‘No!’
Diido saw soldiers in her eyes.
Where the road came down to the camp were stood villagers, a big clump of them.
‘They’ve got children with them, so it’s not fighting,’ said someone.
Diido thought how silly they looked, standing so close together that their legs and bodies looked like one, their arms waving about like seaweed or branches. The waving produced a dead chicken. Then a shrill, boy’s voice called out, and the body broke into separate people. Diido saw him, pale and puddingy and ugly, pointing at her.
Her. She did it. No one had any trouble now, understanding what he was saying.
One of the men from the camp pushed her back. ‘Out of sight, you,’ he said. Diido fled for the humpy.
‘What you done?’ Selena took Diido’s bed-roll and gave her a cloth. ‘Put all the food in that.’ Something in Selena’s voice made Diido obey at once.
‘Girl, what you done?’ she said again, when Diido had wrapped the food up. The princess-among-weavers took Dildo’s hand and turned her. ‘Now get. Hide out in the forest on the other side of the village. We’ll fetch you later, when it’s calmed down.’ She whacked Diido about the legs with her stick. ‘Get, I told you.’
Diido got, taking off across the camp.
‘Yah!’ Diido snapped her fingers. She’d evaded the mob, and was well-hid in the double darkness of the pine forest, and the night. ‘All without seeing me.’ She always had so many words in her that they had to come out, whether or not there was anyone to listen to them.
She didn’t unroll her blanket, but lay with it bunched under her head, eyes wide open, staring at the stars that crawled past the still branches.
Like an arrow the thought slammed into her head, agonising: They will not come for me. Unblinking, she watched the sky. ‘I wouldn’t come for me, neither.’
Why would they? Gaida was not really her sister, Giitan most certainly not her brother – they had taken Diido up after the soldiers, all of them walking from the fighting. Taken her up? In fact she had clung, like a limpet. And if protection was offered – and Giitan had offered it – well, better to give willingly, Diido had reasoned, than to be forced.
And Selena? Come for her, with her stick and her club foot and no help from Diido? No, no. They would not come.
Diido sang a little under her breath, sang of the City, and the great river that ran through it, the song called ‘The Lament of the Pearl Diver’, and knew that at first light she would start the long walk back home.
GOING SOUTH
Da was divvying up the day’s work, something he had done ever since Ban could remember. Ban sidled towards the door, and out.
‘Where do you go?’ Ardow had followed him.
Ban shrugged. ‘Are you my Lord or my brother, always asking where I am going and what I am doing.’
‘That war!’ Ardow threw the words out with such an unaccustomed bitterness that Ban was halted in his tracks. ‘As sure as if you did go yourself, it’s ruined you.’
Ban could only goggle at him in astonishment.
‘Look at you, not a word to say. Before Cam Attling came back you were a part of us, worked with us, and for us. You—’
He did not say, waste time. Roaming the unkept parts of the forest with no other purpose than to outwalk your own thinking, that is surely a waste of time. He did not say, run rather than come face-to-face with any of the villagers, people you’ve known all your life, no wondering they think you soft in the mind. He did not say, don’t fit. But Ban knew all this without hearing it. Thought about it, as he wandered aimless about the fringes of the village.
Then something distracted him. In one of the fields, Farrow Gorlance was dancing. No, not dancing . . . dodging. Ban crept closer. A girl, an Uplander girl, was tucked in a little copse of poplars, throwing stones, and each savage missile was making Farrow Gorlance dance. It was too good a sight to miss. Ban crouched on his heels to watch.
Stumbling and blubbering, Farrow eventually fled uphill towards the road, looking back over his shoulder again and again. At what showed in his face, Ban could not keep from laughing aloud. The girl had slipped out of sight, appearing on the far side of the trees to walk up the lane, easy in her manner as Mistress Fenister strolling about her garden. Ban followed her, silent as her shadow, and better hid.
She dawdled along the Ridge Road; Ban skulked in the trees. She killed Mistress Gost’s prize hen; Ban watched. She ran then, and Ban hesitated, turned back. Where the lane led down to the paddock he paused and looked down again, grinning as he thought of Farrow.
