by Jane Yolen
Ballad of the Twelve Sisters
There were twelve sisters by a lake,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
A handsome sailor one did take,
And that day a child was born.
A handsome sailor one did wed,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
The other sisters wished her dead
On the day the child was born.
“Oh, sister, give me your right hand,”
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
Eleven to the one demand
On the day the child was born.
They laid her down upon the hill,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
And took her babe against her will
On the day the child was born.
They left her on the cold hillside,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
Convinced that her new babe had died
On the day the child was born.
She wept red tears, and she wept gray,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
Till she had wept her life away,
On the day her child was born.
The sailor’s heart it broke in two,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
The sisters all their act did rue
From the day the child was born.
And from their graves grew rose and briar,
Rosemary, bayberry, thistle and thorn,
Twined till they could grow no higher,
From the day the child was born.
THE STORY:
“I am sorry,” Jenna said. “I have acted foully since we left the Hame. It is as if my tongue and my mind have no connection. I cannot think what makes me act this way.”
They had stopped for the night, scarcely a hundred feet off the road, in a small clearing only slightly larger than a room. There was a rug-sized meadow with great oaks overarching it, branches laced together like a cozy roof. Still, Catrona would not let them light a fire for fear of alerting any passersby.
They ate their dark traveling bread and the last of the cheese in silence. Nearby the horses grazed contentedly, hobbled by braided vines. When they had first dismounted, Catrona had shown them how to twist the green rope and secure it to the horses’ front feet, tight enough to keep the horses from running off, slack enough so that they did not stumble.
Jenna decided, after much thought, that the slow, steady crunching progress the horses made was a comforting sound, not annoying. But she felt neither steady nor particularly happy about her own progress the past few days. An apology was necessary, and so she offered it.
“What is there to be sorry about?” asked Catrona. “You have slept little and seen too much this past fortnight. You have been torn from and shorn of much you know. Your young life has been turned completely upside-down.”
“You speak of Petra, not of me,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “And yet her mood remains sunny.”
“What is it they say in the Lower Dales? That: A crow is not a cat, nor does it bear kits. Jenna, if you were Petra, you would be sunny despite all. It is her way. But you are Jenna of Selna’s line …” Catrona said.
“But I am not of Selna’s line,” Jenna interrupted. “Not truly.” Appalled at the whine in her voice, she buried her face in her hands, as much in shame as in sorrow.
“So. That is it.” Catrona chuckled. “How can White Jenna, the Anna, the mighty warrior who killed the Hound and cut off the Bull’s hand, as in the prophecies; who has ridden off to save the world of the Hames with her companions by her side; how could she have been born between the thighs of a woman like that.” She jerked her head back to indicate the direction from which they had just come. “But, Jenna, it is bearing, not blood, that counts. You are a true daughter of the Hames. As am I.”
“Do you know your mother?” Jenna asked, her voice quiet.
“Seventeen generations of them,” Catrona said placidly. “As do you. I remember you reciting them, and never a hesitation.”
Petra spoke for the first time. “And I can say my lines, too, Jenna, though my birth mother left me at the Hame doorstep when I was not yet weaned, with a note that said only, ‘My man will not abide another such as this.’”
“I know,” Jenna said, her voice a misery. “I know all the tales. I know that half the daughters of the Hames come there abandoned or betrayed. Or both. And it never bothered me until now.”
“Until that silly woman and her sillier husband claimed you,” Petra said, moving next to Jenna and stroking her hair. “But their claim is water, Jenna. And you are stone. Water flows over stone and moves on. But the stone remains.”
“She is right, Jenna,” Catrona said. “And you are wrong to worry over such nonsense. You have more mothers than you can count, and yet you count that story more than all the rest.”
“I will count it no longer,” Jenna said. She stood, brushed the cheese and bread crumbs from her breast, and stretched. “I shall take the first watch.” She looked up at the heavy lacings of the oak and the one small patch of cloud-covered sky, then sighed and stared down at her hands. The ring on her littlest finger, the one the priestess had given her to use as identification, was a reminder of her task. She should think of that, and not of this other silliness. At least, she thought, Skada is not here to bruise me about it.
But the watch seemed longer without Skada’s company, and despite her promise not to think about Martine and Geo Hosfetter—their names as silly as their manners—she could think of nothing else. If she had stayed with her true mother, her birth mother, she would surely have been as awful as they. She spent her watch braiding and unbraiding her long white hair and musing about a life she had never lived.
Morning began with a noisy fanfare of birdsong from a dozen different tiny throats, mellow and chipping, thin and full. Jenna sat up for a moment and just listened, trying to distinguish one from another.
“Warblers,” Catrona whispered to her. “Can you tell them?”
“I know the one that Alna called Salli’s, that one, there.” She raised her hand, finger extended, at a single, melodious call.
“Good.” Catrona nodded. “And what about that one, with the little brrrrrrup at the end.”
“Maybe a yellow-rump?” Jenna guessed.
“Good twice. Three times and I will admit you are my equal in the woods,” Catrona said. “There—that one!” The call was thinner than the last two, and abrupt.
