Her rage was so sudden and so passionate, her heart pounded with a dull ache. She gazed down at her bosom and half-expected to see the skin throbbing. She stifled a sob and buried her head in her hands.
Colm looked at her. “What’s the matter, my lady?”
She jumped to her feet and grabbed hold of his arm. “Oh, Colm, let’s leave here now. Let’s leave.”
“Oh,” Colm replied with a negligent shrug and a wave of his hand, “let’s not fret ourselves. He certainly appears harmless enough.”
“That’s just it,” she said, panic rising in her voice. “He isn’t harmless. Quite the contrary, he’s an evil, awful creature who spreads wickedness and hatred.”
“Oh, pshaw.” Colm smiled benignly, his attention turning to the hideous little dwarf. “Come here, little man. Come here, it’s all right. We shan’t harm you.”
With a meek smile, the dwarf stepped forward gingerly, as if fearful of these great, mighty humans. He drew closer to Colm, then a broad, leering grin spread across his ugly features. He thrust his chin in Rose Red’s direction. “Pretty lady.” His voice lilted softly, like a cat’s purr.
“Aye, that she is,” Colm said, gazing down lovingly at Rose Red, who cringed beside him. “A lovely lady.”
“A lovely lady,” the dwarf repeated, an edge of malice creeping into his voice, “who likes to take her dainty white fingers and shove them deep inside her sex.”
At first Colm’s face did not register understanding. Then, slowly, his ears reddened, his face turned a bright shade of pink and his smile faded.
“A pretty lady,” the dwarf simpered, “who likes to dig around inside her cunt and bring pleasure to herself.”
Rose Red sensed Colm stiffening beside her. His fingers, tight with tension, laced around his scabbard.
“A pretty lady,” the dwarf chanted in a singsong voice, “who can bring herself to great pleasure, all by her lonesome self!” He pranced about the clearing in an absurd charade of a dance, then whirled around on his toes to leer at her. “You don’t need a man, do you, my dear? You can get along just fine all by yourself.”
“Be off with you!” Rose Red lunged after the dwarf, who pranced out of reach. Screaming in frustration, she grabbed some rocks and flung them at the dwarf, who darted nimbly out of the rocks’ trajectory.
“Hah, hah, hah!” he chortled. “You’re aim’s not good unless you’re tickling your pussy!”
“I hate you! I despise you! You rotten, filthy little dwarf!” She reached for a large rock, reared back, and heaved it at the dwarf with all her might and strength. This time it hit its mark. It struck the dwarf squarely on his nose, and instantly, a stream of blood gushed from his nostrils. He screamed in agony.
“Who would’ve thought,” she hissed with a menacing air, “that the old dwarf could have so much blood in him?”
“You bitch!” the dwarf howled. “You bitch, you bitch!” He opened his mouth to issue further expletives, but could say no more. His throat filled with phlegm and blood.
“Be gone!” she cried. “Be gone! And trouble me no more!”
“Ha-hah!” the dwarf chortled. “You’re still a whore.”
“And you’re a miserable wretch!”
The dwarf, still clutching his bleeding nose, scuttled out of sight into the deep woods. Rose Red stood there, panting. She clutched a rock in her fist in the event the dwarf decided to make a return performance.
But no, he apparently felt he’d done enough damage.
Now an awestruck silence permeated the air, the fields, the woods. Not a single bird chirp or call could be heard. A hush fell over the landscape, as if the air itself fell silent. Time seemed to stand still.
Rose Red stood frozen in place for a long, dark moment, then allowed her fingers to relax. The rock slipped from her fingers, falling to the ground with a dull thud.
And still she heard no sound behind her.
She must turn to face Colm. She did so with a heavy heart, and she forced her gaze upwards until she looked up into his eyes. His gaze was impenetrable, unreadable, his sea-foam green eyes hooded. She could not discern what he felt.
After a long pause, he gave a heavy sigh and then slid his sword back into its scabbard. He bent to retrieve his cloak from the ground. “Shall we be heading back to your mother’s, then?”
