I’m accustomed to sleeping in my own bed and there’s hardly a decent inn from here to Derby.” He paced in front of us, the sound of straw crunching beneath his feet.
“My apologies,” Hudson said. “Do you still want the Gilead?” Bartimaeus stopped his pacing. “Oh, very well. I’ll have the stable boy hitch up the carriage, and we’ll find you some less conspicuous clothes.” He shot me one last withering glance. “Something that flaunts fewer jewels than the queen of Sheba would wear.” Technically, the beading on my dress wasn’t made of jewels, and I had planned on wearing my cloak over the dress, but I didn’t turn down the offer. It would be nice to change into something that didn’t look like it had come from the evening-gown portion of the Miss America pageant.
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“Be ready when the carriage is,” he added. “I don’t want to waste any more time on you than I have to.” With that, Bartimaeus turned on his heel and left the barn.
I rubbed Junior’s back through his fuzzy sleeper. “I’ve thought of a new moral for the story: ‘Wizards are a bunch of grumpy old men.’ ”
“Maybe,” Hudson said. “But if he can send us home, I’d vote for naming your baby after him.” He reached out and tweaked the baby’s chin. “Right, little Bart?”
• • •
An hour later, the carriage was packed, the horses were ready, and I was wearing a worn brown dress that smelled of onions and gar-lic—one of the servant’s gowns. The wizard had also given me a head-covering wimple to hide my blond hair. “If we see anyone, shrink down so as not to appear so tall,” Bartimaeus had told me. I wasn’t that tall, but the Middle Ages was populated by short people. Then Bartimaeus had grumbled disapprovingly. “And for mercy’s sake, do something so you don’t look so pretty.” Personally, I thought the ugly brown dress and wimple did a suffi-cient enough job of that. The wizard also gave me an outfit for the baby—a beige shirt that was so long it looked like a shapeless dress. Cute baby clothing hadn’t been invented yet.
Hudson changed into new clothes too because King John had told his knights that I was traveling with one of his guards. He wore an oversized gray tunic, leggings, and a leather belt. Unlike my wimple and kitchen-staff ensemble, Hudson’s outfit somehow looked good on him. It was his broad shoulders. He could make anything look rugged.
I had to quell the urge to call him “farm boy,” and pretend I was But-tercup from The Princess Bride.
But I did let my eyes rest on him a lot.
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Before we left, the wizard sprinkled a spicy-smelling liquid on each corner of the carriage. “Don’t touch these spots before they dry,” he told us. “If you ruin the hiding spell, our enemies will be able to see the carriage.” He sent me an especially deep frown. “We can’t have that while we carry a fugitive.”
I wasn’t looking forward to a day-long carriage ride with Bartimaeus and his many complaints, so I was happily surprised when he climbed up to the box seat and announced he was driving. “There are things out in the forest that only a wizard can ward off,” he told us in a condescending tone.
Fine. More power to him and more room for us. Junior was already bored with the baby toys in the diaper bag, and I had no idea how I was going to entertain him in a carriage all day.
The answer to this question was soon evident. Junior wanted to play Grab Mommy’s Lips. Hudson was coconspirator in the game and kept holding Junior airplane-style, zooming him toward my face.
After we played that for a stretch, Junior moved on to Try to Throw All of the Baby Toys Out the Carriage Window. Then he tried to teethe on the seats. We fed him creamed carrots, which he somehow managed to smear across not only his bib but his entire body. I only had wet wipes to clean him off, which weren’t very effective, especially since Junior then decided he wanted to eat them.
By the time he took a bottle and fell asleep that afternoon, I was exhausted. I propped him against the crook of my arm and noticed a smear of carrots near the shoulder of my dress. I tried to clean it off with a wet wipe, one-handed.
“Don’t worry about stains,” Hudson told me. “I’m sure the book will erase them.”
“This dress belongs to the wizard’s servant and you know he’ll gripe about me getting it dirty.” I kept wiping but couldn’t manage 282/356
very well with only one hand. Finally Hudson moved from his seat to mine, took the cloth, and wiped it for me. He was so close now, bent over and touching my shoulder, that my heart skipped a few beats.