The Cradle Queen by Steven Veerapen

Author:Steven Veerapen [Veerapen, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-11T22:00:00+00:00

***

Martin sat up in his cot. The hammock had been wrenched down, and a grumbling Guthrie had ordered a proper bed, with a wafer-thin mattress, brought in its place. ‘Much better than I’ve ever had,’ he had muttered, ‘and me a gentleman-born’.

‘Ahh,’ said Martin. ‘This is more the kind of thing for which I was meant. He prodded the pillow – a rare luxury – with his elbow. The one on the good side. Still, the movement sent a jolt of pain running through him, and he felt pearls of sweat pop out on his forehead and run down his face.

‘Cease moving,’ said Rowan.

Although Danforth had insisted that the queen’s physician was an honourable and trustworthy man, Martin had insisted on the services of Rowan Allen as soon as he had come to. The physician had stamped off, ignoring Danforth’s apologies, cursing ‘Scotch ruffians, thieves and ingrates’, and swearing in French. Martin had returned the curses in kind. Rowan Allen had, he recalled, said that she was skilled enough to care for her father in his dotage, and Martin trusted to the instincts of a girl who worked with flowers, herbs, and possets more than a man who looked to cutting and bleeding.

‘You know,’ said Rowan, ‘the apothecary in the burgh says that everything can be cured by the right diet. If you have a stomach ache, eat this. If you cut off your thumb butchering meat, eat that.’ Martin laughed. ‘What did I say about moving?’

‘Understood.’ He chewed on his lip.

‘What on earth happened to your face?’

‘My … is it bad?’ Martin’s right hand brushed his cheek. ‘Is it really bad?’

‘Pretty bad.’

‘I was in a fight.’

‘Fight, ha!’ Danforth’s voice barked from across the room. ‘He was struck in the chops by the fellow who was stabbed. Yesterday.’

Rowan laughed. ‘Well, that at least will fade. Your wound there, that will close up soon enough. I’ll fashion a bandage for your arm. It’ll keep it raised. Stop you from using it and tearing the hole. You have rare luck, Arnaud – it passed through you.’

‘He has rare luck that the man was a weak shot,’ sniped Danforth.

‘A hunting accident, I thought you said.’ Rowan turned sharp eyes on him. ‘It was poor luck, surely, that the man was a weak shot.’

‘So it was. I misspoke.’

‘And the man carried out, swearing and cursing, as I came in. Was he in the same accident?’

‘Yes.’

Martin looked away, whilst Danforth clasped his hands behind his back and looked down. ‘What were you hunting this time, the Calydonian Boar?’

‘Eh?’ Still Martin was looking at his chest, suddenly interested in the bloodstains on his shirt.

‘A great boar which ravaged Calydon,’ offered Danforth. ‘As I recall, it was shot by a woman in the end. That did not please the men.’ Martin looked up, to find Danforth looking at Rowan. His stare was somewhere between suspicion and, perhaps, attraction.

‘Atalanta,’ she said. ‘Who killed also two ravening centaurs. But she did not kill the boar, sir, only took the first shot and claimed its hide.

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