Mechanically, her mouth finished what she’d been saying to Joe. “I haven’t got anything useful, I’m afraid.”
He gave a grunt of amusement. “You’ve got Per. That counts for a lot here.”
She trudged on beside him, wondering if it did. And even if it did, what happened when Per became bored with her? 21st side, she could have walked away, found herself a job, lived her own life. That wouldn’t be easy here. It wasn’t simply a case of her being a woman—plenty of women 16th side earned their own livings as hen wives, ale wives, small farmers. But they were all allied to one riding family or another—they were Sterkarms, or Allyotts, or Beales … You couldn’t be “loose” as they termed it, or without family.
She said, “Joe, if you could go back through the Tube, would you?”
“Nah,” he said instantly and emphatically. “Leave Kaitlin and Wee Peerie? For what? Television? Game shows? Coke? Not a chance!” A pause while he trudged a few steps. “Wish I could let my sister know I was all right. … But that’s all.”
Will I think like that a year from now? Andrea wondered. A blackberry cane seized her skirt and tugged at her. She took the chance of a brief rest while she groped in the dark, and was painfully spiked by sharp thorns. She’d run back to the comfort and familiarity of the 21st before, back to her family and hot showers, police forces and law. And when she had, she’d missed Per desperately. … Even when she’d settled into a cozy sort of humdrum relationship with Mick, she’d missed Per. …
She dragged her skirt fiercely from the hold of the thorns and walked on, faster, despite the load she carried. One way or another—for better or worse—the choice had been made for her. Her life, whatever her fears and regrets, was 16th side now.
7
16th-Side A:
Wild Country
The Changeling Sterkarms
The noise of the wind stopped as they descended from the moors into this small valley. Their horses’ hoofs clopped gently on hard earth or softly onto grass; their saddles creaked as they moved. A man coughed, the stream rippled—but otherwise, the hills cupped a deep, soft silence.
Below, in a hollow beside the stream, was a hut of sticks and turf, with other small hummocks of outbuildings around it. No smoke came from its thatch.
They had guessed the little croft would be here. It existed in their own world, too, in Grannam country. There was nothing much to the place. A small field, scraped from the moor, growing carrots, peas, and beans. Another small field of oats, close to harvesting. That meant the croft’s meal kists would be empty.
There were no people or animals to be seen. Per guessed that the people had driven off the few animals—a pig and a cow or goat—in an attempt to save them. In their own world, they’d ridden past the place that was the image of this, because it had so little worth taking and the crofters were unlikely to threaten them. But Patterson’s orders had been to destroy everything—all fields, all homes.
Per reined in and dismounted to ease his back and hips while his men rode on, passing him. Tired, he rested his head on Fowl’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Sweet Milk reined in beside him and Cuddy started sniffing the undergrowth fringeing the track.
Since they’d left Patterson the day before and struck out to follow his orders, they’d ridden a long way, heading for Grannam country. That night, they’d halted in the hills, near a small river where the water lightened the darkness. They’d rubbed the horses down, watered them, and fed them oats from their saddlebags.
Despite the long ride, Per had lain awake, listening to the horses gently treading and grazing beside the stream’s running water. When he knew that sleep would never come, he’d risen and taken over the watch, to sit through the night’s chill and watch the hills, the trees, the stones come out of the darkness as light grew. At least open eyes made it harder to see the image that his mind presented to him over and over again: the lead ball smashing his mother’s face.
He put his hand over his eyes and told himself again that it could not have been his mother. He had come through the Elf-Gate; he was in Elf-Land. So it could not have been his mother. It had been an Elf, an enemy glamoured. So he had stiffened his arm and pulled the trigger—and the unreliable, untrustworthy pistol had done its job this time. He’d seen his mother’s face destroyed and her body thump to the ground.
Above him, Sweet Milk cleared his throat. Per raised his head from Fowl’s warm side and looked about. He saw that Sweet Milk studied the little huddle of low turf buildings.
