A fortnight later, I spotted the dust cloud raised by multiple vehicles on a dirt road. Out of curiosity, I hid in the thick brush on the east side of the driveway in front of Lord Herman’s manor house. The well-dressed man and woman who had watched me and my boy in the garden were none other than Lord and Lady Herman. They stood in front of the manor with the servants fanned out to either side, ready to receive the visitors.
Five carriages escorted by a company of green-coated cavalry drew up to the manor in a perfectly orchestrated maneuver. Footmen opened doors and helped the occupants out. Most were servants, maids in black gowns and manservants in dark green livery. They assembled in two neat groups on either side of the center carriage. When all movement ceased, a footman placed a gilded footstool in front of the door to the middle carriage. An older man in a black livery coat with gold trim opened the carriage door, and out stepped a magnificent red-haired man in his forties, taller than everyone around him. He wore a tawny velvet coat and a gold collar of estate from which a colossal emerald hung.
He turned and helped a beautiful woman with long wavy blond hair off the carriage. She was tiny compared to the man. She wore a traveling gown of tawny velvet and more strands of pearls than I could count. Two children, a tall blond boy and a shorter red-haired girl, followed. Their clothes matched the royal couple. It was a family group dressed to impress, but looking at them made my head hurt.
Lord and Lady Herman greeted the visitors, with the manor staff bowing and curtsying in unison. I caught the words “your majesties.” So this was the King and Queen of Nordvek. That meant my boy in the walled garden was a prince.
The royal family was here to visit my lonely, neglected boy who was kept far from public view and hosted by the unfriendly Lord and Lady Herman in the furthest barony from the capital. There was so much wrong here in the undercurrents that a knot of fear grew in my stomach for his sake.
“So, Gregor,” the King looked down on Lord Herman with a frown, “where’s my Andray?”
“Sire? His Highness Andray is reading in the garden,” Lord Herman explained in a helpful. “We did not want to disturb his daily routine for fear of upsetting his fragile health.”
“Horse puckey!” the King bellowed. “You, my lord, are telling me that Andray is in such sorry health that sitting in his wheelchair here on the front steps is more life-threatening than sitting in his wheelchair in the garden? Well? Are you?”
“Well...no, your Majesty. It’s just that he’s so frail and prone to colds, and...” Lord Herman tried to placate the annoyed King.
“And the colds he can catch on the front steps are so much worse than those he can catch in the garden? What kind of fool do you take me for, Sirrah?”
“Stephano,” the Queen interjected in soothing tones, “Lord Herman is just trying to protect your son from...”
“Silence, woman,” the King growled. “Lord Herman, take me to my son now.”
“Your will, your Majesty,” the little lord cowered.
As the baron led the King through the manor to the garden, the rest of the assembly broke up. The servants began to carry trunks into the building. I saw the Queen and Lady Herman trade a conspiratorial and knowing look. The young princess appeared timid and said nothing, keeping her eyes on the gravel driveway in front of the manor. The blond Prince watched everything and took it all in with a perfectly neutral expression. I could not tell what he might be thinking behind that perfect visage.
It did not escape me that the Queen had called Prince Andray “your son” when speaking with the King. She was not his mother, which suggested his birth mother was dead.
I wanted to rush to one of the trees that overlooked the garden to see what happened when the King saw his son Andray; however, my chosen hiding place in the brush was too close to the two-footed ones for me to leave unnoticed. I would have to wait until the unloading was done before I could spy on the garden.
When it was finally safe for me to leave the front of the manor, no one was in the garden.
Despite the boy’s pleas that I stay far away from the manor, I chose an invisible perch in the trees and watched the garden right up to the beginning of the wolf hunts. I was happy to see the King and my boy talking for many hours in the garden, both laughing and smiling. The King showed great love and care for his disabled oldest son. Prince Willam sometimes visited the garden too. The two boys seemed to get along. Willam lost his expressionless face when visiting Andray and replaced it with genuine smiles. In contrast, the Princess and the Queen did not visit Andray once.
