The channel they were following now was wider and deeper than most, and the trickle of water in the bottom was almost wide enough to be called a stream. In the distance ahead, the half-light showed two giant grey shapes standing guard on either side of the channel. Ashhere supposed they were trolls, or ancient standing stones of malevolent power, but he was too tired to care. He plodded on, and with diminishing distance and growing light the two shapes resolved into a pair of gritstone tors. Beyond these sentinels the channel made a wide bend to the left and the stream gathered volume to become an infant river running in a sandy bed. A little further on, and it threaded through a jumble of gritstone boulders and plunged over a rocky fall to vanish in a dark hollow scooped out of the plateau side.
Ashhere stared at it, uncomprehending. His first thought was that they had wandered around in a circle and come to the ravine they had climbed up in the night, but he did not remember a waterfall. And slowly he realised that the sun was rising behind him, and the blue-shadowed plains rolling away to a distant horizon were in the west.
“You have crossed Kyndyr,” said Severa’s voice, behind him. “Not many men can say that! The safe way down is another mile further on. I will show you, but first stop and drink. This is the best drinking water for miles.”
She was right. The water was clear, cold and refreshing, and they drank, refilled water bottles and skins, and washed off the worst of the peat. Eadwine produced a leather flask of mead and handed it round, and that, together with the watery sunlight filtering through the clouds, completed the cure. A gritstone edge led north and west from the falls, giving easy walking on flat slabs and sandy peat, and as they followed it the plateau edge became less and less precipitous and the boulders less and less frequent.
Severa stopped beside the last of the boulders, where the edge faded away altogether and the way ahead dropped gently down into a shallow saddle.
“The army-path runs in a deep valley beyond those moors to the north,” she said, pointing to their right. “But you should cross the low ridge directly ahead, north-west, and then any of the streams on its far side will lead you down to the river and so to Ardotalia fort. What you will find there I do not know, but it is not in his lordship’s lands. This is as far as my knowledge goes.” She included them all in a brilliant, brittle smile. “I wish you well. May the Father and the Son and the Blessed Lady Mary look on you with favour.” She held out her hand to Eadwine. “Fare you well, Steeleye. May you come safely to your home and your lady.”
Eadwine took the proffered hand. It did not seem real that they should part, not now, not yet. He had intended to thank her, to say some brief and decorous farewell and then set off on his way. But as she stood looking up at him, her long hair swirling about her face, he no longer cared about hunting a murderer, avenging his father and his beloved brother, even about seeking Aethelind. Nothing seemed to matter, except that he would never see Severa again.
“Come with us.”
It was an utterly stupid thing to ask. He had no home, no land, no money, no means of supporting a woman, and he was committed to a task that was almost certain to end in failure and death. He was not even free. Yet all he could think of was that he could not bear to be without her.
She buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Steeleye!” Her voice was not much above a whisper. “I can’t.”
He stroked her hair. She was not free either. But what kind of life would be waiting for her now?
“Navio will find out that you helped us. He hates you, Severa.”
She drew a shuddering breath and raised her head. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“I am. I fear for you.”
Her eyes met his. “Is that the reason you want me to come?”
He knew he should have said yes. He should have lied to her to make this parting easier. But even as he was trying to think of the words, he slowly shook his head.
A spark flickered up in the expressive eyes. “Then what is?”
“This.”
Her lips were soft, her body warm and pliant against his, her arms around his neck, her hands tangled in his hair. He was no longer aware of cold or fatigue, no longer saw the moorland or felt the searching wind. All that mattered, in this world or the next, was the woman in his arms.
It was Severa who drew back, laying her cheek against his chest so that he could no longer see her face.
“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered.
“I must.”
“I know.” She let him slip his fingers under her chin and tilt her face up to his. “You belong to someone else.” She kissed him again, with a despairing fierceness. “Oh, I am a fool, a fool!” She pulled away, dashing the back of her hand across her eyes. “Go! Go now, before it is too late. And forget me!”
Eadwine looked back once. She had climbed up onto one of the boulders, as though to keep them in sight as long as possible. Her hair tossed wildly against the pale sky, and one hand was half-outstretched as though in entreaty or farewell. He checked his stride, hesitated a heartbeat, and turned back – but she was gone. The rocks and the sweeping moorland were empty, bereft of human voice or figure. She was gone, and he set his face once more to his onward journey, knowing that he could not do the only thing she had asked of him. He would never forget her.
Chapter 15
Severa stumbled down the rain-slicked path through Combe village, not caring who saw her. The sun was already setting, and it would be dark before she got home. She did not care about that either. All her future seemed dark. During those few hours of shared danger she had tasted the exhilaration of risk and fear and success, and something more. It was as if she had come truly alive for the first time. Now the routine of village and hafod seemed no more than a joyless living death, a drudgery without hope and without reward. For nearly four years she had waited for Iddon’s return, and now she knew she did not want him back. Life with Iddon had given her status, comfort and security, insofar as those things could be had in the Lord of Navio’s orbit. It had never given her joy or colour or laughter or desire, and because she had never experienced these things she had not mourned their lack. Until now.
