Daughter Of The Forest (51 page)

He let her finish.

“If not your brother, then who?” he said. “What other enemy has she so close at hand? For this blow is not for us, mother. This strikes at Jenny’s heart and at her will. The price of this fire is three moons, four moons of silence. Another whole season of waiting.”

I’m afraid, at that, I burst into tears. Silent tears, but hard enough to make my shoulders shake and my nose run. Perhaps they had forgotten me, there where I crouched on the floor by the charred remains of my work. But I had not been able to shut out their voices. I put my hands over my face.

“I must confess, I do feel some sympathy for the girl,” said Lady Anne, fumbling for a handkerchief. “Here, use this,” she said. Red was quiet, watching me. “Off you go, Hugh,” his mother said firmly. “There’s no need for you here. I will deal with this.” But he ignored her, and I heard rather than saw him come close and kneel down beside me where I sat weeping on the floor.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I cannot take you myself, but John will ride out with you to the place where this plant grows. You can bring back whatever you need. This hurts, I know. But you have been strong before, and you will be now. What is burned can be replaced; what is destroyed can be made again. In time you will win back your voice. In time—in time, you will find your path back home.”

I would not look directly at him, but I lowered my hands from my wet cheeks, and used my fingers to speak to him. My thoughts were muddled with distress, my gestures less than clear.
Long. Long time. I—tired. You—too—tired
. That drew a wry expression from him, a lopsided stretch of the mouth.

“I’m good at waiting. You’d be surprised how good,” he said.

There was one more thing I had to ask him. It wasn’t easy to show.
How you know—spin, weave—voice
? He understood all right. A tiny shadow of a smile, soon gone.

“I’m learning to listen,” he said. “Slowly.”

Over his shoulder, I saw Lady Anne’s face, frozen in disapproval as she watched us. Well, I didn’t care what she thought. It would take all my strength and all my will to set to again, to make up the work that had been destroyed. I would have no energy for speculation or worry. Tomorrow I would go out, and I would gather enough starwort for two whole shirts. And I would work day and night, night and day until I finished the task. No enemy was going to stop me. I was the daughter of the forest, and if my feet faltered on the path from time to time, at least they were going straight forward into the dark. And perhaps I was not quite alone.

As they went out onto the landing, she spoke to her son in an undertone. Her words were not meant for my ears, but I heard them, for in my state of distress it did not occur to me to move politely away from where I stood just inside the doorway.

“Tell me one thing. Just one. What place is there for this girl in your household, once you are wed? Do you believe for a moment your wife will tolerate her continuing presence here? With all that people are saying about—about you, and about her?”

“I see no problem,” said Red, and his tone was distant, as if he was hardly paying attention to her words. “Why should anything change?”

Lady Anne lost her control, momentarily. “Really, Hugh! Sometimes you exasperate me beyond belief! Can you be so unaware, so blind in this one thing alone? I wish you could take a step away. Look at yourself for just a moment.
For you speak to her as you do to no other. You speak to her as if—as if to another self
. It’s time you woke up from this dream. I fear for your safety, for all of us, if this continues. The girl must leave here.”

I hovered inside the long room, wishing she would remember I was there, and stop it. I heard Red’s voice, very soft, very remote.

“When have you known me make a bad decision, Mother? When have I ever shown faulty judgment?”

She did not reply for a while, and I thought perhaps they were gone. But when I ventured out, there they still stood, Lady Anne looking at her son, love warring with anger on her face, and Red staring into space, expressionless mask well in place.

“This is different,” was all Lady Anne said. Then she ushered me downstairs, and gave me food and drink, and was kindness itself, for she understood the requirements of duty, though her eyes gave me another message. She was afraid, but of what I did not know.

The next day started well. Although the loss of so much work weighed heavy on me, I was now resolute in my path forward, and forbade myself to dwell on what might have been. John appeared quite early, with his own tall gray horse and a smaller mare for me to ride. There were two other men in attendance. Perhaps Red had overreacted to the threat of danger just a little. I was pleased at the chance to ride, rather than be carried before or behind like a sack of grain. The mare was docile but kept up a good pace, and we reached the small stream with its mantle of starwort well before midmorning.

