Joan pushed her way out of the kitchen’s noisy heat and smoke and back into the crowded alleys. Horses and riders passed. She felt the thump of the hooves through the ground, but could not hear them above the bell’s clangor from above.
“Joan!”
The voice was lost in the din of the bell, and at first she didn’t heed where it came from, but when it yelled again, more irritably, she looked up and saw a man glaring down on her from horseback. A helmet shadowed his face, and the guard partly hid it, so she recognized the horse before she knew her father.
“Joan, bid thine aunt gan to Yonstones. Dost hear? Yonstones.”
“Aye, Father.”
“Give them word of this, and ask their help. Understand?”
“I understand, Father.”
“God keep thee and thine aunt.” He kneed his horse forward, clattering over the cobbles toward the gate.
“God keep you, Father!” she called after him, but couldn’t hear her own voice above the din. She most fervently meant her prayer. While not feeling much fondness for her father, she couldn’t begin to think what life would be without him to rule the tower.
The ride left and the crowd thinned as each man and woman hurried back to their work. Joan climbed the tower’s steps, slowly this time, in no hurry to return to her aunt.
Mistress Crosar
Mistress Crosar wished the men on the roof would consider the alarm given and stop ringing the bell. The din gave her a head pain. Thankfully, most of her orders could be given by merely pointing. The maids knew that changes of linen had to be packed into the saddlebags—and the older men who would be remaining at the tower knew that the valuable linens, pewter dishes, cups, glassware, and silver candlesticks had to be carried to the tower’s stronghold: a small stone outbuilding with an iron door.
A movement beside her made her look around. Joan stood there, eyes lowered and hands folded before her, waiting to be bidden to speak.
“Well?” Mistress Crosar demanded. “I can’t hear you—speak up!”
“The cook!” Joan yelled. “Says they’re”—the bell stopped suddenly—“already at it!” The servants looked around, startled by her shout. “The cook says, Aunt,” Joan continued quietly, “that he kens there’s a ride and he’s making ready.”
“Good.”
“And, Aunt? My father bid me tell you that we mun gan to Yonstones. To take them word and ask for help.”
The Yonstones!
Mistress Crosar straightened and stood quite still, staring unseeingly before her. In her mind, she saw an intricate web of friendship and enmity, alliances, betrayals, marriages, and revenges. Shining and gleaming at the center was her own family, the Grannams.
Almost as large, but darker and uglier, was the sprawling mess of the Sterkarms, against whom they always had to be on guard. There were other families, some close to the Sterkarms, and linking to them. These families had few links to the Grannams, and those that existed were strained and frail. Other families were almost as opposed to the devils as the Grannams themselves, and their links to the Grannams were many and strong.
Where did the Yonstones fit? Ah, she had them. They were a good family, with land and cattle. They were linked to the Grannams by a marriage—not an important marriage, but it would count for something. And hadn’t they lost cattle to the Sterkarms? Of course they had—who hadn’t lost cattle and, indeed, lives, to that spawning of vipers?
She started from her trance, saying, “We shall need horses—and peats brought in, and—” Halfway to the door, she stopped, turned, and looked at Joan. “They have an unwed son, Yonstones. He would do very well for a first … Don’t stand there, lass! Help, maids!” And Mistress Crosar hurried from the room and down the tower stairs.
6
16th-Side A:
The Sterkarm Shieling
Andrea • Per May • Toorkild
In the shifting firelight of a burning pine knot, Yanet raised her arm and pointed at the person who had killed Isobel.
Toorkild, his clothes smeared with his wife’s blood, looked from Yanet to Per. He could not understand.
Gobby shouted at Yanet, “What be wrong with thee, woman?”
A fair-haired girl with large blue eyes moved to stand protectively beside Yanet. Joe Sterkarm joined them, setting his hands on the girl’s shoulders.
Yanet, resenting Gobby’s tone, put her hands on her hips. Then she turned and beckoned forward two boys. They came fearfully to her side. “Tell Laird what you saw,” she said.
