Shield of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman Read Free Book Online

other back to the bridge above.
    I looked into the park—no one yet.
    “I have to find food! Hurry!” We ran across the bridge to the kitchen.
    We were both weeping but it didn’t matter. “I mun lead ye to Dere Street close on Hadrian’s Wall,” Margery said shrilly. “He told me as I must. Will ye eat turnips, My Lady?”
    “Anything! Hurry!”
    We both made bundles of our skirts, threw in bread, meat, onions, beans, everything mixed.
    “Let’s go, dearie,” the dame said.
    “No, not yet.” I thought I heard a voice from above, mayhap in my own head, but ’twas my mother nonetheless. “I’ll be right back, Margery.”
    And I ran away before she could protest, past the smoldering bodies, over the privet hedge, past the leek garden, the pot-herbs, the medicinal plants—where I neatly swooped up a handful of hemlock—past the hawthorn into the orchard. ’Twas like a dream, the blossoms still falling, my mother’s voice still echoing from only yesterday.
    “Mother?” I said in a wavery thick voice. “Mother?”
    The blossoms swirled in an updraft and I saw her form bending and swaying.
    “Mother!” I ran to her but she was far ahead and I kept running in and out of the trees, sobbing. Then I saw her direction: ’twas toward our fruit cellar, and it came to me what she wanted. The deep fuchsia cherry tree shivered by the path as memory flooded back.
    “Yes!” I panted, “I understand.”
    Soon the treasure was up and I reached inside the box, grateful that I’d had to weigh and feel the coins for their value. I took silver livres, then fished for the gold coins from Byzantium and found twenty, tossed in a few deniers and marcs for immediate expenses. I carefully replaced the box.
    “Don’t leave yet,” my mother ordered. “Put your father’s sword with the silver and bury it with my vial and blood when you return.”
    “Yes, yes I will.”
    I pressed the wall to the right as I’d been instructed and a door swung open. Quickly I thrust my father’s sword into the small room with our other silver objects and pushed the stone façade back in place.
    “Will you talk to me again?” I asked the empty air, but there was no answer.
    I retraced my steps toward the hall where I took the scroll, then to the kitchen. As I passed the hellish pile, my father’s whisper nowentered my brain: “Go as a boy…. Tell
no one
your true identity until you reach the king.”
    Holding my breath, I circled the human butchery to find someone near to my size. My fathers young messenger Arthur was closest and his clothes appeared unharmed. Gulping back nausea, I began slowly to disrobe his stiff cold body. With my arms near full, I still must find weapons: I settled on a hunting bow and arrows carried by our archer, Gerald, for those with my father’s dagger were all I could handle. I loaded Arthur’s hat with my coins, threw his fur over my shoulder and walked awkwardly back to the kitchen.
    Dame Margery stood in the yard, quivering with fear for she thought I’d been caught at last.
    “There’s some of them Scots hid in the cheese room to trap us,” she wept. “I heard them scuffling around.”
    “Lance!” I cried, wondering how I could have forgotten.
“Deo juvante
, he’s alive!”
    The wolf leaped again and again to mouth my face in his great jaws, saying in his way that he understood the horror as well as I did.
    “Hush!” Dame Margery clutched my shoulder. “Listen!”
    In the distance we heard men laughing and shouting.
    “They’ll catch us sure!” Dame Margery’s gaunt face showed every bone, and tears ran.
    “The labyrinth!” I cried. “Maisry and I used to hide there!”
    We ran awkwardly to the horse stalls, counted three from the door, knocked aside a stack of bales and pushed together with all our might. Behind us the laughter grew louder. Hooves on the bridge!
    And the ancient door swung open. For an instant we saw the outline of a stone-hewn tunnel big enough for a horse, then