A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  Joan thought the ground floor of the tower unclean and stinking, and the narrow stairs within the wall dirty and muddy. She was sure that her aunt—who drove their maids to keep the yard and tower as clean as they could be—was thinking even worse, but neither of them remarked on the dirtiness. I will copy my aunt in cleanliness at least, Joan thought. It’s not good to make your guests soil their hems and boots as they pick their way through dung. It shows the mistress as a sloven.

  At the top of the stairs was the tower’s hall. A long trestle table had been set up, spread with a fancy linen cloth, and set with a silver bowl for them to wash their hands. A good earthenware platter was piled high with buttered bread. It was, Joan thought, a showy way to greet guests when you couldn’t be bothered even to sweep the floor. There were trodden, withered rushes and a piece of charred peat by her foot, quite plain to be seen.

  They all washed their hands and rinsed their faces of dust, drying themselves with the linen towel Mistress Yonstone handed them. Joan seized the chance to glance at her while thanking her for the towel, and saw she was hardly older than herself, and was certainly not Sandy Yonstone’s mother. Stepping back behind her aunt, and again lowering her gaze to the floor—and the bits of bread crust, mucky straw, and old rushes—Joan wondered whether a young step-mother-in-law might be easier to manage than an old one. I would make her clean this place!

  Master Yonstone begged them to sit on the settle, and Mistress Yonstone insisted, so Joan and her aunt sat side by side. Mistress Yonstone brought trays to them, and they each took a cup of small beer and a slice of buttered bread drizzled with honey. The food was generous and well done, Joan had to admit.

  Sandy Yonstone had seated himself on a stool at the opposite side of the hearth. Joan glimpsed him there, but dared not give him a straight look in case her aunt noticed her “staring at men.”

  When good manners had been shown by the offering of water for washing, food, and drink, Mistress Crosar said, “Master Yonstone, you’ll no be surprised, I think, if I say this is no a visit for tittle-tattle and storytelling.”

  Master Yonstone leaned on the wall by his fireplace. “I think tha come to bring me word of Elven, Mistress.”

  Mistress Crosar gave a slow bow of her head. “I come in my brother’s place. He rides.”

  Joan took the opportunity to peep at Sandy Yonstone from beneath her brows. It was a shock to find him looking at her, and she hastily lowered her head. All she’d seen was that, like his name, he was sandy, with dustily fair hair and red skin. Oddly, an expression of surprise, even shock, which she did not understand, had come over his face as she’d looked at him.

  “Be it true what I hear,” Yonstone asked Mistress Crosar, “that Elven have been seen?”

  “Aye—and Sterkarms ride with them.”

  Yonstone couldn’t hide his shock. “Sterkarms!” Fear showed on his face, despite his attempt to hide it. The Sterkarms might be of low birth, but they were the strongest of the riding families. They could put many men in the saddle and had a reputation for ferocity, cunning, and treachery.

  For all that, the Sterkarms were as human as anyone else, and it was possible to fight them or even bargain with them, if you thought it worth trusting them.

  But the Elves weren’t human. If the Sterkarms had allied with the Elves, who could stand against them?

  Mistress Crosar set down her cup and said, “My brother and I wish to know, Master Yonstone, with whom will tha ride? With Sterkarms and Elven … or with us?”

  9

  16th-Side A:

  The Sterkarms’ Shieling

  Per May • Andrea • Gobby Sterkarm • Toorkild Sterkarm

  “Hark,” Gobby said, “and I’ll tell you what we mun do.”

  They were gathered at another shieling, one higher in the hills. The parties made up of mostly women and children had come to it first, all of them tired and sharply hungry but with much to do.

  After a brief rest and a breakfast of cold porridge, Yanet had set two women to laying out Isobel’s body and two men to scraping a grave in the lower corner of the meadow. Everyone else was to work on the shieling, which hadn’t been used for a while. The women and children had labored throughout the day, cutting turfs to build up slumping walls and gathering piles of fern for thatch and bedding. Andrea’s hands soon smarted with cuts and grazes.

