by Alison Adare
Janet lent a hand where she could, carrying kettles of cold water from the well to the kitchen and ones full of hot water back, taking her turn stirring the wool in the hot, smelly tubs with sweat stinging her eyes.
Tom did as well — even, stripped to his breeches, taking his turn dunking the sheep under water as they were driven through the stream. Janet avoided that particular task, instead staying dry on the bank in the line of people waving their arms and shouting as the sheep came plunging out of the water to turn them toward the pens.
Watching Tom wrestle cheerfully with yet another recalcitrant ewe, and watching the others as they shouted encouragement or roared with laughter on those instances when the sheep managed to dunk Tom instead of vice-versa, Janet thought that he had probably done as much for himself with the tenants of Brinday in this one week than all the months since they’d arrived. When he struggled up the bank grinning, wet hair straggling into his eyes and the pale skin of his shoulders shading pink from the sun, and one of the shepherds offered him a swig from the jug of beer with as little ceremony as anyone else, she was sure of it.
~o~
The weather held as clear as anyone could have hoped, as if the sun had decided to make up for the whole first half of the year’s shining in a few weeks. The sheep shorn, and finally the lambs as well, they were driven back to pasture, and most of the tenants went with them. They would return, Donnic said, for the harvest festival, but in the meantime they had their own hay to mow as quickly as they could in case the rain returned.
There was hay to gather at Brinday, as well, and as the women carded and combed wool in the courtyard, the men toiled in the meadows. Janet joined them, as did Father Donnic, and sweated and panted her way across the fields with the rest of them. At first she was hard pressed not to cut off her own foot with her scythe, and trailed well behind the others — even Donnic, who with his robe discarded revealed a wiry physique and a deft hand with a blade. Janet was used to handling long poles with sharp blades, though, even if not for this purpose, and soon found herself falling into the rhythm of it and enjoying the warm sun, the clear air, the knowledge that every sweep of her arm would help them through the winter.
Some was lost to another spell of rain, but they got enough stacked to satisfy Davith. It satisfied Janet as well, to look out at the haystacks from the wall above the gate and their promise of fat, well-fed sheep no matter how hard the winter.
The weather dried again, enough to let the harvest start. It was delicate work with hand sickles, to make sure as few grains as possible were lost, and Janet didn’t attempt to help. She did her share binding the sheaves, though, and carrying them in for storage, going to her bed each night with an aching back for weeks.
Watching the tenants come in through the gate for the harvest festival, Janet thought that they had reason to be thankful. Testing as the year has been, we endured. The rye may well take us through the winter. And next year, we will thrive.
Then she turned and saw Tom and Lady Modron by the door to the great hall. Her heart gave a painful thump. Next year, they will thrive. She herself would be, if she had the sense she was born with, well away from here by then.
But in the meantime, she had a role to play, and Steward Cooper’s duties to fulfill, and so she crossed the courtyard to take her place two steps below Tom and his betrothed, where Brinday’s steward should be standing.
Donnic had explained to Janet that in year’s past the occasional merchant or tinker would make their way to Brinday for the festival, bringing the opportunity for the tenants to buy such things as needles and salt, or even, in very good years, a ribbon or a broach.
There were no traders or tinkers this year. Instead, Janet saw many of the tenants producing small handicrafts which they had no doubt made in the winter: a whittled whistle, a patterned woolen cap. Trades were made, sometimes for goods, sometimes for wooden markers that probably signified a debt to be paid when circumstances allowed. Trestles were set up and the cook and her helpers carried out platters groaning with food. One of the pigs had clearly laid down his life for the feast, as had several of the more recalcitrant hens, and Lew and Tom had been out with the hounds. Some of the new rye had been threshed, winnowed and milled already, Janet saw, for there was bread aplenty.
