The Black Hill

by Alison Adare

  “You should ask your mam to let you sleep up here,” Janet said to Emlyn one morning as they both studied the pigs. “Rather than go back and forth in the rain.”

  Emlyn shook her head. “She’d say no. She won’t spend a night within the walls, she always says, no matter how late it might be,and I’m not to either.”

  Janet turned to look at her. “Why not?” Then she realized what memories these walls must hold for Braelyn, if she’d been in the fort when she heard her husband burn. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.”

  If Emlyn had been a boy, Janet would have thought the locals had accepted the idea that she was to be Tom’s page, and later his squire. Certainly, the things she learned in the days she spent with Janet — aside from an ever-expanding vocabulary, some of which required Janet to do some quick explaining — would serve her well in such a position.

  They think she’ll be a housekeeper, perhaps.

  In a break in the weather, Davith organized men to haul stones from the valley to be cut to repair the walls. Janet and Emlyn sat on the wall above the gate to watch. When one broke free of its ropes and plunged back down the road, narrowly missing the men behind, Janet found herself explaining to Emlyn that Saint Theodisia had been a milkmaid before she was called to a holy life.

  “Oh,” Emlyn said wisely. “A milkmaid in the same way Our Lord was a fisherman?”

  “Er, that’s right,” Janet said, watching the men pick themselves up. The stone had veered aside from the road and rolled into the wood, breaking trees as it went. Janet noted that none of the men went after it, leaving it to lie in the shade of the twisted trees. She didn’t blame them. She herself had not gone near the wood again after that one time, for all Tom’s jokes about dragons. Her gaze on those dense thickets, she said, “Emlyn, tell me about the dragon again.”

  Emlyn kicked her heels against the wall. “What about it?”

  Janet turned to look at her. “Has anyone ever seen it?”

  “Apart from the people it et?”

  “Apart from that, yes.”

  “Don’t know. No-one says.”

  “So,” Janet said, looking back at the wood. “It might not be a dragon. It might be … I don’t know. Something else. A kind of bear, maybe.”

  “Do bears breathe fire?”

  “They don’t,” Janet said. “That’s a good point.”

  “Are you going to kill it?”

  “It’s lucky, isn’t it? Why do you want me to kill it?” Janet asked.

  “You’re an adventuring hero, aren’t you? They kill dragons.”

  Janet laughed. “I’m neither adventuring nor a hero, Emlyn. I’m Tom’s — Lord Brinday’s steward.”

  “Then why are you in disguise, then?”

  “In disguise?” Janet asked absently, watching the next stone being hauled up the hill.

  “Dressed as a man,” Emlyn said, and Janet’s heart stopped.

  “I am a man,” she said as steadily as she could, striving to put amusement at such a ridiculous suggestion in her voice as the cold sweat of panic broke out on her brow.

  “You are not, then,” Emlyn said flatly. “It’s clever. I’ll dress as a boy when I go to find my fortune.”

  The girl was probably the only person in Brinday not blinded by what she expected to see, rather than what she did. Out of the mouths of babes … Janet thought, quite seriously, of immediate flight, of leaping down from the wall, taking Masie from the stables, and riding until either the mare foundered or she did herself. She was astonished at the evenness of her voice when she said, “I’m not — Emlyn, I’m a man. I am.”

  Emlyn rolled her eyes. “All right then, but you can trust me. I’d be like your squire. That’d be right, wouldn’t it, for you to have a girl as a squire? Should I wear trousers and cut my hair to do it, do you think?”

  Trust. Trust a child to keep a secret like this … It was lunacy, but what choice did she have? None. “No, you shouldn’t,” Janet said, and when Emlyn pouted, “because people would ask questions, since they know you, wouldn’t they? And it wouldn’t be much of a disguise then, would it?”

  “’Spose not,” Emlyn conceded.

  “And I’d need a very clever squire, wouldn’t I? Who’d know how to keep her ears open and her mouth shut?”

  Emlyn grinned. “I can do that!”