  Others gathered fuel and built fires in a row down the middle of the bothies, then started making an evening meal.

  Throughout the long, tiring day, bands of horsemen and footmen came in, bringing dispiriting news. The Bedesdale Tower was indeed broken, and the Elves were making a hellish din at Gobby’s Grenkirk bastle houses.

  Per had ridden in with his band in the afternoon and, as soon as his horse was cared for, came looking for Andrea. She’d been thankful to embrace him and know that, for now, he was safe. “Thy mammy’s lying unburied!” a woman had said sharply, as Per kissed her, and they’d drawn apart, slowly. The work increased as more people came in, with more bothies to make ready and more cooking to be done. Per joined the men who dug latrine pits.

  When Toorkild rode in, he helped Per carry Isobel’s body down the meadow. Everyone followed and stood around the grave. “Tha shouldst have a better farewell than this, lass,” Toorkild said to her. “And tha shall, tha shall.” He and Per threw earth and flowers onto the wrapped body, and then everyone helped to cover the grave. Then, as Per wiped his eyes on his sleeve, it was back to work.

  Now it was dark and, thankfully, work could stop, and they could eat, though there was little to eat but porridge. Outside their circle of firelight, the night was black and the air chilly. Everyone gathered outside the bothies to eat and talk, enfolded in the smell of smoke, earth, and sap from broken stems.

  Gobby stood over one of the fires. As he turned his head to address his audience, his face emerged from shadow into red light and then vanished again. Smoke and sparks drifted past him. “What we mun do,” he said, clapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other, “is join with Grannams.”

  He looked around, prepared for fierce argument, but there were only dull stares from sad and exhausted people. Some stood with folded arms: many more sat or lay in the grass, or on saddles, or on the turf benches built into the bothy walls.

  Andrea had the honor of a place on a bench beside Toorkild. Per sat at her feet, leaning his head against her thigh and hugging her legs. One of her hands smoothed his hair. She looked from him to Toorkild, expecting one of them to speak. But both were dazed by the loss of Isobel. They might not even have heard what Gobby said.

  Gobby turned, peering into the firelight and shadows, looking for anyone who might give him an argument. “Grannams,” he repeated. “We mun join with Grannams against Elven. Do you hear?”

  The Grannams had been the Sterkarms’ enemies for so long that they needed no reason to hate them. Every Sterkarm child learned that Grannams were vile, murderous, lying, treacherous, and wicked, just as they learned that the earth was beneath their feet and the sky above their heads. That the Grannams were enemies was a given of life. And yet no one seemed to have noticed that Gobby was suggesting joining forces with them.

  “Toorkild!” Gobby said. “We mun—”

  “Join with Grannams. Aye, aye.”

  “Thou’rt agreed?” Gobby said, surprised—and almost disappointed. Toorkild said nothing. Nor did anyone.

  From the darkness, at last, someone growled, “Grannams!” There was a rustling of grass and clothes and a sound like growling.

  “They killed—”

  “They burned—”

  “Isobel—”

  “Think with your heads and no with your arses!” Gobby said, happier now he had the fight he’d expected. “Grannams no killed Isobel. Elven and their Changelings killed Isobel. Mind that! And that be why we mun join with Grannams. Toorkild! What dost s
ay?”

  They all waited for Toorkild’s reply. After a moment, he made a dismissive gesture with his hand and shook his head.

  “For Isobel!” Gobby said. “Toorkild—grieve for her in a while, when we’ve killed Elven!”

  Toorkild shook his head again.

  Per lifted his head from Andrea’s thigh, then clambered to his feet, stepping over her legs to stand by his father’s side. He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “What we mun do, Father’s Brother, is close Elf-Gate, so they bring no more through. I’ve closed it before.”

