Wildwing (26 page)

Married

T
he church is ablaze with stained-glass rainbows and the rippling light of hundreds of candles. Ribbons of incense waft up to the arched ceiling, where they mingle with the priest’s last mumbled phrases. For a moment, the only sounds are the rustle of capes and the clink of swords. And then, from somewhere in the crowd behind me, I hear the silver jingle of Pilgrim’s bell as she shifts on Will’s glove. Will, who just heard me say, “I do.”

“That’s it?” says Sir Hugh. The priest looks confused. “We’re married?”

The priest nods. “Why, certainly.”

Sir Hugh turns to me. “Now you can take off that veil,” he says with a leer, as if he’s undressing me right there in church. “Or perhaps you’re waiting for your husband to help you.” The men around him snicker as he reaches up a hand.

I step back out of his reach. I may be married, but the king still mustn’t see my face, not if the castle is to keep my dowry.

“But, my lord, don’t you remember my vision?”

“The angel? How could I forget?” He looks at the king with a wry smile. “For a while we actually feared she was convent bound.”

“Then you wouldn’t have had
that,”
says the king, glancing at Eustace, who clutches a parchment as if his life depended upon it. And indeed, it probably does; those are the dowry papers, now signed, with the king’s seal shining a brilliant blood red at the bottom of the page.

“Nor
that,”
says Sir Hugh under his breath, his eyes running up and down the curves of my golden gown.

Each time he speaks my chest feels tighter, but I manage to keep my voice steady. “My lord, I must remove this veil at the very spot where I saw the angel, and nowhere else.” Turning slightly to face the cross on the altar, I tinge my words with the slightest hint of fear. “I dare not do otherwise.”

There’s a collective sigh from the crowd behind me.

“Let us be off, then,” says Sir Hugh, suddenly gruff and impatient.

The king starts toward the door. I try not to flinch as

Sir Hugh takes my arm in his, leading me after. I search the crowd for Will, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

Outside, long shadows reach out to me from the tombstones. Not long now until sunset. Everything in me longs to run, to leap on Fidelius and gallop to the field
—faster
, I think,
faster!—
but I force myself to breathe calmly as Sir Hugh leads me to my horse, sees me into my richly embroidered saddle. He heads off to find his destrier, but he’s stopping to speak with Eustace… . And the sun sinks lower.

Here, at last, is Will, come to give me Pilgrim. He rides up close, pressing against my leg—oh, I’m right not to stay! He puts himself at risk each time he’s near me!—and I lean over to whisper a word. At that moment Sir Hugh trots alongside on his fine black steed.

“My lady,” he says, and there’s a new sound of ownership in the words.

I straighten, settling Pilgrim on my wrist, arranging my golden skirts across the saddle; I crane my neck, trying to see the sun as it disappears behind thatched rooftops. We can’t delay much longer, or this wedding dress will seal my fate and I’ll be Lady Matilda forever. I see her again, the real Matilda, limp in the back of the wagon—the sodden braid, the bleached skin—and suddenly I can’t breathe. I’m the one who’s drowning.

The church slips into shadow; the air is suddenly chill.

Finally, the king mounts his steed. Finally, he raises a regal hand, and the crowd erupts in frenzied cheers. Finally, our unwieldy column snakes through the narrow streets, past the half-timbered houses, through the town gates and onto the road.

Au That Remains

W
e trudge along, too slowly, more like a small army than a wedding party. Fidelius senses my urge to gallop, and I have to rein him in. King Henry, Sir Hugh, Eustace, and Mr. Greenwood ride near me, followed by Beatrix and Will because, as I explained to the disapproving Lady Winifred, they were with me when my vision came true and so must be there as I pay it homage. Father Bartholomew is rolling along with the ladies in the wagon, and a long line of men-at-arms brings up the rear.

The sun is so low, its rays are almost horizontal, tinting the world pink. The bare trees are robed in a rosy glow, and even the stones sparkle like jewels. This road has never been so beautiful, or so long.

Mr. Greenwood keeps glancing at me uneasily, all too aware how close we are to sunset. Then he rides alongside me and whispers, “I could create a diversion so you can gallop ahead.”

But even as he says it, we’re rounding the last curve. There’s the familiar bridge, the oak tree, the winding stream.

