by Gayle Greeno
“Easy, love,” Khar stretched to bat at the offending strand. “Don’t make a spiderweb of it.”
Nuzzling the ghatta’s neck, she blotted her eyes on Khar’s shoulder. “I just want to do something right, something Ma can appreciate, be proud of me for. I’m not sure she always understands—what I really do, I mean. What we really do. If I show her I can still do this ...” she trailed off, giggled, “she’ll still think there’s a chance I ca be a weaver. Ugh!”
“Perish the thought. You expect me to spend the rest of my life exhibiting self-control around so many potential toys dangling invitingly.” Despite her best intentions, the ghatta’s paw stole toward another strand. Only to touch, she told herself.
“Well, I’ve got to get this right. ” Doyce tried again, but even with her swing back to good humor, she was too intent about her task. Now everything she touched went subtly awry, a missed peg, an overlap, a twist. “Damnation,’ she grumbled as she detached a mistake and tried again. I used to be able to do this in my sleep. The only thing I could safely handle right now, not mangle, would be rope!”
Chin on paws, the ghatta suggested, “Can your fingers do one thing while your mind’s doing something else?”
“That’s the idea. Supposedly this is so boring that you have time to think deep thoughts about solving the world’s problems. ” A shaky laugh. “I can’t even convince Jenret to find time to marry me, let alone solve the world’s problems. I wish he’d get back ... before the baby’s ....” Doyce plumped down, head in hands, and commenced wailing in earnest. “And this blasted loom won’t even cooperate so I can think deep thoughts!”
Khar half-rolled onto her back to regard her beloved. “Come on, love. Let’s show your mother you haven’t lost your touch. Let your fingers go about their business while we see what Matty and Kharm are doing.”
Dropping her hands, clearly aghast, Doyce snapped, “Do you want us both thinking about sex again?”
“It’s another town, another day for Matty and Kharm. I’m sure they can’t think about sex all the time.”
“According to Jenret, that is what boys Matty’s age think about all the time. ” Leaning against the loom, she tried to calm herself, slide into that other world, so like and yet so unlike her own. Her hands began automatically warping the threads.
Neu Bremen swarmed with commotion as Matty and Kharm made their way down the road toward it. He’d heard of places being called a beehive of activity, always thought it fanciful, but from his vantage point overlooking the spread-out town he could see why. People scurried along dirt-packed streets, pouring toward the center of town, clotting thicker and deeper as he watched. And all the time an ominous buzzing floated toward him, the exact nasal hum an angry hive makes when disturbed. The buzzing vibrations set up a visceral unease deep within him.
He found a convenient rock and sat watching, wondering. Might be wise to avoid Neu Bremen altogether. Kharm stalked back and forth at his feet, clearly upset by the commotion, yet drawn to it. Ask her what was wrong and he’d find out. Don’t ask and he wouldn’t know. Instead, he delayed his decision, eased a blistered heel free of the wooden clogs he now wore, boots outgrown, far too short. They rested in his sack, fit to be worn for dress, pinch-toed painful, but not for heavy walking. Heavy walking had been his fare since leaving the Widow’s farm in Waystown.
Absently he picked his woolen stocking away from the blister, sucking in his breath as it stuck, then tore loose. Winter, or near-winter, not the best time to be homeless and on the road again, and if he didn’t stay at Neu Bremen, find odd jobs to support himself and Kharm, most likely he’d move on north to Free Stead. But that, from what he’d heard, would be even less likely to offer jobs to tide him over the winter. What to do, where to go?
Life with the Widow hadn’t been bad, indeed, had become almost too comfortable, which was why he’d determined to leave. Too easy to be trapped by complacency—his, not hers. Had seen her all too often in those nights after dinner casting sidelong glances at him as she mended, did the other thousand and one things to be done about the house. He’d be working at a task—carving a new tooth for the rake, harness mending, shaving an ax handle smooth-and they’d be chatting aimlessly or, more accurately, he’d be chattering, responding to the noncommittal sounds she uttered to soothe and smooth, occasionally tossing in a few words, sometimes several whole sentences.
