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“I can,” Marcus’ voice said suddenly. He had come up silently behind Devin, his gun in his hand.
Lavender was unconcerned. “You won’t shoot me,” she said. “The sound of a gun will bring those soldiers back here.”
“True,” Marcus answered, his voice deadly. “But I can slit your throat and no one will hear a sound.”
Lavender’s body crumpled, like a bunch of rags thrown on the floor, her gnarled hands went to her scrawny throat. “Why would you kill me? I’ve not done you any harm. I’ve done nothing but speak to the gentleman.”
“He told you to be on your way,” Marcus replied. “You need to leave.”
“I will,” she said. “I thought we could help each other.”
“In what way?” Marcus asked, his voice sarcastic.
“I can show you a way into the tunnels,” she whispered.
Devin and Marcus exchanged a look. The tunnel system, which used the natural cave formations of Northern Llisé, would provide them with a safe, protected route to reach Madame Aucoin’s house in Amiens. “And what do you want in return?” Devin asked. He realized his mistake too late when her toothless grin revealed her brown gums.
“So you do need to reach the tunnels?” she cackled.
“Devin, shut up!” Marcus growled. “You’re only making matters worse.”
“I can take you there safely,” said Lavender. “For a price.”
“And what would that be?” Marcus asked.
“What does the boy have hidden in his coat?” Lavender asked.
“You’ll find nothing in my coat but a ripped lining,” Devin replied, involuntarily clutching Tirolien’s Chronicle to his side.
“Let me see,” Lavender asked, reaching out with sticklike fingers.
Marcus slapped her hand away with the barrel of his gun. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he said.
She snatched her hand away, holding it against her scrawny chest. “If you hurt me I will tell the soldiers where you are.”
“Then I may as will kill you,” Marcus replied calmly. “I doubt anyone will miss you.”
“Lavender is a story,” she protested feebly. “You can kill the bards but you can’t kill stories.”
Devin leaned forward warily. “What do you mean?”
She wrapped her arms around her as though she were cold, her ragged clothes looking more like a burial shroud. “Stories live on if you keep telling them.”
“There need to be bards to tell them,” Devin corrected her gently. “The bards tell the stories so that they won’t be forgotten.”
“You can tell the stories,” she insisted. “You can tell Lavender’s story.”
Devin rubbed at the bandage on his forehead. He wanted to lie down and still the thumping ache in his head.
“Come back tomorrow,” Marcus said. “You can tell your story then.”
“Lavender’s story is part of the Chronicle,” she said.
Devin exhaled. “Dear God, Marcus! She can’t be the Lavender that Armand taught me about?”
“I agree,” Marcus muttered, shifting his gun from one hand to another. “That was centuries ago, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Devin whispered. “Lavender, is your story about your white pony?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes,” she said, “my beautiful white pony that ran away.”
“Where is your father’s house?” Devin asked. “Surely there must be someone left who wonders what happened to you.”
She shook her head, looking forlorn and afraid. “I can’t find it.”
“You lived in Arcadia,” Devin explained gently. “This is Tirolien. Your story is in Arcadia’s Chronicle. I believe that you lived there.”
She threw her hands out in supplication. “I don’t know where that is.”
“We are going that way,” Devin said.
“Devin!” Marcus warned. “We can’t take anyone with us.”
“But she’s lost,” Devin said. “Surely we can show a little mercy?”
Marcus shook his head unyieldingly. “Not now. Not here.”
Devin looked helplessly at Lavender. “How do you live? Where do you sleep?”
“I sleep under the trees. The roots are my pillows. In winter when it is cold, I live in this cave.”
“This cave?” Devin asked, nodding behind him.
She nodded, curling her feet around her, pulling the scraps of her clothing down to cover her toes. “I eat berries and nuts.”
“This is her cave, Marcus,” Devin protested. “We can’t stay here.”
“I don’t mind,” Lavender offered. “We can all stay here together.”
“We mind,” Marcus replied. “If this is your cave, we’ll move on.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “I have no one to talk to but myself. Once I ate at a fine table, with wine and tarts; there was music and laughter and dancing. Now, I am lost and I don’t know where home is.”
Devin closed his eyes, thinking wretchedly of Angelique and all she had lost.
“Lavender, how old are you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I have forgotten.” She picked at the fabric of her clothing for a moment. “Did you know my pony is missing?”
“I had heard that,” Devin said. “I don’t believe you will find him here though. You need to go back to Arcadia.”
“Is it a long way?” she asked.
Devin looked at her bare feet worn hard and leathery from walking. “I think you could make it,” he said, pointing above them. “You should follow the road.”
She made a sharp keening sound, making herself as small as possible. “Men travel the road. They are cruel, cruel men. They burned my father’s chateau.”
Devin sat forward, making his head throb more. “Your father’s chateau burned?”
“It’s gone,” she said in faint voice. “All my people are gone. There is no one left but me and I have nowhere to go.”
Devin put a hand to his head. “Marcus, surely there is something …”
“No,” Marcus repeated. “We can’t get involved. There is too much at stake, Devin. We need to move on, Madame, and leave you to your cave.”
She nodded, sitting in a forlorn heap.
“Do you have any money?” Devin asked.
She shook her head and spread thin fingers. “I have nothing but my friends,” she said, gesturing behind them into the small cave.
Marcus whirled, pointing his gun behind them but there was nothing there but the rocky cave floor.
“What friends?” Devin asked.
