An Exchange of Gifts Page 4

  As he had asked, she wore her tattered dress, braided her hair tight to her skull, and tied the headscarf in the fashion he had seen women wearing in the market. That didn’t make her feel at all disguised. She could have wished that Market Day had dawned gray and drizzling, but that would have meant many who might come to buy on a fair bright day would stay away. Which would do their savings no good. Meanwhile, by candle light, Wisp had taken charcoal from the hearth and was now dirtying her face, drawing lines, he said, to make her appear aged. And she was to walk ungracefully, lurching from side to side when they reached the town.

  “I don’t honestly don’t think this disguise idea will work.”

  “Oh, it’ll work. You’ll see. I’ve made you warts, and put hairs on them.”

  “What?”

  Wisp laughed at her reaction. Then touched the spot at the side of her nose and the end of her chin. “Everyone will look at them and not at you,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  “When it’s much too late to do anything about it,” she said caustically.

  “No, no. Lots of people will be on the road. We’ll have a chance to perfect your appearance.”

  Meanne was still dubious, but there were other considerations which she had to take into account. And, in a way, she had missed having company far more than she had at first thought she would. Wisp was a very good companion, easy to get along with, thoughtful of her and considerate, but they had so little in common beyond their lives together here. And yet, she had been more content in Wisp’s company than with anyone else in her entire life.

  So they set out. Wisp had contrapted a little barrow into which they put all the little sacks, jars, leathern bottles, as well as some honeycombs which Wisp had dared stings to get. Honey was much in demand at the market. And they brought a dozen or so reed baskets which Meanne had made for the little wild, sweet apples, hazelnuts, and walnuts they had gathered, much scolded at by the squirrels who had watched from the upper branches of the trees.

  They had been on the road for some time, several hours Meanne was sure, when they encountered the first travelers. Wisp knew the farmers by name and greeted them, and she received nods and one or two tentative smiles. Involuntarily, her hand went to her face, to cover the disfiguring warts.

  “You see?” Wisp whispered to her, his eyes sparkling with malice. “Don’t forget to lurch. And if you could manage a stumble or two, that would be even better.”

  “I thought you said your mother wasn’t decrepit.”

  “Well, there has to be a good reason why you don’t come to market. Everyone else does, feverish or with broken legs. If you can’t walk well enough to make the journey, that would excuse you.”

  So Meanne lurched and stumbled, once accidentally, but the trip sent her into the laden market cart of one of the more prosperous looking farmers.

  “We’ll never make the market to get the best place for our stall,” the farmer grumbled, “if we have to keep at your mother’s pace.”

  “Oh, then, good sir, go on ahead of us. We won’t mind,” Wisp said in such a charming manner that guilt overtook the farmer and he suggested that the ox would not be overburdened by Widow Sudge’s weight since she was so thin. Meanne wondered how he could consider her ‘thin’ although, possibly by contrast, since his well-cushioned wife was with him, striding along like a good countrywoman. She sniffed when Widow Sudge was installed on the seat. Meanne would rather have walked for the cart swayed enough to make her feel nauseous and bumped about so that her tailbones were rubbed sore on the hard seat by the time they reached the town.

  The town was smallish by the standards she had been accustomed to—clusters of houses surrounding the market square and the church, which was so poor it had no steeple. But Meanne had been so long in the forest with no one but Wisp that the sudden sight of so many faces and bodies and the noise of so many voices almost frightened her. She sat erect as she could until Wisp tugged at her skirt and whispered that she was not riding her lady’s carriage now. So she slouched all the way across the market square. Then she and Wisp had to set up their little stall—a rough board across two stumps—almost outside the square. But she arranged things as attractively as possible, setting the baskets of fruit and nuts in front of the stall, and arranging the bags, jars, and bottles where all her wares could be seen.

  Wisp did the calling, enticing people to come to their stall, recognizing and talking to those he knew, encouraging them to purchase products which he remembered they’d previously bought. Meanne was quite impressed and wondered again whether he had been cheated by cunning townsfolk who were, as she remembered, always trying to cheat her father out of his just taxes.

