Leopard in Exile (12 page)

Where did she go—and when?"

The Mother Superior regarded him sorrowfully. "She vanished from her own bed in the dead of night on

Candlemas Eve. I fear that some terrible fate has overtaken her."

The disappointment was as sharp as a blow. Five months, and the girl missing every day of it! The trail

was worse than cold. Had Warltawk known that when he baited Rutledge with the news of the girl's peril

less than a week ago?

"No. I will not believe it." Rutledge staggered slowly to his feet. "She cannot simply have vanished."

"Was her bed slept in?" Koscuisko asked unexpectedly.

The Mother Superior frowned, thinking. "Yes. I believe it was. But the most peculiar matter—that which

causes us to have such worry—is that her habit and shoes remained when she had gone."

Wessex and Koscuisko looked at each other, and each had come to the same conclusion. The girl was

dead, though they might never know how, and there was nothing to be done now but get home as fast as

possible. It had been foolish for Wessex to come so far, risking Rutledge's capture and his own. To

remain would be worse than suicide. It would be black treason.

"I thank you for your help, Madame," Wessex said. "Come, my friends. We have far to go."

The Queen of Heaven

(Wiltshire and Baltimore, 1807)

T
he house that was nestled into the rolling Wiltshire downs had been called Mooncoign for time out of

mind, for long years before it became King Charles Hi's gift to the first Marchioness of Roxbury over a

century ago. It was Sarah's favorite place in all the world, even though she had only seen it for the first

time two years before.

Who were you
—
and who am I? Of your line, or I could not have been drawn here to take
your

place
…
but who were you? Am I like you? Rupert will not say
.

Sarah stood alone in the Long Gallery, gazing upon the painted portraits of her ancestors—or at least, of

someone's ancestors. The portrait of the last Marchioness—of
Sarah
—hung at the end of the line, a

splendid study by Romney. Sarah had ordered it removed from the Hall and hung in this out-of-the-way

place as soon as she had recovered her true memories. The painted stranger in the gilded frame was not

her, but the likeness of a woman who had sacrificed her name and her life so that Sarah could take her

place in this half-like world.

Why? That was a riddle to which she had no answer.

Sarah sighed heavily, wrapping her cashmire shawl more warmly about her shoulders. It might be the end

of June, but it was still chill in the Long Gallery when the sun moved around to the west.

She'd come here to tease herself with old riddles in the hope of taking her mind off the other matter, for a

week had passed, and there was no word at all of—or from—her husband.

When Wessex had not appeared by the morning after the ball, Sarah had decided it was best to continue

on with the plans the two of them had made together. She would remove to the country, even though it

was the height of the Season, and do her best to make it seem that Wessex was with her. He would

know to seek her at Mooncoign as soon as he could.

If
he could. Did he lie dead even now, an unrecognized corpse in some back alleyway of London? Had

what Wessex called "The Shadow Game" come to him?

Oh don't be a goose, Sarah Cunningham! He took Hirondel with him, and I wager the beast has

the sense to come home if there is trouble
—
even if Rupert does not! I shall write again to London

to see if he has arrived there yet
.

Rather than going home to Mooncoign, Sarah ought more properly to have removed to Dyer Court, for

that, not Mooncoign, was the Duke's principal seat. But the two estates marched together—one of the

reasons Wessex and Roxbury's parents had betrothed them so many years ago—and Sarah privately

thought Dyer Court to be chilly and over-formal. She preferred Mooncoign, with its long rambling wings

refaced in Italian limestone a century ago, and its fantastical rooftop Sphynxes.

And
this was
the house in which that other Sarah grew up. If I am to know her at all, I must find

her here
.

Sarah gazed on the unliving face of the woman who might be her twin—who
was
, in some sense, her

twin, though their kinship lay across dimensions, rather than space or time. After a long moment, her

shoulders drooped. The painting kept its secrets, as it always did, and after several hours spent here in

solitude Sarah was no closer either to an explanation of her husband's absence, or to the serenity to

accept it.

With a last look back at the portrait, Sarah walked resolutely to the stairs.

The gardens of Mooncoign, in the time of the last Marchioness, had been redesigned by no less an artist

than "Capability" Brown. They did not now reflect the stiff formalism of previous ages, but what passed

on these civilized shores for a Romantic and tumbled naturalism.

Sarah crossed the terrace and passed down the long slope of lawn. There was an apron of white gravel

at the foot of the swale, and beyond that a low boxwood maze. Reaching the other side, she circled left

to strike the Ride, a long straight stretch bordered by double plantings of tall yews that led down to the

shore of the ornamental water, making a pleasant gallop that had ended in soggy disaster for more than

one horseman. From hints Knoyle had let drop, Sarah suspected that her other self had found her death

in Moonmere, for the abigail still spoke of how sick Sarah had been two Aprils gone following a mock

sea-battle staged on the lake.

Beyond the ornamental water the tame garden ended. Plantings had been arranged to suggest a dense

woodland, but they gave way quickly to such true wilderness as England could fairly boast. Sarah had

often gone into the spinney to think, but today she had not stopped to change her day-dress for a walking

dress, and neither her shoes nor her skirts would survive the expedition. With a sigh, she stopped at the

edge of Moonmere and looked down.

Barely a ruffle of wind marred its surface, and so Sarah saw her reflection mirrored against the sky: a

plain brown-haired, grey-eyed girl in a simple white calico day dress.

Who is Sarah
? she wondered.
Who am I
?

Suddenly the light failed. Sarah looked around, and saw that the surface of the lake was steaming. Veils

of mist were rising from its surface, forming a thick cloud that was moving quickly to envelop her. She

took a swift step backward before realizing that whatever danger the mist represented, it was moving too

fast for her to escape. Resolutely, Sarah steeled herself to face what came.

