The Queen's Secret Read online

  My Own Jilly says stop talking, you are being awkward.

  Tell your own Jilly she isn’t helping, Anthea shot back.

  “I see,” the farmwife said. “And why are you here?”

  “We need water,” Anthea said. “Could we draw from your well to water our horses?”

  The woman’s expression went from astonishment to horror in less than a heartbeat. She raised her arms as though to sweep them all up, letting go of the dog, who ran in the midst of the horses’ legs, making noises that were not quite barks now that he saw how big the intruders were.

  “Stay away from my water!” the woman cried out.

  Rogers looked just as horrified, and started to back his horse away. The combination of her shrill voice and the dog dancing around their feet was making all the horses stamp and whicker nervously. Anthea and the other riders hurried to tell them to hold still: the last thing they needed was for the horses to go into a panic and trample the dog or run into a field and ruin the crops.

  The woman put one hand over her nose and mouth and waved frantically at the horses with the other, shooing them away. She hurried over to the well to block it with her body.

  And then Anthea realized why the woman was so upset. It was the same reaction she herself would have had a year ago.

  “They’re not diseased,” Anthea shouted at the woman, over the muted barking and the woman’s cries and Rogers’s huffing and puffing. “The horses, they don’t have any diseases!”

  Rogers, born and raised north of Kalabar’s Wall, turned and looked at Anthea in complete bafflement. The woman, however, turned and looked with a mingling of surprise and suspicion.

  “It’s true,” Anthea said. “Hundreds of years ago many people and horses died of a disease that is long gone, I promise. All of our horses are healthy. You can’t get sick from them.”

  Light dawned on Rogers’s face. “We have our own buckets,” he announced. “We can use our own buckets!”

  The brigade was fully equipped with camping gear, including things that Anthea had never known existed. Among these were collapsible leather buckets that fit very nicely into saddlebags.

  “Like this!” Jilly called out.

  Anthea turned in her saddle to see that her cousin had already snatched her bucket from a saddlebag and snapped it out to demonstrate it. The other riders quickly began finding theirs. From the muttered curses, some of them had not bothered to pack the buckets for the return journey.

  “Those look mighty handy,” the woman admitted. She fixed her eyes on Anthea again. “And you say these horses aren’t sick?”

  “No, ma’am,” Anthea said. “And they never have been. I swear to you.”

  “And the king knows about this?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Anthea said. “King Gareth gave the order for us to return to the north, but many of our men and horses are still in Travertine and Bellair, taking messages between the king and Queen Josephine.”

  Anthea didn’t feel the need to mention how these messages were passed. She figured this woman had had enough revelations for one day.

  “And the queen gave you that rose?” The woman pointed to Anthea’s lapel.

  Yes, came from Jilly via Caesar.

  “No,” Anthea said. She was a terrible liar, and this woman appreciated—and deserved—honesty. “My aunt Deirdre, a Rose Matron, gave it to me. I … attended a Rose Academy for many years.”

  “Interesting,” the woman said. She flapped her apron, thinking. “And you say you won’t need to let the horses drink from my bucket?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  She kept flapping, but Anthea felt her hopes surge. She could tell that the woman was going to give in. The question now was how long she would make them stand, thirsty, while she finished deciding.

  Only another minute, to Anthea’s relief.

  “Very well,” the woman said. “But use your own buckets and hurry—my man will be back for supper in an hour!”

  They hurried. A bucket line formed while half the men got the horses tied up in two rows. There wasn’t a bucket for every horse, so they let the horses who had been carrying riders drink first, and then led them to the end of the row while they watered the others.

  But horses take a long time to drink. And they drink a lot of water. The riders were just finally topping off their own canteens when a man came down the road, leading an ox in harness.

  “Uh-oh,” Keth said, and punctuated this comment with a cough.

  The farmer dropped the ox’s lead so that the animal stopped a few paces away from the horses. He folded his arms over his chest and frowned at them. Anthea braced herself. Then his eyes lit on Jilly and he began to shake his head.

