I worked the catch hidden in the door hinge and then hunched over to enter the secret spy-ways that wended behind the paneled corridors of Withywoods. I found her tiny hidey-hole. It was empty and looked untouched, her cushions and pens just as she had left them. The fragrance of one of her mother’s candles still hung in the air. “Bee!” I called, still hoping I might hear an answer from her. Hunched over, I followed her chalk marks toward the entry in the pantry. I was horrified to see other markings on the walls, her clear letters indicating passageways that I’d never explored.
I saw a litter of objects on the floor of the passage ahead and smelled urine. When I reached a spill of unused candles and the mouse-gnawed remains of a loaf of bread, I was completely puzzled. I traveled on toward the pantry exit. There were burnt candle stubs discarded on the floor, a wet shawl that was not Bee’s moldering in a pile, and then I found the pantry entry door ajar. I shouldered it wider and squeezed out, then shut it firmly behind me. Not even I could see where it had been.
This time of year, there should have been a store of hams and smoked fish and strings of sausages swinging from the storage hooks. There was nothing. Taken as plunder? Sausages? It made no sense. I knew of no one who would attack Withywoods. Adding that the culprits had stolen sausages only made the riddle ridiculous.
I stepped from the pantry into the kitchen. A scullery maid was there, her winter shawl flung around her shoulders over her nightdress. Lark. That was her name, a second cousin to Cook Nutmeg and a recent hire. “Oh! Holder Badgerlock! Where did you come from? We didn’t expect you home so soon, sir!”
“Obviously not! Where is my daughter? And where is Lady Shun?”
“Sir, I’m sure I don’t know. I thought you had gone to Buckkeep Castle to see Lady Nettle. And I don’t know Lady Shun. Still new here, sir.”
“What happened here while I was gone?” I met her question with one of my own.
She pulled her shawl more warmly around her shoulders. “Well, sir, you went to town. Scribe FitzVigilant returned and told us you had decided to travel on to Buckkeep Castle. And then we had the Winterfest. And the fire in the stables. And that fight, though no one saw that. Someone was drunk probably, or several someones. Scribe Lant couldn’t even say who stabbed him or why. Some of the other men were knocked about, a black eye here, a tooth gone there. You know how menfolk are. And then we had that messenger, who I think is less than a half-wit, with his parcels for folk no one’s heard of. And now, tonight, you popping out of the pantry. And that’s all I know, sir. Oh, and the steward, shouting us out of bed and telling us to bring you a tray with hot tea and some food to your study. Is that why you’re here in the kitchen, sir? Was there something else you wanted?”
I turned away from her prattling and ran once more through the halls of my home. My heart pounded in my ears and I was thirsty but there was no time to stop to drink. I was trapped in a hideous, twisted nightmare, a dragon-tainted dream in which nothing made sense and I could not wake. Bee’s room was empty, the hearth fire burned out to ashes and the stones long cold, her wardrobe dragged open and her little tunics flung about. I looked under her bed, crying her name hopelessly. I felt I could not drag enough air into my lungs. I could not order my thoughts. I suddenly, desperately wanted to just curl up on her bed and sleep. Not think about any of this.
No. Onward.
I found Lady Shun’s room in the same sort of chaos it always was. I could not tell if it had been ransacked. Her bed was cold and unslept in, the bedding dragged half onto the floor. One of the hangings had been torn loose. On I went. My chamber had been rummaged through as well. I didn’t care. Where was my child? I left the corridors of bedrooms and ignored the few sleepy and frightened servants I passed in the hall as I ran again to the schoolroom and the scribe’s quarters adjacent to it. I flung open the door to FitzVigilant’s room and felt an unmanning wave of relief when he sat up in his bed. “What is it?” he demanded, face pale and eyes wide. “Oh. Badgerlock! Back so soon?”
“Thank Eda! Lant, where are they, where are Shun and Bee? What happened to the stables?”
The growing consternation on his face made me want to strike him. “The stables burned down on Winterfest eve. I suppose someone was careless with a lamp. Shunanbee? What is that?”
I was gasping for air now. “Lady Shun. My daughter, Lady Bee, my little girl. Where are they? Did they perish in the fire?”
“Holder Badgerlock, calm yourself. I do not know the ladies you speak of. Surely your stepdaughter is Lady Nettle, the Skillmistress at Buckkeep Castle?”