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7

Colin groaned with pain as he half slid and half fell off his horse and onto the ground, where he lay like a freshly landed trout. A long night filled with too much wine and not enough sleep had been followed by the unsoothing clang and banging of Gut-Buster and Obtruncator as Rowan attempted to teach him the rudiments and a few of the finer points of swordplay. At least, as far Colin could tell it was all rudimentary, and though he felt the point often, he didn't find it particularly fine. This got his day off to an inauspicious start. Maggie's insistence that they leave immediately because she had been unable to use her aunt's gift to locate Amberwine from within the castle had not been a welcome development. It had become even less agreeable when the decision was made by Maggie and Rowan that in order to keep to a minimum the effect of the rowan trees upon her, Maggie was to ride Rowan's swiftest steed at maximum speed out the west gate of the castle and across the moors. Colin was to trot behind with a packhorse and a fresh mount to replace the lathered one that would carry the heavily veiled Maggie away from her nemesis. That was all very well for Maggie, but Colin hardly felt up to walking on tiptoe very quietly, much less trotting.

Neither had his sacrifice of his own best interests in order to preserve hers met with deep appreciation and profound gratitude. Maggie was turning the mirror over in her hands, staring at it moodily when he rode up, and she continued to be quiet and uncommunicative, nodding or shaking her head or answering in the shortest possible fashion when he addressed her, if she answered at all.

Now that he was finally allowed to rest his throbbing head and aching limbs, he was prodded out of his misery by Maggie who said, "If you don't want any of this, I'll give the rest to Ching." He looked up. She was seated on her bedroll, toasting her toes before one of her fuel-less campfires, eating a wing of the roast pheasant that turned on the spit, dripping juices into the flames with a sizzling pop that even sounded delicious.

After feasting on the rest of the bird, two potatoes with fresh herbed butter, and half a loaf of hot bread, Colin thought he might survive after all.

With surprise, he saw that Maggie had spread his cloak across her knees and was reweaving one of the assortment of rips and tears and holes that were its only adornments.

"Thank you," he said. "But you don't have to do that."

"I like sewing," she replied without lifting her eyes. "It calms me."

"Well, if it's calming you want, listen to this!" In spite of his afflictions, new verses for the song about Amberwine and the gypsy had been worming their way in and out of his aching brain all day long. He fetched his guitar down from the horse and sang:

 
"Go saddle me my good gray steed
The brown is not so speedy
And I'll go racin' 'crost the moor
To overtake my lady.
"When he saw the man who wronged him so
His anger it did kindle,
But thinkin' on his lady's love
His wrath did slowly dwindle.
"How could you leave your house and land
And all the wealth I gave ye?
How could you leave your own true love
To ride with Gypsy Davey?
"Oh, what care I for house and land
Or all the wealth you gave me.
I'm goin' now, my own true love,
To ride with Gypsy Davey."
 

"Then I'll put those other two verses I sang earlier towards the end. What d'ya think?" Colin asked, looking up expectantly. Maggie was staring off into space again, ignoring her needlework. When she saw him watching her, she quickly brushed her face with the back of her hand and leaned down to bite her sewing thread in two."Well?" Colin asked again.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What do you think?"

"Oh—the song. Very good, Colin. You really do have a talent." It was the longest sentence she'd said all day. He was about to ask her if she'd like to discuss what was troubling her or if perhaps he was mistaken and she was merely practicing to enter a religious order under a vow of silence, when she added another comment. He grinned with relief and with the realization that for a change he was actually glad to hear her say something. "But how do you know Winnie's side of the conversation?"

"A combination of research and poetic license. Ludy, the serving maid, was listening at the door when Rowan told Cook what happened on his ride."

"I think he showed remarkable restraint for someone with his background, don't you?" She rewove one of the few places on the cloak that had remained intact.

"Well, he came off all right in the song, I suppose . . . "

"He'd make a handsome king," she said.

By returning his guitar to its sack Colin was able to conceal his frown. Rowan had been decent enough to him, but Maggie was acting, now that he thought about it, a lot the way she had after meeting the unicorn. While Rowan's horns were of another variety, they apparently troubled him enough to cause him to pay a lot of unsettling attention to ordinary brown-haired girls like his susceptible sister-in-law. It would have pleased Colin a lot better if the bereaved, deserted husband had just gone on bereaving and left his own traveling companion out of it.

