By These Ten Bones (8 page)

“A spell book! A book of the black arts!” exclaimed the farmer. Father Mac was absorbed in examining the text. He didn't answer the charge.

The whole town was around the old woman now, talking and exclaiming. “Damned witch!” shouted Little Ian, and someone flung a handful of mud onto her velvet cloak.

“Filthy witch!” cried several voices, and the crowd surged forward.

“Get her to safety, Black Ewan,” called Father Mac. “I hold you responsible.”

People were shouting and cursing, and Lady Mary was shouting back. Her face was red, and her white hair had come loose from its neat bun and straggled around her face. Black Ewan half-carried, half-dragged her down to the castle, Father Mac's arms around her protectively. Some of the crowd ran to supply themselves with weapons and rocks, but they didn't use them. For the moment, they were unwilling to hit their parish priest.

Father Mac and Black Ewan disappeared into the castle with her. They were intent on the relative safety of the Hole, the simple cell chiseled out of the rock and reached by a trapdoor in the floor of the lowest story. The crowd milled around outside, robbed of its victim. The men had drawn their knives, and women who had patted Maddie's cheek since she was old enough to walk were shrieking out terrible threats.

“Burn her goods!” shrieked Jeannie Ian, and the idea caught on at once.

“Burn out the witch, burn the books of the black arts,” echoed a half-dozen voices. Excited boys raced back to the fire by the bog for burning sticks and embers. Townspeople came and went through the castle doorway, bringing her furniture outside. They pulled out the bench, smashed up the table, and threw linen down in a heap on the gravel shore. Maddie saw one of Lady Mary's tapestries and her little embroidered footstool on the pile. Then the fire caught, and the flames went up with a hungry roar.

Maddie raced up the stairs and into the hall. The small brown book about werewolves! She had to find it again. Her cousin Hector went by with a handful of books, and Maddie grabbed him, sending them toppling to the floor. “Get out of the way!” he said crossly as she bent to shuffle through them. He kicked the one she reached for, sending it spinning away from her hands.

What am I doing? she thought in a frenzy. Father Mac had that book! He had it back near the houses, by the other fire. She turned and raced out again, skinning past men carrying a heavy chest down the stone steps, past Tom's Ma and Old Peggy arguing over a sewing kit. She ran to the fire by the bog, searching the ground for the book. Stools, distaffs, and baskets of wool lay abandoned on the ground where they had talked. Someone had dropped a half-knitted sock in the mud.

Black Ewan walked by on his way from the castle. Maddie saw him bend down and pick her book out of a clump of grass. Then he tossed it onto the glowing embers.

Maddie tried to retrieve it, but the heat forced her back. The book about werewolves. Paul's only hope for a cure. The pages curled and blackened and became licking flames, their secrets lost forever.

“That didn't belong to you!” she cried out in disappointment. The farmer just patted her on the shoulder.

“Maddie, you don't understand,” he said, steering her toward the houses. “This is a problem for your elders.”

Just like Paul, thought the girl bitterly. A problem for my elders. “And that's how elders solve problems, is it?” she challenged. “They throw them into the fire.”

“We take care of our own,” he replied. “We attack before we're attacked. One day you'll have people to protect, and then you'll understand.”

I do have people to protect, thought Maddie. I have people to protect from you.

They came around the corner of Black Ewan's house. Colin the Smith knelt there, hammering on Mad Angus's fetter. The smith had taken off the padlock and was pounding an extra link into its place, forming an unbroken chain between the two prisoners so that the Englishman couldn't escape.

“Hey!” exclaimed Ned angrily. “Why do all this? The harvest is done, and we got no work now. We got to go.”

Black Ewan bent down to pick up the padlock, eye to eye with the scruffy Traveler. “I'll deal with you later, you murderous scum,” he promised grimly. “Did you think I'd let you walk away after you tried to kill my brother's boy?”