She sobbed aloud in sudden agony. Steeleye had asked her to go with him. What had possessed her to refuse? But what choice had she had? He was going back to his betrothed, and if he found her he would marry her, and then what could she be to him – a mistress at best, more likely a discarded slut to be abandoned on the roadside. She scrubbed an angry hand across her eyes. It was all her own fault, it served her right, she had always known no good could come of it. Like a chicken trying to flutter after a hawk, she had made a fool of herself. But oh God, to watch him go, and to a woman he did not even love! Another sob shook her. He couldn’t have kissed her like that if he was in love with someone else, he could not. Unless he was a duplicitous deceiving two-faced rat, and he wasn’t that, surely he wasn’t that. Although she remembered the ease with which he had deceived the guards, and before that the bandits. When he was playing a part everything changed, his face and his posture and even the tone of his voice, as easily as putting on a mask. He could have deceived her just as easily, and she was going to spend the rest of her miserable life longing for someone who had already forgotten all about her.
“Oh, God!” The cry was torn from her. “I wish I was dead!”
A door opened, spilling a wash of light over the track. People crowded out of houses and barns, surrounding Severa in a wide circle. The voice of her sister-in-law shrilled, high and clear, “See, I told you! I told you there was no birthing! Slut! Liar! She’s been with a fancy man! She’s not fit to be a headman’s wife!”
The cry was taken up. Severa had endured mockery before, but this had a note of fear in it, as though they believed that attacking her would pacify some other malevolent force. What it was she did not know – until the Lord of Navio pushed his horse through the crowd. With him were a dozen men with spears and a wolf-net, and Severa’s brother scampered at his side.
“I’ll take her, my lord!” He plucked at the Lord of Navio’s saddle in his eagerness. “Give her to me. It’s my duty to take her in. I’ll see that she’s punished, I swear it.”
Severa gazed at him, too numb to care. What did it matter whether she wore away her life in domestic drudgery in Iddon’s house or in her brother’s?
The Lord of Navio did not answer. His gaze was fixed on Severa, his lips drawn back in a feral grin, and she realised that she had a third choice.
She found her voice, bitter despair lending it a mocking note. “Punished for what, brother dear? Adultery?” She laughed, never taking her eyes from the lord’s face. “Oh, I have better things to do than that!” She raised her hand, and saw Navio flinch a little. Yes, he remembered.
Her brother was still flapping and pleading. The Lord of Navio pushed him away as he might spurn a tiresome hound. “No. I will take her.”
Severa stared straight ahead in the smoky hall. The wolf-net was tight over her head and upper body, pinning her arms to her sides, but she had not even tried to struggle.
The Lord of Navio glared at her from his high-seat. She was drenched from the day’s rain, weary and bedraggled, but the green eyes met his with a defiant contempt that brought back humiliating memories of black pudding and a village’s mockery. Bitch! The stuff had been disgustingly greasy, and a vile stink had clung about him for weeks afterwards. He had even had to take a bath. But he would get rid of her this time, and with a bit of luck he could get that prettified dandy from Elmet to do it, and then any curse would fall on him.
“What were you doing in the fort?”
Her voice was calm, almost bored. “Conjuring demons to fill your belly with writhing snakes of fire.”
“Ha! It didn’t work!”
“I didn’t say it would be immediate.”
“Who was the man you were with?”
“The Lord of the Underworld.”
Some of the watching spearmen shifted uneasily. The Lord of Navio scowled. He would dearly like to throw the bitch to his spearmen and then to the dogs, but most likely neither would dare touch her. His stomach grumbled, and he waited anxiously for any sign of a writhing snake of fire, but it seemed to be only indigestion.
“How did the prisoners escape?”
“I turned them into toads and they crawled away through the stones.”
He turned triumphantly to the lord from Elmet. “See? She admits it!”
A frosty stare. “The prisoners were yours, not ours. Is this charade to go on much longer?”
The woman laughed. “If you want to murder me, your lordship, it seems you’ll have to do it yourself. Tell me, do you still eat black pudding?”
There was a snigger from the back of the hall. Someone else remembered the incident. The Lord of Navio glowered. And he had another score to settle with her.
“Where’s the bastard who tripped my horse?”
“He went south.”
“Ha! My men on the dyke never saw him!”
“I turned him into a starling and he flew over their heads.”
“Where were you today?”
“On Shivering Mountain, sacrificing a black goat to the Lord of the Underworld. Before Beltane comes you will be struck down, your breath will choke in your throat, your skin will turn grey and peel off in sheets –”
“Enough!” The Lord of Navio had blanched.
The envoy from Elmet exchanged a superior glance with his standard-bearer. How these peasant brigands clung to their rustic superstitions! But he put a hand to his crucifix, just in case.
The Lord of Navio was on his feet. “You will die, bitch!”
“It comes to us all in the end.”
