Ambergate (38 page)

I looked at the elegant circlets of gold. “But the swans wear the crowns around their necks, Nate. What does that mean?”

“Power is a responsibility,” Erland murmured.

“It’s a yoke,” said Leah. For a moment she looked frightened. I watched out of the corner of my eye as Erland laid his hand
on hers.

“But perhaps the crowns and swans mean something more than earthly power alone,” said Nate thoughtfully. “That’s what my father
always said. Perhaps the Protector was nearer the truth in his speech this evening than he realized.”

I could not recall now what the Protector had said. At the time I had been too agitated to understand his meaning.

Leah was impatient, fretting. “What now, though? Is there no way of escape from here? If we stay until the fire has burned
out above, the Protector will have soldiers posted back around the Cathedral. He’s determined on this marriage. We’ll be caught
as we leave! I’d rather starve to death down here than be captured again.”

“I’ll stay with you,” I said quietly. I was still the girl whom Mather and Chance were after: Number 102.

“I’m going to look at the Amber Gate,” she said restlessly.

We were all recovering in our own ways, but Erland still looked weary. So Nate took a candle and went with Leah, for
he was always courteous, and I sensed he was eager to see it for himself—this marvel of which his father had spoken so often—but
I wanted to stay with Erland, to have him to myself for a moment.

We saw the candle flicker as Leah peered into nooks and crannies on the way, searching for any means of escape. Their voices
echoed back to us, their exclamations of wonder as they found the Gate.

Erland leaned toward me. “There is something I must tell you.”

But even as he spoke we heard Leah call in sudden excitement, “I see a boat!”

I could see her trying to push against the gold branches.

“There’s no boat, Miss Leah, and there’s no key to the lock either,” I heard Nate say despondently.

“There is a boat. Look, there!”

Erland and I glanced at each other, and he picked up the lantern. In spite of our weariness we almost ran.

With more light we could see what Leah said was true. As I looked between the golden branches, there was a boat stirring softly
with the dark water, touching the brick platform beyond the Gate. It was a long, flimsy craft, with oars stowed in the hull.
“Perhaps the tide has drawn it through the tunnel,” said Nate, puzzled. It seemed magical—miraculous—to see such a thing,
as if it had floated to us in answer to our desperate need.

“If we could reach it—unlock the Gate…,” said Leah. I saw her face was lit with longing now she saw the possibility of a new
life so close. “Can’t we think of something?”

Nate shook his head. “There may have been a key once, an age ago…”

“Amber Gate…,” I whispered to myself. I looked up at the curving branches, the birds surrounded by luxuriant fruit: the gate
of plenty, the gate to Paradise. Amber and gold…

A memory flicked into my mind. Long ago I had played with treasures—his treasures—and he had let me. “Gobchick!” I said. “Where
is he?”

We called his name, to no avail. His den was empty, his blankets in a heap. We took candles into the darkest alcoves behind
the arches, where the shelves of coffins were, the jars of skulls, the stone boxes of bones. I was nervous at being so close
to dead men, but I knew I had to find him.

“You are brave these days, Scuff,” said Erland, in a low voice, when I had come out into the open from another alcove.

“Only on the outside.”

“That is all anyone ever is.”

“What was it you wanted to say to me?”

“Later—when this is over.”

There was a tiny sound of movement, so near it chilled my blood. But it was not one of the skeletons come for us, but Gobchick,
curled up in an empty coffin that was only half pushed into a bottom shelf and stuck out over the stone floor. He was whimpering
quietly, and when I held my candle close he put his little hands over his eyes like a child.

“Why, Gobchick,” Erland said gently. “Why are you in here? Were you hiding from us?”

He shook his head. I saw with pity that he was trembling.

“There are no soldiers down here; don’t be frightened.” Erland held his hand out and Gobchick took it and climbed out stiffly,
as if his joints pained him. This was too damp a place for an old man.

“Gobchick,” I whispered, “will you show me your treasures, as you used to do?”

He looked at me with eyes that were as sorrowful as a dog’s; yet he did his little shuffling walk hand in hand with me back
to the den that we had searched already.

“Are they here?” I looked doubtfully at the tumble of bedding on the bare stone floor.

