to rail against, but simply a gift, a trinket, to be tossed to whomever my brother saw fit.

  The fact that every other girl at the hunt had heard me admire Lord Danton years earlier only made it worse, somehow. John had used my own . . . longing . . . against me.

  “I thought you liked Danton. Wasn’t it good news?”

  I shook my head. My braids were coming loose, and I felt the kinked loops of them brush my shoulders. My hair felt so heavy, as heavy as the world, as heavy as marriage. I reached up to pull out a pin, let down one braid; then I started on another.

  “It might have been,” I said, “some other way . . .” I sighed. “Not like this. Not at John’s bidding. When I imagined a betrothal I always thought that he . . . that it would be me he’d want. Not because my brother made him some—​some advantageous offer. One that conveniently leaves John as Loughsley’s sole heir, and me thrown to the side, forgotten. Not that I don’t wish sometimes that John would just forget me . . .”

  I started pulling faster, scattering pins along the ground as we began to walk.

  I thought distractedly of a tale one of my nurses had told about two children alone in the forest, leaving bread crumbs to mark their way back home. But birds had eaten the crumbs, and then the children had been lost indeed—​at least until they came upon a house made of sweets in the heart of the wood.

  My fingers caught in a braid. I tugged, but the motion only snared me tighter. I scrabbled at my head, feeling panic rise in my belly, feeling foolish that I would let so small a thing frighten me, but frightened nonetheless. Entangled. Trapped.

  Bird reached up and stilled my hand. We both stopped walking. He unwove the snarl of hair. “You don’t have to do what he tells you, you know,” he said, laying the plaits neatly across my shoulder.

  I turned away and started walking faster this time. “Don’t condescend, Bird.”

  “I wasn’t. Silvie, haven’t you ever thought about—​about just leaving? Leaving him?”

  I flinched. “Leaving John? . . . Of course. But not my father. And not—​not everyone else who lives at Loughsley, who lives on the tenanted land. I couldn’t leave all of them to John’s tender mercies, either.”

  “Even for the glorious Lord Danton?” He laughed.

  I stopped and faced him full on. “Stop, Bird. Shut your mouth. You think you—​you think you’re so much tougher than I am, that you understand the world so much better, and I’m just some naive noble girl who can be led away from her family, from her duty, by a—​by a silly crush. And I know that’s all it was, thank you.” I was breathing fast now. “You think you’re so much stronger than I am, so much wiser, don’t you?”

  “Silvie, I—​Silvie, I meant . . .” He took a deep breath. “Silvie, that’s not what I’m trying to say.” He looked down at the ground. When he looked up at me again, he squared his shoulders. “If you ever did decide to leave, to run away, I’d help you. I’d go with you.” He stepped toward me again. “I would go with you tonight. Right now.”

  I was no longer taller than Bird, but I only had to tilt my head up a little bit to look into his eyes. I wanted to see condescension there, mockery.

  Instead, there was a depth of caring sincerity that I knew I could trust, if I needed to. That I had always trusted.

  “You haven’t talked about running away in years,” I said. “You used to, all the time . . .” I tried to laugh, hoping he was just trying to lead us toward some other sweet childhood memory. But the laughter caught in my throat.

  “We could live in the woods,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “Sure, haven’t we spent nearly every free moment up in the trees since we were children? Deep in the forest. John would never find you. No one would ever find either of us.” He reached up to undo another of my snarled braids. “We would be happy in the woods, Silvie. You would be free out there.”

  I felt myself shudder. The ache I felt standing close to his body and saw looking into his eyes was as addictive as warm honey.

  “What are you saying?” I whispered.

  But my thoughts skittered back to earlier that evening, to the Hunt Ball, to Danton and my brother and my father and all the people to whom I owed my help, my duty, my life.

  There was no refuge, no freedom, for me.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I told you. I can’t leave them all to him.”

  The depth and warmth vanished from his eyes; they glinted like mica. “Now you’re condescending,” he said. “Who says we can’t get by without you? We common folk. We are tougher, Silvie, than anyone who’s been fed and coddled all her life without having to work for it, and you know it, or you’re a fool.”

  My fists clenched. “Yes, Bird, I’ve been coddled. I’ve always had food. Delicious food, as much as I can eat, whenever I want it! I’ve never had to sew my own clothes or patch my own roof, or even feel a chill on a cold day. I’ve never had to build my own fire. I can ring a bell and get a cup of tea brought to my bed at any hour of the night. And I never—​I didn’t stand up to my brother. But—” My breath caught. Like Bird, I was afraid I hadn’t said what I meant. “But there’s still toughness in me, Bird. I know there is.”

  The kind of toughness I had, that I was sure I had, was something I couldn’t describe, not even to my best friend. Especially if he didn’t see it in me anyway. But by the Lord, I knew it was there.

  I felt no longing for him in that moment, and it was a relief. I wanted freedom from that feeling, too.

  “I can’t run away, Bird,” I said. “Maybe I couldn’t throttle John in the ballroom, but I can’t just abandon everything to him, either, can’t just shuck him off and forget. I can’t. I don’t care if that makes me naive.”

