by Andre Norton
A pot of fine wine jelly from London had been added to two loaves on a bright morning when there was a certain briskness in the air, suggesting that the turn of season was approaching. As Olivia rode with her offering she wondered whether she must not urge Maudie to move to the manor before winter. Such a suggestion would lead to argument and she was marshalling her word weapons as she went. Mist had been this way so often that she knew every twist and turn of the path and need not be closely attended to.
It was not until Olivia had dismounted that she noted the green stiff curtains were still drawn across the small paned windows. But the hour was near nooning and surely Maudie would have been up and about for hours.
Mist’s reins were thrown over a shrub and Olivia, grabbing up the trail of her habit, was at the door in the space of a breath or two.
She pushed into the foreroom of the cottage, near one half of which was taken up by Maudie’s bed. Drying herbs hung in stings from the beams. But a portion of those had somehow landed on the floor and been trampled. It was dusk-dark, for the door had swung to behind her. Olivia could only see the bunched coverings on the bed where Maudie must be.
“Maudie!” she dropped the basket with no care for the contents and hurried to the bed.
There had been no answer except a choking cry from the direction of the window where something appeared to be struggling on the floor.
“Maudie!” Olivia turned her back on the bed to start for that moving shadow.
An iron hard hand gripped her arm jerking her back. She could not reach her assailant as he must be on the bed behind her, and his strength was such she could not break that hold.
But she fought with all the vigor she could summon. All at once the grip on her arm was loosened, but before she could pull free, she was caught a second time, swung around, and a stinging blow on her cheek near rocked her from her feet.
Breath foul with brandy fumes made her gasp sickly as she was struck a second time and forced back against the bed, her attacker looming as a dark shadow over her.
“Slut—” that name merged into such a flood of obscenity that the words lost their meaning in growls. His jaws appeared to slit in a wolf’s grin. This was more beast than man, and a fear such as she had never thought to know choked her, even as one of his hands moved to her throat forming a noose of flesh and blood to strangle.
She clawed vainly, striving to tear at that distorted grimace on his face, to somehow keep that mouth from touching hers. But all her efforts were too feeble as she fought for breath.
There was a sudden sound and the light of day struck full on Sir Lucas as the curtains at the window were jerked aside and that casement thrown open with force enough to break one of the small panes.
“Herne! Herne!”
Through the panting of their struggle that cry rang, though Olivia heard it only dimly as her attacker continued to force her back on the disordered bed. She was aware as if that outrage struck another that, though he had not released the hold on her throat entirely, he was now clawing with his other hand at her bodice striving to rip apart the stout material.
“Herne!”
Sir Lucas’ head swung toward the window, though he did not loose his grip upon his captive. He snarled. Then he aimed another blow so heavy that he brought tears to her eyes. However, she could at least draw a breath, for his hand had relaxed that noose hold on her throat.
She tried to scream but her voice was only a croak which was drowned out by a third call:
“Herne!”
There was a flash of green light. Sir Lucas gave a rasping cry, stumbled back from her. Olivia clawed her way loose from the tumble of covers into which she had been shoved, levered herself up in time to see her attacker turn toward the cottage door which swung open again, as if by its own accord.
Olivia gasped. From his breast protruded a shaft like that of an arrow, though it was green and shimmered like a spear of light. One of the man’s hands, now swinging limply at his sides, arose as if to touch that deadly hurt. He did not fall, instead he lurched out of the door, vanished from Olivia’s sight.
“Bind me in me own cloak, would he! But not sure of his knots—that one.”
Still dazed, Olivia saw Maudie by the open window, shrugging off the folds of cloth hampering her. Her cap had disappeared and her white hair was pulled into a tangle. She gave a last twist of her shoulders and the stout red winter garment slipped to the floor.
Olivia swallowed. Her throat still felt as if it were half closed and she took short, frantic breaths. Somehow she managed to stand, with an anchoring hold on one of the bed posts.
“Maudie,” she had to make a painful effort to shape that name and her voice was a hoarse whisper.
The old woman kicked the cloak up against the wall and came to the girl with a quick step.
“Now, m’lady, there’s naught to fear. That one takes care of his own. Be at peace against all ill—Herne’s lady—”
“Herne’s lady?” repeated Olivia.
“Aye. Chosen you have been and rightfully so. You have been watched and measured since first you came hither. True time is not reckoned by the clocks of men. There was my dear lady before you—she was chosen. And before her another. When your own time passes you will find one who will walk Herne’s wood in turn and hold his favor. For he is one of the Old Ones who did not flee the land when belief grew thin, but rather still cherishes what was always his.”
She paused and held her head slightly atilt as if listening. Perhaps in direct answer came that sweet call of a hunter’s horn. Yet this hunter must be guardian not destroyer.
Olivia blinked. It was hard to understand, but now small memories flowed together and fitted well. Her sense of being under eye when in the woods, the fact that the children when she was one of the party dared to venture under the trees—that horn—
“Sir Lucas—” she croaked, still rubbing her throat.
