Ravenwood

by Nathan Lowell

  “So, do you believe in us, mum?”

  She smiled, then, and nodded. “Yes, William. I do.”

  He nodded back. “Thank you, mum. And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make sure that Frank’s got the saw ready for us and then go grab some dinner.”

  The evening closed in fast with the shorter days of autumn. He headed for the storage room, leaving her standing there for a few more moments admiring the view.

  The thickening dusk masked the colors but here and there a brilliant yellow still reflected enough light to stand out of the dusk. She listened to the wind through the treetops and her eyes searched the tall fir to see if she could spy the raven looking down. She couldn’t and she wondered if the episodes had been nothing but her imagination after all.

  She sighed and was surprised to feel disappointment. She would have liked to feel like she were special, magical. “Somethin’ other than an old fool,” she muttered to the setting sun before starting off down the path to find a cup of tea.

  She worked herself into a high dudgeon as she strode along, ignoring the twinges from the cut down her belly and striking the earth with her staff harder than she needed to. She knew she was being pouty but she didn’t care and vented her frustration on the night by stomping along like a five-year-old told she couldn’t have a sweet before dinner. The image delighted her and she screwed up her face the way she remembered her own Robert used to and pretended she was a pouting child for no other reason than her own amusement. The silliness of it washed over her and she laughed aloud at herself. Her stride loosened and she stopped stabbing the ground with her staff on every step. By the time she got to her house, she was in pretty good spirits, thinking about which tea she’d like to have and what she’d like for dinner.

  She got almost to her door before she realized that Thomas had been there and left a fine fat hare hanging on the peg at the edge of the roof. The shape swung gently in the soft night air. She looked up at it and smiled. He was such a thoughtful man. A familiar soft croaking sound drew her eyes upward even further and she looked into the golden eyes of the raven perched politely on the ridgepole of her roof.

  “Well, there you are.” She looked at the rabbit and then back to the raven. “Come for dinner have you?”

  The raven croaked again.

  “Well, give me a minute, and I’ll find you a piece or two.”

  Chapter 34

  Room and Boards

  Tanyth woke with the sunrise and crawled out of her bed roll. It promised to be a busy day and she didn’t want to miss a minute of it. It felt good to be up and about. She stirred up the fire, and added a couple of small sticks before pushing the tea kettle closer to the heat. Her porridge was cool but she slopped a little warm water on the top and gave it a stir, too. It would warm and the apple she’d cored and put in the night before gave it a lovely smell.

  She pulled warm clothes out of the bed roll and slipped baggy pants on over her naked–and now chilly–legs. A pair of warm socks covered naked toes and her worn boots slipped easily onto her feet. She stamped them down and grabbed a wrap before bolting for the privy. “Shouldn’t have waited so long.” It was a good natured grumble and almost made her giggle. Only the thought that giggling might have damp consequences kept her from doing it.

  Taking the return trip a bit more sedately, she noticed that frost had touched the grass in some of the sheltered areas. She knew it wouldn’t be long before every morning would be a frosty one. She marveled that this would be the first winter in her life that she wouldn’t be stuck in a cottage with somebody else. For the past twenty winters, she’d lived with her teachers. Each of them asking only her help during the coldest months and, in return, feeding her and letting her stay warm by their fires. She’d whiled away long dark hours in discussions over this or that preparation, how to best get the goodness from some herb or other, and the most useful ways of combining beeswax and oils to make salves and balms. This winter, she was the “old woman” and it amused her to think that others valued her as more than just an extra pair of hands or a strong back. She wondered if she should give up her plan of finding Mother Pinecrest and stay in the village for a while.

  In the forest, the raven cawed loudly.

  “Perhaps not,” she muttered to herself.

  By the time she got back to her hut, the water was boiling, the oatmeal was warm, and the sun peeked over the tree line across the way. She made short work of her breakfast and cleaned up the pots before refilling the tea kettle, banking the fire, and dressing for a walk up to the saw pit. She’d never seen planks being cut and she found the idea interesting. It seemed almost incomprehensible that the men would be able to saw the length of those logs, not just once, but several times, in order to turn them into boards. She knew, in her mind, that they would but in her heart the labor seemed prodigious.

