Bronwyn's Bane Read online

  “Dumb joke,” Carole remarked. “Bronwyn didn’t even know about it, much less understand it. I don’t see the point.”

  “It was a christening gift, cousin, and meant, we must presume, as all christening gifts are meant,” Bronwyn said bitterly. “It was intended to help me grow up to be a better queen. Don’t you see how well it’s worked? Everyone is so starved for my company because of it that even my own mama and Aunt Maggie banished me here so—so the new baby wouldn’t have to always take second place to such a brilliant big sister, I suppose. Can’t you imagine what a fine stable government we shall have with all my subjects loving, respecting and trusting me as you do?”

  Carole winced. “I see your point,” she said glumly. “You think maybe you’re supposed to stay here so they can give the baby the crown instead of giving it to you? I understand why you might think so, but Mama and Aunt Winnie wouldn’t do that without explaining it to you, I’m sure.”

  The swan made a rude noise.

  “No, they would have,” Carole insisted. “And anyway, she’s not old enough to be queen yet and there’s a war on and there could be all kinds of other reasons. Why would Mum make such a point of explaining this curse thing to me if she holds it against Bronwyn? It’s just one problem—like—like not being good at drawing or ciphers or something. It’s not as if you mean to lie, after all, Bron. I’m sure you’re good at other things.”

  “A very magnanimous viewpoint, but hardly politically pragmatic, dear girl,” the swan said, flicking her tail feathers slightly.

  Bronwyn thought of all the jousting dummies she’d slain and the battles into which she’d victoriously led her dolls. Surely fate had led her thus far for some grim purpose. “There is but one honorable course for me to take in order to redeem myself,” she announced at length. “The reputation of Bronwyn the Bold must be upheld at all costs to prove my worthiness for the throne. Therefore, I must join my father as soon as possible and win glory on the battlefield at his side in order to vindicate myself.”

  Carole looked pained for a moment, then brightened. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I might have thought it up myself sooner or later but since you mention it, we know it’s rubbish.”

  “Your confidence in me is touching, cousin,” Bronwyn said, but her face lightened a little. At least Carole and the swan were interested enough in her to try to figure out what she meant, even when she wasn’t sure herself.

  “There is another way, of course,” the swan said. The girls looked at her expectantly. “We can attempt to locate this agent person and through her the originator of the curse.”

  “How?”

  “Quite easily. I shall glide to the beach where the two of you will loose me from this harness. Thereupon shall I fly back to Little Darlingham to the home of that so dreadful woman from whom the wizard obtained the curse. I shall make her tell me how to remove it. First, however, I shall stop at your manor, my dear Carole, and request a rescue party come to fetch you.”

  “Wonderful!” Carole said. “Meanwhile, maybe we can find something to eat.”

  Chapter 3

  Carole wasn’t the only hungry one in the neighborhood. Bright eyes watched and a stomach that could have been mistaken for a bear growled from within the forest as the girls hopped from the chariot and unhitched Anastasia. The swan had worn the harness for so long that her feathers were rubbed away beneath it, a circumstance that led to a lot of hissing and fussing.

  “I suppose that will leave some ghastly calluses on my alabaster skin when I resume my true form,” she fretted.

  “Maybe you could wear another kind of harness to cover them up—something in gold with emeralds or pearls, maybe—and start a new fashion.”

  Bronwyn nodded wisely. “Since I look so fetching in armor, all the court ladies have affected it recently.”

  “I think,” the swan said shortly, “that there is no time like the present to begin my journey. I shall be gone but a day or two.” Then she folded her half-furled wings and asked kindly, “But how thoughtless I am! You children must be very hungry. You’ll be famished before your people can fetch you. However will you survive till then?”

  “We won’t even notice starving,” Bronwyn promised. “We’ll have our minds upon affairs of state. I shall solicit the commoner’s viewpoint from Carole.”

  “Thanks awfully,” Carole said.

  “There are those tasty plants in the bottoms of pools, you know,” the swan said. “I could pull some up for you before I go.”

  “Er—never mind,” Carole said, and shrugged. “We can always fish, and there’re berries this time of year, bound to be. Oh, and I almost forgot. I’ve some biscuits in my…” she dug into her still damp pockets and extracted a shapeless lump of mush which stuck to her fingers. “Well, they’re a bit soggy, but we can manage.”

  “Yes,” Bronwyn agreed brightly, though she’d never fished nor eaten berries off the bush and had no idea how anyone could eat such things. “We shall roast them on a spit inside my helmet, as I’ve done so often when in the field with Father. I know exactly how to do it.”

  “Don’t worry.” Carole almost laughed at the puzzled note in Bronwyn’s voice. “We’ll figure it out. You just fly for help, Your Highness, and never mind us.”

  “Very well. Stay in this precise place so your people can locate you from my directions.”

  “We will,” Carole promised, regarding ruefully the pasty mess on her hands. “I want to be home for a real supper tomorrow.”

  The girls watched quietly as the great swan fanned her wings and swept skyward, above the spiring trees, momentarily eclipsing the sun with her body.

