by Anna Kendall
Let there be no dreams tonight.
There were none, and the next morning Hartah was cheerful. “A good place for information!”
Aunt Jo looked at him, and then away.
After that, there were no inns, and we slept in or under the wagon, eating provisions Hartah had bought in Stonegreen. His good mood subsided, replaced by a restless tension I didn’t understand. But he didn’t hit me or Aunt Jo. He barely noticed us, until one night, over a campfire built beside a rocky landslide that hardly blocked the cold wind, Hartah looked at me directly. His eyes flickered red and gold with reflection from the flames, like a beast. “How’d ye like to be rich, Roger?”
For some reason, I thought immediately of Cat Starling, back on her prosperous farm. Of her clean black braids, her carefully ironed petticoat. I said nothing.
“Scared ye, have I?” Hartah jeered. “So much the better. There’s fearful work for all of us ahead, and all of us will share the spoils. That’s only right. You’re a great one for right, ain’t ye, Roger?”
Anything I said might provoke him. I stared at the fire. Hartah took another swig of the brandy he’d brought from Stonegreen.
“That’s good, stay silent, boy. Silence is what’ll be needed, mark my words. But you’ll stay silent or swing with the rest of us, eh? You’ll see that. I know.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, nor did I care. As long as he left me alone, as long as he kept his fists on the brandy and not on me. When he again raised the bottle, I slipped down into my blanket and prepared to sleep.
But then I glimpsed Aunt Jo’s face, her eyes wide and horrified, her withered lips parted in a silent scream.
The next day I could smell the sea on the wind, although I couldn’t yet see it. We left the main road and climbed a muddy track upward into hills even wilder, cut with deep ravines and falls of rock. The horse, old to begin with, faltered and strained. I thought the poor beast might drop dead in her traces, but still Hartah urged her on. The wagon wheels groaned, even though the load now consisted only of its driver. Aunt Jo and I walked behind. All of our provisions were gone except a half loaf of hard bread, and Hartah had dumped the ragged faire tent into a ravine. When I dared to ask him why, he laughed and said, “Rich men don’t need such sorry lodgings!”
We reached the top of the track with the horse still alive, pulling the wagon into a thick wood of old oak and wind-bent pine. Here the tang of salt air was strong. In a clearing beside a swift hillside stream sat a crude wooden cabin, its log roof sealed with pitch.
“Hallooooo!” Hartah called. Two men came out of the cabin, one young and one about Hartah’s age. The older leaned on a wooden staff, one of his legs bent and useless. He hobbled toward us.
“So you’ve come.”
“We have,” Hartah said.
“Is this your boy?”
“Yes.”
“Well, see that he does his share of the work.”
“He will.”
The younger man stared at me, scowling. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, wide-shouldered and handsome, with yellow hair falling over bright blue eyes. I found myself wondering if Cat Starling would have liked him, would have kissed him.
“Then come,” the older man said.
“Are the others—”
“Soon.”
Hartah said to Aunt Jo, “Make camp. There, under the trees by the creek. Don’t come near the cabin, or you’ll wish you hadn’t. You too, boy.” He and the yellow-haired youth strode into the cabin, the lamed man limping after them.
My aunt and I drew the wagon under the trees, tethered and watered the horse, made a fire. There was nothing to cook. As I gnawed on my share of the bread, hard and moldy, three more men arrived in the clearing. None had families with them. They disappeared into the cabin.
My aunt handed me her piece of bread. She had not touched it. When I looked at her in surprise, I gasped. Never had I seen a face like that. Whiter than frost and her eyes just as frozen, wide open and fixed in terror.
“Aunt . . . what . . .”
Abruptly she turned her head and vomited into the weeds. Thin strings of brownish green bile retched from her mouth. In truth, I was surprised anything came up at all, we had eaten so little. Even more surprising, vomiting seemed to hearten her, or at least to return her voice.
“Go, Roger. Go now. What they plan . . . you must not . . . run!”
I stared at her across the dying fire. Never once had she told me to escape Hartah, or tried to protect me from him. I said, “What are they planning? What’s going to happen?”