  Janet had her doubts. “But you being my squire will have to be a secret, won’t it? So you can listen out for things I need to know without people knowing.” I’m going to hell. There’s no doubt about it, I’m going to hell.

  “Things about the dragon?”

  “About anything that might hurt Brinday.”

  “Like a spy?” Emlyn screwed up her nose.

  “No,” Janet said quickly. “When I was in the army, and the enemy tried to spy on us, we had special people to stop them. You’d be like that. Looking out for spies. Protecting everyone.”

  “Oh,” Emlyn said. She kicked her heels for a moment. “All right, then.”

  “Good,” Janet said. “Because I could really use your help. But it has to be secret.”

  “I know about secrets,” Emlyn said wisely.

  Janet ran her fingers through her hair and then pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Saint Sebastian’s shinbones. My entire life is now at the mercy of the discretion of a child.

  When Tom called her name from the courtyard, she almost fell off the wall.

  She scrambled down the ladder to the courtyard where Tom waited. He had his arms full of a great bundle of cloth, and when she reached him he shook it out. It was a thick fall of gray wool, a cloak. There was fur around the shoulders, and the great broad muzzle of the wolf she’d killed sewn onto the hood.

  “Striking, isn’t it?” Tom said. “Try it on.”

  Janet took it gingerly. “This is …”

  “The local style,” Tom said, “for wolf-hunters, at any rate.”

  He himself had agreed to the looser tunics and trousers in the local style on her urging, at least on some days. And this is his revenge. Janet swung the cloak around her shoulders, found the pin that fastened it so the wolf’s front paws crossed across her chest, and, reluctantly, pulled up the hood. The weight of the wolf’s head was greater than she expected, and her inquiring fingers felt a stiffness to it. Some sort of frame, or stuffing, so it keeps its shape. “I feel a fool.”

  Tom studied her. “You look very fierce. Wear that when we spar and I’ll be unmanned.”

  Janet snorted. “A fierce fool, then.”

  “Wear it from time to time anyway, Jack,” Tom said. “Father Donnic says that pack had the tenants in mortal fear all last year and this. They swore it was led by the devil. Every time they see you in that cloak they’ll be reminded that the first sight they had of us brought the news of their delivery.”

  “I’m not sure that pack wasn’t led by the devil,” Janet said.

  “More like by the pup of one of Lew’s dogs who was out when a wolf bitch was in heat,” Tom said. “That would explain the size.”

  “Perhaps,” Janet said. “Although Lew doesn’t seem to be so careless, to me.” She slipped the cloak off and held it bundled in her arms. “I will wear it, then, since you think it will do some good, but not on a warm day like this, when I’ve got hours of clambering over the walls ahead.”

  Tom turned to watch Davith in deep conversation with one of the local masons. “I wish we could afford to bring in a master mason.”

  “Me too, but we can’t,” Janet said. “And the walls were put up by the fathers’ fathers’ fathers of the local men, in the first place.”

  Head tipped back, Tom studied the weathered walls. “A few more fathers, I think.”

  “They don’t need to stand against cannon, do they?” Janet pointed out. “But they do need to not fall on anyone, and give the people something to shelter behind if the winter brings bandits.”

  “Half the people here might well be bandits, in their spare time,” Tom said. “Will be, i
f there’s bad hunger this winter.”

  Janet grinned at him. “And so long as it’s someone else’s manor they’re banditting, best you and I don’t know.”

  Tom frowned. “The Crown’s law …”

  Janet snorted. “The Crown’s law stops a fair few day’s ride east and south of here, as you’ve said yourself,” she said. “Your law runs in Brinday, Sir Thomas.”

  “Well, I suppose we must do as we can with the walls,” Tom said. There was a glint of humor in his brown eyes. “After all, we must have something to hide behind when your dragon comes, besides your strong sword arm.”

  Janet swatted his shoulder. “Let me put this away and I’ll show you how strong my sword arm is.”

  “A challenge?” Tom said. “You’ll regret it. I accept, Steward Cooper.”

