by Susan Price
Yanet stared at her. “Best sheets, Isobel? They’ll be ruined.”
“Do I care for ruined sheets?” Isobel said. “Do as I say.”
Yanet hurried away, followed by three others, striving to overtake the stretcher party and reach the tower before them.
It was a hard climb, made in silence and a little breathlessly.
Joan, looking ahead, saw the tower come into view. It was small compared to her home, a small, poor tower. To her, once inside its walls, it wouldn’t be a shelter but a prison. Her unwillingly moving feet came to a halt, and she stood still, letting Isobel and the Elf-Maid get ahead of her. Other Sterkarms came up behind her and passed her by. They looked at her, and someone said, low, “Grannam bitch!” A shoulder hit her, staggering her. Someone blundered into her from the other side, almost knocking her over, so that she had to touch her fingers to the earth to keep her balance, dirtying her hand. Joan ran a few steps, hurrying up the path to Isobel’s side again, regretting, despite herself, that she had strayed away from her mother-in-law. Even the company of that flaunting Elf-May would have given her a little protection. People laughed at her, jeeringly, as she went by.
They reached the tower and passed through its low, narrow gatehouse, where puddles of green water lay on the floor, and emerged into the muddy, mucky courtyard, shadowed by the crowding together of many buildings: storehouses with sleeping quarters above, a kitchen, a smithy, stables, kennels. It was a place of narrow, awkward, stinking muddy alleys with the tower, a squat, ugly building, in the midst of it all.
Andrea loved the place. When she’d lived there—in that other world—she’d often been annoyed and frustrated with its inconveniences; but when she’d returned to her own time, she’d missed it. And now, even though Toorkild was dead, there was a certain comfort in being there again.
The Sterkarms were gathered around the guest bower nearest the tower, where Isobel had ordered that Toorkild should be laid out. The guest bowers were small bastle houses—that is, they had a ground floor built of stone, with neither door nor windows. The upper story might also be of stone, but was more usually of wood. On this floor there were small windows and a small, narrow door with a ladder which could be pulled up into the room at night. This upper story might be furnished as a bedroom for a guest—which meant no more than a bed, some pegs to hang clothes against the wall, and perhaps a couple of chests. Or it might have been turned into something like a small bed-sitting-room for someone who lived at the tower. A trapdoor in the floor led down into the stone room below, which was almost always used for storage.
The crowd gathered around the bower was watching Toorkild’s body being lifted to the upper story by ropes tied around the stretcher poles. Per and Sweet Milk, standing in the doorway above, hauled it up, while men underneath supported the weight and pushed.
Isobel, as she stood watching, gave a start, remembering her duties. Looking around, she saw her daughter-in-law and the Elf-May and, behind them, an even more important guest—Elf-Windsor, with his Elf-Guards.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I must make your sleeping places ready. I’ll show you to a fire and see that you have meat and drink.”
“Do no worry—” Andrea began, and then saw Isobel’s white, set face.
“Be so kind,” Isobel said. “Follow me.” She turned and led the way toward the tower. The crowd parted before her.
Andrea, catching Windsor’s eye, followed her. Hospitality was important to the Sterkarms. Guests should always be warmed and offered dry clothes, if they were needed, and food and drink before they were asked a single question. A guest should always be given the best. Nothing excused a hostess from this duty, not even the violent death of her husband. Isobel must be feeling ashamed that she had so far forgotten herself and, Andrea guessed, would be happier if they allowed her to be hospitable now.
Joan hurried to walk a little behind Isobel and a little before Andrea, because she could feel—and see—Sterkarms staring at her with contempt and hatred from all sides. She felt safer when she was close by the Elves.
As they approached the tower, they passed a single-story building of mud walls and overhanging thatch. Heat breathed from its door, and a smell of cooking. Metallic bangs and clatters came from within. A woman came to the door to throw out a bowl of water—catching sight of Isobel just in time to stop herself flinging the water all over her. She gaped at the sight of her mistress in little more than her shift, and stood still, hugging her bowl and listening to Isobel’s rapid orders. Warm water and towels were to be brought to the hall right away; and bread and ale, the best they had. Butter, too, and cheese—“It be for guests,” Isobel added significantly. The cook would know, from that, the kind of effort he was to make.
