Straw Into Gold (16 page)

And grabbing both our hands, she bustled us through the woods—the trees stood well apart now—stopping now and again to exclaim at a place she recognized. "I built a lean-to here. You can still see the notches I cut." She ran her fingers into them wonderingly. "And there, where that one tree breaks into two trunks. Do you see the hollow? I would put apples and nuts in it for the squirrels, then stand there and watch them scramble."

On through the ever-widening woods we rushed, the queen almost glowing as her memories took on weight. Her laughter and her tears were all one thing.

"Majesty," I said, "the trees are growing fewer and fewer."

"Of course. We are just this side of a long meadow. And beyond that lies the road."

"But the trees give us less and less cover."

She suddenly stopped, breathless, then laughed and shook her head. "The past is such a temptation. I would have run headlong into it without realizing that the present is ever so much closer."

"I think," said Innes,"we would have run into more than that."

Then we heard it: the jangling and whinnying of a troop of horses. We knelt low to the ground and grouped behind the last of the pines. Beyond the meadow, rows of white tunics rode in pairs along the way to Wolverham. They moved very quickly.

"Oh," said the queen, her hand up to her mouth.

"They haven't seen us," I said.

"The mill ... the mill is burned."

There was no mill to be seen. Some stones still held to each other, and a charred timber poked up sharply into the air. But that was all. The Grip had kept his promise.

"We cannot go there now. But the meadow?" I asked. "Who belongs to the meadow?"

The queen did not answer at first, and I heard her murmur a quiet prayer. Then she shook her head and pointed. "You see where the trees bend around to meet the road. The farmer's house lies on the far side of those trees."

"Then perhaps—"

"He would be of no help. He and my father argued once over the weight of his meal, and neither would ever forgive the other."

"Majesty, perhaps now we should try the farmer anyway."

She shook her head. "Millers and farmers can say fearful things to each other."

"Then," said Innes,"you will need to command him as his queen."

The queen looked at him, quietly and with love, and I felt my soul twist with the sorrow that Innes could not see it, and that it was not given to me. She put her hand along his face. "Then we had better go on. There is a farmer ahead who is about to entertain royalty unexpectedly."

But as it turned out, there was no need to command. Staying back in the shadows, we followed the line of trees around the meadow, and when we came behind the barn, there was the farmer loading bales of straw onto his cart, and on the cart itself, straightening the bales for their journey, was the miller.

We stood still in the forest, the queen with her hands to her face. Neither the miller nor the farmer saw us as we watched them in their companionable work, the bales hefted and stacked, hefted and stacked, with no words needed between the two and the work making its own heat. But there was no heat where we stood, and Innes stamped his feet and beat his arms against his sides.

Perhaps it was that movement that caught the miller's eye. He stared across the field, and when the next bale was thrown up to him, it hit him full in the chest and tumbled back to the ground.

"Your great clumpy miller's hands can't catch hold?" the farmer yelled up, but the miller was already tumbling down the cart himself. Then he was running across the field to us, running with the awkward gait of a man who has not run for many years. He stumbled in the furrows and caught at the air when he tipped forward, but he ran all the while. It was fortunate that the barn hid him from the road; Lord Beryn's Guard would never have missed his careening gait.

And so he came to us, and he grabbed the queen into his arms as roughly as he might have grabbed a sack of flour, the golden dust of the straw that covered his face catching onto hers. They held each other, and held each other, and all the while not a word spoken between them, and no need for one.

And then there was the miller's wife, the farmer not far behind her. And she with her hands up to her face too. Then the miller stood aside, the queen held out her arms, and the miller's wife was in them, pausing only a moment to touch the queen's face before she held her to herself, the scent of the straw strong around us, and a sudden sunbeam casting the dust of it to a golden halo around the three.

Then the queen turned to Innes, and the miller asked, his voice low and gruffed,"And is this him, then?" The queen nodded, and the miller picked Innes up in his two great clumpy miller's hands and held him to his chest, the tears coming suddenly and without pause. Innes reached to feel the contours of his face, and then the miller's wife took his hand and laid it onto her face, and the three of them laughed and wept together, the queen looking on until the miller drew her in. Then it was the farmer and I who watched that holy moment.