  She would regret it, Janet knew, as she took the cloak up to her room. Tom had been learning to fight with a sword since he was a youth, and she herself knew only as much as he’d taught her. If we were grappling on the battlefield, on the other hand … or in the streets at home …

  She passed Lady Modron on the main stairs, and bowed, as manner dictated.

  “What have you there?” Lady Modron asked in her musical voice.

  “A cloak, my lady,” Janet said.

  “Oh, from the wolf?”

  “Aye.”

  One slim hand reached out towards her, and Janet fought a sudden impulse to flinch, but Lady Modron only touched the cloak, running her fingers through the thick pelt. “A fine beast,” she said quietly, almost sadly.

  “Aye,” Janet said. Beast is true enough, at least. “If you’ll excuse me, my lady —”

  “Of course,” Lady Modron said, and Janet made her escape.

  She stowed the cloak in her chest, shuddering a little at another sight of the snarling mouth. Slamming the lid closed with more force than necessary, she couldn’t help remembering Lady Modron’s fingers, stroking the fur of the dead wolf like a woman caressing her lap-dog.

  Remembering her soft, regretful tone.

  Chapter 8

  The tenants with skill at masonry cut the stones hauled into the fort, but the weather turned again before they could do much more than ready the worst places of the walls to receive them. The courtyard turned to mud, and despite putting away the rugs and sweeping up the straw, even the best efforts of Brinday’s women couldn’t keep the floors clean. Janet learned a few new local words when she slogged through the puddles and pools and tracked mud through the straw in the great hall. It was not five minutes after Caris the housekeeper had personally swept out the old and laid fresh, and Janet was upbraided in a tone that made her flinch with words that made Father Donnic blush.

  The weather was too foul for hunting or riding. Half of Brinday went around their daily tasks with streaming noses and hacking coughs. The hens were out-of-temper and reluctant to lay. One of the sows turned savage and killed her piglets. The rye, which had put on a good spurt of growth in the few warm days, was drooping and listless again. Part of the roof on the floor above the kitchen finally gave up its struggle and subsided into the courtyard, letting in a gout of water that, by the next morning, had made its way down to turn far too many of the sheaves of oats to mush.

  At breakfast the morning after the flood into the storeroom, Janet picked moodily at her pottage and tried to see how six months’ supplies could be made to last twelve.

  “You’ve taken little time to develop delicate tastes, Jack,” Tom said. “Time was we’d both have viewed this as a feast.”

  “Aye,” Janet said. She stirred the mess in her bowl. “And that time will come again, if we don’t get decent weather before harvest, and a decent price for the wool.”

  “The dragon’s hungry,” Emlyn said matter-of-factly, her own bowl so empty it shone.

  “Oh, the dragon brings the bad weather, then?” Tom said, smiling a little.

  Emlyn nodded. “It was the same the year my Da was et. Mam told me. Not rain, but there was a sickness in the sheep that she couldn’t mend, and the wall came down — the one behind the church, that’s still all crumbled — and killed a boy, and everyone was hungry, until the dragon woke. Then the next year was good again.”

  “That’s a fine story,” Tom said, “but only a story, Emlyn.”

  “It is not, then!” Emlyn got up on her knees in her chair and leaned over to look down the table to where the others were finishing their own meals. She called out something that brought Lew’s head up sharply and made Davith and Donnic exchange a glance. Glyn’s spoon paused briefly, and then dipped into his pottage again.

  “Behave, Emlyn,” Janet said. “Don’t bother other people, or you won’t eat here again.”

  “But it’s not just a story!” the girl protested. “They know!”

  “How about it, Donnic?” Tom called down the table. “Do you know this tale, as well?”

  Another exchange of glances between Donnic and Davith. “It’s true that Edwal ap Bryn was found dead seven years ago,” Donnic said at last. “Down the hill. And it was a hard year, that one, as the girl says.”

  Ap Bryn. Janet stared at Donnic, and he looked away. Ap Bryn. Son of Bryn. Son of the lord Bryn? Born the wrong side of the blanket?

  Christ’s cod, no wonder I thought Emlyn looked familiar! She’s Lady Modron’s niece!

  “But —” Tom started.

