By These Ten Bones

by Clare B. Dunkle

  “Hey!” exclaimed Ned angrily. “Why do all this? The harvest is done, and we got no work now. We got to go.”

  Black Ewan bent down to pick up the padlock, eye to eye with the scruffy Traveler. “I’ll deal with you later, you murderous scum,” he promised grimly. “Did you think I’d let you walk away after you tried to kill my brother’s boy?”

  “That little villain?” sneered the old man. “If you beat manners into him, I wouldn’t have to do it. Wish I hit you instead. I’ll cave your skull in.” Colin the Smith finished his work and picked up his tools, and he and Black Ewan walked away.

  “Cursed meddle-maker!” fumed Ned. “Stupid clod! No work now from that old woman, no money, no drink!” He jerked crossly on his chain, and Mad Angus jerked back harder. Ned abandoned the contest. “And what are you unhappy for?” he demanded irritably of Maddie. “You got a face like a pallbearer.”

  “Lady Mary was helping me,” she told him sadly. “She was hunting for a cure for Paul. She had a book about it, but it’s burned up. He’ll never be cured now.”

  10

  Maddie went home to find Fair Sarah building up the cooking fire and Paul fetching in peats. He dropped them by the hearth and came over to the girl. “Madeleine, what was it about?” he asked quietly.

  Terribly discouraged and frightened at the transformation of her neighbors, Maddie wasn’t ready to answer him. She gathered comfort from the familiar sights of her own house: the milk sheep lying in the corner, the chickens murmuring quietly to themselves as they roosted for the night. Then she looked at Paul, and her feeling of comfort evaporated. She knew just how the faces of the townspeople would look when they threw him onto the fire.

  “Tell the truth, I don’t know what it was about,” she said, kneeling by her mother’s side to help her pat out oatcakes. “Black Ewan says Lady Mary’s a witch because of the smith’s baby and because of the—the Water Horse that attacked you. But because of lots of other things, too, things that go back years and years. People were thinking them up all day.”

  “Well, I know what it was about, if you don’t,” sighed Fair Sarah. “Black Ewan’s never forgiven that woman because Kathleen wouldn’t marry him. Lady Mary had no kin to stand by her, and the people are afraid. They’re looking for someone to blame right now. Strange things have been happening lately.”

  James Weaver and Father Mac had been watching over Lady Mary in the Hole until Black Ewan brought the padlock and secured the trapdoor. Then they had stayed by the castle to make sure that the crowd worked out its anger and no harm came to the prisoner. The two men ducked under the doorway now, and Father Mac bent to warm his hands.

  “Is she really a witch?” asked the wood-carver, looking at Maddie.

  “No!” she burst out in response. “She’s a sharp-tongued, proud old woman, and that’s all she is.”

  “But she’ll die as a witch,” growled Father Mac. “Of that I have no doubt. I can’t just sit by while an innocent woman is hanged out of revenge and fear. I can’t watch my parish commit murder.”

  “Do you have a choice, Father?” asked James Weaver. “You’ll not find a way into the Hole, and Black Ewan will take his farmhands with him to escort her to the new lord. The padlock’s on the grate over Lady Mary, and Black Ewan always has the key.”

  “It isn’t right, what’s happening to her,” Maddie said in a pleading tone, and her eyes told Paul that she didn’t know what to do. Would it save Lady Mary if she gave away his secret, or would it just mean another death?

  A gloomy silence settled over the room. The young man sat down and took up his carving, frowning as he thought.

  “I can make a key,” he announced. They all stared blankly at him. “I can study Black Ewan’s key,” he explained, “and I can carve you a copy.”

  “A wooden key would break in the lock, son,” observed Father Mac kindly.

  “You’d have to have one cast, or have a smith study my key,” answered Paul. “I’ve done work for smiths before, making models of broken tools.”

  “A model,” breathed Father Mac. “Would Colin the Smith do the work, do you think?”

  “He’d do it,” said Fair Sarah. “My brother would do the work for me, and his own wife would never know.”