There was no need to tell John the rules. He sent one man up the hill to watch, the other down to the fringe of the trees. He himself settled on the rocks near me, and let me get on with it. Margery must have spoken with him about my work, for he seemed to understand that I must perform every step of this task myself, though I could see his frustration as he watched my laborious cutting and bundling of the fibrous stems. The sun was warm, and there was much activity of bee and swallow and small creeping insect. I remember clearly the smell of that day, for the air held the sweetness of the first hawthorn blossoms and the heady fragrance of wild roses in early bloom. Near the water, a few wild violets struggled free of the invading starwort, and stretched their tiny brave faces up toward the light. I cut back the stems that choked their growth, so that they might enjoy one season’s sunshine.

I grew weary, and John made me stop and drink from a flask he had in his saddlebag, and eat bread and cheese. He called the men in, passed out their rations, sent them off again. Neither had anything to report. He watched me finish the small meal, a wry smile on his face.

“Good,” he said. “You run yourself too hard, Jenny; the body cannot go on working forever, if you neglect it. I wish I could help you with this task. You’re a small girl to do such labor. How much more?”

I had one bundle complete and tied up neatly further down the gully. I indicated, another the same, then we might go home. John nodded.

“Try holding your knife this way,” he said, showing me. “Good. It makes a cleaner cut, and that will wear less on your hands. By God, whoever set this task on you has much to answer for.”

This was as vehement a statement as I had ever heard him utter. His kind, worn face was creased with concern. I gave him a reassuring pat on the arm.
It’s all right. I can manage
.

I held the knife as he had shown me. It helped a bit. Fresh blisters developed on those parts of my hands that were not already too scarred to damage further. I felt the sweat running down my back and between my breasts and across my brow. But it was easy to put the pain aside. Simply focus the mind on the goal: my brothers, safe, back in this world as men again. The unraveled tapestry mended, the seven streams flowing together, the converging paths again joined as one. I moved further downstream, seeking flatter ground where the plant could be more easily reached.

I sensed it just before it happened, for there was a sudden chill in the air, an instant of wrongness that made the hair stand on end and the spine freeze. But so quick; no time to move, to draw breath, to warn; no time to think, even, of what might be coming. Then the roaring, crashing sound of a great quantity of earth and rock moving with speed; something knocking me off my feet, hurling me to the ground. I struck my head, and for a moment everything went black. Then an awareness of the sound dying away as swiftly as it began; my heart pounding in my chest, a sharp pain in my left ankle. I opened my eyes, blinking and choking, for my face, my whole body was covered with earth and dust, and the air around me was full of small particles lit by the sun to a dazzling gold. Overhead, birds still called and little clouds still scudded in a bright blue sky. Nearby, there was an eerie silence.

I struggled to sit up, but something was holding my ankle down. In front of me, I could see the sack still spread, the starwort stems laid neatly across, the glint of the knife where I had dropped it. The other bundle, carefully rolled ready for collection. Beyond this, the streambed, the ferns, the small trees still stood. I twisted around. And behind me, everything was gone. Everything. I stared, scarcely able to take it in. Where the gully had cut into the hillside, bisected by the green-fringed stream, there was now a huge expanse of tumbled rocks and soil and bare roots. Up above, a great raw gash scarred the hillside, as if a slice of living rock had been crudely carved out and flung carelessly downward. Had it come two strides further, I would have been crushed. It had been so quick; so quick.

In that moment of recognition, I came closer to breaking my silence than at any point so far. For there was no movement, no sound save for the trickle of small pebbles, of pockets of soil as they settled and moved. I sank my teeth into my lower lip, to stop myself screaming,
John! John! Where are you?
Somehow, I managed to wrench my foot free of the rock that pinned it, aware that I had done myself worse damaged, but not caring. Somehow, I scrambled up and over the rockfall, seeking the place I thought closest to where he had been, dashing the dust from my eyes, forcing myself to move despite the pain. Behind me, at last, there were sounds. The man posted to watch at the tree line came running back up the hill, his face sheet white. Of the other, who had guarded the upper margin, there was no sign.