“Tush, m’lady. He was served as well he might be. Herne’s arrows do not fly light but they fly well. Now set you down, m’lady. I have possets which will soothe that poor throat of yours.”
She let Maudie install her in the chair by the outflung window. Herne—could one dare to believe? But why—here?
Olivia ventured a question.
“Will I ever see him, Maudie—this Herne?”
Maudie laughed. “There is a time for everything, m’lady, and when that comes you shall have no question.”
“You know him then, Maudie—Herne?” She found a desire to repeat that name.
“All who dwell in his place know him. He is a good master but a bad foe, as that devil Sir Lucas discovered. Now drink up this potion, m’lady.”
She had poured a golden liquid into a silver cup so old that the intricate patterning on its side had been near worn away. It tasted of honey, and of herbs, and oddly of flowers as if summer scents had been infused in it. Drinking, Olivia’s last shadow of fear and pain vanished.
She smiled almost drowsily, ready to await what the future might bring—even as the Lady Lettice had lived and—how many before her?
It was not until after a night, filled with dreams which were not nightmares but promises she could not remember in detail upon awakening, that the news arrived. One of the grooms had delivered the story with gusto.
“Fell down dead, m’lady,” Mrs. Beckett reported, “right before the eyes of Tom Donn who told the whole story at the ale house where our Jim heard it. Struck by the Hand of God Almighty he was, dead—and not a mark on him! They sent for the ‘pothecary and he swears it must have been some weakness of the heart. Tisn’t my place to speak ill of the gentry, m’lady, but the world is a cleaner place with such as Sir Lucas out of it.”
Throughout the day Olivia kept to her role of polite if dismayed interest in the sudden demise of her neighbor. She was sure that only Maudie shared her secret of the happenings at the cottage. And since her nemesis had died apparently in his own courtyard no other would ever know.
T
oward nightfall she grew restless. The latest novel posted from London could not hold her eye or attention for even half a page. She brought out a bit of work she had started with the vague idea of recovering the small chair in her bedroom the seat of which showed a sad lack of care. After she missed four stitches, pricked her finger to the extent of having to sketch in another bud of the pictured rose to cover that stain, she surrendered to the fact that she was indeed indulging in a spasm of nerves.
Or was it nerves? In her first season, before she realized how far her girlish dreams strayed from the reality kept jealously tight by the fashionable, she had sometimes felt this way before a ball. Expectation—and something else she could not define—she shrank from doing so.
Olivia did not do justice to the dinner served up where she dined in solitary state deemed suitable by her staff to her consequence. She settled at last for a peach, part of the year’s crop, round and perfect, but uncommonly juicy as to the use of fingers.
The dusk had deepened so that when she looked without from the windows, her eyes still be-dazzled by the candlelight around she could not pick up any landmark until she stood blinking for several seconds.
Then—she knew! Faint but growing closer—the horn’s silver call.
Turning, she raced for the stairway and her own suite above. What luck she had no personal maid waiting in attendance now. Annie, the upper housemaid who had taken over the keep of her wardrobe must have already withdrawn to the warren where the servants had their own lives.
Olivia burrowed into the great wardrobe, brushing aside the hanging clothing with no thought of wrinkling having to be dealt with. Her hands closed at last on what she sought—the softness of velvet—and she pulled out her find.
It had been her choice, her own, back in the days when her sister-in-law had kept a sharp eye on her, since it was so well known that she had no acute understanding of the dictates of fashion. The gown was very plain, no ruffles, no braid in fantastic coils, only a small stand of lace, now faintly yellow, edging the neckline.
As one who races with time, Olivia shed her house gown, pitched her proper cap onto the bed and somehow got herself buttoned into the flow of green—forest green. She surveyed her reflection most critically in the long mirror on the wardrobe door.
On impulse she raised both hands and pulled the pins from her hair. Somehow it did not look so dully brown when she let it fly loose about her shoulders. She turned to look at the back, her head at a stretch.
There was something different—she could not put name to what had appeared to have changed in her appearance but she found it exciting.
Quickly she blew out the candles, leaving only the small night light and one candle to carry with her. Holding her skirt gracefully high for greater speed, she retraced her way, not to seek out the front door but rather the side one which she knew had the faulty latch and could be safely used.
It was cool as the night wind wrapped her round, but she did not feel it. The excitement raising in her supplied a heat of its own. She had left the candle just inside the door, now she used both hands to control her skirt as she brushed through the garden gate to the road, made haste along that for the short space striving to make sure she was not sighted, until she reached the turn off to the wood.
Now she was running, the wind pulling gently at her hair, soft on her face. It was rustling the leaves in the great trees as she came into that other’s kingdom.
“Herne?” Olivia called, not sharply as Maudie had summoned him, but with a softness tinged with uncertainty.
“Herne?”
Shadow detached itself from shadow. She dropped her hold on her skirt, both hands now pressed against a heart which was beating more than her recent exertions warranted.
“Herne—?”
And the welcome came—eagerly—joyfully—
“My lady.”
Sometimes, there are things that one must do—even at the risk of all one holds dear.
