TWO
Ninian left his horse tethered to a tree branch and raced off down the narrow track to Meggie’s hut. He had left his father and Gus behind, painstakingly searching the main path and the narrower trails leading off it, while he hurried on to seek out his half-sister. Rosamund will be with her, he told himself over and over again. Meggie will explain that they didn’t realize how late it was until darkness was too well advanced to make the journey home. She’ll say she’s very sorry we were all anxious, but that it seemed safer to keep Rosamund warm and snug with her in the hut overnight. She’ll tell me she was planning to set out first thing in the morning to bring her back.
He repeated the words to himself until they were meaningless.
He raced on down the overgrown path, heedless of his own skin, and soon had a bramble tear across his cheek and a lump on his shin where he had run into the outstretched branch of a fallen tree. He was calling silently to Meggie as he ran, and he believed she must have heard him. He would not have said he knew with any certainty exactly where the hut was, yet he made his way straight to it with not a single wrong turn. But there was no time to wonder at his sister’s strange powers.
He bounded across the clearing, gasping for breath, his heart pounding so hard that he felt light-headed and sick. He skidded to a halt in front of her door, bending over to ease the sharp pain in his side, then reached out and hammered on the stout wooden planks with his fist.
The door opened instantly, and Meggie’s voice said, ‘No need to break it down! I heard you coming, and anyway I-’
Then she saw the state he was in. She gasped and, clutching at his shoulders with hands that hurt, rasped out, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
He straightened up and looked at her. There was a light burning inside the hut, but she had her back to it and her face was in shadow. Pushing her aside, he stared into the hut. ‘Is Rosamund here?’ he demanded, eyes darting frantically around the small, tidy space.
He knew the answer to his question even as she spoke. ‘No, of course not, she-’
She had understood, as of course she would. She led him inside, closed the door and pushed him down on to the stool beside the hearth. She picked up an earthenware mug and, tipping into it a handful of something from a jar on a shelf, poured on hot water. She stirred it, blew in it and handed it to him. ‘Drink.’ He obeyed her. ‘Now, tell me.’
He did as he was told. He had no idea what she had given him, but he trusted her. Rightly, for the herbal concoction had already calmed him. ‘Rosamund hasn’t come home,’ he said. Then his fear came galloping back, and he burst out, ‘It’s dark, she’s out in the forest and she’s barely more than a child!’
‘Hush,’ she soothed him. He glanced up at her tense face. She muttered something under her breath and then said, ‘I walked back to the House in the Woods with her late this afternoon. We were almost there when she saw you and said she’d run on and go the rest of the way with you.’
‘You let her go on alone?’ Suddenly, he was furious.
‘She wasn’t alone, she’d just seen you!’ she flashed back, her own anger rising alongside his. ‘I watched as she caught you up, then I turned round and came back here.’
Realization struck them simultaneously. ‘It wasn’t you, was it?’ she whispered. Her face had gone white.
Mutely, he shook his head.
She sank down on to the floor beside him and reached out for the mug he held. She took a sip, then handed it back. ‘It looked like you,’ she muttered. ‘Are you absolutely sure? Could it be that you didn’t hear her hurrying up behind you? You did have your back to us…’
He thought hard, running through his movements that afternoon and early evening. There was, however, no real need; he knew full well he’d still been far from home as dusk fell.
‘This afternoon I was fishing on the Teise,’ he said. ‘I was miles away, and it took me ages to get back. I caught a trout,’ he added absently.
‘So you would have arrived home from the opposite direction,’ she said. He watched her fierce concentration as she worked it out. ‘Rosamund and I were approaching from the west, and you were coming from the east. It can’t have been you she saw.’
He pounced on her words. ‘You just said it looked like you,’ he cried. ‘You must have seen this man too!’
Slowly, she nodded. ‘Yes, but Rosamund said, “There’s Ninian,” and I suppose I just took her word for it that it was you.’ A sob broke out of her, quickly suppressed. ‘I should have looked more carefully! I should have gone on with her and handed her over to you! To him, I mean,’ she corrected herself. ‘Whoever he was.’
Whoever he was, Ninian thought. Who was he? Oh, dear God, and what did he want with Rosamund?
He twisted around and put his arms around Meggie, pulling her close. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said. He felt her resistance. ‘It wasn’t,’ he repeated, ‘and you are not to waste any more time on blaming yourself, because that’ll take your mind off what you ought to be doing, which is helping me work out what happened and where we’re going to find her.’ He realized he was yelling. ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly.
She pulled away from him, pushed back her hair and met his eyes. He saw a flash of humour in hers, there and gone in a moment. ‘You’re so much the elder brother,’ she observed. ‘I’m helping you.’ She snorted. Then her face clouded and she said, ‘Where do we start?’
‘Describe this man,’ he commanded.
She closed her eyes, and he guessed she was picturing him. ‘About your height and build, wearing a dark leather tunic and a short cloak with a hood. You’ve got a leather jerkin,’ she added, her eyes blinking open and fixing intently on his.
‘Yes, I have,’ he agreed. He waited.
‘At first he had his back to us,’ she went on, ‘and he was walking in the direction of the house.’ Her eyes were shut again, the lids screwed up tightly as if by this effort she would make herself remember more. Suddenly, she relaxed, slumping against him. ‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘I saw someone, Rosamund said it was you, I believed her. I didn’t really study him. He was among the trees and I didn’t have a clear view of him, and I-’
Gently, he took hold of her hand. ‘Enough,’ he said softly.
He had the clear impression she was about to start piling blame on herself again and that wasn’t going to help. Still holding her hand, he got to his feet and pulled her up beside him.
‘Come on,’ he said.
Her eyes in the dim light were huge, the pupils wide. ‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m taking you to the House in the Woods. Then I’m going to look for Rosamund.’
‘I don’t need you to take me anywhere!’ she snapped. ‘I know my way through this forest far better than you do and I won’t go astray.’ She was reaching down into the corner as she spoke, and he thought she was picking up the bag of provisions and clean linen that she always took with her when she went to stay in the hut.
‘Indeed you do,’ he agreed, ‘but Rosamund is missing, perhaps taken by this stranger who looks like me. I won’t risk the safety of another of the family, so I-’
She did not let him finish. She spun round, and he saw that, far from picking up her old leather bag, she had a sword in her hands. It was only a short sword, little more than a long knife, but the candle light glinted off its edge and he could see she kept it very well honed.
He took an involuntary step back. ‘You don’t-’
Again, she interrupted him. ‘I don’t know how to use this? Don’t patronize me, Ninian. My mother and I lived here in the wilds for years together, and I didn’t know about this weapon until long after she’d gone. She would have been able to use it, make no mistake, and I can too.’ She held the sword firmly in front of her, the knuckles of her hands white as she gripped the hilt.
She saw his face, and slowly she lowered her blade. He said, so quietly that he was surprised she heard, ‘She was my mother too.’