Red Hart Magic (4 page)

THE KING'S HUNTERS

Chris lay with his head turned on his pillow so that if he
could
see through the dark, the inn would be visible. He had spent a good hour this evening fixing that tiny sign, so now it swung from a twist of wire over the main door, jutting out the way it would have done if the Red Hart were a real inn. Once he had set the model on the table, after the fall to the floor had somehow opened the bottom and released the sign, that slab of wood at the bottom was as firmly fixed as ever.

“The Red Hart,” he whispered. Had there once been a real Red Hart? Most of the models he had made were copies of
famous ships or planes which did exist or had once existed. So he was sure that there
had
been a Red Hart.

Why had anyone wanted to make a model of it? And why had the sign which identified it been hidden inside? Why, why? Chris could list a whole column of whys.

All at once he was sleepy, too sleepy to find a new hiding place for the inn. Why he did not want anyone to see it, he could not explain.
She
had—snooping around! Maybe Clara had told her to get his suitcase; he supposed that Clara must have. But—Chris scowled into the dark.
She
had no right— no right to know about the Red Hart, no right at all. His last thought, trailing across the borders of sleep, was resentment.

Chris was aware first of the cold. He squirmed, trying to find warmth, putting his hand out to draw the covers up closer. But what his fingers caught was not the satin-bound edge of the thermal blanket but rather some stiffer and coarser material.

He opened his eyes. The room was no longer dark. There was a dull red glow at floor level against the far wall. And— he sniffed—smells. Such smells as Aunt Elizabeth would never have allowed in her air-freshener-haunted apartment.

Chris sat up, the rough cover falling away from his clothed body. He was not wearing pajamas any longer, but clothes. He sniffed smells of cooking, burning wood, other things which were very pungent but which he could not identify. Then he knew without question that here was the tang of horse, of people who did not bathe too often, of—

His eyes adjusted to the faint radiance of that spot of red.

He had been sleeping on the floor, and the fire was nearly out! Master Bowyer would have something to say about such carelessness!

That other Chris Fitton faded completely from his mind. He was Chris Fitton all right, potboy at the Red Hart, lucky to be that out of the charity of Master Bowyer, and not tramping the lanes a-begging his way.

Scuttling quickly to the dying fire, he set about nursing it again into a respectable small blaze. Must be near morning; that sense of time which he had gained when on the tramp told him it would not be long before Sukie came, yawning and complaining down from her garret, to slap around pots and pans.

Chris rubbed his hands together in the warmth of the returning flames. The chill still struck at his back. But at least the heat on his face was a blessing. His nails were broken and rimmed with black; there were calluses on his palms and fingers. He hunched down in the warmth, grateful for a short time of quiet here.

They had had a late night what with the Master being gone again. Jem, too. Lucky no one had come for shelter. Being potboy was hard enough, but Chris distrusted strange horses, and to help in the stable was an extra burden he did not want. Not that he had any complaints, Chris told himself quickly.

Not many innkeepers would take in a stranger, give him a whole coat to his back, and a way to earn his keep. Master Bowyer—to think about him made Chris feel as warm inside
as the fire did without. He tried to count the days back to when he had had no hope at all, before he had tried to hide in the stable at the Red Hart and Jem had routed him out. He was far more used to taking blows and kicks than he was to such kindness as Master Bowyer had offered him. It seemed very far in the past since his father had dropped down a-mow-ing, his face all drawn to one side, and his arm and leg dead-like. Three days had his father lain so before he died. Then the squire had turned them out of the cottage—him and Bess. Not a penny did they have between them.

Bess, she went to Mistress Fellows at the mill. At least she got something to eat and a roof there. But there was no room for Chris. So he told her he was off to make his own fortune. Fortune? Rather a chance to starve in some wet ditch! Until he came to the Red Hart.

Chris wished he had some way to let Bess know, and to learn how she was faring. But he had come a long way, or so it seemed to him during those miserable days of tramping. The only luck he had was being so small he could hide, so that no constable took him up as a vagabond to be whipped or set in the stocks before being sent on his way.

“Plaguey cold!”