“Yellow throat … no, wait, that is a …” Jenna shook her head. “I guess I am not yet as good as you are.”
“That was a Marget’s warbler, after which Amalda named your best friend. It is good to know that I am still needed in the woods.” She smiled. “Wake Petra while I see what there is to offer for hungry travelers.” She disappeared behind a large oak.
Petra, who had had the middle watch, was curled up in her blanket, the waterfall of her hair obscuring her face. Jenna shook her gently.
“Up, mole, into the light. We have much traveling yet.”
Petra stretched, bound up her hair quickly into two plaits, and stood. She looked around for Catrona.
“Food,” Jenna said, motioning to her mouth.
As if the word itself had summoned her, Catrona appeared, but so silently, even the horses did not notice. She carried three eggs.
“One each, and there is a stream not far from here. We will water the horses and fill our flasks. If we ride quickly, we will make the Hame by midday.” She gave an egg to each girl, keeping the smallest for herself.
Jenna took her throwing knife from her boot and poked a hole in the top of the egg, then handed the knife to Petra. As Petra worked the blade point into her egg, Jenna sucked out the contents of her own. It slid down easily and she was hungry enough not to mind the slippery taste.
“I will lead the horses,” Catrona said. “You, Jenna, and you, Petra, pack up the rest of the gear. And do what you can to
make it hard to read our signs. With horses that is difficult, I know.”
She led the three horses away. Using branches as brooms, Jenna and Petra followed right after. There were no fire remains to disguise, but much evidence of the horses and their browsing which could not be totally erased. Still, the signs could be confused, and Jenna did what was possible. Perhaps an incompetent tracker might think a herd of deer had grazed through.
At the stream they washed quickly, less for the cleanliness and more for morale. Jenna filled their leather flasks while Petra kept a watch on the horses. Catrona went ahead to scout to make sure their return to the road would not be noted.
When Catrona came back, they pulled the reluctant horses from the water, mounted up with more facility than grace, and started off, Catrona in the lead once more.
The sun was high overhead and they had passed no one on the road. The one small town they had ridden through had been strangely deserted. Even the mill by the river had been empty of people, though the water kept the wheel turning on its own.
“How odd,” had been Catrona’s only comment.
Jenna’s thoughts were darker than that, for the last time she had been where all motion and sound had seemed to stand still had been at Nill’s Hame when she returned to find death the only occupant. Yet there were no bodies lying about the town, no blood spilling along the millrace. She breathed slowly, deliberately.
Petra’s face was unreadable and Jenna said nothing, worrying more about her friend’s silence than the silence in the town.
They rode on, till they came to the ford after which Calla’s Ford was named. The pull-line ferry waited on the far side of the river but there was no ferryman in sight. Together Catrona and Jenna hauled on the thick line and the flat-bottomed ferry slowly moved across the water on its tether.
When it grounded, they walked their horses onto the boat in silence. Even with the weight of three horses and three women, the boat rode high in the water.
Built for more than that, Jenna thought. The silence was so oppressive, she kept the thought to herself. But she wondered, all the time that she and Catrona pulled on the water-slicked rope, whether the twenty-one horses of the king’s troop could cross on such a boat. Twenty men, and the Bear. Or the Cat. Or Lord Kalas himself.
The little ark plowed across the river quickly, grounding itself with a grinding sound on the shore. The horses got off with more promptness and less urging than they had gotten on. This time both Petra and Jenna remounted with ease.
Jenna urged Duty into the lead, and the horse began an easy gallop along the well-worn road. Behind, Catrona’s and Petra’s bays took up the white mare’s challenge. Jenna could hear their quickening hoofbeats and smiled wryly. For a moment nothing existed but the wind in her hair, the sound of the galloping horses, and the hot spring sun directly overhead.
If I could capture this moment, she thought. If I could hold this time forever, we could all be safe.
And then she saw what she had feared: a thin spiral of smoke scripting a warning against the sky.
“The Hame!” she cried out, the first words any of them had spoken in an hour.
The other two saw the smoke at the same time and read it with the same fear. They bent over their horses’ necks, and the mares, with no further urging, raced toward the unknown fires.
As they rounded a final bend in the road, the road suddenly mounted upward. The horses labored under them, breathing heavily. Jenna could feel her own heart beating in rhythm with Duty’s heaving breaths. Then they crested the rise, and saw the Hame before them, its great wooden gates shattered and the stone walls broken.
Petra reined up at the sight and gave a little cry, flinging her hand to her mouth. But Jenna, seeing movement beyond the walls, stood in the stirrups hoping to distinguish it. Perhaps it was fighting, perhaps they were not too late. Pulling her sword from its sheath and raising it overhead, she called to Petra, “Stay here. You have no weapon.”
Catrona was already racing forward. Without giving further thought to the consequences, Jenna turned Duty toward the broken stones and, with a great kick, impelled the horse to leap the fallen wall.
There were three men and a woman bending over. They scattered before Duty’s charge. One man, tall and ungainly, like a long-limbed water bird, turned and stared. Jenna screamed sounds at him, not words, and was about to strike when the woman ran between them and raised her hands.