  Father Mac sat up straight, his eyes flashing. “Then make me that key,” he said, “and I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll get their witch to safety.”

  “This is a serious matter,” warned James Weaver. “If word got out that we helped Lady Mary escape, we’d be turned out of the town, and the lad here would face even worse than that.”

  Maddie discovered that Father Mac and her parents were looking gravely at her. “Oh, don’t fret about me,” she replied modestly. “I can keep a secret.”

  The next day was windy and cold, perfect for threshing. The men opened the wickerwork doors on either side of the grain barn and threshed out the grain on the open floor, beating the kernels from their seed heads with hinged flails while the women tossed the kernels in baskets so that the wind could blow away the chaff.

  Threshing was hard work, and the men were soaked with sweat in spite of the cold. This was the sort of simple task that Mad Angus excelled at, and he threshed more than all the rest of them put together. Ned was almost no help at all, but Black Ewan saw to it that he took his turns.

  The men had decided that the young wood-carver was too weak to do any threshing, so they brought him tools to mend instead. Paul sat on the edge of the threshing floor with the broken tools around him.

  “That’s a fine job, lad,” remarked Black Ewan, wiping his damp brow and sitting down beside the carver after his turn with the flail. “It’s good to see you busy at useful work.”

  Paul didn’t say a word to his unsuspecting model, but he sneaked long and careful glances at the big skeleton key around his neck. He was not so foolish as to fashion a key right in front of the farmer, but every now and then he took out a small block of wood and made a nick in it to guide his carving later.

  After lunch, Paul returned to the weaver’s house and sat down by the door, where he had the best light. He sat there for hours, almost without moving, deeply engrossed in his task. Hurrying back and forth as she went about her own work, Maddie watched the carver. She remembered her first view of him the day the Travelers had come. He had sat just so, with his shaggy black hair falling into his face and the shavings falling onto his knees. Except that this time he glanced up to smile at her and held out the finished key. Her heart skipped a beat as she smiled back.

  “You’re done already? You’re that cunning,” she exclaimed, studying the wooden key. “Black Ewan himself couldn’t tell the difference.”

  “I just hope it works,” he said, taking it back to examine it. “It’s as close as I know how to make it.”

  The threshing days passed, full of hard work and high spirits. The witch still huddled in her dark, rocky cell. Maddie came home from Mass one morning to find that Paul had been out in the biting wind gathering eggs for her, and her mother was scolding him as she fixed breakfast. The chickens weren’t laying as they had in high summer, and the sheep were giving less milk. It was the turn of the year toward the lean times.

  After breakfast, Fair Sarah left with some broth for Tom’s Ma. Maddie was just picking up her knitting and settling down to keep the fire when she noticed something odd. Her apple tree that Paul had carved wasn’t where she had left it. She went over and picked it up.

  The wooden figure was different. It still had a tree’s crown of leaves and apples, but the trunk had turned into a pale, slim girl. Leaves grew out of her hair, and her two arms stretched out to become branches. Maddie walked toward the doorway and turned the carving in the light, studying it with wonder.

  “It’s you,” said a voice from the doorway, and she looked up to find Paul there. “At least, it looks like you,” he added awkwardly. “Do you like it? I had just finished it that first morning when I looked up and saw you talking to Ned, and then I look
ed down and saw you in the wood. That’s why I didn’t want to give it to you when you asked to buy it. Because I wanted to carve what I had seen.”

  Maddie examined it. The tree girl was slender and sweet, poised and graceful. Maddie could see that she was happy by the lift of her arms and her chin. Happy to be an apple tree, happy to grow where she was planted. The tip of one toe-root just showed beneath her long skirt.

  “After I saw you,” he went on, “every block of wood I saw had you inside it. I carved you instead of working on the box I was supposed to finish, and that’s why we stayed so long. I carved you so many times, Ned swore at me. He said I was going soft in the head.”

  “But why would you carve me? Who would want to see me?” Maddie held out the tree girl. “Just me, I’m not fancy like this.”