Per had visited Elf-Land and had told Sweet Milk of the grand buildings of brick and stone that he’d seen on every side there. Even the poor folk’s houses had been of brick, with glass in the windows and doors on the ground floor. The roads there had been of hard stone, not the track of earth and grass they trod here. “Be that an Elvish palace?”
Sweet Milk shrugged and dismounted himself. Ahead, the other men reined in, waiting for them. Their heads moved constantly, watching the country and the skylines.
Per and Sweet Milk led their horses to join them. Per saw his men’s uneasiness in the way they sat in their saddles or hunched their shoulders. Like him, they were full of the restless bee buzzing in the head and limbs that came of being always on watch, always ready to fight or run. Action of any kind would be a relief. Reaching them, he said, “Let’s make sure they come home to nowt but rain on hillside.”
Grinning, the men led or rode their horses down the path to the croft. Sweet Milk and Per followed, leading their mounts, with Cuddy pacing at Per’s side. They watched as the men used their lances to rip the thatch from the buildings. Dismounting, they kicked and tore at the turf walls. Some breached the turf walls surrounding the fields.
Inside the dark little house, the fire flared up when a kick from a booted foot opened it to the air. The men took hot and smoldering turfs on the points of their lances or knives and placed them where the wind encouraged their flame and fired the thatch. They found the meal chest and filled their saddlebags with what little was left.
They rode their horses through the breaches in the field walls and trampled the almost ripe grain, riding to and fro, up and down, mashing the plants into the ground. They built a fire in the field, among the browning, drying leaves, and encouraged it to spread. When they rode on, it was certain that the crofter would have to beg or starve.
It was after midday when Per reined in and stooped down from his saddle to lay his lance on the turf, signaling to the others that, they, too, could stop. The horses and the men needed rest, but it was the country they rode through that troubled Per. He didn’t know the Grannam’s country as well as his own, but he knew the broad sweep of it. He thought he knew where they were—or, at least, knew the landmarks the Elves imitated in their glamouring.
He dismounted, left Fowl in Ecky’s care, and indicated with a nod of the head that he wanted Sweet Milk with him. Cuddy followed as they walked away, and Per pointed to the ground. “Hold.”
Cuddy watched, trembling, as they started for the hillside, but couldn’t bear it. She sprang up to follow. “Hold!” The anger in Per’s voice made her sink down again, and this time she stayed, though she whined.
At the top of the slope, Per and Sweet Milk lay down in the grass and scrub, shoulders pressed together. Their jakkes were buff and brown, as were their gloves. Sweet Milk’s helmet was covered with dark-brown sheepskin, in which leaves were caught, while Per’s was coated with soot and grease. They would have been hard to see from a yard away.
Across the valley, as Per had suspected, was something that looked, in every stone, like the Grannam Tower at Brackenhill. Yet it could not be, because they were in Elf-Land.
The imitation was perfect, even to the few horsemen and cattle in the valley around the tower. It was the time of year when most of the Grannams would be away in the shielings—and the Elve
s had taken mind of that.
There was no smoke from the tower’s buildings, and so little activity in and around it that Per guessed it had already been abandoned. If this had been his own world, he would have guessed that Richie Grannam had been brought word of the Elves and had ridden out with his men.
If this had been his own world …
Per rolled on his back and closed his eyes, leaving everything to Sweet Milk for a while. He needed rest.
As soon as his eyes closed, he heard the explosion of the pistol and saw his mother’s agonized face—and when he flinched from that, his merciless thoughts showed him the great rising cloud of dust as his father’s tower fell. He told himself endlessly that it was merely an Elf glamourie, but in every detail, it was his father’s tower. He had to hear the groaning, grinding, thudding of stone all over again. And see and breathe the dust. Stone flour. It had heaped on their helmets, caked their faces … His mother’s bone had shattered, had burst blood …
It had not been his father’s tower. It had not been his mother. He must remember that. His mother was safe in his father’s tower, a world away.
