Chapter 22
Conversation between Rhea and I remains scarce but at least it’s not the pressurised, compacted abyss after Arlo’s burning.
We move about the cottage companionably enough, and there’s sufficient space that we don’t need to be near each other if what’s unspoken becomes oppressive.
We’re both careful, I think, to keep a safe buffer.
And I think we both know I could have said, ‘Now, Rhea, are you listening? He was always going to die. Maybe not so painfully, but that’s the result of not doing what you’re told. ’ But I didn’t say that.
She’s already moving more slowly, her belly grown larger and larger, but I think there’s still a while yet, just a little.
Rhea often rests her hands on her stomach, arching back as she helps around the house, although there’s fortunately little to do on the holding now, nothing I cannot manage alone.
The apple trees will need pruning soon to see them through winter, she can help with that.
If this baby was human? I’d have her doing useful busywork, cutting swaddling cloth, stitching small clothes by the fire, knitting booties and jumpers and tiny caps, all the items a winter-tide child might require.
But there’s no need for anything more than a shroud.
I’m mostly mended despite the extra bruising.
When I’m good and ready, when I’m strong enough, then I must go deep into the forest again.
Back to the grove to do what should have been done a long while ago, with hemlock and hatchet and fire.
I’ll pay my debt to that first summer husband and perhaps somewhere a notation will be made in some grand ledger so that my good deeds might begin to outweigh my ill.
And I vow, no matter my loneliness, no matter my losses, I’ll never make another summer husband again.
* * *
Outside, early morning, I’m taking a few minutes on the bench by the rose garden, surveying the uneven earth, all those vague little mounds the grass rolls across.
It’s very quiet and cool, and I adjust my scarf, wonder if my coat is thick enough.
Yes, I decide, the ride will warm me up.
Rosie’s saddled by the barn, reins looped over a fencepost. I’d have started out later, especially with autumn-gloom upon us – but it’s lifted.
I’ll not go out in the darkness until I know what’s afoot, what’s taking the children, and I’ll be certain to return home well before dusk.
As long as the cottage wards hold, as long as we’re inside by nightfall, we’re safe.
I am, however, very aware that I seem to be the one and only adult who’s felt followed.
Rhea has never seen anything nor sensed herself stalked; no one in Berhta’s Forge has mentioned it either.
I should find it – I will find it, but I need to know more.
I cannot forget the image of the huntsman that night, spectral and malign, the most likely suspect.
But what is it?
Where does it rest?
And where has it come from and why now?
I shake my head. There are safe boundaries within which we can live for the moment.
I will tell Rhea, in a few days, about the huntsman – thus far, I’ve kept that knowledge to myself.
Why? Fear. Fear of being thought mad. Fear of having anyone ask why would such a thing appear to you? What in you would call to it?
No. Let me find it first. Let me discover its nature. Let me concoct a plan before I mention this to anyone else.
‘Mehrab?’
She’s wrapped in the thick colourful quilt around her shoulders, but her feet are bare, her hair a wild golden halo, the skin beneath her eyes puffy, and her complexion ever so slightly greenish.
A trick of the light, I think, because when she sits beside me it’s gone or so subtle I can’t see it any longer.
‘You’ll catch cold like that,’ I say, and she gives me a look that says How much worse can that be? I cannot fault her.
‘You’re going into the village again?’
‘There are things we’re going to need when – when the time comes.’ I shake my head, say without thinking, ‘Things I’d let run out because my time for such things is done.’
She nods slowly. ‘You said… you said that’s why you’d chosen the rose garden. Easy to visit. This happened to you, that’s why you’re so certain of everything, of course.’
I don’t have the energy to lie. ‘Yes. That’s how I know how fast it comes and that they never live.
’ Tears heat my eyes too quickly and begin to spill, though my voice remains steady.
I nod towards the five little mounds scattered around the spot where Yrse lies.
‘Why do you think I spend so much time out here?’
