Rhiannon (2 page)

“What'd he want?” the son asked, yawning large. “He looked rich to me.”

“He wanted a friendly chat,” she answered. “And direction to the town.”

“He better have paid you,” groused Arnold. “He better have paid, and well.”

 
The wayfarer took the right fork and crossed the common barley field in good order. There upon its far edge was some watermeadow, and then the River Woether flowed across the trail, just as the dame had told him it would. His horse easily stepped through, as the river's ford was well marked by many centuries of crossings. Cold mist rose and curled thick above the fast-flowing river, joining with the fog from the choppy sea, which was quite nearby now. In fact, looking to the right, he perceived, at just a little distance, the eery glowing torchlight that marked the town's quay. He could make out several boats moored there, and some movement upon the dock that sent the mist spiraling. At this time of night and on the edge of such wilderness, it was likely pirates were afoot.

The breeze brought a putrid smell from the beach that made him grimace.

He pulled his cloak closer and set his face toward the unknown forest ahead of him, as his destination was neither the sea on his right nor the town on his left. He was after the bluff trail, the
invalid
trail, and he tried to perceive the entrance to it through the murk.

He was all concentration, leaning forward in his saddle and squinting into the darkness, when he sensed a disturbance in the fog behind him. Tightening the reins of his steed, he clucked to his mount, meaning to turn and see what approached.

But he felt a sudden astonishing pain, and all before his eyes went red, then black.

 
Reeve Almund Clap, chief overseer of Lord Claredemont's lands, had taken up the habit of making rounds right at first dawn after foggy nights. And so it was he who first came upon the body of a young stranger lying in the shallows of the River Woether not far from the quay. The pale corpse moved its limbs in mimicry of life with the light current, and Almund quietly and respectfully dismounted and knelt in the frigid waters to make a close inspection. He concluded that the unfortunate man had been knifed, seven times all told, and stripped of all he owned. He assumed the wayfarer had been on foot, as there was no sign to inform the good reeve of the steed the man had been riding.

Even the prints of its hooves had been stolen by the sticky-fingered river.

Most down in Woethersly were still groggy with sleep when the murder bell disturbed the peace at dawn that April morn, but Rhiannon had been wide awake for some time already. Not from Granna's snoring, neither—though it
had
been a night of spectacular blastings. But rather because during the wee hours, the wind had switched south and spring had finally come blustering up high Clodaghcombe Bluff.

When Rhia could not keep still for another moment, she'd crept from the pallet and tiptoed to the corner of the loft where sparrows had last year built a nest, leaving a wide and breezy gap in the roof twigs where you could look down upon the world.

'Twas still dark, but Rhia'd lately discovered she much enjoyed the night look of things. The other five cottages atop their bluff shone in the moonlight, the glistening brook sewing them together with starry stitches. They seemed like faeries from the olden days of magic, dancing with joined hands around the small stone church. The church itself looked completely made of moonglow, or elsewise from the honey of Granna's prized hives, which Rhia could just make out hovering ghost white in the misty distance.

She smiled at a lump of shaggy darkness upon the church roof, clearly visible against the bright stone steeple. It was certainly their groshawke, Gramp, standing vigilant nightwatch on behalf of all up here, they three women in this cottage and the invalids they cared for in the other five. Well, four at this moment. They'd a vacancy in their fifth invalid cot, now the ox-kicked yeoman had died of his dire injuries last month.

The moonlight sparked gold off Gramp's ancient birdy eyes.

“G'd evening to ye, Gramp,” Rhia whispered through the darkness.

“Crrrr-awkk!” Gramp flapped his hoary old wings so the mites making their snug bed in his feathers were rudely awakened and went spiraling out into the moonlight like glistening faery dust. “Craaah
awk
!”

At that alarm, Granna gave an impressive last snore and sat straight up. “Thanks be to ye, God, as I'm still a-breathing!” she said heartily, her usual practice upon waking. Then, missing some warmth, she felt beside her on the pallet and found only the indents of Rhia's body in the wool-covered straw.

