by Kim Wilkins
Rowan wondered if she should feel uneasy. She was unarmed, but Niamma was half a foot shorter than her and delicate of limb. Or at least she appeared to be.
‘Did you know your aunt sent me the most ridiculous gift?’ Niamma said with a laugh.
Rowan was not expecting this. ‘Which aunt?’
‘The one whose name I can’t bear to say. Bluebell.’ She grimaced. ‘We don’t get on.’
‘I had gathered that. What did she send you?’
‘An empty box.’ Then Niamma laughed again. ‘The problem with Thyrslanders is they are not quick enough to laugh.’
‘Is this about that bogle charm?’
‘She will be thanking me for it one day! I asked the druid to make sure it was a nice unexpected thing, not a nasty one. But I won’t tell her that yet. If she wants to point to an enemy among the Ærfolc it is Rathcruick, not me.’ Niamma shook her head. ‘I do not want to talk about your family. At least not her and not Heath either. And certainly not Rathcruick, if you still bear any daughterly affection for him.’
‘Affection?’ Rowan spluttered. ‘I never had affection for him. Pity, maybe. Curiosity. But he changed me, and he ought not to have. I was a child. Younger than your brother.’
‘No more talk of Rathcruick then,’ Niamma said, with a wave of her white hand. ‘Let us talk of you and me.’
Rowan tilted her head curiously. ‘Go on.’
Niamma was silent for a few moments, choosing her words. A light breeze moved in the hazel trees, and birds chirped deep in the grove.
Finally, she said, ‘Do you have enough courage to do what you must?’
Her words amplified the doubt in Rowan’s heart. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Connacht chose you, not Heath. Heath may know a few tricks about how to lead an army, but anyone could learn those. You’re clever. You could do it. But he cannot learn to be what you are.’
Rowan remembered Heath’s warning, and prepared a diplomatic reply. But before she could open her mouth, Niamma continued, ‘The Ærfolc are connected to the land beyond farms and fields. We are connected with our souls. All magic – the kind your Aunt Ash cruelly drains out of the elements and harnesses as undermagic – proceeds from that connection. Without a leader of the spirit, without a chieftan who can hold the otherworld in her mind as you can, the Ærfolc are not Ærfolc. We are just folk. We are just Thyrslanders. I do not want to be a Thyrslander, and nor do any of the other chieftans. Heath is well liked. You are necessary.’
‘I am yet very young and –’
‘Psh. I’m twenty-four and have been leading the Wildwalkers since I was eighteen. Ærfolc do not judge the young; they judge the weak.’ Niamma stopped a moment and shook her head. ‘I am not stupid. We have no homes for the ice-men to raid, but if they find us on the road or in a coomb or sheltering in a cave, they will kill us. They must be stopped. The tribes can form an army; Renward has an army.’
‘Renward also has a treaty in place with Ælmesse. With Bluebell.’
Niamma shrugged. ‘Needs must.’
Rowan shook her head. ‘What are you telling me? What is it you are trying to get me to do?’
‘What’s right,’ Niamma said. ‘Despite your family. What’s right for us, the Ærfolc. Do not be afraid to … take charge.’
‘Heath wants all the things that you want. He is a good leader.’
‘Then learn what you must from him about war, then go to Connacht and take the horns. The tribes will unite and follow you with far greater pride and fearlessness than they will ever follow Heath.’
‘Niamma!’ a mournful little voice called.
‘Coming, Albi,’ she called back. She fixed her eye on Rowan. ‘I’ve raised him since Ma and Da passed. He will be my heir. I can’t see me marrying or having babies. Load of nonsense.’
Rowan laughed. ‘It is indeed.’ But even as she said it, she knew one day she wanted children. Maybe just one. A little girl who could live the childhood that she had missed out on.
Niamma was moving off now, towards her brother’s voice. ‘Take the horns,’ she said again. ‘Do what you must. You know what it is. You share our blood.’
‘I will try,’ Rowan said, watching her walk away. Then to herself: ‘All the gods help me, I will try.’