She’d looked up one evening, hands bunched tight in the shirt she mended, “Like having Reinholt beside me again, having you here. Things only we knew, you seem to know. Find myself checking that he’s still buried out back. Uncanny.”
He’d shared a hot, complicitous look with Kharm, realizing he’d been the unwitting vessel into which Kharm had poured her knowledge of the Widow. Those trivial tidbits of thought, the vague, unspoken remembrances that aureate each person if one were sensitive enough to read it. Kharm hadn’t actually read the Widow’s mind, but those random thoughts hovered, ripe for the picking or, if not picking, absorption, just as dishclout soaks up water. As easy for him as for Kharm to gauge the Widow’s mood by her expression, the set of her body, the number of words she chose to squander on any given subject. Not prying, but there for the asking, if one knew what to “ask.”
That, and the fact that neighbors had been eyeing him, thoughts lurking lasciviously at whether he shared the Widow’s bed yet. All too predictably comfortable—and disquieting—especially after he resolved a few thorny dilemmas for various neighbors. Reconciled them from what he’d absorbed from Kharm, not even realizing he was unraveling their problems, mediating their arguments, their disagreements. People began wondering at his insight, exhibited a faint discomfort in his presence, as if he’d eavesdropped on their lives, even the aspects they thought they’d suppressed. They had to admit he’d been impartial, favoring no one over another, but even his endorsement of their cause seemed to have violated their personhood.
Was there no place for him? Did the same reaction await him in Neu Bremen? Did any place exist where it wouldn’t? And his loneliness for Granther and little Henryk and the sweetly curved and padded Nelle, resourceful as she was lovely, swept over him in a high tide of longing and emotion. “Kharm, what am I going to do?” he wailed aloud. “What are we going to do? All I want is a home, a place to settle down, be me. To belong!” His chest squeezed tight, his sinuses flooding, the pressure building inside his head.
“I know, I know,” the ghatta crooned. “Own hearth, own bed, own den to cuddle safe and warm. Miss it, too, but I have you.” Wiping his eyes on Kharm’s back, he scrubbed his cheek against her whiskers, purposely trying to scratch back with his softer and still limited facial hair. A game they played. But the ghatta abruptly pulled away. “Oh, untruth! Wrongness!”
The shouts and rumblings from below had intensified. Not a disrupted hive now but worse, the growling sounds he’d shivered at one winter night in Gilboa, the wolves hungry enough to venture near, prowl the snow-packed streets, eager to chase anything through the drifts if it represented dinner. A keening hunger to these sounds as well, but a different sort of hunger, a rapacious desire for satiation no matter the need. Wolves hunted to assuage their hunger, not out of a desire to kill for pleasure. He slammed his foot into his clog, picked up the walking staff he’d carved, and straightened his sheepskin poncho.
“Can I do anything, can we do anything?” Please, let her answer be no. No desire to enter that village, enmesh himself in their troubles, but he was Amyas Vandersma’s grandson and responsibility always dogged him; if he could somehow make things right, it was his duty to do so, or at least try. One day he’d lose his nose from sticking it in places it didn’t belong. Why not be carefree, or at least uncaring like his father? A deep breath—too bad courage couldn’t be inhaled. “Kharm, what’s the matter? Tell me what’s wrong.”
And this time the surge as Kharm transmitted a multitude of inner thoughts didn’t swamp his senses, as if the ghatta herself had learned to pick and choose, unbraid
one strand before tugging another. One thought, an overwhelming one, raced from mind to mind, left him grappling to shape it into coherence, the concept foreign to Kharm. “Rope?” No, it wasn’t just rope. “Looped and knotted, around neck?” He stumbled, clogs unwieldy. “Noose. Kharm, it’s a noose. To hang people by the neck, kill them. Sort of like how the Killanins trapped your mother.”
A growl of anger and Kharm exploded down the dirt track toward the village, Matty rushing to keep up or at least not lose sight of her. Regardless, he guessed their destination: in almost every village or hamlet all roads converged at the village well, the nucleus for gatherings large and small, gossip, business, and plain daily converse. People poured out of alleyways between houses and shacks, tents, thronging the main streets, sweeping him along. No option but to ride the current, bobbing like a chip, and he didn’t fight it, jostled harder to get there faster, push closer to the center.