“Yes, let’s.”
Their footfalls fell heavy as they made their way to her mother’s cottage. With every step that brought Rose Red closer to home, a heaviness descended on her heart.
Colm didn’t utter a single word. He didn’t need to. She could tell that his courtship of her was over, his affection forever corrupted by the sly dwarf.
He escorted her to her mother’s door, bade her goodbye, then turned his back and walked away. She stood in the threshold of the doorway, watching him go. She suspected this would mark the last occasion on which a young man from the village would court her. Her destiny was to die an old maid.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 14
If Rose Red hoped that the hideous event in the woods with the dwarf would remain their secret embarrassment, and that Colm could find it within himself to forgive her, those hopes were soon dashed.
The realization crept on her slowly. The night following the incident with the dwarf, and at the appointed hour when Mama and Rose Red routinely sat down to their evening pot of tea, Suzie carried in the tea tray and set it down before Mama. As she did so, Rose Red noticed with a start that she’d laid out an extra teacup and saucer. Mama gazed at the articles for a long moment. “Will Colm be coming tonight?”
Rose Red replied, “I’m not sure, Mama. He mentioned that he had some extra work.”
Even as she spoke these words, she bit her lip at such an evident lie. What extra work would anyone in their right mind impose upon a man recently come home from the wars?
If Mama sensed an apprehension on Rose Red’s part, she did not disclose it. Instead, she picked up the teacup and saucer and silently handed the articles back to Suzie. “We shan’t be needing these tonight, Suzie.”
“Very well, ma’am.”
Again, the following night, Suzie brought an extra teacup and saucer. But at Mama’s mute shake of her head, the maid quickly plucked up the articles and disappeared with them into the kitchen.
“I do believe I’ll take an extra lump of sugar tonight, dear,” Mama murmured.
“Yes, Mama,” Rose Red said, tears blinding her eyes as she reached for the tongs. She dropped three sugar cubes into Mama’s cup, added a dollop of milk, and poured the tea.
“Thank you, sweetheart. There’s nothing quite like a good cup of tea.”
Mama loved her, this she had always known. But her mother’s circumspection, her rectitude, her recognition of Colm’s rejection of her, coupled with the fact that she still loved Rose Red, showed something that she had never before considered so deeply. Her mother loved her beyond all reason. Her mother would always love her, would never judge her, and would always understand her.
And so, as Rose Red sipped her tea, she reflected and did not pity herself. No man would ever pay her court again. But could any woman profess a love as deep and as filled with affection as the love her mother bore her? No, indeed not. This would be her recompense.
But would Rose Red ever be able to give that sort of love to a child?
Spring passed into summer, and summer yielded its abundance, and then, before Rose Red realized it, autumn arrived.
And on such a bright autumn day, a day so beautiful, so transcendent that the dying leaves burned with a burnished fire, Colm Rathbone married another.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 15
As Mama finished reading Snow White’s latest letter aloud to Rose Red, she set the letter to one side, her brow creased. “What think you of your sister’s letter?”
Rose Red stirred her tea. “She sounds upset.”
“Aye, but every woman frets when she draws close to her confinement. It’s only natu
ral.”
“Did you worry, Mama? Did you worry with us?”
Mama’s eyes grew soft. “Yes, I did.”
“Does motherhood really change a woman that much?”
“I’m afraid it does, my dear, but all for the better.”
Rose Red gazed at Mama for a long moment, then focused her attention on the hearth. A sick, nameless dread rose up in her belly. Ever since that business with Colm—that hideous, hateful business—Mama had seemed to withdraw into herself. She must have sensed the business between Colm and Rose Red, and grieved privately for the heartbreak.
Rose Red closed her eyes, leaned her head against the cushion, and was not surprised at the hot, angry tears brimming in her eyes. She thought she wept silently, but after a moment a dry, soft hand caressed her own. Her eyelids fluttered open and she gazed into her mother’s steely, determined little face.
“I think it’s time,” Mama spoke gently, “that you saw a change of scenery.”