‘Mehrab—’
‘Each time I’ve given birth, I’ve been alone. It’s always terrifying. At least you won’t go through that. I won’t allow it.’ I don’t look at her but feel her hand on mine. We don’t say anything, and I cry. When I’m done, I look at her at last, then pull my hand from hers. ‘Oh!’
In her hair blossoms are sprouting, white and pink, thickest along the hairline and around the shells of her ears. ‘Oh.’
‘What’s wrong, Mehrab?’ And the girl – she’s a child after all – sounds scared.
‘It’s all right, don’t fear. You’re blossoming – quite literally – it happens.
It happens. It’s just sooner than I thought.
’ I laugh, gently plucking one of the flowers to show her.
I don’t say that some of mine are pressed between the pages of a book.
Her look of shock dissolves, replaced by wonderment, and she giggles.
‘I’m a meadow!’
‘A meadow, a garland, a bouquet, whatever you wish.’ I rise. ‘But it means your time is closer than I thought, and I must get moving.’
She holds the horse’s head as I mount, stroking the velvety nose. ‘Will you visit the Widow Wilky? Ask about her orphans?’
‘Eavesdropper.’ She’d not mentioned my conversation with Thad Peppergill until now, but I should have known. ‘Yes. I’ll see her. Now promise you’ll not stray from the holding. Stay in the warmth, eat well, drink a lot of water – you will thank me – and don’t answer any knocks at the door.’
Her brows lift, her head tilts. ‘Anything else, Mother?’
‘Awful child. I’ll be back before nightfall.’
* * *
It might be time to start bringing Rhea with me when I go into the village.
Or soon. After the baby comes and goes, when she’s well again.
It’s been months since Fenna brought her to me, months during which the likelihood of pursuit has faded.
It wouldn’t hurt for her to become acquainted with our nearest neighbours, find younger folk to talk to so I’m not her only company.
Meet men not made of wood. If she stays, of course. If she stays.
I make no plans, merely consider contingencies.
If she stays, she can take over some of the village errands; it won’t hurt me to do less.
It’ll be healthy for her to engage with humanity again.
At the very least, she should meet Reynald, do some lessons with him because he knows things I do not, has greater skill in his field.
If she leaves, it won’t matter.
Abruptly, Rosie whinnies and stalls, dancing sideways.
I gentle the skittish beast, trying to see what’s bothered her.
I took the river path today, a change of scenery, just a slightly longer route – up ahead, there’s something lying in the middle of the way.
I dismount, keeping hold of the reins but letting them play out as far as I’m able.
The horse isn’t so keen, snorting and tossing her head as I get further away, but she stays put despite her disapproval.
I’m careful in my steps, sweeping aside any leaf matter as I go, making sure there’s no wolf-pit been dug here for the unwary or a metal trap, hidden, full of gnashing teeth, and no raised earth to say a penitents’ path like the one that caught me all those months ago has been laid here.
Nothing. And when I get near enough, I laugh out loud. Then I look closer.
A knitted bear of golden-brown wool. Wracking my brain, trying to recall why it’s familiar, it finally hit me: I last saw it clutched to the chest of a sleeping Matthias Peppergill at the foot of the tree in his parents’ garden.
What’s it doing out here? Has the boy gone a’wandering again?
I pick up the bear and cast around for any sign of the child.
There’s nothing. No footprint, no discarded shoes or scrap of fabric torn from a coat or breeches.
Nothing disturbing the earth or leaves except for me in my overabundance of caution.
From the corner of my eye, however, I’m sure I see something to my left, bobbing in the river.
The moment I turn my head, it’s gone, no sign of it, and I’m left with an impression of something definitely too small to be a child.
If there was anything there in the first place.
Hyper-alert, I stare for long moments at where the water runs quickly over a small weir, froth and foam as it hits the lower liquid.
No. Nothing.
I go back to Rosie, hold the toy out for her inspection.
She sniffs at it with suspicion. Snorts, tosses her head again; disdainful rather than distressed, but she won’t go forward, not on that path, so I find another, parallel and narrow and about ten feet away, and she’s content to take it.
