The Black Hill

by Alison Adare

  If the words meant nothing to most of those who heard them, his tone was unmistakable, and the tenants struggled on until all the sacks of rye were in the courtyard, the spilled flour from torn or dropped sacks was swept up as meticulously as would have satisfied Caris, and wood was piled high.

  It took the flour a little time to catch. The sacks were well packed, the wood a little damp, and the slight drizzle didn’t help. The sheaves went up quickly, though, and once the flour began to burn, it burned hot, filling the courtyard first with the smell of baking bread and then thick, sour smoke. Coughing and retching, Janet shoveled the flour that tumbled down the sides of the pyre back into the heart of the flames, trying to stay clear of the licking tongues of fire which reached out for her as if malignantly alive. As she bent and scraped, shoveled and pushed, the scorching heat pressed at her until she could almost believe it was not a bonfire she tended but the dragon of Brinday itself she fought.

  And then another beside her, bending to the same task, puffs of flour igniting in the air as they showered onto the pyre, and then another, and another — and finally she could lean shaking on her shovel, sucking a burned thumb, watching the flames settle and pull in on themselves and begin to burn low.

  She turned to the man next to her and saw that it was Lew: Lew, with hands so blistered and peeling it must have been an agony for him to use them.

  Oh, Saint Sebastian.

  Let me have been right.

  Chapter 15

  In not so many days, it became apparent that Janet had been right. Fed on the good wheat and oats she’d purchased with the coin the wool had earned, even the sickest began to slowly improve, while those least affected made rapid progress.

  Those whose flesh had begun to rot, however, had more suffering ahead of them. Braelyn amputated fingers and toes, both whole and part. One poor woman was so afflicted that the only way to try and save her life was to take both her hands and both her feet. She died anyway, and it was hard not to think of it as a mercy.

  But her funeral was the last they had to hold, and life slowly began to return to normal. Glyn limped into the great hall and offered his sword to Tom. Janet winced to see the awkwardness with which he drew it, with only the thumb and two fingers left on his right hand. Tom took it, and pretended to think it over, although he’d told Janet the night before over their chess game that he could not spare Glyn from his post. Whether the man can learn to fight with his off-hand or not, time will tell, but his men are loyal to him, and they’ll not love me for turning him out to beg. Tom pointed to Glyn’s left, whole, hand, and when the man held it out, put the hilt of the sword into it.

  Not a thought showed on Glyn’s grim face, but he nodded. “Thank you,” he said, and it was not in the local tongue.

  Standing on the walls one afternoon, Janet saw Glyn making his way quietly out through the gates alone. He turned and made his way around the corner of the wall. It took her a few minutes to make her way across the broken stone at the point of the fortification and find a vantage point from which he was again in view. She was unsurprised to see him, sword in his left hand, sweating though the most basic of beginner’s exercises.

  She slipped away before he could realize he was observed, well aware of the sense of humiliation that had driven him, master of guard, to sneak off to practice where no-one, and especially not his men, could see him. Instead she fashioned a rough training dummy out of firewood, sacking and straw, dragged it out to Glyn’s private training ground early one morning and set it up.

  Janet did not try to watch him again to see what he made of it. When he felt he was ready to train with the others, to spar with them, without putting up such a poor showing his pride could never recover, he would do so. Until then, his struggle was an intensely private one, and she left him to wrestle with his new-found weakness alone.

  Donnic, too, had been changed by the pestilence, although outwardly not as drastically as Glyn. On Sundays, his sermons very often mentioned fire. The first few times, Janet asked Glyn or Emlyn afterward what had been said. The third time she got the answer that all sinners shall burn or a variation thereof, she stopped asking. Janet began to rely more and more heavily on Emlyn to make herself understood to the tenants when her own vocabulary was inadequate. Though Donnic always agreed when she asked him, his speech was slower, now, and very often he would trail away mid-sentence and stand staring into the distance, or into the sky, until a touch on his arm recalled him to the present.