She crawled behind Devin into the shadows. “These friends,” she murmured, collecting small rounded wooden balls from the floor of the cave. She placed one of the balls gently in Devin’s hand. “This is Simon.”
Devin turned the ball in his hand, revealing features cut deeply into the wood with a knife or stone. The wooden ball was a head with recognizable features: plump cheeks, a bulbous nose, and a mouth wide open in laughter. “Who is Simon?” he asked.
“My father’s baker,” Lavender said. “He made all the tarts, cakes, and sweets. He always saved me something special in his apron pocket.”
Devin reached carefully for another ball. “And this one?”
“My father,” Lavender said, her fingers reluctant to release it into Devin’s hand. She turned it so the features were apparent but did not pass it to him. The face was strong, the nose long and thin, the smile betrayed a gentleness that Devin recognized in Lavender’s own face.
Lavender collected it, cradling it in her lap like a child. “I would like to see him again,” she whispered.
Devin looked at her gnarled hands, the skin that hung from her wiry frame and thought that she must have outlived her father by at least fifty years. “I would like to see my father again, too,” he answered gently.
She looked up. “Do you know where your father is?”
“I know where I left him,” Devin replied. “I hope he is still there but nothing is constant. Time changes everything.”
“I went back one time,” Lavender said. “There were horrible men there. They had killed my father’s guards and burned the chateau.”
Marcus returned his gun to his jacket. “When was this?”
Lavender shrugged. “Many winters ago. I saw the men on horseback and the torches and I ran. I didn’t even try to help them,” Lavender murmured, her voice barely audible. “I carved their faces here, so I wouldn’t forget them.” She swung her arm out, encompassing the wooden heads. “I have them all except for the stable boy who didn’t latch my pony’s stall.” She chose one head from the collection and held it up. “This is the Captain of the Guard. His name is Amando. He would have fought to the death to protect them!”
Devin glanced at Marcus. “Had you heard about the destruction of this chateau?”
He shook his head. “No, nothing. Although much of what transpires in these far northern provinces goes no further. I doubt your father knows either.”
Lavender let out a huge sigh and leaned back against the rock as though the conversation had exhausted her.
“Lavender,” Devin asked. “Did you have any brothers or sisters?”
Her little head bobbed up and down as she scrambled forward on her knees. “They are here, too.” She lined four wooden balls up on the rocky shelf above them. “Sébastian, Abelard, Michel, and Charles.”
Devin felt a shiver run down his back at the detail she had worked into the faces. It was almost as though she had collected a host of men’s heads that had been decapitated. He took a deep breath, trying not to show his revulsion. “Is it possible that they might have escaped?”
Lavender began to cry. “I don’t know. I ran away. I didn’t stay to help them fight. I simply saved myself.”
“God!” Marcus commented angrily, his face unreadable in the shadow of the rocks. “This world seems filled with women who have been abused and yet feel responsible for their families’ deaths.” He remained silent for a moment and then put a hand out to grasp one of her scrawny shoulders. “Lavender, we’ll take you back. Surely there is someone who can help you in your own province.”
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_54c1f23f-dde1-51a4-8b89-b15bdb1aeb73)
Dreams (#ulink_54c1f23f-dde1-51a4-8b89-b15bdb1aeb73)
“You told me you knew a way into the tunnels,” Devin said, extending Lavender a piece of bread.
She nodded as she tore at the crust in her hand. “It is down the mossy steps. A whole town used to be there. It’s deserted now. No one has lived there in years.”
Devin wished there had been time to read Tirolien’s Chronicle. Surely, an entire deserted town would have found its way into the Chronicles at some point. He recalled the map they had found in the Bishop’s Book, which outlined the resettlement of people from towns in danger of being wiped out by the government. His nearly perfect recall brought the map to mind with all its details but he remembered no designation for a deserted town in the mountains above Calais.
“What was the town called?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Lavender replied, fondling one of the wooden heads of her brothers. “It was very, very old.”
“It sounds too good to bypass,” Devin replied.
“We’re not on an archaeological expedition,” Marcus warned him. “We’ll investigate only if it will get us back to Arcadia sooner.”
Devin shifted so the back of his head was against the rock face behind him. The coolness of the stone soothed the dull ache that persisted. “Where do the tunnels go, Lavender?”
She shook her head. “We don’t know. We don’t like the dark.” She seemed to grow smaller when something frightened her; she scuttled backwards, nervously cradling the carved heads of all her brothers in her lap.
Devin tried to imagine what her life had been like, to have lived once as a child, in a household of wealth and affluence, and then spend the remaining decades as a wild thing that lived off the land and hid wherever she could find shelter. The parallels to Angelique’s life were uncanny but while he found Angelique both endearing and repelling at different times, Lavender merely seemed pathetic. How terrifying it must seem to be elderly with no prospect of anyone to care for you. If she died in these woods or even in the shelter of the cave, she would leave little alteration in the landscape: just a small bundle of bones in a few shreds of cloth.
Marcus arrived triumphantly. Surprisingly, in the short time he had been gone, he had caught two fish. He gutted them on a flat stone and fileted the meat, dividing it into three portions.
“Lavender claims to know a way into the tunnels,” Devin said quietly, as Marcus worked.
Marcus looked up, his knife poised in midair. “Can you show us the way?” he asked.
Lavender bit into a piece of fish, mashing its white flesh between her brownish gums. Devin found himself alternately disgusted and then sympathetic to her. “We’ll go down the mossy steps,” she repeated, gesturing somewhere over her shoulder.
“How far away are the mossy steps?” Marcus asked.