  When she got up there, hat on her head and staff in her hand, the crews had already assembled. Jakey, William, and Frank would be on top of the logs, pulling the saw up and keeping the line straight. Harry, James, and Matthew would be in the pit, pulling the saw back down again. They’d work in pairs, only one pair at a time but trading off regularly to keep fresh.

  The men treated the saw–a long band of toothed steel–with all the respect due a poisonous snake. The teeth could bite flesh as easily as wood and nobody wanted to get a bite taken out of them. Tanyth could relate to that.

  Frank took the first turn on top and Harry clambered down into the pit. The log itself was held in a clever arrangement of cross bars and supports that could be moved to allow the saw’s passage. Before he began, Frank took a ball of heavy cord and unrolled it along the length of the log. He rubbed it with a block of chalk and, with Jakey’s help, snapped it along the length of the log leaving a clean white line about an inch in from the side.

  Frank lifted the saw off its supports and lowered the end down into the pit very carefully. “You ready, Harry?”

  Tanyth watched the bending steel straighten and line up as Harry took the handle on his end and Frank kept the tension on top.

  “Ready, Frank.” Harry’s voice sounded muffled.

  “Easy does it then.” Frank placed the saw on the mark where it crossed the end of the log and slowly pulled the handle upward. When he got to the end of his stroke, he paused before Harry started pulling from the other end. Frank kept just enough tension on the handle to keep the steel level and straight. They moved cautiously at first, getting a feel for the saw and the wood and the rhythm of the movement. Within ten strokes, they moved rapidly up and down, the saw ringing almost musically as it rasped through the wood. They sawed steadily for nearly a quarter hour before Frank and Harry traded off to Jakey and Matthew. The sawing continued. Tanyth watched for maybe half an hour more as the pairs traded off after each short shift.

  Amber, Sadie, and Megan came up the path and smiled at Tanyth watching the sawing.

  Amber smiled brightly and nodded at the men. “Good morning, mum. Pretty amazing isn’t it?”

  Tanyth shook her head in amazement. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Sadie took her by the arm and continued up the path to the barn. “Well, come on, mum. They’ll be there for days cuttin’ logs. We got work to do.” She grinned and leaned in close to whisper. “Besides if you’re standin’ there watchin’, Frank’ll be so busy showin’ off he may hurt himself.”

  Amber overheard and her laughter trilled through the woods even over the sound of the whipsaw.

  Megan walked up beside them and tutted Sadie. “You stop being rude.”

  “How do you know I was bein’ rude? You didn’t hear what I said.”

  She sniffed. “Amber only laughs like that when you are and Mother Fairport is blushin’.”

  Sadie and Amber both laughed at that and continued on their way through the barn to the storage area in the back.

  Amber took charge as they entered the workroom. “Alright, we need the worktable set up, a fire laid, and a kettle put
on for tea.” With surprising efficiency, Tanyth found herself lighting the fire while Megan ran a bucket to the pump and Amber and Sadie wrestled some of the horses and planks into place to form a work surface.

  In addition to the food supplies, Frank also brought back bolts of winter weight fabrics and skeins of yarn for knitting, along with spools of heavy thread and three cards of needles. So while the men worked in the saw pit, the women moved into the workroom and set to work outfitting the village in winter clothing. The adults only needed to have their winter gear checked and patched, but each child in the village needed to be outfitted anew for the coming season. In most cases that meant passing the heavy clothes from older child to younger, but need outnumbered the available hand-me-downs and everybody needed something. Tanyth needed something warmer for outer wear and some warmer shifts and leggings. The houses were snug, and the winter snows served to insulate them even more, but the temperatures were frigid and, even inside with the fire going, they were never as warm as a summer day.

