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The risen sun had put an end to David’s first night on guard. Past the turn of the cell block corridor, across from the kitchen that formed the heart of Seagate castle, a room not much more than a closet had been fitted with hooks and shelves to serve as a coatroom. David retrieved his small canvas satchel from this little den and headed for the lobby. The only thing he needed that wouldn’t fit his pockets was the bottle of nerve tonic, but he felt strange carrying only it. He’d packed a change of clothes he didn’t really need. An unused notebook, and some pencils of similar wear. Filling out his satchel was their sole purpose in life.
He passed the newcomer in her lonely corner. She was out of his sight at that angle. He stopped for a second to lean back, craning his neck; caught sight of her legs jutting out from her perch against the wall, and straightened up again. He kept walking before she could catch him staring.
Though the sun was up, the day was hardly begun. Most of the prisoners still dozed, if not slept. He was unmolested on his walk to the iron gate blocking the corridor. After a chat with Jacob he’d be on his way. David flipped though his keys as he approached the bars.
Wait.
That word came unbidden to his mind. His hands slowed their search, his feet their pace, not in obedience but in confusion. It had been so clear, but it had not been the voice that usually put his thoughts to words. He tried to recall it to no avail. Another voice not his, however, did pipe up, this time in the realm of firm reality.
“She’s my prisoner, I see her when I have need. If you object you can explain yourself to the majesties of the Crown. Keys.”
“Uh…sir, I wasn’t told—“
“Well I’m tellin’ you now! Keys.”
“Ambrose,” said a new voice. David nearly dropped his own keys, fumbled them into his pocket and scurried backwards. “Sir, I’m Captain Bossard of the Blankston City Guard. Mr. Belvedere is not only my guest but a member of the Royal Elite. We need to see his prisoner. It’s official police business.”
“Mr. Belvedere!” This was Jacob, fresh from the office that adjoined the lobby by a spiralling staircase. Clearly he had heard the tone of his visitors voices and was trying to counter it with cheer. “Captain! We weren’t expecting you so early.”
“Weren’t expecting it either,” said Mr. Belvedere. “What I did expect was a shade more decorum from your officers.”
“Of course,” said Jacob, with a disarming laugh. “I’m sorry we kept you waiting. Give him your keys, Andrew. Mr. Belvedere can come and go as he pleases.”
There was a jingle of an iron ring being snatched up. Bossard spoke again.
“Thank you, Mr. Holbrook. Andrew,” he added.
Run.
That strange voice drowned out anything else that might have been said in the lobby. David sprinted back up the corridor, half-packed satchel jostling his leg. Stumbling around the turn, he paused out of sight. He heard the creak of the cell block door swinging on its hinges. The coatroom was only a short dash away. He made it before they’d closed the gate behind them.
Before the juncture of the corridors, Mr. Belvedere waved his hand behind him, motioning his companions to stay put. Bossard held Marigold back by a gentle touch on her arm, next to the alcove where David had spent most of his first shift wondering the night away. The Elite Forces man continued to the lone cell in the corner.
He caught the first shoe flying at his head. The second hit him in the chest with an ineffectual slap of sole on muscle. A growl of rage was his only greeting, as he bent to retrieve the matching pair. He stepped to the bars and held them out.
“Next time, I won’t give ‘em back,” he said calmly. “Keep ‘em on your feet.”
“Fuck you!” spat Guinevere. “Take them and fucking—“
“Ms. van Allen,” he interrupted. Volume did not silence her; his tone did. “You have a visitor. Now’s not the time.” He motioned Marigold to come forward. Bossard escorted her, however little it was needed.
“Who?” snapped the prisoner. “Another fucking pig come to fuck me over? Another…” She trailed off as she saw her apprentice on the Guard captain’s arm. In the unsure quiet, Mr. Belvedere set the shoes down next to the bars. He looked to the downcast young lady on his side of them.
“Take your time, Ms. Baker,” he said. “The captain and I will be just past the gate. You yell if you need us.”
The two men left without further ado. Guinevere did not put her shoes back on. She crossed her stocking feet as she sat down on her cot.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she sighed. Marigold pressed her lips together.
“I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “I wasn’t fast enough. Sir Roger came after me.”
“No, not that,” said the witch. “I was expecting to be ash at this point. That wasn’t always the plan, don’t look so worried. Killing myself was not something I aspired to, but I preferred it to prison. Especially Crown prison. Some things aren’t to be.”
She said this last with such melancholy that Marigold felt ready to excuse herself for being a bother. But she couldn’t. Not with so many questions and so much depending on them. She had only agreed to sign over her testimony if she could get some answers.
“It’s not true, is it?” asked Marigold.