I trot up alongside Sir Hugh. “This is the place,” I say.

“Halt!” he calls, in a voice so commanding, everyone freezes. Not even a strand of a horse’s tail twitches.

Trying for my holiest expression, I start the speech I rehearsed. “Your Majesty, my lord, I go down here to honor the vision I was granted and leave my—”

But Sir Hugh is already turning his horse, clattering down the stream bank.

“My lord!” I cry, urging Fidelius after. “I’m afraid you can’t come.”

“Nonsense,” says the king, following in our wake. “You can’t deprive a man of watching his own wife’s deveiling.” From somewhere behind us comes a chortle of amusement.

Now all three of us are crowded by the water’s edge. I can’t stop and argue; the sun is too low. I’ll have to convince them along the way. The wagon waits on the road with most of the men-at-arms, so it’s a much smaller group that winds the narrow path upstream.

I take up my case with Sir Hugh again. “Before, my lord,it was only my maidservant and the falconer lad who came with me, because that was how I foresaw it in my vision.” The path disappears, and we lead our horses splashing up the shallow stream. I speak louder. “The three of us who saw the angel must enter the field alone. But only for the very first moments. And then, indeed, I wish you all come witness how I have left this veil behind.”

We’re almost there. I stop, and they all stop with me. There are so few leaves remaining, I glance ahead anxiously to see if the lift shows through the branches. But the copse is tangled enough that the field is blocked from view.

“I pray you, wait here,” I say.

To my immense relief, the king answers for him. “Hurry along, then. I’m ready for that wedding feast.”

He waves toward Will and Beatrix, commanding them on, and—oh!—Beatrix’s eyes are rounder than platters as her little horse trots in front of His Majesty’s mighty steed.

The three of us round the last tangle of bushes, break into the field—

“By God’s breath!” exclaims Beatrix, staring agape at the lift. Its filigreed sides are aglow in a last moment of sun.

The top of the dead tree is lit as bright as a match, but much of the field already lies deep in shadow. We leap off our mounts, and Will takes Pilgrim. I tear off my veil andtie it around one of her legs, lightly, so it will flutter off as she flies.

“Hurry,” says Beatrix.

Will pulls out his knife and cuts off Pilgrim’s jesses. “She’s not coming back,” he says. “And nor are we.”

My heart twists. The gardener’s gloves, the shop boy’s apron—

“You belong here,” I whisper, not wanting to say it.

“It’s with you I belong.”

And I’m so tempted …

“Hurry”
pleads Beatrix. “The
miracle.”

And then, suddenly, I see what to do, how to make it all work. I put a hand on Will’s arm. “You can’t come now,” I say urgently. “They’d think we ran off together. It’s only if I go alone they’ll have their miracle.”

“And not dare take back the dowry,” says Beatrix.

“I’ll send the lift back for you in ten days, Will,” I say, stepping inside, turning to face him. As I start to close the door, a sudden chill makes me shiver. “Ten days to make sure you’d have no regrets. And you must tell Sir Alec?”

He sees my hand on the door and realizes what I’m doing. With a fierce look, he drops the knife and reaches out, just as the latch catches. There’s a click, the sound of finality. Now Will is dropping his other arm, casting Pilgrimoff so he can free his hand, grab the door—but it’s locked. The lift begins to shake.

Pilgrim is trained to rise high, and rise she does, above the trees, into the last rays of the setting sun. “Oh, the light!” screams Beatrix, so piercing, everyone will hear, will look. “Up in the sky! My faith! It’s a miracle!” And the shafts of light are arrows fanned across the sky, arrows that strike the gold-trimmed veil, blazing it into a circle of light. A halo.

A wisp of radiant fabric drifts down from the sky, slowly, toward the king, all that remains of Lady Matilda… .

The rattling and shaking are reaching their pitch, and Beatrix is screaming?”She was carried aloft with that bird! She’s been taken!”?and the numbers are whipping past in a blur. I reach toward Will, his hand outstretched toward mine, and then he, too, is spinning away on the other side of the lift, and the world turns black.

Home

T
he rattling stops and everything is wrong. The library smells of smoke. My eyes fly open. Orange flames are devouring the control panel, the dial that says RETURN.

“No!”

