Dragon's Keep (6 page)

Angel's betrayal

AN
angel leaned over me
as my eyes opened
to the light, h
er golden hair blowing
loose in the wind.

"So I am come to the afterworld," I
mumbled, still half asleep. The angel's small brows tilted. I noticed then she
had no wings.

Rain began to fall and with the rain,
awakening.

Alive.

A girl of an age to me.
No angel. Who was she, then?

"Are you the shepherd's daughter?"
I asked. She began to walk. I followed her up the rocky path, my thoughts
scattering like startled birds.
The dragon.
A female.
She saw my claw and kissed it.

My legs ached and my belly growled with
hunger. We drank at a mountain brook. By the time we crossed it, I'd formed a
plan.

Father Hugh's map and food were in my
saddlebag. I'd find the trail I'd run down last night, slip into the copse
where Rollo was tied, and ride him north to Columba's Tear. The waters there

would
heal my hand. I would be free. But how was I to find
the trail when I'd only seen it in the dark?

The sharp wind caught my cloak as I followed
the girl along the path, thinking.

A voice cried,
"Ah, you've put yourself to some use, Kit-cat!"

Demetra! The girl had led me to the wolves!

Mother rushed from the cave, her face
mottled,
her
eyes red and swollen with tears.
"Ah, God, Rosie!
I thought the dragon—"

I did not stay to hear the rest but flew away
from her.

"Rosie! Don't run off again!"

I stumbled back down the muddy path, running
fast and hard. But they caught my sodden cloak and dragged me screaming back
into the viper's den.

"You're
back
home now," said Demetra, tying a leather strap about my waist and securing
it to a metal ring on the wall.
Home?
This wasn't
home. With Ali's help she'd pulled me down a maze of darkened tunnels to this
small room.

"Leave us, Ali," said Demetra.

Damp with sweat and breathing hard, I tried
to regain strength for battle as Demetra sped about with wooden bowls and
stinking herbs. Mother entered my cell.

Demetra turned.
"The
cost before the cure."

Mother placed her silver on the table between
a loaf of bread and a carving knife. Demetra snatched the coins and dropped
them into her leather sack.

The queen peeled off her golden gloves and
sat beside me

while
Demetra crushed dried mustard seeds in her mortar
bowl. The room filled with a pungent autumn smell as she worked.

All was silence but for
the rhythm of mortar and pestle.
Then
wiping her hands on her wool kirtle,
Demetra left the cell.

"Untie me quick, Mother. Take me
home."

She patted my arm. "No, Rosie. This
woman will heal your mark. She has great powers."

"Dark powers!"
I spat.

Mother flinched. "It's time to take this
cure. No one else has healed you.
If there were another way.
. .
You must be brave, Rosie."

There were tears in Mother's eyes as she said
this, but I felt no pity for her. She could free me if she chose.

In the copper
firelight, I eyed the knife next to a loaf of bread
on the nearby table. Whilst Mother turned to dab her
eyes, I reached for the silver glint, but Demetra swept in and caught me by the
wrist.

"You must be hungry, child." She
let go her hold then clapped her hands twice. Ali appeared, received her
orders,
then
returned with honey and a horn of goat's
milk. The hag tied my wrists firmly on either side of me as Ali sliced the loaf
and dripped honey on the bread. Eyeing the crumb-encrusted knife, I ate the
morsels Mother fed me until my aching belly calmed.

My betrayer came to take my horn, and I saw a
ring of dirt
beneath the girl's
fingernails. Still, her hands were slim and beau
tiful, and I felt a
pang. If I had God's power to order, "Let her hands be mine," I'd do
so. What would it matter to this girl who betrayed me to the hag? Who would
care if
she
had a claw?

"Who is the girl?" I asked when
she'd left the cave.

"Ah." Demetra laughed. "She
might have walked in your shoes."

"Quiet," ordered Mother.

Demetra left the cell, her gray hair lifting
like cobwebs in a breeze. It was the first time Mother had crossed the hag
since I'd been recaptured. But it was in defense of another.

"What does she mean to you?" I
asked, the words leaking from the ache in my chest.

"Nothing at all," said Mother.
"She's Ali's bastard, Katinka."

So Katinka went from angel to bastard in a
single day. How strange the world was. Then I remembered the look Ali had
given Mother when first she'd seen her. "You
knew Ali before she
was a servant here," I guessed.

Mother started. She would have denied it if
she could and worn a fixed look of indifference, but I'd read the truth in her
face already. "She was once my lady's maid," Mother admitted.

Marn had told me about the lady's maid
expelled from Mother's service for bedding a wandering minstrel. "And
wasn't she rounding with child already before she left?" Marn had said.
"Ah, she was spoilt. And here she was as pretty as an angel."

Demetra still hadn't returned, and Mother was
softening to me, it seemed.

"Free me."
A
command, not a plea this time.

Mother kissed my damp
hair. "You will be healed, Rosie. And
later
when you're married to Prince Henry, you will thank me."

"Take me to the lake. I'll find my
healing there."

"The lake?" asked Demetra as she
darted back in.

"Columba's Tear," said Mother, patting
my arm.

Demetra laughed. "It's nothing but a
marsh now."

"I don't believe you!" I said.

"Well, now, do you think I'd live here
if a lake could do my healing? I'd stir the waters myself and charge good coin
for folk to come and take a dip."

The hag slit a prune and removed the pit.
Humming to herself, she took a jar from the shelf, pulled the cloth from the
lid, and drew out an enormous spider. Its legs flailed in the air.

"Mother," I
said, hoarsely. "Order her to take the thing away!"

