Sapphique

‘Claudia!’ Fi

‘Hurt?’

‘No. You?’

‘Bruised. Nothing serious.’ Claudia dragged soaked hair from her eyes. ‘I can’t believe this. Sia would never order it. Where are they?’ Fi

‘Now what?’

‘We regroup,’ Fi

‘There’s a pistol in my saddlebag.’ But the horse had already bolted. She glanced sidelong at Fi

‘I could try and crawl to that oak: Fi

‘And get round …’

‘There might be an army out there:

‘One man. Maybe two, no more: He squirmed back, the bushes rustling. Instantly two arrows thwacked into the bole of the tree above them. Claudia gasped.

Fi

‘This is the Steel Wolves,’ she hissed.

Fi

‘They left this next to my head.’ He held up the dagger; the snarling wolfshead dripping in his fingers.

Then as one, they turned. Voices were approaching through the hissing forest.

‘See them?’

‘Not yet.’ She eased forward.

‘I think our enemy has.’ Fi

‘Look.’ A waggon was rumbling along the track, precariously laden with mown hay, the loose cover flapping in the wind. A brawny man walked beside it and another drove, sackcloth hoods covering their faces, their boots thick with mud.

‘Peasants.’ Claudia said. ‘Our only chance.’

‘The archers might still be—’

‘Come on.’ Before he could stop her she scrambled out.

‘Wait! Please, stop!’ The men stared. The big one swung a heavy cudgel up as he saw Fi

‘Our horses were frightened and ran off. By the lightning.’ Claudia shivered in the rain, puffing her coat around her.

The big serf gri

‘The rich always need.’ The cudgel tapped against the raw red hands. ‘And we all have to jump but it won’t always be like that. One day soon…’

‘Enough, Rafe.’ The voice came from the waggon, and Claudia saw that the driver had pushed back his hood. His face was wrinkled, his body bent. He seemed old, but his voice was strong enough. ‘Follow us, missy. We’ll get you to the cottages, and then we’ll find your horses.’ With a low hup! he whipped up the ox, and the heavy beast lumbered past. Claudia and Fi

Fi

‘They’ve gone,’ Claudia muttered.

‘Or they’re following.’ Fi

‘Just here, lad, just here. Don’t you fret. I won’t let Rafe rob you, even if you are Court folk. The Queen’s people, are you?’ Claudia opened her mouth indignantly but Fi

‘Ah well. We were all young once.’ The old man winked at Claudia. ‘Wish I was young again.’ Rafe guffawed with mirth.

Claudia set her lips tight, but tried to look miserable. She was cold and wet enough for it.

When the waggon clattered through a broken gateway she muttered quietly to Fi

‘Keeping them on our side. If they knew who we were …’

‘They’d jump to help! We could pay …’ He was watching her strangely. ‘Sometimes, Claudia, I think you don’t understand anything at all.’

‘Such as what?’ she snapped.

He nodded ahead. ‘Their lives. Look at this.’ Cottages was hardly a word for them. Two lopsided, squalid buildings squatted at the edge of the track. Their thatch was in holes, wattle and daub walls patched with hurdles. A few ragged children ran out and stared, silent, and as Claudia came closer she saw how thin they were, how the youngest coughed and the oldest was bow-legged with rickets.

The waggon rumbled into the lee of the buildings. Rafe yelled at the children to find the horses and they scattered, and then he ducked under one of the low doorways. Claudia and Fi

‘This way, lord’s groom and lady’s maid. We don’t have much, but we do have a fire.’ Claudia frowned. She followed him down the steps under the wooden lintel.

At first she saw nothing but the fire. The interior was black.

Then the stink rose up and hit her with its full force, and it was so bad she gasped and stopped dead, and only Fi

And above all, the sweet smell of damp, as if the whole hovel was settling deep into the earth, tilting and softening, its wooden posts rotten and beetle-bored.

As her eyes became used to the gloom she saw sparse furnishings — a table, joint-stools, a box-bed built into the wall. There were two windows, small and wood-slatted, a branch of ivy growing in through one.

The old man dragged up a stool for her. ‘Sit, missy, and dry yourself. You too, lad. They call me Tom. Old Tom.’ She didn’t want to sit. There were certainly fleas in the straw The miserable poverty of the place sickened her. But she sat, holding out her hands to the paltry fire.

‘Put some kindling on.’ Tom shuffled to the table.

‘You live here alone?’ Fi

‘My wife died these five years. But some of Rafe’s young ones sleep here. He has six, and his sick mother to care for…’ Claudia noticed something in a dim doorway; she realized after a moment that it was a pig, snuffling the straw of the adjoining room. That would be the byre.

She shivered. ‘You should glass the windows. The draught is terrible.’ The old man laughed, pouring out thin ale. ‘But that wouldn’t be Protocol, would it? And we must abide by the Protocol, even as it kills us.’