  There was laughter and quiet cheering from the younger people, particularly from those men who rode with Per. The Elves had taken Per into Elf-Land and made him a hostage, but they hadn’t been able to keep him there, for all their powers. He’d fought his way back, and had burned down the Elf-Gate on his way. Ingram, Per’s youngest cousin, jumped up from somewhere to stand beside Per and gaze at him, Andrea thought, with more starstruck soppiness than she’d ever directed at him. And then she closed her eyes as the memory came of that other world, where Ingram’s body had been brought home slung over a pony. This memory of other worlds and lives was like the horrible gift of second sight. While people were happy and alive, she saw their end.

  Per said, “We get between Elf-Gate and these Elves who murdered my mother. We close their gate. And then we ask these Elves to my mother’s funeral wake.”

  There was more laughter, on a grimmer note, as those words were repeated. Andrea realized what deep anger lay beneath Per’s words.

  Gobby stood with folded arms. “Tha think it’ll be easy, dost, to ride through Elven and reach their gate?”

  “No easier than joining with Grannams, Father’s Brother. Who shall bell puss-cat?”

  Andrea opened her eyes to see a rare expression on Gobby’s firelit face—puzzlement.

  Per leaned toward his uncle. “Who shall gan to Grannams and put it to ’em? Dost mind answer we gave ’em, last time they wished us ‘good day’?”

  There was a laugh from the darkness from the people gathered around. They understood something from Per’s words that Andrea didn’t. Looking around for an explanation, she saw Sweet Milk, who came and sat beside her. He explained the laughter in his usual silent way, by lifting up his own head by the hair, while letting his mouth and eyes sag.

  Andrea tilted her head in an equally silent “Oh” of understanding. At some time in the past, she gathered, the Grannams had sent messengers to the Sterkarms—and the Sterkarms had sent back the messengers’ heads as an answer.

  So who was now going to take a message to the Grannams?

  “Do we wait for Elven to ding down all our towers?” Gobby demanded. “Somebody mun go. If there’s no better body, I shall go!”

  Gobby was the man to send, if any. He had earned his nickname by his willingness to say, bluntly, whatever he thought. But he was also capable of craftiness, of deciding what he wanted and choosing his every word and action according to that aim with great patience, regardless of his true wishes—and that, too, was gobbiness.

  Gobby and Per stood, catching the dim red light of the small fires, while most others were shapes in smoky darkness—yet there was a sense of the Sterkarms holding their breath, of waiting. Someone said, “Toorkild?” Still Toorkild said nothing. He sat, elbows on knees, staring at the ground in front of him.

  In the quiet, through which the sound of the stream threaded and the burning peats and wood crackled, an idea leaped, fully formed, into Andrea’s mind. She knew, as soon as it appeared, that it was right, but it was also terrifying. She turned it this way and that, examining it, hoping to find fault with it since she hardly dared accept it. She burst out, “No Grannams! We should ally with Changelings!”

  Her words were received with the deep, shocked silence that Gobby had expected for his. Even Per stared at her in silence.

  The stares and silence made her feel small, cold, and alone. These were not her people; she did not understand them. To them, she was an Elf, and they had little welcome for her, yet her way home to the 21st was closed forever. “Per,” she said, appealing to her only real friend there. “Dost no see? Ally with Changelings!”

  He turned toward her and the firelight lit his face goldenly. The anger in it—directed at her—dismayed her.

  But what did she expect? She’d asked him to ally with the people who shot his mother in the face.

  From the blur of faces in the darkness came grumbles of agreement. “Changelings be Elven.”

  “Elven killed Isobel.”

  Andrea swallowed and met Per’s eyes. “Mind!” she said. “Mind why Elven brought Changelings here—because they could no beat you themselves! Because they no ken these hills. Because they no ken your ways. So they brought your Changeling selves here to set them against you. And Changeling Sterkarms will show them fastest ways to find your towers and bastles. They ken all your shielings and all your ways through hills. They’re best weapons Elven could have! So take that weapon away! Ally with Grannams, aye, if you can! But ally with Changeling Sterkarms, too.”

  “They killed my mother,” Per said.

  Andrea felt she was beaten. Without Per’s support, the others would find it easy to dismiss her. She started, as someone came from behind her, to stand at her side. It was Joe Sterkarm, who’d left his place by Kaitlin’s side.