The tower had no windows in its ground story, but there was a small, squat door of thick wood, with a grid of iron behind it. Andrea followed Isobel eagerly through the door, into the dim, barrel-vaulted ground room. As always, it stank of the horses and cattle that had been penned there.
A narrow, winding stair, guarded by another iron grid, led up within the thickness of the wall, and Isobel started up it. Andrea, close behind her, found her feet and fingers remembering every little hollow of the steps and wall, and the way the light fell through the slit windows. She loved it.
Joan, behind Andrea, was longing for her own home as she had never longed for it before.
Isobel led them into the tower’s hall, which took up most of the second floor. It was a large, high room. Smoke hung thickly in the air—thick, harsh, throat-catching smoke—and had blackened the upper walls and the great wooden beams of the ceiling, from which hung hams, strings of flatbread, smoked and dried fish, onions. Drafts from the unglazed windows pierced and shifted the smoke and chilled the backs of their necks.
The hall was almost empty of furniture and, at that hour, of people. One old woman crouched on a stool by the hearth. The trestle tables had been cleared and stacked against the walls, and on the hearth there were only a couple of settles.
The hearth was huge. A fire burned in it, and on the hood above was carved the Sterkarms’ badge, a black shield bearing a red, upraised arm holding a dagger. Their enemies called it “The Sterkarm Handshake,” and Joan’s father had always said that the Sterkarms, being mere farmers and thieves, had no right to any badge. The sight of it was particularly bitter to Joan at that moment, seeming to boast of the Sterkarms’ murderous treachery. But she dared not say anything or even let her feelings show on her face.
“Be so kind, sit,” Isobel said, leading them to the settle. As she watched them seating themselves, she went over in her mind what she had ordered and wondered if there was anything else she needed to do. She realized, suddenly, that her daughter-in-law was wearing nothing but muddy nightclothes—as she was herself. A dart of hatred went through her, and her first thought was: Good. Let her freeze. But the girl was her guest—and her other guests, the Elves, were witnesses to the Sterkarms’ manners.
“Daughter-in-law,” Isobel said, “come with me. I shall find you clothes.” Beckoning, she turned to leave the hall.
Joan jumped up from the settle where she had sat but looked terrified.
“I’ll come with you,” Andrea said, rising. “I can help you dress.”
This Elf-May was a pushy madam, considering the putdown Joan had given her earlier, but this time Joan smiled weakly, though despising herself. She felt safer with Andrea’s company. Isobel led them out of the hall and up the staircase to the floor above, which was the private room she had shared with Toorkild. There was a small fireplace, a bed, a settle, a stool, a big chest, and a cupboard that also served as a table. Isobel froze for a moment, looking at the bed. No longer would it be hers. No longer would she be kept warm in bed by Toorkild snoring beside her.
She turned away from the bed, went to the chest, and knelt before it, leaving Andrea and Joan standing in the middle of the r
oom. Unlocking the chest with a key from her belt, Isobel sorted through the things inside, occasionally tossing some item of clothing toward the bed. Andrea picked up those things that fell short.
Isobel closed the chest again and locked it. “Help me dress, daughter-in-law. And then I’ll help you dress.”
Joan was shocked. She had never helped anyone dress. Her maid had helped her. But remembering that it would be safer for her to please her new mother, she hastily went forward.
Andrea offered her help, too, in lacing skirts at the back, lacing up bodices, lacing on sleeves. Isobel didn’t want to accept her help, because she was a guest, but soon found that Andrea was handier than Joan. “I am shamed to put you to this trouble, Mistress Elf. Thanks shall you have.”
“It gladdens me to be of help,” Andrea said. It saddened her to hear Isobel speak to her so formally.
Once dressed, Isobel was eager to be gone. “Be so kind, Mistress Elf—help my daughter-in-law to dress. I would not ask, but—”
“Today be a troubled day,” Andrea said, and moved behind Joan to lace up the skirt the girl had already pulled on.
“Forgive me,” Isobel said, and ran away down the stairs.