  “Well, Miss Jillian! What have you done this time?”

  “Farmer Finbar!” she crowed with delight. “Abandoned your tractor for good?”

  “Oh, you girl!” He reached out and pumped her hand as though she were a man. “Poor machine never ran right after you and your—” He caught sight of Anthea. “Well, there you are, miss! Found your lost horses, did you?” He took in the two dozen horses crowded into his farmyard. “Looks as though you did!”

  “What—” Anthea began. “Who …?”

  And then she remembered: the tractor coming out from behind a hedge, frightening the horses. Leonidas had spooked and gone off into the fields, dragging two mares with him. Anthea had pursued them, while Jilly and the farmer had taken care of Caesar, who had been injured, and then Jilly had gone on to Bell Hyde and the queen.

  This was the same farmer.

  He grabbed Anthea’s hand and pumped it up and down as well. Rogers came forward, looking bemused, and offered his hand to the man.

  “I’m Courier First Class Rogers,” he said by way of introduction. “I hope that it’s all right, but we’ve been drawing water from your well for the horses. And the men. We’ve just finished.”

  “Finbar, Edmund Finbar,” the man said. “And you’re right welcome! Of course you are!”

  “Edmund!”

  The riders all parted, leaving a clear path between the horses to where the farmwife stood with her hands on her hips, staring at her husband. The farmer gave Rogers a wide, genuine smile.

  “Are you telling me that the new tractor was lost because of a horse?” She looked incredulous, and then uneasy, glancing at the horse nearest her as though it was waiting to smash her to the ground.

  “Now, Jenny,” he said. “I didn’t want to send you into a panic. I know how your brothers always talk about the people north of the Wall.”

  “You said that our tractor got out of control and ran itself into a wall.” Jenny was not to be put off.

  “That is true,” Jilly offered. “The tractor scared the horses, Mr. Finbar jumped off to help us, and the tractor … kept going.”

  “Into a wall,” Anthea said.

  She had only the vaguest memories of this, but she did remember the crunching sound of metal on stone. It felt like something that had happened years ago, but it had only been six months, she realized. Hours after the tractor accident she had been shot, been chased by hunters, and run right into her mother, who had put her on a private train in an attempt to win Anthea over to her mother’s cause.

  Jenny just stood there shaking her head. Then she started laughing.

  “So you were trying to protect me from being scared by the horses?” she finally said.

  “Er, yes,” her husband confessed.

  “Well, I just told these poor folks to hurry up and get the water before you got back, because I was trying to protect you,” she admitted, with another chortle.

  Finbar began to laugh as well, and while he was shaking hands all around, his wife went into the house and brought out pitchers of cider and cups and gave everyone a drink. She slipped some cookies into the pockets of Jilly and Anthea and Keth, and even dared to touch Buttercup’s shoulder. Her husband regaled the riders with the story of how he had taken Jilly to one
of the barns and hidden her and her horses there while he fetched the local animal surgeon, who had been sworn to secrecy after sewing up the gash on Caesar’s shoulder.

  Everyone was smiling, and Anthea felt some of the never-ending tension in her shoulders unknot, just a little. Here were more people, ordinary people, mingling with the brigade, and it was all right. They hadn’t been run off the property with pitchforks. Or shot at. Slowly but surely, Anthea thought, they could get Coronam to accept the horses once again. Slowly but surely.

  “Where is the surgeon?” Jilly asked as they were remounting. “If we pass by his house, I would love to thank him again!”

  The laughter and smiles stopped. Anthea watched it happen, watched it fade from the faces of Jenny and Finbar, watched it spread to the riders as they noticed. The knot of tension between her shoulders tightened again.

  “Oh, miss,” Finbar said. “Trewes is a good man, but don’t you be going anywhere near him.”

  “What? Why?” Jilly looked up from tying Buttercup’s lead to her saddle. “He seemed all right … he liked the horses, didn’t he?”