“Go. Go. Go.” She was moaning now, like an animal in a trap, as she rocked back and forth by the fire on her skinny haunches. How could I go, leaving her like this? She was my aunt, my mother’s sister, and I could not leave her here alone with whatever she feared so much. . . .
No. That was not true. The truth was harsher, more shaming: I was afraid to run. To go off into that wild country, without weapons or money or food . . . and Hartah had threatened to . . . if he came after me and caught me. . . .
I felt shamed by my own cowardice, and shame turned me angry. “You’ve lost your wits! I can’t go! Be quiet or I’ll—” I stopped, appalled. I sounded like Hartah.
Aunt Jo stopped, too. No more moaning, no more rocking. She sank onto her blanket, her face turned away from me, and lay quietly. But one more sentence came from her side of the fire, and it was clear and cold as sea air.
“Your mother died at Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor.”
I went still. It seemed the whole world had gone still: leaves didn’t rustle, wind didn’t blow, embers didn’t snap in the ashes of the fire. At Hygryll, on Soulvine Moor. After years of refusing to tell me anything of my parents. My mother.
“Where is Soulvine Moor?” I demanded. “And how? How did she die?”
Aunt Jo said nothing, rigid as stone.
“How? And what of my father—Aunt Jo!”
But Aunt Jo would say no more. She lay down, as stiff and unresponsive as if it were she and not her sister who had died at that unknown place. Unknown now, but I would find it. Now that I had a name, I would find it. And for the first time ever, I would cross over with gladness.
My mother, in her lavender dress . . .
It was a long time before I could sleep. I watched the stars between the branches of the trees. I watched the clouds drift in and cover them. Toward morning, it began to rain. I crept under the wagon. The cold rain didn’t matter; tomorrow I would go. My aunt had told me to run, and now I had a reason, a place to run to. Tomorrow I would go, and I would find the place my mother had died, and I would cross over and find her.
But toward morning Hartah woke me, and everything came crashing down.
“Boy! Get up, curse you, get up now!”
I started awake, sitting up so fast that I hit my head on the bottom of the wagon, a sharp crack that sent spears of light through my brain. Hartah seized me by one arm and pulled me from beneath the wagon.
The little clearing was bedlam. Men ran around cursing, hitching Hartah’s old horse to a wagon that must have arrived in the last few hours. The rain still fell, a slow, cold drizzle that soaked through my wool tunic as if boring inward. Through the gray curtains of rain the men’s lanterns gleamed fitfully, illuminating now a clenched face, now the load upon the wagon bed, which was unseen beneath a tarp.
“Come!” Hartah roared, dragging me with him.
Someone else yelled, amid a row of curses hot enough to blister rock, “She be too early! She be too early!”
We ran behind the cabin and then kept going. There was a second track here, leading steeply downward. As Hartah and I descended in the darkness, I tried to keep my feet on the muddy ground, desperately watching by the light of Hartah’s swinging lantern for firm footing amid the streaming water. The smell of salt grew sharper. I could hear a wagon close behind me, the horse led by someone. We left the trees, and the wind hit me so hard I almost fell. All at once I
could hear the sea surging below.
At the bottom of the track we reached a tiny, pebbled beach. The sky was pitch-black, but as lanterns came down with the men, I saw that the beach lay between steep cliffs and the sea. The pebbles were dotted with large rocks, and even larger ones jutted from a wild sea. Dark waves rose and crashed on the boulders, some sending spray inland to dash against the cliffs. Rain fell steadily.
“There!”
“Hurry, damn you!”
“She be too early! Too early!”
“We can still do it. . . .”
Do what? The yellow-haired youth pushed me out of the way, so hard that I fell on the rocks. I staggered up, dazed; no bones seemed to be broken, but I shrank back against the cliff, peering desperately around. No way back up to the cabin except by the one track, and men stood there, swinging their lanterns.
Yellow Hair pulled the tarp from the wagon and tipped it. Such strength! A load of dry firewood spilled onto the beach in an enormous pile. Someone lit a brand soaked in oil and tossed it onto the wood, which flared instantly. Dry, cured, oiled—someone had prepared the wood with great care. The flames mounted high into the windy sky, a great bonfire.
