Chapter Seven: The Duchess and the Smiling Cat (1)

[manniness]

The farewell comes as a shock.

“Where... where are you going?” Tarrant asks the Gray Lady. He ignores the unbitten apple in his hand and studies her profile.

“To Mamoreal,” she replies slowly, “eventually. I want you to take Thackery and Mally with you and meet me there.”

“At... Mamoreal?” he confirms.

“Yes.”

He lifts his gaze and studies the battle-torn field that is all that remains of his home.

“No,” she says and he startles at the feel of her gauntlet-encased left hand clutching his forearm. “This is not where you need to be now.”

He feels his brows draw together and a bubble of Stubborn expand within his chest.

“There is no more you can do for them here,” she says.

He blinks at her, studies her earnest expression.

“Do not let the Red Queen win. Do not allow her to destroy other homes...”

She says nothing about families and he feels that bubble of Stubborn harden... and then fade away like a misplaced sneeze.

“Go to Mamoreal with Mally and Thack,” she whispers. “Uilleam and I will meet you there.”

Preparations are made and feet are set onto the road and shoe leather squeaks-groans-grumbles and he moves through it all as if in a dream – and perhaps it is a dream! Yes, yes! Perhaps now he will make that long journey he has sensed doing in his other dreams! Although, those had been dreams had during slumber and this is a Waking Dream and that should make his adventures much easier to recall after the fact!

He muses about hat repairs and cups of tea and riddles and rhymes and his fevered imagination stumbles and stutters as he tries to picture the sights he has yet to see...

But of course: as he hasn’t seen them yet he can hardly picture them, can he? That’s putting the cutting of the plum pudding before the passing ’round, isn’t it? When did his mind begin thinking in such hopelessly backward ways?

He giggles and the sound seems to startle Thackery who trips and bangs into a tree. The sound echoes down the forest lane and calls Tarrant back to himself, back to this place – wherever he is – rather forcefully. Eyes narrowed, he surveys the forest, its trees, the dirt road and his own feet upon it. How had he...? How long had he...? And where are they going?

“Calm down, ’Atter,” Mally’s voice soothes him as gently as she can considering the amount of jostling his wild glancing about is causing for her on the brim of his hat. She reminds him firmly, “We’re on our way tah Mamoreal, followin’ the Gray Lady’s orders.”

Ah, yes. Tarrant vaguely remembers something about Mamoreal and meetings and... was there some other M-word involved?

“Mamoreal, yes, yes,” he agrees. “Marvel... meander...”

Although he has found himself on this road, following Thackery’s meandering lead, with a dormouse traveling via his hat, a cooking pan in one hand and the still-unbitten apple in the other, he still feels a bit... lost. Puzzlingly lost. Lopsidedly lost. Perhaps if he loses himself completely, the feeling will not seem so disconcerting?

Tarrant struggles to let his mind wander with his feet; walks are excellent exercise for the mind. In fact, he has thought of several riddles worth serious Investigation whilst walking. He strives for that normalcy but instead finds himself wondering why the Gray Lady and the Dodo Bird had insisted on traveling separately from himself, Mally and Thackery despite the fact that they are all bound for the same destination! In fact, now that he thinks about it, he can’t even hear the pair walking behind him... He blinks as the sun glints off of the small pot Thackery wears on his head, pauses in the middle of the Tulgey Wood road, and turns to look back.

Frowning, he complains, “I don’t see them.”

“Don’t see who?” Mally replies.

He glances up momentarily, as if he has the ability to see through the brim of his hat to the creature perched on the top of it. “The Gray Alice and the Dodo Bird,” he replies. “Do you think they’ve misplaced themselves already?” The road seems easy enough to follow to him but perhaps Gray Ladies and Dodo Birds see things differently... Or perhaps they had succeeded where he had failed in getting themselves lost, in losing themselves...

Mally snorts. “Lost? I wouldn’t think so! They ain’t followin’ us tah Mamoreal directly.”

