“How long ago?” asked Aufors, sympathetically.
“Too long for hope to last,” she said, wiping her eyes furtively on her sleeve. “Now, just for the sake of talk, what would the mother’s name be, the one whose business you’re on?”
“Alicia,” he said, smiling.
“Good enough.” She turned and stumped away on her gnarled cane, pausing at the door to give him time to tie his horse.
“And how might I address you, ma’am?” he asked, stopping to let her go in first.
“Ma Muddy, that’s me. It’s a fen name, and only half a joke.”
He stepped through the door and stopped, frozen in place. Genevieve sat before the fire! He gasped, she turned, and he knew then she was not his love, did not even greatly resemble her except in silhouette. The skin and hair were different, but the line of the forehead, the chin, yes, and especially the nose were almost the same! Full face, this girl was broader across the cheeks, however, and her mouth was narrower.
“Bessany?” he asked. “And the baby?”
She lifted the baby into the light. “Did my mother send you?”
“Yes. I am to take you to Merdune.”
“Has she gone to Ruckward?”
“She should be at Poolwich by now, where Earl Ruckward is staying also. Four days for your mother to cross the sea.”
“Are they hunting me?”
Aufors nodded. “All up and down the roads. Earl Ruckward has published a reward. He must love you very much?”
She laughed chokingly. “Oh, he loves me, yes. I am his candidate for something unimaginable.”
“For what?”
“Why, to whatever he aspires to. Heaven knows what.”
The baby began to fuss, and she put the infant to her breast, head and breast warm glowing globes in the firelight, the one covered with wispy red hair curled into elflocks.
“How do you know?” Aufors asked.
“I saw something. It frightened me.”
“What did you see?” the old woman asked, coming forward to stir up the fire. “You didn’t tell me of any seeing?”
“1 saw myself lying in a great red stain of blood. Nearby I saw my husband surrounded by old men, passing my child from hand to hand among themselves, as though deciding what to do with it.”
“Ah,” the old woman moaned. “They do that. I’ve seen that, myself. When the Duchess died, she left a wee girl, and I saw them passing the child around, like a prize.”
“How will we go?” asked Bessany, looking into Aufors’s eyes.
“We will dirty my horse and comb him backwards, putting burs in his mane. We’ll hitch him to Ma Muddy’s cart,” he said.
“We will dye your hair … If we can, Ma?”
“Oh, aye. Thalnip hulls make a dye. I’ve plenty.”
“Well then,” Aufors went on, “the child will wear a cap with bits of dark horse hair thrust in around the edges and rooster feathers on the cradle board. And we will dirty our faces and halter the sheep to follow, unless the dog will bring them along, and we’ll ride south tomorrow, across the marsh, the shortest way we can to the Reusel, and across it, avoiding Poolwich like the plague.”
“The fen road,” said the old woman, beginning to bustle at the fireside. “Though short don’t describe it, for it wanders. Still, it’s not a way anybody would look at. Too long. Too soggy. It’ll bring us out at Ferrybend, well east of Poolwich, and from there, if we’re lucky, we can travel the short road to Wellsport, where my nephew’s a barge man.”
“He’ll help us?”
“We’ll count on his family devotion. I’ll take the mattress, to pad the cart. And I’ll pray for good weather. Nothing worse than winter rain on the fens.”
“Come sit,” said Bessany to Aufors. “You look weary.”
“This is the third day of riding,” he admitted. “As a soldier, it was a common thing, but I’m out of practice.”
“How’s my mother? Is she well?”
“Very well, though saddened by your plight,” he said. “Very determined to get your older daughter back to Merdune.”
“She didn’t want me to marry Solven,” she said. “Gardagger encouraged me, of course, though since he’s not my father, he couldn’t have forced me to do so. Mother said there was a danger in marrying older men.”