“What’s ‘it’? What have they told you?”
“Well…they said there were dozens of barrels of gunpowder found in the basement of Blankston Town Hall. All set with fuses made to go off at once. And they said it was meant to be done under a full hall at the Harvest Dance.”
“Did they mention how they found out about it?”
“No. Not to me,” admitted Marigold.
“They haven’t arrested Alfaen yet,” said Guinevere. A statement, not a question. Marigold gasped softly.
“Was he part of it?”
“He was half of it, until he turned tail and tattled. If we’d been found out second-hand he’d have been arrested as quickly as me. The only explanation is that he’s ratted in exchange for his freedom.”
“Guin, you’re not denying you did it,” said Marigold, close to tears. Guinevere kept a straight face as she studied her apprentice.
“There’s no sense denying it. They wouldn’t believe me even if I was innocent. But I’m not. I did it, or tried to do it, and I’m not ashamed.”
“Guin, I don’t understand,” said Marigold shakily. “There would have been innocent people in that hall. Women, and children.”
“Innocent?” spat Guinevere, riveting on her. Marigold shied back. “Those innocent women who gossiped about all the demons I’d fucked? Those innocent children who threw stones and called me a hag? They’re as nasty and small-minded as the inquisitors. They have the same disease and they deserve the same fate. We could do with another Steadney if this is how they’re going to treat those that serve their Mither.”
Marigold’s first instinct was to protest the violence of that statement, but she understood the feeling behind it; the frustrated, exhausted place it had come from. After a moment’s reflection, she chose a different subject.
“I do want to thank you,” said Marigold quietly. “For trying to help me escape. It would have been easy to put some of the blame on me and I appreciate that you didn’t.”
The witch had no response to this. Her apprentice asked it, then, the one question that had troubled her more than any others.
“If they didn’t let me go…” said Marigold. “If they hadn’t let me pass…you wouldn’t have set off the nitre, would you?”
“Marigold,” said the witch, “you wouldn’t have known a thing. It would have been instant. There would have been no pain.”
Marigold was not the type to get angry. She never yelled, or chastised, even when it was deserved. She felt sick, instead. Nauseated to her very core. Her skin tightened, raising her fine hairs like hackles on a cat.
“I appreciate your honesty, but, I don’t know what to say, Guin. I don’t know how to come to terms with the fact that freedom from prison meant more to you than our lives put together. And the lives of all those men…you would be free but we would all be dead. I didn’t even do anything wrong,” she added in a quaver. She had never felt betrayed before, since betrayal required trust, and Guinevere had been among only a handful of people in her life she had trusted. She did not know what to say or do about this new feeling. So, she walked away, fleeing the strange sick sensation and the woman who had caused it.
“Marigold, it’s not that at all!” Guinevere’s shout fell on willfully deaf ears. “Wait! Marigold!”
They listened to the distant hollow murmur of women’s voices down the corridor. Mr. Belvedere would lean over from time to time, peeking around the corner and through the cell block gate to the distant figure of Ms. Baker. Not that there was anywhere she could go, or much that could happen to her in there, but instinct made him check. Bossard leaned against the wall next to him, his hands flat on the small of his back, pressed between body and stone.
“Our would-be destructress is chatty today,” observed Mr. Belvedere. “She hardly said a word to me outside admitting her guilt.”
“Same here,” agreed Bossard.
“I found it odd,” continued the Elite Forces man, “that she made no mention of fellow conspirators, though she clearly had them. I asked her point-blank about them. She refused to look at me until I changed the subject.”
“Yes, I…got a similar response.”
“But someone else wrote the letter you received, Julian. We know she had a friend in all this.”
Bossard could feel the careful sideways probing of Mr. Belvedere’s eyes. He also refused to look over.
“Are you not concerned that a wanted criminal knows your home address?” asked Mr. Belvedere.
“He conspired with her to demolish a building,” said Bossard, “not to murder scores of innocent people. The letter made that clear, I thought. I don’t consider a bit of naive thuggery a reason to worry for my safety.”
“I see your point,” admitted Mr. Belvedere. Then: “What makes you think this accomplice was a man?”
“They usually are,” said Bossard quickly. “Ms. van Allen is a rare exception.”
His tone couldn’t fool even himself.
“I won’t ask how you know him,” began Mr. Belvedere. “That hardly matters. I won’t ask if you sat right beside him while he wrote his letter. I won’t even ask if your wife saw him that night, or if she might be persuaded to say so. You’re a good man, Julian. I trust your judgement as much as my own. Whatever reasons you have for protecting this person are the proper ones, I’m sure. But I will ask this, and I need an honest answer: is he gonna cause any more trouble?”