“Aye!” Thackery agrees. “Ano’her road! E’erone’s gotteh make thar auwn path!”

“Thackery,” Tarrant objects, “this is the way to Mamoreal. If the Gray Lady isn’t taking this road, then she’s headed toward...” He twitches his chin to the side, feels his eyes narrow, decides to not think of whom lives in the place where the Other road leads. “They’re traveling in the wrong direction and...! Not acceptable! Risky! Bluddy Dodo Bird!”

He pivots smartly on his heel – causing the passenger on his hat to squeak with alarm – and begins to jog back the way they’d come but a pair of paws on his jacket tails and hairy hare feet digging into the rutted road stop him from getting very far, very quickly.

“Halt, thar, laddie!” the hare commands, not releasing Tarrant’s jacket hem. “Ye heard th’ auld bessom; best ge’ye teh th’ castle!”

“But they’ve taken the road to Crims!” he argues, wincing even as he says the name of that cursed place.

“Calm down, ’Atter,” Mally announces. “They ain’t goin’ back there!”

“... back?” He glances up again – and again sees only hat brimage – as he allows Thackery’s insistent tugging to pull him a bit further down the empty, dirt road.

“Ar!” she declares. “She didn’ tell yah? The Gray Alice busted the dodo and I outta prison!”

Tarrant listens as Mally narrates the daring escape the Gray Alice had orchestrated from the Red Queen’s prison. (He had not even known that Mally had been arrested! In fact, she might have been beheaded and he might never have realized... Or perhaps he would have heard days – weeks! – after the fact and...!) Through the haze of frenetic guilt, he hears something about Pass Words and Palace Guards and Pokings and...!

He is glad he hadn’t been told any of this earlier. The Gray Alice’s familiarity with the Red Queen’s castle is unsettling. Had he known about this before he’d met the Gray Lady, he would have been quite suspicious of her. He would, very likely, not have trusted her. And he likes trusting her. He wants to believe she is worth the risk of his trust. Trustworthy.

But the Gray Alice seems to know quite a bit about Crims and its castle and its queen... One must, naturally wonder why...

Perhaps a bit of round-about will get him the answer to that question!

“If the Gray Alice and Uilleam are not planning to pay a visit to Crims, then where are they going?” he asks after the tale has been told and several rhymes made and ballads sung about the historic event: the end of the Red Queen’s marzipan prison.

“Tah see the Duchess,” Mally helpfully informs him. Or, rather, the information would have been helpful if Tarrant had possessed an inkling of how to interpret it.

“What a strange place to wish to visit...” he muses. “Do you suppose our Gray Alice wishes to learn how to escape the axe-man?” That is the skill for which the ugly duchess is most well-known for. Why, time and time again, she has managed to make herself scarce at the Red Queen’s court just when that Bluddy Behg Hid’s temper gets the better of her. Which is often. Or so he has heard.

“Do you suppose it’s a learnable skill?” he muses, successfully distracted from his woes. “The Gray Alice seems rather well-versed in many skills... Sword-play, Stubbornness...”

“Don’t know why she was wantin’ tah go there,” Mally muses to the universe in general. “Don’t know why she changed ’er mind about it when McTwisp told ’er the date, neither.”

“She... did not know the date?” he queries, puzzled that a woman so... Commanding of all in her presence would be so remiss as to neglect collecting something so utterly mundane as the date!

“Naw, but she knew you. Even knew where yah were, too. Odd, innit?”

“Quite,” he agrees, unsettled.

“An’ e’en odder... she’s still wantin’ tah see the Duchess. Fer a chat on self-preservation, yah think?”

Slowly, Tarrant shakes his head. “No... The Gray Lady seemed quite adept already at... such things...”

“So what’s she takin’ her Stubbornness an’er Sword tah see the Duchess for?”

The dormouse’s tone is merely speculating – to pass the time, no doubt – but Tarrant feels a twinge of worry at the words. Yes, why would the Gray Alice be going to the Duchess’ house with those twine companions?