  “Emlyn, run up to my chamber and get my cloak,” Janet said quickly, giving Tom a sharp look. “The wolf one — I’ll be out in the rain today.”

  Tom subsided, but once Emlyn was out of the hall, he leaned forward again. “But you don’t believe this Edwal was killed by a dragon, do you? Lady Modron says it’s as likely as may be that he set a fire to keep warm and it got away from him.”

  “That’s as likely as any other explanation,” Donnic agreed. He translated for the other three men. Davith nodded. Lew, Janet noted, shrugged.

  “And seven years before that?” she asked. “Did someone else get careless with a fire then, too?”

  Donnic hesitated. “It may be, yes. It was —”

  Glyn slammed his fist down on the table, making Janet jump, and said something low and fierce to Donnic, and then all four men were arguing in the local language. Janet strained to make out words in the singing sentences. She was almost certain Lew said something about a wolf, while Glyn was making some fierce point about ap Bryn, finger stabbing at the table. Finally Davith slapped the table hard and in the sudden silence rattled off a long sentence to Donnic that made Glyn nod and Lew look away.

  “Excuse us,” Father Donnic said, turning back to Tom and Janet. “The old stories, here, mean much to us.” He glanced at Glyn. “Too much, at times, perhaps. There are tales of bad years and bad deaths, it’s true, but what place doesn’t have such stories? The good Lord will deliver us from all evil.”

  “They don’t keep dates here as carefully as we do,” Tom explained to Janet. “Every now and then there’s a death, and they imagine that it’s exactly seven years since the last, and weave it into the local legend of the dragon.”

  “Is that what Lady Modron told you?” Janet asked, hearing the waspish tone to her voice too late to do anything about it. Of course he listens to her. He’s fallen in love with her, and isn’t that as you’d want, if he’s bound to be married to her?

  And it was not one way those feelings ran, it seemed. One night, finding Tom not in his chambers and the chessboard not set, Janet had headed back to the great hall to see what kept him. From the door, she’d seen him in his chair at the head of the table — seen Lady Modron as well, leaning on the edge of the table, looking down at him, her fingers resting gently on his hand as it lay beside his wine cup. There had been nothing at all improper in it, and they had not even been alone — Janet had been able to see Aneria, Lynn and Tegan, Modron’s women, sitting by the fire, fingers busy with embroidery.

  But the look on Tom’s face, soft and open and lost, as he’d gazed up at Modron, had made the scene unbe
arably intimate.

  Janet had backed out silently. I suppose the flowers worked.

  And she had, after all, wanted them to work, hadn’t she? Wanted Tom to win the heart of the woman he was bound to marry and free to love?

  “She’d know more than anyone else about Brinday’s history,” Tom pointed out, and Janet shook the memory away. “It’s been her family’s land since before there are records.” He paused. “And she has a particular reason to know it’s just a local legend. One of the deaths attributed to this dragon, when she was a child, was her brother.”

  “Her brother?”

  Tom nodded. “He fell from the walls one night. They found him —”

  “Down in the wood,” Janet said, the hair standing up on the back of her neck.

  “Aye,” Tom said. He finished his pottage and pushed the bowl away from him. “Down in the wood.”

  ~o~

  As far as Tom was concerned, the story of the dragon was a closed subject. More than once in the weeks that followed, Janet tried to raise it with him. Don’t you think it’s odd that the hunt-master would let his own fire get out of control? Don’t you think it’s strange, that the story always talks of the wood below the fort, and both men died there? Don’t you —

  “Enough!” he snapped at her at last, one morning when they were taking advantage of a rare day’s sun to practice sword-work in the courtyard.

  “But —”

  His sword met hers with more force than he usually used, sending a shock up her arm. Janet disengaged and circled, knowing she couldn’t match him strength for strength. Nor, given only a few years’ experience, skill for skill. “Leave it,” Tom ordered, trying to close with her again. “And stop leaving your left side open.” A rap of his sword on that elbow, painfully hard.

  It hurt less than the way he let her words slide past him while Lady Modron’s lodged. “Tom —”