Dragonswood

by Janet Lee Carey

  “How long have I slept?”

  “All night and half the day. Garth Huntsman insisted we share the room that I might watch out for you and let him know when you awakened.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t let him know I’m awake, Poppy.”

  She ignored my comment. “There’s chamomile tea,” she said. “I’ll put honey in it for you. Oh, isn’t it grand we’re here, Tess?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, confused.

  “I’ll fetch the tea and you’ll feel better soon.”

  “Where is your leper’s robe?” I asked her suddenly. “Where is mine? And who took my knife?”

  I stood swaying by the bed, then had to sit again.

  “The robes stink, Tess. We don’t need them here.”

  “My knife,” I insisted shakily.

  “It’s in the kitchen where it belongs, Tess.”

  “The knife belongs with me.” Meg and Poppy were so ready to receive the huntsman’s kindness, but was it kindness? How could we be so sure? I’d blame myself if he was only after the bounty money. “Where is the huntsman?”

  “Here, why?”

  “Did he leave while I slept?” I tried to calculate how long it would take to ride from this hunting lodge back to Oxhaven, but my mind was still too hazed with sleep.

  “He was gone this morning.”

  “For how long? Was he on horseback?”

  “On foot, and why are you asking so many questions? You have me reeling, Tess.”

  “I won’t be tricked, Poppy.”

  “He’s been nothing but honorable since we came here.”

  “We need our disguises,” I insisted. “What if we have to run? Tell me where they are.”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” Poppy marched out and returned to heave a reeking bundle on the floor by my bed.

  “Here!” she said. “You can have them all. And the knife you insist on having. And now you’re awake, you can make your own tea and see if I care!” With that, she slammed the door.

  I’d have stayed in the room, but I needed to use the privy. I’d slept in my black kirtle, and the rags I’d wrapped about my blistered feet while on the road. I got up and waited for dizziness to pass. I’d grown thin on the road and was as much a shadow wraith as a girl. I checked the tall wardrobe and was relieved to find my cloak inside. Wearing the leper’s robe over my cloak while on the run had protected it so it wasn’t fouled with dirt. I slid my feet into my shoes.

  It was raining hard outside. The wind was chill. I returned from the outside privy, walking soft-footed (or so I thought) through the long corridor, when I heard a voice call, “Tess?”

  In the room on my left, three stuffed chairs were drawn up by the fire. The voice came from the largest, high-backed chair.

  “Sir?” I leaned against the doorframe. I was still soul tired and wanting my bed, if not to sleep, at least to rest and think. I needed to come up with a sound plan to save my friends if this man betrayed us.

  Garth Huntsman said, “Come here and sit awhile.”

  I went to the hearth, but did not sit.

  The huntsman sprawled comfortably in his stuffed chair, a finely embroidered one that King Kadmi likely used at one time. Horace slept at his master’s feet, his long, soft ears spread on the floor like wings.

  The man eyed my dripping hair. “Wet day out,” he said. I did not reply. I wasn’t about to say I’d had to go outside to the privy.

  A book lay open on the table by his pewter mug. So the man could read? The woodward who patrolled our southern section of Dragonswood was a simple man, some said a lazy one, who couldn’t read or write. More books filled the shelves by the window. Thin volumes of poetry, thicker works on history, castle defense, and weaponry, things such as a king or his grown sons might read. The poetry, I thought, might have belonged to Queen Lucinda. It made me sad to think of our queen who died in childbirth four years back.

  The huntsman poked his thumb in and out of the pewter mug handle like a turtle peeking out of his shell. “Tell me, how did you manage to spring Tom?”

  I curled my toes in my wet shoes. The clean room made me all too aware of my sour, sweat-stained kirtle. I drew my hair over my marred ear. “Why do you wish to know, sir?”

  The huntsman looked up. Again I was surprised by the contrast of his light eyes against his sun-darkened face.

  “Poppy and I climbed over the sheriff’s manor wall, sir.” I edged my damp shoes closer to the blaze. The path between lodge and privy was icy. My feet were very cold.

  “You need not call me sir. Call me Garth,” he said. “You both went over the wall. Then what did you do?”