Joan was silent as they worked together to dress her, and Andrea couldn’t think of anything to say. As soon as Joan was dressed, she sat on the bed, clasped her hands in her lap, and looked at the floor.
“I think we should go down,” Andrea said. “There’ll be food. You must be hungry.”
The girl didn’t move or speak.
“Did you ken about attack?” Andrea asked.
Joan lifted her head and stared her in the face. “Sterkarms attacked us! Did my—my husband ken it would happen?”
Andrea sat beside her, at a little distance. “Sterkarms attacked?”
The girl gave her another angry look. “My father would never be so treacherous!”
Andrea said nothing. She knew that the Sterkarms never considered themselves treacherous either, even when, to anyone else’s way of thinking, they plainly were. “Let’s gan down and eat. I ken you be scared, but—”
“I be no scared!” Another glare.
Andrea paused before saying, “We—Elven—will help. I think you should gan home as soon as—”
“Stupid Elf!” Joan said. “I can never gan home!”
Andrea sat silent for a moment. The girl might be right. She had been married to Per, and her relatives and neighbors would assume that the marriage had been consummated, even if it hadn’t. And it probably had. There was no divorce in the 16th. To her own family she would be a disgrace and an unmarriageable burden. To the Sterkarms she was one of the people who had murdered Toorkild. Andrea didn’t envy her.
“I shall gan down,” Andrea said, and left the girl sitting on the bed. She supposed that, if Joan hadn’t come down after a short while, she would be foolish enough to take some food up to her.
In the hall downstairs Windsor sat alone on one settle, and his drivers and bodyguard were sitting or standing around the other. They were all hungry, and there didn’t seem to be much left of the food and drink for either Joan or Andrea.
There was nowhere for Andrea to sit except on Windsor’s settle. She sat at the other end from him and took a slice of bread. Looking at him, she said, “What are you doing here?”
“Andrea, you haven’t been paying attention. You see, there’s this company called FUP, and—”
“Okay, you stopped the fight. Thanks a bunch. Now why haven’t you gone back to the Tube? Why are you still here?”
“I wanted to see that everyone was safe, and to offer my condolences. Where’s the little beauty? Gone to bed?”
“Do you mean Joan Sterkarm? Do you realize how much danger she’s in? She should be got out of here quickly.”
“Oh, you do fuss,” Windsor said. “But don’t you worry. I’ll look after little Miss Joan. We can’t have her coming to any harm. In fact, next time you’re having a girlie talk, you might put in a word for me. Tell her that I’m looking out for her.”
Andrea turned her shoulder to him. “Don’t speak to me,” she said, “unless you have to. I can’t stand the sight or sound of you.”
“Oh, Andrea,” he said. “Don’t be jealous.” Several of his men sniggered. Could he be any more hateful? Andrea gathered up what little was left of the food and drink and carried it up the stairs to Joan, infinitely preferring Joan’s bad-tempered company to Windsor’s.
A bed, brought in pieces from the storeroom below, had been knocked together in the upper room, or bower. A mattress, thickly stuffed with straw, was placed on the heather ropes tightly stretched across the bed’s frame, and covered with one of Isobel’s best linen sheets. Then four men lifted the rigid corpse like a log of wood and placed it on the bed.
From outside came a loud clanging: a din as if a huge metal ladle was being bashed on a large metal pot. The clumsy bell on the roof of the tower, usually used for sounding the alarm when a ride was sighted, was being tolled in slow rhythm to mark Toorkild’s death. People on the hillsides around, people up and down Bedesdale who heard that slow, tolling bell, would know it was rung for a death. They would send messengers asking: For whom is the bell tolled?
Isobel climbed the ladder and entered the room, carrying clothing in her arms, which she set down on a chest before going to the bed and stooping to unfasten the sword belt at Toorkild’s waist. She had to tug it free from beneath the body. “Oh, my poor, poor mannie.” For years now, whenever Toorkild had ridden away to reive, she had feared this end. Now it had happened. At his son’s wedding. She need fear it no more, but she must live with it. The tears she had been holding back burst through, and she sobbed and let them run down her face and drip onto her dead husband’s face.