It was fine enough weather and far enough from anywhere to fold the cover back off the cart on the last ten miles to Yldra’s house. It made Rose happy to glance across and see Linden’s face taking in the scenery: the open moors, the last of the rock daisies, the broad clear sky. Rose knew the way well. They had stopped at the last town for supplies to see them through for several weeks. She hoped Yldra still kept chickens for eggs. Linden loved eggs for dinner.
She was in good spirits as they rattled around the bottom of the hill where Yldra’s house stood. But then Rose realised she could see the little white dwelling clearly, and that the corn dollies that lined the way towards it were all overgrown and black with mould. Yldra’s home was usually protected by magic.
Something wasn’t right.
The driver slowed, reined the horse in at the bottom of the hill.
Linden looked at her curiously as she climbed down.
‘Back under the cover,’ she said. ‘Wait here,’ she told the driver. ‘I won’t be long.’ Already Rose was making plans in her head: if Yldra had moved on, they could still use the house. It wouldn’t be so bad. They’d be safe here, if not as perfectly hidden as she’d hoped. She slung her bag over her shoulder. Up the hill Rose went, past the corn dollies, and to the front door. Rose could already feel there was nobody home. An emptiness in the air.
She pushed the door open, saw the bones, and pulled it closed again. A big breath. Then she went inside.
Yldra had died in her hollow, the shallow scoop in the floor of her house where she buried herself with only hands and face exposed, so she could pull the magic out of the land. Perhaps she had gone into one of her trances and never woken. There were no signs that violence had been done. A skull, some grey hair, and two skeletal hands resting calmly on the ground. She had been dead for months, if not years. Rose crouched down. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You were a great help to me when I needed you.’
She closed her eyes and said a prayer to the Great Mother, then turned to the shelves carved into the earthen wall, where Yldra kept her potions. Jar after tiny jar lined the shelves, all with cork stoppers. As a very little boy, Linden had loved to arrange them and rearrange them, understanding all the complex markings on them that told Yldra what they were. Rose still remembered what a few of those markings meant, and she quickly found the one she was looking for. She unbuckled her bag and slipped it in, still not sure if she would ever use it. Rose was fastening the buckle when she heard a commotion outside. Shouts. The horses neighing. Thumps in the cart.
Heat enveloped her heart.
She tore open the door and began to run. Four men in dark blue livery on horseback had circled the cart. A fifth had climbed into the driver’s position on the cart and taken the reins. She couldn’t see Linden through the crowd of people, but she could see her driver, running for the woods.
‘No! Linden!’ she cried, stumbling and righting herself and making it to the bottom of the path in time to grab at the reins. ‘Let him down! Take the cart, but let the boy down!’ She could see him now, cowering in the corner of the cart, clutching his box of maps.
She heard footsteps as one of the men dismounted and came towards her. She turned, saw the insignia of King Tolan’s court on his sash, and relaxed. They weren’t thieves or cut-throats. They were soldiers. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘My son and I are travellers. We knew somebody who lived here.’
The soldier was in his forties, with grey hair and a rugged face. He squinted at her, as though struggling for recognition.
Please don’t let him know who I am.
‘You’d best come with us, my lady,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe out here.’
‘I am perfectly safe and in no need of yo
ur help.’
‘Travelling with an Ærfolc driver? I’d say you are in desperate need of us. We’ll bring you back to civilisation.’
‘No. I insist that you –’ But then he grabbed her around the middle and no matter how she struggled, he wouldn’t put her down. He deposited her instead in the cart, where Linden immediately leapt on her and pressed himself against her.
She put her arms around her son and the cart began to move and there was nothing she could do.
‘We will be fine, Linden,’ she said, although she didn’t believe it. ‘Don’t you worry. We will be fine.’
Seven
The sound of a child crying in fear roused Ivy as she was drifting off to sleep. She sat up and pulled back the covers. It sounded neither like Eadric nor Edmund, and for a few moments she wondered if she had misheard and the sound was actually a cat crying in the garden beyond her bower.
Then footsteps beyond the door, in the main part of the house, and Ivy knew Gudrun had risen and that it must be Goldie who had cried. Goldie was sharing the bed with Ivy’s boys. She waited a few moments to hear if one of them would call for her, but all became silent.