“Merci,” the woman cried, desperation lending force to her thin voice. “In Alta’s name, ich crie merci.”
The words penetrated Jenna’s fury and slowly she lowered her sword, her sword arm shaking so hard, she had to reach over with the other hand to steady it. She noticed what she should have noticed before. The tall stork-man was not armed. Neither was the woman. “Hold, Catrona,” Jenna called out.
Catrona’s voice came back strongly, “I hold.”
“Please,” the woman said, “you must help, if you be Alta’s own.”
“We are,” said Jenna. “But who are you? And what has happened here?” She looked around as she spoke, not directly at the woman. Expecting to see bodies, she saw none. Yet the gates and walls were thrown down, shattered as if by a great blast. There were weapons scattered throughout the courtyard: several bows, dozens of swords, a number of knives, three rakes, even pieces of wood that might have been makeshift cudgels.
The woman clasped and unclasped her hands. “We be from Callatown. To south. If you rode that way.”
“We did,” Catrona said. “And none there to greet us. Nor at the ford.”
“My husband Harmon, here, be ferryman at’t ford. He and I and all our neighbors been here two day, burning dead.”
The tall man, her husband, put his hands on her shoulders and spoke to Jenna from behind his wife. “Grete speaks true, girl. I went out to ferry when a troop of king’s horse came by. They tied me up and Grete, bless her, be down in root cellar getting it spring cleansed. She could hear their coarse mouths and kept hid, waiting till they be gone.”
Grete interrupted. “It wouldna done any good to come out and fight. I knew that much.”
“She does, too.” Harmon had taken his hands from his wife’s shoulders and swept off his brown cap, kneading it between his long fingers. “She come up later, after they be gone over the water, and cut ropes. Look, the mark be still on my wrists.” He held one hand up but if there was a mark there, Jenna could not see it.
“A hundred or more they be,” said a second man, coming over. “That’s what Harmon said. A hundred or more.”
“This be Jerem the miller and his boy,” Grete said, gesturing at the two. “They was let be for they give the troop grain for horses.”
“But the rest of the town, they be tied up or kilt,” said Jerem. “Exceptin’ the girls. Them they took. My boy sneaked out to see that night.”
“Mai,” said Jerem’s boy. He said it quietly but his dark eyes were defiant under his thatch of yellow hair.
“Mai be his sweetheart,” explained Grete, “and she be gone with the rest. And they be promised to one another.”
“Why are you here?” It was Petra, who had dismounted upon hearing the voices. She led her horse through the maze of fallen stone. “You had your own sorrows, then. Did you come here for help?”
“For help?” Grete repeated, shaking her head.
“Bless you, girl,” Jerem said, “we came to help. They be our mothers and our sisters and our nieces and our aunts. They came among us to give us sons.”
Harmon added, “Jerem, he ground their grain and they paid him well, in crops and in strong arms. And when I be took last year with the bloody flux, didn’t a pair of ’em work all day pulling ferry for me. And four of ’em at night. And another doctored me, and two nursed me in the even.”
“And takin’ no payment for it. None. Not ever. It be their way, you know.” Grete’s thin voice rose and fell oddly.
“So we come quick as we could. When we knew what went on in town.” Harm
on’s hands still pummeled his hat.
“But we be late,” Jerem said. “We be hours too late. And they be all dead or gone.”
“But where …” Jenna began, her hands still trembling on sword and reins.
Grete nodded toward the central building of the Hame. “We been cartin’ ’em to Hall. My sons in there be helpin’, though it be strange for men to work there. That be never allowed. Us women, yes, we came sometimes. To help bring in harvest, or our girls for training some. But the boys wanted to do for the sisters, settin’ ’em side by side. The old lady, that Mother A, she be not quite gone when we got here, the blood all bubbling out of her like kettle to boil. She told us what to do. ‘Side by side,’ she said.”
Jenna nodded slowly. That explained why the women’s bodies were not scattered through the yard. “And … and the men?” she asked at last. “Surely there were some wounded, some dead.”
Catrona added, “Surely they took some of them with them in such a fight.”
“They drug their own wounded away. Or killed ’em on spot,” said Harmon. “The men be all dead, some thirty of ’em. We burned them there.” He pointed outside the broken wall, away from the road. “Foreign-looking, they be. Dark skin. Staring eyes.”
“Young,” Grete said. “Too young for such deaths. Too young for such killings.”
“But dead all the same,” said her husband, putting the hat back on his head. “And don’t they say: The swordsman dies by’t sword, the hangman by’t rope, and the king by’t crown.” He turned, looking over the ridge of his shoulder, and spoke to Jenna. “We be obliged for your help.”
Jenna nodded, but it was Petra who spoke, her voice shaky. “We will help.”
“We must be gone soon,” Catrona said in an undertone to Jenna. “The others must be warned.”
Jenna nodded at that, too, thinking to herself that her head must be on a string, so easily did it bob up and down. Then she whispered back, “But one hour surely will not matter. Let us find Selinda and Alna and bid them farewell.”
“An hour can spare a life,” Catrona said. “It is something we learned many times in the army.” But she gave in all the same. “For Alna and Selinda. An hour. That is all.”