And all at once I saw a light far out on the surging dark sea.
She be too early! We can still do it—
No. No. They were going to—
I had heard of such things. I hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was like witches or like sick-curses, too monstrous to be believed. But here, here and now, my uncle—
Three lights flashed in rapid succession out on the dark sea, and the men on the beach shouted.
“She sees us!”
“She’s coming in—”
“Get ready!”
The ship out there thought the bonfire was a guide-light, the kind made to lead vessels toward safe harbor. She was sailing blind, out there in the wild storm, and this fire would lure her toward the rocks. How far out did the rocks extend from the beach . . . how soon would the captain realize what was happening . . . ?
I didn’t know. I had never been on a ship. And there was nothing I could do.
Time passed. I don’t know how much time. The rain lashed me as I huddled against the cliff, and out there on the sea, the ship fought the storm. Her lights seemed to come closer, then to recede. In the rain and darkness I couldn’t judge distances. I couldn’t judge anything.
But enough time passed for the clouds to lighten in the east, over the top of one cliff, and hope seized me. If it got light soon enough for the ship to see the danger . . .
It did not. Even over the hammering waves I heard the crash as the ship ran into the rocks and splintered. Her lights bobbed wildly. A few moments later they went out.
The men on the beach screamed in joy.
Dawn approached. As the invisible sun rose behind the angry clouds, the entire horrifying scene came into view. The ship lay on her side about a quarter mile out, breaking up as the sea pounded her again and again. Figures struggled in the surf, trying to get ashore. Some disappeared beneath the chaotic water and didn’t reappear. Others reached the beach, dripping and exhausted and bruised, their clothes torn ragged by the rocks. And my uncle’s men rushed to meet them.
I saw the yellow-haired youth grab a sailor by the neck, push him down, and drive a knife square into his back.
It was no contest. For every survivor from the wreck, there was a killer on the beach. Blood streamed along with the rain, turning tide pools red. The men moved in a frenzy, silent now but all the more terrible for that, flashing their knives in and out of living flesh.
After a while, no more figures staggered ashore.
Cargo began to wash up then, great casks and wooden boxes, dashed against the rocks in their passage. The men dropped their weapons—knives and swords and spears would have endangered them in that slippery sea—and waded out to grab the casks before they could split open. Stumbling, cursing, gripping the slippery rocks for balance whenever possible, the wreckers retrieved what they could, half carrying and half floating the cargo ashore. The sun rose higher behind the clouds, and I could see sticky red on the discarded blades.
“You!” Hartah roared at me. “Help! Fetch in cargo!”
A box was abruptly tossed up by the waves, coming down on a rock just yards from the beach. The wood splintered and broke. Cloth spilled from the box, immediately sodden with salt water. Red, gold, blue—the rich silks and velvets and brocades swirled in the water or clung to rocks even as my clothes clung to my body. The dyes began to run, staining the water colors that no sea ever was: red . . . yellow . . . blue . . . lavender . . . . I stumbled toward the shore until a hand on my arm stopped me.
“Roger! Go!”
My aunt Jo had materialized on the beach. She must have come down the muddy track, come after everybody else had left the cabin, come to tell me where my mother was. . . . I couldn’t think. My back to the cliff, I stared at her, dumb, amid the wreck and the rain and the cloth dyeing pebbles fantastic colors.
“Go!” She thrust something at me, and without thought, I took it. Hartah’s knife, plucked from the bloody sand. She wanted me to take it, to run away while there was still a chance. A chance to find my mother’s death place, to cross over and see her again—
My feet finally moved.
A huge cry, and Hartah loomed before us. Some of the ruined cloth from the wreck clung to him, dripping blue velvet draped lopsided over his shoulders like a mockery of a cape. In his hands he held a metal-bound wooden box. From somewhere behind me, someone cried, “Soldiers! Run!”
