“Yes,” she said quietly. “No magic is better.”
Meg knew that when the children thought no one was looking, they were very affectionate toward one another. They held hands, Talis often putting his head on Callie’s lap, and whenever no one was near, they sat as close as possible to each other. But in the presence of others, they never so much as touched. Meg was sure this was Talis’s wish, for she felt that if Callie had her way, she might chain herself to his side, but Talis liked to pretend that he didn’t need Callie.
But now, on this night, after this extraordinary story, Talis stood up, then held out his hand to Callie. In front of the two adults, he openly held her hand and led her off to bed. It was Talis’s highest compliment: public praise.
20
Meg’s feet hurt. For that matter, her entire body ached. She had been walking for two days now and she wasn’t used to walking.
When a cart full of cabbages came rumbling by, she stepped to one side into the dust and muck at the edge of the road, then leaned against a tree for a moment’s rest. For the thousandth time she wondered how Will and the children were faring without her. When she returned, would Will be very angry with her? Or would he have been so worried about her that he’d put his arms around her and welcome her home? Or would he not speak to her for days—or maybe not for years?
Since Meg had never heard of a wife who’d run away and returned, she didn’t know what a husband would do. She’d once heard of a woman who’d run away with another man, but she’d never known anyone to run away to get a teacher—as she was doing.
Looking up at the sun, she saw that she had another couple of hours before sundown and would spend another cold night sleeping on the ground, so she heaved herself away from the tree and started walking again.
It had been almost a month since the event that Meg knew had changed the lives of her family. A month ago the boy Edward had come into their lives and nothing had been the same since. At least not for her and the children, that is. Will was exactly the same, and when Meg tried to talk to him about the changes in their family, Will got almost angry. He refused to speak of what Meg had seen, that Callie and Talis were actually little ladies and gentlemen.
“Better that they are a farmer’s children!” Will had snapped in such a way that all of them looked at him with startled eyes. Will only got angry when there was reason, and now they could see no reason for his anger. “Forget this boy!” he shouted. “How I wish he had never come here.”
As the days passed, the children did not forget Edward’s visit. Meg was right—he had changed something in them. Callie looked at her book until Meg thought the pretty squiggles would disappear. And Talis tried to play with his sword in the way Edward had showed him.
But after a month of this, suddenly Callie stopped looking at her book and Talis put his sword down and didn’t pick it up again.
“What is wrong?” Meg asked them, for they were long-faced and silent.
“It is no use,” Talis said, “I have no need for a sword. I should learn blacksmithing.”
She was used to Talis’s gloomy words; he was always predicting that misery was just around the corner. But what was unusual was that Callie didn’t ridicule him, didn’t tell him how silly he was. Meg had never before realized it but they all assumed that part of Callie’s “job” was to cheer Talis up, to make him see the bright side of things. When Talis hinted that he couldn’t do something, Callie stepped in and told him he could do anything in the whole, wide world. Meg knew that Talis thought he could move mountains because Callie believed that he could.
But Callie said nothing when Talis put away his sword. When Callie put aside her precious book, Meg asked her why.
“I cannot read,” she said. “I will never be able to read. I am good only for feeding rabbits.”
Meg had never heard Callie say a negative thing in her life. And Meg had never heard Callie say that she wanted anything. All Callie seemed to want was to be with Talis. Talis did things while Callie followed along behind him and told him he could do them. They were a perfect pair: his pessimism and self-confidence combined with her shyness and belief in magic and beauty. But, most of all, her unshakable belief in Talis.
When Meg heard Callie complain that she couldn’t read, Meg had to sit down. She had to face it: Things had changed and they weren’t going to return to the way they were.
It took Meg a couple of days to figure out what she was going to do. She was going to go to John Hadley’s wife and demand that she be given money to hire a teacher for the children.
Meg liked to leave things up to her husband to take care of, following him almost as blindly as Callie followed Talis, but Meg wasn’t stupid. She had an idea why John Hadley had not come to claim his precious adopted son. In the ensuing years, his wife had either given birth to a healthy son, or she had somehow persuaded her husband to forget the boy. Meg wouldn’t be surprised if the woman had lied to her husband and told him Talis was dead.
But Meg knew that Lady Alida knew the truth. Will had bought this excellent farm with money given him by her ladyship; he’d told her that, changing his original story. So if John thought the children were dead, Meg knew that Lady Alida knew they were alive somewhere. And if her ladyship cared nothing for another woman’s son, she must care for her own daughter, and she would not allow her to grow up uneducated. What would be said about her lack of education when Callie was at last accepted back into her father’s rich house?
Meg didn’t like to think that far ahead, to a time when she wouldn’t have the children. She envisioned the time of parting as a long, long way away, maybe when the children were adults.
And when they were adults they were going to need to know all the things other ladies and gentlemen knew. If Talis wanted to learn to be a knight, he was going to have to learn whatever a knight needed to know. And if Callie wanted to learn to read—heaven only knew why she wanted such a thing when she made up stories better than could possibly be in any book—then Meg was going to help her to learn to read. When Meg went to heaven she planned to be able to tell the Lord that she’d done everything in her power to help her children get the best that life had to offer.
It took Meg nearly a week to walk the fifty miles to John Hadley’s house. She got lost a couple of times and spent one evening plucking chickens in return for her dinner, but she at last reached the place, then nearly wept with exhaustion and frustration to see that the old keep was a burned-out shell. Was this why John Hadley had never come for his children? Had he and all his family been killed in a fire?
She didn’t like the idea of sleeping near the ruins, as they had a ghostly, eerie feeling. How long after she and Will left had the castle burned down? That night nine years ago Will had told her that plague had broken out in the castle and the village so they must flee at once. She hadn’t listened to all of what he said before she started running with the children. And she hadn’t said a word over the next days while Will went to moneylenders and traded something (she never knew what) for money, then bought a wagon and drove them far away from the village where they’d both grown up. He’d bought a beautiful farm for her and the children and she’d never looked back.
Had it not been for the arrival of the boy Edward, she wouldn’t have returned to her home village now. As she stretched out on the cold ground near the ruined castle to sleep, she smiled, thinking of all the people in the village she’d like to see before she went back to Will and the children.
In the morning, in spite of her lack of a bed, she felt better. Today she’d find out what had happened to John Hadley and his family and if it was possible, she’d see her ladyship and get her to give her the money to hire a teacher for the children. During the last days Meg had had some time to think of what she’d do and say when she saw her ladyship. Before she’d spent years with Callie and Talis, she’d always thought of herself as clever enough, probably as smart as the next person, but nine years in the presence of those two rascals had taught her a thing or two.
They were as clever and as wily as snakes, teasing her, tricking her, using their minds, which moved like lightning, to dupe her into participating in anything they wanted. Talis was by far the worst. He loved to play jokes on her, then laugh outrageously when she fell for the same trick again and again.
Sometimes Will got annoyed with her. “Meg,” he’d say, “you mustn’t always think good of everyone. You must understand that people are not always what they seem. They sometimes tell lies in order to get wh