The Elves had used a mere handful of stuff to blow in the gate, iron grid and all. They’d entered and, with another handful of stuff, had destroyed the gatehouse and then the tower itself. The sight turned the bowels queasy. They hadn’t needed to carry barrels of gunpowder over the hills. The tower’s stones had been broken apart and thrown down by a handful of stuff that could fit in a belt pouch.
The Elves had gone on to Gobby’s bastle houses. …
No, to some Elf fortress that had looked like Gobby’s bastle houses. …
The bastle houses weren’t as strong as a tower. They had stood in a group of three, turned in toward one another, their lower stories of stone without doors or windows.
It was there they’d parted company with the Elves. He’d agreed to kill Elves and burn fields here in Elf-Land and he would—but he hadn’t the stomach to watch them destroy something that looked so like his uncle’s home.
Glamour, it was all glamour … He must try to remember only that the Elves had promised him revenge on his father’s killers.
Sweet Milk nudged him, and Per turned to meet his foster father’s eyes under the shadow of his helmet’s peak. Sweet Milk nodded to the track below them.
A mounted party had left the gates of the Brackenhill Tower and was making good speed away from it. Armed men with lances and two women, their cloaks spread over the horses’ rumps. Behind one of the men, another woman rode pillion—a maid. Distant and faint, there came a sound of hooves.
The blood in Per’s veins turned cold. Only two women would ride from the Brackenhill Tower with an armed escort and a maid: Richie Grannam’s widowed sister, Mistress Crosar, and his daughter, Joan Grannam.
But that was in his own world. His own world, where Joan Grannam had, for a night, been his wife, before he’d killed her for her treachery. He’d taken the head of the old woman, her aunt, when he’d helped the Elves take the Grannam Tower.
This was nothing but Elf-Glamour. Those were not the Grannam women, but Elvish doubles, made to confuse and distract them—like the glamour of his mother and the tower.
“Why Grannams?” he said, his fist clenching in the grass. Sweet Milk glanced at him and shrugged. “Why make doubles of Grannams?”
He hated Grannams, had always hated Grannams, had been raised to hate Grannams. He would kill the Grannam babies in their cradles if he could, so they couldn’t grow into Grannams. Guising themselves as Grannams would never slow his hand against them. Did the Elves not know that?
The riders passed out of sight behind trees. “They gan Yonstones’ way,” Sweet Milk said. He looked grimly thoughtful.
“This be Elf-Land,” Per said. “There be no Yonstones.”
“Nor Grannams?” Sweet Milk said. “Will we gan?” He started back down the slope to where the men walked the horses along after them.
Per started after Sweet Milk but came to a halt and sat on the hillside, chewing at the thumb of his glove. The puzzle churned around and around in his head. Why did the Elves disguise themselves as Grannams?
Cuddy crept to his side, trying to make herself small despite being the size of the donkey she was named after. She pushed her cold nose into his face and brought him back to himself. Rubbing her ears, he went on down the hillside to join the others.
“Be this Dead’s land?” Ecky asked. Obviously, Sweet Milk had told them who had ridden from the tower.
“They want us to fight dead?” Sim said, and the men sent angry and fearful glances from one to another. They all had dead standing behind them. They’d killed men on raids; and on every raid, they’d left women and children behind them—hungry women and children. Cold, too, once their homes had stopped burning. No matter what the Elves had promised them, they would never have agreed to come to the Land of the Dead.
Whatever Per’s own doubts, a troop of men who jumped at every leaf fall and mouse scuttle in fear of ghosts was no use at all. “If this be Land of Dead,” Per said, “where was my father when they dinged down his tower? Where was Gobby when they came to his bastle house?”
They grinned at the thought of Toorkild or Gobby, dead or alive, letting such insults pass, but their amusement was a little forced. Per made his own face smile, though a deep chill ran through his bones at the thought that somewhere, not so far away, in some shieling, something walked in his father’s shape.
8
16th-Side A:
The Yonstone Tower
Mistress Crosar • Joan Grannam • The Yonstone Family
Above the clopping of the horses’ hooves, Mistress Crosar said, “When we arrive, Joan, remember thine manners. Stand still, and keep custody of thine eyes.” By which her aunt meant: Keep your eyes down and look at the floor. Don’t gawp about and stare your elders and betters in the face like a mannerless hoyden.