A cheerful shout went up as Tom — as the lord of Brinday and his future lady — appeared again at the top of the steps. Janet thought that was at least as much for the new young lord wearing local fashions as if he was born to them as for the old lord’s daughter. As Tom handed his betrothed down the steps and made his way around the courtyard, exchanging carefully pronounced greetings here and there, Janet watched the faces of those he spoke to and thought that she might just be right. When Tom produced a copper coin and bought an intricately carved wooden hairpin from Lew, then presented it to Lady Modron with a courtly bow, there was even a cheer.
Janet made her way around the courtyard, raising her own cup in answer to those who toasted her as she passed. “Sir Thomas, my lady,” she said as she reached them. She bowed, and gestured toward the two chairs at the head of the long trestles. “Your places await.”
Chapter 11
“Most courtly, from someone with a head full of hair,” Tom said dryly. He brushed a stalk from her shoulder.
“Lew’s men have been hard at it this week, like all of us,” Janet said. “And the stalls still need cleaning. An extra hand was welcome.”
“Steward Cooper, you seem rather well paid to be playing stable-boy,” Lady Modron said, smiling as if that would take the sting from her tone.
Tom gave the breath of a laugh. “Jack’s not been paid at all as yet,” he pointed out.
“Aside from room and board,” Lady Modron murmured.
“And a generous board it is tonight,” Janet said. “I’m sure Caris has kept the choicest cuts for you, Sir Thomas, Lady Modron.”
Tom stepped toward the empty chairs, but Lady Modron put a hand on his arm. “My father did not think it seemly to eat with the tenants, even at the harvest festival.”
If that’s so, then why did they set those chairs without me saying a word about it? Janet wondered. “Tom …” she said softly. “They’d like it.” They’d like you.
“If you were gently bred, Steward Cooper, you’d understand,” Lady Modron said, and Janet decided that even had Lady Modron not been going to marry Thomas Lynhurst, she would have hated her.
She drew breath to answer, but before she could frame words that could be spoken in the presence of a lady, Tom lifted his head a little, a muscle moving along his jaw. “My father, who was nothing if not a gentleman, not only sat at table but joined in the dancing at the harvest feast,” he said. He drew back one of the chairs, and the hand that held Lady Modron’s tightened as he drew her towards it. “My lady. Your seat.”
Modron’s mouth thinned, but she had little choice. Short of an embarrassing physical struggle. As gracefully as if she’d never considered doing anything else, she took her seat, gathering her skirts around her, and sat toying with the wooden hairpin in her lap as Tom took his place by her side.
A hand patted Janet’s shoulder, and she turned to see Lew smiling at her. He elbowed the man next to him, moved along the bench into the space provided, and patted the place next to him. “Here, Jack.”
Janet took the offered place, grabbed a slice of bread and speared a thick, juicy piece of pork on her knife. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he echoed back at her. From his slightly glassy smile, Janet guessed the beer was far less watered tonight, and she sipped carefully. It was not beer at all, but the heady honey wine served at table in the great hall. Janet well knew its strength, and she set the cup down after only a mouthful. Although Saint Sebastian knows I deserve a skinful tonight, after the last months. If Steward Cooper was going to get royally drunk, however, it had better be in the privacy of his own room.
Further down the bench, someone had started rapping on the table with his or her mug. Oth
ers picked it up, calling out. “What are they saying?” Janet asked, the most useful of the complete sentences Emlyn had taught her.
“Davith,” Lew said, and indeed, Davith was rising to his feet, holding out his hands for quiet. As the noise subsided — not just the clatter and clamor of cups and fists on the tabletop, but the hum of conversation as well — he turned toward Tom and Lady Modron and bowed.
“Davith has a fine voice,” Janet heard Lady Modron say to Tom. “He always sings at the feast.”
Oh, and you’d know that because it’s not the way of the lord and his family to join the tenants tonight, would you? Janet thought, and then forgot it instantly as Davith opened his mouth.
