The Cup of the World (10 page)

‘I should have brought a lantern,’ she muttered to herself.

But what for? Carrying a light would only give her away to anyone watching from the castle. She knew the way. At least, she knew it in daylight. And it was not wholly dark, even here beneath the trees.

Her feet touched stone flags. Some of the trunks around her must be pillars. The old fountain stood before her. Her fingers reached to touch the dry rim. It was there. She felt her way down to crouch on its step, and slowly settled her back against the stone. She wondered how long she should wait. An hour, he had said. Could she judge the time?

The wind stirred in the branches. Between them, to her left, she could see the lights of the castle. Faint sounds clicked and muttered among the trees. Now and again she was sure she heard a footstep, but though she turned her
head and strained her eyes she saw nothing, and then a gust would come and all the leaves would shiver, and as it died she would listen and listen and try, from all the meaningless patter of a wood at night, to pick a sound she knew.

It was cold. Her cloak was thin. Her feet and ankles were chilled. There were warmer things in her bundle, but she did not want to fumble and scatter her belongings in the darkness. She felt that if she did it would take her an age to be ready again.

Then she thought that she might as well be warmer and have something to do to pass the time. As she reached for the bundle she again thought she heard someone moving in the trees. More than one person, for the sounds behind her seemed very quickly to be followed by others to her left. She rose and looked around. Nothing moved. No one stepped forward to greet her.

So she waited. And the wind shivered and the grove clicked and rustled and dripped around her, and gradually the pounding in her heart eased, and she crouched and hugged her arms around her knees, and looked at the lights on the hill and wondered if she had strayed into a dream.

The cloud thinned. The light grew. A few feet behind her a voice spoke.

‘Phaedra.’

Her heart jumped, and jumped again when she saw him. He was standing by the fountain, dressed in a heavy cloak, with the moonlight in his hair. Some restraint gave within her when she saw him, and she was smiling. So was he.

‘You did come,’ she said.

‘I came. My ship is at the jetty on the lakeshore. Do you want to come with me?’

There were other men behind him, watching from the shadows of the columns and the trees. She rose.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Ulfin.’

‘No!’

A man stumbled forward from among the trees behind her. Metal scraped in a scabbard. A blade gleamed for a moment in the moonlight.

‘She's not for you!’ yelled Aun.

Phaedra cried out to him, but the knight was pushing her back from the fountain, drawing with his other hand. Aun checked his rush, hesitated. Steel flickered in shadow between the two men. Other hands took Phaedra and pulled as she looked back. The knight said something and then struck, and struck again as quick as a snake. Aun staggered away.

‘Don't kill him!’ she cried.

Distant voices called from the castle. The blades rang and the fighters stumbled. Aun beat desperately to keep the long blade away, and then swung at his enemy's head. The knight jumped back.

‘Ha!’

‘This is ridiculous,’ the knight said. ‘Get him off me.’

Men surged forward around Phaedra. She heard Aun shouting. There were lights and movement from the castle.

Her companion's hand fell on her shoulder.

‘We must go now. Follow me.’

Blows and running feet sounded in the wood. From further off Aun was still shouting. ‘Ho, Trant! Raiders! Raiders!’

A whistle blew by her right ear. The knight was leading her quickly downhill, out of the trees and along the lakeside. There were two others with him. More came running up.

‘Is anyone hurt?’ he asked the one nearest him.

‘How do I know?’ The man put a whistle to his lips and blew. Shapes moved on the slope – men running towards them.

‘Come on!’

Before them Phaedra saw the long line of the jetty with the Trant boats rocking at tether. At the far end lay a long ship with her mast stepped and sail furled. There were men moving aboard. The knight led Phaedra out to it and jumped lightly down onto the deck. He held out his hand to help her after him. Behind her his followers gathered on the jetty The man with the whistle was trying to count them.

‘They've sortied,’ said someone.

There were lights – torches – moving down the slope towards them from Trant. The men on the jetty scrambled aboard. The Trant boards pounded under the feet of the intruders.

‘Push off

‘Stand by me, Phaedra,’ he said, from the stern of the vessel. She picked her way among the men and boards to join him. Oars swung and bit whitely on the dark water.

‘Together!’ urged someone near her. ‘After me!’

There was a strip of water now between her and the jetty She could still jump, and struggle back to her shore if she chose. She would have to jump now, if she was going to. The moment was slipping away.

He was standing beside her. They had touched, and she almost had not noticed. He was there, where she could touch him again. The deck lifted and made her decision for her. She reached to him to steady herself and hooked her hand into his belt. She allowed her fingers to stay where they could feel his warmth through the thin cloth.

Men were moving about them, and some looked their way. She wondered if they could tell what she was thinking, and whether it showed on her face, even in this light. She thought he must be able to feel her pulse through her fingertips and the fabric of his shirt, and if he could it would be wonderful, because he would already know what it was she did not think she could ever say. They stood together, and the taste of dark water was in her mouth.

On the hill above her was the mass of the castle, topped with torches, against the night sky. In that flat shadow lay Father, the knights, the dogs, and all the tattle-tale community of Trant. Collen, restless in his stable. The chapel, with the light on the altar. They looked down on her, and she departed.

Suddenly the night hissed at her savagely. She jumped.

‘Keep low,’ he said softly, and they kneeled together on the deck. There were torches and men moving on the jetty Someone yelled at them from the shore.

The air hissed again, a hateful sound.

‘Crossbow,’ muttered a voice near her. ‘More than one, maybe.’

‘Hoist sail.’