“That little villain?” sneered the old man. “If you beat manners into him, I wouldn't have to do it. Wish I hit you instead. I'll cave your skull in.” Colin the Smith finished his work and picked up his tools, and he and Black Ewan walked away.

“Cursed meddle-maker!” fumed Ned. “Stupid clod! No work now from that old woman, no money, no drink!” He jerked crossly on his chain, and Mad Angus jerked back harder. Ned abandoned the contest. “And what are you unhappy for?” he demanded irritably of Maddie. “You got a face like a pallbearer.”

“Lady Mary was helping me,” she told him sadly. “She was hunting for a cure for Paul. She had a book about it, but it's burned up. He'll never be cured now.”

Maddie went home to find Fair Sarah building up the cooking fire and Paul fetching in peats. He dropped them by the hearth and came over to the girl. “Madeleine, what was it about?” he asked quietly.

Terribly discouraged and frightened at the transformation of her neighbors, Maddie wasn't ready to answer him. She gathered comfort from the familiar sights of her own house: the milk sheep lying in the corner, the chickens murmuring quietly to themselves as they roosted for the night. Then she looked at Paul, and her feeling of comfort evaporated. She knew just how the faces of the townspeople would look when they threw him onto the fire.

“Tell the truth, I don't know what it was about,” she said, kneeling by her mother's side to help her pat out oatcakes. “Black Ewan says Lady Mary's a witch because of the smith's baby and because of the—the Water Horse that attacked you. But because of lots of other things, too, things that go back years and years. People were thinking them up all day.”

“Well, I know what it was about, if you don't,” sighed Fair Sarah. “Black Ewan's never forgiven that woman because Kathleen wouldn't marry him. Lady Mary had no kin to stand by her, and the people are afraid. They're looking for someone to blame right now. Strange things have been happening lately.”

James Weaver and Father Mac had been watching over Lady Mary in the Hole until Black Ewan brought the padlock and secured the trapdoor. Then they had stayed by the castle to make sure that the crowd worked out its anger and no harm came to the prisoner. The two men ducked under the doorway now, and Father Mac bent to warm his hands.

“Is she really a witch?” asked the wood-carver, looking at Maddie.

“No!” she burst out in response. “She's a sharp-tongued, proud old woman, and that's all she is.”

“But she'll die as a witch,” growled Father Mac. “Of that I have no doubt. I can't just sit by while an innocent woman is hanged out of revenge and fear. I can't watch my parish commit murder.”

“Do you have a choice, Father?” asked James Weaver. “You'll not find a way into the Hole, and Black Ewan will take his farmhands with him to escort her to the new lord. The padlock's on the grate over Lady Mary, and Black Ewan always has the key.”

“It isn't right, what's happening to her,” Maddie said in a pleading tone, and her eyes told Paul that she didn't know what to do. Would it save Lady Mary if she gave away his secret, or would it just mean another death?

A gloomy silence settled over the room. The young man sat down and took up his carving, frowning as he thought.

“I can make a key,” he announced. They all stared blankly at him. “I can study Black Ewan's key,” he explained, “and I can carve you a copy.”

“A wooden key would break in the lock, son,” observed Father Mac kindly.

“You'd have to have one cast, or have a smith study my key,” answered Paul. “I've done work for smiths before, making models of broken tools.”

“A model,” breathed Father Mac. “Would Colin the Smith do the work, do you think?”

“He'd do it,” said Fair Sarah. “My brother would do the work for me, and his own wife would never know.”

Father Mac sat up straight, his eyes flashing. “Then make me that key,” he said, “and I'll take care of the rest. I'll get their witch to safety.”

“This is a serious matter,” warned James Weaver. “If word got out that we helped Lady Mary escape, we'd be turned out of the town, and the lad here would face even worse than that.”

Maddie discovered that Father Mac and her parents were looking gravely at her. “Oh, don't fret about me,” she replied modestly. “I can keep a secret.”