He went home, past the shrine, though the way was further. The shrine was surrounded by Fenister land, but owned by itself and the village. The narrow path to it, through Fenister land, was the shrine’s too. Every time anyone walked there they said how it must hurt Fat Fenister, that he could not tax them for walking it, though most of them only came near on Shrine Days, out of fear of the ghosts that lived there.
‘Ghosts!’ Cam used to say. ‘It’s just old Money Bags, spreading stories to keep those that do have a right to the place out of it.’
Ban never walked it without a happy feeling of taking something of his own back from Fat Master Fenister.
Today, under the gloom of the trees at the altar, a white shade was wafting about. Ban screamed aloud.
‘Oh!’ cried Mistress Ankerton, scrunching her skirt in her fists.
And for a startled moment they stared at each other.
‘Mistress! I did think you was a ghost!’
‘Ghost!’ She was bruised about the face, for all she pulled her scarf very low. She had lost the babe she had been carrying after the last beating Abenestor had given her. It may be she was here to pray for it, but she bustled past him, busy as ten people, shoes click-clacking on the stony track.
‘Mistress Ankerton!’ Ban listened to himself as if to a stranger. ‘I do know a place . . . if you do not wish to, you know—’ He gestured towards the village.
Mistress Ankerton had stopped in the track, and just stood there, her back to Ban, seeming much occupied with smoothing her skirt.
‘While you do think on what to do.’
She turned, keeping her eyes down, as Ban himself did. Do I look like that? he wondered. Cringing and hammered by life?
‘I’ve been thinking about it all the years of my marriage,’ she said, and Ban realised how rarely he had heard her speak. ‘South.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m going south.’
‘I . . . I will say nothing.’
‘I know. You’re a good lad, Ban.’
He laughed. ‘Do you tell my brothers that!’
‘You did ought to leave, too. Go south, or north or east or west, it doesn’t matter. Shake them off, and all that they load you with, your brothers, the village.’
Ban laughed again, in discomfort this time. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Aye. I daresay not. Think on it, though.’ And she walked on, south.
Ban stood motionless, until he could no longer hear the sound of her steps. Apstead lay to the south, and there were Mattows in Apstead. Before her marriage to Abenestor, she had been Ellaner Mattow.
‘Ghosts!’ It did seem that Cam had been right. Ban was glad only Ellaner had heard him scream.
Ardow came out to lean on the doorjamb and swing the door so that the lamplight from the cot came and went in the goat shed, came and went. ‘Strange times, indeed. To see you working. Thought you’d forgot how.’
‘Give it over,’ said Ban, who was milking the nannies.
Ardow left the door pushed wide. ‘Did you hear?’
‘Hear what?’
‘Old Da Mattow took a whip to Abenestor Ankerton! And Ellaner gone.’ Ardow put on Mam’s voice. ‘With naught but the clothes she does stand in, and no one knowing where.’
‘Unh?’ Ban shook his head. ‘Huh! That so.’ He had never in his life strayed so far from honesty, and it was an unsettling feeling.
‘That would be a si
ght, Old Mattow trouncing that bully Abe Ankerton!’ Ardow had a tussle with his shadow ‘Should have done it long since.’
‘I did see something funny today.’ Ban never paused in his steady pulling at the nanny’s teats, and the milk sploosh-splooshed into the bucket. ‘Farrow Gorlance dancing.’ And he told Ardow. Told him all but who threw the stones. ‘Didn’t see who it was,’ he said. Another lie.
Ardow leaned on the wall, laughing. Laughing still, he slid down it and sat on the muck on the floor. His laughter was like an infection, and Ban caught it, but under the laughter he turned Ellaner Ankerton’s words about in his mind. What did she mean, go south?
The next morning Ban went to roam the woods, but his own misery was a duller pursuit than he usually found it. He browsed with the goats, gathering early greens and edibles. In the warm noon sun he tickled some trout from the stream, hanging them upon a stick for ease of carrying. Interest. He had forgotten how it felt.
He was meandering towards home with the goats when he became aware of someone standing in the road. Ban started to walk wide around him.