“Will that solve my problems, Mama?”
“Perhaps not, but I do believe it will do you good, nonetheless.” Mama rose, smoothed down her skirts, and gazed with unfocused eyes into the fire. “I’m sending you ahead of me to see to your sister. I will follow in a fortnight’s time. I’ve already written to Paul. He’s sending his carriage for me. You can take Black Beauty. I think you’d enjoy that, don’t you? Riding up there, alone, on horseback?”
Rose Red blinked back her tears. “Yes, Mama, that would be lovely.”
Mama patted Rose Red’s shoulder. “Dry your eyes, child. Folks always thought your sister to be the pretty one, and it’s no mistake that she married as easily as she did.”
The words took a moment to register, but when they did, Rose Red gaped at her mother. Rare for Mama to speak so openly about the fact that Snow White never lacked for beaux. She’d only mentioned it one time before, and that years earlier.
Mama stroked Rose Red’s cheek. “I’ve always known this about you, my raven-haired beauty. It will take a very special man to recognize your merit. Quite frankly, I’m not the least bit surprised that none of those simple-minded villagers ever saw you for what you really are, my lovely dark rose.”
Rose Red smiled through her tears. “I’ve lost my bloom, Mama. I’m an old maid.”
“Nonsense,” Mama shot back brusquely. “He’s out there. You just haven’t found him yet.” And with that, she stroked Rose Red on the head and swept from the room with a queenly majesty, leaving Rose Red behind, laughing and crying at the same time.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 16
Early the following morning, Rose Red set off on her journey, riding the mare Black Beauty, a gift from her rich brother-in-law.
As she rode, her thoughts drifted back to her tête-à-tête with Mama the night before. If she’d asked Mama to lend her the use of their own small carriage—another gift from Paul—Mama would gladly have given it to her. Yet somehow, Mama instinctively knew that Rose Red would be happier riding Black Beauty.
Her journey on horseback would give her another opportunity, the gift of reflection. She and Snow White possessed the unspoken communication, the bond, the connection that came as a result of their years together, growing up as sisters. And Rose Red, so focused of late, so worried about Snow White, had almost forgotten the bond she shared with another woman in her life.
Mama understands. She truly understands me.
The village, drowsing in the early morning chill as she eased past the village green, lay blissfully silent, the only sound the clip-clopping of Black Beauty’s hooves. A sheen of frost laminated the stone fountain in the center of the green. One or two villagers noticed her, but merely ducked their heads, avoiding eye contact. Rose Red settled her hood over her head and guided Black Beauty onto the highway and out of the village keep.
Shortly before she quitted the village entirely, she noticed a lone man, one of the royal guard, dressed in his black coat over a garment of green and gold, guiding his mount into the village. Apparently, the war did nothing to aid King Stephen in his quest to find his lost son Prince Caspian. How sad. So many young men died just so a boundary line with Queen Guinevere might be maintained. And at the end of the bloody war, the King’s son, still missing. Rose Red suspected the young man had died years ago, set upon by ruffians in the deep wood.
The royal guardsman nodded at her. He proved to be the only person who acknowledged her departure from the village. What did that say about her life as a villager, when the only person to wish her farewell was a complete stranger?
Her journey proved uneventful, except that she’d never before in her life traveled so far from home. As a consequence, everything interested and amused her. The farther east she traveled, the more the landscape changed. It transformed itself from flat fields filled with dry, rotted cornstalk hulls to fields of wheat and barley ready for the harvest. Then it undulated into gently sloping hills dotted with cattle and sheep, until finally shifting into the ancient mountain ranges and deep forests leading to the sea.
Her nostrils flared at the acrid scent of salt air, and a soothing mist framed her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. A different sensation, the salt air, but she rather enjoyed it. At this first taste of her sister’s newfound land, Rose Red suddenly understood what Snow White meant when she spoke of the sea in her letters.