Fine was entirely inadequate. Slow and thoughtful in speech, in song, Davith had the voice of an angel: not the high, silvery voice of the boys who sang in church, like angels who had never known thought of sin, but a clear, light copper sound, an angel who had seen the worst the world had to offer and still lifted his voice in unending praise of the Lord. The words were meaningless to Janet, but it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes and let the sound wash over her. Davith was singing in celebration of the harvest, she understood somehow, but also of more than that: of the turning of the year, that had brought them to the cusp of autumn, of the lambs born in spring and the trees now in full leaf, of the harvest just reaped, of the long cold winter past and the one ahead that let the land sleep to awake fresh and fertile. And of all of them, too, gathered around the table, who had put the labor of their hearts and hands into Brinday’s well-being, working side-by-side without stint: of the old men whose backs were bent but who carried the wisdom of three score years; of the young men and women and their healthy strength; of the children who turned their hands to every task their little fingers were equal to.
When he finished, there was silence, and Janet found her cheeks were wet.
She opened her eyes to see Davith looking at her. He spoke directly to her, quietly, as if they were alone.
Janet looked around for Donnic or Emlyn to translate, and then turned to Lady Modron.
“He asks,” Lady Modron said, “if you understood.” She raised her voice in the local language.
Janet recognized a negative and rose to her feet without thinking. “Yes,” she said, slowly and clearly. “Yes, Davith ap Owelth. Thank you.”
A little murmur of comment ran along the table, and Janet wondered which word she had horribly mispronounced. Then, beside her, Lew nodded. “Yes, Davith,” he said, and from far down the table, Glyn said the same.
Davith bowed again, looked up to the stars, and opened his mouth.
The music was different this time: fierce and sad and somehow frightening. It was almost a war-song, but without a rhythm one could march to, full of harsh words and shifts in tone that made Janet’s hair rise on her arms. Somewhere down the table, a woman joined in, weaving her voice through Davith’s, and then another, at one moment making harmonies so sweet Janet’s heart ached with them and then a moment later sliding apart into almost dissonance. Davith’s voice was sad, grieving, yet resigned. One woman’s voice wound around his, low and pleading; the other struck bright, clear notes, cold and implacable. Davith sang first with one, then the other, and each time he joined his voice to the high hard notes of the second woman Janet wanted to jump up and stop him. She clenched her fists in her lap to stop herself and Lew reached out to wrap one of her hands in his calloused palm. What are they saying? she wanted to ask, but the song was still going, growing more urgent, the two women contending directly against each other now —
With a cry, Lady Modron thrust back her chair and rose to her feet.
The singers fell silent, and Tom stood as well. “My lady? Are you well?”
“Forgive me,” Lady Modron said, voice shaking. “That hairpin — a splinter. I will go and tend to it.”
She turned and walked quickly, almost ran, to the stairs, Tom following.
In the dirt beneath Lady Modron’s chair, Janet saw the long wooden hairpin lying abandoned. She hooked it toward her with one foot and scooped it up, wiping the dirt off on her hose. Lew’s work was even finer than she’d thought, the whole pin carved in the likeness of a spray of wild rose, almost in bloom apart from one single blossom fully open at the tip.
A splinter, Lady Modron had said.
But the wood beneath Janet’s fingers was smooth and soft.
~o~
Janet woke from a dream of burning alive to find that she was.
Her skin was blazing, crackling with heat — she flung herself away from the flames and found herself on the floor of her room, still burning. Frantically, she slapped at her arms and legs, trying to put out the fire — but there were no flames beneath her hands, only the searing pain of them.
Her stomach twisted and convulsed and she vomited, coughed and gasped and vomited again, retching until there was nothing left for her to bring up but sour bile. The fire was gone and now she was cold as ice, trembling with chill until her teeth rattled against each other. Panting, she crawled across the floor towards her chest, hauled herself up to fling it open and reach in for her cloak.
The king wolf lunged out at her, mouth drawn back in a snarl, teeth snapping at her face. Janet hurled herself backwards, kicking out at the slavering beast, screaming for the guard. The wolf hunched and, like the devil it was, dissolved into the shadows of the room, writhing around her, reaching out to claim her …
Janet flung herself at the door, staggered and fell hard enough to make her retch again, scrambled up. Get out, get out, get out get out get out … the door yielded to her frantic fingers and she wrenched it open, got through it and slammed it behind her.