The boys were terrified. One looked at Toorkild, started to cry and turned away.
Yanet said, “Telling will get no easier with waiting.”
The other boy threw out his arm to point at Per, and shouted, “He did it! He rode with Elven and shot his mammy!”
As soon as Toorkild had raised himself from his wife’s body, Per had pulled away from Andrea and almost lain down beside the corpse. He put his face close to the bloodied mess of his mother’s and turned his head sideways on his mother’s chest, listening for the slightest heartbeat, the faintest breath. So intent was he that Andrea wasn’t sure he’d heard what the boy had said or knew of the accusation made against him.
Toorkild shouted, “Art saying my laddie shot his own mammy?”
Some of Per’s men laughed aloud at the idea. Others stared at the people around them, faces blank as if they’d heard a foreign language. No one spoke. Quiet sounds were heard from a distance—the stream running over rocks nearby, a gust of breeze through a tree’s leaves. The boy who’d made the accusation took fright and hid behind Yanet.
A movement from the corner of her eye made Andrea glance around, to see Sweet Milk take up position above Per, his arms folded. Per’s men, Ecky, Sim, and others, gathered behind him. Sweet Milk said, “Per’s shot nobody.”
“Still less his mammy!” Ecky said.
Andrea said, to Toorkild, to Gobby, “This be what I told you. There be other Sterkarms in this world—who look like you—who came with Elven.”
Their faces were angry, bewildered, lost.
“It was other Per,” she said. “Elvish Per. Changeling Per.” She held out her hand to the boy who peered from behind Yanet. “Be no scared. Tell us every thing tha saw.”
Scared and miserable, the boy told his story: of how he’d seen the Elves in their Elf-Carts and how there had been mounted men riding with them. He looked around for his friends, and the bolder ones crept forward and confirmed his story. Aye, mounted men, and they’d known them as men from their own tower—Sweet Milk and Ecky, Sim, and Per.
Hoots of contempt and protest came from the accused men—but Per still knelt beside his mother, trying to find any sign of life in her.
Sweet Milk stooped and pulled him to his feet. Per’s face, in the firelight, now bright, now shadowed, was bewildered. Dark blotches on his face and hands were his mother’s blood. Sweet Milk glowered as he stood behind him, and the other men of his band closed around them.
“We ride with no Elven!” Sim said.
“We left tower this morn,” Ecky said, “when we heard word of Elven. We’ve no been nigh it since!”
Andrea held up her hands for silence. “Let boys tell us. Be so kind.”
The boys were now more frightened than ever. Men they admired, even loved, were angry with them. “Be so good, tell us,” Andrea coaxed. “We mun ken.”
Interrupting one another, stumbling, passing the tale from one to another, the boys recounted how they’d run back to the tower, where Isobel had been overseeing the flit into the hills. She hadn’t believed their tale so they’d taken her by sheep paths to a high point where she could look down and see for herself the approaching Elf-Carts and the men riding with them. She’d known Per straight away, and had taken a rowan branch and run down by herself to speak to him.
“B
y herself!” Toorkild said. “And you let her!”
The boys quailed.
“Toorkild,” Andrea said, “how could they stop Isobel?” Not only had Isobel been their mistress, but every one there knew her to have been a woman of implacable determination. Toorkild even chuckled at the thought of the boys stopping her, and then broke off and abruptly turned away from them.
“We pulled her back,” one of the boys said, “but she would gan! She went up to Per—to—” He flinched, almost ducking away from Per. “To Per with Elven and—”
“Tried to touch him with branch,” said another.
“Tried to break spell.”
“And he pulled his pistol and shot her.”
“They left her where she fell. They rode past, and carts went past.”
“Left her lying.”
The deep silence of the high moors fell, with not a breath of wind or a bird’s call to break it. They stood in their small circle of firelight, encircled by darkness, and looked down on Isobel’s body with its ruined face. A few hours before, she had been alive and beautiful.