  They didn’t sell much in the first several hours, which depressed Meanne, although Wisp kept trying to reassure her that people always bought necessary items first, and he had done most of his selling in the afternoons. To appear busy, Meanne constantly reorganized their wares. Most of the time she stood on first one foot, and then the other and wished she could sit. She’d had a lot more practice sitting at large gatherings than standing about. That had been for common folk.

  ‘You’re now the common folk,’ she told herself bitterly. And then reminded her chastened self that Wisp had been quite right—no one was looking at her at all.

  A shout in a tone of alarm alerted the entire market place as one of the market stewards came charging into the center of the square, babbling about troops. Those in the very center of the square, the prime area for stalls, suddenly began clearing their wares and affairs with loud calls and shrieks for assistance.

  Not everything had been hauled to safety when a black horse, bracketed by two of the grays her father used for heralds, came cantering into the square, followed by a troop of the household guards. She shrank back against the wall at the sight, grateful that Wisp put himself before her, a living shield.

  “Don’t worry, Meanne. I’ll protect you from the soldiers,” he said over his shoulder, somehow larger and bulkier in his effort to protect her.

  Not that the heralds were even looking about. They lifted their cornets and blew the announcement voluntary. Then the leader—and his horse was caparisoned with the de Ravelon colors so the rider was probably Timeon, the third son, who was currying favor to get a military commission—unrolled the message and began bellowing words, some of which he badly mumbled. He sounded as if he either had a cold or was hoarse from repeating himself all over the country.

  “MUMBLE MUMBLE KNOW YEZ THAT…REWARD…” Gasp of delight from the crowd, “. . . WHOMEVER…mumble mumble…WHEREABOUTS OR CAN LEAD…SIGNED THIS TENTH DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH…” Timeon had quite possibly been traveling a long time, Mearme thought with no compassion. Lady Suvanna must miss him frightfully. “MUMBLE MUMBLE…” and he rolled up that sheet and stuck it in the message tube to one side of his saddle and, with the expertise of performing some habitual gesture, he extracted a second roll from another tube. Standing up in his stirrups now, he held it top and bottom, and as he turned in her direction, she could see it was a full face portrait of herself, taken from the court painting that had been made the previous year for her eighteenth birthday.

  She hid her face behind Wisp’s back, warts and all. But the eyes of the entire crowd were on the troop, and there were exclamations of amazement and delight—and one or two bawdy remarks from males—from those viewing her painted face.

  ‘Whyever did they paint me with such a vacuous expression,’ Meanne thought. ‘I look as if I were about to simper like that bubble-headed Lady Suvanna. And never, ever was I known to simper.’

  “Easy,” Wisp said. Meanne realized she had been digging her fingernails into his shoulder, which was higher than she remembered it being. He must finally have begun to grow.

  “THE MURDERERS OF PRINCESS ANASTASIA MUST BE FOUND ,” Timeon’s voice rang clearly through the murmurs of the market square. “SOMEWHERE, SOMEONE IN THIS KI
NGDOM MUST HAVE SEEN SOMETHING. ” He had another scroll which he exposed…this time a painting of the blooded gelding she had ridden.

  Good heavens, she had staged her death rather too authentically. That was both a relief—because it meant they were not looking for a live person—and dismay, that she was being mourned. She really hadn’t meant to cause everyone grief…even her father for wanting to marry her off to that dreadful Baron.

  Still, as no one could have seen her or her erstwhile murderer, Timeon’s quest was doomed to failure. That is, unless he came close enough to identify her. He was dismounting now, and so were the heralds and troops. Small boys had been enticed from the crowd as horse holders, and the liveried men were moving around, each of them carrying a smaller replica of that awful court portrait and showing it to everyone.

  “Don’t worry,” Wisp said to her. “They won’t recognize you from that picture, I assure you.”