It was a desperate search, with no tools for the task, clawing away at stones, using bare hands to scoop out soil, the two of us gasping for breath, not even knowing if the place where we dug was right or not. There was no way to move the bigger rocks, though we tried; by the time you had what you needed, which was ropes and draft horses and eight or nine strong men, it would be far too late.

We found John, finally. A hand, an arm. After struggling, aching labor, an opening to where he lay, all but crushed by an immense boulder that pinned his body from chest to feet. He still breathed, and was yet conscious, for a narrow triangle between delicately balanced stones had left him a tiny pocket of air. There was nothing more we could move; no way we could free him.

I sent the man back for help. There was no sign of the other, no way to tell where he lay beneath these tumbled stones. The horses were tethered lower down, under the trees. It would not take so very long to ride to Harrowfield, to fetch men and ropes and tackle. Not so very long. Still, too long.

I sat very still on the rough stones, for a wrong movement might bring more down around him, might cause the weight to settle more heavily on his body. John’s face was gray under the dusting of soil, and a small but steady trickle of blood made a crimson line on his cheek and pooled on the rock beneath his head. I listened to the sound of his breathing, and felt the weight of the rocks in my own chest. I did not weep for this was beyond tears.

“Jen—” he was trying to speak. I gestured,
no, no talk. Breathe. Just breathe
.

“No,” he managed, and his eyes already held the shadow of farewell. “Say—tell—”

Each word needed a breath. Each breath bore the agony of that crushing load, the earth slowly squeezing the life out of him. “Red,” he said. “Right thing…right choice…right…you…say yes…” For a few moments he closed his eyes, and when he forced them open again, with a shuddering, rattling gasp for air, I saw the film of death clouding their steadfast honesty. He was bleeding from the nose as well now, bright droplets that became a little stream and then a steady flow. He tried to clear his throat, but could not; a terrible sound came out instead, a cruel, heartbreaking sound. I held his hand, stroked his brow, longed for words. It is terrible to be a healer, and to know that there is nothing, nothing at all, that you can do.

“Tell,” he managed. “Tell her…” and then a spasm overtook him, and another, and he died, coughing his lifeblood over the tumbled stones. Without finishing what he had to say. But there was no need. I knew that part without being told.

It did not take long for help to come. And yet, it took forever, as I felt John’s hand growing steadily colder in mine, as his blood dripped on the stones and congealed into little pools. There was no sound around me but the crying of birds and the rustle of a spring breeze in the birches. My voice was silent; but my spirit was screaming for anyone to hear.
Why? Why take him? He was good; people loved him. He was innocent of any part in this. Why take him?

I had been alone so long, cut off from any knowledge of the spirit world, that I could not tell if the little voice that answered me, in my head, was my own or another’s.

That’s not the way it works, Sorcha. You knew it would be hard. Now you are finding out just how hard
.

But why John? He was happy. Why give him a son and then deny that son a father?

A laugh. Not cruel, just uncomprehending.
Would you rather another had been taken? The child perhaps, or him with the hair like fire, and the cold eyes? Would you wish to rewrite the story?

I stopped my ears and shut my eyes, but the voice went on inside my head. The fire in the head. It hurt, all right.

How strong are you, Sorcha? How many partings can you bear, before you must weep aloud?
Then the laughter. I did not know if I spoke to fair folk or foul, or simply to the confused voice of my own spirit.
I will not listen to you. I will not hear this
. Silently, I recited my brothers’ names over and over, a charm to keep out demons.
Liam, Diarmid. Cormack, Conor. Finbar, Padriac. I need you to be here. I need you. I will bring you back. I will
.

Help came. Ashen faced, deathly quiet, Red and Ben supervised the desperate, painstaking removal of rocks and soil, the lifting of their friend’s broken body from the rubble. Horses dragged boulders, men set to work grimly with shovel and spade and with their bare hands. But they found no trace of the other man’s body. Either he lay buried too deep, under the last great immoveable rock, or…but the alternative was unthinkable.