The hunts were delayed six days until two wagons brought the King’s wolfhounds. The hunting parties assembled the next morning and met for five days. I stayed close to the village while the hunters were in the forest. I decided near Herman’s Close was safer since no hunting party would be looking for wolves so close to home.
I saw Andray join the hunt on the fourth and fifth days, riding a well-tempered mare and sitting on a custom-made saddle that accommodated his missing foot. He looked happy to join the hunt, and the King surrounded the boy with so much cavalry that I wasn’t worried for his safety.
I didn’t realize that Andray never returned from the fifth day of hunting until the morning after when the search parties assembled.
The King mobilized every hale man and boy in the village and manor to search for his son. The search party had to be over 300 people when it moved out. When I became aware of what was happening, I followed at what I hoped was a safe distance. They found Andray’s mare dead at the foot of the escarpment around noon. The site was just a short distance from what I called the spring cave, which was one of my sleeping spots.
“Looks like some kind of predator got the horse,” the King’s Keeper of the Hounds decided, “ripped out the neck.” The mare had a ragged gash at the base of its neck. It didn’t look right to me.
Dekker shared my opinion, “An attacking animal did not make that gash. Only a bear could pull a chunk of flesh out that big, but bears don’t attack from below. Wolves do, but the wound is too big for a wolf.”
“Yet here we are, with a dead horse with a gash made by some kind of beast here in front of us,” the Keeper of the Hounds sneered. “How would you explain this? We can not deny the evidence before our eyes.”
Dekker had no answer for the Keeper’s disdain. He and Father Garshom fell back once the searchers moved on in their scheme to search further to the west. Once the others were well ahead, the two men circled back to the horse.
Dekker and the priest crouched to look at the wound. “This is just plain wrong,” Dekker muttered.
“Could it have been made by a wolf and then widened overnight by wolves or other animals?” Father Garshom asked.
“If other animals scavenged the dead horse overnight, it would be a mess with multiple rips and tears.”
“What about a cougar?” Garshom looked at Dekker.
“A cougar would have covered the carcass with dirt in an attempt to bury it. Cougars bury their meat and then revisit it to feed on until it goes bad.”
I had crept up behind them and was listening. Dekker had an excellent grasp of attack and feeding patterns. I yawned loudly to let them know I was there. Gershom jumped, and Dekker whipped around with his short sword, ready to defend.
“Oh,” he gasped and then relaxed, “it’s you.”
“Hello, my lady,” Father Garshom smiled. “Do you want to see it?” He gestured to the dead mare.
I nodded and walked up to the carcass. Dekker scooted sideways to let me through. The wound was strange. There were no noticeable cuspid tooth marks. It was a ragged avulsion, but it didn’t look like a bite. Then I sniffed and knew that someone had staged the dead horse for the benefit of the search party. The wound smelled of beeswax and linseed oil, the combination men used to oil their swords and woodsman tools. I lifted my head and growled my dismay softly.
“Do you agree with me that no beast made this wound?” Dekker asked. I nodded.
“I was afraid of that,” Father Garshom said. “Prince Andray’s sister died in the same suspicious fire that took his eye and foot. Someone is determined to kill Queen Eleanor’s children.”
“Will you tell the king?” Dekker asked.
“He will not listen to me,” Garshom laughed bitterly. “Remember? I’m a disgraced priest, stripped of my office for making false accusations about the hunting lodge fire. I was lucky not to be defrocked. Besides, we may know our lady here is honest and upright, but we would be laughed at all the way to prison or exile if we claimed our evidence came from a spirit beast. They don’t believe in such superstitions in the capital.”
“Do you think the boy is still alive?” Dekker lowered his voice so only the priest and I could hear despite our isolation.
“I don’t know, but looking at this dead horse doesn’t leave me feeling encouraged.”
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“This horse died here,” Dekker stood up and circled the carcass thoughtfully. “There are no drag marks or cartwheel imprints in this soft soil. It wasn’t killed somewhere else and then dumped here. Unless the Prince was removed from the horse before the horse arrived here, then the Prince was here too.”