  Paul took the carving to look at it and then at her. She could tell that somehow he still saw the resemblance.

  “You’re beautiful, Madeleine,” he said simply.

  “Beautiful? Me? Lord bless your heart, I’m not beautiful! With my round face, and these big hands—” She held them out. “And I’m thick in the middle like Ma, all us women in my family are thick in the waist; why, just look at my aunt Janet, and even Bess has already gotten thick.”

  The young carver waited until she stopped babbling. Then he handed back the apple tree with a frown. “You are, too, beautiful,” he retorted with perfect sincerity, and perhaps he was right after all.

  Threshing was over at last. Everyone gathered in Black Ewan’s big house for a feast, and young roosters who had walked tall in their pride suddenly found the promise of life cut short. Maddie looked around the smoky room at her neighbors chatting and singing and realized that Paul wasn’t there. She went hunting for him and found him out in the twilight, carving a two-handled drinking cup.

  “Come join us,” she said, but the young man shook his head. She knelt down to study the graceful cup. “Please, Paul. Have a little fun for once. You’re among friends here.”

  “I’m not among friends,” he answered. “I can’t ever be. They wouldn’t be my friends if they knew.”

  “Well, if you don’t want them to know, you should come join us,” remarked the sensible girl. “They all know you can talk, and they think it’s strange that you don’t. If you miss an evening like this, they’ll gossip about you.”

  So Paul came into the house, bringing his carving with him, and he sat in a corner under a little rush light to finish the two-handled cup. The others welcomed him with friendly words, and Maddie felt she had won a victory. Little Ian was just finishing a tale about Finn Mac Cumhail and the founding of his warrior band.

  “The king released the three hundred heroes who were condemned to die, and he gave them all to Finn,” he concluded. “You never saw such a host! The sunlight glittered off their shields and long spears and the gold collars and armbands they wore. One by one, they knelt at Finn’s feet, and they swore faith with him for all time. From that day forth, they roamed the land looking for enemies, and one man among them could conquer a whole army. They were the bright-haired Fianna, the most beautiful of warriors, and all the people rejoiced in their brave deeds.”

  The listeners murmured their approval at this familiar ending, and Little Ian paused for a drink. “Why doesn’t the carver lad give us a story,” he proposed. “Come, we know you can speak, and the old man’s not here to beat you. Tell us a tale of your own people.”

  Paul gave Maddie a look that said as clearly as words This is your fault, but she just gave him an encouraging smile in return. He turned the cup in his hands, agitated, before glancing at the spectators lining the long room.

  “My own people,” he murmured, and he looked at the cup again. He took a deep breath.

  “A young chief was hunting in the woods,” he began, “and he heard merry singing far from any house. He followed the sound and saw a lovely maiden walking through the forest. Her eyes were gray like storm clouds, and her hair was yellow like grain, and no sooner had he seen her than he loved her. He stepped up to her and would have greeted her kindly, but she turned and ran from him.

  “The chief followed her to a tall, round tower. He would have gone into the tower after her, but an old woman barred his way. ‘Where has she gone?’ he demanded. ‘And what bride price will you have for her? I want to make her my wife.’

  “‘There will be no bride price for my daughter, and no bride,’ the old hag told him. ‘It’s said that men will be her doom.’

  “But the chief wouldn’t take this for an answer. ‘Name a bride price,’ he declared, ‘and name it now, because if you don’t, I’ll come with my strong men and take her away from here and make her my wife anyway.’ Then the old woman sighed and thought, and at last she asked that her daughter come back to stay with her in the tower for one week out of every four, and to this price the young chief agreed.

  “The pair were married and lived happily, and the maiden bore her husband twin sons. He was terribly proud of his beautiful wife until his kinsman came to visit.

  “‘Where’s this beauty I’ve heard you boasting about?’ demanded the kinsman, and he laughed when he learned she was not at home. ‘Cousin, someone is leading you by the nose like a bull,’ he said. ‘If you asked me what I think, I’d say that your wife has two husbands instead of one.’