  Tom, too, was sobered. He looked less like the young lord of Brinday, riding west through open countryside to take possession of his manor, and more like the man Janet remembered from the last, worst days of the war: eyes shadowed and chill, fine mouth set. It took more and more to win that trace of a smile from him, and she could not get him to laugh at all. He sat late in the great hall with Lady Modron and no longer refused her at all when she made to fill his cup. Very often when Janet made her way to his chambers for their nightly game of chess the room was empty. On those occasions she waited for him, she grew used to him coming in a little fuddled with drink, used to having to repeat herself as his attention drifted away from her to the fire.

  Lew was changed least. He’d lost no fingers or toes, though the sickness had left him with a limp, and he was as calm and cheerful as ever. Watching him grooming Nightfoot, crooning softly to the stallion, Janet thought that it was perhaps because the horses and the hounds had not suffered at all, and if they were happy, all was right with Lew’s world.

  Brinday’s luck, at last, seemed to be changing for the better. Once Lew and Tom and the huntsmen could ride out, they rarely came back without game, and not only did they all eat well but were able to salt and set aside meat for the winter. The streams, swollen by the constant rain, yielded fish, and though they had to be careful with the wheat, oats and barley, none went hungry.

  Emlyn recovered as quickly as if she’d never been ill, and was soon following Janet around the fort whether she was needed or not, still gravely watching everything she did and then mimicking it in miniature. She resumed racing up the hill before dawn again, too, to join Janet and Tom at their morning meal — and it was only during those meals when Janet could see a little lightness in Tom’s eyes.

  She still joined him in the evenings, but they rarely played chess anymore. Even if Janet set up the pieces, he would lose interest after a few moves and sit turning a knight or the king over and over between his fingers, staring into the fire. Even her encouraging remarks about the state of their stores got little more than a grunt in acknowledgment. When she talked of her plans for the next year — the dying shed, the coppers — she had the sense that her words washed over him like the constant rain on the walls of Brinday, making no impact, leaving no mark.

  He only shrugged when she raised the topic of his now well-delayed marriage to Lady Modron. It was hardly the time, Janet understood, but still, when would there be a better? Autumn, and falling leaves, and then the long cold winter would be on them soon enough. And, she suggested to him, would it not give the people heart, to see their new lord married to the daughter of the old lord? A sign of a future of peace and prosperity?

  Tom shrugged again.

  Janet didn’t press it further, and she knew, as she tossed sleepless in her bed that night, it wasn’t out of any tenderness towards his feelings that she’d let it go. No friend would let him drag his feet like this, not when the Protector’s favor depends on it. If I was only and entirely his friend, the friend he thinks I am, I’d shake him by the shoulders until he listened.

  I’d drag them both into the chapel by their ears.

  It was as a friend Tom had asked her — asked Jack Cooper, anyway — to come to Brinday. Janet rolled over and punched the pillow back into shape. And I’m betraying that trust because …

  Because she didn’t want him to marry. Not Modron, not anyone, if it couldn’t be Janet herself. And it can’t be me myself, can it, you fool? Even if he knew me as a woman, he’d neve
r look at me twice … even if he looked at me twice, even if he wasn’t betrothed to someone else, I’m a locksmith’s daughter and he must marry according to his rank.

  I’m like a dog lying in the manger, with no use for the hay, barking and snarling at the cattle coming to eat.

  Janet dozed at last, woke with dawn in a tangle of sheets and blankets, resolved to do better. Still, at breakfast, every time she opened her mouth to press the point, the words died in her mouth unsaid. You must marry her, and marry her soon. An easy sentence, a simple one, one she should and must say —

  And did not.

  Tom finished his pottage and strode off to inspect his turnips, and Janet pushed her own bowl away. Christ’s cod. If I can’t be a true friend to him, what use am I here at all? She raked her fingers through her hair. Well, perhaps I can do something, at least. She caught Emlyn’s eye. “Can you show me again where the flowers are, in the woods?”

  Emlyn nodded. “But there won’t be any, this time of year. Except roses. They last and last.”

  “Can you show me where the roses are, then?”

