Bertie alone goes after Iylaine

Bertie ran with the other boys down the stairs and out into the court, but he stopped when he caught a glimpse of green and red and blonde flitting past the gatehouse and out onto the road.

Though she scarcely realized it, his years of being a watchful elder brother to Baby had led to a continuing awareness of her presence when she was nearby, and a vaguely troubling consciousness of her absence when he did not know where she was. And he had learned to identify a glimpse of her in a crowd or across a court, even when only out of the corner of his eye.

Tonight he groaned when he saw her go by. She had run off like this before, but never at night. And tonight was the new moon, though few still observed the fact.

The first time she had run off to the woods alone he had told the Duke, and the Duke had told her father, and Bertie had witnessed the scene he had made.

Bertie found him rather harsh. Of course one couldn’t whip a girl, but it almost seemed preferable to shouting at her like that. Bertie never cringed beneath his father’s switch the way she had that day beneath her father’s hard words.

Since then, when Bertie alone witnessed her escape, Bertie alone went after her, and he usually convinced her to return without much fuss. But tonight…

He looked around him. Tonight all of the men were busy with the fire. By the time he got someone’s attention and explained what had happened…

Bertie patted the knife on his belt to make sure of it and then ran through the gate.

He saw her little form running up towards the crossroads, and towards the fire that lit the sky above her with a ghastly red.

Bertie ran after her, but Baby could run faster than any girl he had ever known. By the time he had come out on the other side of the pines that bordered the crossroads, she was nowhere to be seen.

He ran out into the center of the road and howled her name. She could have gone anywhere if she had left the road. But if she had run this far north, it wasn’t to turn and run to the east or west now. The only place that seemed a likely destination for Baby was the forest itself, and the forest was on fire.

He recalled with a twinge that she liked to come to Selwood when she went out with Malcolm. No doubt it was a special place for her. But what could she do here now? What did she expect to save? Had they hidden something in the woods that she wanted to retrieve?

“Baby!” he shouted again. “Iylaine!”

He wished he had told an adult. He glanced back at his old house, but he knew that Osric and Aelfie had already gone to their father’s house, for their farm was only across the road from the southern edge of Selwood. Egelric’s farm too was in danger, and his men were at the castle tonight. He would have to run far for help, and there wasn’t time.

Bertie called her name again and then stopped to cough. The wind was blowing from the west now, but there was enough smoke in the air all around to make him choke. He spat and then stomped his foot in helpless frustration. He couldn’t simply run into the woods and hope he would find her there. She could be anywhere. She could be far away.

Then he heard her scream. It was not only a scream of pain – it was terror. She was not far.

Bertie ran through the crackling, tinder-​​dry underbrush at the forest’s edge, following the screams that came one after another, with only a pause for her to take a breath between them. He saw that he was running directly towards the fire. Had she found herself trapped?

He stumbled into a stand of birches that was rimmed by flaming bushes. A woman in a long gown struggled with the shrieking girl, holding a fistful of blonde hair in one hand and Baby’s arm in the other.

Bertie stopped, bewildered. The woman had red hair, and for a sickening moment he had the idea that it was Elfleda. The scene was hellish enough to make such things seem possible. Was the woman trying to throw her into the fire? Or prevent her from running into it?

“Baby!” he cried.

There was such a desperate plea in her voice when she screamed his name in reply that he knew that the woman was the terror. He drew his knife and ran forward into the heat.

“Let go of her!”

The woman did not seem to have heard, but Baby was screaming his name now instead of merely screaming, begging him to help her, and there was something horrible about the way the woman was holding back Baby’s head to expose her delicate neck – or to break it.

Thus Bertie did something he had never done before, and had never been sure he could do: he drew back his knife and plunged it into another person’s body. He did not stop to aim – he merely stabbed the woman in the easiest spot for him to reach, in her side, somewhere below her ribs.

It worked. She arched her back and howled, and she let go of Baby so that she could clamp her hands against her side.

Bertie took a few steps backwards, stunned at what he had done. It took him a moment to even remember that Baby was there, and he only looked up at her in time to see her run away from him and leap into the burning bushes – leap directly into the flames.

Had the woman been trying to prevent her?

He let his knife drop, sickened. He had stabbed a woman, and Baby was as good as dead – had killed herself by jumping into a fire. The only possible explanation was that none of it was true.

Then he looked up at the woman, and he knew he was dreaming, for she had the face of the woman he and Malcolm and Dunstan had seen in the catacombs a year before. They had since decided that they had all imagined her. He cowered away from her, waiting to see what would happen next in this nightmare.

The smack she gave him was real enough, and sent him tripping backwards. His head hit the dry earth with a crack, and for an instant, before he truly slept, he was distinctly aware of the taste of piney smoke on his tongue, and of Baby’s absence.