  “That he did, miss,” Finbar said. “He mentioned you again when he came last month to look at Furze.” Furze was the ox. “And to tell me goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?”

  “Aye, miss,” Finbar said. He reached out and put a hand on Florian’s neck. He was standing between Florian and Caesar. Florian held very still, and the farmer gingerly stroked his black mane. “His brother were a surgeon, too, down in Dawsebury, near Travertine. Seems that there’s a powerful lot of sickness down that way. Coughs, fevers, and the like. His brother was taken suddenly, and so were many in the town. Trewes went for the funeral, and to get his brother’s family sorted.”

  “And?” Jilly’s voice went shrill.

  “Word came two days ago,” Jenny said. “All dead. The widow and the babies, Trewes, and half the town.”

  In the ensuing silence, Keth’s cough was loud and jagged.

  6

  AT HOME AT LAST FARM

  “How can you wear that coat all the time? It’s a thousand degrees in here,” Jilly said.

  Anthea ignored her. It wasn’t a thousand degrees in the stable. It wasn’t even particularly hot. But it was warm: all the straw insulating the floors and the large animals raised the temperature significantly, but Anthea still wore her long army coat.

  There was a little trickle of sweat running down her back under the coat, it was true. But what was also true was that if she took the coat off, she felt vulnerable. The coat soothed her, like getting under a heavy blanket on a cold night. When she took it off she felt … light, but not in a good way. As though any breath of wind could blow her over, or anything could cut or bruise her.

  There was no one at Last Farm who would hurt her, she knew. And she had Florian to protect her, not to mention the other horses, and Jilly and Keth, the household staff, even her fierce little owl, Arthur. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming, something big and dark and terrible was about to roll over them, and she didn’t want to be unprepared when it came.

  In her typically uncannily shrewd fashion, Jilly said, “Keeping warm won’t prevent you from getting the Dag.”

  Anthea shuddered. “I know,” she said. “I just … feel like wearing my coat. I like this coat.”

  “We’re going to be fine,” Jilly told her.

  “I know,” Anthea said.

  They were both lying, and they knew it. Over the past few days that they had been back beyond Kalabar’s Wall, at Last Farm where Anthea’s father and Uncle Andrew had sheltered and trained horses since before Jilly and Anthea were born, a great deal had happened in the south, and none of it was “fine.”

  There had been an outbreak of a terrible form of the influenza that had quickly been christened “the Dag” because the cough felt like daggers tearing through your chest. The brigade had all been terrified that Keth had it, since he still could not shake the racking cough he had developed when he was stationed near Travertine, which was where the sickness had started.

  But Keth never had a fever or any of the more debilitating symptoms of the Dag; he just couldn’t stop coughing. Dr. Hewett had mixed honey cough syrup and even boiled up some lozenges that Jilly and Anthea both kept stealing, because they were so delicious, but the doctor couldn’t seem to cure his cough permanently.

  Even more worrying were the continued rumors of war. No one seemed to understand what had happened that day on the river. No one seemed to want to take responsibility for it. Kronenhof swore that they had not sent those ships, and the Crown swore that they had not given the order to fire on the Kronenhofer ships, and certainly had not given the river guards the authority to completely destroy any ship. These answers, which Anthea pictured in her head as rooms full of men just shrugging and looking confused, were unsatisfactory to everyone.

  Kronenhof was refusing to accept Coronam’s apology, and Coronam, it must be said, wasn’t actually apologizing. Anthea had pointed out that saying “I didn’t do it” wasn’t apologizing, and a few days later the newspaper pointed out nearly the same thing. Kronenhof had recalled their ambassador from Coronam. Coronam had taken theirs back from Kronenhof. Now other countries were involved, saying that they were going to remove their ambassadors and cut off trade if Coronam and Kronenhof didn’t apologize to each other.

