Part 35 (2/2)

I did not need more explanation. Whatever room it was she had looked out on, they were there.

At last I could stand the silence no longer. ”What are they?” I dared to murmur. ”Are they...are they men?”

”Lower your voice! You have already caused enough trouble.”

I could not have been more stunned if she had struck me. ”I have caused trouble?”

”It is your fault it has come to this.”

A fraction of my dread was replaced by astonishment.

Her face was a hard mask in the candlelight, all edges and shadows. ”Do not pretend such innocence, Miss Lockwell. It is wasted on me. I know what you are. I have known it since the moment you set foot in this house, and every fear I had, every concern I tried to relate to him, has come to pa.s.s. I told him not to bring you here, and when you came I encouraged him to dismiss you at once. Would that he had listened to me.”

Now I did feel as if I had been slapped. ”I thought you merely disliked me. Yet you say you tried, with conscious effort, to drive me away!”

Her expression showed no shame. ”It is not only my duty to care for this house but for its master as well. I did everything in my power to prevent him from bringing the children here. Their presence could not be tolerated. All the more because I knew that once they came, your presence would become all the more likely. Almost from the first moment his cousins prevailed upon him to take the children, he spoke of you as their governess.”

”But why me? Surely there were other choices, ones you would have not considered so poor.”

Her face seemed to soften a fraction. ”Do not think I speak ill of him. His only fault is kindness. He wanted to see again a person whose fate had once been his concern. There can be no impugning his motives.” Now her expression hardened again. ”The same cannot be said for others, Miss Lockwell. Forgive me, I mean Mrs. Quent.” She spoke these last words as if she had swallowed a mouthful of vinegar.

”You cannot think I came here with that intention!”

”I would not presume to know with what intention you came here. All the same, it is your coming that has brought us to this.”

It was too much. Tears stung my eyes. ”How can that be?”

”You cannot see? Then you do not merely look a dolt. They know the work he does, and long have they wanted to put a stop to it.”

”The rebels,” I said. ”Those who plot treason against the Crown. Mr. Quent said they have been using the Wyrdwood to meet and gather, to conceal their plottings. And his work is to seek-”

”I have served him for nearly twenty years,” she snapped. ”I know what he does.”

The housekeeper looked away. Her gray dress melded with the gloom, and her face seemed to float: a pale cameo, shaped by years of worry that had long ago become regret. ”I wanted only to protect him. That is why we endured a silent life here, in this forlorn place. If we were alone, then we were safe; never would they attack him openly, not in his demesne. Yet if they could find a way to draw him into theirs...”

”But the children are gone,” I said. ”They have failed to lure him to the Wyrdwood.”

She raised a sharp eyebrow. ”Have they, Mrs. Quent?”

A weakness pa.s.sed over me. I wished to sit, but there was no room in the pa.s.sage. The children were gone. The witch had been stopped from drawing them into the wood; I had stopped her. Yet in their stead, I had given the plotters even better hope for compelling Mr. Quent to enter the Wyrdwood. For what man would not come to the aid of his new wife?

Yet something had happened they had not expected, just as it had that night at the Wyrdwood. Westen had thought to capture me, but it was he who had been captured instead. A curious feeling rose in me: a sensation of triumph. I even smiled, I think.

A howl echoed from somewhere above in the darkness, and any feeling I had was replaced by dread. I looked upward, into the dark. ”What is happening to them?”

”The wood is changing them.”

”But how can that be?”

She gave me a look of disgust. ”What do I know of the affairs of witches?”

The housekeeper turned away, and her gray hair and gray dress faded into the gloom, so that I could see her only as a woman-shaped void where the candlelight did not reach.

”I told him,” she whispered to the dark. ”I told him not to go in there.”

”Westen,” I said. ”Your son. Is he-”

”He is a fool. If only his father had...” The candlelight wavered. ”He knew the peril of the wood, but they toy with it. They laugh and believe they can put it to their own uses. All they can think of are their schemes and plans. 'You shall see, Mother,' he tells me. 'We will be free of this tyranny. We will have a king who protects the folk in the country.' As if it matters who sits in the Citadel! What king has ever cared for folk like us? It is not worth giving up your...It is not worth dealing with such as her.”

Now she did turn to look at me. ”I hate it. I hate the wood. I hate those women who go to it and work their craft there. I hate its trees. I hate that it took my husband. And I hate that it is taking my son!”

I was struck dumb. No breath would enter my lungs. Her face hung in the darkness before me, and for the first time since my coming to Heathcrest Hall, there were feelings upon it I recognized: anger, and love, and despair. Something glinted on her cheek.

She seemed to see me staring. Her lip curled up. ”Now,” she said, pus.h.i.+ng past me. ”I hear them no longer. We must go.”

She moved back to the end of the pa.s.sage. By the time I reached her she had already pushed it open. I saw a wedge of silver light, and though it could only be dim I squinted as if it were a brilliant glare.

”Come, you fool!” she said, seizing my arm and dragging me forward as the opening grew wider.

”Why?” I said as I stumbled after her. After all she had said, I could not understand. ”Why are you helping me?”

”I keep this house, and all that is in it, for him, that is why.” She pulled me through the door.

I blinked and saw we were in the front hall. We had emerged from behind another panel, this one beneath the stairs. Not ten steps away was the arch that led to the front entry to the house. We both looked around, but the hall was empty save for ourselves and its usual mounted denizens.

”To the door,” the housekeeper said.

I hurried toward the arch, but when I reached it I realized the housekeeper was not behind me. Turning, I saw her start up the stairs.

Dread seized me. ”Mrs. Darendal, what are you doing?”

”It is none of your concern,” she said with a glare over her shoulder. She ascended several more steps.

”You cannot go upstairs. They are up there!”

”So is my son. I will not leave him to them.” She continued climbing.

”But he is like them!”

The look she sent me across the hall was filled with such loathing, such contempt, that I could only stagger back against it. The housekeeper vanished up the stairs.

For a mad moment I thought of das.h.i.+ng after her. No-she did not want me. Whatever she had done to help me, it had not been for my sake. I turned and ran to the front door. It was still open.

I ran through. Mist coiled around my ankles, pooled on the stones, slithered down the steps. I hesitated, thinking of Lanna and Jance. Were they still in the house? I could not know, but if I had any hope of aiding them, it was to escape this place, to ride to the village, to seek help. I started down the steps.

A dark form moved in the mist before me, and I halted. There was a sound like a blade being drawn over a whetting stone. The shape stalked up the steps.

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