  “Yes, but Timeon knows me.”

  “He does, Princess?” Wisp said in a low voice, his eyes dancing with a dark and suddenly menacing light.

  Would Wisp turn her in? For the reward? It would be more than a boy of his standing would ever come across legitimately. No, she quelled the rising panic. Wisp had been her friend, and he could no more risk being identified as a runaway as she could. But Timeon himself was moving down this row of stalls. She had danced with him more times than she cared to remember. He had even attempted to flirt with her until someone, quite likely the bailiff, had warned him off. Old Stepano rarely missed noting anything to do with her, or the conduct of young men in her presence.

  As Timeon neared her, she stiffened, then remembered to sag like a woman bowed down by the weight of responsibility. Nervously she rearranged her packets and bags and noticed that her hands had got wrinkled and gnarled. Just what old Martita had warned would happen if she insisted on ‘rummaging in dirt and coming into contact with worms and slugs and slimy things that carry heaven-knows-what diseases.’ She hid her disfigured hands in the ragged apron which had suddenly grown awful looking stains as well as rents.

  She kept her head down, her chin, wart and all, almost touching her chest so all she saw of Timeon was his mud-splattered boots as he walked by, not so much as pausing to peer in her face as she had noticed him doing in every other female’s face. She was hurt, definitely shocked, and almost outraged.

  “Told you no one would look twice at you, Meanne,” Wisp said in a low voice that carried only to her ears.

  She wasn’t sure she could trust herself to speak…especially with Timeon near enough to hear her. He’d once said he loved to listen to her beautiful lilting voice that made common words sound golden.

  “In fact,” Wisp went on with an edge to his words that she had never heard before, “no one wants to look at you at all.”

  She looked up at him…then adjusted her gaze downward to his customary height. He must have been standing on a box or something before, for he’d shrunk again. There was a ‘knowingness’ in his eyes that quite frightened her.

  “Let’s leave this place,” she whispered to Wisp, wanting him to return to the charming, amusing, gentle companion of the past months: wanting to leave this market square which was so exposed to her: wanting to run back to the safety of the forest and the idyllic safe life she had enjoyed there with him.

  “What? And go hungry or cold this winter? No, my lady,” and he drawled that title in an unpleasant and unWispish fashion, “we shall stay to the bitter end.”

  It did not comfort Meanne in the least that, by dusk, all their goods were sold, and at good prices. The troops had had a stroll about the marketplace to see if anything for sale was worth their coin. Two soldiers whom she recognized from the castle guards bought lavender from her and, for that moment, because they didn’t recognize her and she knew the sweethearts for whom they were buying, her spirits returned as she thought of the irony that the lavender they bought had been cultivated and harvested by their own princess and no one would ever know.

  Wisp made her go to the wool merchant’s stall to buy skeins and sturdy cloth to make her winter clothes. She made her purchases as quickly as she could—as much because the draper was as anxious to be rid of her as soon as possible as because she did not care to linger to be questioned, as many of the townsfolk were. The troop was certainly determined to carry out the letter of their orders.

  As darkness fell and she thought of the long trip home—and more of leaving the market square as fast as possible—Meanne suddenly could not seem to get Wisp to leave. He had always returned quickly from his own trips to the market. Why was he dallying now? They had all they came for—the sale of the produce, the purchases of wool, cloth, more flour, salt, beans and butter: and bread and cheese to eat on their return journey.

  Then, with equal and unexpected precipitousness, Wisp could not get out of the town fast enough. He even set her in the barrow—“you’re not supposed to walk fast, you know”—and was pushing her through the gates before she knew what was what.

  “And why the haste, Master Wisp?” she asked, annoyance and indignity making her waspish.

  “The troops are now asking who’s new in this area and I do not want them looking me over.”

  “But you surely don’t think you’d be suspected of murdering me?” She was so amused at such conceit that she laughed, and he deliberately pushed the barrow into a pothole, making her teeth rattle. When she tried to climb out, a very hard strong hand on her shoulder thwarted the action.