  Amber, Sadie, and Megan–having spent so much time helping Tanyth with her recovery–took to having her join their sewing circle with a ready familiarity. When Charlotte and Bethany joined them in the workroom, they treated her with a shy reserve at first, even seeming to be shocked by the lack of propriety shown by the others. Over time, as they became more comfortable, the six women relaxed in each other’s company and got on with the tasks of stitch and hem.

  The days took on a rhythm that was as much driven by the rasp-rasp-rasp of the saw as the passage of the sun through the sky. It became common for the men coming off the saw to walk into the workroom for tea, or just water, and to chat for a few moments before returning to their labors. Even lunch was done in shifts with the work not stopping for food but with the men grabbing bites between their turns at the handles.

  The days grew steadily shorter and the harder frosts pinched off the softer plants. The leaves all turned to festive colors and then fell to the ground, leaving bare branches stark against the sky. Dark green pine, spruce, and hemlock stood out in patches among the drab grays and browns. Migrating birds filled the sky with wings as the Axe Moon gave way to Hunter’s.

  On the new moon that marked the end of the month of the Axe, the work of sawing boards came to an end. William calculated the impressive stack of planks would be enough for their immediate needs. There were still posts and beams that needed shaping but that would be done with the logs that William had felled earlier in the fall. In the meantime, one more task remained before they could begin construction on the inn proper.

  The village was up early in the cold, breath puffing in the chill light of predawn. Frank, Jakey, and William took the empty lorry wagon and headed south to the town of Hendrix Crossing. While they were gone, most of the villagers went up to the hay loft in the barn and began moving the old hay out of the way. Some of it went to chink cracks. Some was tied in bundles and the bundles laid out along the foundations of the more exposed houses. More was spread as mulch over those root crops that were still in the ground. In the end, they cleared the hay loft and opened a large door in the top of the barn to let the cold air blow through to air the place out.

  Tanyth watched the preparation with some trepidation, even as she tended the fire in the workroom with Megan. “What if there’s not enough?”

  Megan shrugged. “It’s a chance for everyone, isn’t it, mum? But the people down in Hendrix have never let us down yet. It was a good year for hay. Not too wet, not too dry. We pay good gold for the feed for our beasts and they have the best fields around.”

  “The idea of buying feed just seems odd.” She sighed. “What do they feed their animals?”

  Megan grinned. “The same as we do. They just have more fields, we have more woods. That first year we traded wood for hay, but when we stopped cutting the trees, we offered them cash instead. They took it, gladly. Good coin is hard to come by out here, and not everything can be bartered for.”

  Tanyth blinked at Megan. “I thought William said we had no coin out here. We kept all the money in town?”

  “He did. Frank brought it back with him from town. Just enough to pay the hay factor in Hendrix.” She shrugged. “And maybe a few extra. It’s how we’ve done it these last few winters and it seems to work out.”

  “I suppose you do what works.”

  She nodded and took a pot of tea and some mugs out to the workers.

  Three days later the lorry wagon was back, piled high with hay held down and protected from the weather by a broad swatch of canvas. It took almost half a day to unload the hay and get it all up into the barn’s loft, even with everybody helping.

  Amber invited Tanyth to dinner that night–a festive meal with Frank, Thomas, Sadie, William and all the children. Thomas had taken several fat geese earlier in the week and most of them were being spit roasted in various of the houses in the village. Amber and Sadie had spent the day cooking together and had built a feast of roasted vegetables, bread, and spitted goose.

  As they settled in for their meal, Amber turned to Frank. “Are you ready to go again?”

  He shook his head with a chuckle. “No, but I guess I better be, eh?” He sighed and worked his shoulders. “At least driving six horses isn’t as hard as pulling a saw.”

  William groaned sympathetically. “That’s true, and tomorrow I’ve got to get the foundation holes dug before the ground freezes.”

  Thomas looked up from a trencher of goose. “You took a chance waitin’ this long, didn’t ya?”

  William shook his head. “Not really. It doesn’t usually freeze until Hunter’s Moon.” He shrugged. “And besides we needed to get the boards cut so we’ll be able to tack the whole thing in place.”