Dekker walked around the horse in widening circles, looking at the ground, underbrush, leaves, and tree trunks. “I can find no trail of this horse traveling to this spot nor any footprints,” Dekker concluded. “So either the Prince was never here, he left this location on his own, a wild animal carried him off, or some animal that walked on two feet carried him off; however, I can not find a trail that would narrow down those choices.”
“Oh, Merciful Matadee, what a muddle,” the priest grimaced. “What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you have twisted your ankle, and I had to help you back to the village. There’s little point in continuing with the fake search.”
“We will see you later, my lady,” Garshom scratched behind my ears. Then the two men left, heading back to the village.
I walked back to the horse to sniff at its hooves. Why did they smell like ferns? Then I took a deeper look. The hooves and pasterns were spattered with grey-green mud, and greenish clay was stuck in the horseshoes. This horse crossed water-saturated ground near a clay deposit. There was only one stream nearby, downhill to the south. I started running down the slope.
When I got to the stream, I ran upstream and started walking back in the stream itself to examine the ground on either side. My search plan bore fruit when I spotted green clay exposed in the bank, followed by the imprint of horseshoes going uphill toward the dead horse.
I followed the trail of horseshoes. Where they vanished, I picked the likeliest path someone would use with a horse. I had walked quite a way when I heard the sound of men laughing. I crouched low and slid into the thickest underbrush, moving sideways to get off the path the horse took to its death. Inch by inch, I closed the distance silently until I could see them. Three men were drinking. Next to them was my boy, tied up and gagged.
“When is that slacker Johan going to get here? He should have been here by now.”
“Well, the roads up here aren’t the best.”
“Aren’t the best? They aren’t even graveled. No wonder no one wants to live up here.”
“Don’t forget the elves. Those bastards are just the other side of those cliffs. Who would want to live so close to those savages.”
“Dammit, when is that black arse going to get here?” I don’t want to sleep another night out here with no fire and no hot grub, and we’re almost out of booze.”
All three of them looked like they were more drunk than sober. They had swords and axes, but I saw no bows or crossbows. I was estimating the distance I needed to jump to land on the back of the nearest ruffian when a tired-looking man wearing teamster gloves dragged himself into the little clearing.
“Johan, you spoot spewer, what took you so long?”
Johan took one of the men’s flasks and drank a swig, “The wagon is stuck at the ford over this ridge.” He handed the flask back. “It’ll take all of us to get the wagon out of the mud.”
“Why can’t we carry the kid down to the ford and just chuck him in with the bear in the cage?”
“Hey, I like that idea!”
“Yeah, that could work,” Johan said. “Then we can let the bear go and free up the wagon. Sounds like a plan. Let’s do it.”
The other three men got up and staggered around. They were more inebriated than I thought they were.
“You boys are hopeless,” Johan was disgusted. “Get walking. I better carry the kid because none of you is sober enough.”
My options for rescuing my boy were vanishing as I watched. I had no more time to plan. I waited for Johan to pick up my little Prince when I leapt. His neck fit neatly in my mouth, and I bit down. He probably felt very little pain, if any, before I broke his neck in two. I rolled when I landed and then sprang back onto my feet.
The three drunkards hadn’t even noticed anything amiss yet. I trotted back to my boy. His eyes were wide with fear. I licked his face to reassure him. I then picked him up by his collar and dragged him away. The drunks heard the dragging noise and turned.
“Ahhhhh! Mountain cat!”
“We’re going to die!”
“I can take him,” the shortest of the three pulled out his sword.
I put the Prince down gently and started a sprint at the drunks. The man with the sword screamed, dropped the weapon, and ran down the hill. I let out my loudest screech, showing all my teeth. The other two turned and followed the first.
That was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I dragged the Prince several hundred yards before I stopped to chew the ropes off him.
“Oh, Fuzzy,” he reached up and hugged me around the neck, “I thought they would kill me. They were going to put me in a cage with a bear, one of the ones they use for bear-baiting. They wanted it to look like a wild animal had carried me off.”
I chuckled since a wild animal, namely me, had just carried him off.
“Hey, Fuzzy?”
I looked at him, tilting my head in question.
“Can you understand me?”
I nodded.
“Holy Mother Goddess, no way! You really can understand me?”
