The Accidental Highwayman (20 page)

“No,” said Morgana. “They are enemies. Had the Duchess not been robbed of her soul in defeat, she might herself rule Faerie. She is, according to legend, my great-great-great-great-aunt, sister to Snaremink the First, father of my lineage.”

“Right. So why does she desire your capture enough to lob a flock of gryphons at us? I'm not much on court intrigues, but she must have a purpose in it.”

“I know not,” Morgana said, sunk in thought. “She cannot cross between the worlds herself, for to do the ruckins requires a soul. The best she could manage would be a sort of phantom. But she can send her minions after us. It is them we must watch for. If there's good news in it, it's that her efforts will surely collide with my father's, and the two of them may hinder each other to our advantage. It is possible.”

“What if,” I ventured, having cudgeled my brains for some scrap of wisdom that might improve our situation, or at least impress the princess, “she wishes to capture you for a hostage, because your father has something she wants?”

“He has nothing she wants,” she said. “He hasn't got her soul. That's been lost for a dozen millennia, by your calendar. Anything else she desires, she simply takes, and the Black Planet swallows what's left over.”

“I say, Faerie sounds a jolly place,” said I. Morgana didn't reply, lost in her own thoughts.

After a time she returned to the present, favored me with her half smile, and said, “Thank you for taking my part in this business. I wanted nothing to do with you, at first. Now I don't know what I would do without you.”

So saying, she blushed prettily and went back inside the snug of the wagon, whence I soon heard feminine laughter. Lily had a tonic effect on everyone when she was in good spirits. Morgana's words had a tonic effect upon me.

I spent the remaining hours it took to drive us to the remote place examining my recently conceived plan. Nothing Morgana had said dissuaded me from the notion. It was a terrible idea, speaking plainly, but it was also the only scheme that made the most of our party's strengths and the least of its weaknesses.

There were two keys to the program: the first was our caravan, which had proven impregnable to goblings, although feyín could come and go from it easily enough, as long as they didn't touch the gold decorations, and Morgana (being a halfsie) wasn't affected by the metal. That made our humble conveyance a rolling fortress.

The second key was our unusual assortment of talents.

*   *   *

At sundown, with our encampment made beside the enormous stone, Lily cooked oat porridge from the cupboard, enriched by a rabbit caught by Fred. Gruntle—irritable since his wing had been repaired with paste and parchment—was horrified by this dexterous piece of poaching, and closely inspected the deceased cony to make sure it wasn't anybody he knew. I was astonished that Fred had been so civilized as to return with his game, rather than eat it “on the hoof,” so to speak; he had nothing to gain by his generosity. But so he did.

As twilight fell, I saw the baboon and Gruntle contentedly eating ants out of a hill together, so there were no hard feelings between them on the rabbit's account.

Meanwhile, I attended to Midnight. His disgust with the situation was palpable. I plied him with grass and oats and a good brushing, and told him how clever and noble and handsome he was.

Then I took myself apart from the others to study my ex-master's will by the light of a candle-stump. It wasn't of any practical use, for we had already strayed beyond its borders, but I was interested to see if the last few drawings upon it matched our recent adventures. Had Magda predicted everything correctly? In addition, I was feeling sentimental, and wished to remember my master by the pen strokes he'd made upon the map.

The entire drawing had changed.

“Morgana,” I said, returning to the circle of firelight. Darkness was now full upon us. “If I could trouble you for a minute or two?”

The Princess was no longer so stiff and formal as when we'd first met—and not just because she'd been advised against it as a matter of disguise. Her adventures had placed her firmly among the doings and customs of we manlings, and I suppose the human side of her was enjoying a newfound liberty. While she had once sat always as if upon a throne, no matter what the accommodations, with her back straight, her head erect, and her hands folded before her, now she was all elbows and knees upon the ground, sprawling comfortably. I suspected Lily's influence may have been exerting itself, as much as anything else. She was an informal soul.