Per still hadn’t spoken. Andrea peered at him anxiously. His expression suggested that he was alone and wondering vaguely what to do next.
Yanet stooped and threw a corner of the blanket over Isobel’s smashed face. Straightening, she said, “Lads came and found me, told me … I got people away, into hills … When dark fell, me and old Anders, we went with lads and found her. Before crows and foxes could have her.”
“Thanks,” Per said. Finding his voice gone, he swallowed. “Thanks shall you have.”
“It was no more than she would have done for me. But that be why it’s took us a whiley to get here.”
“I never kenned,” Toorkild said, shaking his head. “All time I was thinking, why takes she so long? I never kenned.”
Gobby said, “And what of Tower?”
“They brought it down,” Yanet said.
A shocked cry broke from the crowd. The tower was their home, their protection, their symbol of themselves. They were the people of Toorkild’s tower.
Toorkild and Per looked at Isobel’s sprawled body. Andrea saw Per reach out and take his father’s hand. Gobby said, “The peats—”
Smoldering peats packed into the tower were supposed to make enemies wary of carrying gunpowder inside. It was easier to replace beams and timbers damaged by the peats than it was to rebuild a tower.
“They blew in doors,” Yanet said. “They had no barrels, no gunpowder. But in doors went. And down tower fell.”
“They be Elven,” Andrea said, thinking of plastic explosives. A few pounds of the stuff in the right place would do more damage than several barrels of gunpowder.
“If these Changelings ken our ways, as you tell us,” Gobby said, “we be too nigh tower. We mun gan further into hills.”
“Isobel!” Toorkild said.
Gobby put his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Bury her here, quickly, or carry her with us—but gan we mun, Toorkild, and no bide here to be found.”
Per cleared his throat. “Wait for first light?”
It seemed Gobby was taking charge. He considered, briefly, then shook his head. “That will be their thought. Nay; we gan now.”
Per pressed against his father’s other side. “Take Mammy. No leave her here for them to find her grave.”
Toorkild nodded.
Gobby said, “I’ll take men and find Elven.”
The Sterkarms, as Andrea knew all too well, were capable of arguing for days, even years, over petty matters; but when they thought a situation urgent, they agreed and acted in three blinks of an eye. Formal orders were hardly needed. They all knew the paths through the hills and the meeting places. The women knew what they needed to take and what they could carry.
The armed men formed into their bands, dark figures flitting past fires. Tired horses stamped and snuffled as they were saddled, and then the men mounted and rode off, each of their lances resting on the toe of one boot, quickly vanishing into darkness except for the sounds of hooves. Riding by night was nothing new to them or their mounts.
Per stayed long enough to see his mother’s body rolled in blankets and tied across a pack pony, and then came running to Andrea. Bloodstained as he was, he hugged her tight and hard, kissing her ear, her mouth, her neck, while squeezing her until she thought her ribs would crack.
She hugged him just as hard, wishing she could hold him fast and keep him there with her. She’d thought—they’d both thought—that they would spend that night together—but now, who knew when she’d see him again?
“Gan with women,” he said. “They’ll look after thee.” He pulled back from her, but still held her. “I’ll see thee when I can.”
Andrea’s throat was tight. She couldn’t speak, or think of anything to say, but only nodded. His face was not only smeared with blood, but with tears, and she ached for him. She wanted to hide him somewhere, keep him safe. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but why bother with such ridiculous words? The chance of his being hurt or even killed was as real as the hard ground under her feet, making anything she could say a waste of breath.
He backed away, pulling free of her arms—then lunged forward, kissed her again, turned, and ran to join his men.
She turned away sharply, not wanting to see him ride away. It felt as if his very body were being torn out of her heart. Around her, people who all loved someone were getting on with things. She screwed her eyes shut to keep back tears and looked about for something to be getting on with herself.