For answer he let go my hand and disappeared in the blink of an eye. I had no notion where he had gone. But he wriggled out
of the bottom shelf between two coffins with a little sacking bag, the kind that usually contains church money. “May I look?”
I said.

He nodded.

I knelt down with him beside me and I poured the contents of the bag out onto the stone. The others kept back and did not
press us, so it was we two crouching on the floor with the candlelight glinting on Gobchick’s hoard of treasures as I ran
my fingers over them, turning them over, separating them. I knew what it was I looked for.

I could hear him crooning over them: gilt buttons of all shapes and sizes, a foreign coin of tarnished silver, a baby’s
pewter teether much bitten, colored beads, a broken ivory comb, part of a gold locket, three pearls. Sharp-eyed as a jay,
he had picked them up from the floor of the Cathedral and lovingly stored them away.

How long had he had some of them? Did I remember playing with any of them? I didn’t know. I was bitterly disappointed. My
head drooped. “I thought there might be a key. Did you ever have a key, Gobchick?”

A curious sound came from him. When I looked at him I saw he was weeping: tears coursed down his wrinkled cheeks. I could
not bear to see him cry. “Why, what is it? You’ve lost the key, is that it?”

He ducked his head. I knew suddenly that he still had it.

“Please, Gobchick. If we stay here, we shall all die, most like.”

“You, little one?” he said, with a wistful look. “That is certain sure.”

At once he put his hand into his feathers. When he brought it out again he held a key. When I took it from him it was solid
gold and heavy, and it held the warmth of him.

“This is the key to the Amber Gate,” I said with great excitement, for I knew it must be; and he nodded and a tear splashed
on the stone.

“Was it you that brought the boat, Gobchick?” I was amazed, for I did not think he had such strength in him.

He nodded again. “From Paradise.”

“Paradise?”

“Now you will go,” he moaned. “Leave Gobchick again.”

I could not speak for a moment. I understood why he’d hidden the key. Yet part of him wished to help: he had
brought the boat for us. “Come with us.” I said, saddened by his misery and worried for his state. “You can’t stay here.”

“Gobchick keeps Ambergate safe. Must say goodbye to his little Clem.”

“What did you call me?” I said, scarcely breathing.

He looked at me with his bright eyes. “Clemency. Gob-chick’s little Clemency. You are darling baby of the Lady.”

And at that self-same moment, as I gazed at him in shock, there came a clatter of boots down the steps outside the crypt,
and a voice shouted: “Have you the girl singer there? She is under arrest by order of the Lord Protector!”

Gobchick must have vanished at once. Erland was the first of us to come to his senses. We were all too shocked to move. “This
is the Messenger,” he called back, his voice firm. “She is under my guard. There is no need to concern yourself, whoever you
are.”

“You are a traitor,” came the voice, boldly confident. “The rebel Molde has confessed. We know everything. You too are under
my arrest.”

It was Chance who burst into the crypt, brandishing his ceremonial sword. His face was smeared with smoke stains but triumphant
as he eyed us all, not in the least taken aback to find himself outnumbered. He knew none of us was armed. His red-rimmed
eyes glittered dangerously in the candlelight, and so did his sword.

“Quite a little catch!” he said, and he made a mock bow to Leah. “Your uncle will be most pleased to find you safe and well,
Miss Leah.”

“Safe, but distinctly unwell on seeing you, bodyguard,” she said, her lip curling.

“No thanks for someone who brought that ruddy great swanskin of yours all the way to the Cathedral today? Evil heavy it was
too.”

Leah said nothing, so Chance turned his attention to me. “And you, Number 102,” he said slowly. “Clemency Fane by your given
name. You look so took aback I see you’d no notion of your true identity. Yes, you’ve rebel blood in you, my sweet. You are
the daughter of the late Lady Sophia and of her own true and secret love, Robert Fane. They carried on right under the Lord
Protector’s nose—until he found out, that is.”

I thought I might faint. I was dimly aware that everyone was staring at me, at Chance.

I am not a number. I am a name
.

“The Protector tried to have you killed when she died,” mused Chance. “Pity was, from his point of view, he didn’t succeed.
It wasn’t till recent he was told by one of them very soldiers commanded to kill you all those years ago—on his deathbed,
he was—that the little girl was still alive and not so little now.”