Whatever she can sense on the other, I’m not fool enough to try and ride her over it.
The path of least resistance has its appeal. I must be getting old.
* * *
The first thing I notice on arriving at Berhta’s Forge is that there’s no line of salt been laid around the village.
I look carefully and can discern absolutely no evidence of one.
There’s been no rain, no snow, no sleet, nothing that might have washed it away in the days since I told Thaddeus Peppergill what to do.
I can only conclude that he decided the expense was too great, that the loss of other lives was a risk he was willing to take.
I wonder if I’ll find such a boundary, however, around his mansion alone?
The second thing I notice is that Faolan’s with the mares, currycombing the white who’s still pregnant. Sorrel and Blister are accompanied by long-legged foals who come straight over to me as I dismount and lean on the fence. They snuffle and nibble at my hands; they smell very new.
‘Good morning, old man.’
‘And to you, old woman.’ He keeps working, but grins at me over his shoulder. ‘What brings you here this fine day? I warn you I’ve no more horses to spare.’
‘Hush. Visiting Widow Wilky.’
‘What’s she done to draw your ire?’
‘Oh, how brief was the sweetness of your tongue…’
‘My tongue’s plenty sweet and I’m happy to demonstrate—’
‘I had a visit from Thad Peppergill yesterday.’
‘You do know how to kill a mood.’
I shrug. ‘He said some of Widow Wilky’s orphans have gone missing.’
He stops mid-brush and the mare snorts her annoyance. ‘I’ve not heard that.’
‘I don’t imagine he’s been spreading it around.
I don’t imagine he’s told too many folk and he’s probably asked the widow to keep it quiet, lest he have to deal with complaints.
Have you heard anything else? Has Anselm mentioned Ari?
Have there been any occurrences out of the ordinary?
A strangeness in the woods, signs of… incursions in the village? ’
He shakes his head. ‘Incursions, Mehrab? What sort?’
And I can’t bring myself to tell him, though I’m unsure why. The words won’t come, cannot find purchase on my tongue, will not push past my teeth. I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why did you come to me?’
I smile.
We drift into the house and as soon as the door closes behind us, clothes are peeled away in that mysterious and effortless fashion, flesh meets and melds, mouths and lips and tongues and teeth go everywhere, tease everything.
Hands and fingers transmit desire and heat and he kisses my bruises, the old and the new.
Somehow, we find the bed and when he’s in me, the pleasure is so intense it feels like I could reach up and touch both sun and moon, reach through time and hold past and present and future in the palm of my hand and freeze them in this moment of pure intensity.
There’s a second, though, when as my head turns from side to side in ecstasy, I think I see a shape at the door.
Gone too quickly, I can’t be sure. A shadow, just a shadow from the movement of sun and trees outside the window.
And my attention’s dragged back to what’s being done to me, what I’m doing, and I feel like I might never separate myself from him and I bite at his shoulder to stop myself from screaming like a fox in heat.
In the quiet afterwards, I half-doze, running my fingers along the lines of his scars while he strokes my hair.
My mind, never still, picks at the idea that if I’d made a different choice years ago, this bed would have been mine, that I’d not be a visitor here in a house decorated by another woman.
That if I’d wanted a child, there might be a lad or lass who looked like me wandering these rooms. That if I’d wanted a constant companion…
But perhaps we’d be bored of each other.
It happens. No one’s proof against it. The irony is not lost on me that though he got no child on me, the summer husbands did, some of them.
And that I, each and every time, instead of ensuring those pregnancies did not come to fruition…
let nature run her course. That for a time, I had hope and a wish, though I cannot say why. I’d have been a terrible mother.
Abruptly, I sit up, swing out of his arms, out of bed, and gather my clothing despite his protests. I don’t snap, I’m gentle, and kiss him tenderly and deeply, tell him I’d laze with him all day if I could, but there are things that must be done, and I’ll let myself out.
The truth is that I cannot stay in that bed when it’s so crowded by my past, and his.