  He looked at me, biting his lower lip thoughtfully. “You are tough, Silvie. I was wrong to say what I said.” He reached toward my face, then lowered his hand to touch my arm instead. “Sure, no one else was brave enough to show that hart mercy today but you.”

  I smiled sadly at him and took a deep breath. My anger left me just as suddenly as my longing had. “I think . . .” I slipped my hand back into his. “I think I can run away for an hour.”

  Hand in hand, down toward the river, Bird and I took our solitary way.

  * * *

  Loughsley Abbey sits at the bottom of a huge rockface. It’s almost all bare granite all the way to the top, dotted here and there with stubborn heather and gorse. In front of the house is a wide, quiet portion of the North River, which traverses down to our country from Nordsk, breaks into narrow ribbons in the depths of the great forest that separates our manor from Esting City, and then braids together again to make its way to Port End, where our country of Esting meets the sea. Only six months earlier we had seen the sleek, angular explorers’ vessel, bound for Port End, that the prince had purchased. In just a few weeks’ time Rioch would sail away in search of new lands and—​he hoped—​new peoples. For our prince was convinced that the proper bride for him waited somewhere not just beyond our own country’s borders, but beyond those of any other known country as well.

  But I didn’t want to think about brides as I walked away from Loughsley and the Hunt Ball and John and Lord Danton waiting inside. I held Bird’s hand tighter and walked faster, until we got so close to the edge of the river that I could feel silty water seeping through the soles of my shoes.

  The waves made shushing sounds as they touched the shore and drew back again, touched and drew back. There was a louder, more insistent rushing farther out toward the middle of the river. Clouds had come in and blotted out the moon and stars. Some of the cold had gone out of the breeze
.

  The air tasted like water and moss, like rot from fallen leaves: deep, earthy, insistent. There were so many layers of perfume and incense and scented oil in the ballroom that even Titan could hardly have discerned the subtler scents from the buffet table, let alone any honest human smells. The air outside was from a whole different world.

  I tripped over a rock and bit back a yelp; it seemed wrong to break the whispering quiet of the waterside. Bird caught my arm, then kept walking as though nothing had happened.

  We’d left Loughsley Abbey far behind. I looked back; the ballroom’s tall windows glowed like gems in the house’s East Wing. The word wing was apt: the windows’ light seemed to lift the house from its rocky cradle, its stand of trees and its vast gardens, all dark except for pinpricks of torchlight. Loughsley looked as if it could take off at any minute, like a bird of prey, and come after me.

  Bird and I approached a bend in the riverbank where willow trees trailed their branches like snakes in the dark water. Before us was a covered bridge. A charming, arched confection that my whimsical mother, so I’d always been told, had asked for as a gift from my father, she having so many friends in the village of Woodshire across the river. Even though he disapproved of her friendship with the villagers—​as much as my father could disapprove of anything my mother did, which was never much—​he had still built it for her. Intricately carved oak and ash made up the path and the roof, showing hearts and flowers and robins in flight, those most commonplace of love symbols. The arch of the bridge was exaggerated, high enough that on the rare sunny day, its reflection in the water made the impression of a perfect circle.

  “Do they still call it the Wedding-Ring Bridge, in the village?” I asked.

  Bird opened his mouth to answer—​I could hear the intake of breath, even though I couldn’t make out more than the outlines of his face in the dark—​but I put a hand to his chest and stopped him.

  My own breath had caught in my throat.

  There was someone on the bridge: a tall, bulky figure, hardly visible. I wouldn’t have seen it except that the person was not under the deep shadows of the covered walkway at all, but climbing over its side. The figure raised a thick arm to check—​what was it, looped around the rail?

  I heard a slithering sound as a line suddenly slipped down and cracked straight.

  Someone hung by the neck below the bridge, toes just barely touching the water.

  THREE

  Little Jane

  I ran for the bridge, skidding in my muddy dancing shoes. I wondered, knowing it wasn’t what I needed to wonder about right then, whether it would take more time to stop and pull off the useless things or to keep running while they sucked at my feet.

  Of the two of us, Bird may have been stronger, but I was still the fleeter. Dancing shoes or no, I reached the bridge before he did.

  I could hear gagging, and as soon as I touched the rope I could feel the person on the other end still struggling.

  Relief surged through me.

  The fall hadn’t snapped his neck. It seemed a wonder, given how large and heavy he’d looked from the ground, but I thought someone this desperate deserved at least that small miracle: one more chance that he might not die, not now. Not now.

  But for all my archery and riding and the genteel sportsmanship I prided myself on, I was not nearly strong enough to haul him up again.

  Bird was there before I’d finished my thought. “Hold the rope!” he shouted, not at me, but to the person below.

  I looked down and saw hands flail upward, blindly groping. Bird wasn’t helping me pull, and I couldn’t under-stand it, couldn’t think about anything but the horrible gagging noises below us and the splashes of water from his struggling feet.

  Finally the hands found the rope and grasped it, heaving upward. The gagging eased, turned to a strangled gasp and then a cough so deep that I could almost feel it racking my body, too.