Ivy lay down again in her soft bed. Guiltily. Gudrun was sick and much older than Ivy, and sleeping on a straw mattress by the hearthpit. The right thing to do would have been to give the older woman Ivy’s bed, but she couldn’t. Crispin wouldn’t allow it.
Ivy’s eyes came to rest on the long tapestry hung against the wall, with its complicated pattern of dragon heads and bird claws. When Ivy had had this room built on to the main house, two years ago, she and Crispin had ordered a secret door. Hidden from the outside by a blackberry hedge and from the inside by this tapestry. A knock in the night meant Crispin wanted her and he had been explicit the evening Ivy had taken Gudrun and Goldie in: Do not give her your bed. I may have need of it myself.
Ivy could have argued the case. But things had been so tense between them since Wengest’s snub …
She pulled the blankets back again and rose, opened the door to the main living area and peeked through. Gudrun was sitting up on her blankets, staring at the fire.
‘Is all well?’
‘She had a nightmare,’ Gudrun said with an apologetic smile. With her hollow face lit from below by firelight, she looked like death itself. ‘She sleeps now. Sorry to wake you.’
‘It’s no matter.’ Ivy looked at her bed behind her, then padded out across the rushes on bare feet to sit by Gudrun. ‘What does she dream of? With Edmund it’s always the chickens escaping the coop and pecking his face.’
Gudrun sighed. ‘She dreams of Willow.’
‘Nightmares?’
‘You don’t know how your sister became.’
‘I do a little. She was very cross when I burned the chapels. But I have learned to control my temper since then.’ Crispin had been clear on that: her emotions governed her too readily.
‘I lived with her. I saw what she did to the poor child …’ Gudrun looked back over her shoulder to the curtain that separated the children’s beds from the room. ‘Her name is not Goldie.’
‘What is it then?’
‘I will never say it, because I cannot risk it being heard or repeated. I have no doubt that Willow searches for her. No doubt at all. She wants that child more than she wants … anything.’
‘So why did you take her away?’
‘Willow was cruel to her. Disappointed she was a girl. In Maava’s view, women cannot rule. So when Goldie was born, she started to believe that one day the child would simply wake up and be a boy. Every day she was a girl goaded Willow into crueller and crueller behaviour. Praying for hours on end while kneeling on stone, until the poor child’s knees were bloody. Chastising her if she smiled. Pulling out her eyelashes because they made her so pretty.’
Ivy flinched.
‘She is my granddaughter. I could not bear to see her suffer so.’
‘Your granddaughter. Do you mean, because you were married to Æthlric?’
But already Gudrun was shaking her head. ‘Wylm was her father.’
‘Wylm?’ Their stepbrother.
‘I don’t know why he did it. He took that knowledge with him to the grave.’
Ivy couldn’t imagine Willow having sex with Wylm – or anybody really.
‘When Willow left for a journey to the north, to make a pact with Hakon, I took Goldie and ran. We travelled at night and hid in the day and the child’s severe upbringing meant she could endure anything. Then we settled for three lovely years in a village in the north of Thriddastowe, and nobody knew who we were, and we got by. I did a little farm labour and Goldie helped in the kitchen at the local alehouse.’
Ivy marvelled at this. Her boys could do nothing useful. They had never needed to.
‘But then I got sick, and when it became clear I would not recover, I set out to find you.’ Again her eyes went back towards the children’s bed, and her voice dropped low. ‘You are the closest person in the world to her by blood now. You and Willow shared a womb, but you do not share a zealous cruelty. I am a trimartyr, and look forward to meeting my creator. But the Maava I obey would surely not condone what she has done.’ Then, almost to herself, ‘Surely He wouldn’t.’
Ivy sniffed. ‘I don’t think the gods, whatever their names, care much about any of us. They are too busy being godlike. Why would you care whether or not a king had a cock if you could make lightning?’
Gudrun laughed despite herself. ‘Spoken like a true heathen.’
‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it? I’ve always thought so. And here what’s inside poor little Goldie’s pants has got Willow into such a lather of nonsense.’