That was Jem come through the door from the cobbled courtyard. He was blowing on his red hands and stamping his feet just like one of the stalled horses. Now the ostler jerked off the woolen cap he wore, so lank locks of hair fell to the folds of a worn cloak about his shoulders. Chris moved quickly to one side to make room for him as he squatted down on his heels to warm himself in the full force of the
fire. He brought with him the strong smell of horse, mixed with an under one of dog.

“Where's that slut, Sukie?” Jem demanded and coughed heavily. “She'd keep her bed round the clock if she could.”

“I'm here, gallows-meat. You'd best speak well of your betters,” Sukie flounced into the kitchen. Her overskirt was tied up in front above a full petticoat, spotted here and there with evidence of her labors at spit and boiling pot, in spite of the long apron she had tied around her near shapeless waist. Her hair, turned up under a cap, straggled down about her neck in the back. She had a face the color of the dough she punched and pummeled when she was fashioning a pie, her nose a button, her eyes, under scanty brows, seeming near without lashes, a washed blue in color.

“Put light to the candle, you—” She turned on Chris. “Do you think I can do aught in the dark?”

Reluctantly he left the fire just as Sukie kicked at the tangle of blanket on the floor where he had lain. “Get this out of the way. Hell's own breath, you think to trip me, you lack-wit!”

Jem laughed. “In a fine temper this morning, lass? And what made you so? Did you dream ill—”

Chris, hurrying to fold the blanket, caught that glance Sukie shot at the ostler. Her full cheeks reddened as she snatched down a flitch of bacon and set to sawing at it with a long knife.

“Laugh will you!” She dealt fiercely with the bacon. “ Tis deaf-eared and lack-witted you are, Jem. Dreams, they do tell one things—true things. If I dream ill, there be a good reason to watch ahead.”

“And you dreamed ill?” he asked.

She had her back to him and did not look around, but she hunched her shoulders as if to set a barrier between them.

“Dreams be chancy things,” Jem added after a moment of silence. “Best not depend upon ‘em, lass.”

Sukie snorted and kept on with her preparations for breakfast. Master Bowyer was not like some innkeepers who had one table for his guests, another for those who served. Chris's mouth watered. In due time he would have a good fistful of bread with a sizzling bit of bacon in its folds, a slab of cheese, and a measure of ale with no grudging.

“This be baking day.” She ignored Jem, speaking to Chris as he lighted the thick tallow candle in its stand, bringing it to the table. “You'll get ready the wood for that.”

He nodded. The oven was outside, next to the wall of the scullery which he knew very well indeed, that being where he sloshed Sukie's various pans in sand and water until she declared them clean. Untidy as she might be in person, Sukie was remarkably careful of her tools of trade and not one to use last night's grease in a pot to flavor this night's supper.

“We'll have us company today—”

Jem had been almost to the door. Now he swung around quickly. “It's an ill day for travelin’. There's the smell of snow in the air,” he stated flatly.

Sukie shrugged. “There be them as no snow can stop.”

Chris was caught by her tone; it was almost as if Sukie were uttering a warning. They got a goodly amount of trade that was certain, being as they were on the road out of Rye.

And the Red Hart was no bush hole with only tramping people to deal with. Gentry stayed here more often than not. The tale was, as Sukie had many times told Chris, that in the old days once, a King himself had sheltered within these walls. Of course, that had been in the days of the Old Faith when the Abbey monks had run part of the Red Hart as a guesting house.

Master Plumm—he who had bought the place back in King Henry's day, after the monks had all been turned out— he had kept the guesting house and added to it. Thought to set himself up as a squire or the like, had Master Plumm. But he had died with the flux, leaving no heir to follow him. So, in time, it had become an inn.

But Chris, sometimes pressed into aiding with the waiting in the private rooms, marveled at the fine paneling on the walls, the great carved staircase up which Master Bowyer would show the gentry with a dignity as complete as if
he
were a squire and this a manor.

Jem came back to face Sukie across the big table where her hands were busy with familiar tasks. “What have you heard then, woman!”

She faced him eye to eye, for Sukie was tall for a woman and Jem had the small, rather wizened body Chris had somehow come to think of as proper for a stableman.