After a time, when the sun had passed over her sight and hovered in the sky behind her head, she realized that she’d ridden nearly to the point of exhaustion. She would stop and rest a spell. She found a deserted beach, and, after giving Black Beauty a ration of water and some oats, settled down on a blanket to eat the basket supper that Suzie had prepared.
She finished off a slice of cheese and egg pie and was lifting the flask of warm milk to her lips when a noise startled her. It was strange, a thin, piercing cry that sounded eerily human. She gazed down the length of the beachhead, but saw only a seagull struggling with a fish.
But then the fish cried out!
It was like no fish she had ever seen, a large fish with two legs. Rose Red dropped her flask and gazed in wonder at the spectacle before her. Clearly, the seagull meant to carry off the fish to eat it.
“Help me!” the fish cried out. “Help me!”
A sensible part of her told her that fish couldn’t speak. But she sojourned in a strange new land, and perhaps fish could do so here. Then her sensible side prevailed, and in a sudden, dawning realization, it struck her—it wasn’t a fish at all. The seagull was attacking a human child!
Her heart in her throat, Rose Red leaped to her feet and tore down the length of the beach. The seagull dragged its victim down into the surf. The seagull meant to drown the child.
“Stop!” she called. “Stop it!”
The seagull saw Rose Red, grabbed hold of the child and pushed it back down into the surf. The child thrashed mightily and attempted to run away, but the seagull caught hold of it again and pushed it under the waves. By the time Rose Red reached the seagull, the child appeared to be near death. He’d given up the fight, and with his body crumpled, his head bowed, he waited for the final kill.
“Oh, dear God!” She ran to the seagull and kicked it. She scrabbled about in the sand, digging her fingers in deep, until her fingers curled around a large rock. She yanked it out of the sand and flung it at the seagull. The rock grazed the seagull’s head. The gull released the child only for a moment, then dug its bill into the child’s ear and pulled the child deep under the waves yet again.
“Go away!” Rose Red screamed. “Be off!” She fluttered her hands to distract it. When the seagull finally released its hold on the child, she chased it a good distance, until she was sure that she’d driven it away for good.
Then she hurried back to the place where the child, nearly drowned, lay half in the surf, half on the sand.
But she didn’t find the child in the surf. He sat on the sand a little ways up from the gently lapping waves, glowering at her. She blinked in surpris
e as she approached. She knew this little person. Looking terribly disgruntled and sweeping wet sand from his arms and legs, sat the mean little dwarf.
Rose Red and Black Bear: Chapter 17
“It’s about bloody time you got that seagull off me!” he spat. “I nearly died!”
Rose Red stopped short a few feet away. “You wretched little man, how dare you attack me! If I’d only known that no child drowned, but you—”
“You would’ve dusted your hands off, said ‘good riddance,’ and left me to die, wouldn’t you?”
Rose Red started, then paused, wondering at herself. If she knew at the time that it was the dwarf, and not some poor, defenseless child, would she have turned her back and left him to drown in the surf? It went completely against her Christian teachings, but then again, this hideous little man had ruined her last chance at marriage. She stomped her feet and kicked at the sand in a fit of pique. “I wish I’d left you to die.”
The dwarf regarded her with a baleful expression for a moment, then rose to his feet. “Aw, don’t be sore about that. I only did you a favor. You really didn’t want to marry that buffoon, did you?”
Rose Red considered. She suspected that Colm intended to propose to her that day in the woods, just moments before the dwarf materialized. If all had gone well, at this very moment she’d be Mrs. Colm Rathbone, enjoying her husband’s company in their marital bed many times by now. Oh, yes, Colm would be spreading her legs apart many a night and thrusting himself inside her. A sudden flame of desire licked her loins and her ache grew.
But there was more to marriage than the marriage bed. If the dwarf hadn’t disrupted the proposal, she wouldn’t be free to travel as she did now, setting off to her sister’s villa to be present for the birth of her first niece or nephew. No, married women did not go gallivanting across the country. She’d be living with Bertie Rathbone and all her sons, learning how to be a good wife and daughter-in-law. Did she really want to be cramped inside that snug cottage close by the village?
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