“Guard!” she howled again, not sure what language she was using.
“Jack!” Tom was on the stairs above her, sword out, hair disheveled from sleep.
“The wolf, the devil —” she gasped, and then saw the darkness coiling down the stairs behind him, its tendrils stretching out to wrap around his ankles. “Run!” Grabbing his wrist, she hauled him behind her, taking the stairs down three at a time, catching herself against the wall, leaving skin on the rough stones and diving onward.
Tom hung back, trying to slow her. “Jack, what …?”
“It’s the devil.” She pulled him down the corridor to the great hall. “It’s the devil, the devil’s here, he’s here!”
“Jack!” Tom’s sword fell ringing to the floor and he seized her shoulders, forcing her to stop. “Make sense!”
“The wolf, in my room, on the stairs — in the shadows, the devil, the devil!” The thick, sinuous darkness came closer and closer. Janet tried to wrench herself free of Tom’s grip, but his hands tightened, fingers biting into her shoulders.
“Are you drunk?” He let go of her long enough to brush her face with his fingers. “Merciful god, you’re burning.” Ignoring her struggles, he hoisted her over his shoulder. The movement made her stomach spasm again and she retched painfully, convulsing in his grasp as he carried her down the hall, shouting for Braelyn.
Then he carried her through the door to the great hall and stopped dead. “Merciful god,” he said again, letting Janet slide to the floor.
She rolled over and saw a scene from a nightmare.
The great hall was all but dark, only lit by the faint glow of embers in the fireplace. The blackness outside that tiny circle of light was as thick as mud, oozing toward them, and in that viscous dimness shapes heaved and thrashed. Janet saw one of the shearers with blood running down his face and arms as he gouged at himself with his nails; another lay screaming on the floor, pounding hands and feet against the stone. Shapes writhed and howled, voices rising in a chorus of horror and agony.
“Stop it, man!” Tom hurried to the man tearing at his own flesh, taking him by the wrists, and then shouted, “Caris! Caris, Braelyn!”
The noise rose to an eldritch chorus of lupine howls. The shadows squirmed like snakes and reached out from the corners of the room.
He tried to shake her off, but she clung, pulling him towards the doors. “Jack, it’s a fever, you’re fevered —”
Step by step, shaking and sweating, she dragged him to the doors and through them. In the courtyard, people were screaming, running, staggering. When Janet looked up, the stars spun crazily above them, swooping and wheeling. Then darkness soared up around them and shut out the sky.
Janet shoved Tom down the stairs, towards the stable. “Go,” she gasped. “Go, ride, go!”
He seized her hands. She could see his lips moving but the crackle of the fire consuming her drowned out his voice. The wolf had her by the feet, biting through flesh and bone — no, it was not the wolf, it was long brambles of wild rose winding around her legs, thorns gouging her flesh. Janet doubled over and fell. Tom caught her and she pushed him away. “Go! Go!”
A great blackness stooped over her, huge wings flapping, hot breath searing her.
“The dragon!” someone was screaming. “The dragon!”
Everything went black.
Chapter 12
Janet woke with a jolt. The dragon!
But there was no dragon, no wolf. No roses. She was in her own bed, light streaming through the window. She turned her head, wincing at the stab of pain in her temples from the movement, and saw Tom, sitting in her chair, legs outstretched, arms folded, chin resting on his chest.
Drawing breath to speak to him, she stopped. Cautiously, she lifted the sheet spread over her and peered downward. She was relieved to see she was in her shirt and breeches. When she breathed, she felt the familiar tightness of the cloth binding down her breasts. Whoever had put her to bed had made no effort to undress her, which meant her secret might still be safe.
“Tom,” she said softly, and his head jerked up.
“You’re awake,” he said. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Janet said, although she wasn’t sure that was entirely true. Her voice cracked on the word, and she grimaced. “Thirsty.”