She knew my fear of spiders. I'd always run
at the sight of them. A year before this, when a fat spider had crawled into my
solar, I'd screamed and leaped onto my bed. Mother had bolted the door and made
me stand beside the spider. "A princess
doesn't
show her dread," she'd said. And so the spider crawled up
the wall
while I held my breath. Thus, she'd taught me to swal
low my fear, to let my blood scream in my ears and not give voice
to
it.

Blood was screaming in my ears now as Demetra
held the spider by its leg.

"Mother!
Tell her to get rid of it! I
don't mind my curse at all.
I'll wear my
gloves till death."

"Till death, you say?" Demetra
laughed. "That may be." Demetra dangled the spider above the fruit
then stuffed it into the shriveled plum.

I tried to get up, but the leather cinched my
gut so tight I
fell
hack on the cot.

"Keep her still," ordered Demetra.

"Marn!"
I screamed as Mother held me down. My nursemaid was
far away down the mountain, but she would have stood between Demetra and me,
old bones to old bones, and kept the horrid spider away.

I clamped my jaw against the fruit. If that
spider crossed my lips, I was sure to enter a strange world knit by the devil's
needles—a world where a loving mother would pay out silver to have her girl
tortured.

Demetra bent over my cot, her breath smelling
of turnips. "This will stave off the shivers." She thrust out the
puckered plum, the
spiders
leg wiggling out one side.

"Take it, Rose. It's for your
good," said Mother.

I bit my lips, but Demetra pulled my jaw
open, dropped the spider-fruit in, and clamped it shut.

O, Saint Alodia,
protector of children, come wrap Demetra with
your cord and drag her into hell,
I prayed. But
there was no saint.
No cord. And the only
thing wrapped was my tongue around the
wretched
prune. I pressed it to the side of my cheek while Mother
ran her fingers through my hair. "Soon all
will be well, Rosie," she
said.

Demetra moved my jaw up and down to make me
chew the spider-plum. I never will forget the crunching sound the spider made
between my teeth.

Flying as in a
Dream

Mother had never let
me
show
my hand to anyone in the world but her, but all vows
were broken in Demetra's stinking
cave. She
dismissed Ali and her child then carefully removed my
glove before the
hag. Demetra's glance was hungry, as if she
hoped
to toss my severed claw into a soup and sup upon its power.

"Woman!" said Mother impatiently.
"Will you but stare and stare?"

The hag applied a poultice of hot mustard
plaster and stinging nettles, wrapping the mustard cloth tight around my scaly
claw. Stinging heat seared my flesh, flamed into my hand, and burned up my arm.
Soon my hand began to round and swell like
a
ripened peach. I was racked by shivers.
So much for the
medici
nal powers of spider-fruit.

"Stop," I cried. "Make her
take it off."

Mother, still holding me to my cot, kissed my
forehead. "Hush now," she said.

"The nettles
sting."

"They fight your cursed flesh,"
said Mother.

A small shadow hovered
in the hall; an edge of skirt appeared.
Mother adjusted the poultice so no part of my claw could
be seen.
"Enter now, Katinka."

She came in with a tray of mint leaves.

"Mint," I called.

Katinka held out her tray. Mint would cool my
burning claw. I could stand the pain a moment more, knowing it was near. Mother
laid the wet mint leaves on the backside of my hand just above the burning
poultice.

"Be gone," said Demetra, pushing
the girl from the room. Katinka tumbled to the floor in the shadowy hall, but
she did not cry out.

I waited for the cooling mint to work, holding
my breath and thinking of a rhyme Father used to say. "Hug her and kiss
her and take her on your knee, and whisper very close, darling girl, do you
love me?"

"Darling girl, darling
girl.
. . ," I whispered over and over, but my hand
grew redder and rounder till it seemed like a wormy apple torn from the branch
to rot.

The fire in the pit crackled as Demetra
unwrapped the poultice. I felt a moment of relief, then she added more hot
mustard smear and nettle leaf.

Burning.
Stinging.
"My
finger!
It's stinging like a thousand bees."

"Enough," said Mother turning to
Demetra. "Stop her pain."

"Sleep potion has a
cost," said Demetra above my screaming.
Mother tossed more silver on her table. Demetra pocketed the coins and
took a sea sponge from her little shelf.

"When Rosalind's a good girl, she'll
have her cakes and cus-tard," said Demetra, holding out the sponge.
"But when she pouts and cries, she'll have nothing but hot mustard."
Demetra laughed at this, her gap-toothed mouth showing her gray tongue. Leaning
over me, she pressed the sponge to my mouth. I thrashed and screamed into the
strange-smelling sponge.

"What's in it?" asked Mother.

"A good sleep potion.
Poppy tincture and hemlock—"

I drifted away from the hag, my mother's
worried gaze, the
cell with its crackling
fire. In my fevered dreams, I faced a legion
of angry sprites
who
cut off my arms with their grass-blade swords. No matter
how many arms the fairies cut, I grew more back, till I had eight arms in all.

Rousing from a strange dream, I found Demetra
sitting at my side. Her rough voice still echoed in my head as if she'd spoken
through my sleep.

"Ah," said the hag. "Your eyes
are open now."

"Where is Mother?" I croaked.

"Oh, where, oh, where has your mother
gone?" taunted Demetra. Her cheek twitched as she peeled the poultice from
my hand. I tilted my heavy head and looked down. On my puffed-up hand my blue
claw seeped green ooze.

Mother slipped into the cell, shadow quiet.
Demetra touched my swollen claw with her long fingernail.

"'Tis softened now," she said.

Mother was all concern. "Can she feel
you?"

"She feels it but far away. The poppy
and the hemlock have