A Sterkarm Kiss

by Susan Price

  Per glanced up and saw that it was the Elf-May. The one he’d been with when his father had been hurt. Without giving her any kind of answer, he turned to Sweet Milk, who was beside him. “Lift him out.”

  “Nay!” Andrea said. “Tha kens not how he be hurt!”

  Per hesitated. The Elves, after all, knew about healing. But looking again at the way his father lay in the narrow well of the cart’s back, he said, “We canna help him here.” He edged himself behind his father so that he could lift up his shoulders, while Sweet Milk went to Toorkild’s feet.

  As they lowered the injured man, awkwardly, from the Elf-Cart, the Elf-May was busying herself again. Pushing past people, she ran to a spot behind the cart, which was lit by the lamps of the third car. “Put him down here, in light. Has anybody anything to lay him on?”

  But people had dashed out of the Elf-Palace half dressed, and had then been chivvied into the Elf-Carts. They were all cold and had nothing to spare for Toorkild. So he was laid on the turf. Per wrenched off his Elf Jacket and spread it over him, but it was short and of little use. The people gathered around, staring, but the Elf-May pushed them back. “Keep out of light!”

  Toorkild wore nothing but his shirt. His splayed, bare, hairy legs looked comical and very sad. Isobel came to his side and knelt. “Toorkild?” She smoothed his hair and called his name again, as if he was asleep and she needed to wake him. She lifted one of his hands to her face. “Cold,” she said.

  In brushing back his hair from his brow, she saw a spot of dirt just above one eyebrow and rubbed it away. It stayed. She rubbed again, then looked at Per. “A hole.”

  Per, kneeling at his father’s other side, bent low to look. His heart seemed to squeeze tight at the first touch of a greater fear. It seemed to him that his father’s head lay a little oddly on the ground. He slipped his hand beneath his father’s head, as if to lift it—and instead of meeting a round, hard skull, his hand sank into warm mush. Knowledge too swift for thought sent a spasm through him, holding him frozen and breathless for an eye’s blink. Then he withdrew his hand and looked at it. In the gray light from the cart’s lamps, his hand was black and glistening.

  The spasms shook him again, pulling his belly up under his ribs, shaking him with long, silent sobs. He felt cold all through. He felt that the tower had collapsed, leaving him shelterless and alone on the wet, cold hillside.

  He lifted the hand that had been behind his father’s head into the light of the Elf-Lamps, so everyone could see it.

  From the people gathered around came a deep groan. Isobel looked up. She stared at the blood and matter on her son’s hand, and said, “Aaa-aaaa-aaaa …” It was a horrible sound, despairing and stricken. It seemed to trickle from her mouth unheeded, and it went on and on.

  12

  16th Side: Return to the Tower

  Per’s hand was covered in blood, clots of blood, and brains. He made to wipe his hand on the turf but stopped himself. The matter covering his hand was his father. It would be disrespectful and unloving to wipe it away.

  He knelt there, by the body, holding his bloodied hand up and away from himself. Toorkild was dead, he knew that. The back of his father’s head was crushed, gone. No man could survive that. Not even the Elves could heal it.

  The women, gathering around, raised a keen: long, wailing cries that carried far through the cold air. The moorland wind blew past, chill where it touched the skin and damp. His mother’s brokenhearted, unbelieving moan went on and on, and his father’s body lay on the ground before him. Per, though he heard and felt and saw it all, was almost unknowing of it. His father was dead. He knew that, and his mind circled around it. His father was dead. Was dead. Nothing followed from that—there seemed nothing else to know or think.

  Andrea was slower to believe. Not until she’d touched Toorkild’s hand and felt how cold it was—damply, chillingly cold, clay cold—did she begin to believe it. And not until she’d felt at both of Toorkild’s wrists, and at his throat, and put her ear to his chest, did she actually believe it.

  Even then she said, “He might—if we can keep him warm—if we—”

  Per turned his head and looked at her, with a force that made her draw her head back, as if she’d been slapped. In the bright light of the headlamps, his eyes were silver. He held out his hand to her, the hand that was clotted with thick, dark blood. He said, “I hold his brains in my hand.”

