Chapter Eight The Weaver
Chapter Eight
The Weaver
A knock on the door in the slim hours, when morning has yet to find a foothold, is always – without exception – awful.
The Weaver, a sheep farmer who kept to and was kept by the hills, stood in the doorway with his head bare, hat worried between his palms and an expression that was both hopelessness and hopefulness in turns.
Isolde already had her work-dress on, pulled over her nightshift, while her feet had been jammed into her walking shoes.
Her steel hair was nested with sleep, though her instructions were sharp and capable.
The Weaver’s prized ewe had taken ill and he was distraught.
Although she had never met the man, Kensa knew the sheep farmer was an odd sort.
He did not speak to the other villagers and spent months alone, tending to his livestock.
What’s more, he wore a wool shirt and threadbare waistcoat, no matter the season, even on the hottest days.
He was accepted, mostly, and his need for solitude respected.
Supplies were gathered and Kensa was bid to find wormwood, elm bark, honey and wild garlic. Glass vials, scuffed and scratched, jostled together in her father’s old satchel.
‘It’s only a sheep,’ said Kensa groggily, pressing her heels into her shoes.
Isolde’s tone was harsh when she replied, ‘If it’s brought the Weaver to my door at this hour, then it is not only a sheep to him.’
That was the end to Kensa’s dissent, as she followed the sheep farmer, his lantern aloft, along the drovers’ tracks and up the steep hills, to where his small croft lay.
It was a neat, well-managed property. Even in wet weather, the flagstones around his stone hut, outbuildings and sheepcote had been swept clean, while the surrounding willow fences were sturdy and expertly latticed.
Beyond them, the clear night held more stars than any of them had numbers for.
‘I can’t face losing her,’ said the Weaver.
He led the wise woman and her apprentice into the sheepcote. Its flint-cob walls were topped with a thatch roof, keeping dry the mud-packed earth and straw beneath. Inside, were several fleecy occupants, caught between weariness and wariness at the strangers in their bed.
To Kensa’s eye, these animals were housed better than the poorest folk in the village.
In one corner, separated from the other sheep, was a sickly ewe.
She was no young creature, legs and muzzle marked with age, eyes layered with a thousand grass-fed views.
Her breathing was laboured and she did not acknowledge the new bodies in her pen.
Isolde was thorough in her assessment, surveying the sheep, and then the Weaver.
‘You need to sleep,’ she said to him firmly. ‘You’re no use to no one if you are too weak to stand.’
‘Is there nought to be done for her?’
Isolde shook her head and the Weaver released a sound from his throat, tight and vulnerable. ‘What if she passes while I’m sleeping? Going to fetch you was risk enough.’
Isolde chewed on her lips awhile, then turned to her apprentice. ‘Kensa will stay, she will wake you.’
Kensa’s mouth turned southwards. A refusal crouched behind her teeth, until she caught the Weaver’s expression. The pain on his features and the expectation. It was one she had known in earlier days with her sister; an obligation to care, which she could not refuse.
‘I will stay,’ she said, ‘I will wake you.’
If the day came, it did not come for Kensa, whose hours narrowed to a shadowed corner in the sheepcote.
The shelter’s other occupants were put out into the surrounding fields, their bleats pressing stubborn life into the funereal silence.
She sat beside the ewe, heard its troubled breaths.
Prayed it would pull through. It slept a while, refused food and water, slept further, and Kensa feared the worst, only for it to stir once or twice.
Her fingers stroked, brushed away flies, cleaned what needed cleaning.
There is a subtle communication that builds between human and animal when the pair occupy a space for a time.
Where sense is shared and talkless knowledge exchanged.
It was in this silence that is not quite silence, that Death held back the sheep’s breath and began to store it for himself.
‘It’s time,’ said Kensa, upon fetching and finding the Weaver, asleep in a chair at the hearth. His rest had not restored him. He seemed frail and thin, as though he would gladly follow the ewe’s descent into those final moments.
‘Nineteen years she’s been with me,’ he said. ‘Had her when it was me and my man up here, he hand-reared this girl himself.’
Kensa did not know what to say, although she knew she should.
‘That’s a good age,’ she offered at last.
There had been talk, rumours about the Weaver and his man, Pat.
A row with Mr Aldridge, the curate, after he would not marry the pair.
Neither was seen at St Gerrans Church again and Pat sadly passed not long after.
Kensa had never paid the talk much mind, for she knew what people said about her own mother and her unmarried proclivities with Mr Skewes.
‘He loved these sheep, he did, and I’ve loved them for him.’
The Weaver cried and hummed and sang his grief to the ewe. A warbled offering, yet soothing nonetheless. In his arms, he held a lost love, not a sheep. He did not see the difference now. With a rasping voice, he stumbled through a melody about reunion:
‘A guv kolon, deus tre.’
Oh, sweet one, come homeward.
Who was the first person to tend another’s ills with song?
That seemed, to Kensa, like witchcraft then, like the Old Ways not yet forgotten.
Her own fears gnawed at her, as she pictured him singing to a young woman with blonde hair and Elowen’s face.
How close Death seemed now, as though its proximity to the sheep could snatch other frail lives purely for the convenience of having them near by.
She left man and sheep to their goodbyes, putting her mind towards food.
Her joints were stiff from sitting and she smelled of straw and sickliness.
Bread, cooked mutton and fat passed for a simple meal, which she pushed down her gullet.
The Weaver could not speak enough to accept a plate and so Kensa left it covered beside the hearth.
‘I … ’ she said, did not say.
When at last she arrived back to Bohortha, the sun had set and its back was turned to her.
Upon stepping over the threshold, her legs went.
Exhaustion, little food and second-hand loss piled within her, until she collapsed with the weight of it.
Isolde was there to catch her. Hands in her armpits, broth fetched from the stove, clothes stripped and blankets heaped upon her.
She was guided to the chaise longue and a fire roared: Welcome! It’s safe! Rest! It’s safe!
In her addled state, Kensa could have sworn she heard the flames speak. Perhaps, when one listens hard enough, everything has a voice or a story or a song worth hearing. She only wished she could stop crying enough to hear it.