Bossard still couldn’t stand to look him in the eye as he reflected on this question. Once he had his answer, however, he refused to look away.
“He’s impulsive, and stupid, but he’s not a killer. Prison would turn him into one.” He paused, reflected some more. “We’re not the ones that worry him, Ambrose. He could handle a criminal record, but he couldn’t handle his mother’s disappointment. She’s all he has. He’s all she has. I couldn’t do that to either of them. Especially now, that’s he’s saved a town hall’s worth of people.”
Their eyes remained locked as Bossard silently dared Mr. Belvedere to object. He didn’t.
“So, no,” finished the captain. “I don’t think he’s going to cause any more trouble.” He crossed his arms and settled back against the wall, unconsciously mimicking Mr. Belvedere’s stance.
In the silence that followed, they heard a distant cry. Mr. Belvedere peeked around the corner in a flash. Ms. Baker was striding down the corridor with a strange conviction in her step, ignoring the shouts behind her.
“If he tries anything, Julian, it’s on you,” said Mr. Belvedere.
“I know,” said Bossard. Mr. Belvedere nodded once.
“Alright.”
The two men stood to attention off the wall. Mr. Belvedere had eyes only for Marigold, though he addressed the captain.
“What a lovely conversation we did not have,” he whispered. That was all. He met Marigold at the gate and held it open for her. Bossard came forward as Mr. Belvedere locked the cell block with his ill-gotten key.
“Ms. Baker?” prompted the captain.
She stood tall.
“I’m ready to turn in my testimony.”
Paula was already home from the bakery when he arrived. The morning rush for bread had been and gone. She had already changed out of her work clothes and was busy agitating the flour out of them in the washtub on the kitchen floor. He’d made a plan to sneak past to the bedroom without being noticed, in just such an event. He thought he’d been quiet in opening the front door, but Paula immediately called his name.
“David, is that you?” she asked, when she was met with silence. He took a deep breath.
“Yeah,” he sighed. He came forward to stand in the kitchen door. She remained on her knees, one hand on the washboard and the other full of sodden cotton. She had paused in her work and was riveted on him.
“How was your morning?” asked David.
“It was good,” said his wife. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“Did everything go okay?”
“Yeah, it was quiet, just like I thought. Nothing eventful.”
“You can talk to me, David. You don’t have to keep things secret when they bother you.”
He looked to the washtub, avoiding her gaze. She stood and dried her hands on a teatowel hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.
“I know it’s not easy for you to talk,” she said as she approached him, “but it’s not easy to watch you struggle alone, either.”
“I’m not struggling. It’s nothing to worry about.”
Paula grabbed his hand, and by that token, his attention.
“But you’re worrying about it anyway,” she said. “Tell me what it is so I can help you stop. Was it something at the prison?”
David sighed, resigned to his fate.
“The captain came by just before I left. I thought he was gonna see me and have me fired.”
She took his other hand to stop it fidgeting.
“Can he do that?” she asked. “I thought Seagate was owned by town council.”
“Sure, but…he could go over them. There are all kinds of lawyers and things for that.”
“Why would he want you fired?”
“Because he still thinks I’m crazy.”
“David, you haven’t talked to him in weeks. How do you know what he thinks?”
Paula could see him fighting to find and answer. She moved her hands to his shoulders, leaning in against him. She pressed her lips tightly together a moment in her own fight for words.
“It seems to me,” she said quietly, “that if you were really and truly feeling well, you would have applied to return to the Guard. Instead you went to a place that wouldn’t ask how you were.”
Still no answer. She continued.
“You’re the only person not sure you should be working. You can project it onto Bossard all you like, but it’s your feeling, and it’s your decision. I want you to make it sooner than later if it’s going to cause you more distress.”
“You want me to make the decision to leave us penniless,” he snapped. “What a thing to wish!”
“David, we have enough. We will always have enough. What I don’t have right now, and what I want more than money, is a husband that’s both happy and healthy. I’ll never have that while you’re jumping at the captain’s shadow all night. I’ll never have that while you’re working strange hours at a stressful job.”
“What about your strange hours?” demanded David. “What about your stressful jobs? I can’t stand the thought of you supporting us both, Paula.”
“I can stand it,” she countered.
“But I’m…” He paused, hesitated. “I’m the…”
She held up her hand to silence him.
“I know I have to listen, David, but I also have to stand up for myself. No - for us. Take that nonsense and put it where it belongs. If anyone gives you a hard time about having a working wife I will beat them to death with the washboard.”
He had no reply to this. He looked to his shoes. Paula squeezed his shoulders and pecked him on the cheek.
“Do you want some breakfast?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said, and meant it. “I just want to sleep.”
It didn’t come to him, but he felt better for trying.