“Rhiannon, where've ye got to?” Granna called out.

Rhia grabbed her skirt from the peg. “I'm a-hurrying to bluff's edge to gather whatever seed there be, Granna, ere the wind that brought it this gusty night takes it on along elsewheres!”

“But it be darkish, Rhia,” Granna warned predictably. “You must await the dawn afore it be safe to . . .”

But Rhia was by then pulling her rough wool skirt over her long flaxen sleep shift as she hopped down the loft ladder. She figured her distance from Granna far enough so's she could pretend not to hear. “Be back later, Granna!” she sang out as she pulled tight on the waist cord of the skirt and knotted it. She grabbed the rawhide ankle boots that awaited her behind the ladder, finding them nice and toasty from the nearby fire.

Usually Mam would have slept beside the firepit, but just now she nursed poor burned Ona and her twins in their cottage both day and night. So without anyone else to question her (for a big and welcome change), Rhia skittered barefoot and light as a spider across their main room, grabbed her seed bag from the rafter, and hit out quite jauntily into the adventures surely awaiting in the mysterious night world.

Upon the stone stoop she sat long enough to pull on the boots and lace them.

It had been Gramp's main business all Rhia's life to heft off and fly above her each time she traveled to the rough lip of the high stone crag. So here he came, swooping from the chapel roof like some cumbrous stone gargoyle come alive.

“Is the wind not wondrous tonight, Gramp?” Rhia called up to him, bouncing to her feet. He teetered above her, straining to gain his wingy balance upon that same rough night wind she liked so well. Had he words, he might surely have naysayed her opinion, as the bluster of that gale provided
him
with only troubles. But that's oft the way of it—the human has the go of things, and the beast is left with no choice but the go-along.

The gardens and the hives were pinkish as Rhia sailed past them, and by the time she and Gramp were zigzagging through the thicket of wind-bent orchard trees, the fog had mostly loosed its hold and slunk on back down to the sea, fog being a watery thing and completely out of place in the sky. Still, it will oft sneak there in the deep of night, pretending to be its better cousin, the cloud.

“Well, here we are then, Gramp,” Rhia announced, dropping to her knees when she'd run clean out of solid ground. Gramp mayhaps thought her comment insulting, him being winged and better fitted to judge from the sky such a thing as when the edge of the sheer crag had indeed been reached. But he merely settled in a dignified way onto the faery rock that overhung the water far below, snugging his hard old talons fast into the hole perfectly in the center of that round stone. From his vantage there, he'd keep Rhia from mischance by a growlish sound deep in his throat if she moved too near the edge, or ventured onto rock that had crumbled a new bit with the wind or rain.

Truth was, Gramp's job of vigilance was even harder than usual this April that Rhia was fourteen, fifteen in three months. For Rhiannon was not paying attention to her business like she should have been, or like you might think she
would
have been so close to a dire drop. This darkish morn, for instance, instead of starting right in gathering the night-borne seed she'd spoken to Granna so urgently about, she instead picked up a chrysalis that had been recently breached and went all moody with inspecting it.

“Poor butterfly, gone rashly into the bright blue, but now air-stranded and beyond return!” she cried, shredding the torn chrysalis into tiny strips and tossing each one to the wild breeze. “Still, Gramp, what fine adventure it must surely be to have wings, to fly hither and thither at your own whim! To brave the whole wide world!”

Gramp didn't respond to her moody musings, as he never acknowledged her prattle to him here at the treacherous bluff's edge. To do so would have lowered his vigilance, and, as stated before, he needed all of that with Rhia, especially this spring.

And besides, he'd another important job beyond the considerable job of keeping her from falling to a certain death. It's rare they got visitors from the seaside town below come clear up their trail, but when they did, Gramp always warned of them, hearing their approach from Woethersly before Rhia's own ears picked up the grunts of their exertion or the swishing of the high weeds that lined the steep path upward along the seaside edge of Clodaghcombe Forest. At detection of someone coming with evil intent, or even
good
intent, Gramp gave a high squawk and spread his old wings wide so as to make quite a fearful spectacle of himself.