  But she had no sooner cleared the beach and topped the first line of trees in the forest behind where Bronwyn and Carole stood when something sparkled briefly against the green, and spun upward, like a shooting star in reverse, and Anastasia cried out with swan’s eerie trumpeting. One wing flapping feebly, the other crumpled against her body, she tumbled crazily, plummeting into the woods.

  Bronwyn and Carole exchanged a brief startled glance. Then Bronwyn clamped on her helmet, grabbed up her shield and sword, and sprinted into the woods, Carole close on her heels.

  They were only just in time to avert a tragedy, though to whom the tragedy would have occurred was far from certain. Anastasia leaned lopsidedly in a small clearing, the hilt of a dagger buried in one shoulder, a ruby ribbon trickling from it. The injured shoulder was the only part of her that was still.

  Her beak slashed, stabbed, darted, and snaked back to strike again while her good wing whipped up and down, scattering fall leaves and dirt with each beat. She hissed hideously and no wonder. A plumpish, swarthy boy with black hair and a gleefully ravenous expression on his face worried her like a cat teasing an oversized sparrow.

  He feinted, jabbed, circled her—always avoiding the powerful uninjured wing and grabbing, when he thought he could get away with it, at the knife in the wound.

  Bronwyn strode forward and simply pushed the boy off his feet, planting her sword point calmly in his gullet. “Hold knave, or by my grandfather’s noble bones I’ll spit you as I did the Black Knight when last he trifled with a friend of mine.”

  The boy didn’t know who Bronwyn’s grandfather was nor to which black knight she referred, but he did know when he was in trouble.

  “Spare me, great lady! Spare this poor hungry gypsy boy. I’ll give you a share of the meat. Just don’t kill me before I’ve had my last meal, I beg you. Surely such a magnificent lady as you wouldn’t kill a man when his belly’s rumbling?”

  Bronwyn tried to look fierce, because after all, Anastasia was an ally and one ought to defend one’s allies, but then, a person could certainly see the boy’s point about eating too. She appealed mutely to Carole. The gypsy caught the look that passed between them and shifted tack.

  “Sweet maiden,” he said, squirming to try to capture the witch with his large soulful eyes. “You must not allow your friend to slay me. Why, I hold
the key to your fortune. Without me, you never will learn of the beautiful hall you shall someday live in nor the handsome stranger who will come into your life.” The stranger he had in mind, actually, was himself. He thought it unwise to mention that if she succumbed to his blandishments he intended to be out of her life as fast as he was in it, though he still hoped to make off with some of that swan first.

  Carole gave him a withering look, turned her nose up and knelt beside the swan. She examined the dagger and entrance wound from all angles. Anastasia looked at her so expectantly that she felt compelled to make some comment.

  “Stab wound,” she said with what she hoped was a certain air of witchy professional proficiency.

  Anastasia closed her eyes momentarily, as if relieved. Carole was glad the swan was relieved and wished she were. People tended to expect a great deal of witches in difficult situations, even when one hadn’t had time to learn everything there was to know about one’s own powers, much less one’s mother’s and grandmother’s powers. A person just couldn’t help it under such trying circumstances if there were certain deficiencies in one’s competence.

  Carole was quite adept at dancing things about and could even do some housework more or less magically this way, making threads dance through needles and needles dance through cloth or dishes through dishwater. In that way her magic roughly paralleled her mother’s hearthcrafting talent. But Mother hadn’t gotten around to showing her what all the powders in her medicine pouch were for, or any of the medicinal arts for which Great-Granny Brown was so well known. Witch from a long line of witches she was, but Carole still couldn’t tell mugwort from wolfsbane. She abandoned at once the idea of dancing the knife out of Anastasia’s wound when she considered what a mess the blade would made cutting capers in the poor swan’s shoulder.

  Nevertheless, someone had to do something—and quickly. If only the unicorn’s blessing were still fresh in the river water, the water alone would cure anything. Even then, though, they’d still have to get the knife out of the wound.

  Suppressing the niggling idea that one reason she hadn’t learned the healing arts yet was that she was secretly a trifle squeamish, Carole called to her cousin with all the authority suited to the witch in charge of the case. “Bronwyn, leave that little weasel alone for a moment, won’t you, and pull this out of Her Highness. You’re stronger than I am and it ought to come out all in one pull so it won’t hurt so much.”

  Bronwyn handed her the sword, still pointed at the boy’s throat, and said, “He must not escape. He is doubtlessly an enemy spy sent to kill enchanted royalty.”

  “What royalty?” the boy demanded, sitting halfway up as the blade retreated during the transfer. He lay down again rather quickly as the blade wobbled back into position against his throat. “I harmed no royalty. Just that swan there. They taste like chicken. Ask anyone.”

  Bronwyn meanwhile laid down her shield, put both hands on the dagger hilt and pulled. Anastasia gave a long indrawn hiss. She glanced quickly at the blood welling from the dagger hole and flopped her head down, drawing a weary wing over it with one brief willful movement before her entire body toppled over onto her good side.

  The gypsy boy laughed a short, nervous laugh. “You have been making sport with me, pretending to be upset and finishing her off yourselves! Ah, well. I am not a greedy man. Are you going to carve or shall I?”