The Outling
Lord of the Fantastic: Fantastic Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny (1998) AvoNova
Herta pulled impatiently at the hood the wild wind attempted to take from her head. Facing this was like trying to bore her body, sturdy as it was, into a wall. The dusk was awaking shadows one did not like to see if only in a glimpse from eye corner. She shifted her healer’s bag and tried to hold in mind the thought of her own hearth fire, a simmering pot of stew, and a waiting mug of her own private herb restorative.
The wind howled, and within her hood Herta grinned. Let the Dark go its way, this eve it held no newborn in its nets. Gustava, the woodsman’s wife, had a new son safe at her breast and a strong boy he was.
Then she slowed her fight against the wind, actually pushed aside a bit of hood to hear the better. No, there was no mistaking that whimper—pain, fear, both fed it.
In the near field there was a rickety structure Ranfer had once slovenly built for a sheep shelter, though all flocks would be safely bedded this night. She had not been mistaken—that was a lonesome cry, wailed as if no help could be expected.
Herta bundled up thick skirts, gave a hitch to her bag, to push laboriously through the nearest gap in the rotting fence. She did allow herself a regretful sigh. There was pain and she was a healer; for such there was no turning aside.
She tore a grasping thorn away from her cloak and rounded the end of the leanto. Then she halted again almost in mid-step, and her white breath puffed forth in a gasp.
There was a form stretched on the remains of rotting straw, yes. Great green eyes which yet had a hint of gold in them were on her. The body which twisted now as if to relieve some intolerable pain was—furred. Yet it was womankind in all its contours.
Herta dropped her cloak and strove to pull it over brush and crumbling wood to give some shelter. Light—not even a candle lantern. But she had the years behind her to tell her what lay here—a thing of legend—yet it lived and was in birth throes.
White fangs showed between pale lips as Herta went to her knees beside that twisting figure.
“I would help,” the healer got out. She was already pulling at her bag. But there was no fire to warm any potion and half her hard-learned skills depended upon such.
She shook off mittens and into the palm of one hand shook a mixture. As she leaned closer the thing she would tend swept out a long pale tongue to wipe her flesh clean.
Having turned back her sleeves, Herta placed her hands on that budge of mid-body. “Down come.” She recited words which might not be understood by her patient but were the ritual. “Come down and out into this world, without lingering.”
She never knew how long she kept up that struggle, so hampered by the lack of near all that was necessary for a proper birthing. But at last there was a gush of pale blood and a small wet thing in her hands. While she who had yielded it up at last cried aloud a mournful cry-or was it a howl?
Though Herta held now, wrapping in her apron, what was undoubtedly a female child, large to be sure but still recognizable for what it was, the body which had delivered it once more writhing. Foam dripped from the jaws and a strong animal smell arose. But the eyes went from Herta to the babe and back again. And in them, as if it were shouted aloud, there was a plea.
Without knowing why, except that somehow this was a part of her innermost being, Herta nodded. “Safe as I can, I shall hold.”
Her breath caught as she realized what she had just promised. But that it was a true oath she had no doubt. The eyes held to hers; then came a dimness and the figure twisted for the last time. Herta squatted, a wailing baby in her arms. But at her feet there was now, stiffening and stark, the body of a silver white wolf.
Herta’s hand started to move in the traditional farewell to those passing beyond and then stopped. All living things in the world she had always known paid homage to That Beyond, but did an Outling come within that shelter? Who was she to judge? She finished the short ritual with the proper words almost definitely.
“Sleep
well, sister. May your day dawn warm and clear.”
Stiffly she got to her near-benumbed feet. The babe whimpered, and she sheltered it with a flap of cloak. Night was closing in. She did not know how or why the Outling had come to the fringe of human habitation, but either those of her kind would find her or else, like the wood creatures whose blood she was said to share, she would lie quiet here to become part of the earth again.
Heavy dusk was on Herta when she reached her cottage at the outer edge of the village street. Lanterns were agleam above the doorways after the Law, and she must set hers also. But luckily she seemed to have the village street to herself at the moment. It was the time for day’s-end eating and all were at their tables.
Inside she laid the baby, still bundled in her apron, on her bed and then saw to the lantern and gave a very vigorous poking to the embers on the hearth, feeding them well from her store. She even went to the extravagance of lighting a candle in its grease-dripped holder.
To swing a pot of water over the awakening fire took but a moment or so, and she rummaged quickly through her supplies of castoffs, which she kept ready for those too poor to have prepared much for birthings.
Once it was washed and clad she would have vowed that this was a human child—healthy of body—born with a thick thatch of silver fair hair—but human as the one she had earlier brought into the world.
She hushed a hungry wail by a rag sopping with goat’s milk to suck. It’s eyes opened and Herta would always swear that they looked up at her with strange knowledge and recognition.
Briary, she named her find, and the name seemed to fit. And she had her story ready, too: a beggar woman taken by her time in the forest, who died leaving one there was none to claim.
Briary was accepted by the village with shrugs and some mutterings. If Herta wished to burden herself with an extra mouth during the lean months, the care of a stranger’s offthrow—that was her business. Too many owed life and health to the healer to raise questions.