Wildwing (12 page)

Vision

I
sit up with a start and jerk the bed curtain back. Sun streams in the window like a stage light, illuminating the bread and wine Beatrix left on the bench. How could I have slept so late? And today of all days?

I pull on my shift, grab the bread, and scoot into the window seat, where I can stare out at the morning hubbub. The dogs are barking in the kennels, the smith has his bellows going at the forge, and that looks like Oswald striding into the stables. And then, finally, there she is: Beatrix, walking back across the bailey with a purposeful step. I gulp down my last bite of bread and run to the door. It takes her forever to clomp her way to the top.

“Well?” I ask. “What did he say?”

She’s breathing so hard from the stairs that I take her hand and lead her to the window seat. I pour her some wine. She takes a hearty sip, then pants, “Never heard such a thing, says he”—she stops to fan her face—”but God wills it, and his father can spare him, and so be it, says he.”

I jump up and pull my scarlet gown off its peg, holding it out to Beatrix, but she’s still sitting there, one sturdy hand clutching the goblet, the other resting on her heart, and she’s gazing at me with reverent eyes.

“Oh, do tell me where you were sitting when the vision came!” she begs.

I hang the gown back on its peg and walk to the center of the room, where it will make the most impact. “I wasn’t sitting,” I say. I drop to my knees and raise my clasped hands to my heart. “I was holding my cross, like this, and praying for a sign of what I’m meant to do here at Berringstoke.”

Beatrix sighs deeply, contentedly. “Yes?”

“And then there was a blinding light, and a picture filled my head, as real as if it were right in front of me. I saw a field, and myself standing there, and a huge bird, lit up like an angel, flying to my arm. And a voice said, ‘Go!’“

“Ahh!” sighs Beatrix.

“And I knew I was meant to find that place and see the holy falcon. Though what it may portend, I know not.”

“Only Heaven knows what your vision foretells.” Beatrix stands and takes down the dress, then waits while I rise from my knees to slip it on.

“And not too many people riding alongside you, no men-at-arms?” she says.

I nod. “That’s how it was shown to me.”

She snugs the ties. “Mayhap the bird will fly to your arm and come back to our mews.”

“Mayhap,” I say, pleased to have the word come so naturally. I remember to wait as she puts on my shoes. “I only know I must find that place.”

“Indeed you must,” she says, placing a cloak on my shoulders and fixing it with a jeweled pin.

I take a step toward the door. Beatrix follows.

“You needn’t bother,” I say. “I know my way to the mews.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t think I’d let you outside the walls alone!”

But that was exactly the point! I can’t have everyone staring at the lift, wondering what it is, lugging it back to the castle for closer examination.

“I’m not going alone,” I say. “William is taking me. After all, he was in the vision.”

It’s almost a knowing look she gives me then. “Then I must have been off at the side somewhere, under a tree,” she says. “Because them in Heaven would surely know a lady can’t go off alone with a young man, even afalconer’s boy, and before she’s wed at that.”

I can feel myself blushing to the roots of my hair. I hadn’t thought of it like that! But since she puts it that way …

“Very well,” I say. “Let’s go.”

William is standing outside the mews, slim and tall. He steps forward and drops his head in a bow. The air is brisk and morning new.

He leads us across the bailey and stops in front of the stables. A gangly boy is bringing out three horses.

“Here we are,” says William. “A pretty palfrey for you, my lady.”

A white horse the size of an elephant dances from side to side. My breath is trapped in my throat. I hadn’t thought about horses! Look at him, tossing his head; he’ll buck me off and break every bone in my body.

“I thought we were going to walk,” I say.

Beatrix looks at William, and William looks at the stable-boy, and the stable-boy looks at the horse, and the horse snorts loudly. They’re none of them convinced.

I obviously need to pull out some ammunition. So I sigh and hang my head, aiming for a regretful air. “You see …” I pause, long and meaningful, as if the words are difficult for me to say. “I’m afraid I don’t remember how to ride.”

William strokes the monster’s neck. “We don’t know where it is, this place in your vision. We might be circling for hours before we find it.”

I did say that to Beatrix, that I’ll have to let the vision lead me. From what I remember of my breakneck ride with Edward, the trails are too twisted for me to even attempt going that way. I’ll take us down to the bridge and then along the stream. Afterward, I’ll ask William to show me the shortest way back.

I look at Beatrix; she’s still catching her breath. It’s different, with her coming.

“I suppose we could take the wagon,” says William.

But a wagon won’t fit along the stream. I take a deep breath, staring up at the horse’s wide neck, his high haunches, and I pull my determination around me like armor. I learned to eat without a fork; I can learn to ride a horse.

“Beatrix, remind me how to get up, will you? It will come back to me soon enough.”

“There’s the spirit, my lady,” she says.

My seat is already so sore, I won’t be able to sit for a week. I’m bouncing around like a fool in spite of Beatrix’s constant stream of advice to do this with my knees and that with my balance. Balance! How can I think about that when it’s all I can do not to fall off? During a rare calm moment I hear Beatrix murmuring to William, “Mayhap I’ll ride Fidelius on the way back and give her old Bess here.” Oh, I hear that perfectly well. And I see him nodding.

Mayhap? Not bloody likely! I clench my teeth. I may be sore, but I’ll show them. I’ll ride this beast there and back, even if I’m nothing but one big bruise when I’m done.

We clomp downhill for a while, following the well-worn way. It takes all my concentration just to stay upright. I don’t even hear the stream until we come to the bridge. I pull the reins too sharply, and Fidelius skitters to a stop, tossing his head and snorting. I manage to hang on until he quiets down.

Then I close my eyes and assume a reverent expression, pretending I’m hearing a divine voice. “We must go here,” I say. “Along this stream.”