Oh, be quiet yourself! Joan thought. Old nag. Let me enjoy the ride. But she said nothing and, while her aunt looked at her, kept custody of her eyes by gazing at her horse’s ears. “I shall, Aunt.” As soon as she thought it safe, she peeped about her again, at the sky, the hills, the whole wide living space of it. Distant bird calls made the great breadth of air seem even wider and lifted her heart. It was good to ride again—she could have been a better rider if she’d been allowed more practice. When I’m married, she thought, and free of the old witch … Which was such a dreadful thing to think that she sent a quick glance at her aunt to make sure she hadn’t somehow heard.
But it was true. One good thing about marriage was that it would free her of her aunt—although it might place her under the rule of an even worse mother-in-law.
If she lived long enough, though—if she survived fever and childbed—eventually she would be mistress of her own household. Free to rule as her aunt did.
I’ll be a kinder mistress, she thought as the horses’ hooves plodded onward.
No, she thought with the next blink of her eye, I’ll make them jump!
Would she marry young Yonstone? Her aunt had that in mind. Joan tried to remember him. Had she ever seen him, at a fair, or at church? She didn’t think so—but then, her aunt always made her keep custody of her eyes.
They were on Yonstone land now, finally nearing the end of their ride—a ride that Joan had begun to think they would never begin. Despite her father’s clear orders, her aunt had dawdled and tarried and seemed to think that setting pigs free, giving chickens a last feed, and locking up valuables were more important tasks than escaping the Elves and Sterkarms and taking word of danger to their neighbors. So it had been nearly the next midday before they’d ridden from Brackenhill’s gates. There was not, Joan thought, a more infuriating woman alive than her aunt.
It had been a long ride. At first, Joa
n had feared attack, but the fear had faded until she worried more about the biting flies that the sprig of elder tucked into her horse’s bridle failed to keep away. When they reached Yonstone country, she worried that the Yonstones might attack them, not realizing they were messengers. She was relieved to see their escort cut green, leafy branches to carry as a sign that their intentions were peaceful.
Despite that, a sick feeling gathered under her breastbone as they rode on toward the Yonstone Tower. Soon, the ride would be over, the Yonstones would greet them, and then it would be all custody of the eyes and good manners. Her aunt would be watching her, storing up rebukes for every time she raised her eyes or spoke a word too much. It would be an ordeal.
The path to the tower was steep, and they dismounted, leading the horses. Yonstone people came and stared curiously at them—herd boys, kitchen women, and dairy maids. At the gates of the tower, Yonstone himself waited with his eldest son and a party of servants to take their horses. He had known, of course, that they were on their way. His herd boys had brought him word.
“Mistress Crosar,” said Yonstone, coming forward and taking both her hands in his. “It gladdens me to see you. Welcome!” And he kissed her on both cheeks. “And, young Lady Joan! Welcome, my dear! How gladdened I am! And here is my young master—Sandy, give Mistress Crosar thine arm, and I shall give mine to Lady Joan.”
So Joan entered the tunnel of the gatehouse on the arm of the Yonstone, as if they had come as guests for a feast and not because the Elves were back and dinging down towers with the Sterkarms.
The Yonstone Tower was small and cramped. Its yard, like that of all towers, was crammed with many small wooden buildings: bowers for sleeping, kitchens, storerooms, kennels, byres, whatever was needed. Narrow, muddy lanes twisted between them. Pigs rooted and flocks of honking geese wobbled along in search of food.
Before the tower itself was a cobbled area that should have been swept clean, but was, instead, claggy with muck and straw. There, in the mud, waited Yonstone’s wife, her feet in wooden clogs that raised her above the dirt of her own yard. She clattered forward, to clutch at their hands, and Mistress Crosar and Joan had to endure her pressing close to them and kissing them before she led the way into the tower.
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 7