The fogbank broke over her like a chill caress, blotting out sight and scent. Sarah looked down, and even

the grass beneath her feet was gone, enveloped in the all-concealing greyness. In that moment Sarah

recognized it for what it was.

Magic.

"Sarah…"

The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"
Help us
—
help them
—
help yourself
.…"

The mist drew back a little, and now Sarah could see her surroundings once more, but they were terribly

changed. The close-cut grass beneath her feet was a sparkling silver, and the colorless trees across the

lake sparkled as though they had been dusted thickly with sugar. The water at her feet was mirror-still

and mirror-silver: no sunlight danced upon its surface, nor did it reflect the blue of the sky.

Neither sun nor moon.

"Where are you? Show yourself!" Sarah cried.

"I am here."

He was as she had first seen him: a man as small as a child, dressed in a sort of short deerskin toga, his

skin stained dark in a dappled pattern that was meant to match the pattern of moonlight through trees.

His hair was long, and carefully braided with leaves, and around his throat he wore a torque of pure gold,

with terminals of clear amber carved in the shape of acorns. He reached out a hand to her.

"Walk with me, Sarah."

Unhesitatingly, Sarah put a hand into his. She had met him—or his like—before. This was one of the

Oldest People, the race who had held this land before her own people's ancestors. That Sarah's kind

now walked its green hills was by the sufferance of these elder kin, to whom she owed a daughter's

respect. He had come to her once before when she was new in this world… but what was his purpose

now?

The mist dissolved before them, but it did not show Sarah the familiar lands around her home. Instead,

they walked in silence through a forest of oaks whose trunks were larger than three men together, where

the mist swathed the great branches like bridal veils.

"This is the land as it once was, before Men came out of the East with their flint and bronze and steel,"

the fairy-lord said. "Once it was ours, then you came to take it from us."

"Why are you showing me this?" Sarah asked. She pulled against his grip, but it was as if the land itself

gripped her. Now he was taller, wearing green velvet instead of spotted doeskin, his face hidden by a

golden mask with branching jeweled antlers.

"It is the nature of Man to take, just as it is the nature of Time to send each race through the Grey Gates

in the end. But oh!—not yet, Sarah!—do not send us away yet!"

"I will not banish you ever," Sarah said, puzzled. "Mooncoign is yours for as long as you wish it, and I

think—I have heard—that the King has said your lands and ancient rights here in England are to be

respected by all men."

"The generous words of an English king, but no King rules in France," the fairylord said sadly. "The Great

Marriage has not been made there, and the land suffers. We
are
the land, Sarah, and so we daily

dwindle and die!"

"But what am I to do?" Sarah asked, confused.

"Come." As she followed him once more, the great oaks slowly vanished from the landscape. Now the

land was gently rolling, forested in pine and birch… and hauntingly familiar.

"I know these woods!" Sarah burst out, coming to a stop.

She had hunted this forest—or its twin—through all the years of her childhood. American state or English

colony, the land itself was unchanged: these were her home woods as she had seen them on many a misty

Baltimore morning, with the yellow leaves beneath her feet and the faint tang of woodsmoke on the air.

Tears gathered in her eyes: this was home—
home
!

"Why do you bring me here?" she demanded, her voice suddenly harsh. The longing for what she had so

casually given up was a dull pain in her heart, destroying her carefully-cultivated serenity. Never to walk

these woods again, never to breathe this air…!

Now her companion's hair was a white, lime-stiffened crest over his skull and down his back. Rings of

blue paint around his eyes gave his gaze the staring intensity of an owl's and he wore a goatskin kilt and a

collar of bones and feathers strung upon a leather thong.

"In the West there is a land where Men do not yet take so much from their elder kin, where the worlds of

man and beast and spirit live all in harmony. Do not let this war which destroys us here seek out our

kindred as well. We beg this of you." He dropped her hand and stepped back.

"Me?" Sarah demanded incredulously. "How can I—?"

"You have lived in the world that will come, but in this world, those things are not yet as they are there.

Stop them, Sarah—or all is lost!"

He had been moving away from her as he spoke, and now his body was half obscured in the mist. The

white of his hair and kilt merged into the whiteness of the fog, making him a ghostly figure.

"Wait! Don't go!" Sarah took several stumbling steps after him before realizing it was hopeless. Where

the Fair Folk wished to dissemble, no mortal could pierce the veil.

When the mist fell away, Sarah found that she had somehow been transported into the woodlot on the far

side of the lake. It seemed as if the last few moments might not have happened, but she knew better than

to dismiss this vision as nothing more than a vivid day-dream. The fairylord had come to warn her—or to

ask for her help.

"
You have lived in the world that will come
…"

He must mean her own world, where the colonies had achieved independence from the Crown, and

forged a new American nation. Did that mean that such a revolution would come in this world as well?

And how could she it if that were indeed so?
He wants me to stop Napoleon
, she realized

incredulously.
He wants me to stop the war that the King himself cannot end. How in heaven's

name am I to do as he asks
?

"Oh!" Sarah made a small sound of frustration. "And I might as well have gone for a walk in the woods at

that," she said ruefully, "for my dress is ruined and I have lost one of my slippers into the bargain."

Kicking off the other dainty shoe—meant for floors of wood and marble, not a trek through the

outdoors—she began trudging back to the house.

It was after tea-time when she reached Mooncoign again, and she was no closer to understanding what

had happened beside the lake than she had been before. The feelings of homesickness that the fairylord

had kindled made her both melancholy and angry, though who the subject of her anger must be, not even