“The King's Men—them as are called Pursuivants—have been nosin’ about over to Hockenly. ‘Twas the peddler as brought the word when he were a-hunting me out a reel of thread yesterday. Happen, they'll come ridin’ hereabouts, too.

There's a-plenty as follows the Old Faith still, mum-jawed as they be about it.”

Jem rubbed his chin with his hand. A three-day grayish stubble sprouted there. Jem shaved only of a Saturday as Chris well knew, he doing the fetching of the hot water for that task.

“Hockenly is it? But the Pursuivants have nothing against the squire. He does his churching by the King's law and always has. There's no likely fish for them to be a-nettin’ here.”

“The peddler would have it they're nosin’ out a massing priest,” Sukie returned.

Jem laughed. “Not here! What would bring one o’ them to us? The squire's no friend to any Papist. They'd do better castin’ south. Instow has them what has been fined these twenty years for following old ways!”

“You tell ‘em that—when they come then,” Sukie retorted. “They'd be right glad to have your word on it, Jem Truck. You being so big a man an’ all.”

Jem laughed again, but Chris noticed that when he once more turned to go he was frowning. Though what the King's Pursuivants tracking down Papist priests, those known traitors to the country, might mean to Jem, Chris could not understand.

He thought about such hunts as he pulled his sacking cloak tighter about his shoulders and went into the yard to see when Sukie's oven wood would be ready. Poor people did not much trouble their minds with the rights of the matter. First, there had been King Hal who wished himself free
of a wife and so said that the church was his. Then later came that daughter of his—Mary—who was as firm in saying that the church was the Pope's, and had men burned to prove it.

After her, Queen Bess. And she the Papists made their plots against, saying she had no right to the throne at all. So then it became law that to be a priest was to be a traitor. Men were killed by that law if they were taken. Now King Jamie, he held by that same law. So his men hunted priests and those who would shelter them. Chris shook his head. What did it matter to him? He was thankful for a full belly and a place before a fire at night.

Nan sat in a rocking coach, which blundered clumsily along the muddy lanes. She no longer watched her uncle. For she felt too nauseated with the lurching to do more than hope that they would stop—somewhere—anywhere—before she disgraced herself by being violently sick. Uncle Jasper was not one to excuse such weaknesses.

They had risen before daylight, Nan still more than half asleep when her uncle bundled her in. Now there was a gray day outside the coach windows, though nothing else showed but a tangle of tall growing hedge walling in the rough lane on either side. She shivered; day was no warmer than night. Though the bed she had slept in had been curtained against drafts and there was a warming of blankets there about her.

Jasper Knype was a King's Man. He could order people
about and be obeyed. Nan saw him now peering through the window of the coach as if trying to pick up some landmark among the matted brush. Above a point of dark beard, his lips were set so tightly it was as if he must seal into himself some knowledge never to be told. His nose was large and sharp at the tip, his eyes never still, ever flitting from side to side as if he was in search of other people's secrets while locked upon his own.

It was his duty to the King, he said, this searching out of traitors. Nan huddled closer in her cloak of dull gray. She was now a part of what he did, even as was Sam Dykes, who drove this coach, and Henry Mockell, who rode beside him, and the three troopers who urged their heavy-footed horses behind, trying to escape the splattering of the near-frozen mud the big wheels tossed back at them.

She had been schooled in her duties. Uncle Jasper was not one to spare the whip when it came to making clear his will. She must do again just what she had done before, three, four times—Now she closed her eyes and thought only that she dared not be sick.

Uncle Jasper prayed when he wanted something. Nan had no wish to ask Uncle Jasper's fearsome God for anything. She was a miserable sinner, that she knew, and Uncle Jasper's God hated sinners. It was very hard to remember what life had been like before Uncle Jasper claimed her. There had been Rose and Ann and Mistress Nevison, peace and quiet and no beatings—no soft quiet voice that went on and on until she could do nothing but what that voice said for her to
do. She was Uncle Jasper's blood kin, and that meant that he alone had the right to her. She swiftly learned there was no appeal from his will.