Rust the fox-woman was standing by the fence, shouting orders at some people who were unloading large red boxes from a covered cart.
Bess’s wagon was on the far side of the field, beneath the overhanging branches of a tree.
‘You had better be off, Lewin,’ Barda said, climbing down from the wagon seat. ‘We will see to things here.’
Reluctantly, Lief started across the field. As he passed the growing wood pile, a small figure carrying a towering bundle of sticks darted heedlessly across his path.
There was no way of avoiding a collision. Lief staggered and the child fell. Sticks flew everywhere.
‘Watch where you are going, bird-head!’ the child shouted angrily.
His small black eyes were sparkling with fury through a grinning, hairy mask. He was the boy Lief had noticed the night they were captured. The boy wearing the mask of a…
… a polypan, Lief realised, remembering the strange, thieving beast he and his companions had met on the River Tor.
The polypan-boy scrambled to his feet and began gathering his fallen sticks.
‘Now I will be the last of all Plug’s orphans to bring fuel for the fire,’ he grumbled. ‘That means I will be last in the line for food. And it is all your fault!’
‘Zerry!’ the frog-woman roared. ‘What are you playing at, you lazy young hound?’
The boy’s head jerked around. Without waiting to pick up the rest of the sticks, he shot away towards the wood pile.
‘It was not me, Plug!’ Lief heard him shouting as he ran. ‘It was his fault! He tripped me!’
Lief hurried on, wondering how many of the children in the camp were orphans, taken in by the Masked Ones to be trained in their ways. Quite a number, if Zerry’s words made sense.
He reached Bess’s wagon and moved under the tree to the back.
The door was closed. A lumpy sack was propped against the wall beside it. The sack smelled very strongly of rotten fruit. Here and there a thin white stem poked through the rough cloth.
Curiously, Lief pinched off the tip of one of the stems and squinted at it. It was not a stem, he thought, but a root. Some sort of crop. And, by its smell, it was from the field beside the forest.
He remembered how rough the ground had felt when he was lying in the field. That was because the Masked Ones had been digging there, he thought. Digging there for five whole days!
He saw that a large, empty iron pot hung over a pile of wood nearby. Bess was planning to make soup from the white roots, it seemed. Lief wrinkled his nose at the thought of it.
He moved to the door and raised his hand to knock. Then, with a shock, he heard voices coming from inside the wagon. He pressed his ear against the door, and listened intently.
‘Yar hart as raling yar had, Bess!’ hissed a voice he recognised as that of Quill, the eagle-man.
‘Ta bay was lad ta as!’ Bess growled back. ‘Ta sayns are all taya!’
The boy was led to us, Lief translated to himself. The signs are all there!
‘Sayns!’ snarled Quill. ‘Trackary, ya mayn! Can ya nat say at, Bess? Ta kang chays tas bay ta spay an as bacas ha laks layk Bede!’
… Trickery, you mean! Can you not see it, Bess? The king chose this boy to spy on us because he looks like Bede…
Yes, that is just what a tyrant king would do, Lief thought uneasily. He would know that Bess was more likely to accept someone who looked like her lost son.
But why did the Masked Ones fear spies at all? What were they hiding?
‘Ya ar wrang, Quill,’ he heard Bess say coldly. ‘Na, plays layv ma. Ha wal ba haya an a marnant.’
‘Haya?’ the eagle-man thundered. ‘Bat, Bess, ha wall say…’
Lief’s heart thumped. ‘See what?’ he whispered. ‘What will I see?’
‘Ha wal nat naw wat ha as saying,’ snapped Bess.
He will not know what he is seeing…
The door of the wagon began to open. Swiftly Lief jumped back, then took two rapid steps forward, as if he was just arriving. Quill stepped out of the wagon and they almost bumped into one another.
‘Oh—I beg your pardon!’ Lief stammered.
The eagle man stared, then brushed passed him without a word and strode away. It was impossible to tell whether he had been deceived.
‘Ah, Lewin!’ Bess called from the dimness of the wagon. Suddenly her voice was warm and welcoming. ‘Come in!’
6 – Mysteries
The wagon was richly furnished. The air was heavy with the scents of spices and perfumed candle wax.
Bess was sitting at the round table. A candle threw flickering light up onto her smooth owl face. Her hands were cupped around a glass ball in front of her.
‘Sit down, Lewin,’ she said, nodding at the chair on the other side of the table.
Unwillingly, Lief did as she asked.
‘Ah,’ Bess breathed. She stared, as if drinking in the sight of him.
But there is nothing to see, Lief thought. She cannot see my face. I am wearing a mask.
Then it struck him. The bird mask he was wearing must have once belonged to Bede. When Bess looked at him, she saw her son reborn.
He felt sick.
He looked down at the table. The glass ball was swirling with shadows. Was this what Quill had not wanted him to see? He thought of the Shadow Lord’s crystal, and shuddered.
Bess took her hands from the ball, and the shadows disappeared.
‘Do not fear the glass, Lewin,’ she murmured. ‘With its aid I read the signs, as my mother did before me.’
She pushed the ball away, revealing another object lying on the table in front of her. It was row of eight small metal rods fastened to a wooden base. She struck the first of the metal rods with her long fingernail and a low, clear note rang out.
‘Can you name that note, Lewin?’ she asked.
Lief had no idea what she meant. He shook his head.
Bess sighed. ‘I feared as much,’ she said. ‘You have a great deal to learn.’
She passed a sheet of paper to him. ‘Music is like another language,’ she said. ‘This is how we write it down.’
‘Now, I am going to play the notes on this paper,’ Bess said. ‘Listen carefully.’
She struck the rods one by one. Notes rang out, going up like stairs from low to high. She played them again, this time singing their names.
Lief’s fingers felt hot. He looked down and saw that the liquid that had oozed from the fragment of root was drying to grey jelly. His fingertips were stinging. Suddenly fearful, he rubbed them against his coat. The grey jelly peeled from his skin in tiny balls, which he brushed quickly onto the floor.
‘Stop fidgeting and pay attention, Lewin!’ snapped Bess. ‘You must learn to read and write music. How else will you be able to note down the beautiful songs you will compose for me, as Bede used to do?’
Lief’s face grew hot beneath his mask.
‘Bess—’ he mumbled. But Bess’s voice flowed on as if he had not spoken.
‘Ah, Bede’s songs could charm the birds from the trees,’ she sighed. ‘The words were full of feeling. The rhymes were perfect. The melodies were charming. And, of course, his voice was without compare. Wherever we went, silly village girls were drawn to him like bees to a honeypot.’
She laughed. ‘They paid well for the chance to swoon over Bede! When we moved on, we would leave a trail of broken hearts behind us, and our purses would be heavy with bareface gold.’
She reached across the table and took Lief’s hand. ‘And you will be the same, Lewin,’ she said. ‘You will restore the fortunes of the Masked Ones!’