  “That night the young chief paced his house in anger and suspicion. At last he journeyed through the woods and crept up to the round tower. Fearful shrieks and noises came from inside it. He climbed the vines that covered it to look in a high window. There sat the old hag, knitting and humming, with his two baby sons sleeping by her side. But his lovely wife was nowhere to be seen. In her place was a hideous monster.

  “It looked like—like—” Paul broke off, his voice unsteady. “I don’t know what it looked like. But it was big and black like a shadow, an evil thing that thought only of harm. It was chained to the wall, and it tore at the chain and hissed and shrieked foul curses. The forest rang with the sound of its screams.

  “The chief beat down the door and killed the old hag with one stroke of his sword. But he sat down before the ghastly monster and watched it fling itself to and fro. He waited all through that long night, until dawn finally came, and at the end of the chain, asleep, lay his own lovely wife.

  “Then the chief brought stones and mortar to the tower, and he walled up his wife inside it, and his two young sons in there with her. The last thing he saw as he placed the final stone was the babies sitting by their sleeping mother and playing with her beautiful yellow hair.”

  The listeners stirred and scratched their heads, thinking about the story. Maddie sat still in horror. Paul stared down at his carving, working furiously. The knife seemed to fly in his hands.

  “He did a good day’s work, I’m thinking,” considered Old Peggy. “Can’t leave a creature like that to roam loose.”

  “He’d have done better to stop her mouth with mud and drown her in the sea,” proposed Tom’s Ma, “and not let her remain on the land.”

  “He’d have done better to burn her,” opined Little Ian, “and scatter her ashes over the water. That’s quite a tale, lad. So you say that the chief was one of your people?”

  But Maddie knew it wasn’t the chief that Paul counted as kin. She spoke quickly before he could answer.

  “I don’t believe that story!” she exclaimed passionately. “It can’t be true. No one could do that to someone he loved, or to his own children, either.”

  “It’s true, Madeleine,” he said grimly, his eyes on his work. “I’ve seen the tower without a door, and that’s where I learned the story.”

  “Don’t take it so much to heart, child,” said Father Mac to Maddie. “That’s a very old tale from the days before we had Christ’s Church and His grace. Evil things like that belong to the pagan world, when ignorant people still offered sacrifices to the demons and studied the flights of birds.”

  Paul gave a gasp as his knife slipped and gashed him
deep in the thumb. The blood flowed over the wooden cup and soaked into the freshly carved surface. Maddie thought of his mother killing chickens and praying to the gods. So it was something worse than nonsense, after all, and his face showed her that he knew it. He stared without moving at the ruined cup, at the dark stains on the light wood. Then he tossed it into the peat fire and watched as it began to smoke.

  That night Maddie dreamed that she stood just outside the castle with food for Lady Mary. Someone inside was sobbing and crying. Underfoot on the stone threshold was a long, brown smear. It hadn’t been there before.

  The crying rose into screams and wails and burst into bellows and groans. It was soulless, the sound of neither laughter nor tears. Maddie peered past the stone steps into the deep gloom of the building, looking for something she knew. Large, dim shapes dangled there like dead beasts waiting to be butchered, and that sobbing, screaming thing was coming toward her.

  The next instant, Maddie sat up in bed. She was safe at home. She lay back down, heart pounding, and thought about the awful dream. Before, the castle had been the home of a proud, interesting old woman. Now it was a place of suffering and despair. Soon Lady Mary would be gone from the rocky cell, and the bleak castle would be empty. The new lord planned to put one of his strong men there, but Maddie knew something even stronger. Something that screamed. Something that killed. Something that might be looking for a home.

  11

  The hush of dawn lay over the valley. Then the hush was broken. Maddie woke to the sound of Gillies yelling for his master and Black Ewan calling back. Her father scrambled past, climbing out of the box bed and ducking under the door frame on his way out of the house. Maddie bumped into Paul in the darkness, and Fair Sarah threw her kerchief over her braid. They wrapped their blankets around themselves as they hurried out into the morning.