"Why don't we try the magic mirror again, Maggie? We ought to find out if we're headed in the right general direction before we go much further."

"I suppose you're right. I wonder why it wouldn't work this morning. Toads! I thought if Rowan could just SEE Winnie he might—oh, I don't know what I thought."

"He did try that once to get her back," Colin reminded her, disliking Rowan even more because fairness forced him to defend the fellow.

"I know. Where shall we start?"

"Where your aunt left off."

Maggie had pulled the mirror out of her pocket and polished it. She held in her mind the image of Amberwine and of gypsies, the latter image provided by the village fairs and her imagination freshly fueled by Colin's song. As the rainbow lights flashed away in the darkness, two indistinct pictures, one superimposed on the other, appeared in the mirror.

"Hmmm, let me try to clarify that," she said, and focused on her sister as she had last seen her, tousled and troubled and burdened by pregnancy. The gypsy wagons that had hung ghostlike over the mirror faded and Maggie and Colin almost wished them back to hide the ugliness of the remaining image.

Amberwine huddled by a stone wall, her hair tangled in a mat that covered her face, so that it took Maggie a while to be certain that it was indeed her elegant sister who swatted the flies away from the sores that covered her arms and thin, bare legs. Her ribs showed sharply above her swollen stomach. As the sounds of a marketplace rattled through the mirror, Winnie suddenly sat up straighter and shoved a handful of hair back from her red, swollen eyes with one sharp combing motion. A peddler's cry sang out over the other noises and Winnie got to her feet, pulling the remnants of her shift over as much of herself as they would cover. The cry was repeated, and Maggie almost lost the picture in her surprise. "That's Hugo's cart!" she said, as it came into view, immediately in front of Amberwine.

At first it appeared as though Winnie might try to round the corner of the building and escape the peddler's notice, but then she seemed to change her mind and drew herself to her full height, managing to look regal and somehow, Colin thought, ethereal and heart-breakingly beautiful, for all her dirt and mats and sores.

"Why, my Lady Amberwine," exclaimed Hugo, as though he were greeting her in her father's kitchen garden. "Whatever are you doing here in Queenston?"

Though Maggie had difficulty with them, the social graces and their attendant poise had been Amberwine's by birthright, not education alone, and had never deserted her. Now, as ever, she was cool. "Oh, hullo, Hugo. How nice to see you here. I don't suppose you'd have a frock and a bit of bread or something today I might charge to Daddy's account, do you?"

The peddler's tone was sweeter than Aunt Sybil's house. He waved a cutely admonishing finger at her. "Now your ladyship knows I have nothing fine enough for the likes of you on MY humble cart." He gave Amberwine a chance to interpret this as a rejection of her thinly-disguised petition for help, then said, "Actually, ma'am, I've been sent to look for you. Your father is staying here with a distant relative of your stepmother's. If you wouldn't mind riding in my modest wagon, I could take you to him."

Amberwine was cool, but not that cool. Tears of relief and gratitude washed her lovely face. "At last. Oh, Hugo, I don't know how to thank you," she started babbling, "if father will only forgive me, perhaps—"

She stopped herself from talking by fairly dancing onto the cart. "Is Maggie along? Will I see her?"

"Old Hugo has all kinds of surprises for you, my Lady, if only you'll just settle yourself so we can get on now," he said it as though coaxing a child.

"Oh, certainly, to be sure, oh, my, yes," she wriggled around and signaled to him that she was ready for departure.

"That slimy bastard!" Maggie yelled, as the mirror went dark. She thrust it rudely back into her pocket. "How fast can we get to Queenston from here?"

"It's about a week's hard ride, at least. Maggie, what did he mean about your father being there?"

"I don't know. It's a lie, of course. What can that vile worm be up to, anyway?"

"Can he have passed us while we were at the castle?"

"Perhaps—or else—"

"Or else what?" he asked, hoping she wouldn't insist they ride all that night to get to Queenston the earlier.

"Or else that explains the iron trap, and why our horses were stolen. But why would Hugo be the villain Rabbit saw shoot Dad's horse? And how could he move so quickly? You yourself said a week. The man must not sleep." She sighed and bit her thumbnail before spreading her blankets. "We have to though. And the horses need a rest."

Colin swallowed his own questions about the vision and with weary relief spread his bedroll on the ground.

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Framed