We passed an open door and I had a glimpse of a room that was lined with little boxed shelves with scrolls sticking out of them. From floor to ceiling they went, and it reminded me of a honeycomb, or the chambers in a paper wasps’ nest. At long tables, people sat with scrolls unfurled and weighted to lie open beside stacks of paper and inkpots and pen stands. I wanted to stare but when I slowed, one of the guards slapped me on the back of my head. ‘Walk!’ he reminded me, and I walked.
We passed another chamber full of tables and with the walls lined with books rather than scrolls. Scribes lifted their eyes from the pages and stared as we passed. I saw no windows, but squares of light shone through the stonework. I’d never seen such a thing. Some of the people in there were not much older than me and others were older than my father. Their robes were all a rich green. They were not Whites and I guessed that these were the Servants of the Whites. No one spoke as we passed though I felt their curious glances.
At the end of the corridor was a door and yet another set of steps. These were narrower and steeper, and I struggled to keep moving. At the top, I turned to look back. One of the guardsmen looked away from my gaze. The other never met it. He pounded on a door that had a little barred window in it until a woman with dark hair and brown eyes came and looked through the bars. ‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘Lock of Four,’ one of them said.
She raised her brows. ‘For whom?’
He gestured down. She stood on her tiptoes to look down at me. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Very well.’ I saw her puzzlement, but she unlocked the door and we went into a very small room. She turned away from us and unlocked a second door. Bright sunlight flooded in and she led us out onto a flat, unroofed area. I blinked my eyes and then lifted my hand to shade them. Light bounced back at me from a white floor. I squinted. It was a large area, with tall walls, and I caught a glimpse of a guard walking slowly along on top of the wall. We were on the roof of the stronghold. The tall graceful towers I had glimpsed rose from each corner of the structure.
‘This way,’ she said. I followed the woman and the guardsmen came behind me. I held one hand over my sun-dazzled eyes, squinting through my spread fingers. It seemed ridiculous: small me in the midst of such vigilance. We crossed an open space and then entered a narrower way, fronted with iron-barred chambers on both sides. Some were occupied but most were empty. I halted when the woman halted.
She looked down at me. ‘Now we wait for the Four, for only they have the keys to these last four cells. Give me that sack.’
I surrendered my small carry-pack reluctantly. She opened it and looked inside. ‘Just clothes,’ I told her. She said nothing as she rummaged through my tattered garments, then handed it back to me.
I heard a door shut and low contentious voices and squinted back the way we had come. The Four. The moment they became aware we were waiting, their conversation ceased. Each had a guard accompanying them. They walked briskly to where we stood. Symphe took an elaborate key on a jewelled fob from a pocket concealed in her skirts. She handed it to her guard, who inserted it into a long bar and turned it with a sharp ‘snap’. Then she stepped back as Coultrie handed a key with a white bone handle to his guard. Another snap. When all four keys had been inserted and turned, the woman who had guided us slid the long metal bar to one side and opened the door. She motioned me inside.
As I stepped through the door, I heard a deep soft voice from the next cell. ‘What, Symphe? Not even a hello? Coultrie, you should wash your face. You look ridiculous. Fellowdy, have you no youngster to bugger today? Ah, and here is Capra. I see you have washed the blood off your hands for this visit. How formal of you.’
Not a one of them flinched or responded. I was within my cage and couldn’t peer into the next one but I wondered who it was who so boldly challenged the Four. Then the first guardswoman shut the barred door with a clang. Each guard stepped forward to turn a key and remove it, and then present it to their master or mistress.
‘Child,’ Capra said abruptly. ‘Tell me your name and your father’s name.’
I had rehearsed it. ‘I am Bee Badgerlock, of Withywoods. My father is Holder Tom Badgerlock. He manages the sheep and the orchards and the grounds for Lord FitzChivalry. Please, just let me go home!’
Her eyes were flat. I hadn’t lied, not at all. I looked at her earnestly.
Without a farewell or words of any sort, they all walked away. From the next cell, I heard that soft voice again. ‘Eleven adults to lock up one little child. Are they right to fear you?’
I dared no response. They might ignore him, but I thought they might come back to beat me. Clutching my bundle, I surveyed my cell. There was a pot for waste in the corner, and a low bedstead with a straw-stuffed mattress with a single blanket of undyed wool at the foot of it. The back wall of my cell was of lacy white stone; the openings that let in air and light were shaped like leaves and flowers and seashells. I tried my hand in one. It could fit and I could reach all the way through to the outer wall. The wall was as thick as my hand and forearm. These cells would be unpleasant in winter, I thought to myself. Then I wondered if winter even came to this region, and whether I would live long enough to see it.
The cell was not much wider than the bed, with just room for me to walk past it. The door and the wall that faced the walkway were of bars. I had an unimpeded view of the empty cell across from mine. I would have no privacy here, not for using the waste pot or for changing out of my urine-soaked trousers.
I could not quite poke my head out between the bars. I looked as far as I could up and down the walkway, but saw no one. I had a small amount of private time. I pulled out the blue trousers that Trader Akriel had given me. I’d been wearing them the night they killed her. Her favourite shade of blue. And some brown spots of her blood. There were gaping holes in the knees now and the cuffs were frayed to fringe. But they were dry. I hastily changed and then spread out my wet trousers on the floor of my cell to dry.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. The straw mattress was thin. It crushed flat beneath me and I felt the ropes of the bedstead. It would, I decided, be more comfortable to pull the mattress off the bedstead and sleep on the floor. I went again to the door and peered out. The walkway was still empty. Only then did I allow myself to open the collar of my shirt. I tucked my chin and nose inside it and smelled the elusive, fading scent of honeysuckle from my battered, flaking candle.
‘Mama,’ I said aloud, as I had not said since I was very small. Tears stung my eyes as if my spoken word had summoned grief from the grave rather than any remembrance of her.
‘You are very, very young to be in such a large amount of trouble,’ the soft voice said. I froze and made no sound, my heart hammering. The voice was deep and though the words were in Common they were flavoured with a foreign accent. ‘Tell me, little thing. What wrong have you done? Or what wrong do the Four imagine you have done, to merit being locked away like this?’