Erland’s eyes, shadowed beneath their heavy brows, met mine. I couldn’t tell his thoughts, but he reached out and pressed
my hand as if in acknowledgment. Chance chortled. “You don’t know everything, see, Messenger!”

But I looked back at Erland and wondered.
Did you know all along
?

“How do
you
know this?” Nate said to Chance, frowning.

“Officer Mather told me the whole story on the way to the Cathedral today. Like getting blood out of a stone to squeeze any
confidences from that one” He puffed out his chest. “But he owed me. It was my sharp eye that spotted her, right back at Murkmere,
see? Wanted to know what all the fuss was about, didn’t I?” He looked at me impudently. “Who knows, you might have made a
leader yourself one day, and we can’t have that. They’d love you, the rebels. Daughter of Robert Fane? You’re a dangerous
girl, Number 102.”

“You said my name was Clemency,” I said tightly.

“Habit,” said Chance, shaking his head. “It’s the habit, see. Number 102 comes easier. That’s what you’ll be arrested under.”

Near me, Nate ground his teeth; I could hear him. “Don’t lay a finger on her. You’ll have two strong men to fight if you do.”

Chance looked him up and down with a sneer, and then Erland. “What, a Boy Musician, whose hands are better acquainted with
a ratha than fisticuffs, and a silken sop of a courtier? Anyway, all I’ve got to do is guard you. I was clever. I knew you’d
be down here. I’ve armed soldiers coming any minute.” He went up to Erland, watching us from the corner of his eye for any
movement, and jabbed him under the chin with his sword hilt. “What do you think of that, traitor-boy?”

“What makes you think I’m a traitor?” Erland said wearily.

“You spied on the Lord Protector, didn’t you? Then you repeated all his doings to Molde and the other rebels.”

“Doesn’t it rather depend on whose cause you support? I support the rebels’ cause, I freely admit it.”

“Bit late for that, ain’t it? You won’t be doing any more spying for them.”

A strange little mutter came from the shadows beneath one of the arches where the dead men’s caves were, then a breathy cough
that might have been ghostly laughter echoed around and around the crypt.

Chance whirled around in fear. “What’s that? Who’s there?”

A long thigh bone slid out over the stone, almost to his feet, and he drew back in horror.

The next moment, Erland’s arms were around his neck, squeezing, and he had dropped his sword with a ringing sound that went
on and on, until the sword was picked up by Nate and pointed at his throat. Gobchick capered from the shadows in glee, his
feathers bobbing, his little wizened face cracked by a grin.

Chance went limp. “Now I’ve seen everything,” he moaned. “A chicken man as well as a swan girl.”

In one movement Erland moved his hands from Chance’s neck to his arms and grasped them behind him.

“All right, all right,” Chance muttered. “I give up.”

I slipped off my underskirt and began to tear it swiftly into strips; it was not the best quality, else it wouldn’t have torn
so easily. Then I bound the bodyguard’s arms as quickly as I could while Nate stood over him with the sword.

We made Chance sit on the floor against the wall. “Worth a try, wasn’t it?” he said sulkily.

“You mean all that about the soldiers coming was nonsense?” demanded Leah.

“No, they’re coming all right. They’re searching for bodies right through the Cathedral, hoping to find yours maybe. They’ll
be coming down here.” He looked up at us sideways. “Suppose you’ll kill me now, anyway. Might as well tell you there’s no
edge to that sword—it’s just for show. You’ll have to strangle me with your bare hands.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” said Nate scornfully, but he laid the sword clown out of Chance’s reach. “We’ll have to take
you with us, though. We don’t want you staying here and telling the Militia about us.”

Chance looked amazed. “Go with you? You think you can get out of this place? If you go up the steps you’ll run slap bang into
them.”

“We’ve a key to the Gate,” I blurted out most foolishly and then wished I hadn’t, for the soldiers might arrive before we
could use it.

I ran to the Amber Gate, and Gobchick capered after me. “Let Gobchick do for Clemmie,” he sang out, and so I gave him the
key. He was the Gate’s guardian and should unlock it, not I.

He looked at me with dreaming eyes, the key in his hands. “Gobchick brought you here to play, long time ago.”