  “I filched the keys while Poppy entertained the guard.”

  His brow went up at the word entertained. I ignored it and told him how I’d gone to Tom’s cell, then how Tom had tricked the turnkey disguised as a leper.

  “Ah! Fear of contagion!” He laughed. “Tom begged for a cell and the frightened man pushed him right out the door.”

  I smiled a little. “The leper’s garb is a good disguise.”

  “Until now,” Garth noted. “Lady Adela will have heard all about Tom’s clever escape. She’ll be looking out for lepers now.”

  I felt the shock of what he said, but of course it was true. The stinking pile by my bed was useless. We couldn’t guise ourselves that way again. Now what would we do?

  Low flames burned russet in the hearth. Garth extended his long legs and crossed them at the ankles. There was an ease of confidence in him as if he knew he was strong and did not have to prove himself to anyone. It’s well he’s our protector if that’s what he truly is.

  The huntsman leaned forward and pumped the leather bellows. Sparks skittered up from the burning logs. “You know I break the law bringing you and your little mob to the king’s lodge,” he said as he pumped. Ah, he’d been too rash, and regretted his decision now. I couldn’t blame him.

  “I wouldn’t endanger you after your kindness to us, Garth Huntsman.” Trembling, I made a quick decision, and spoke before I weakened. “Now you’ve fed us and all, I’ll leave before dawn and take Poppy with me. We are both strong. But if you would keep Tom a while longer?” My knees were putty. “And Meg too, being that she’s his wife. If you could let them stay on so the man won’t die on my account.”

  “On your account?” He stopped pumping and gave a startled laugh. “I saw what the witch hunter did to Tom. Was it you who captured him, tethered him to a horse, and dragged him through the streets?”

  My legs folded. I sank into a chair. I might as well have beaten Tom myself. But I’d not say that to the huntsman. He was not my confessor.

  “I’ve upset you. Are you hungry? Do you need something to drink?”

  I shook my head. Still Garth left for the kitchen and returned with an apple and a mug of ale. I took the ale gratefully, drank too fast, and belched into my hand.

  “Sorry, sir,” I whispered.

  “It seems you were thirsty after all.”

  I put the mug down and ate the apple.

  Garth swished his beer. “Lady Adela thinks she’ll clear the island of witches, but there are too many accused, and too many burned.”

  I’d thought the same myself. I didn’t doubt there were witches abroad who practiced evil spells. Hadn’t a coven tortured Lady Adela? Put out her eye? But still.

  “I’ve thought many of the women aren’t witches at all.” I blushed saying this. We three friends had discussed this on the road, but it was rash to convey such radical ideas to a stranger.

  Garth looked at me for a long while. Rain pounded the windows. My mind raced as I tried to think of ways to soften what I’d said. No words came. Then he surprised me.

  “The townsfolk seem eager enough to point out all the witches to Lady Adela. Why do you think that is?” he asked.

  “Folk are angry with their lot.”

  “And what is their lot as you see it, Tess?”
/>   Was he teasing me? I couldn’t tell. It might be incautious to say more, but I was numbed by my long journey, eased by ale, and it seemed too late to turn the argument to another course. At home I’d get a split lip for voicing my opinion, but unlike any man I’d ever known, he appeared genuinely interested in what I had to say. “Many people are hungry. Men can’t feed their families. With hunger comes disease. You’ve heard of Lord Sackmoore’s new grain tax?”

  “I have. Not a wise move in these times,” he added.

  “We saw men die in a riot for food. They rushed into Dragonswood to hunt game and were slaughtered. Brutally so.”

  His face hardened. “If they’d come in here I would have booted them out, by God.”

  His flash of anger was all too familiar. Run if you have to.

  “But there was no need to kill them,” he added. “Lord Sackmoore has a lot to answer for. King Kadmi wouldn’t have put such a strain on his people.”

  My hands were filthy on the armrests; I put them in my lap and tucked my damaged thumbs in. “Suffering is not a new thing. Children sicken. Babes die—” Remembering Adam, I nearly choked on the words before managing to continue. “Men lose their children or their women when they die in childbirth—”

  Garth gave a start and set down his mug. “Go on, Tess.”