Gudrun pulled her mouth down into a frown. ‘It’s not nonsense, Ivy. It’s madness. Dangerous madness. You do understand that, don’t you?’
Willow, her twin, was dangerously mad. Ivy let the thought settle for a few moments.
Gudrun sighed, leaning back on the straw mattress. ‘My back hurts so much. A tired pain. Only death can stop it. It’s grim.’
‘I should leave you to sleep,’ Ivy said, mention of death and sickness instantly stirring away her comfort.
‘No, stay a little. There is more to tell, more you must know. She calls Willow the crow mother.’
‘The crow mother?’
‘The raiders call her the Crow Queen. One time in the alehouse where Goldie worked, drunken men were telling tales of the cruel north. Now, who knows how much of it is true and how much exaggerated, but they said she killed her victims by slitting them open from behind and pulling their lungs out through their backs.’
Ivy reached a hand for the ground, as though it could stop her from falling into the horror.
‘Goldie ran home to tell me, crying and shaking. In her little mind, the Crow Queen of these tales and the woman she remembers as her mother are now the one monster. And that is the monster she has dreamed about ever since, a monster of blades and blood. So you see, you must never let her fall into Willow’s hands.’
Ivy reached for Gudrun’s fingers, which were cold despite the fire. ‘I won’t, I promise,’ she said. ‘She will be protected here. We have a standing guard and I will raise her alongside her cousins, and no man shall ever find out who her mother is. The boys’ nurse is away visiting her sick sister, but when she returns I will instruct her to treat Goldie as though –’
Her promises were interrupted by a tapping noise coming from Ivy’s bedroom.
‘What’s that?’ Gudrun asked.
‘Probably the wind,’ Ivy said, climbing to her feet. ‘You should rest. You look tired and you must save your energy.’
Gudrun nodded and rolled onto her side. ‘I shouldn’t keep you awake either. There will be more chances to speak before I …’ She finished her sentence with a sigh, and closed her eyes.
Ivy returned quickly to her room and closed the door behind her. As quietly as she could she lifted the tapestry. Crispin had already opened the door and stood in the threshold smiling
at her in the dark.
‘My lady.’
That smile. It was the end of her. ‘My captain,’ she whispered. ‘You’d best not come in. Gudrun is still awake.’
He grabbed Ivy’s arm and yanked her outside into the cold night air, closing the door. ‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, and the words were so unexpected that she didn’t mention the blackberry thorn that had grazed her skin.
‘An apology? For what?’ The list was long.
‘Rowan has run away and Wengest has gone looking for her. So you see, his failure to visit was nothing to do with us, or with how unevenly you are running Sæcaster. You do not need to worry. It was not your fault.’
Ivy felt cheered by this news, and especially by Crispin’s gentleness, which was always welcome. ‘Well then. Run away? From what?’
‘Marriage to Wulfgar.’
‘I was around her age when I married Guthmer,’ Ivy said, to herself really, as Crispin didn’t care. He was nuzzling at her neck and massaging her breasts through her nightgown.
‘It’s been a long time since we stripped off outside together,’ he said.
Ivy put her hand in his hair as he descended down her body, ruching up handfuls of her nightdress and tracing his warm lips over her belly and thighs. She closed her eyes and tried to enjoy his attention, but then a light mizzle began to descend and even Crispin had to admit defeat.
He stood up, laughing, and kissed her with the taste of her on his mouth. ‘Goodnight, my lady. How long are the visitors staying? It’s been nearly a week.’
‘Gudrun intends to die here and leave the child with me.’
‘Ah. All three of them will be of an age to be sent away to school then.’
‘I hadn’t –’
He silenced her with a kiss. ‘Goodnight,’ he said, then dashed off as the rain began to hammer down.
Ivy ducked back inside and pulled off her nightgown, which was now damp. She hung it over the back of the chair and climbed into bed naked. Her body was full of confused impulses. Desire, overlaid with fear. Why was there so much fear with Crispin now? It never used to be like that. He was her beloved; she was silly not to simply speak to him about it. In her mind, she started to form the sentences that she could use, but knew she never would. It kept her from sleep for a long time.