‘No you don’t.’ It was Acton Mansto, blocking his way, sidestepping with Ban, like a reflection. ‘Could you . . . that is . . . could you give this to Old Mattow, for Mistress Ankerton? For a past kindness. If I went, I’d have to talk to the old man, tell him why . . . and I’d rather just leave it.’
He held out a satchel, and obediently Ban took it. The strangeness of the day before seemed to have carried over to this one.
‘I . . . I watch out for her, because she did once watch out for me. I do thank you.’ Acton turned and walked on down the track, not once looking back.
When he was out of sight, Ban opened the satchel. Dried fruit, dried meat, waybread, and a flask. Ban’s heart felt as if a great hand fisted about it and squeezed, for he knew that flask and he knew when Cam had given it away. Ban closed the satchel.
Cutting through the forest, he left the satchel on Old Mattow’s doorstep, but even as he turned to go he picked it up again, then slipped back into the trees to gather up the goats.
What did she mean? he thought, walking home. The answer was there, but he shied from it.
‘What’s this?’ said Mam, when he put the fish and greens on the table.
‘Food.’ Ban took a crisp green stalk and ate it.
That evening, he and Ardow went into the village proper and found it like a carnival day gone wrong.
The women were standing in their doorways, arms folded, bellowing their opinions to each other across the street. Master Sanderlin was sat in a chair by the door of his shop, and the bench outside the tavern was already full.
The village had been invaded by an Uplander witch, they were told, who had put a spell on Mam Gost’s prize hen and killed it.
Mistress Keystone stood up on her stoop and bawled, ‘I did hear it was a stone killed that bird. Was it good in the pot?’
Gosts and Keystones did not always like one another so well.
Finn called from the tavern, ‘We want to find her, this witch, for word is she did steal Ellaner Ankerton away.’
‘More like Abe did do for her and bury her in the garden!’ someone called back.
Ban opened his mouth, closed it.
‘Uplanders they might be, but that does not make them witches,’ said Da Gost. His wife’s look was hard as a slap. ‘Well . . . do you breed yourself another hen. You do have a yard full of them. Aye well, I’m only saying what some are thinking.’
There was more, until at the end of it the witch was guilty of: abducting Ellaner Ankerton, causing the dry winter and the poor harvest following, the low birthrate among Corban Farmer’s sheep (Corban Farmer was not there), and the war.
Ardow looked at Ban. Ban looked away.
A mob of young men caught up with Ban and Ardow on the track back home, looking ready as for battle. Grove Gorlance had a stick and Finn Pacenot his crop.
‘There’s to be a hunt,’ said Grove.
The Gorlances were a family gone rotten. First Mam Gorlance, then Layne, and finally Da Gorlance had died, and though there were aunts and uncles enough, it was left to the two younger sons to finish raising themselves, a job they did poorly.
Ardow laughed. ‘A hunt? For what?’
‘The Uplander witch! We do live in danger until she is caught.’ Grove looked straight at Ban. ‘None can track like you. Will you help save the village?’
‘She’s but a maid,’ said Ban.
No one answered that. They were organising where and when to meet for their hunt, talking among themselves, and over Ban.
Ban thought of the maid stoning Farrow Gorlance. Of Cam’s words: They look different, don’t they, hut his eyes showed the same, I mean, a person, just a person. Like me.
There was a hierarchy among the villagers and Coverlasts were bottom of it. If Gorlances, low as they had fallen, asked (ordered), then Coverlasts did. Ban drew Grove’s face in the dirt with his toe, ground the ball of his foot into the image. No one noticed. First Ellaner, and now the Uplander maid – and he to keep the village from both of them.
The sun was well up, and Ban and Ardow kicking their heels, waiting at the meeting place, before Grove sauntered up the path, with Finn, Davin Mansor and all the rest in tow
‘Let’s hunt.’ Grove made a rough grab at Ban, which he ducked.
‘You do scuff up the spoor – the footprints.’ He lay on the ground and sideheaded the traces of tracks. Not that he needed to, not with Da’s voice sounding in his head, clear as it had when he’d learned the skill as a small boy.