The standard-bearer failed to stifle a laugh and turned it hurriedly into a cough. By the Blessed Lady, but the girl had spirit! He had once seen a woman like her in the entourage of a very rich wine merchant, all high cheekbones and golden skin, redolent of strange countries under a hot sun far away, and had determined to own one himself some day. Now he looked at the tangled mane of black hair and imagined it combed smooth, imagined her clothed in silks and serving wine in his hall to his envious friends, and then later there would be more wine, but no silk –
“My lord!” He stepped forward. “Will you sell her as a slave girl? I will give you gold for her.”
The green eyes widened momentarily, flicked over him as though he were the one on sale, and then were veiled by thick lashes. God –! He would be the envy of all his friends.
The Lord of Navio turned slowly, his piggy eyes narrow.
“So she can put a curse on me from afar? You think I’m a fool?”
The standard-bearer did, but it was not the moment to say so. Over his head, the frosty voice of his lord said, “We would not dream of interfering, my lord. Please excuse the interruption.”
The Lord of Navio’s voice filled the hall. “She must die!”
Nobody moved. The woman laughed again. “Remember,” she taunted, “any man who touches me with blade or hand will die. His hands will drop off, his teeth will fall out, he will drown in his own blood.” A mocking glance swept the hall. “Who wants to be first?”
“Stone her!” A heavy wooden platter struck her face with enough force to draw blood. The Lord of Navio grinned wolfishly. “Ha! She can die without being touched. Stone her!”
“My body will rise from the grave to haunt you,” mocked the woman. The thread of blood down her cheek gave her a demonic look, and the standard-bearer was half-relieved that his bid had failed.
No more missiles came. The Lord of Navio was practically dancing in fury.
“No body! No grave! Push her into the fire!”
The girl’s voice was scornful. “And my ashes will curse the place of my death until the end of time.”
“Cowards!” screamed the Lord of Navio at his shuffling spearmen. “What do I feed you for? Get a horse! An old one,” he added hastily, in case horses could be cursed too.
Severa made no resistance as they tied the trailing line of the wolf-net to the horse’s harness, and that seemed to encourage the spearmen. A few even found the nerve to throw stones at her as she was marched back up to Combe village and forced into the chapel.
“This place is already cursed!” bawled the Lord of Navio, as his men hauled a heavy rock against the door and stacked the walls high with the village’s firewood supply. “Let her die here with her heathen demons!”
He thrust a torch into the pile. The wood sputtered and caught. More torches were thrown in, and the fire grew. Much of the firewood was wet from the day’s rain, and clouds of choking smoke billowed across the hillside. The wet thatch flared in ragged patches and spat showers of sparks into the air to whirl away on the wind and die as they fell to the sodden earth. A few mice fled squeaking from the flames, their fur smoking, and the Lord of Navio and his spearmen ran to stamp on them in case one was the witch’s spirit escaping.
One of the heavy roof timbers fell in with a crash, sending up a sheet of sparks and a thick swirl of smoke that blotted chapel and hillside temporarily from sight. Soon the others were outlined in fire, eerily beautiful against the dark sky, like a skeleton clothed in flame. As the first beam fell in there was a long-drawn bubbling scream from the blaze, a scream that could have come from the tortured depths of the Underworld. And then nothing but the roar of the fire.
“This fort’s deserted like the other two,” Lilla reported back, in the murky half-light of a wet morning. “Doesn’t anybody live in this country at all?”
“Not any more, by the look of it,” Eadwine answered, hoisting his pack. “Heledd’s bard said some people call it Makerfield, the Field of Ruins. I thought he was exaggerating.”
“Bloody awful place,” Ashhere grumbled. “No food, not a building with a roof, and it rains all the bloody time.”
This was not quite true. It had in fact stopped raining at least twice during the two days and two nights since they had left Severa, but the tran
sition from cold depressing drizzle to cold depressing gloom and back again was of purely academic interest. And the country was as desolate as its weather. Expecting to find local warlords ensconced in the surviving fortifications, they had approached Ardotalia fort and the two small walled towns with extreme care, and found all of them to be roofless ruins apparently inhabited only by mice. Villages and farmsteads were reduced to weed-grown hummocks, patches of nettles on the old middens, and the occasional charred or broken timber. Wells were stagnant or blocked with debris. Fruit lay rotting on the ground in dilapidated orchards. On both sides of the road, fields and pastures were turning back to scrub. If there were any inhabitants, they kept themselves well hidden. The only sign of human life they had seen in thirty miles were a few bleached bones scattered among the weeds. It was a salutary reminder to all of them – except Eadwine, who had known from the beginning – that exile was not going to be all friendly farms and pretty women. Drust had hardly said a word for two days, Lilla appeared to be sunk in a fit of the sulks, and Ashhere occasionally found himself thinking wistfully of the Lord of Navio’s dungeon.
“At least that was dry,” he muttered to himself, trying unsuccessfully to adjust his pack so that the straps did not cut into his shoulders through his wet tunic. “Not surprising nobody lives here, what a dump, no good to man nor beast –”
“Shows what you know about it,” Lilla snapped, behind him. “It’s good country, this, flat and fertile. Look at the size of the nettles. It’s poisoned. Or it’s cursed.”
Paths of Exile Page 27