Fool's Assassin - Страница 88

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I took the lit candles with me and went down the hall to where Riddle stood in his nightshirt, his arms crossed on his chest. I had never seen the man look so stubborn. A rumpled kitchenmaid, one of the village girls newly hired to help, stood nearby in her nightrobe and shawl, looking both sleepy and alarmed. Mild stood nearby, disapproval at this uproar stamped on her face. And Shun was complaining loudly. Mentally, I was thankful that Revel had not been roused. Tomorrow would be soon enough to put the house steward in an uproar.

Shun set her hands to her hips and glared at Riddle. Her dark curling hair was wild on her shoulders and her nightdress strained against her out-thrust chest. “No. I don’t want her sleeping beside me. And what could she do if the ghost came back? Riddle, you are supposed to protect me. I want you to sleep in my room!”

“Lady Shun, that would not be appropriate,” Riddle replied firmly. I had the feeling was repeating himself. “You wanted a companion for the night? Here is Pansy, ready to serve. And I assure both of you that I’ll be right here, stretched across the threshold should you need any sort of assistance.”

“Ghost?” Pansy broke in, her sleepiness vanishing. She turned her shock and appeal on Riddle. “Sir, I beg you, the lady is right! I would be useless should a ghost come into the room. I’m certain I should faint dead away!”

“I checked Lady Shun’s room. I assure you, there is no intruder and nothing to fear there,” I announced firmly.

“Of course there isn’t now!” Shun objected. “It was Rono’s little ghost, crying and accusing me! Ghosts cannot be found when you search for them. They come and go as they please!”

“Rono?” Mild laughed, and then said, “Oh, beg pardon, Lady Shun, but there is no Rono ghost in that room. The only ghost known to walk through those chambers is old Lord Pike. So his parents named him, but all the maidservants in the manor called him old Lord Peek, for he dearly loved to catch a glimpse of any woman in her shift or drawers! My own mother told me that he would hide in the—”

“No more stories tonight!” I announced firmly. I already knew from the look on Pansy’s face that she would be giving her notice tomorrow. The suppressed amusement in Riddle’s eyes could not lighten my mood. All I wanted was to seek my own bed. I put authority into my voice.

“Mild, if you would, help Riddle to make up a pallet outside Lady Shun’s door. Lady Shun, if you wish a companion to share this chamber with you, then we are offering you Pansy. No one else. Pansy, you will be paid extra for this service tonight. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all. I am going to my own bed now. There have been enough disruptions after a very taxing day.”

“If Rono’s ghost throttles me in the night in vengeance for his death, I hope you will have a good explanation for Lord Chade as to how you failed in your duty to protect me!”

She threw the stony words at my back. I continued to walk away. I knew I was leaving the burden of sorting it out on Riddle’s shoulders. I knew he could handle it. And he’d had at least some sleep, and had not murdered anyone nor burned a body tonight.

I opened the door to Bee’s chamber. Empty. So she had had the sense to change her clothing and go to my room. I continued down the corridor. I opened the door to my room and stood still. I could feel that she wasn’t there. The room gave me no Wit-sense of her presence, only chill and emptiness. The fire had almost burned out.

I lifted my branch of candles high, trying to tell if she had been here. So far as I could tell, nothing had changed since I’d last left the room. Habit made me cross to the hearth and add wood to the fire. “Bee?” I called softly. “Are you hiding in here?” I dragged the rucked blankets off the bed to be sure she hadn’t burrowed in and fallen asleep. The ridged sheets and stink of sweaty male assured me that she would have found it an unappealing hiding spot. No. She had not been here.

I headed back to her room. All was quiet in the corridor. Riddle opened his eyes and lifted his head as I passed. “Just checking on Bee,” I told him. I was reluctant to let him know that I’d misplaced my own daughter. Just the thought of what he would report back to Nettle about the disorder in my household made me wince. Ghosts and smoking chimneys and a half-trained staff were as nothing compared with misplacing Nettle’s small sister.

Candles held high, I entered her room. “Bee?” I called softly. Obviously not on the bared bedstead. I knew a moment of fear. Had she crept into the bedding in the servant’s room? I hated myself that I had not taken it and burned it immediately. “Bee?” I cried louder, and two hasty strides carried me to the door of the adjoining chamber.