When I spoke to her, Morgana immediately adopted a more regal posture, and rose decorously at my request.

“I've got my eye on you,” Willum said to me from atop a heap of firewood drying by the blaze.

Morgana and I retired a little distance from the others. I didn't want to reveal the peculiar change in the map to anyone else, in case it was something dangerous. I showed her the sheet of paper, holding the candle close.

“Do you see it?” said I. “The entire thing has changed. You can just see the edge of the old map, here at the bottom, but this is an entirely new drawing otherwise. And the little ciphers have changed, although they're still penned in my master's hand. I'd call it witchcraft, but I'll warrant that's stating the obvious.”

“'Tis witchcraft,” Morgana said, peering closely at the page. “Magda's work, this is. I thought it was but an ordinary drawing when first I saw it; there are no witchmarks upon it. But this is a borigium, a caster's map. It would take hours to enchant such an object into being, and yet you said you took it from your master's lifeless hand, with the ink scarcely dry?”

“That's right,” said I, confounded. But then, “Do you know—I recall something now. The day I met the old witch, when we parted, it went from afternoon to night, and from one place to another, in what seemed to me the blink of an eye. It didn't bother Midnight, but I was sore disconcerted at the time. Could she have—”

“That's the very chance she needed,” Morgana said. “She must have hexed you out of time, prepared this borigium, and then hexed you back. Midnight wasn't bothered because he carried you to the new spot himself, in the usual way. He saw time pass, and thought nothing of it. You were little more than a dressmaker's dummy until Magda lifted the spell.”

“But I first saw it before she could have touched it,” I protested.

“The original drawings were indeed your master's work. He was telling you what Magda had warned him would happen, but he didn't dare label it. It's the Eldritch Law, verse six of chapter two: ‘Of Faerie, make no record.' Magda must have warned him.”

“But what can the purpose of this be?” I couldn't imagine what the witch had in mind—the map hadn't been of much practical use.

“If we had only known what you possessed, it should have saved us no end of trouble,” Morgana said.

“I wasn't hiding it,” I said, defensively.

“I didn't say you were! By the Starlit Falls, you
are
a sensitive fellow, Kit Bristol. All I mean is that I have myself been a fool for not recognizing this object for what it is. You see, with a borigium we receive warning of what's to come.

“The reason it has all changed since your master sketched it is because circumstances have changed. Some things came to pass. That's what the drawings indicate: events to come. Others did not. These new illustrations tell us of events that could lie ahead. They may occur and they may not occur, but we can guide our course by them, like stars glimpsed through the dark clouds.”

She swept a stray lock of black hair from her brow, and it fell back. So she took off her Gypsy kerchief and rearranged her hair, in such a very human and womanly way it was a delight to behold. I half expected her hair would brush itself by magic, but it tangled as hair ought to do.

“Why are you staring at me?” she asked, without seeing that I did so.

“I'm not,” I said.

“But you were.”

“I wasn't staring, I was looking.” And a pretty poor defense it was. Most of the time, I couldn't tell whether to be glad or irritated by her, so I was both, in rapid succession. “Anyway,” I went on, rather more gruffly than necessary, “there's only one symbol on that map which hasn't changed. The last one is a hanged man. It has remained a hanged man since the first, and I don't like the look of it.”

“It will change,” she said, but didn't sound very confident. “Nor are we certain that it represents you.”

“It looks like me,” I said, although in truth it was just a featureless stick-figure.

“Let us see what we can decipher,” Morgana suggested. She touched the map with her slender fingers. “This is our route northward. The first of the drawings here at the edge shows our unusual carriage; that's clear enough. I am thankful that Mr. Puggle used real gold, and not Dutch metal, to decorate his wagon, or we would all be captured or slain. The next sketch is a girl standing upon one foot, holding a spear, I think.”

“I'd have said it's a tight-rope dancer,” I ventured.

“A what?” Morgana had probably seen every wonder genuine magic could devise, but apparently she'd never seen an aerialist in action.