  Andrea dropped back on her heels, feeling winded with shock. How could he say that? But he was a 16th sider, far more inured to death than a 21st sider like herself. Her head crowded with thoughts of Toorkild as she had known him in another time—a big, cheerful man, capable of such kindness that she had always easily forgotten the violence and cruelty of which he was also capable. And while she’d been assuring them that he was safe, Toorkild had been snuffed out. Sorrow overpowered her and tears ran down her face. She scrambled around the body’s feet, to reach Per and embrace him, to try and let him know that, if she could, she would take some of his pain from him, and that she grieved for Toorkild too. But as she reached him, he held her off with an outstretched hand and got to his feet. His other hand, his bloodied hand, he still held in the air, away from himself. She felt it as a rebuff, and it hurt.

  On his feet, Per looked around. Day was coming, and the birds called over the moors. Crowded around him were the people from the tower—his people now—half dressed and shivering, their faces shocked and scared. At his feet lay his father’s body, his mother kneeling beside it. There were the Elf-Carts, blockish lumps of metal, gleaming in the early-morning light. He saw Sweet Milk’s broad face, both anxious and angry. Sweet Milk said, “Grannams.”

  Aye, the Grannams. They were standing here, on the open moors, without shelter or defense, and none of them knew how close behind their enemies were. His father would never have let them hang around here. They had to reach the tower. And at the tower, they could wake his father’s body and give it burial, keep it safe from the crows and foxes.

  Stooping, he wiped his hand on the wet grass, wiping it clean of his father’s brains and blood. “Mother!” She still rocked and keened, and he spoke more sharply than he usually spoke to her. “We mun back to the tower. Up!” And he gave her his hand, pulled her to her feet.

  Sweet Milk yelled, “Into carts! Now! Move!” Every one—men, women, and children—moved toward the carts. They were used to Sweet Milk giving orders, whether they were farming or fighting.

  Per lifted his father’s shoulders, his clothes becoming more stained with blood. Sweet Milk took Toorkild’s feet, and other men came to help lift the corpse into the second cart in the line—the cart where Joan was huddled in a corner.

  Andrea, wiping her face, went to Per and said, “Give me keys for carts—keys that make them go!”

  Per reached into the pockets of his Elvish jeans and took out the ignition keys. Carrying them, Andrea walked from car to car, returning the keys to the drivers. It occurred to her then that none of the other Elves had left their places in the cars. Not even Windsor. And when she handed the key to his driver, Windsor didn’t ask how Toorkild was. He just said, “Oh—can we go now?”

  Andrea said nothing but hurried back to the car that now carried Toorkild’s body—the car that also carried Per, and Isobel, and Joan. She climbed aboard.

  Joan had watched as the men heaved and hauled Toorkild’s body on board, knowing that she had missed her chance to run. She shrank into the corner, trying to make herself unnoticeable, but the Sterkarms knew she was there. She kept catching looks from them: long, hard stares.

  During the whole time the cart had been at a standstill, she’d been planning an escape. Jump down, she told herself, and run! Two or three times she had actually made a move to do it, with her heart pounding and skipping, but then had sunk back. How could she cross miles of moorland, barefoot, in her wedding shift? And this was Sterkarm country. She didn’t k
now it.

  The dead man’s head, lying crookedly because of his shattered skull, was laid at her very feet, and in the growing light, she could see his blood on the cart’s floor. His face, within his ring of dark hair and beard, was bleached to the off-white of tallow. His teeth showed between whitened lips, and his eyelids sagged. Joan looked away, at the ground.

  Her husband, Per Sterkarm, and his mother climbed into the cart and sat with their feet almost on the body. The beautiful Elf-Maid climbed in after everyone else and made people move up to make room for her. And why did she shove herself into this cart, of all the carts? Because she had her eyes on Per Sterkarm—and welcome she was to him! But after one quick glance, Joan kept her eyes down. If she didn’t look at anyone, perhaps she wouldn’t make them angry.

  As the car lurched away, Isobel suddenly threw up her head and unleashed a long cry that startled Andrea so, she felt pinned to her seat. It was a whoop, a hunting call: “A, a, a, a, a, a, a! My man be gone! A, a, a, a, a, a, a aaaaa! My man be gone!”