Nearby, a party of women were packing and Andrea joined them, helping a woman to lift a basket of peats and fasten it to a pony’s back. The women eyed her warily, knowing her to be the Elf-May, but they needed her extra pair of hands.
When the ponies, women, and children were all loaded until Andrea thought their knees would surely buckle, they moved away from the shieling into the darkness. Behind them, a few bits of peat glowed red to mark where their campfires had been.
Andrea’s eyes adjusted to the dark, and she saw the masses of hills, trees, and bushes outlined against a lighter blue sky, where the moon silvered the clouds. Thickets of prickly gorse grew on either side of their path, their heavy scent always a reminder of coconut—a comparison the Sterkarms could never make, since they’d never seen or smelled coconut and never would.
Footmen armed with spears and clubs walked with the women, and Andrea jumped when a man’s voice, close behind her, said, in English, “Fancied a nice walk, didja?”
It was Joe. Andrea smiled at him, glad of the chance to talk, even though her heart still ached after Per. “I daresay I shall have had more than enough of walking before we get wherever we’re going.”
He gave a grunting laugh. “We’ll soon get you fit again.” He turned silent, perhaps thinking of other things that might happen, besides healthful walks through the hills.
“Isobel,” he said. “Nice lady. Shame. Per’s knocked sideways. Got to be.”
They tramped on in silence.
“Are you happy, Joe?” Andrea asked at last. It was something she badly needed to know, because she couldn’t see how this adventure was going to end with a return trip through the Tube. Like Joe, she was here for the rest of her life now.
Joe gave his snorting laugh again. “You saw my lady.”
“The blonde.”
“Aye. Kaitlin. She’s Yanet’s daughter. She’s got a little boy.”
“Yours?” Andrea asked.
Joe laughed breathily in the darkness. “No! Hers. Had him when she was just a kid herself.”
“But she’s with you now?”
“Me and her, aye,” Joe said proudly.
“She’s lovely.”
“I’m a lucky man. And I’m fond of the little lad, mind. Per, his name is. We call him Kaitlin’s Pe
r, or Wee Peerie. A little terror, him.”
Per was a common name among the Sterkarms, so it probably meant nothing, but Andrea wondered if Per had fathered the little boy. She knew he’d fathered more than one child at the tower. “So you’re happy?”
“Happier than I’ve ever been.”
She looked at him, but could see only his shape. “Really? I mean, honestly?”
She saw his head turn to her, and saw him nod.
She remembered how she’d warned him about accepting Per’s offer of land 16th side. “Even though you’re cold and wet most of the time, and sleep on the ground and get no proper medical care and—”
Grinning, he replied as he had before. “What? You mean like my life was in Elf-Land?” He shook his head. “There are things I miss, yea … When it’s cold and wet here—and it always bloody seems to be— you can’t duck into a cinema or a library. You never get a hot bath. The work’s bloody hard, and the food’s mostly God-awful. But you get used to it. And you learn ways. I’m the local GP, you know.”
She laughed. “Not the wee white pills!” The Sterkarms had always been very keen on aspirin.
“No—though if you’ve got some?” He was disappointed when she shook her head. “Oh, well … I know the basics—boil water, keep wounds clean. If you’re going to dig for a splinter with a knife, boil the knife. I know things like, if a kid’s got the runs, give it plenty of fluids—boiled water—or small beer—and salt. Sugar’s too expensive. Can’t get it.” He looked at her inquiringly.
She almost laughed. “No, Joe, sorry, no sugar, either. I left in a hurry. …” Her voice tailed off as she realized just how much of a hurry. So intent had she been on warning “her” Sterkarms and spiting Windsor … Well, there hadn’t been any time to plan or prepare.
“Act in haste, repent at leisure,” her mother had been fond of saying, and she feared she was going to learn the truth of that saying very thoroughly. There was no way back for her. She would vanish from her 21st-century life. … How long would her partner or her parents wait for some kind of contact before they realized she was gone?
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 6