  “I won’t. I’ve troubled you.” Had his mother died birthing him or a younger sibling? Or was he thinking of Queen Lucinda? Garth was twenty or twenty-one by my guess, and would have been a young man of sixteen or so when the queen died.

  “Do go on, Tess,” he insisted. “It’s been a long while since I’ve spoken to anyone by this fireside, so I mean to hear your theory out.”

  “All right.” I’d not reached the meat of my argument, the reasons why folk produced witches in every town. “Seeing their loved ones sicken and die, folk look for someone to blame so they say, ‘The midwife’s a witch’ or if the cow sickens and the milk sours, they say, ‘Yon girl hexed our cow and stanked the milk.’ They’re careful to pick a weak old woman or an unwed girl who’s poor. Not the wife of a powerful man in the town.” I thought of Jane Fine, whose only sin that I could see was that she chose to live alone and make a living by selling her pretty candles. I’d looked up to her as a girl and wanted to be like her.

  “Or,” Garth added, “if a child goes sick, the mother might point and say, ‘That woman hexed my little boy and gave him the pox.’”

  I nodded. “That sort of thing. So by this they cast all their woes on a single soul and burn her. As if that will make their hardships disappear in the flames.”

  The muscles in Garth’s jaw worked as he stared at the poker. “The witch hunter should be reined in,” he said. “If I had the power to do it…” He squeezed the rim of his mug as if to strangle it. I was very close to him in my chair, and tensed. I knew how a man’s anger built up sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but by degrees. First came the tight-jawed talking under the breath, then fists forming, muscles rippling down the arms, after that came shouting and blows.

  He’s angry with Lady Adela, not me, but I’m handy. Get out of the room. No. Fearful looks and sudden bursts for the door might intensify his rage. One time when I’d tried to run after Father discovered I’d forgotten to empty his chamber pot, he’d grabbed me hard enough to break my arm.

  The door is but fifteen paces back: If I rise slowly and creep out even slower…

  My soaking shoes steamed by the fire. Garth noted my shivering—whether from fear or cold or both, I couldn’t keep still. His eyes followed the steam rising from my shoes.

  Of a sudden, he went down on one knee. “You’re cold,” he said, pulling one shoe off and then the other.

  Speech left me. A husband might touch a girl’s ankle, remove her shoes. I hardly knew this man. The stinking cloth wrapped round my feet against the cold hung in gray shreds. Horrified, I grabbed my shoes and made for the door.

  From behind he called, “If I keep those two I might as well keep you and Poppy. The law does not change whether I harbor two fugitives or four.”

  I wondered why he would risk so much for us. I turned and spoke from the hall. “You’re under the king’s protection living here as master of his hunting lodge.”

  Garth rubbed the armrest. “The king won’t be coming here again,” he said in a low voice. He stood and turned his back, arms crossed, one hand covering his black armband.

  I bit my cheek for bringing up King Kadmi so lightly. There was a brutal long silence between us broken only by crackling noises from the fire.

  “Go back to your friends,” he said at last.

  I fled down the hall, chastened.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE NEXT MORNING at dawn, Garth Huntsman rode out to fetch a healer. He said he knew someone who might have the skills to save Tom. I roused Poppy. We cleaned the filthy kitchen, chased the mice with the broom, dumped the flour fouled with mouse droppings, and used the rest to mix bread dough.

  By forenoon Tom’s fever worsened. Red-eyed, he spoke to the shadows in the room. There are strange tales of shadow wraiths in our land, spirits that haunt the dying and steal the very life-breath out of them.

  Meg looked at me, her eyes wild with fear.

  “Tom’s babbling is fever-driven,” I said. The dark patches creeping along the walls could be only lack of sunlight in his room. I swiftly drew the drapes to let in the October sun, weak as it was. Sweeping the cobwebbed corners, I also said a prayer to Saint Agricola, defender against misfortune.

  We made a hearty lamb-bone soup, and Tom sipped a little of it. After lunch, Garth still hadn’t returned with the healer. Our worry increased to agitation. Egg whites on the sores had failed. We had no agate stone to place upon Tom’s forehead to draw out the fever. I brought Meg and Poppy cold, wet cloths, and a little wine for Tom.