  “I may yet, madame,” he said, once more in that hard tone of voice that was so unWispish.

  A little more frightened by this change in Wisp than she ever thought she could be, she subsided until they were well past the first of the farms. She could hear the lowing of unmilked cows and the barking of dogs as they passed.

  “I’d rather walk now, please, Wisp,” she said, having decided that was the proper tone to take with him. “You’ve enough to push with our purchases.”

  She had both hands on the rough sides of the barrow and push-jumped herself out of it. And got the second shock of her life. For the person propelling the barrow was not her Wisp, but a tall, albeit slender, young man, with burning blue eyes in an angry face.

  “Wisp?” she cried for the young man resembled Wisp, as he would perhaps look when he reached his majority.

  This Wisp dropped the handles of the barrow and faced her.

  “Yes, Princess, Wisp, your obedient servant,” said Wisp’s voice, issuing from the transformation. Once again he made the sweeping bow of the courtier. The expression on his face was not that of obedience or in the least servile.

  “I don’t understand. I really don’t understand…Wisp?” She added the name, hopeful of an explanation.

  “Late of the household of Baron Estevan de Bolivarre.”

  “Oh!” She backed off from him, hands in a defensive attitude. For it was from a marriage with Baron Estevan de Bolivarre that she had fled. “But…why do you hate me?”

  There was no doubt of that nor the contempt in which he held her.

  “I thought you the daughter of a rich land owner perhaps, but I never considered a Princess of the Realm,” he said in a mocking tone.

  “How does that make me more contemptible?”

  “Remember the stripes on my back?” He leaned toward her, the blue eyes that had once so kindly regarded her full of hatred, contempt and more, complex emotions.

  “How could I forget? De Bolivarre ordered them? Why?”

  “Because, madam, I would not use my Gift to his benefit!” Wisp stood proudly erect.

  “Oh!” Meanne swallowed with dismay, attempting to make sense out of the situation. “Then the portrait I was sent was not accurate? I knew there was something about the man…”

  “Indeed, your instinct did not mislead you,” Wisp said, his manner to her slightly tempered.

&nbs
p; “But your Gift? Were you being forced to… Oh, no!” Suddenly Meanne knew the style of Wisp’s Gift: he was a shape-changer, an illusion-maker. And all this time, he had been changing not only himself but her when the need arose, and he’d been making any other ‘alterations’ that were needed to preserve the illusions that had guarded them both. The Forester not looking at her; the ‘stones’ that had been his bribe; his inability to find the house again; whatever people ‘saw’ of her in the town square. But mostly, how Wisp had appeared to her, appealingly young, deft, and unthreatening. Had those weals been genuine, or a ploy to gain her sympathy and lower her guard against him? Yes, they had been real enough: they had supported his tale of being a runaway—with good cause. And they were still visible now, as pale scars on his back on those summer days when he had bared his back to summer sun while they worked, side by side, in the garden.

  “Oh yes,” he mimicked her words in a bitter tone.

  And the night when she’d thought Wisp had moved across the doorway? How close she had come to discovering the true form of the sleeper! And they’d lived together for months!

  “I was to accompany the Baron to your father’s city as his bosom-friend,” and now Wisp’s voice dripped with loathing and abhorrence, “so that I could maintain the illusion of a handsome, fine, upstanding, generous man…”

  “But how could you do that all the time?” Wisp would have be extraordinarily Gifted.

  “Not all the time, Princess,” Wisp replied. “Only long enough to get you back to his castle. Then you would have had to deal with the real man.”

  “Oh, Wisp, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I just didn’t like him. But Father insisted. His Gift would be reinforced by mine. And you were beaten because I refused?” Her hands stretched out involuntarily towards him, his back.

  “No, I was beaten because I refused, madam. I had evidently left before a message could be sent him that you were…how shall I put it? Unavailable? Murdered?”