the thornpierced the bird’s heart. At that moment his voice throbbed just like the bird’s, and when he climbed off the table, he had an expression on his face I’d never seen before on anybody. Long after I was tucked up in bed with Poppet I could still see it. Try as I might, I couldn’t understand what it meant.
6
He knew their secrets, they did what he said .
I rose to a murky dawn. The weather had changed. That itself should have warned me, I suppose. Despite my compulsions, sometimes I’m slow to see signs.
This inn had no inside sanitation, only a pump in the makeshift yard, and as I didn’t want to wash in public, I watched from a window until the servants had done their early chores and gone to the kitchen for bread and ale. Only then did I go outside, hitch up my skirts, take off Walter’s trousers and inspect my scabs. The salve was working. Since it was also four days since I’d pumiced, the rest of my scars had dulled into gray dents ridged with skin every shade of purple. “Hideous,” I told the chickens who had congregated around me, hopeful of grain. I heard the inn’s front door open and, for fear of the summoner, hid myself under the wall.
It was not the summoner: it was the Master, unslept, unkempt, unhappy, towel slung over his shoulder, his writing box tucked under his arm. He wandered to the pump and placed the box on the ground. When the chickens scuttled up to it, he snatched it up and placedit on the side of the well. I tutted like a chicken myself. What was he thinking? One nudge and it would tumble. He laid down his towel, cranked the well’s handle, clanked the bucket onto a bench, and doused his head. Eyes tight shut, he reached for the towel. One soggy sleeve caught the box’s protruding corner. I sprang forward. To stop the box from falling down the well, I had to smack it sharply. It pitched, then crashed onto the ground, spilling all its contents.
The chickens converged. “ Psh! Psh! Get out! Get away!” I flapped my arms before snatching up plummets and cuttlefish, inkpots and oak galls, bottles and quills and all manner of enviable writing paraphernalia. “I’m sorry,” I began to say, when something very bright caught the beady eye of the cockerel. He stretched his neck. “No!” I cried, and dived. Master Chaucer, all caught up in his towel, dived too. I got there first. “Here!” I held up my trophy. It was a thick gold ring, quite obviously a signet ring. Before handing it back, I inspected the engraving, hoping to make some clever remark about the Master’s seal. But it wasn’t a writer’s seal. It was a much grander seal. The grandest seal possible. My mouth opened. “You lied!” At once, I wanted to eat my words, for surely I was mistaken. I inspected the ring again. I had made no mistake. Engraved quite clearly into the oval plate was the image of King Richard, crowned and holding orb and scepter, seated on acovered throne balanced on an angel’s back. If that wasn’t convincing enough, “ Ricardus Dei Gracia Rex Francie et Anglie et Dux Hibernie ” was inscribed in bold letters around the outside of the ring. I wasn’t sure what some of the words meant, but even the village dunce knew the word rex . The ring was a king’s ring, our king’s ring to be exact. What was more, such a ring could have only been handed over by the king himself, and he would only hand it over for a purpose.
I held the ring as though it might bite me. The Master didn’t even try to snatch it back. He just stared at it too. “I didn’t lie,” he said flatly. “I said I carried no document or letter and I don’t. I never mentioned anything else.”
The cockerel backed away, lifting his legs fastidiously high.
“Yet you’ve got this,” I said. The Master fiddled with his sleeves as I worked out the rest for myself. “Luke. His memory. He said you gave him puzzles and he wasn’t to write them down. Of course you’re not carrying anything. He’s going to France.
Brenda Novak
Italo Calvino
C. C. Hunter
ylugin
Mario Puzo
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Toby Neal
Amarinda Jones
Ashley Hunter
Riley Clifford