Читать книгу The King’s Daughter - Christie Dickason - Страница 17

Winter was clinging on into March, treading heavy-booted on the first green shoots of early spring. My large hunting greyhound, Trey, lifted his head and tested the damp grey air. Then Wainscot, too, lifted her head. Her ears swivelled towards the entrance avenue leading to the main house at Combe. Because Anne had chosen to stay inside by the fire, I was riding with only a groom and six of my hounds.

I held a small bunch of little wild daffodils to inhale their fresh odour while I rode, though I knew better than to curdle the milk by taking them into the house. Then I heard the hoof beats that my dog and horse had already heard. I shivered and threw down the daffodils. I pressed Wainscot forward through a haze of dark leaf buds, still as tight as fingertips while Trey and the other greyhounds sprinted ahead.

As we broke out into the avenue, a riderless horse was trotting down the track towards us. Riderless, like a horse in the tapestries of battlefield scenes, or at a king’s funeral.

Wainscot gave a joyful whinny of welcome.

Clapper. Without Abel White.

I swung my right knee over the saddle head and slid to the ground. When he saw us, Clapper broke into a canter and nearly knocked me over as I ran to meet him. Surrounded by a mêlée of wriggling dog haunches and sniffing noses, I hugged him, rubbed his neck and kissed his nose and breathed in his smell. It really was Clapper, not the ghost horse I had imagined for an instant when I first saw that he had no rider. He was sleek and well fed. He still wore his old tack. I quieted Trey, pushed past Wainscot who had arrived close behind me, and began to search the saddle for a message or some other sign of who had returned him.

No pouch. No saddle bag. No sheathe for a sword nor a lance-holder where a paper might be hidden. No letter tied to the bridle. I flipped up the saddlecloth. Nothing there. Nothing under the quilted leather pad of the seat. Nor fastened to the back of the cantle, nor under the saddle flaps.

‘Did you escape and find your own way back here alone?’ I asked him.

Then, under the small buckle guard at the top of the girth straps, I found something. Not a letter, a small blue-grey spring of rue, threaded through the steel buckles. I extracted the sprig carefully and held it to my nose.

Clapper nudged me hard. I put a calming hand on his neck. I needed to think.

A fresh-cut evergreen herb, not dried, still sharply musky with its odd animal smell. It had to be a message. It had not found its way into the buckle by itself. It had been put there by someone who knew that I would search.

Evergreen. I looked at the sprig in my hand. Surely that was the message—evergreen. Perhaps Abel was still alive after all

But rue? My first surge of joy turned sour. Even in this wintry weather, there were other plant choices. He…whoever it was…I wanted the messenger to be Abel White but tried not jump to conclusions…might instead have chosen the evergreen bay to signify victory, honour and success. Bay protected. But he had not sent a victor’s bay.

Or he could have sent protective rush. Or round-leafed box, or a mottled heart leaf of the little sowbread cyclamen, to ward off evil spells. Or even a feathery stem of grey mugwort that is tucked into a traveller’s shoes to give him strength for his journey. I could have read a happier story in any of those.

Rue spoke of repentance and sorrow. Rue spoke of regret. Rue could heal but also curse.

He dared not write but sent this vegetable messenger instead.

I could read only one conclusion. Abel had failed in his mission for me.

After supper that night, I sat beside my fire holding the sprig of rue between my palms willing it to tell me more.

The reappearance of Clapper cracked open the door holding back the future. It told me that, like the warmth of a morning bed, this life was going to end. Just as someone elsewhere had chosen to send back my horse, my true life elsewhere would begin whenever my father willed it. I could not let Combe and its people take root in my heart. I had merely borrowed this world and would soon have to give it back. I had no colours, or tastes, or smells for what awaited me.

I begged my tutors to tell me about Italy, France, Spain and the German states, in any of which I might, or might not, find myself living for the rest of my life.

I coaxed Mrs Hay to visit me at bedtime as she had once done. While Anne lay goggle-eyed beside me, my old nurse told me yet again the tales of my family’s past, carrying the seeds of my future.

I watched the Haringtons together. I listened to the tone of their voices, watched what distances they kept between them, noted their exchange of glances, trying to sniff out the dark truth about this mysterious thing, marriage that made my father threaten me with it as the alternative to execution.

A perverse impatience began to press like a belch in my gullet. I hated my own helplessness and the false safety of Combe. Knowing the worst would be better than knowing nothing. At least then, I could try to think what to do.

I would fall asleep each night holding the fragment of stone from the crags in one hand, cradling the smuggled Belle with my other arm. I was a creature of marsh and granite, temporarily asleep, buried in a green, green forest. But I could hear hoof beats in the distance, drawing closer.