  “Well …” The girl tapped her spoon on her bowl. “Yes, but … they’re near the dragon. We’d have to be really careful and really quiet. When the leaves fall, is when it wakes up.”

  Dragons live a long way away, where it’s hot all year round, Janet reminded herself. The Protector lives somewhat closer. “If we were quiet? Could you show me?”

  “Yes.” Emlyn slipped from her seat. “Now?”

  Janet nodded, and stood as well. “Now.”

  She had not been into the woods since that first time, although she’d found her gaze drawn to them often as she walked the battlements, the gnarled trees seeming dark and forbidding even clothed in the rich green leaves of summer. With the leaves shading into gold and bronze, the silence as she followed Emlyn further and further into the undergrowth seemed deeper, stronger. The small noises they made — a branch pushed aside here, a footfall there — were swallowed by the oppressive hush and somehow made it weigh more heavily. The massive indifference of the trees to the sound of their passage rendered Janet and Emlyn utterly irrelevant.

  “What do people say about Sir Thomas?” Janet asked Emlyn, to break the silence with a human voice.

  Emlyn paused, letting Janet catch up with her. “Which people?”

  “Any people,” Janet said patiently. “The tenants. Your mother. Your neighbors. The women in the kitchen.”

  “The women in the kitchen say he’s very handsome, and has manners sweet as sugar. The neighbors say he should never have come here. Mam says it’s a crying shame about him.”

  “Why?” Janet asked. Emlyn began to work her way onward again and Janet followed. “Why a shame?”

  “I don’t know, she saw me then and stopped talking.”

  “Do people mind very much that he’s the lord, and not from here?”

  “No,” Emlyn said. “Old Lord Bryn wasn’t from here, was he?”

  “He wasn’t? Where was he from?”

  “Down south somewhere,” Emlyn said without much interest. “There — the roses. See?”

  Janet slipped past the last trunk and saw the wild rose bush, a massive tangle of stems and flowers, almost smothering the trees it grew around. “But this side of the border?”

  “Oh yes,” Emlyn said. “He came to marry the old lady. Only she wasn’t old then.”

  Janet drew her knife, and began to cut one long stem after another. “So Lady Modron’s mother was the only heir in her time, too?”

  Emlyn shrugged. “Dunno. Does it matter?”

  “No,” Janet said. She gave a handful of sprays to Emlyn to hold. “It’s just unusual, that’s all.”

  “The dragon eats all the boys,” Emlyn said matter-of-factly, picking a thorn from the brambles she held.

  “Does it, now,” Janet said neutrally.

  “Yes,” Emlyn said. “Davith told me.”

  Janet stopped, knife poised above a stem. “Davith told you about the dragon?”

  “No,” Emlyn said scornfully. “Everyone knows about the dragon. Davith told me I was lucky I was a girl. If I was a boy, the dragon would take me like she et my father.”

  Emlyn’s father, Edwal ap Bryn. Illegitimate but acknowledged son of the old lord. “Davith never mentioned the dragon to me,” Janet said, beginning to cut again. “I think he would have, if it was something to worry about.”

  “He did, then!” Emlyn said. “In his song, at the festival. It was about the dragon.”

  “The dragon?”

  “Aye.” Emlyn sang a snatch of it in her piping voice and Janet recognized the melody. “That means, dark and cold beneath the hill, black fire in the night.”

  Janet gathered the rose brambles together and eyed them. Enough — even for the vainest fine lady. “And what happens? In the song?”

  “A man is going to kill it.” Emlyn said, following as Janet began to climb the slope back to the fort. “And his wife doesn’t want him to go. But the dragon wants him to go, so she can eat him. His wife sings stay, stay, stay with me, and the dragon sings come, come, come to me. And the wife sings, I’ll hold on to you, I’ll cling to your legs and cling to your arms, I will never let you go.”

  “And what happens at the end?”

  “He goes anyway, with his wife hanging on to him, and the dragon burns her, so she lets him go, and the dragon eats him.”

  “That’s cheerful,” Janet said.