The next day was windy and cold, perfect for threshing. The men opened the wickerwork doors on either side of the grain barn and threshed out the grain on the open floor, beating the kernels from their seed heads with hinged flails while the women tossed the kernels in baskets so that the wind could blow away the chaff.

Threshing was hard work, and the men were soaked with sweat in spite of the cold. This was the sort of simple task that Mad Angus excelled at, and he threshed more than all the rest of them put together. Ned was almost no help at all, but Black Ewan saw to it that he took his turns.

The men had decided that the young wood-carver was too weak to do any threshing, so they brought him tools to mend instead. Paul sat on the edge of the threshing floor with the broken tools around him.

“That's a fine job, lad,” remarked Black Ewan, wiping his damp brow and sitting down beside the carver after his turn with the flail. “It's good to see you busy at useful work.”

Paul didn't say a word to his unsuspecting model, but he sneaked long and careful glances at the big skeleton key around his neck. He was not so foolish as to fashion a key right in front of the farmer, but every now and then he took out a small block of wood and made a nick in it to guide his carving later.

After lunch, Paul returned to the weaver's house and sat down by the door, where he had the best light. He sat there for hours, almost without moving, deeply engrossed in his task. Hurrying back and forth as she went about her own work, Maddie watched the carver. She remembered her first view of him the day the Travelers had come. He had sat just so, with his shaggy black hair falling into his face and the shavings falling onto his knees. Except that this time he glanced up to smile at her and held out the finished key. Her heart skipped a beat as she smiled back.

“You're done already? You're that cunning,” she exclaimed, studying the wooden key. “Black Ewan himself couldn't tell the difference.”

“I just hope it works,” he said, taking it back to examine it. “It's as close as I know how to make it.”

The threshing days passed, full of hard work and high spirits. The witch still huddled in her dark, rocky cell. Maddie came home from Mass one morning to find that Paul had been out in the biting wind gathering eggs for her, and her mother was scolding him as she fixed breakfast. The chickens weren't laying as they had in high summer, and the sheep were giving less milk. It was the turn of the year toward the lean times.

After breakfast, Fair Sarah left with some broth for Tom's Ma. Maddie was just picking up her knitting and settling down to keep the fire when she noticed something odd. Her apple tree that Paul had carved wasn't where she had left it. She went over and picked it up.

The wooden figure was different. It still had a tree's crown of leaves and apples, but the trunk had turned into a pale, slim girl. Leaves grew out of her hair, and her two arms stretched out to become branches. Maddie walked toward the doorway and turned the carving in the light, studying it with wonder.

“It's you,” said a voice from the doorway, and she looked up to find Paul there. “At least, it looks like you,” he added awkwardly. “Do you like it? I had just finished it that first morning when I looked up and saw you talking to Ned, and then I looked down and saw you in the wood. That's why I didn't want to give it to you when you asked to buy it. Because I wanted to carve what I had seen.”

Maddie examined it. The tree girl was slender and sweet, poised and graceful. Maddie could see that she was happy by the lift of her arms and her chin. Happy to be an apple tree, happy to grow where she was planted. The tip of one toe-root just showed beneath her long skirt.

“After I saw you,” he went on, “every block of wood I saw had you inside it. I carved you instead of working on the box I was supposed to finish, and that's why we stayed so long. I carved you so many times, Ned swore at me. He said I was going soft in the head.”

“But why would you carve me? Who would want to see me?” Maddie held out the tree girl. “Just me, I'm not fancy like this.”

Paul took the carving to look at it and then at her. She could tell that somehow he still saw the resemblance.

“You're beautiful, Madeleine,” he said simply.

“Beautiful? Me? Lord bless your heart, I'm not beautiful! With my round face, and these big hands—” She held them out. “And I'm thick in the middle like Ma, all us women in my family are thick in the waist; why, just look at my aunt Janet, and even Bess has already gotten thick.”

The young carver waited until she stopped babbling. Then he handed back the apple tree with a frown. “You are, too, beautiful,” he retorted with perfect sincerity, and perhaps he was right after all.