"Majesty," said the farmer finally,"the Guard are all about. They've searched the house and barn twice already this morning. And here we are almost in plain sight."

"The farmer is right," said the miller, setting Innes down. "And that"—he grinned—"is not something I say often."

"You should say it more often than you do, you donkey of a miller."

"You ox of a farmer, do something right and I will say it. Though"—and here the miller almost began to weep again—"he took us in, you know, took us in when our mill was still smoldering, as we stood with nothing left."

"And there's been no end of trouble ever since. Who would have imagined that a miller never learned to stack bales. Look at that cart. It won't make the road before it tips over, and then there will be the whole thing to do over again."

"Perhaps," said the queen, "it would do to—"

"Yes," said the ox of a farmer, "to get you all inside. And not all crossing at once so we don't attract unwelcome eyes."

"Let the eyes of the unjust be blind," I thought.

The farmer went first and slid open the barn door, then the miller's wife with the queen, the queen swinging her arms and striding as if her feet had never touched a marble floor. Then the miller and Innes, Innes walking confidently beside him, swinging his arms a bit too eagerly and tripping once, but no one from the road would have guessed that he was blind.

And so I stood alone. Absolutely alone.

Perhaps it was no accident that the sun faded at that moment, but with its going, loneliness fell over me like an avalanche, and I was startled by the hurt of it. I did not envy Innes. I did not. But the knowledge of how little I had froze me, and though I tried, I could not even drag up memories of Da, memories that might have carried a thaw with them.

So I stood alone.

And it was then that the mailed hand reached down across my face and stopped my mouth with its iron taste.

It jerked me up and back, farther into the woods, and in a moment I could no longer even see the barn, could no longer smell the pine and the straw—only the iron. Then my arm was whipped around my back and the voice of the King's Grip slithered into my ear.

"If you cry out, Lord Beryn's Guard will be upon us—and upon them—in less than a moment. And it will not be a queen and a prince they set their swords to, but a miller's daughter and her blind son. Do you understand, boy? Yell and you give the game away."

I nodded, still looking through the trees, straining to see the barn.

"They will go on without you, and who knows but that they might even reach Wolverham with their riddling. But they have no need of you now. And it's the last day, so they have no time to come back and search." He turned me around and shoved me forward, into the darker pines, where his black horse waited. There was no cantering away this time. The horse waited patiently while the Grip hefted me into the saddle like a bale of straw, then mounted behind me. He turned the horse's head and dug in his heels, and the horse spurted into the deeper shadows, back the way we had come. It had all taken only a moment. I wondered if they had yet even missed me in the barn.

"Your trail was plain as could be, even if Lord Beryn's Guard did not think to follow it. Boy, I could almost believe that you wanted to be followed. But perhaps you thought I had been killed?"

I said nothing. I ducked as branches swiped at us and tried not to think of the ache that was numbing the arm he still held.

"But I won't be killed. Not while I still have this search to finish. And I have waited for its finish for a long time, boy, a long time."

"I've searched for a riddle's answer to save a hanging," I said finally. "And what have you searched for?"

"He does speak! Boy, I thought you might have lost your tongue in all this. You should be thanking me now. If I had let you go on to Wolverham, it would be more than your tongue you'd be losing."

"If you ever truly served the king—"

"The king," the Grip snarled scornfully. "The king. As if he were a man I should serve. He fuddles about in his own fear, afraid to sneeze before the Great Lords give him the cloth to sneeze into. He armors himself like a god, then looks to Lord Beryn to see if he may piss that day. Do you think bringing the answer to a riddle will save a single life? Let the answer be what it may, Lord Beryn will shake his head and the hangings go on."

I knew it was true. Horribly, I knew it was true.