I nodded again.
“Fuzzy, someone wants me dead,” he looked upset.
I nodded a third time. I needed to shut the boy up so I could get him to shelter before the sun went down. It was late enough in the afternoon that the shadows were getting long.
I cleared the dead leaves off the ground and drew a crude stick-figure drawing of a person on the back of a four-footed animal. He walked over to my picture on his knees.
“Oh! I get it. I can ride on your back?”
I nodded. Then I laid down so the boy could get on me. He struggled to get his leg over my back, but he managed. I stood up without dropping him, and then I walked through the forest to the base of the escarpment.
He fell off my back the first time I jumped into the spring cave. I looked back down, and he appeared to be okay.
“Hey, warn me before you do something like that,” he complained. Yes, he was fine. I jumped back down. Clearing another patch of dirt, I drew a really poor drawing of a person wrapping both arms around my neck. He stared at it for several minutes until he figured it out.
“You want me to hold onto your neck?” he asked. I nodded.
The second jump was successful. I now had my boy on the little ledge leading into the cave. He balked at going in because it was dark. Poor human, he couldn’t see in the dark.
I decided the spring cave would be an excellent place to hide my boy. Looking at the cliff face from below, one could see only the cleft where a spring came out. It put out a lot of water that fed a little stream. I liked the spot because deer, my favorite meal, came to the stream to drink. I just hung out on the ledge and bided my time waiting for dinner to show up, and then I pounced.
The entrance was a little constricted, which was fine as far as I was concerned. No bear would ever be able to squeeze inside. I could sleep soundly without worrying about visitors I couldn’t dispatch to the afterlife on my own. That also made it a safe place to hide the Prince.
Once inside, the cave widened out into three chambers. There was more than enough room for me, the Prince, and the area I wanted to designate as our waste disposal repository. I just had to hide him long enough for all the searchers to go home. Then I would visit the good priest for advice on a long-term strategy.
The short term presented its own problems.
“Fuzzy, I can’t see.”
My boy followed this by saying: “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten for a day.”
And then: “Is there somewhere I can go to have a bowel movement?”
It would be a long night, and the sun wasn’t even down yet.
I took him back outside so he could empty his bowels and bladder. Then I jumped him back into the cave. I waited for him to fall asleep and slipped out. It took me no time at all to run to Herman’s Close. The manor was all lit up, but it was a typically quiet night in the village. I waited until the tavern shut down and all the lights went out in bedroom windows.
I silently ran from shadow to shadow until I was under the priest’s bedroom window. Folding myself into a pocket of shadow, I tapped on the window with a claw.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
I heard motion and then grumbling.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
I heard Father Garshom say something he certainly did not learn in seminary.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
Tap...tap...tap...tap...tap.
The window flew open, and I spotted the tip of a quarrel loaded on a crossbow.
“Meow?” I said
“My lady?”
In reply, I purred.
“What are you doing, you insane beast?”
The crossbow vanished, and I heard it creak as he unloaded the quarrel and released the string tension. He opened the window as wide as it would go. “Can you get in through the window?”
He barely had time to get out of my way as I sprang inside. The fit was tight but I made it in with just a scratch. He closed the window and pulled the shades.
“Now, why are you tapping on my window in the middle of the night? No, wait. Let me make this easier for you.”
In his nightshirt and bare feet, he entered a room off the hallway. He was back out in seconds with a board. He put it on the floor in front of me. It was the alphabet with both regular and capital letters. I remembered that one of his duties was teaching the village children their letters and math. Of course, he had a teaching tool like this.
“Now, my lovely lady, just point at the letters and spell the words you want.”
So I did.
N...e...e...d…...b...l...a...n…k...e...t.…..b...r...e...a...d.…..b...o...w...l……c...u...p……c...a...n...d...l...e..….m...a...t...c...h...e...s..….s...o...a...p…
“Wait! You found the missing Prince?”
I nodded yes.
“And you have him in a safe spot?”
I nodded another yes.
He surprised me when he dropped to his knees and hugged me, “Oh, thank you, thank you, you big gorgeous pussy cat, thank you!”