The air was still and silent.
Ambrose got up and walked around the clearing, telling himself, You can never be too careful, but knowing as well that it was because he was afraid.
Hodgson had attacked him every night since Ambrose had fled Brigane, and every time it filled Ambrose with the same paralyzing terror.
From a young age, Ambrose had imagined fighting in battles and killing the enemy; that was what all Brigantine boys were brought up to hope for. Ambrose had visualized many times thrusting his sword into a Calidorian soldier, a Calidorian lord even. But Hodgson was a Brigantine. A member of the Royal Guard. A brother in arms. Ambrose told himself that he’d done nothing wrong. He’d been challenged and he’d defended himself. Hodgson was overconfident and had fallen for his feint, and Ambrose had been lucky, because otherwise it would have been him with the sword in his chest.
Ambrose sipped water from his flask and lay down again. He needed to sleep. He’d been riding hard for three days, with little food and less rest. He closed his eyes, trying to empty his mind, and eventually drifted back to sleep. He dreamed of lying in bed with Catherine, the drapes dark red around them as he pulled her gown from her shoulders and kissed her neck. She took his hand and touched the back of it gently with her fingertips, the touch that he loved so much. But as she looked up at him she turned into his father and said, “This hand killed a Brigantine soldier. This is the hand of a traitor.”
Ambrose woke with a start. It was getting light. He was covered in sweat again, and he went to the stream to wash, hacking at the undergrowth with his sword as he went, saying to himself, “I’m no traitor. Catherine knows that. So does my father. It was them or me. Them or me.’
He wanted to act with honor. That was all he’d wanted his whole life. To fight well, to act properly, to uphold his family name, and he had done all that and yet it had all gone disastrously wrong. Because of Boris, because of Noyes . . . because of the king. Because in Brigant now there was no honor. They had killed Anne and now they wanted to kill him.
And had Boris really challenged him because of one look he’d given Catherine?
He wasn’t sure.
But was he acting honorably with her?
Catherine was not even his to think of, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking of her. She was all he wanted to think of. She was betrothed to another man, and yet he dreamed of her in his bed, sleeping with him, loving him. But that was not his future; it never had been and it never could be. His future should have been the army, but that was now out of the question. He needed to find a different future for himself, but first he wanted to understand the past. He wanted to understand what had happened to his sister.
He was heading northwest to escape Noyes and his men in this quiet part of Brigant, but his aim was to go to Fielding, the place on the remote west coast where Anne had been captured and Sir Oswald had been killed. Ambrose didn’t know why his sister had gone to Fielding, but he suspected that it held a clue to why she had really been executed. His sister had been accused of having an affair with Sir Oswald, but Ambrose didn’t believe it for a moment. He knew they’d had a brief dalliance years ago, but it had come to nothing and they had remained what they both preferred, which was close friends and fellow travelers. They had been to many places together, staying away for long periods, always returning with stories of exotic foreign lands. So why had they been in a small village on the west coast of Brigant? What could possibly have interested his sister there? Ambrose wanted to see Fielding and find out. Even if he didn’t find an answer, he wanted to say he had tried, that he had not simply accepted the lies about his sister.
He went back to his meager camp and pulled out the last of the cheese and ham he’d bought at a farm the day before. He counted the money he had left. Eight shillings. It wasn’t much. Still, he wasn’t without resources. He had his most valuable possessions: his horse, saddle, sword, and knives. He’d bought an old jacket from a man in one of the villages he’d passed through. The leather was worn and split, but it was better than nothing. He’d kept his guard’s uniform, which was merely a cloak and jerkin, to wear at night to keep warm. He didn’t sleep at inns, partly because of the risk of Noyes hearing about him, partly because he needed the money for food, not a bed.
He ate the last of the cheese, saddled his horse, and set off.
By noon, he was out of the woods and into rolling grassland given over to sheep. He passed through a small hamlet and bought some milk, ham, and more cheese and got directions to Fielding. The roads were narrow, stony, and potholed, but by mid-afternoon he reached the coast. There was no sign of a town or village, and the only indication that there was a farmhouse somewhere was the presence of some thin, bedraggled sheep. However, it was a beautiful place. The sea was vast and blue-gray and the beach wide and sandy. And far away on the beach Ambrose saw a figure. Ambrose rode across the sand, and the old man, who had been bent over digging for whelks, stood upright and watched him approach.
“Good afternoon to you,” Ambrose said.
The man stared at him and gave a nod in reply.
“I’m looking for the village of Fielding.”
The old man gave a wheezy laugh. “You’re a bit old, ain’t you?”
“Old? For what?”
The man shook his head and then gestured to his left. “That way. North. The camp’s in the dunes. There’s bugger-all in the village; it was abandoned years ago.”
Ambrose wasn’t sure what to say to that, but regardless, the man had picked up his bucket of whelks and was walking away.
Ambrose rode north along the coast. The tense feeling in his stomach had returned. It was unlikely Noyes or his men would be here. But something was. Something to do with Anne. Something that had led to her death.
It was late in the day when he saw the sand dunes ahead. They were high and wide, like small hills, and he could see a few figures in the far distance on the beach. He cut inland to avoid being seen, then turned back north to ride through sandy fields where a few sheep nibbled at the poor grass. It was getting dark as he made his way through some thin trees, toward where he thought he’d seen the figures on the beach. He led his horse on a path through the dunes. Ahead, he could hear a few shouts and a laugh. Ambrose recognized the familiar and welcoming sounds of an army camp.
On a wide expanse of flat scrubby ground in the dunes were numerous tents and a few small fires. It looked like a typical army camp, except for one thing: all the soldiers were boys. Some seemed to be fifteen or sixteen, but others looked much younger, no more than twelve or thirteen.
Ambrose knew that many young men became soldiers as a way out of poverty, but none were allowed to swear loyalty to a lord until they had come of age, as Ambrose himself had done. As a young boy he’d wanted to fight for Brigant. He’d played war games with Tarquin, tracking and setting up ambushes, camping out for days on end, training in combat and horsemanship. His army training, the comradeship with his fellow guardsmen—those were days that he recalled with feelings of true happiness. But to gain those skills you needed to learn from older soldiers. Here there seemed to be only children.