by Anna Kendall
‘I see,' Tom said. His face broke into a grin. ‘I'm so glad, Peter. Although I always knew you wouldn't really betray me. You couldn't. We're adventurers together. Still, you musn't try to protect me – that ain't your part. It's my part to protect you!'
‘All right,' I agreed. Tom had no idea what I actually needed protection from, nor how little he would have been able to supply it.
‘You're shivering,' Tom said. ‘Are you cold? Fia has my cloak but if you want my tunic to put atop your blanket—'
‘No, no, I'm fine.'
‘Are you certain?'
‘Yes. Let us go back to sleep, Tom.'
‘All right.'
But neither of us did. I feigned snoring, but my mind would not leave my monstrous dream. Tom tossed and turned, and twice he said softly, ‘Peter?' He wanted company. I did not. Eventually he grew quiet and his breathing deepened.
I did not sleep until nearly dawn, afraid of what dreams might come. But none did. When Tom and I woke, within moments of each other, the morning was far advanced, and Fia was gone. So was Shep.
18
Fia returned at noon, with Tom. ‘I told you I'd find her!' he exulted to me. ‘I can track any game!'
‘I am not game,' Fia said crossly. ‘Nor was I lost.
I was merely gathering things we need.' Her apron was tied in front of her in a sort of bag; I had often seen countrywomen carry things in such a way. She sank gracefully to the ground and untied the apron. The pungent scent of wild onions tickled my nostrils. With them were several handfuls of nuts, various other plants I did not recognize, a packet of leaves tied with vine, a large bunch of greens and twelve black stones worn smooth by some stream. Fia untied the leaf packet. It held four quail eggs.
‘By damn!' Tom said enthusiastically. ‘I love quail eggs!'
‘Then both of you clear out and let me make a meal,' Fia said.
I said, ‘What are the stones for?'
She smiled at me and my heart turned over. She had washed her hair and clothing, perhaps in the same stream where she found the stones, and damp tendrils clung to her lovely neck. I pictured her bathing, naked in cold rushing water, and all at once my body responded like a soldier on parade. Had she noticed? I hoped not.
‘Call me when the food is ready. I need to ... to go and find Shep.' Hurriedly I moved away from the cabin, calling, ‘Shep! Shep!'
Behind me, Fia chuckled softly.
*
She made a delicious salad, with boiled eggs, for the midday meal. She made rabbit stew for dinner. Over the next few days she made pallets of pine boughs whose sweet smell almost banished the mustiness of the cabin. She made a woven basket to gather berries. She made rush lights dipped in pine resin. She made fish hooks of carved bone, and caught fish with them. She made Tom scour the woods for logs and the stream for large flat rocks, and of them made benches and a table. She found hickory nuts and summer apples in the woods, mussels in the stream, cattails in a marsh. Maggie herself could not have accomplished more.
‘But, sweetheart,' Tom said, setting a large flat rock on an upended log and eyeing the resulting wobble with the sure knowledge that Fia would make him fix it, ‘we don't need Peter's snares. Shep can catch game.'
Fia raised her face from the nuts she was pounding into some sort of flour. Her look of sadness was back, so profound that even Tom noticed.
‘What's wrong, sweetheart? Shep still ain't back?' She didn't answer, and he turned to me. ‘Peter, is Shep back?'
I said to Fia, ‘He's not coming back, is he?'
She had once more bent her head over her work. ‘How should I know? I am here with you.'
But she knew.
Tom said, ‘Of course Shep'll come back! Good ol' dog!
Peter, I wish to talk to you outside.'
We left Fia to her pounding – whap whap whap of stone on nut meat – and went outside. Tom dragged me away from the cabin.
‘Listen to me, Peter. This girl likes me, and I like her.
That's obvious. So will you please leave us right after dinner for – oh – several hours? Until full dark?'
I didn't know what to say. All at once Tom's face darkened. He said bluntly, ‘You don't want her for yourself, do you? Because she don't want you.'