  In the other cars, Andrea saw heads jerk up. Among the men walking beside the cars too. She felt the shock and anger roused by Isobel’s cry fizzing among the Sterkarms like electricity. Oh, God, she thought: There’s going to be trouble. But she was too slow in foreseeing where the trouble was to come from.

  Per’s hand shot out, grasped Joan’s hair, and dragged her head down toward the corpse with one strong pull that made Joan scream with pain and fear.

  “See what thy kind’s done, tha bitch. I promise thee there’ll not be as much left of thy father!”

  He shook the girl’s head by the hair and shoved her face toward the corpse’s. Joan’s hands scrabbled at his, and she screamed with pain and horror.

  Andrea was too appalled at first to react, not only by the violence but because this was Per—Per, who had never been anything but gentle and loving with her. She said, “Stop it! Per! Leave her!” He didn’t even look around. Andrea got clumsily to her feet in the lurching car and reached over people, falling onto them as she grabbed Per’s arm. “No! Stop it!”

  “I’ll slit bitch’s throat!”

  “Be so kind!” Andrea pulled at his fingers, trying to dislodge his hands from Joan’s hair. She knew she had no hope of it: His hands were far stronger than hers. “Per, Per, be so good, be kind! She be a bairn.” Giving up trying to loosen his hands, she gripped his shoulders and said into his face, “She did not kill thy father! She can no help what her kin did! Per, I thought better of thee—” Desperation inspired her. “I no thought thee a man to revenge slights on a girl-bairn instead of man who struck blow!”

  His face changed. He’d understood her. For a moment she thought his rage would turn on her—he was white with anger. Then, breathing hard, he let Joan go. She collapsed back into her seat, clutching at her head and crying.

  Thinking to protect the girl for a longer time, Andrea said, “She could be carrying thy bairn!”

  “I’ll hack it out of bitch!” he said, sending Joan a look that made her cower more. “I’ll never breed a bairn on that!”

  Andrea rose to her feet. Clinging to the stanchions, she tried to see how she was going to get past Per to sit beside Joan. There was hardly space to move, and Toorkild’s corpse was underfoot—and his blood and brains. She shrank from treading in them—but staying where she was meant leaving Joan exposed to further assault. “Shift!” she said to various Sterkarms, who obeyed her because she was an Elf and a guest. She struggled past them to squeeze into the space beside Joan. She tried to put her arms around the girl, but Joan cringed from her. Still, she hoped she could offer her some protection. To Per and Isobel, Andrea said, “It was none of her doing.”

  They looked away. The cart lurched on, crawling forward, over the moor, toward the Sterkarm tower in Bedesdale.

  Hours later, in full daylight, they came in view of the tower. Andrea could hardly bear it. There it was, on the hillside above the valley, built of reddish-gray gritstone, surrounded by its fifteen-foot wall. So many times, after she’d first been separated from Per, she’d imagined returning here. In dreams she’d walked through it, climbing its narrow stairs, looking for Per. She’d visited it in her own time and seen it in ruins; but never had she imagined returning to it with Toorkild’s body at her feet. Or with Per’s bruised, frightened wife.

  The car moved slowly over the rough ground with many people walking beside it and behind it, keeping pace. Most of them, men and women, were weeping. The toughest of the Sterkarm men weren’t ashamed to be seen in tears—they thought it obvious that a man easily moved to righteous anger would also be easily moved to tears. Catching sight of the tower, one of the women called out, “What will we tell them?”

  A deep sob came from a man; and keening rose afresh from the women. Andrea looked at Per and saw his mouth set hard in a white face. Isobel’s face, too, was white and hard, while her tears poured down. Andrea didn’t know what to say to them.

  It took the cars a long time to find a safe way down into the valley and then to crawl across it, and some of the Sterkarms went before them, to take the news to the tower. By the time the MPVs stopped beneath the steep climb up to the tower, Sterkarms were descending from it, bringing horses.

  People gathered around the car, peering over its sides to see the body, and men pushed forward, offering to help lift it down. While Isobel, Andrea, and Joan sat still, Per bent to raise his father’s shoulders. The body had become rigid, like a heavy plank of wood, and it proved easier to push it along the floor of the cart to the people waiting at the cart’s tail. They lifted it like a log and carried it away.

