even seen any paths, though she knew they had to be there, cutting from village to village and leading to the fields and the hut of the sick cottar Eliwys had gone to see.
They climbed a low hill, and at the top of it Father Roche looked back to see if they were following. He knows where the drop is, Kivrin thought. She had hoped he had some idea where it was, that Gawyn had described it to him or told him which road it lay along, but he hadn’t had to. Father Roche already knew where the drop was. He had been there.
Agnes and Kivrin came to the top of the hill, but all she could see was trees, and below them more trees. They had to be in Wychwood Forest, but if they were, there were over a hundred square kilometers in which the drop could be hidden. She would never have found it on her own. She could scarcely see ten meters into the underbrush.
She was amazed at the thickness of the woods as they came down the hill into the heart of them. There were clearly no paths between the trees here. There was scarcely any space at all, and what there was, was filled with fallen branches and tangled thickets and snow.
She had been wrong about not recognizing anything—she knew these woods after all. It was the forest Snow White had got lost in, and Hansel and Gretel, and all those princes. There were wolves in it, and bears, and perhaps even witch’s cottages, and that was where all those stories had come from, wasn’t it, the Middle Ages? And no wonder. Anyone could get lost in here.
Roche stopped and stood beside his donkey while Rosemund cantered back to him and they caught up, and Kivrin wondered wryly if he had lost his way. But as soon as they came up to him, he plunged off through a thicket and onto an even narrower path that wasn’t visible from the road.
Rosemund couldn’t pass Father Roche and his donkey without shoving them aside, but she followed nearly treading on the donkey’s hind hooves, and Kivrin wondered again what was bothering her. “Sir Bloet has many powerful friends,” Lady Imeyne had said. She had called him an ally, but Kivrin wondered if he really was, or if Rosemund’s father had told her something about him that made her so distressed at the prospect of his coming to Ashencote.
They went a short way along the path, past a thicket of willows that looked like the one by the drop, and then turned off the path, squeezing through a stand of firs and emerging next to a holly tree.
Kivrin had been expecting holly bushes like the ones in Brasenose’s quad, but this was a tree. It towered over them, spreading out above the confines of the spruces, its red berries bright among the masses of glossy leaves.
Father Roche began taking the sacks from the back of the donkey, Agnes attempting to help him. Rosemund pulled a short, fat-bladed knife out of her girdle and began hacking at the sharp-leaved lower branches.
Kivrin waded through the snow to the other side of the tree. She had caught a glimpse of white she thought might be the stand of birches, but it was only a branch, half-fallen between two trees and covered with snow.
Agnes appeared, with Roche behind her carrying a wicked-looking dagger. Kivrin had thought that knowing who he was would work some transformation, but he still looked like a cutthroat, standing there looming over Agnes.
He handed Agnes one of the coarse bags. “You must hold the bag open like this,” he said, bending down to show her how the top of the bag should be folded back, “and I will put the branches into it.” He began chopping at the branches, oblivious to the spiky leaves. Kivrin took the branches from him and put them in the bag carefully, so the stiff leaves wouldn’t break.
“Father Roche,” she said, “I wanted to thank you for helping me when I was ill and for bringing me to the manor when I—”
“When that you were fallen,” he said, hacking at a stubborn branch.
She had intended to say, “when I was set upon by thieves,” and his response surprised her. She remembered falling off the horse and wondered if that was when he had happened along. But if it was, they had already come a long way from the drop, and he wouldn’t know