Farther and farther into the woods the horse took us, spurting forward with each dig of the Grip's heels. "You see there," he said, "those branches snapped at the trunk. Even without the snow, they would have given you away. And that spot there where one of you stumbled."

"Where are you taking me?"

"I thought that surely you of all people would know that."

And then I did know. He was taking me to Da's cottage.

"I burned the first one. At first I thought the logs were too weathered to catch, and then I thought there was some magic at work. But I piled up branches against the sides and set them alight, and the rest followed soon enough. It generally does. But now, to come upon this second one. Well, boy, that's evidence of design, wouldn't you say?" He laughed shortly, then spurred the horse again.

He never relaxed his hold on my arm, which was now numb and bloodless. But that was not what brought the tears to my eyes. I wished more than anything—more than anything—that Innes and the queen, and the miller and his wife, would come yelling down upon us. Sometimes I even turned my head to see if they were following. I knew that they had to reach Wolverham. I knew that they had to bring the answer to the king's riddle, even if they did not know it was meaningless. I knew that they could not come. But I wanted them to come anyway.

The trees grew thicker, and the horse slowed. The Grip had to lean down to follow our tracks in the thinner snow. But he was sure of the path, and soon I smelled the familiar smoke, and the trees gave way, and we were in the clearing beside the tiny cottage.

"He will come here, won't he, boy? Sooner or later the little man will come. And then I will trade you for the secret of spinning straw into gold." He released me and lowered me from the horse. Slowly I let the arm fall to my side, feeling the pain as the blood pushed back into the closed and stiffened vessels. I rubbed my hand up and down its searing muscles.

"It will come back soon enough." The Grip chuckled. "Now into the cottage. After this day I will never serve another man."

I pushed open the door and walked in. The bread and the cider were still by the hearth, warm and brown. I poured the cider into a mug and gulped at it, feeling its warmth come down into me. Only then did I realize that the Grip had said nothing since we entered. I looked at him. He was staring at the loft, staring like one who has found his heart's desire.

The loft was heaped high with straw, piles and piles of it, fresh and golden, almost glowing, though the loft was in shadow. It spilled down in wisps to a spinning wheel, where a long strand had collected and twisted around the spindle. Beside the wheel, skeins of golden thread lay piled up, their round richness tumbling hugger-mugger all over the floor. It seemed that the wheel must have just stopped spinning.

None of this had been here when we had left. Da must have brought it. Da must have just been sitting at the wheel. If only he could come now and somehow carry me away.

Slowly the Grip crossed the room. He picked up a skein and stared at it, turning it around and around in his hand. He set it down, and pushed at the wheel, pulling his fingers back with the tingle of it. But the wheel spun around three times—
whirr, whirr, whirr
—and in that time it filled the spindle with half a skein of golden thread, drawing the straw from above. He pushed at it again, and the wheel spun—
whirr, whirr, whirr
—until the spindle was full. It dropped off the wheel, and another empty one leapt up from a basket to take its place.

The King's Grip lifted the skein, the light from it shining on his face. Then he set it on the mound of golden thread, tossed his mail gloves to the cottage floor, and clambered behind the wheel. He looked around and found the place for his foot, then pumped at the pedal. The wheel blurred to a whirl, and the empty spindles began to leap to the wheel, then fall off and pile up full around him. He stared at the whirling, his eyes glazing, his mouth pulled back to a grin. He kept pumping, and the wheel spun, and the straw twisted down from the loft, and the spindles fell with their full skeins.

Higher and higher the piles grew about him, now so high that he had to shove them aside with his knees. They spilled out over the floor, and the King's Grip laughed with the pleasure of it.

"Do you see, boy? I have the trick of it. I can spin straw into gold. Into gold!"

The straw kept coming and the wheel kept spinning, and no matter how much straw pulled down from the loft, the piles of it never grew smaller but seemed to plump up higher and higher.

I stood back from the whirling wheel. The skeins flew off in an arching blur, and the King's Grip had to push out with his arms to keep his wealth from overwhelming him. His eyes never left the spinning, and his feet never gave up their pumping.