Empty. I tried to remember how it had looked when I had last seen it. Had not the bedding been less on the floor and more on the bedstead? I prayed to gods I scarcely acknowledged that she had not touched it. The room was so small that it was the work of a moment to be sure she wasn’t in it. I stepped out of it and then, horror-stricken, rushed to her winter clothing chest. How often had I reminded myself that she needed something smaller with a lighter lid? I knew she had fallen into it, her head smashed, and then suffocated in the dark.

But all it held was her clothing, in pushed heaps and wads. Relief warred with worry. She wasn’t there. I felt a spasm of annoyance that her clothing was so ill kept. Had the servants abandoned this room when I chased them from mine? In so many ways I was failing my child, but most of all in that I had lost her tonight. My foot nudged something and I looked down at a heap of wet clothing on the floor. Bee’s clothes. So she had changed here. She’d been here and now she was gone. Where could she be? Where would she go? The kitchen? Had she been hungry? No. She’d been unsettled, even scared. So where would she go?

And I knew.

I walked past Riddle, feigning a calm I didn’t feel. “Good night!” I wished him wryly. He watched me pass, and then rolled to his feet in a fluid motion.

“I’ll help you look for her.”

I hated his perspicacity, and welcomed it. “You take the kitchens, then. I’ll check my study.”

He nodded and was off at a trot. Shielding my candle flames, I followed. At the bottom of the stair, we went our separate ways. I doubled back to go to my private study. All was quiet and dark as I traversed the dark passageways. When I reached the double doors of the study, they were closed. All was still.

Chapter Eighteen
Invisibility

...

Beloved,

Was a time when I knew peace in your presence. Though, to be truthful with myself, there were as many times when your presence plunged me into deadliest danger. Or pain. Or fear. But the peace is what I remember and long for. Were you here, I would seize you by the shoulders and shake you until your teeth rattled. What is the meaning of this truncated message you have sent me? Did you fear to entrust too much information? Did you suspect how cruelly your messenger would be hunted, or how she would suffer such a tortured death? What need could compel you to knowingly risk her to such a fate? I ask myself that, and the only answer I can find is that if you did not, she would face a worse one? What, I ask myself, could be worse? And then I wonder what sort of danger you yourself are in right now, that you did not bring this message yourself.

All I have are questions, and each one is a torment to me at a time when I am overwhelmed by other concerns. You have set me a mysterious task with few clues. I fear it is an essential one. But just as essential are those already in my hands. The raising of my daughter … shall I again abandon my own child, this time to go in search of yours? Too little information, old friend, and too large a sacrifice.

I stood alone in my room and listened to Shun shrieking out in the hallway. Bitterness rose in me. After all I had gone through tonight with him, all I had done to help him, one cry from her, and my father ran off and left me standing in the semi-dark in soggy clothing. I pushed the lid of the chest up higher and strained to reach the bottom and, by touch, discover something dry and comfortable I would wear to bed. I pushed past winter socks and itchy wool shirts. My fingertips touched something, and then I got hold of it and pulled it up from the bottom of the chest.

It was a warm felted nightrobe. Red. My favorite color. I carried it closer to the fire to look at it. It was new and unworn. I turned the collar inside-out and knew the stitches. My mother had made this. For me. Made it and set it aside, as she had so often done, to be pulled out the moment I outgrew my old one.

I shed my wet garments where I stood and pulled the new nightrobe on over my head. It fit well, save that it was a bit long. I lifted it to walk. It made me feel elegant to have to catch up my skirt when I walked, even if it was only the train of my nightrobe.

The ghost cried out, a long, distant wail that lifted the hair on the back of my head. I stood frozen for an instant. Then it came again, closer and louder. Two things happened in that moment. I knew I should never have left a cat in the spy-maze, and I abruptly deduced that yes, my chamber did have an entrance to the secret corridors. It just wasn’t where I had thought it would be.

I pushed open the door to the maidservant’s room. The firelight barely reached into the room. I went back for a candle. The pale stranger’s bedding was as she had left it, crumpled on the bed. I knew better than to touch it. I edged around it and as I did, my feet tangled in something and I nearly fell. I cried out, in fear of the infected bedding, and the ghost cried in response.

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