“Knave-speak!” Thackery suggests, swishing his ladle though the air wildly.

Tarrant’s mouth goes dry. He comes to a halt in the middle of the road again as, bit by bit, the most unbelievable picture begins to form:

A sword...

Battle leathers...

A visit to one of the Red Queen’s favorites...

Knave-speak, indeed! Why else would a woman in battle leathers, carrying a sword, be so determined to seek out the Duchess... who is also the sometimes-favorite-confidant of the Red Queen? The Red Queen whom had been so recently re-named Bluddy Behg Hid... The Gray Lady had destroyed the Red Queen’s prison, had freed its inmates, had been on her way to see the Duchess next when she had learned of the date... had stopped... had turned around and gone to Iplam to help him.

And she had helped him. Quite a bit, he sees now. She had even tried to help him help himself. She had endeavored to teach him to not only survive, but to fight for Just Cause.

Would she have asked him to accompany her to the Duchess’ house if he hadn’t been so irredeemably useless at battle skills?

Had that been the reason why, upon learning the date (which she ought to have known already!) she had sought him out? Had she been hoping she would have an ally against the Duchess? (And Tarrant doesn’t believe for one moment that the Dodo Bird will provide any measurable assistance at all in the event of a fight!) Before Tarrant manages to take one more step on the road, he has convinced himself that he has failed the Gray Lady... is failing her! She is taking her sword to the Duchess’ house to fight and she had tried to train Tarrant so that she might not face whatever dangers await her there alone but she is alone – utterly alone! – because Tarrant had not once managed to scrape together enough competence to be a fighter worthy of standing beside her... and... and...!

… and what if something happens to her?

Tarrant cannot bear the thought. Yes, her knowledge of the Bluddy Behg Hid is suspiciously accurate and, yes, she can probably fight her own battles, but she is the only person who... she was with him when no one else... she had stayed even though he had tried to drive her away and she had given him a purpose despite his resistance to it and... could he one day be the one to bring down the Bluddy Behg Hid? He doesn’t know... but if he does it will be because of her, because of her Belief in him!

How can he let her go on alone in the face of all that she has done for him?

“Thackery!” he shouts, blinking himself into focusing on his surroundings again. Standing opposite him and in the process of reaching for Tarrant’s jacket sleeve, Thackery stumbles backward at the force of his announcement. “About-face, Thack! Back to the spur!”

Without waiting for the hare to obey, Tarrant pivots on his heel and resumes jogging back the way they’d come, his mind very clear and focused solely on the nearly forgotten trail that leads from the Mamoreal Road to the Duchess’ house.

“’Atter! What are ye doin’?” Mally cries, no doubt clutching the ribbon on his hat to keep herself from bouncing right off the brim.

“Goin’ teh th’ Dunchess’s house,” he growls. “Teh help th’ Gray Lady.”

“Help ’er do what?” the mouse shouts back.

In all honestly, he is not sure he knows what the Gray Alice is intending to do. He only knows that he must ensure that she is unharmed!

“She’ll b’ usin’ tha’ sword, aye?” Thackery summarizes.

“We don’t have a sword,” Tarrant assesses.

“We have hatpins,” Mally observes.

“An’ spoons!” Thackery contributes, beating the wooden ladle against the pot he’s still wearing on his head.

Tarrant feels his lips stretch into a wry grin. “Hatpins an’ spoons,” he summarizes. “Pots an’ pans...”

Well, the Gray Alice had told him just yesterday to fight with whatever is at hand. It looks like this day could very well bring about a practical application of that very theory!

 

 

*~*~*~*

 
Follow this link for Chapter Seven, Part 2.
 

Notes:

 

Tarrant thinks “putting the cutting of the plum pudding before the passing ’round” the same way we’d say “putting the cart before the horse.” In Through the Looking Glass, Alice learns that she has to pass the pudding around before cutting it, as things are contrary in Underland.