  Anthea knew King Gareth; he would never apologize. Orders had come from Travertine that the brigade should learn to shoot and ride “defensively.” Andrew had sent his own orders, instructing them not to tell the Crown that they already knew how to shoot and that the horses were trained to fight as well. What else he had heard and seen from his new post in Travertine, Andrew didn’t say.

  “You see, fine,” Jilly said when they left the stable.

  There was a rider coming up the long drive. When some of the men in the paddocks along the drive saw him, they waved and whistled.

  “Is that …?” Anthea began.

  The Soon King, the horses in the paddocks began to say. The Soon King! He returns! They whinnied greetings as Finn rode up to the yard between the Big House and the stable.

  From inside the stable, Florian and the others who had been put in their stalls for the night began to stamp and call out as well. Anthea and Jilly assured them that it really was Finn, which became unnecessary because as soon as Finn dismounted, in his private paddock Constantine the herd stallion reared onto his hind legs and let out his ear-splitting scream.

  Anthea hated that scream. She had first heard it the night she had come to the farm last year, and it had terrified her then. It still sent a shiver through her, reminding her of the time that she had gone into Con’s paddock “uninvited” to prevent him from trampling a little owl that had wandered under the fence. Anthea had gotten the owl and herself out safely, largely thanks to Finn jumping in to pull her out of harm’s way, but Florian had been badly hurt coming to her rescue. She had been so caught up in the horror of watching Florian allow his herd stallion to bite and kick him that she had not even noticed the owl—Arthur, though he hadn’t been named yet—biting hard into her hand. She had a scar from the incident.

  So did Florian.

  Constantine screamed again, and Anthea shuddered. Behind her, she heard Florian and Leonidas calling out, greeting Finn loudly now that the herd stallion had already done so. Marius and Caesar bugled, too, and Gaius Julius, and the other stallions that were in the stable.

  But not the mares. Anthea still didn’t understand the mares, and apparently neither did the stallions. Florian had once told her that the mares had other names, given to them by their mothers, shared only among themselves or with a mate, and sometimes not even then. Florian had also told her that it was “not his place” to directly address a mare, and even though he and Bluebell got along very well (as far as Anthea could tell), they would often speak through her even when they were walking side by side, like young schoolchildren having a fight.

 
; Finn tied Marius’s reins behind his neck so they wouldn’t get tangled and sent him into his paddock with his bridle and saddle still on. He threw his saddlebags over his shoulder and came toward Anthea and Jilly, who were hurrying over to meet him. He grinned when he saw them and held out his free arm.

  Anthea stopped short, but Jilly went ahead and gave him a hug.

  “You’re finally back from your mysterious mission!” Jilly said.

  Finn made a face. “Just more nonsense messages. Honestly, at first I thought Gareth just wanted to give me extra work.”

  He turned to Anthea, hesitated at her stiff expression, and then patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. He had kissed her once, on the cheek, and they had never spoken of it or repeated it. Anthea wondered if he remembered. She certainly did.

  “Where’s Dr. Hewett?” Finn said. “I need to speak to him immediately.”

  “Oh, in his cottage, I think,” Anthea said. “Why? Are you sick?”

  She and Jilly both took a step backward. Anthea couldn’t even feel embarrassed: the Dag sounded horrible.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” Finn assured them. “But I’ve got a bunch of people with me, and they need lodgings and a place to work.”

  “What?” Anthea looked around. “Where?”

  “Back at the station,” Finn explained. “Scientists studying the Dag.”

  Jilly put her hands on her hips. “What did you bring them here for?”

  “It wasn’t my idea!” Finn held up his hands in self-defense. “The king ordered me to lead them here!”

  “You could have at least sent a warning ahead,” Jilly grumbled.

  Finn sighed. “Con does not like this idea. He doesn’t want any strangers near the herd. He flat-out refused to pass along the message.”

  Anthea shot a look at Constantine, and found to her discomfort that he was watching her already. She looked quickly away but could feel that the herd stallion did not. She turned her back on him and covered her unease by peering down the lane in the deepening twilight, even though she couldn’t see the Wall, let alone the train station.