Chapter 5 #2
“Do you?” I was not surprised. Glenna had a different swain every week.
She and I were of an age, old to remain unwed, but Glenna at least had her share of admirers.
Her figure was neat, her skin clear and milky; she’d a riotous mane of auburn curls.
’Twas her father, Rufus Baker, who kept these admirers from turning proper suitors.
He’d been pilloried twice already for selling underweight bread, and his tongue could be sharp as a rod on bare skin.
No young man wanted such a father-in-law.
Yet it had never stopped Glenna from having her fun.
Would that I could ever have such fun! My girlhood had been spent caring for my house, and my sick not-mother; I had not even a moment’s pleasure on the saints’ days or at local fairs. Then again, no young man had ever looked at me the way they did at Glenna, not until the shepherd came around.
I recalled the brush of his fingers at my throat, and a thrill spread throughout my entire body.
Glenna stared into the distance, dreamily twisting her apron in her hands. “Oh, and you should have seen him, Bess! The finest man I ever did see. Strong and hale like a knight from a story, with the face of an angel, but the Devil’s own mischief in his eyes.”
Many a youth looked upon Glenna Baker with the Devil’s mischief in his eyes. “Was he now?” I said dryly. “I suppose next you’ll be telling me he had all his teeth.”
“He did!” Glenna exclaimed. “Sharp and gleaming like little pearls. And he were dressed all in green, like unto an elf lord. So handsome he was, I even called him that.” She sighed full long. “If only I might see him ever again.”
Her words caught like a dry crust of bread in my throat.
A besotted lass will often brag of her suitor’s good looks, referring to him as an ancient god, elf lord, or shining knight out of a minstrel’s tale.
’Tis simple exaggeration, nothing more. But the gleam in Glenna’s eyes seemed feverish to me now, her words pouring out not from enthusiasm alone, but almost—dare I say it—from fear.
“Never again will I see his like on earth.” Her hand dropped to her belly, then fell quickly away.
I misliked her words; the telltale hand at her belly, and the sweet aroma wafting from her, spring blossoms and ripening fruit. My tongue went dry, and I croaked out, “And his name?”
She made no response but a deep, yearning sigh.
No name. Of course, no name. We do not hand them out willy-nilly among the fae.
“You met this elf lord when and where?” My tongue had gone sharp, like a fishwife’s.
“’Twas Imbolc,” Glenna said distantly. “As chill as Satan’s bathhouse. And yet standing beside him, by the well at Carterhaugh, it felt to me like the heart of summer. And when he touched me, a rosy flame burned beneath my skin.”
Imbolc.
When the Veil lay open between Faery and the mortal realm, though I chose not to pass through. It did not mean no tricksy wights had come through from the other side.
One of them had seduced Glenna Baker. He was responsible for both her current distraction and for the scent of fecundity upon her.
Glenna Baker was with child.
“You carry the elf lord’s child,” I said to Glenna.
She pulled me further away from the crowd, where her brother and father might not overhear. “I only call him that.” She rolled her eyes and laughed too high. “I am sure he is naught but a wandering tinker, for all his elegant clothes.”
Neither elf lord nor wandering tinker would likely give the child his name.
“It matters not,” I said quietly. “You carry his child.”
Glenna lightly slapped my arm, as if I had made some outrageous jest.
Then she lowered her voice. “You cannot say that. There’s no way you could know. ’Tis only a fortnight since I should have . . .” She trailed off, unable to finish what she had been about to say.
You cannot even speak the words “my courses are late.” How can you be ready to bear a child? I steeled myself against the slight tremble in her lips, the wet shine of her eyes. “You told me about your lover.”
At the mention of him she went starry-eyed again, as if she was well and truly besotted. More than besotted.
Enchanted.
Glenna might call her lover an elf lord in jest, but I feared he was one in truth. Love cannot trap the fae as it will the folk of earth. We hunger and are sated. We seduce and abandon, and care not what seed we have sown.
At least, we are not meant to.
Yet this child would be born on this side of the Veil. Likely it must pass beneath a horseshoe nailed to the lintel every day. Be baptized, and whatever harm might come to it from that, I did not know.
But I knew this: To be a child of two worlds, and citizen of none, is a fate no one should have to endure.
This pity I felt was not of the fae at all.
“I am not your friend,” I continued, as if by saying so I could harden my own heart.
“If you wished to brag of your new love, you would have gone to one of the Douglas girls, or to the reeve’s daughter.
Never would you come to me.” I was blunt, but grateful I need not be otherwise, my faery limitations for once coming of use.
“Never would you tell Mairi Grieve’s daughter you had a dalliance in the woods, unless something had come of it, something you did not want. ”
Glenna’s brown eyes were wide with wonder. “They say Mairi Grieve was midwife to the queen of the faeries herself.”
I gawped at her, speechless. Who said it? When? Was this idle rumor, a tribute to Mairi’s knowledge and skill, or did someone actually know?
Glenna’s elfin lover, perhaps.
But Glenna had already moved on from the subject. Shame flushed her cheeks. “Dinna tell my father. About the bairn.” Her voice dropped to a whisper as her gaze fell to the ground.
“He will figure it out in time!”
Glenna might be publicly humiliated or cast out of her own home. I remembered Peggy the Cottar, aged before her time and begging on the road.
Glenna bit her lip, looking vulnerable and young. “Not if I—” She trailed off, brushing her fingers across her belly.
There it was. Why she confided in me, what she needed me for. Glenna Baker was childing but wished to be empty, and like as not, she wanted my help.
Do not follow in your mother’s footsteps. The words of Eamon Grieve returned to me. And the priest’s: She messed with God’s will.
And Glenna’s own: They say Mairi Grieve was midwife to the queen of the faeries herself.
Glenna was a silly git, a goose of a girl, but she knew who to turn to in her time of need.
“What are you planning to do?” I asked quietly, fearing the answer.
She sniffled, her eyes round, and shook her head. And so, the question had turned right back around to me.
“I know an herb,” I said, and despite myself, put my hand over hers. “Do not fret. Mairi Grieve taught me everything she knew.”