There was a hiss and thump and a yelp from someone forward. The sail surged up the mast, flapping and rumpling in the night breeze. Men scrambled around it.
Then it shaped and filled, and the ship heeled under the palm of the wind. The oars rattled and came aboard. The thick ripple from the stem of the boat grew as their way increased. The jetty was well behind them now. Lights were moving there.

‘Did you see to the boats?’ he muttered to the helmsman.

‘Threw the oars into the water and cut every rope we could find.’

‘Thank you. In the bow, there! Anyone hurt?’

There was a pause. Then someone called back. ‘Only splinters.’

‘I think we've done it, then,’ he said. Whether this was to himself or to her Phaedra was not quite sure. She was looking back at the torches on the jetty and in the castle, growing more distant with every minute, until the next headland hid the lower lights on the shoreline, and those in the castle fused into a single, high spark that seemed to follow them across the water. The shoreline dropped behind them and was hidden in the night, but she could see the castle light still.

Men were moving about the deck, loosening bundles, spreading blankets in the prow and stern of the ship. They gave one to Phaedra. It was stiff, and felt as though it had been soaked in oil. Someone pushed past her to take over from the man at the helm.

‘Sleep now, rise early’ said the knight. ‘We'll be warmer anyway’

Phaedra realized she was shivering. The light she had been watching had gone. The moon was high – nearly full, but not quite. A fringe of shadow blotted one edge of the
disc. Her knight and four others lay down in a row in the stern. She wrapped herself in her blanket and lay down with them, a woman not quite seventeen among these strange warriors. There was no privacy but she was glad of the warmth. She did not feel at all sleepy. She looked up at the curve of the big sail above her, and at the moon, and tried to imagine what tomorrow would be like, but found that she did not know. She had walked off the jetty into the end of her world.

The water noise was different when she put her head to the deck. It was both deeper and shriller, and much nearer than it had been. Just the thickness of a few boards beneath her ear was Derewater – deep, and cold, and lightless. The men breathed and muttered beside her, and she felt warmer. The moon watched them gliding on the surface of the lake.

Ask nothing, ask nothing, sang the wake of the boat.

Someone stepped past her head. They were changing the man at the helm again. Somewhere forward she heard the low notes of a wind instrument – some kind of pipe, she thought. It had a breathy sound, less pure than she was used to, and the melody was strange. The moon had moved. She must have dozed. The ship washed purposefully forward in the unchanging dark.

Ask nothing.

Ask nothing of the night.

am the March-count of Tarceny.’

They were crouching at the rail of the boat, watching the sun rise over. The wind was strong enough to make the boat heel and to bring the big wavelets slapping against its side. Phaedra, huddled within a borrowed cloak, shivered constantly. Her body ached after a fitful night on the boards. There was, of course, still no hope of privacy. But the big sail was tinged with sunlight against the darkness of the lake surface, and a long black-and-white pennant cracked at the masthead. The sun flared on the distant water and licked the nearer waves with gold. For the moment she would not have been anywhere else in the world.

The western shore was much nearer now, and the steep wooded ridges were clear in the weak light. Ahead of them a large, flat-topped, dark-sided hill dominated the shore. The prow of the boat pointed straight for it. All that land must be Tarceny still. Astern, the lake stretched away, headland after headland blending in blue-grey shapes with the water until the shore faded from view. The east was a bank of mists. Trant, and all the country and lakeside she knew,
was lost behind her. And north, under the bellying sail, the lake ran on without end. There were no other craft to be seen on the water.

‘Our discomfort is almost past. That hill above the shore is Talifer's Knoll. Just this side of it is my harbour at Aclete, where we shall be able to show you a little more hospitality …’

He was the march-count. These men-at-arms were his; these crewmen were in his service. All those people busy on the hills, lands, woods, rents, dependencies – a thousand calls on his time. He was the peak of a human web that spread over the western shore of Derewater.

And of Tarceny! The Doubting Moon!

‘Do – do not worry for me,’ she said. ‘Indeed, it is beautiful this morning.’

‘You are good. I am not much of a sailor, myself. Boats have advantages, of course. It is most unlikely that we could be followed. Which is well, because I doubt either of us wishes harm to Trant. And even I can see that the view from the deck is sometimes a rare one.’

Phaedra stole another glance at him. He was still real; still there. Until now she had known his face as something in a dream – handsome, whole, but never an object for study. She had never seen details like the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, or the black stubble on his cheek and chin.

His face was long, and in repose it was solemn. Just now there was the faintest smile about him as he watched the sunrise, lost for a moment in thoughts of his own. He wore his black hair short. Three days ago he would have been clean-shaven. His eyes were a soft brown, his brows
strong and yet not heavy. He must have been between twenty-five and thirty years of age. He wore black. Perhaps it had been chosen for the night's adventure, or perhaps because it was the colour of his house. She thought it suited him.

And she wondered at herself, for he was there – there beside her, as real as the day when before he had been shadow! It was almost as if it were she who was shadow now: she who was smoke without substance, beside him. She could not think what to say. His hand lay on the bulwark a few inches from her own. She wondered if she could take it in hers.

Suddenly he looked down at her. ‘Am I right? Will they follow, do you think?’

Startled back into the complications of land and family, she sighed. ‘They do not know who we were or where we have gone,’ she answered. ‘But if he believed me kidnapped, Father would hunt to the ends of the earth, with every knight and man-at-arms he could call on.’

And if he knew she had gone willingly?

Together they watched the sunlight on the waters.

‘You left your home to escape a marriage that you would have refused,’ he said. ‘One that others would not have let you refuse. Had you stayed, there would have been great and lasting grief You have spared your father that. It will have cost him a little of his pride. It has cost you your home.’