Why, then, did it feel as if I’d just laid waste to everything that mattered?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FINDING THE QUEEN
I didn’t dare let myself stop; if I stopped, I would cry. Instead I marched myself off to the Great Hall to talk to Sybil about the scrying. If people chose to hold up crosses when they saw me coming, I would just have to deal with it. I had work to do.
But the trouble started before I even had a chance to enter the Great Hall. Just outside the doors, half a dozen ladies-in-waiting were standing in a tight gossipy knot. When they saw me approach, they broke apart. Had the gossip been about me? Had they seen the broadside?
By the look of them, they had. Before this, they’d never been friendly, but now they were overtly hostile. I saw some of them fingering crosses. For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder who had pushed the broadside under Nat’s door.
I wasn’t going to ask; I had my pride. But I wasn’t going to retreat, either—even though they had arranged themselves so that my way forward was blocked.
I brandished my iron bracelet to prove my good faith. “I need to speak with the Queen. Do you know where she is?”
Silence. But then, from behind me, someone spoke up, shyly but with courtesy. It was Clemence. “The Queen? Why she’s in the little room around the back, where we’re keeping the supplies.”
“Thank you.” I could reach that room without going through the Great Hall—or past the line of ladies-in-waiting.
As I walked away, I heard the others chide Clemence for speaking to me. There was clearly more to her than I’d realized, a certain kindness and independence of mind that the others lacked. Was that why Nat was drawn to her? Would he turn to her now?
I knew I should feel grateful to her for helping me, but what consumed me was pain.
Sybil was counting out blankets when I came in. For a moment I almost didn’t recognize her. No longer the perfect portrait of queenly elegance, she wore heavy boots and a gown that had been ruined by the rain. Her curls were disheveled, and her neck and arms and ears were bare, save for her iron ring.
Her eyes, however, were as warm as ever—and livelier than they had been in ages.
“Lucy!” She didn’t leave her work but beckoned me over. “Joan told me you were all right, but it’s good to see you with my own eyes.”
She hugged me, then frowned anxiously. “Oh dear. What is it?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” she insisted. “Do you think I can’t tell?”
It was no use trying to hide the truth from Sybil. “I had an argument with Nat, that’s all.”
“Oh, Lucy! What about?”
“It—it doesn’t matter.” Quickly I broached the real purpose of my visit, telling her about Melisande and the scrying and what Penebrygg had said about them both.
“The wall between the worlds,” she said slowly when I was done. “That rings a bell somewhere—and the two snakes, too.”
“You recognize them?”
“Nothing so precise as that, I’m afraid. But I have this idea that Chantresses were involved in sealing some kind of wall, or widening it, or something like that. I don’t know what they did exactly, or even when, but Mama once said that the Chantresses did it to keep the Others at bay.”
“The Others? Is that what she called them?” I asked. “Not the Mothers?”
“I think she said the Others, but I’m not certain. She was talking to someone else, you see, and I just happened to overhear her. So I didn’t catch everything.”
“Did you hear her say anything else about this wall?”
“Not that I can recall,” Sybil said slowly. “Though I think . . . maybe . . . she said the sealing of the wall had something to do with Melusine.”
“With Melusine?” I was surprised. “Are you sure?”
“Well, that bit I’m really not certain about,” Sybil admitted. “And of course Mama never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
I felt as if we were going around in circles. But then I thought to ask, “Who was your mother talking to?”
Sybil looked down, thinking hard. “Do you know, I think it was when that odd woman came to the house to heal me, the one with the sea-green eyes.”
I felt a leap of excitement. Could it have been Melisande? “Can you remember anything else?”