“My father is excellent,” Reuben corrected. “He’s known to be the best sword in the royal guard next to the lieutenant and the captain.”
“You’re talking to a Pickering, Hilfred,” the prince reminded him. “That’s like speaking to a family of Thoroughbred racehorses and saying your father is the fastest plow horse in the county. Their father”-Alric waved at the brothers-“is the greatest living sword master … anywhere.”
Mauvin ducked a branch. “My father started training all of us before we could even lift a blade. Even my sister Lenare, who I think can still best Fanen, although she no longer thinks sword fighting is ladylike.”
“You don’t have to tell everyone about that, you know,” Fanen said, his left foot making a slopping sound each time he stepped with it.
“Yeah I do-it’s funny.”
“Not so much, no.”
“So, okay, your father is better than my father,” Reuben grumbled.
“That’s not my point at all. I meant it as a compliment … that your father is fair with a blade-”
“That’s a huge compliment coming from him, trust me,” the prince said.
“So what are you getting at?”
“Well”-Mauvin paused a moment as he checked the support of a partially submerged log-“if your father knows how to use a sword, how come you don’t?”
Reuben shrugged. “He’s too busy, I guess.”
“I could teach you.” Mauvin steadied himself by grabbing hold of a fistful of cattails, then jogged up the log to a small patch of grass that formed an island near the center of the pond. “That is assuming you don’t mind learning from someone younger.”
“I’d accept,” the prince said. “When he turned ten, Mauvin bested our Captain Lawrence in a Wintertide exhibition.”
“That was two years ago,” Mauvin reminded him. “Father says I’ll master the first tier of the Tek’chin this month.”
“Nice.”
They each kneeled down, and Fanen lit a small lantern. The sun was well behind the forest now, leaving them in shadow. All around were the chirps and peeps of frogs.
“I see one!” Fanen whispered, pointing toward the water. “Go ahead, Alric.”
“Thanks, Fanen. Most noble of you.”
The prince left his bag and walked carefully with hands out like the claws of an attacking bear. He crept into the pond and in a fast grab scooped at the water, making a great splash. “Got him!”
Alric rushed back, cupping something, his tunic soaked. Fanen held the prince’s bag open for him and Alric deposited his prize. “Now we are even, my friend,” he said to Fanen. “One more and I will pass you. Then I’ll be setting my sights at replacing Mad Mauvin as the Frog King.”
This was obviously some great honor that Reuben had never heard of. Perhaps no one other than the three boys had.
“What kind is it?” Mauvin asked.
“A horned.”
“I have two of them.” Mauvin grinned.
Alric frowned, then turned to Reuben. “Let him teach you to fight-just don’t ever listen to him.”
Reuben sat on the mossy turf surrounded by the forest of cattails and floating lily pads, watching them hunt. He offered to help but was told that was against the rules. Reuben had no idea frog hunting had rules, but apparently it did. Being late in the season, most of the harvests were already in, and snow would be falling soon. But there, in Edgar’s Swamp, the place was alive with sounds-the swish of treetops, the brush of grass, and the deafening chirps and peeps of frogs. The carpenter knew his ponds.
Reuben marveled at his strange turn of fortune. Only a bit over an hour before, he had faced the certainty of a pounding-likely worse. Ellison might not have been kidding about cutting their initials into him. To them he was barely human and not worthy of sympathy. Yet now he was here, safe and surrounded by nobility, catching frogs with the prince of the realm. Just then Reuben was struck by the unique opportunity he had. “Hey, have any of you been to the room at the top of the high tower?”
“The haunted tower?” Alric asked without looking up from the surface of the water where he was stalking another elusive toad.
“Haunted?”
“Sure,” Alric said, creeping through the tufts, trying not to fall. “Nora tells the story every year about this time. I guess because it happened in the late fall.”
“What happened?”
“Nora said it was years ago, before I was born. A girl who used to work in the castle, a chambermaid, jumped to her death. She climbed the tower in just her nightgown. She set a lantern on the window ledge, then jumped. On windy nights you can hear the scream she let out as she fell … and the splat when she landed. They found her body, or what was left of it, on the cobblestones before the main doors.”
“Ewwww.” Fanen looked up from his bag of frogs and grimaced.
“Why’d she do it?”
“She loved a man who didn’t love her back. Just had his baby too. Only the guy said she was lying. She couldn’t keep her job as a chambermaid with a child, didn’t have any family, no way to take care of the baby, so as the legend goes she placed the infant on the father’s bunk, then climbed the tower and jumped to her death. They say her ghost haunts that tower and in the fall, when it’s cold but not yet snowed, she puts her lantern on the window ledge whenever someone in the castle is going to die. They also say that if you go up there when she’s there, she thinks you’re the lover who betrayed her and will push you out of the window to get her revenge.”
“What happened to the baby?”
Mauvin laughed. “It’s just a story.”
“Although a woman did fall from that tower once,” Alric said.
“Who?”
“Nora always called her Rose.”
They got back late because Alric had tied Mauvin’s number of frogs, and the prince wanted to beat his friend. They only gave up after both he and Mauvin fell into the pond while making desperate attempts to catch a rare red-spotted frog. As they were completely soaked, the call of a warm fire was more alluring than the title of Frog King.
Overhead the clouds raced across the face of the full moon as if it were a light underwater and the surface was gliding past. A storm was coming, and as with all storms, Reuben felt uneasy. Guards had been looking for the prince, and the gates were opened before they reached them. Wet, cold, and tired, the three boys left Reuben without a parting good night. They disappeared into the castle keep, leaving Reuben the task of putting all four horses to bed.
The wind shook the boards of the stable and spooked the animals as he pulled the saddles off and brushed them down. Reuben, who had only soaked his feet, was not terribly tired. He was used to harder days than frog hunting. More importantly he wanted to put off seeing his father. Richard Hilfred knew everything that went on at the castle and would have learned of his son going off with the prince and the young Pickering lords. If Reuben came back late enough, his father might be asleep. To this end, Reuben took his time brushing and feeding the horses before stepping back out into the empty courtyard.
The wind had blown out several torches around the ward. The one at the well was out, as were the two near the front doors to the keep. The others were being whipped viciously. A distinct howling could be heard on the wind as it blew between the buildings, kicking up whirlwinds of leaves. The branches of the old oak, now nearly bare, were clacking against each other. The door to the woodshed alternated between creaking and slapping, and the chains on the well’s windlass were jingling as the bucket rocked.
Looking up, Reuben saw it-a light in the top window of the high tower.
He stared. Over the course of the last month, he’d seen a light in that tower twice, and each time someone had died. First old Chancellor Wainwright, then Clare Braga, who died in a horrible fire at the estate the king had just awarded to her husband. Reuben shuddered just thinking about it. Burning must be the worst way to die. Cuts and bruises didn’t bother him, but he touched a hot kettle once and the pain was unbearable for days. His father had slapped him just to stop his complaining.