not said unkindly. “I hear tell you plan to leave again, to get your mother. Lirys said she’s been put away, because of her mind.”
“She has. And I do.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Tressalyn. I’m riding there.”
“Via Tremayne? Funny route to take.” Carys’s look is shrewd.
“I have to do something first.”
“So Lirys said. She also said she couldn’t get it out of you. That you’d become secretive.”
“It’s not a secret,” I lie. “I have to go somewhere before I can get Mama, that’s all.”
“Sounds like a fool’s errand to me. You’re lucky you made it this far without being hurt. I know you’re no fair lady but it’s still a great risk.” I remember the feeling of fingers gripping my hair, how powerless I was in that moment. It makes me shiver. I didn’t tell Lirys about it, and the look on Carys Dapplewood’s face makes me glad.
“Fortune favours the bold.” I smile weakly.
“So does death,” she counters immediately. “The craven tend to live much longer than the heroic. You should stay here, go through the proper channels.”
“I don’t have time.”
“Lirys said you’d say that.” She sips her milk. “What will you do, once you’ve got Trina? Where will you go?”
“I have a plan.”
“So did your brother,” she says, silencing me. “I won’t try to talk you out of it. I don’t believe anyone ever talked a Vastel out of doing something stupid. But I will say this: you have a home here. No matter what trouble you’re in, or how bad things are. We are your family; this is your home.”
I nod, a lump in my throat, and she reaches over and pats my hand.
“The door will be open to you, Errin. It always has been. And we’ll always be here. Now –” she brushes the sentimentality away with a shake of her hands “– they won’t open the gates before dawn, so you’re stuck here. But if you don’t mind the company of an old woman, I’ll stay with you.”
“You’re not old,” I say automatically, but as I study her in the candlelight I see that she is. Lirys is a year older than me and Kirin; she’s the same age as Lief. Carys and Idrys tried for twenty years to have a baby, so the story goes, but they weren’t blessed. When it finally happened, Carys didn’t believe it. Though her courses had stopped, she thought it was her natural time and that her thickening waist was another symptom. It wasn’t until her waters broke that she realized she was having a baby at long last.
Now Carys is in her sixty-first harvest and her hair is streaked with greys and whites. The candlelight, so flattering to the young, draws out the shadows under her eyes and cheeks, plays in the lines that bracket her mouth and span out from the corners of her eyes. In my mind, she looks as she did when we were children – a little grey, a little careworn, but fierce, quick of tongue and temper, but the kindest woman you’d ever meet. I lift my tumbler and drink, and she does the same, yet I notice when she puts it down her hands remain slightly curled in on themselves.
When it’s time to leave I have more milk, and chicken, bread and cheese, and apples for my horse, as well as half a plum pie. We debated whether to wake Lirys so I could say goodbye, but I fretted about the time, and Carys didn’t push me.
As well as the food, she somehow got hold of new clothes for me. I’m now dressed in a neat blue tunic and better-fitting black breeches. I don’t know whose they are and I don’t care: they’re not Unwin’s, and I tell Carys to burn the old ones. In the hour before dawn, Carys neatened the edges of my hair, and she has also lent me her old winter cloak, a rich dark green lined with rabbit fur. With clean hair and clothes and, best of all, freshly forged papers claiming I’m Erika Dapplewood, which Carys tucks into my pocket whilst tapping the side of her nose. I feel hopeful as I swing up on to my horse, who also looks refreshed.
“We’ll see you soon, Errin,” Carys calls softly from the doorway. “Promise me that.”
“I promise,” I say, turning the horse out of the yard and along the lane.
I let my eyes roam over sleeping Tremayne as I pass through. It looks so idyllic, safe and untouched.