  Garth had told us all to stay indoors, for our own protection, he’d said, but after bathing Tom’s burning skin, Poppy went out to gather herbs. I did not try and stop her, I was that worried over Tom. Returning to the kitchen breathless, she dropped stinging nettles she’d carried in her skirts on the sideboard.

  “We’ll seethe the nettles, strain the liquid, and let Tom drink it from a wooden spoon.”

  Tupkin tried to sneak inside. I shooed him out and shut the door. Drink nettles? I knew the stinging welts nettles left on the skin. “How came you by this remedy?”

  Poppy shrugged, her pale hair in tangles and a bit of moss hanging from the tips.

  “I’ve not heard tell of the cure,” said I. “Did Beulah teach you this?” Her housekeeper had the simple healer’s knowledge of women raised out in the countryside. It was from her that Poppy gleaned herb-sense.

  Poppy shook her head.

  “Then who did?”

  “I can’t remember, Tess.” She tugged the moss from her hair and stared at it.

  We’d relied on Poppy’s knack for finding wild onions and mushrooms while on the run, and many times my friend had salved my abrasions, and helped Beulah set my broken arm. But Poppy’s remedies were guesswork as often as not. Once back home when I gave Mother licorice root boiled in vinegar as Poppy had instructed, Mother turned green and vomited. We could not afford to sicken Tom.

  “If you can’t remember where you heard of it, how do we know it won’t harm Tom?”

  Poppy kicked the table. “Would I do that? Would I ever?” Her pink face grew pinker.

  “Not purposefully,” I said, “but Tom’s too sick to take chances on—”

  Poppy snatched a pot and went to the well for more water. She would boil the nettles herself, and press her cure on Tom.

  “We shouldn’t risk it!” I called through the door. Tom might be dying, and the wrong cure could be fatal. Outside, Poppy grunted as she yanked the well rope. Tupkin paced at her feet.

  Cursing under my breath, I swept Poppy’s muddy prints from the kitchen floor. How much longer before Garth returned? He’d ridden out on the black stallion leading the blond mare on h
er tether, a second horse for the healer, I supposed. But I wondered once again if we’d been too trusting. The man had told us to stay in the lodge. Was that to protect us, or did he mean to trap us? The green man swung his sword just as I’d seen him do in the fire. He hadn’t killed us then. Could it still have been a warning?

  I swept the dirt outside in three broad strokes. The law does not change whether I harbor two fugitives or four. How long did he mean to hide us? Garth had an occupation and did not seem needy. But might he lose his post at the hunting lodge now King Kadmi was dead? In these times when work is hard to come by and hunger isn’t far from any door, a man with no hope of future wages might be tempted to collect a handsome bounty.

  I set the broom against the wall and wiped my damp hands. Garth’s also a king’s woodward. Even with the hunting lodge in disuse, there were animals to keep (with little aid from Cackle, I was sure), and woodwards were needed year-round to guard Dragonswood. More had been hired to ride through the forest and search the caves after the king’s treasure was stolen. I imagined that was part of Garth’s job now, though he hadn’t mentioned it to us. Perhaps he’d come to search our cave the morning he found us? Four starving waifs appeared instead of gold and jewels.

  The bread was done. I took it from the oven and set the steaming loaves by Poppy’s nettle pile on the sideboard. If he had only gone for the healer, we should stay.

  But I’d seen him the first time down in Harrowton. What was a woodward from so far north doing there? Why come the very day the witch hunter arrived? Why had I seen him the second time only minutes before Lady Adela rode through the barn door? He could be a spy in her pay. If he’d gone after the law, we should run while we had the chance. But Tom is too sick to move. And Meg will keep by him no matter what. By the saints! I fairly boiled with indecision.

  Feeling I’d go mad in the oven-warmed kitchen, I gathered Poppy’s nettles in my skirt, careful not to touch them, raced out, and dumped them in the mud behind the privy.

  Back out front by the well, I spoke with Poppy.

  “We can’t run off!” she argued.

  “I know Tom cannot, and Meg won’t because of Tom, but what if it’s a trap, Poppy?”