  “Harken to her,” Joe said. “She be right.”

  Andrea saw the look Per gave Joe—a look that then moved to her and that she read easily. Why, Per was wondering, was Elfie-Joe so quick to take Andrea’s side?

  “I’ve no doubt Elven lied to the Changeling Sterkarms, too,” Andrea said. She could take all too good a guess at what the lie had been. “I’d lay a wager they told them Isobel was an evil spirit in disguise—”

  Protests broke out, and she raised her hands to hush them. “That be what Elven will have told Changelings! And think! If Grannams have heard of Sterkarms riding with Elven, then they are thinking that you have joined with Elven.”

  There was silence as they considered this.

  “If you can show Grannams two Pers standing side by side—your Per and Changeling Per—you can make Elven’s trickery plain. Grannams will join you then! But to do that, you must join with Changelings.”

  “Changelings be Elven,” Per said.

  “No—they be you!” She held her breath as she considered telling them that she knew these Changelings, had danced at a wedding with both Changeling Per and Changeling Sweet Milk—but no. The complications and jealousies that might arise from that admission were too many to deal with. “They are you and they might ken Elven’s plans! They be your best—” She broke off. She was never going to convince them. If you want something done well, her mother had always said, then do it yourself. Before she could think clearly, her mouth said, “I’ll bell cat! I’ll go to Changelings—I’m an Elf-May. I can—”

  “Thou’lt gan nowhere,” Per said, calmly and offhandedly, as if this was as unalterable as the sea being salt, and his mind was on other, more complex, things.

  “What?” Andrea said. It was infuriating. “I shall gan when, and where, I like, with your leave or without it.”

  Per opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Gobby spoke. “Couldst speak with Changelings, dost think?”

  A shock of fear went through Andrea as she realized that she might have support for her plan. The Sterkarms listened to Gobby.

  It was all very well having a bright idea about approaching armed enemies with offers of alliance—and it was all very bold and brave to tell your only friend that you would go where you liked and do what you pleased—but if Gobby backed her, then she might actually have to do these things.

  She looked at Gobby, who was known for his twisty cunning, and wondered if he supported her because he hoped to be rid of her?

  It was a neat trap. She didn’t
think she actually had the courage to set off by herself and speak to the Changelings—but neither could she find the courage to admit her cowardice and withdraw her offer. She was the mouse who was going to bell the cat.

  10

  16th-Side A:

  The Elves’ Camp at Grenkirk

  Patterson and the Changeling Sterkarms

  The Sterks-B, as Patterson abbreviated them in his notes, were supposedly his eyes and ears. They’d led him to bastle houses, fair enough, but had then mysteriously taken it up the nose about something or nothing and buggered off on their own. They’d told Gareth that they would come back, but Patterson wasn’t holding his breath while he waited. They were about as trustworthy as the weather.

  He and his men sheltered in the ruins of a bastle they’d destroyed. It was safer than camping anywhere in the surrounding moorland, with its deep, hidden valleys and wooded sides. That was Sterkarm country; and now the tower was wrecked and fields and barns burned, the Sterks-A were probably ever so miffed.

  Patterson set guards and gave orders for the digging of pits and trenches to trip horses, and also a latrine pit. He sent men, under escort, to the river to fill all their canisters with water. The men sweated as they lifted and carried and lugged heavy things. Patterson liked that. If they were tired and busy, they were less likely to do any of the bloody stupid things they were thinking of doing at any given moment.

  As evening drew close, there was a yell. Patterson looked around and saw a guard pointing. Hurrying to the perimeter, he saw armed horsemen riding down the valley toward them. There was no doubt they were armed: Eight-foot lances rose above their helmeted heads.

  Patterson’s heart rose at the sight. He couldn’t help it. They looked so … wild. Ancient warriors riding out of the mist. The muffled, rhythmic thud of hooves on thick turf. A horse shaking its head and a long mane flying out in waves. That big dog loping beside the horses like a tame wolf, its long fur flowing as it ran.