  “Well, she shouldn’t have let him go,” Emlyn said. “He tells her not to. Hold tight and hold true, he says, and wrap your arms around me. But she doesn’t so they both die.”

  It was harder to make her way through the undergrowth with her hands full, harder uphill. Janet had to stop for a moment. “It’s probably quite difficult to hold on to someone while a dragon is setting fire to you.”

  Emlyn shrugged. “It’s what the song says.”

  “Anyway, why did he want to kill the dragon? Didn’t you tell me it was the luck of Brinday?” Janet could see the stone wall ahead of her now, and redoubled her efforts.

  “Yes,” Emlyn said. “He wanted to kill it because it bleeds golden blood.”

  The last twisted branch surrendered its hold, and Janet staggered panting into the open air. “Golden blood?” she said after a moment. “I’ve never heard of a dragon bleeding gold.”

  “Ours does.” Emlyn scampered towards the gates and Janet followed.

  She twined the sprays of roses into the best approximation of a bouquet she could manage and laid them outside Lady Modron’s chamber door, it still being early enough that Modron would not have risen for the day, and then retreated down the corridor to the great hall.

  From the doorway, she saw Modron emerge from her chamber, saw her pause as she saw the great spray of twined wild roses, a bouquet surely only the extravagance of passionate love could provoke.

  Saw her back away as if from a viper, skirts clutched around her feet. A sharp call brought one of her ladies running from the inner chamber, to gather up the stems and hasten down the corridor. Janet slipped back into the shadows as the woman almost ran across the great hall —

  And flung the roses into the fire.

  PART THREE

  Autumn

  Chapter 16

  Leaning on the coping of the well, looking up at the great disk of the full moon nailed to the sky above her, Janet thought I’d take the dragon on myself, if it bled gold. Even a cupful would pay for all we need.

  It was a tempting daydream. Better tubs, better tools … enough stores brought in that we can manage the work without struggling to entirely feed ourselves as well … even some floor looms, and weavers to teach the use of them. A building for dying, well away from where we can smell it.

  Perhaps next year.

  But next year, Janet would not be here to see it. Next year, Tom would be wed, hopefully Lady Modron would be with child, and Janet herself would be well away, somewhere.

  Anywhere.
>
  Tom was no fool. Now she’d proved it could work, he would see the sense in dying their own wool, weaving it. And the tenants had warmed to him, liked him even. His grasp of the local language was growing.

  Janet could leave satisfied that she’d done everything he’d asked her to. She’d watched his back, she’d kept him safe, she’d set him on a straight clear path to securing his future and the future of the sons Lady Modron would bear him.

  Tom and Lady Modron were in the great hall right now, her women sewing by the fire. Janet thought of joining them, then chided herself for it. It’s right for them to spend time together, time alone. Perhaps she’ll agree to a date tonight.

  What is she waiting for? To be convinced he loves her? It was hard to imagine a woman of Modron’s station, the marriage already agreed, holding out for some romantic fancy, but easier to believe that she wanted at least a show of courtly love to satisfy her vanity.

  Janet could even feel some sympathy for her, in that. He must offer for her, and she must accept him — but what woman would not want to think, in such circumstances, that there was at least some possibility he would have wanted her regardless? Tom, at this very moment, might be professing undying devotion, swearing that he’d die for love if Modron continued to delay.

  Aware she should hope that indeed he was, Janet still had no appetite for sitting alone in Tom’s chamber, waiting for him to return and bring her glad news.

  The night was cool and clear. On impulse, Janet went not to the door to the tower, but to the gate. Paul was on duty, and he let her out when she asked without question, just as he would let her in again when she returned, without question. For I am, after all, Steward Cooper.

  For a little longer.

  Out of habit, Janet turned away from the path that ran down beside the wood to the valley. Out of a disinclination for company, she turned from the one that led to the village, where some lights still showed. Instead, she strode out up the hill, across grass washed gray and colorless by the moonlight. The stars were so bright and low that from the top of the hill ahead of her she might have reached up and touched them. Janet found herself wondering what Davith would have sung of a night like this.