Threshing was over at last. Everyone gathered in Black Ewan's big house for a feast, and young roosters who had walked tall in their pride suddenly found the promise of life cut short. Maddie looked around the smoky room at her neighbors chatting and singing and realized that Paul wasn't there. She went hunting for him and found him out in the twilight, carving a two-handled drinking cup.

“Come join us,” she said, but the young man shook his head. She knelt down to study the graceful cup. “Please, Paul. Have a little fun for once. You're among friends here.”

“I'm not among friends,” he answered. “I can't ever be. They wouldn't be my friends if they knew.”

“Well, if you don't want them to know, you should come join us,” remarked the sensible girl. “They all know you can talk, and they think it's strange that you don't. If you miss an evening like this, they'll gossip about you.”

So Paul came into the house, bringing his carving with him, and he sat in a corner under a little rush light to finish the two-handled cup. The others welcomed him with friendly words, and Maddie felt she had won a victory. Little Ian was just finishing a tale about Finn Mac Cumhail and the founding of his warrior band.

“The king released the three hundred heroes who were condemned to die, and he gave them all to Finn,” he concluded. “You never saw such a host! The sunlight glittered off their shields and long spears and the gold collars and armbands they wore. One by one, they knelt at Finn's feet, and they swore faith with him for all time. From that day forth, they roamed the land looking for enemies, and one man among them could conquer a whole army. They were the bright-haired Fianna, the most beautiful of warriors, and all the people rejoiced in their brave deeds.”

The listeners murmured their approval at this familiar ending, and Little Ian paused for a drink. “Why doesn't the carver lad give us a story,” he proposed. “Come, we know you can speak, and the old man's not here to beat you. Tell us a tale of your own people.”

Paul gave Maddie a look that said as clearly as words
This is your fault,
but she just gave him an encouraging smile in return. He turned the cup in his hands, agitated, before glancing at the spectators lining the long room.

“My own people,” he murmured, and he looked at the cup again. He took a deep breath.

“A young chief was hunting in the woods,” he began, “and he heard merry singing far from any house. He followed the sound and saw a lovely maiden walking through the forest. Her eyes were gray like storm clouds, and her hair was yellow like grain, and no sooner had he seen her than he loved her. He stepped up to her and would have greeted her kindly, but she turned and ran from him.

“The chief followed her to a tall, round tower. He would have gone into the tower after her, but an old woman barred his way. ‘Where has she gone?' he demanded. ‘And what bride price will you have for her? I want to make her my wife.'

“‘There will be no bride price for my daughter, and no bride,' the old hag told him. ‘It's said that men will be her doom.'

“But the chief wouldn't take this for an answer. ‘Name a bride price,' he declared, ‘and name it now, because if you don't, I'll come with my strong men and take her away from here and make her my wife anyway.' Then the old woman sighed and thought, and at last she asked that her daughter come back to stay with her in the tower for one week out of every four, and to this price the young chief agreed.

“The pair were married and lived happily, and the maiden bore her husband twin sons. He was terribly proud of his beautiful wife until his kinsman came to visit.

“‘Where's this beauty I've heard you boasting about?' demanded the kinsman, and he laughed when he learned she was not at home. ‘Cousin, someone is leading you by the nose like a bull,' he said. ‘If you asked me what I think, I'd say that your wife has two husbands instead of one.'

“That night the young chief paced his house in anger and suspicion. At last he journeyed through the woods and crept up to the round tower. Fearful shrieks and noises came from inside it. He climbed the vines that covered it to look in a high window. There sat the old hag, knitting and humming, with his two baby sons sleeping by her side. But his lovely wife was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a hideous monster.

“It looked like—like—” Paul broke off, his voice unsteady. “I don't know what it looked like. But it was big and black like a shadow, an evil thing that thought only of harm. It was chained to the wall, and it tore at the chain and hissed and shrieked foul curses. The forest rang with the sound of its screams.