Kharm belabored his mind with steady cautionary commentary, caution, the innate prudence of any wild creature. She’d already vanquished a pack of hungry-looking dogs, ill-kempt and ill-fed, who foraged around the village center for handouts, willingly given or snatched from unwitting hands, careless children balancing a slice of bread stacked with cheese or meat. Neu Bremen was huge in comparison to Waystown or Gilboa, especially Gilboa in the winter when most river boaters and traders had left for homes elsewhere. At least five hundred people, men, women and children, crammed the open area.
“There! Wagon on the east side,” Kharm scrambled up a tree trunk so he could see her, tree limbs bending with their burden of youngsters like ripe fruit. “Climb up, see what’s going on.”
He shouldered his way through tight-packed bodies, grateful for increased strength housed in a barely noticeable cheeseparing of a body. Stand him sideways and he still wouldn’t cast a shadow wider than a fence post. At times he strained to glimpse over heads, but someone always shifted, blocked his view. Not much room on the wagon, either, but he wedged a foot on a hub and propelled himself up, planted the other foot on the wheel’s rim. A shove from behind and he tottered, toppled into a press of women and boys a few years younger than he who’d commandeered the wagon as their view site.
Trading shoves, he established his territory, elbowing randomly to defend his space while he craned to see, giddy with excitement, the crowd’s overwrought mood contagious. Faint disappointment, a letdown, as if he’d been primed for blood. Whatever he’d anticipated, this wasn’t it: a human chain of ten people with arms linked, all men except for a diminutive but sturdy woman at the center, penned in a desperate figure at its core, a man so spackled with mud and refuse, splattered eggs, rotted vegetables it was impossible to judge the color of his clothes. The refuse piled at his feet, along with stones, fragments of mud bricks, some still raining down. The crowd heaved and thrust like a living thing, testing the human chain, searching for a weak link, and Matty knew with a goose-bumped surety that the link might snap not from physical weakness, but from fear, cowardice. Taunts and jibes rained on the man as well as refuse, despite a few overridden pleas to better nature, common sense. So far, not a soul in the chain had faltered, although they shifted, gaining and losing ground, forcing themselves outward with grim determination to press back the throng. A few weapons, mostly clubs and cudgels, waved at the crowd’s far edges, but so far no one had employed them to sunder the joined arms or worse, batter unprotected heads, jaws clenched in raw agony at the effort to hold firm.
Something would tilt the balance—and soon—but he couldn’t imagine what. His stomach knotted at the impasse, tightened with anticipation and fear, his own allegiance unclear. “Kharm, what’s this all about?” If he couldn’t make sense of it, could she?
“The man in the center, the dirty one, is Lorris Straltorth.”
“But what’s he done?” Stralforth looked a paltry figure, incapable of causing much trouble, although a sense of malcontent emanated from him, a soured view of the world and the human condition. Hardly an unfounded view, given his current precarious situation, but Matty’s nose wrinkled with dislike.
“They say he killed. But that’s untruth,” and Kharm’s mindspeech jittered to a halt as two men shouldered a coil of rope through the crowd, dumping it with ostentatious show at the feet of the woman padlocking the chain’s center. He’d not paid much heed before, other than wondering at her place in the protective chain as he’d assessed possible weakness. Yet everyone steered clear of her section. Brown hair straggling from her bun, she kicked the coil of rope dismissively, her resolute expression never faltering, outstaring the men who’d dropped it there.
Two small children, a boy of perhaps two and a girl about four, choose that moment to worm their way through the crowd, rushing to clutch the woman’s skirts, crying, “Mama! Mama!” They buried themselves in the folds, stricken with shyness and a dawning realization of wrongness, no longer the center of her universe, no hand to spare to stroke their heads, hug them safe in the depths of her skirts. The girl looked up at the faces staring down at her and veiled her face, wailing, “Mama! Bad men!”
The pair who’d thrown the rope at the woman’s feet retreated as far as the crowd would let them, embarrassment and confusion flooding their faces. The woman chose that moment to speak. “No, Sissy. Not bad men. But men who don’t know how to obey the laws they voted to govern them. Like the time you took it into your head to help Mama with the churning without asking and, much as you meant well, you made a mess Mama had to clean up, and you knew Mama’d said not to touch.