Marigold had only told one small lie to the Guard. She had turned in her written testimony, all of which was true to the best of her knowledge. Really, there hadn’t been much to which she could testify. Yes, there had been lots of nitre salts delivered to the cottage, and sulphur, and charcoal, yet these could be used for plenty of other mixtures besides black powder. Yes, Guinevere had kept strange working hours, though Marigold had never been a part of these. Yes, she had run from the Elite, but she had been told that they were an angry mob of witch hunters by the accused. Her innocence was made official by Captain Bossard releasing her from custody. That was when the lie came, in the lobby of the guardhouse as he had her sign the requisite papers.
“You can’t stay at the cottage, I’m afraid, Ms. Baker. It’ll be considered a crime scene for some time now. Do you have anywhere else to go?”
“Yes, I have family nearby,” she said, and this part was true. “I’ll stay with them,” came the lie. Bossard smiled at this, glad that this poor woman might have some normalcy for the next little while. Marigold smiled back, glad that these poor overworked Guards would not be making more of a fuss over her than they already had. In addition to food, shelter, and her every request for tea being met, they had helped her gather her necessities from the now restricted cottage. It had been strange to be in Guin’s house with a police presence, but Marigold was glad they were there. She refused to let herself cry in front of them, and that was the only reason she didn’t break down when she saw the state of the kitchen.
She had not been allowed to enter it, not that she’d tried, but she could see the shattered crockery and splinters of the cupboard that had housed it. There was a clean arc along the tiles where the forcible opening of the door had shoved it all aside. A splattermark stain before the threshold told of the boiling ointment that had injured a half dozen men who had gone forth too boldly. Three had needed a stay in hospital. One was still there, so she’d heard. All because of something that had happened in the kitchen where she used to bake and pickle and can.
With the help of her escorts, she gathered up her things into a rucksack. All of her things. A few changes of clothes. A literal handful of keepsakes. The bit of money she could call her own. A toothbrush, a comb, and a glass jar of buttons. The needles and thread to attach them, of course. With one barely-full bag, she moved out of Guinevere’s cottage. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be back. Legally, she had no say in the place, and personally, she wasn’t sure she wanted one. The months of good memories had been overtaken by a single night of the bad.
She was free by the early afternoon. The weather was nice, at least. Much easier to search for a roof when she didn’t need one. The only thing falling from the sky were a few red leaves getting a headstart on the autumn rush. Main Street ran long, the entire length of Blankston. There were four inns on it, all of which were large, and loud, and didn’t suit Marigold at all. The keeper at one of them gave her the rate in hours. It was a reasonable rate, but she thanked him and left, as politely as she had the others. She returned from this errand to the main square of Blankston. The side streets were her next destination. She wanted a bench to sit on as she thought about where to start and how long she might keep up the energy to explore the inns there.
A small crowd had gathered in one corner of the square, not more than two dozen people, with children filling in the gaps. Marigold saw a familliar hat in the centre of it, a gaudy feather flying from the band. After a momentary panic, she realized he was too busy with the crowd to pay her any mind. His head was angled downwards, and the bodies surrounding him kept her safely out of view. She remembered his preference for the feather on the right side of his hat, and followed a trajectory to stay at his back as she snuck in for a closer look.
Signing autographs. That’s what this hero of the people was doing. He was signing the journals, books, bits of card that were handed to him. He had a fountain pen in his hand, which he used to deface those beautiful blank papers. He signed a few of the wooden figures made in his likeness, offered by the tiny hands lower down. Those used to be trees, Marigold thought with a pang of sadness. He signed the band of several imitation Sir Roger Hats™.
As he turned his head to grab another item to vandalize, she saw his face in profile. His bearded chin was wagging. She focused hard, to drown out the buzz of the streets, the stores, the crowd. She remembered the frequency of his voice, and tuned her ears to it.
“…to the mill in the meadow to the north. It was easy, for a witch always leaves a trail. Her claws had rent the trees as she passed, splitting the bark in three great slashes as long as my arm!”
He arced his hand through the air, the pages of the journal it held trilling in this sudden swift breeze.
“Her tracks were small, even compared to a normal woman’s…their boots are cut short, for they have no toes.”
Some of the children gasped at this.
“I followed these prints to the miller’s old barn, where the door had been broken in. The smell of death was everywhere! And deep in the darkness, a flash of green skin and teeth as long as a wolf’s! I leapt aside as the first spell was cast, missing the edge of my cape by only an inch…“
Marigold, no longer fearful of Sir Roger but still plenty annoyed, moved on with a roll of her eyes. There was an alley to the side streets a few paces behind her; what better place to start, she thought, than where I am now.
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