  Isobel rose then. Standing above them, she said, “Mistress Elf, you see that this is an unlucky day with us. I hope you will forgive us if we do not welcome you as we should welcome a guest.”

  “Do no think of it,” Andrea said.

  Isobel then turned, looked down at Joan, and said, “Thou art well come to thy new home, daughter-in-law. Thou’d best stay by my side.”

  And Joan, with none of the hauteur she had shown earlier, looked grateful, and hurried to follow Isobel. Sweet Milk lifted Isobel down and afterward reached his hand to Andrea. Joan he ignored, except for one hard look, and she had to slip down from the back of the cart by herself. She kept close to Isobel, walking just behind her, at her shoulder.

  Isobel crossed to where Toorkild’s body had been set down. As she passed, Sterkarms looked at her with respectful pity and murmured that they were sorry. At Andrea they looked with curiosity, recognizing her as an Elf by her clothes, but she saw them glowering at Joan, and she saw Joan’s shoulders hunch and her head duck lower with every step.

  Andrea stepped to Joan’s side, putting a hand on her shoulder. “All will be well,” she said quietly. As she spoke, she stared the nearest Sterkarms in the eye until they turned away, perhaps afraid of her Elf-Eye.

  At her touch, Joan flinched and looked up at her in terror. When she recognized Andrea, her mouth twisted with distaste, and she jerked her shoulder away from Andrea’s hand.

  Please yourself, Andrea thought. Silly little girl. You’re going to need friends.

  There was an argument going on about how the body was to be transported up the steep hillside track to the tower.

  “Too stiff to gan by horse,” someone said.

  Per said angrily, “My father is no to be slung over a horse like a sack of grain.”

  Isobel, stepping among them, said, “You will make a stretcher and carry him up.”

  There was voluble agreement from those who had brought lances and blankets down from the tower for that very purpose—indeed, the stretcher was almost made.

  “I’ll take one pole,” Per said.

  “I another.” That was Sweet Milk.

  “Where be Gobby?” someone asked. Gobby, as Toorkild’s brother, would want to help carry his body.

  “I’ve no see
n him,” Sweet Milk said.

  No one had seen him at the tower. Gobby—and, for that matter, his three sons—had last been seen at the Elf-Palace, before the attack by the Grannams.

  “Gobby can look after himself,” people assured Per and Isobel. “He’ll turn up.”

  Toorkild’s stiff corpse was lifted onto the stretcher, and Per and Sweet Milk took their places at the front poles. Other men jostled for places, and the stretcher was lifted and carried away.

  Isobel was following when a man stepped in front of her, blocking her way. It was Windsor. No one else there would have done it. Though looking at Isobel, he said, “Andrea, translate for me. Offer Mrs. Sterkarm my condolences—you know the sort of thing to say. Make it good.”

  “Why are you here?” Andrea asked him.

  “Andrea. Neither the time nor the place. Do as I ask, please.”

  Detestable man, Andrea thought. But she said, “Mistress Sterkarm, Elf-Windsor wishes to say how deeply sad he is for death of your husband. He is grieved for loss of so valuable and honorable an ally.”

  “Thanks shall you have,” Isobel said to Windsor, with a nod of her head, and tried to pass him by.

  “Tell her,” Windsor said, “that if there’s anything I can do to help her or her family, I’ll be happy to do it.”

  Andrea, thinking it a conventional phrase, translated it.

  “Thanks shall you have,” Isobel repeated. “Forgive me, Master Elf, but I have to follow my husband home.” And she walked past him to follow the stretcher, with Joan clinging close to her side. Andrea translated her words as quickly as she could, and followed. Windsor, she supposed, would now get back into his car and drive back to the Tube.

  Andrea caught up with Isobel just as Isobel beckoned to Yanet, her housekeeper, and said, “Go on ahead. Build a bed in guest bower nearest tower.” Isobel spoke clearly and calmly. “Take best guest sheets and make it up.” She nodded toward the stretcher. “We’ll lay him there.”