  “True.” Thomas turned to Frank. “You think the placement is right now?”

  “Of the inn?” Frank asked.

  Thomas bobbed his head once.

  “Yeah, I do. Buildin’ it up around the pump, we won’t be draggin’ buckets of water to the inn. Maybe we can put in a horse trough.”

  William snapped his fingers. “I knew there was something I was forgetting.”

  They all looked at him.

  “We need to put an extension on the barn so that we can stable more horses.”

  Sadie looked down the table at William. “Why not just put some stalls in the workroom?”

  Amber looked shocked. “Where will we work?”

  Sadie grinned. “At the inn. I have a feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time there and it’ll be a lot bigger than the workroom is now.”

  Amber seemed startled by the idea but frowned in concentration as she considered it. “Of course.”

  William smiled at Sadie. “That’s a good idea. I should have thought of that.”

  Amber patted his arm. “That’s ok, dear. We keep you around for your looks and your strong back, not your keen mind.” She gathered Sadie and Tanyth in with her eyes. “We’ll do the heavy thinkin’. You boys just do the heavy liftin’.”

  They all laughed and William raised his mug in toast. “To my friends with good looks and strong backs, and the lovely women who let us stay around.”

  Everybody laughed and clinked mugs.

  They filled up on the rich meat and hot bread. Eventually the little ones crawled off to their corner to huddle in a pile under the covers, leaving the adults to graze among the leftovers. As the conversation started flagging, Tanyth turned to William. “Did the sawing help or hurt your shoulder?”

  He grinned and put a hand to his wounded shoulder. “The first day it hurt a lot. The second day, the rest of me hurt so much I didn’t notice. By the fourth day, I was getting’ used to it again.” He jerked his head at Frank. “There’s the man who was sore.”

  Frank hung his head. “I got a bit overextended, but I worked through it.”

  Tanyth shook her head. “I should have thought. Mother Alderton left some liniments that would have helped sore muscles.”

  Sadie giggled. “You should
a said somethin’, Frank. I bet Mother Fairport woulda been happy to rub your sore shoulders for you.” She winked at Tanyth and Amber laughed.

  Tanyth blushed and she thought Frank did, too, but she was too embarrassed to look.

  Thomas changed the subject. “How we fixed for firewood, William? You haven’t had a chance to cut any for a while.”

  Out of respect for Mother Fairport he tried to follow Thomas’s lead. “We’ve enough for the time bein’, I think. When we get the inn going so we can leave Ethan overseein’ the build, I’ll be able to go out again. There’s still a month’s supply in the barn and I think all the huts have full woodboxes.”

  Sadie mumbled something about Mother Fairport’s woodbox needing fillin’ that didn’t carry all the way to the head of the table but had Amber choking on her tea and left Thomas and William looking confused. Frank, for his part, just sighed and muttered. “Kids.”

  Tanyth braved a glance in his direction and thought she saw a small smile on his face, but he kept it hidden behind his teacup until the general jocularity petered out.

  As the laughter faded, the party broke up and Tanyth returned to her hut while Frank headed for the barn to check on the horses. Thomas and Sadie were walking arm in arm toward their house and Sadie was talking earnestly to Thomas. She couldn’t hear the conversation, only the tone. About half way home, she heard Thomas bark a single laugh before it was loudly shushed and she groaned. “Now everybody is gonna know about my woodbox.”

  She sighed and let herself into the house, latching the door closed against the cold. She debated stirring the fire up, but decided to leave it banked until the morning, and changed quickly into a night shift before crawling into her bed roll. It was desperately cold and she shivered for a few moments before her body heat began to drive out the chill. She rolled over onto her belt knife and gasped at the feel of the hard metal pressing into her side. She reached down and slipped it to a more comfortable position. She felt a little silly keeping up her habit of the road, but she shrugged it off and within a few minutes her body heat created a pocket of warmth between the heavy layers of covers on top and the sweet grass ticking and woolen cot liner beneath her. She forgot about the knife and drifted off to sleep.