Chapter Seven #2
Having yet to figure out who and what she was, where she came from, he truly had no idea to whom her allegiance belonged—her aid to him notwithstanding.
Still, a bonny lass such as she, alone and vulnerable—it made no difference whether they were English or Scots camping beyond the forest. An encounter with any marching army or any group of men would not end well for her.
Not every man was governed by honorable instincts.
“Let’s get back,” he suggested.
***
The next day began as hundreds before it had.
Avery woke and gathered water. She coaxed the embers to life and drew yesterday’s pottage nearer the coals.
She washed her face and hands, then ate standing by the window, though she did not lift the oiled cloth to look out—even though the man, Morggán, was nowhere to be seen.
She’d been surprised to wake alone. Only she and Charlie occupied the house, and she hadn’t seen the man when she went to the stream with the buckets.
She wasn’t particularly alarmed. If he had gone, then he’d gone.
She wasn’t greatly disappointed either. His presence had altered the schedule of her days in ways she hadn’t asked for, there being a new edge of awareness that had nothing to do with weather or wolves.
Better, perhaps, that he’d left. She would no longer need to measure her movements against another’s stride, no longer divide food that had always been calculated for one, no longer walk farther than usual from her own door to see to personal needs simply because a man occupied the space within it.
He had brought her no true advantage, she’d already decided, hadn’t brought her much but unease and an awareness of him that she didn’t like so much.
She was troubled less with his leaving than she was with the fact that she had not heard him rise.
She had long taken quiet pride in her attunement to sound, to the distinction between wind in branches and something heavier passing through them.
To have slept through his leaving worried her more than the leaving itself.
It suggested a lapse, or a lack of skill she’d thought honed.
Or worse, it hinted at a dangerous complacency.
Only briefly did she consider him impolite for not bothering to announce his departure, for not speaking a word in parting, but to slip away while she slept. The thought passed as quickly as it formed, though, since he owed her nothing.
She set the bowl aside and straightened. Yes, she was glad he was gone. She could have her life back.
As it was laundry day, she gathered the garments that required washing, sliced a sliver of soap from her meager supply and stepped outside, securing the door behind her more from habit than necessity.
The morning air lay cool against her skin as she made her way toward the loch, Charlie trotting ahead, nose low to the ground.
The path was unchanged beneath her feet, was the same rutted earth, turning around the same bend where roots rose like knuckles from the soil.
Nothing was changed, and yet this morning the quiet seemed larger.
She told herself it was because Charlie was not darting back and forth between her and another, but kept a fairly straight path ahead of her.
But then she realized as well that she wasn’t listening for the cadence of a man’s stride behind her, nor for breaths that seemed to grow more labored the further they’d gone.
She adjusted the bundle beneath her arm and frowned faintly.
It was simpler this way—indeed quieter. As it should be.
Still, when she reached the open stretch before the loch, she glanced once over her shoulder, as though expecting to see him behind her.
Without giving it much thought—the fact that he was not there, and what emotion she might attach to that realization—Avery dropped the bundle at the water’s edge, and sat to remove her boots and short hose and garters.
The loch didn’t offer a convenient ledge or flat stone upon which to sit and scrub.
Its bank sloped gently, reeds giving way to clear water and rounded stones beneath the surface.
She stepped in until the hem of her rolled pants brushed the water and the chill wrapped itself around her ankles.
A few more paces, and she reached the cluster of larger rocks she favored, which were broad enough to brace the cloth against, smooth enough not to tear it.
She began with one of her shirts, which darkened immediately when submerged, growing heavy in her hands.
She worked it beneath the surface, forcing water through the weave, then hauled it up and spread it across the stone.
She took a small measure of the soap into her hand and rubbed it first between her palms before applying it to the collar and underarms of the shirt, meaning to lift the sweat and soil.
She then scrubbed in steady strokes, pressing the linen against the rock, turning it, working the entire piece, her hands moving from memory—push, drag, rinse.
Push, drag, rinse. The rhythm required attention but not thought.
The morning lay quiet around her. There was no sense of being observed, measured, or studied as she’d felt while the man, Morggán, had been here. The difference registered now only as a curious subtraction, one that did not displease her in the least, she insisted to herself.
She wrung the shirt hard, twisting until water streamed clear from the hem, then carried it to the grass above the shore and spread it flat where the sun would find it.
When she returned to the water, she took up her pants from the bundle—yesterday’s pair, stiff at the knees—and set to work on them with greater force.
She scrubbed until her fingers reddened, until the cloth yielded clean beneath her hands, and when her gaze drifted occasionally toward the rise beyond the trees, she didn’t pause long enough to consider why.
The knees bore three separate patches now.
The first had been the man’s doing when they were his, neat, small stitches that held for years.
The second had been hers, added years later when the fabric thinned again.
The third was recent, cut from the tail of a shirt no longer fit to wear.
The linen did not match perfectly; one square carried a faint yellowing from age.
She had a third pair of pants, which were thinner in the seat, made of lighter cloth. Those would not endure another hard winter without attention. When they failed entirely, she would cut them into strips for ties and save the broader pieces for mending.
The shirts fared little better. Three remained fit for wearing.
One strong enough for daily labor. One reserved when the first required washing.
One heavier, kept for cold and used sparingly so it might last. When cuffs frayed, she turned them.
When collars thinned, she bound them over with narrow strips from former garments.
When the underarms wore through, she patched from inside so the wind wouldn’t find her skin.
Her underwear had once belonged to the man.
It had taken her quite some time to make use of those, the very idea initially abhorrent until practical necessity overrode the indignity of it.
She’d washed them a dozen times, maybe more, before she’d put on the first pair, wincing as she’d done so.
She’d resewn the ties twice since. The cloth between the thighs had grown soft as paper, and she had reinforced it last autumn with panels taken from a ruined shirt.
That repair would hold another season, perhaps two.
After that—who knew. Cloth did not replenish itself.
It wore away by degrees. Threads loosened and fibers weakened.
Her wool cloak—also once belonging to the man—would outlast the linen, but not indefinitely.
It showed weather at the shoulders and hem.
Boots could be fed with fat and kept supple; leather endured if tended.
But linen—linen surrendered slowly, invisibly, until one day it tore clean through.
But she had Morggán’s plaid now, she reminded herself, likely made well enough to last for years.
She lifted the pants from the water and wrung them once more, watching until the water around her ran clear again.
When her pitiful supply of clothing diminished to the point of being beyond repair, she didn’t know what she would do.
She had, for some time, imagined that when that day came, it might finally be the thing—the need—that sent her beyond the comfort zone of her forest. The thought frightened her, settling somewhere behind her ribs like any other abstract, inevitable fear, only waiting its turn.
She carried the pants to the grass and spread them beside the shirt. She wiped her wet hands against her thighs and turned, being swiftly brought to a halt by the sight and sound of Morggán coming through the trees.
He hadn’t left.