Her very last words to him had been ill-tempered and quarrelsome—and he had answered them forbearingly, humorously. It pained her to remember that she had not wanted to marry him—wouldn’t have, if she’d had her way. And yet, now, she thought that she could not have been happier with any other man. She squeezed water from her eyes with her knuckles, because she had to be able to see to undress him, and wash him.
Per came to help his mother undress his father’s corpse. It was a hard job, a struggle, because the body would not bend, and its skin was cold to touch. After they had sweated over it awhile, Per signaled to his mother to stand back, and drew his dagger. He cut the shirt from his father’s arms, and slit it down the front, so it could be dragged from under the body. It was another sad aspect of Toorkild’s death that he’d been surprised, in the middle of the night, in his shirt and nothing else. It was partly this lack of dignity that made Per cry. His father had been a good, brave man, and he shouldn’t have died like this, bare legged and bare arsed.
When the body was naked, Yanet came forward silently, holding out to Isobel a bowl of water and some washrags. Isobel soaked a rag, wrung it out, and washed the corpse’s face, wiping away all dirt and blood.
Per said, “Daddy, they’ll pay! They’ll pay!”
From all the others gathered in the room rose a loud murmur of agreement. Isobel, stooping over the corpse, said only, “We’ll make thee look brave: oh, so fine and handsome …” At her belt, on small chains, hung an assortment of household tools: a needle case, scissors, a knife. From among them she selected a comb, unhooked it, and combed Toorkild’s hair and beard, teasing out the clots of blood as best she could. But the head wouldn’t lie right on the mattress. After a while of trying to set it right, Isobel wadded together the wet washrags and made a pad of them to set behind the shattered head, to prop it in a better position. It didn’t work well. Bloodied water spread from the rags across the sheet. It hardly mattered. The body was going to lie there for three days. Its death sweat would soak into the mattress and sheets, ruining them anyway.
Isobel combed the hair over his brow, to hide the hole in his tem
ple where the Grannam pistol ball had gone in. People coming to see him would make the old joke, made at all wakes: “He looks better now than ever he did alive!” She tried to close his gaping mouth, but, stiff in death, the jaw wouldn’t move. “Per?”
By force Per closed his father’s mouth, and Isobel tied a strip of cloth under his chin, to hold it in place. Turning to the chest behind her, she took up the cloth she’d put there earlier and shook it out. It was a shroud of thin, gray wool. She had always kept some ready, in her chests. “Be so kind …” she said, to everyone in the room.
Several people came forward to lift the stiff, heavy body—undoing all Isobel’s work with the washrags—while Isobel spread the shroud beneath it. With the body resting on the bed again, the shroud was folded around it. Isobel tied the knot above the head, and Per—as well as he could, being blinded with tears—tied the knot at the feet. Isobel then opened her needle case, threaded a needle, and sewed the shroud together from head to foot, leaving an opening at the face, so that Toorkild’s people could take their last look at his features and try to seal them in their memories.
“Bring chests here and set them either side of bed,” Isobel said when she had finished. Standing aside, she watched the men move the chests as she’d directed. “Bring me candles,” she said to whoever cared to obey the order. “And water. If I be wanted, I shall be here.”
A couple of women pushed their way to the door and climbed down the ladder, to fetch the things she asked for. Per seated himself on one of the chests beside the bed. Isobel sat on the other. “A grave must be dug,” she said. “Be Sweet Milk here? Find Sweet Milk and ask him to see to digging of grave.”
Sweet Milk was standing at the foot of the bed. He said, quietly, “I’ve ordered it done.” He took no offense at the idea that he couldn’t foresee the need for a grave himself. The lady was not herself.
Per’s thoughts, circling drearily yet again around the fact that his father was dead, came up short on the knowledge that now he was the owner of the tower. He was the one who must see that it was kept in repair, that its walls were sound, that the work was done and there was money to pay for it. He was the one who must keep order within its walls and defend its lands—and his heart beat quicker as he realized that he had not done all that he should. His father would have—but his father could never be angry with him again. He must decide what had to be done himself, and remember to carry it out, and bear the blame if he was wrong.