“Crr
awwwwkk
!” Gramp suddenly piped, giving his wings a mighty flap that sent his molting winter feathers sailing like dandelion fuzz. “Crrrrrrawk, awk!”

He was facing the bay, craning his head so far forward that his stringy neck seemed like an old frayed rope about to come apart.

“What is it, then, Gramp?” Rhiannon whispered in a rush, the air-stranded butterflies instantly gone from her head at that strong alarm. “What d'you see upon the waters?”

The sun had not yet made his grand appearance, but the sea was in no way dark. Indeed the waves were painted pink by the rose-dappled clouds above them. Rhia sat upon her haunches and squinted hard to survey the chop. There
was
a boat out there, all right!
And
it was leaving the port, not arriving. Really, there was nothing so unusual she could make of that, though. Sometimes as many as a dozen boats arrived or departed on days of fine weather, bringing wine and other outside goods for the town of Woethersly and taking away rye, oats, and the much-prized cheese produced by the manor.

Still, this ship was different from any other Rhia had seen. She watched it sail, some dazzled by the beauty and solemn grace of the strange ship's riggings.

“Well, Gramp, as you say, that ship is certainly no plain-rigged Welsh wine trader's craft, and not a gaudy boat of buccaneers,” she pronounced solemnly, as if she were some authority on nautical styles. “Indeed, it's festooned and draped more richly than anything I've seen sailed by the knight of our manor, Lord Claredemont himself!”

And then the absent sun threw his first fistful of bright spangles upward against the pinky clouds and she saw what had been too shadowed for her observance before. Except for a single bright pennant displaying the owner's coat-of-arms, all of that strange ship's elegant riggings and drapes were of one single color—black!

Rhia tapped her chin with one finger and gave a sigh so filled with windy sadness that Gramp could not dare choose to ignore it.

“Well, Gramp, for certain that ship is owned by high nobility. And is it not just unbearably sad that all the nobility are draping themselves and all their belongings in black these days, in mourning for poor King Henry's only son? For indeed, Prince William Aethling has gone to his watery grave aboard his grand
White Ship,
and they say our king has not smiled since, and claims he never will!”

Rhia sighed again and shook her head, imagining it, though Gramp hunched his shoulders and squinted forward, peeved, if you want the truth, as Mam would have been peeved with Rhia about that as well. For Rhia imagined that horrid disaster at least two or three times each day and had a good pathetic sigh about it each and every time. Morbid, Mam pronounced Rhia's constant return to that tragic shipwreck. A shameful use of her thoughts, which might better have been set upon her present business of gathering the seeds ere they blew on along or were eaten by birds. So would have scolded Mam had she heard Rhia sigh so deeply, not once but twice.

But give Rhia slack, because it happens the prince and his large retinue of lords and ladies had all been near her own young age when that grand ship had hit a sea rock and gone so quickly to the murky bottom of the sea last November. To picture such horrors and then to look around with living eyes and see the new buds swelling everywhere, to imagine the cold sea and then to feel the warm wind twining through your hair, to smell the honeysuckle and the rose and know that you lived and were young this first true morn of spring when others were ... well, alas, simply were
not
.

Well, 'twas doubly sad, imagining that, but made life all the sweeter. And made you grateful you had it—life, that is—which is not completely a bad thing to feel, is it?

And besides, to be fair, Rhia was by no means alone. Most in England were still very much consumed with the details of the
White Ship
's final tragic sail. A generation of young nobility, gone without a trace, drowned in the cold sea! Oh, yes, most folk in King Henry's lands had it still much in mind, though near six months had passed away.

And nowhere was it spoken of more often or with more gruesome embellishment than here on the western frontier, where court details were sketchy and therefore imaginings plentiful and constantly embroidered.

“All aboard that chilly sail are now lying in the briny deep between Francia and England with their finery and jewels admired only by the fishes, and caressed by the slim fingers of the probing seaweed,” Rhia whispered, shivering at the thought.