‘Well?’ Da was crouched on one knee. Ban crouched beside him, same knee to the ground, arm across his other thigh as Da had his.
‘Fox or cat?’ said Da.
Ban lay on his side and looked into the light. ‘I can see it, Da.’
Da said nothing. He was waiting for Ban to see more. Ban stared, hut he could not measure the length of the track or the stride from looking at it like Da could. He took his stick and used that. ‘None so big. I do think a . . .’
‘Is it round or round-stretched-out-like?’
‘Not round.’ Ban held his fingers in an oval. ‘Fox!’
‘Look here.’ Da was pointing. ‘It’s a female, for the front print there is to the outside. Males it’s to the inside. You can tell if they’re old or young. Their mood, if they’re grazing or running for their lives.’
The short, wide stamp of Ellaner Ankerton’s shoes was clear as print on the path, heading south. Ardow booted him in the backside. The kick said, You’re playing them up.
Ban sat up. ‘I don’t think—’
‘We do not ask you to think,’ said Finn.
Ardow said, ‘You want Coverlasts to do this, you show some respect.’
‘Well then!’ That was Davin Mansor. He was none so bad, really; probably only here to impress Graine Keystone. They stomped off. Ban lagged. Let them get ahead and mess with the tracks.
Ban steered them off to the north, said quietly to Ardow, ‘I did hear that Mistress Ankerton took herself south to Apstead.’
Ardow’s eyes widened and his face said clear as words, What else did you hear?
They both saw the other track. Female again, but long and narrow, where Ellaner’s was short and wide.
Ban looked away, not to draw attention to it.
‘Looks like a woman’s, but long as mine.’ Ardow propped his elbow on Ban’s shoulder, so that he could lean close enough to whisper, unnoticed. ‘What else are you hiding, Ban?’
The left foot was longer than the right. She walked on the outer edges of her feet, which were long, thin and nearly flat, toes spread wide. Never worn shoes, Ban read in that.
Grove butted in, butted his big shoulders between them, and his big voice. ‘Do your job, little woodlouse.’ He cuffed the back of Ban’s head, harder than was friendly, and anyway, Ban had a year on him in age.
Something in Ban began to baulk. Slower and slower he walked, not looking at th
e trail. Finn was beheading bracken ferns with his whip, and every time Ban looked back, Grove held up his fist and smiled.
Ban stopped. ‘You do want this witch, so-called, then find her yourselves.’ He’d thought his voice would fail him, but it did not. He’d thought his words would start an argument, but Grove just rolled his eyes and one of the mob said, ‘Do you just get on with it, Coverlast.’
Ban looked down, made stabs at the dirt with his feet to hide what trace there was of the Uplander girl. ‘Look at you, come out with whips and sticks for a maid.’ He shoved his way through them, Ardow at his back, and his face fire-hot, but no one, not even Grove, tried to stop him.
‘Little brother!’ said Ardow, when they were clear of them. He clasped Ban’s shoulder.
That evening, Ardow came out to the milking shed again, just stood there watching. ‘I’m glad what I said about the war did mean something to you.’
Ban had not forgotten it, but had put it away. ‘It did, but not what you think.’
‘I’m proud of you, standing up to Gorlance like that. I told them.’
‘Mam and Da and all?’
Ardow nodded.
‘Did not think I had it in me, did you?’ Ban said it lightly, but he was angry, suddenly angry.
Ardow only laughed, and Ban’s rage went as quickly as it had come. ‘Let’s go to the village and see what the news is.’
They went, all eleven of them together. For the first time Ban could remember, Da Gost nodded to him. Ban thought it was because Dance was with him, but Master Gost said, ‘Glad someone stood up to that bully Gorlance.’
When they went into the tavern he was served in turn, not having to wait on the tap-maid’s whim. He sat on the bench out the front of the tavern, beer pot in his hand. The evening air had a softness to it – the trees would be in full leaf soon.
‘I’m still the same person I was before you spoke to me,’ he told Ardow. ‘I’m the same as I was before I did talk Gorlance down. Yet everyone sees me differently.’
Bloodflower Page 11