Did she? Lately she had smiled more at me than at Tom, and once or twice in the sway of her full-breasted body I thought I had seen an invitation ... but I must be wrong. Here was Tom, so confident, so handsome, so much more experienced with women than I was. For me there had been only Cecilia, whom I had loved but not bedded, and Maggie, whom I had bedded but did not love. I knew nothing of women, and knew that I knew nothing. And Tom had saved my life.
‘No,' I said miserably. ‘I don't want her for myself. But, Tom, you wouldn't ... you wouldn't ever insist, would you? Try to ... to force her?'
I thought he might become angry, might even strike me, and I braced myself for the blow. Instead he burst into hearty laughter.
‘Force her? Lad, Tom Jenkins need force no woman! If a man can't make a girl lie down and open her legs willingly, he don't deserve her! And I can! Now, go find an errand in the woods, right after dinner.'
Not waiting for my acquiescence, he turned and strode back towards the cabin, and not even Lord Robert Hopewell, lord protector for the Princess Stephanie, could have exuded more confident, masculine power. As I watched him go, I fingered Shadow's leather collar, still in my pocket. I wondered where Shep had gone. I wondered why Fia wished to go to The Queendom and why she tarried here. I wondered how long after dinner it would take Tom to get Fia's dress off. I wondered why I was destined to lose everything, always, that I desperately wanted.
But Fia had other ideas.
We had no sooner finished our meal than Tom began giving me significant looks. That evening we ate outside, sitting on the bare ground before the hut, and long slanting sunlight touched the tops of the forest trees and turned them green-gold. Fia produced the twelve smooth stones from her apron and cast them before us. ‘We will play at baz! It's great fun! I will teach you both.'
That sweet, beseeching smile, so at odds with her commanding tone. She was Cecilia, she was Maggie, she was herself.
Tom scowled. ‘What is baz?'
‘A game of chance.'
His face cleared. ‘Oh, a good thought, that! I have dice! Tell you what, sweetheart, you and I will wager while Peter gathers the wood for the night fire – it's his turn.'
Fia said, ‘I have already gathered tonight's wood.'
‘Oh! Then Peter will ... will—'
‘I must check the snares,' I said miserably. ‘It's good you made rush lights, Fia. I can take one to light my way, since I expect to be gone quite a while. In fact, I am looking forward to a good long walk.'
‘Then you shall have it tomorrow,' she said pertly. ‘For tonight, we play baz. Tom shall go first. You take six of the twelve stones in hand, Tom, and cast them into this triangle I draw in the dirt.'
There were many triangles drawn in the dirt, and many casts of stones, and despite myself I became interested. Baz turned out to be only in part a game of chance. It also involved strategy, as in battle, where one must out-think one's opponent. Fia did this well, but I did it better.
Tom was wretched at the game, and soon bored. His mood grew disgruntled and sulky and he shot meaningful glances at me: Leave us! But I found no pretext to do so, and Fia insisted that we play on.
‘That was a very good move, Roger,' she said to me, and my heart glowed for just as long as it took to glimpse Tom's face. ‘I can scarcely believe you have never played before.'
But she knew we had never played before; she hadn't even asked if we knew the rules before explaining them. This was a foreign game, brought from wherever Fia came from, and already she knew that it would be foreign to the folk of The Queendom. How?
Tom lost the last of his stones. ‘Goodnight,' he said abruptly, not troubling to hide either his humiliation or his displeasure. His glance at me was ugly.
‘Will you two play very late?'
I understood him. ‘No, I am too sleepy. Goodnight.' Ostentatiously I went to my pallet of pine boughs, my face turned to the hut wall. A spider spun a web inches from my eyes.
‘Goodnight, then,' Fia said, and went to bed, wrapped in Tom's cloak as in an impenetrable castle.
Tom swore softly in the darkness. I watched the spider. It had trapped a fly and was slowly, surely enveloping it in silken snares too strong to break.
Tom was outwardly cheerful in the morning, his natural confidence again claiming his mind, although something of last night's anger remained beneath the good cheer. At the first opportunity he jerked his head towards Fia and winked at me. I set off to check the snares before Fia could ask me to do something else instead. As I walked, this time leaving my staff behind, I fingered Shadow's collar in the pocket of my tunic. Once I even pulled it out and gazed at the strange markings etched into the leather. I missed Shadow. I missed Shep.