  “Now!” I told Bird. His arms were on either side of mine, tensing hard as he pulled. We leaned back, and I put first one foot and then the other against the rail. Every ounce of my weight, every bit of my strength, went into pulling up the hanging man.

  He was pulling himself up now, too; I could feel the rhythmic tugs on the rope, and feel the weight we countered ourselves against coming slowly closer, even before I saw his hands appear between the slats of the bridge.

  At that I dropped my feet to the floor again. After a quick glance exchanged with Bird to make sure he wouldn’t be surprised, I let go of the rope and leaned over the railing to help the man on the last few inches from suicide.

  The hand that grasped mine was broad, sweaty, and even more callused than Bird’s. I felt immense strength, and immense weight.

  With a few more heaves from Bird and me, he was up over the rail, still gasping and wheezing and coughing that rattling cough. He tumbled over me into the shadows and I tumbled with him, his greater weight pulling me along.

  Bird leaned over us and quickly pulled the noose off the man’s neck.

  We lay gasping together in the pitch-blackness under the bridge’s roof, my legs tangled in the man’s skirts.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice as strangled as if the rope still sealed his throat. “I thought . . . I thought . . .”

  “Jane,” Bird murmured. “Jane, try to breathe slowly.”

  Jane? I squinted; it was hard to see much in the darkness. Did Bird know . . . her?

  The person we’d saved stood up, slowly, and Bird grabbed her arm to help.

  She kept standing long after I’d thought she should have stopped, until the top of her head brushed the roof of the bridge, and I could see from the silhouette of her broad shoulders that she was still a little hunched over. The top of Bird’s head came up only to her chest, and next to her he looked suddenly small and childlike again.

  She was the biggest girl I’d ever seen.

  I looked away, embarrassed by how boldly I’d been staring, and grateful that the shadows had hidden my rudeness. The last thing she needed right now was someone looking at her as if—​as if she deserved any scrutiny at all.

  “Here,” Bird said, bringing his other hand slowly to the small of her back. “Let’s get off the bridge.”

  Jane nodded. Even in the deep darkness I could see her shaking.

  Bird guided her down the steep incline and back to the riverbank. I untied the rope and looped it in my arms, then tucked it into the cradle of a tree branch and followed them. I didn’t like the feel of it in my hands—​it seemed some sticky residue of despair still clung there—​and I didn’t think Jane would want to look at it again.

  In the lesser darkness by the water, I could see a little more of her face, the wide forehead and surprisingly delicate chin, the snub nose, the hard set of her mouth. I could not quite make out the color of her eyes: Green? Gray?

  “Silvie,” Bird said, “this is Little Jane—​ah, Jane Carpenter, daughter of the Woodshire Village carpenter. Jane, this is Lady Silviana of Loughsley.” He didn’t make the customary bow that was supposed to accompany my title, and I was grateful, but Jane dropped a quick, shaky curtsey that brought her head only a few inches above mine.

  “I . . . I know who you are, mistress,” she said, still taking strangled, unsteady breaths. “I am more grateful to you than . . .”

  I shook my head. “I’m grateful we found you in time,” I said, then cringed at my own words. I thought I’d said the wrong thing, but she only nodded and kept looking at the ground.

  More grateful than what? I found myself wondering. There was a coil inside me, twisting toward some kind of distance from this desperate girl. Snakes in my belly, hissing, chasing each other with wide-open mouths, wanting me to be as different as I could be from this person, from her shaking and misery and despair, so that I would know by our difference that I was well and whole.

  I hated myself for it.

  Bird touched her arm again, gentle and steady.

  Jane didn’
t move, but even in the darkness I could see her settling under his touch, the way his falcons did, or horses, or me. She felt the same thing those animals and I always felt: that there was a place in him where we could rest.

  The question rose silently in the air around us: Why did you do it?

  I couldn’t ask. I was uncomfortable enough with her gratitude. I thought anything I did or said might push her away.

  Bird didn’t say anything, either. He just stood there, his hand on Jane’s arm.

  She began to drop. I lurched forward to grab her, but then I realized that she was merely sitting.

  Bird looked at me. He pressed Jane’s arm lightly, then turned and walked away.

  We were left alone in the dark, she and I.

  I became too conscious of my own breathing, of the air moving through my mouth and throat. Whispers in the mossy caves inside my chest, breath gathering and releasing in countless tiny spaces; I had seen them illustrated once, the endless forests in the lungs, in one of the huge, dusty books in the library at home. I could just barely see one pinprick of yellow light from the great house far in the distance, or two when the wind made the trees move. I touched my neck, remembering the rope I’d hidden.

  I couldn’t hear Jane breathing. I saw her falling again, when she was only a faceless shape, and I pictured all the tiny forests in her lungs burning, charring, crumbling into strangled ash inside her body, as if she’d succeeded in what she’d planned to do.

  I inched closer to her. I was selfish enough to take at least this one unoffered gift: that I could sit close enough to hear her breathe.

  The sounds were steadier now than they’d been even a few minutes before. They might almost have been my own breaths, and that little rasp at the end of the exhale, the hitch when she took in air, might only have been from crying.

  Bird’s silhouette reappeared. Jagged lines stuck out around his middle, like a child’s drawing of a star.