I explained the general principle to her, and how it was the very thing Lily did for a living, when there was a living to be had doing it (income being intermittent in the performing arts). Then we moved on to the next drawing: a face inside an oval with a loop hanging below it. Following that, as near as either of us could tell, was a portcullis, a barred castle gate.

The following sketches we made no sense of; they looked like meaningless doodles. Morgana explained that too many things were now uncertain, so the future couldn't be scryed that far ahead.
All except the man in the noose,
thought I.

“Now that we know what this map is, I am encouraged to hope we might end our adventures better than we started,” Morgana said, when we had studied every inch of the paper. “But I cannot understand why the next event on our map shows Lily on a walking-rope. Is it so important that she give a demonstration, or does it refer to her in a general way, accomplishing some action?”

I thought I had some idea of that, based upon my plan, but forbore telling her of it yet.

We returned to the circle of light thrown by the campfire. Poor old Uncle Cornelius, though recovered from his shock, had fallen asleep and was snoring lustily through his mustaches inside the cabin. It was no wonder: By his own account he'd toured all of Europe since morning.

Gruntle was toasting crickets in the coals, but the primary dish was the porridge, which everyone consumed with appetite, although it wasn't very flavorful, there being no salt in the larder. Morgana seemed reluctant even to taste it at first, but hunger got the better of her. She was accustomed to more delicate fare. I vowed we would lay in a stock of food if we remained with the wagon for more than another day or two. And I intended we should. It was time to discuss my plan.

“We have had quite an exciting day,” I said, when all were done eating. “And for some of us, several of them. I know that I intended to end my part in it yesterday; yet here I am, and it would be folly to leave this business unfinished. We're well on the way to our goal, and everyone has played some part in getting us here.”

“Hear, hear,” said Willum, and flashed his posterior on and off.

“Well done one and all,” Gruntle said around a mouthful of insect.

“I'm having ever so much fun,” Lily said. “My happiness would be complete if only Uncle Cornelius were to recognize me for just one minute.”

“Perhaps he will, soon enough,” Morgana said.

“No good him knowing you if it's not in front of that nursemaid,” Willum observed. “You've a considerable fortune before you, and that nervy woman has it locked away.”

“Oh,” said Lily, “I care nothing for that. I just want to have my uncle's mind clear for long enough to tell him I'm sorry for breakin' of his heart, that's all. Can't one of you magical folk enchant him back to health?”

“Regretfully not,” Morgana said. “Alike among your people and mine, the mind cannot be cured of its ills. My own father, King Elgeron—his very soul sickens. He lusts for power in the manling's world, and even gold, although he cannot touch it. He envies me my human blood for that alone, I think. If he could but hold gold in his fist as I can, he would bury himself in it.”

Morgana's eyes were now moist, and Lily's brimming. They fell into each other's arms and sighed up a gale of feminine misery, as full of sobs as a plum duff is full of currants. I hadn't meant to make everyone weep again, so I steered the conversation back to the topic on my mind as soon as they had recovered themselves.

“Speaking of your father, or that is to say, of the topic of our journey, in which he is obviously implicated, I have a plan.”

The women having exhausted their tears, I was given everyone's full attention. Even Fred seemed to be listening from his perch atop one of the wagon wheels. I wondered again at the phrase of French I had heard that day, and puzzled over whence it had come. Surely not
Fred.

“We have among us,” I began, “three magicians, an aerialist, and a trick rider—myself, that is—with a fine horse. We have in addition a gentleman once numbered among the greatest impresarios of his day. We have a caravan, ideal in every respect for life upon the road, its property-chests stuffed to bursting with everything one might require to stage a modest spectacle.”

“We know that,” Lily said. “What do you plan to do, sell us to a novelty collector for boat fare?”

“I intend,” said I, getting to the meat of the matter, “to go on a tour of England, from here to the Irish Sea, traveling not in secrecy but full upon the open road, and to put on merry performances at every stop along the way.”