The morning gained me two rabbits and a sore heart.
But Tom gained nothing. When I returned to the hut at midday, he was sweaty and hot from building a dam across the stream just below the waterfall, deepening the shallow pool. ‘No luck,' he growled. ‘She's slippery as a greased pole, that girl! And she's been gone the whole morning again, “gathering food”, leaving me to this stupid work – a “bathing pool”! Why does she want a bathing pool? People needn't bathe more than a few times a year. It ain't healthy.'
Fia bathed every day, but neither of us saw her do it. The bathing pool, it turned out, was for us. Fia expected daily washing. Moreover, she expected it when she was gone on her morning food gathering, from which she returned this time with more eggs, more greens for salad, bulbs of dog-tooth violet to roast in coals, more nuts and berries and strange herbs, and even some of the first wild honey.
‘How did you get it away from the bees?' I asked, my mouth watering. ‘Didn't they sting you?'
‘No,' she said with her sad lovely smile but no explanation. Tom was not interested in explanations, nor in honey; his mood was turning dangerous. He was not used to girls evading him. Scowling, he watched Fia through eyes narrowed to blue slits.
But she was encouraging to him at the midday meal, which we ate outdoors beside the new bathing pool. She smiled at Tom, even flirted a little. ‘Tom, the pool looks wonderful. How did you ever get that log in place? It must be so heavy!'
‘It was.'
‘Yet you managed it.'
‘Oh piss pots, I've lifted things heavier than that.' He straightened and expanded his chest like a pigeon during courtship.
‘You must show me.'
‘I will, sweetheart.' As Fia went inside to fetch him another tankard of honey-sweetened tea from the hearth, Tom whispered to me, ‘I've got her! Go away again this afternoon, Peter!'
I did. I sat on a fallen log well away from the cabin and, having nothing to do, did nothing. But I could not tolerate that for very long. And an idea, monstrous and horrible, had been growing in my mind. I must know the answer.
But there was only one course of action to discover it, or to have even a faint hope of discovering it. And I was afraid of that course. Three times I pulled out my little shaving knife to poke myself and cross over, and three times I stopped myself. I was afraid to go again to the Country of the Dead.
Those figures in the fog, that woman saying my name in tones that froze my blood ... It was not really Fia that kept me from crossing over. It was myself.
So I sat on my log, wretched and cowardly, and late that afternoon dragged myself back to the hut. Fia, on the watch for me, came running to the edge of the clearing. ‘Roger! Where have you been? Why did you go away so long? Tom is very sick and I cannot lift him myself!'
19
Tom lay on the ground beside the bathing pool. His tongue had swollen to three times its normal size, filling his mouth. His eyes were swollen shut. He moaned in pain, and every so often his limbs spasmed helplessly. I knelt beside him. ‘Tom, what happened?'
Groans.
Fia said, ‘We were just inspecting the pool when this illness seized him. I think ... Did Tom eat any mushrooms in the forest?'
‘I don't know.' It was possible. With Tom, any impulsive act was possible. ‘Have you seen such an illness before, from eating mushrooms?'
‘I ... I think so. At any rate, somehow I know what to do for it.'
‘How do you know?' I said bluntly.
‘I don't know. Perhaps I was once a healer?'
‘And a shepherdess and a lady's maid and a kitchen girl.'
She looked from Tom, groaning and oblivious, to me. Her lovely face creased with hurt. ‘Roger, are you angry with me?'
Yes. No. I had no idea, except that it was less anger than fear. But all I said was, ‘The sun is full in his poor eyes. We must move him inside.'
It took both of us to shift Tom's bulk. I took his arms, and Fia, stronger than she looked, took his legs. Somehow we got him inside, and I built up the fire. Tom had begun to shiver uncontrollably and to cry out with pain.
Fia said, ‘I can make him a tea that will at least shrink his tongue.'
‘Do so!' I didn't know what else to do for him. I didn't know anything.