  The laugh turned into a cough as Carole pressed forward. “I will, if you don’t belt up.”

  The boy’s eyes widened with dismay. “But you are serious! That swan is some kind of friend of yours. Ah, forgive me. It is just my luck that the first drumstick I meet has friends in high places.”

  “She’s a princess,” Carole said, and even though she hadn’t been particularly impressed with Anastasia’s claim, she wanted the boy to be. “She was going to help us get out of here and even get Bronwyn’s curse removed when you butted in.”

  “Princess? Bronwyn? Curse? Say, you do not mean—she cannot be—” He sat up as far as the sword point would permit and squinted at Bronwyn and the swan, then back at Carole, recognition and a wide white smile dawning on his dusky face. He clapped a hand to his forehead. “What great good fortune to meet together on the same day Bronwyn the Bald-Faced Liar and Magda Brown’s witchling! And what luck for you, pretty ladies. For today the stars have smiled upon you and led you if not quite out of the wilderness at least into the protection of Jack the Gypsy.”

  * * *

  Later, leaning back on his elbows and toasting his feet by a cozy fire, Jack rubbed his stomach and sighed. “How clever you are to whistle the fishes from the river, Lady Carole. Though I practically had to force myself to eat, you understand, so shattered was I to realize I had harmed that wonderful swan-princess. It was only because I was so hungry, you know. Berries alone are not food enough for a man, and my snares have yielded little. Otherwise, I would not have touched your friend. I am very fond of animals. They all like me. Perhaps they know that my own grandfather was once a bear, bewitched into that guise by the same evil man who has cursed the Princess Bronwyn.” He shrugged. “For whatever reason, beasts and I understand each other. As I say, they like me. And it is a very good thing for us that fishes like you.”

  Carole blushed under his rather self-consciously smoldering gaze. Though he looked a bit younger than she and also as if his recent experience was the only one he had ever had with hunger in his entire life, he was undeniably handsome, with his dark curls and merry grin. She was gratified she had thought of whistling the fish out of the river, where Jack and Bronwyn could catch, kill, and clean them. Jack had a dry tinder box and was an expert fire builder (“If there’s one thing gypsies know about, it’s campfires,” he’d assured them) they were all soon comfortably full of fish and relatively warm.

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” she said modestly. “Just a little trick I do. And I shouldn’t worry too much about Anastasia. She’s just sleeping now. I’m sure of it. I don’t think the wound is as bad as we thought. Probably the fall just knocked the wind out of her.”

  “Still,” Jack said, “Never will I forgive myself if her injury proves permanent. To think that I struck down the only creature who could lift the curse of Bronwyn the—the so-beautiful Princess Bronwyn—”

  “And it doesn’t bother you nearly as much that you prevented us from being rescued, I suppose,” Bronwyn said. She was not about to be fooled by his flattery now. She’d heard what he called her earlier and besides, it wasn’t hard for anyone as familiar with falsehood as she to know one when she heard one.

  “Never fear, dear lady. Have I not said luck has smiled upon you and sent you to me? I like you. I take you under my protection. There is nothing more with which to concern yourselves. We have fire, we have fish, we have the great outdoors…”

  “We have winter coming,” Carole said. He was, after all, only a boy, no matter how nice-looking.

  “That should not be troublesome to Master Jack,” Bronwyn said sweetly. “He knows everything—who you are, who I am and all of the fond nicknames by which my subjects call me. Surely he knows—”

  “Ah, my dear Princess, I see I have offended you!” With the graceful leap of a well-fed housecat who knows on which side its bread is buttered, the boy flowed to his feet and back down on his knee in front of her. “Had your garment a hem I would assuredly kiss it but under the circumstances,” he looked significantly at her grubby bare knees between the mid-thigh hem of her under-tunic and the top of her sandal laces. “Well, yes, anyway. The name given you by those who have never seen your towering loveliness nor felt the tremendous power of your charming blade came to my tongue only because since I first heard it while listening to my father and grandmother talk at night behind the curtains of our wagon, the idea of the beautiful princess whose lies put those of a gypsy to shame has burned in my imagination as one to cherish.”

  Carole giggled. “Cousin, it sounds to me as if you’ve met your match.”

  “Surely not!” B
ronwyn replied, blushing till her freckles were joined in a uniform shade of peach.

  “And Lady Carole,” Jack said, “How can you fail to recognize me? We two played together among the tents of my people when we were but infants? Your parents and mine fought brave battles together and it is well known among my folk that the only women in Argonia as darkly beautiful as gypsies are the bewitching Brown sorceresses. Who else should I think you are when I know you are no woman of my tribe and yet look enough like me that you could be my cousin as well as the Princess Bronwyn’s?”

  “Too bad you didn’t figure all this out before you knifed Anastasia,” Carole said. She remembered her father’s songs about those battles Jack spoke of. What the gypsy boy wasn’t mentioning was that Carole’s folks and his had been on opposite sides in at least one of those battles.

  He shrugged. “As you say, it is a little wound. It will surely mend.”

  “Don’t tease, Carole,” Bronwyn said. “Think how good it was of Jack to come to these woods specifically with the idea of protecting us and helping us in our quest to end my curse.”