“From children I expect a lack of restraint, overzealousness even, but not from you, from adults.” An intimate conversation with children meant to teach adults a lesson, and now her alto voice rose to reach the crowd’s fringes, her poise impressive. “You know me, and well you should. You yourselves elected me, Rema Pelsaert, to serve as your Conciliator, ensure laws were obeyed, judge penalties when they weren’t. And now you’d void the laws that bind us as a community, dissolve them in a fit of unreasoning anger without determining justice has been served.”
A voice shot out from the crowd. “Horst Coornhert is dead.”
“Yes, he is,” she agreed sadly, “but no mob can bring him back.”
“And we mean to punish who killed him,” called another voice. “Clear enough!” “Rock all bloody in his hands when we found Horst.” Indictments rang from various voices, though Matty could never attach a face to the voice, invisible accusations growing in strength because of their anonymity. “Clear as day Lorris killed him.” “Always wanted to, always feeling cheated about everything in life. Said he’d like to see Horst dead in one day.”
“It may be that Lorris Stralforth is guilty. I’m not arguing that possibility.” The bedraggled man in the center sheltered his face with his arms as if to shield himself from the words. “But we don’t know that for sure. We’ve not held a trial, heard the evidence. That’s all I ask, that you not take the law into your own hands. That you don’t deny him—and yourselves—the impartial treatment we so painstakingly established as a right to ensure no one is unfairly treated. Justice and honor mustn’t discriminate amongst its citizens or none of us are safe.”
Matty’s stomach began to uncramp, the words convincing, heartfelt, reminding people of their better selves, the fact that they weren’t animals. “Like murdering Horst was fair treatment?”
“What if it were you, Melville, cowering in the circle’s center, no chance to defend yourself no matter how loudly you protested your innocence? Or you, Gelten?” She named every face confronting her from the front row, taking her time, allowing her plea to sink home. “All I ask is the chance to conduct a fair trial, hear any evidence pro and con, investigate further if it’s warranted. If Lorris’s guilt is proved, he’ll get the rope. If he’s judged innocent, you’ll have to hang me first to reach him.
“Now, I suggest we confine him in his house, post guards to protect him and us, while we figure out what happened. Tomorrow? Can you wait unt
il tomorrow for your fun?” Her lip curled with scorn at the word. “Deny yourselves for a day to see justice served? Or have the news spread that Neu Bremen’s a lawless town where actions speak louder than words and emotions overrule truth, a town where justice is served by whomever can serve it first without considering right or wrong? Oh, yes, new settlers will flock to a town with a reputation like that, hordes of serious citizens to make it prosper. New hands eager to work that new sawmill, that new grist mill.”
The crowd began to cluster and knot, its unity collapsing as it broke into segments of worried faces, whispered undertones. Not many, man or woman, with the courage to face down a writhing monster of a crowd, individuals sucked into a whirlwind of fermenting emotions, spinning faster from the mindless force it generated. Each knot or cluster disintegrated further, people streaming away shamefaced, others still muttering, whipsawed by frustration but unable to lash the frenzy to its previous peak. The wagon bed gradually cleared as various women and boys departed, returning to the tasks so gladly abandoned for a mindless stimulus.
At last, with an audible groan of relief the human chain un-linked, flexing arms and shoulders, legs shaking, weak pillars that had withstood the storm. Two men held Lorris Stralforth’s arms, not unkindly, almost supportive as the shaken man was hurried to a hut and thrust inside, men assuming posts around it.
Sinking to her knees, shoving tendrils of hair off her forehead with an impatient arm, Rema Pelsaert at last embraced her children, shushing them against her shoulder, rhythmically rubbing small backs. Matty jumped from the wagon, walked slowly toward her, allowing her time to assess him. Kharm reappeared at his feet, only to move away, bridging the gap between herself and the little girl, squirming against her mother’s shoulder, blue eyes wide.
Matty squatted, hands resting on his thighs, to bring himself eye-level with Rema Pelsaert. “My name’s Matty Vandersma. This is my ghatta Kharm. I’m not sure, but I think I might be able to help.”