She brewed the tea from her store of gathered plants, and together we dribbled it down his throat. Within a few minutes, Tom's tongue began to shrink, giving him some relief. He grew quiet, then slept. I loosened his belt and raised his tunic, my heart hammering. But there was no rash, no pustules, no discoloration on his broad chest. It was not plague.
I said, ‘I think it might have been mushrooms, after all.'
‘I think so too,' Fia said, and began to cry.
I put my arm around her, and so it happened – or rather, it did not happen.
She turned in my arms and her tears flowed hard and silent, wetting my shoulder. I tried to say, ‘He will not die,' for Tom was already sleeping deeply and his colour was better, and anyway if the mushrooms were the type to kill him, he would have stomach cramps and vomiting. But it was my words that were killed, for Fia raised her head and kissed me.
At the first touch of her soft lips on mine, my member rose and hardened to stone. Her breasts pressed against my body. Her hand reached for me, and I found my voice, although it came out hoarse. ‘Not here ...' Not beside Tom, who had also desired her, even though he lay oblivious.
Fia nodded, took me by the hand and led me outside and a little way from the cabin. She put her arms around me and kissed me again. We sank to the ground, kissing wildly, and I whispered, ‘Me ... not Tom? Why?'
‘It was always you.' She lay back on the pine needles and raised her skirt, smiling at me.
Maybe it was the smile, which wavered between tears and encouragement. Maybe it was the gesture of raising her skirt. But I think it was the scent of pine needles. For it was here, in this grove, that I had once rested in the Country of the Dead with Cecilia in my arms. And it was here I had found Maggie when I returned from Soulvine Moor. She had been digging edible roots, and her face had flushed with both pleasure and fury at my return, and I had taken her away from here and back to The Queendom. Maggie, whose face always surged with pleasure when she saw me, who loved me better than I had loved her or than I deserved. Maggie, whom I had left on a sunny hillside after taking her as I was now prepared to take Fia: without a future or the promise of a future. Maggie, whom I had deserted. My mind filled with Maggie, and with guilt, and my member wilted under Fia's hand.
Nothing more humiliating can happen to a man. And although Fia tried, she could not revive me. I covered my eyes with my one hand.
‘Roger, it is all right. Truly. You are tired. You must have walked all morning, and the shock over Tom's illness—'
‘I will see to Tom now,' I said, to escape her and my shame. I would have got to my feet, but she clung to me.
‘Don't go,' she said, ‘please don't go. We can try again in a little space of time.'
No words were ever said
more seductively, more softly. They had no effect on the softness in my breeches. Scarlet-faced, close to tears, I went to see to Tom.
Then began a time of frustration such as I had never known. Tom's pain stopped and the colour returned to his face, but he slept deeply for many hours each day. In the mornings he was awake but weak, and Fia tended him gently, while I brought in game from the snares. When she was gone to gather plants, I watched over Tom. He was fretful, impatient with illness in a body that had scarcely known it before. ‘By damn, I'm weak as a kitten, Peter. I hate this!'
By noon he would be asleep again. In the afternoon heat Fia bathed in the pool beneath the waterfall. Each day I would say I would not join her, and each day I did. My arms held her slender naked body with its full breasts, and the blood sang in my veins. My member gorged and rose. Then we lay on the sweet grass beside the pool, and the thoughts of Maggie would douse me as the cold mountain water had not. I could not take Fia.
‘It's all right, Roger,' she would say and hold me tighter, until I broke from her in shame and confusion and growing suspicion. It was not just thoughts of Maggie that wilted my member. I was suspicious of Fia – why she had wanted to journey to The Queendom, why she now stopped here, where she had come from. When I asked her these questions, she always replied that she didn't know. If my suspicions proved wrong, and Fia discovered them, she would push me away in horror. I did not want that. But if my suspicions were right ...
No. My doubts were baseless, without foundation. And even if they had had foundation, they would have dissolved in the strength of my desire for her and its continual frustration.
Sometimes I heard guns in the distance, always in the distance, but with the echoes in the hills, I could not be sure how far away. However, even if I had known them to be very close and hunting me, how could I leave Tom ill and Fia for the savage soldiers? She was strong and resourceful, but no woman can stand against soldiers bent on taking her. And if they found out she knew me ...