I wrench the door open, leaping out to grab something?anything!?to suffocate the fire, but I only see papers, brittle and crinkled with age; and there’s no time, the blaze is growing, so I reach for the only thing I have, the wedding gown draped on my body. Lifting as much as I can of the skirt, the long train, I plunge back into the booth and pound the golden fabric against the flames, again and again, the heat blasting my skin, the smoke and stench of scorched cloth choking my lungs?

And then I realize that I’m still pounding, but the fire isgone. I stop with a shuddering breath, my arms falling to my sides. The air is charred and thick. Dials dangle from half-melted wire. The numbers that once flipped by so briskly are nothing but ash. The control panel gapes outward, and I pry off the cover; inside is a ravaged wasteland, all signposts for rebuilding gone. I touch one of the knobs, and it falls off in my hand.

I’ll send the lift back for you in ten days. Ten days to make sure you’d have no regrets …

I see his fierce eyes, hear the certainty in his voice:
It’s with you I belong
.

I stumble from the lift, fall to my knees, and then not even my knees will hold me. Sobs rip through me, as jagged as shards of glass. I sob as if I could wrench my breaking heart from my body, as if my tears could carry him back to my side. Will! He’ll be standing in the field, waiting for a lift that never comes. And as the days pass, he’ll think I’m the one had second thoughts… .

In time I feel the pain stabbing my palm, and I unclench my fist. A cracked knob rolls from my hand to the floor.

Later, much later, when I’ve opened the windows to let out the reek of smoke and charred fabric, when I’ve washed my face and changed into the navy blue dress I left lying there alifetime ago, when I’ve walked like a ghost through the village streets, I open my own front door.

Mum reaches for the teapot. “How was your day?” she says.

My day. I look back outside; the trees are only beginning to turn gold. It’s the same day I left. Somehow Mr. Greenwood managed to do that for me, too.

Mum is setting the teapot down again, peering at me with concern. “You look all done in,” she says, walking to where I’m hanging my apron on the hook. “Why, what’s this? Have you been crying?”

Then I’m sobbing again, and my grief is a flood, wiping out everything in its path. I’m drowning, unable to catch a breath, to lift my head above the torrent.

“Addy, what is it?” says Mum, sitting me in a chair. “It can’t be as bad as all that, now. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”

“There’s no fixing it,” I say, wrenching out one aching word at a time.

“Tell me, then,” she says, her hand on my shoulder.

But I can’t tell her where I’ve been. Who I’ve been. What I’ve lost. I can’t even say Will’s name.

“Sometimes,” she murmurs, “when you think all doors are closed to you, there’s another one stands open.”

I startle, looking up at her. I’ve heard those words before.

In time, my sobs crest and then lessen. I picture theburned lift in the library, and I know I have to tell her something, in words that she’ll understand. That the whole town will understand. And so I say that I was out doing errands, and when I came back, the house reeked of smoke. There had been a fire in the library, and Mr. Greenwood was nowhere to be found. I say that I waited and waited, but he didn’t come home.

“We’d best see the constable,” she says.

They search for Mr. Greenwood for weeks. I feel terrible for their efforts, knowing they’ll never find him. At first, the paper is full of stories of the mysterious fire, the strange contraption in the library, the disappearance of the man whose son disappeared so many years ago. And then the attention begins to fade.

Neither Mum nor I mention my leaving to be a live-in. I sit at home helping with her stitching, and I cry for Mr. Greenwood, who loved me enough to risk his life because he thought I needed saving. And he was right. I did need saving, after all.

But mostly I cry for Will, and the brightness in his eyes, the touch of his hands, the warmth of his mouth on mine. I cry for knowing I’ll never see him again. So I stitch, watering the furrows of my seams with tears.

Then a day comes when I realize I have to go on. That’s all I can do, take one step at a time, like climbing the castle ruins, hoping each time I place a foot there’ll be stone enough to hold me.

I knot off a thread, draw a deep breath, and look up at Mum. “I’m going back to school,” I say. I see the doubt looking back at me, but I keep going. “There’ll be enough to live on, you’ll see. At night I’ll do your hemming, learn to help with the cutting and fitting, so you can take on more work. But I’m going back to school.”

I watch her face. There’s a long pause as she struggles, and then something shifts and she sighs. “All right then. One more chance.”