Riding down the embankment feels like careening off a cliff. My knuckles are white, one hand grasping the reins, the other tangled tight in the horse’s mane. I sigh in relief when we reach the water’s edge. It’s easier now, on the flat. Once I realize I’m not going to fall off anytime soon, my breath quiets, and I become aware of birds singing in the trees, water murmuring around rocks, and sunlight filtering through the red and gold leaves. For a moment I almost feel I could come to enjoy this.

But we’re nearing the field, and William and Beatrix mustn’t see the lift. I have to go on from here by myself, justlong enough to take a peek and make sure it’s there, and then I’ll come back and announce that my so-called vision was only a dream after all.

I stop, and they stop, watching me. Beatrix’s eyes are bright with excitement.

I put on my listening look. Then, “I need to go on alone,” I say.

“Not in the woods, my lady,” says Beatrix.

“This is what I must do,” I say in my most confident voice. “I’ll be so close you can hear me.”

I can almost see her thinking,
God wills it!
She sighs. “You call out every minute, then.”

I nod, turning Fidelius through the trees, toward the opening and the light. I’m getting the hang of the reins, and as long as I don’t tug too fast or too hard, Fidelius is surprisingly helpful. It’s like he wants me to be in control, to tell him what to do. I go through the trees into the field… .

Where is it?

There’s nothing here but long golden grass. Not a lift in sight.

My heart starts thumping around like a whisk beating in a bowl. Could I have the wrong place?

I turn Fidelius in a circle, my breath faster with every step. This is definitely where I came running out of the trees that day at sunset, though the leaves are already a deeper crimson. The dead tree towers like a dark exclamation point. My eyes travel up the stripped trunk—

And there, on the jutting branch, sits a peregrine. A huge one, even bigger than Pilgrim. Just where I said it would be. And it’s staring right at me.

I gasp, feeling dizzy. I made up that vision! How could it be coming true?

Fidelius senses my fear and whinnies.

“My lady?” Beatrix’s voice rings through the trees. “Is everything all right? We’re coming, we are!”

Then they’re next to me, and William is reaching out an arm to steady me on the great horse’s back, and Beatrix is gaping at the peregrine like it’s the Virgin herself sitting up there on the branch. Suddenly—I don’t believe this!—a ray of sun strikes the bird’s feathers just like in a church picture, surrounding it with a circle of golden light.

Beatrix slides out of the saddle (it’s lucky her horse is so much closer to the ground) and falls to her knees in the grass, clasping her hands to her chest. “It’s a miracle!” she whispers. “A miracle!”

William stares at the falcon. At me. At the falcon again, as it spreads its striped wings wide and flaps from the branch, spiraling higher, and higher, until it’s only a dot in the sky. Then even that is gone.

“Isn’t it coming to the castle, then?” asks Beatrix.

I can’t say anything. It was actually there, the peregrine, right when and where I said it would be! And that sunbeam, like a message from on high … I think of the bird—was this the same one?—that led me into town, and then to the shore, the shipwreck, Lady Matilda’s jewels… . My heart is spinning and looping in great wide circles, like the bird’s rising flight, and there’s a space in my head so huge it scares me.

Beatrix is murmuring prayers. And William—William is glowing like there’s a candle burning inside him.

“She was beautiful,” he says, barely louder than a breath. Then he looks around the field and laughs so free and easy, it fills the big space in me, and I find myself leaning in relief against his strong arm, still there from when he reached over to keep me from falling.

“That’s funny, that it was here,” he says. “If you’d described that dead tree from your vision, I could have brought us in a third the time. I know this place well.”

“You do?”

“A special place for me, this is.”

He opens his mouth to say more, but all of a sudden he’s staring at his hand on my shoulder, realizing it’s still there. I become aware of the heat radiating from his touch, into mybody, starting to flow through my blood. We startle and look up at the same time.

He pulls away, stepping his horse sideways until there’s a gaping chasm between us. When he speaks again, his voice is short and clipped. “It’s a good place for falcons. The brook. The open field.”

The magic moment has passed. Now my mind starts to race again.

Where is that bloody lift?
It should be here for nine more days yet! It can’t have sidled off, now, can it? Grown little feet and gone traipsing into the trees?

The image is so ridiculous, I start to smile. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense for the lift to disappear until the day dialed in for its return. You can’t have people stumbling across a stray lift in a field, wondering what it is, messing about with the settings. Why would you even need a return dial if it just stayed?

That’s it, of course! The lift is waiting back in the library. It will be here at sunset on the fifteenth day, and not a moment before. Relief washes over me, and now I can smell the grass again and hear the breeze rustling through the leaves.

“I’ll take us back a faster way,” says William.

Beatrix stops her murmuring and looks up. “Aren’t we waiting for the bird to return?”

“No,” I say. “It seems I was only meant to witness it, after all.”

She clambers to her feet. William gets off his horse to help her back up on Bess.

“So much for having the mews become a holy place,” she says.

“I do thank God for that,” says William. “How would we care for his lordship’s birds with townsfolk coming to stare?” His eyes roam the field. “No, this place is holy enough.”

I follow his glance. I feel freer here, away from the castle’s smoke and noise and careful manners. And I should make it a regular thing, going out through the gate. Customary, so no one is surprised if I come here the day the lift returns. And then there’s William, and the way his hand felt on my shoulder… .

“It would please me to come back here with you,” I say. “Hunting, and all.”

“Hawking? As you please, your ladyship,” he says carefully, though I think I see a bit of a spark in his eye. “We’ll be flying Pilgrim off the creance soon. This is a good place for it, if you’d care to watch.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’d like that very much.”

“And she’s meant to work with the birds!” says Beatrix. “What else would her vision mean? It’s a sign, that’s what it is. Oh, wait until I tell Father Bartholomew!”