The first thing I saw there was Plug-Ugly himself. He was stretched out along my bunk, pretty well filling it, busy eating a fat, dead rat. He looked up and burst out purring when he saw me.
“How did you— No, I won’t ask,” I said. “It has to be magic. Plug-Ugly, I’m really happy to see you, but do you mind eating that rat on the floor?”
Plug-Ugly gave me a wide sea-green stare. I had resigned myself to a ratty bed that night, when he tossed the rat playfully over his shoulder, the way cats do. It flew across the cabin and landed on Aunt Beck’s bunk.
“Oh well,” I said. I took off my spoilt dress and gave it to him to lie on. He liked that. He lay on it and purred, while I hooked myself into the pretty green one. “Move that rat,” I told him as I left. “You don’t know Aunt Beck. She’ll give you what for if you leave it there!”
“Hey, that looks good!” Ogo said shyly. He was coming along the corridor with his arms full of our inside-out bags. “The Captain was going to keep these,” he told me. “He was really annoyed when I asked for them.”
All I could think of to say was “Hm,” like Aunt Beck does. I was glad the dress looked good, but what was going on with this voyage? We had been given contaminated clothes and poisonous medicine and a Captain who would happily have left us stranded on that island. But surely Kenig and Mevenne didn’t want to lose their own son. Did they? But Donal would love to be rid of his brother, I thought. He had never liked Ivar. And Donal had definitely been plotting something, back on Skarr.
Aunt Beck was certainly thinking along the same lines. When we returned to the cubbyhole, she looked up from precisely folding underclothes to say, “Thank you, Ogo. Aileen, you forgot to tidy your hair.” And then, after a pause, “Ivar, Ogo, do either of you have any money?”
They both looked alarmed. Ogo patted his pockets and found a copper penny. Ivar dug around in his pockets and found two silvers and three coppers.
“And I have precisely one half-silver,” Aunt Beck said.
“What do you need it for?” Ivar asked. “I thought King Farlane’s chancellor gave you a purse.”
“It is full of nothing but stones, with a few coppers on top to conceal the trick, and someone,” said Aunt Beck, “has to pay Seamus Hamish for this voyage. Even if your father has already done so, we shall still need to buy food and pay for lodging when we get to Bernica. I must think what to do.”
The fine clothes, still smelling of not-quite-honey and camomile, were neatly packed back in the bags. I was just buckling them up when the cook arrived with our lunch. It was pickled herrings and soda bread.
“I can’t give you more or better,” he said in his gruff way. “Captain’s found his temper again, seeing as we have the barrier in view and can follow it south to Bernica, but says we’ll be another day on the way. We didn’t load food enough for all this voyaging.”
“I see,” Aunt Beck said calmly. “This will do well enough for now.” And, as the cook was leaving, she asked, even more calmly, “I suppose poor Seamus Hamish gets little or no payment for carrying us all to Dunberin this way?”
The cook stopped in the doorway. “Why do you ask?”
“I meant – seeing he has to economise with the food,” said Aunt Beck.
The cook swung around, looking very sincere and earnest. “Ah no,” he said. “That was my miscalculation, you’ll understand. His temper’s up already over that. He likes to eat well, the Captain. And seeing as the High King has promised him a bag of gold for landing you safe in Holytown, and King Kenig has promised him another when we return to Skarr without you, the Captain told me to lay in lavishly – which I thought I had.”
“Indeed?” said Aunt Beck. “Since that is the way of it, we must all accept the situation. Thank you.”
As soon as the cook had gone, Ivar burst out, “The thieving, money-grabbing skinflints! They’re promised two bags of gold and they feed us this!” He pointed at the herrings and I swear his eyes popped with rage.
“It will fill you up,” said Aunt Beck, sharing round the food. “Although,” she added pensively, “I would like to see what the good Captain is eating at this moment.”
“Venison,” Ogo said glumly. “I smelt it cooking.”
“And why are they going to drop us in Holytown and not Dunberin?” Ivar demanded. “It’s miles further down the coast.”
“It seems King Farlane ordered it,” Aunt Beck said. “And I expect it has something to do with whisky as well. We should be thankful, Ivar. Holytown is not a large place, like Dunberin, and should be less expensive. Remember we have next to no money.”
But, when the meal was over, she took me into our cabin on the pretext of putting the bags in there. “Aileen,” she said, turning very serious, “I didn’t wish to say this in front of those two boys, but I am very much afraid that your cousin King Kenig did not intend us to survive this journey.”
I had been nervously searching the tiny space for Plug-Ugly. There was no sign of him or the rat either. I was beginning to wonder if I had dreamt him, when Aunt Beck spoke. It jerked my attention back to her. “But what shall we do?” I said. “Do you think that this prophecy about Prince Alasdair is false then?” And a shameful thing it was, I thought, that someone was playing with King Farlane’s hopes.
“It could be,” said my aunt. “Prophecies are sly, chancy things and easy enough to invent. I’ll keep an open mind there. But it may just be someone – Donal or Mevenne, for instance – seizing a chance when it is offered. As to what we do, well, child, first we keep Ivar safe, and second we try to get to Logra the way they want us to and, being forewarned, then we’ll see.”
Holytown was a little low grey town with an irregular jetty. From the moment we reached it, it was all confusion. The Captain couldn’t wait to get rid of us. Our bags were thrown out on the jetty almost before the ship was tied up and we found ourselves following them into a frenzy of fish and shouting. We seemed to have arrived just as the fishing fleet came in. All around us silver streams of fish were being poured into barrels, or laid out in boxes, or being bought and sold out of deep, smelly holds. Bernica people are not very tall. It added to my confusion that Aunt Beck and Ogo towered out of the crowd and even I found I was nearly as tall as most people around me.
“I’m starving,” said Ivar. “Can we buy some?”
“Not at these prices,” Aunt Beck said. She was staring keenly around, evidently looking for something.
Ogo nudged me and pointed. Just for an instant I had a sight of Plug-Ugly rubbing himself against the legs of a little person in green robes. He was gone again as I looked.
At the same moment, Aunt Beck said, “Ah!” and strode towards the green robes.
There was a whole group of them ambling cheerfully among the fish, pausing to bargain and then moving on with a fish or two in their baskets. They did not look very well-to-do. All the green robes were frayed and grubby. The men mostly went barefoot; the women had home-made-looking sandals. But the oddest thing about them was that each of them had an animal or a bird. I saw a squirrel on one man’s shoulder and one woman had a rabbit nestled in her basket alongside the fish. Somebody else was leading a sheep and another seemed to have a fox.
“Who are they, Aunt?” I asked as Aunt Beck surged purposefully towards them.
“Monks and nuns,” she replied. “They worship the Lady.”
This left me very little