Rage blossomed on Hartah’s face. His head jerked upward, searching the cliff for soldiers. Rain streamed down his red nose, across a bruise on one cheek. Always, rage must go somewhere. He screamed at Aunt Jo, “I told you to stay above!” He raised the wooden box and brought it down hard upon her skull.
Her slight body crumpled onto the rocks.
Without thought, I slid Hartah’s knife between his ribs and twisted it.
His big body went rigid. One arm raised to grab me, and I stepped backward, pulling out the knife. Instantly blood gushed from his side—so much blood! It pooled among the rocks, mingled with the rain, splashed when Hartah fell to his knees and then, after a long terrible moment when time itself seemed to stop, onto his face beside Aunt Jo.
The knife dropped from my slack fingers.
“Soldiers!” someone screamed again, and then they were pouring down the track, slipping in the mud, dozens of them in the rainy dawn. There was no other way off the beach except out to sea, where the ship broke up even more with each crashing surge of the waves. Some of the wreckers fought back, but it was hopeless. Only two of us were taken prisoner, me and the youth with the yellow hair, and there was no way Cat Starling would ever, ever have kissed either one of us.
5
I LAY FACEDOWN on the ground in the clearing above the beach, bound hands and feet, my mouth shoved against the wet dirt. The yellow-haired wrecker lay beside me, similarly bound. The rain had slowed. Soldiers dressed in rain-sodden blue milled around, and shouts sounded continuously as horses, Hartah’s old nag among them, hauled wagons up from the beach. Every so often a boot kicked me in the leg or the belly, and painfully I brought my bound arms up to shield my head as best I could.
What would these soldiers of the queen do to me?
All my life Hartah had told tales of soldiers torturing prisoners, but even in my fear I knew I would not be tortured here. The soldiers didn’t need to force a confession. They would hang us on the evidence of their eyes.
“A priest!” the yellow-haired man cried. “It is my right to see a priest before I die!”
Two pairs of boots stopped on the muddy ground, inches from my head. “He’s right,” said a voice. “It’s the law.” “And did they have law in their minds when they wrecked
“And did they have law in their minds when they wrecked the Frances Ormund? ” demanded another voice, rougher than the first. “Sir.”
&nbs
p; The Frances Ormund. That must be the name of the ship. Again I saw the bodies on the beach, the tide pools red with blood, Hartah and the others shouting in triumph as they snagged the cargo washing ashore. The killings. And I had killed, too. The knife sliding so easily between Hartah’s ribs, like butter into good cheese . . . And just before, the heavy wooden box, smashing down onto my aunt’s head . . .
My mind shuddered away from both images, and from the knowledge that I was a murderer. And yet I did not regret killing him. The thought astonished me. I, who had shrunk from killing a rat that had crawled into the wagon, a snake in the house, when we had a house. But it was true. I should have killed Hartah long ago. And I should have no fear of death now. After all, I—of all people!—knew that both he and I would continue on across the grave, in the peaceful country of the Dead.
But I did not want to go there. Not like this, not forever. What had Mrs. Humphries said to me? “It is not your time. Not yet.”
The first soldier said, “Nonetheless, Enfield, I am bound by the law.”
“Sir, these scum don’t deserve the law! Begging your pardon, sir . . . but ten hands dead, with only two survivors! And a woman aboard, the captain’s own wife!”
“I demand a priest!” the yellow-haired youth screamed. A boot kicked him hard in the side. He gasped and writhed on the ground.
“Enfield,” the other voice said, but without warning. All at once I was seized by the arm and hauled to my feet.
“Sir, let him at least see what he’s done before he hangs! Let him face the survivors!”
The officer made no objection. Enfield dragged me to the cabin. As we went, one soldier spat in my face. Over a high limb of a great oak, two more soldiers threw a pair of nooses.
The inside of the cabin was dark, lit only by a single lantern on a small table. Two people sat in wet, bloody clothes. One had a crude bandage wrapped around his temples; he sat with his head in his hands, moaning. The other was a woman.
She was neither young nor old, with gray streaking the salt-crusted hair that dripped onto her torn gown. Her face was swollen, either from her battering in the sea or from tears. Grief dulled her eyes. Enfield thrust me before her on my knees.