But this wasn’t the 21st. There were no usable maps of this place. No aerial photography because no bloody planes. No satellites, no sat-nav or GPS. In fact, nothing bloody useful at all.
James Windsor hadn’t seen the problem. Of course he hadn’t. Patterson could read a map, couldn’t he? There were 21st maps of the Sterkarm country, weren’t there? Hills and rivers didn’t move about, did they?
Which was where Smartarse Windsor was wrong. Rivers did move about. They were quite athletic, rivers were, charging about all over the shop, taking their boggy and marshy ground with them. And 21st maps of this area showed a dense network of tarmacked roads, bridges, railways, villages, and towns—none of which existed in the Sterkarms’ world. Where was the sense in being guided by a map that promised you a nice little bridge to cross a nice tamed little river when, in fact, you were going to be stumbling through a couple of miles of swamp that merged into a river with treacherous currents and no bridges at all?
But the Sterkarms had known where the rivers were—and where the swamps and the fords were. This might be a different version of the land, and not the one they came from, but they still knew the country to the last leaf and twig. They knew where to find the little crofts, which looked like heaps of turf, and which you might easily pass by if you didn’t know what to look for. They knew the likeliest places for setting ambushes. They had been Patterson’s means of outwitting the native Sterkarms on their own ground.
Now they’d gone, taking their local knowledge with them. Worse—having stirred up the Sterkarms and the Grannams—Patterson and his men were now abandoned in the middle of Sterkarm and Grannam country without much chance of guessing where their enemies were or what move they’d make next.
They reached the relative safety of the bastle houses again and entered through their barriers. “Don’t stand there—break camp.”
The men moved away to obey, leaving Patterson to think. Should he hole up in the towers they’d broken? Press on with his mission though he was in the middle of vengeful and furious rievers? Or turn back for the Tube? If he could get there. …
His men eyed him, wondering what he was thinking. “Quit catching flies!” he said. “Move!”
16th Side:
The Yonstone Tower
Sandy Yonstone • Mistress Crosar and Joan Grannam
Sandy Yonstone had an idea of what you were supposed to do to win a girl. You made a gift, as you did when trying to win anyone’s favor, whether it was a king, a laird, or a maid.
Embroideries, silks, jewelry, lace—none of them were easy to come by, and they were all expensive. He didn’t have any money. He never needed it, except for the few times a year when he went to town. Somehow, he needed to find an acceptable gift that would find favor with a laird’s daughter without spending or trading anything.
Flowers—flowers were pretty. He ranged about the tower and found hedge roses, flat and pink, with golden centers. And some of the little scented flowers, smelling warmly of cloves, called pinks because of the frilly pinked edges to their petals, or sops-in-wine because they were used to give a clove flavor to wine. His mother had planted them in pots, and they still grew every year, in a sunny corner of the tower’s garden.
Feeling proud of his own resourcefulness, he seated himself on a bench near the tower’s door, holding the small posy of flowers close by his leg so no one would notice them.
Above, in the tower’s grander rooms—which weren’t grand enough for her—was Joan, the beautiful Joan, so superior to everyone else here that she seemed some other kind of creature. He knew she was above in the tower because that’s where she’d been, except for very little whiles, since the Grannam party had arrived the day before. Her aunt, Mistress Crosar, kept a close watch on her. Was there any wonder? Wealth brings wolves from the wood, and so did beauty. When she was his wife, he would have to keep a close—
He laughed at himself for thinking of her as his wife when he hadn’t spoken a single private word to her. But she could be his wife. The Grannams thought themselves a grander family, but if his family offered the Grannams a great service … But that was how to argue his case to her family, not to her.
He didn’t know what he should say to her. She was so much more beautiful than anyone else that everyone would think him presumptuous for daring to look at her. She would think him presumptuous.
He’d talked and joked with women about the tower and in the fields, but they were just women. It was easy with them because they expected little of him, and it didn’t matter what they thought. He was the Yonstone son. It was in their interest to please him.
But Joan was a Grannam, Laird Brackenhill’s daughter. There could be no chaffing or joking with her. He would have to mind his every word. What, then, could he possibly say? Was it even permissible to give her the flowers?
He might have thrown down the flowers and gone away if Joan hadn’t suddenly stepped from the tower’s door. She wore pattens over her shoes to raise her out of the muck and held up her skirt to keep it from being dirtied.
He jumped to his feet, dropped the posy after all, and crouched, scrabbling for it. Up he jumped again, clutching the flowers, trying to knock mud off them, and only damaging them—though that did release their scent.
Her aunt wasn’t with her, he noticed, and he was thankful. Instead, her companion was one of his stepmother’s maids. Joan’s head bowed forward on her long neck as she looked at her feet. Her hair, pale as first primroses, was drawn back from her face, and hung over her shoulder in a long plait.
That first time Joan had raised her head and met his eyes, her beauty had struck him like a blow. Now, it did again, and he was dumb. His opportunity was slipping away.
He stumbled over to Joan, thrusting out the posy, his heart thumping as he hoped she would look up and give him a clear view of her face. He couldn’t see it often enough. A gem of a face, a perfect oval, with large eyes as clear and blue as glass, the lines of their lashes and brows clear and delicate as engraving. The color in her cheeks was a soft foxglove pink, and it flushed into her face as softly as the pink flushed into the white of apple blossom. Sandy had never seen a more beautiful girl. There could not be a more beautiful girl. Not if you rode for miles.
Joan, seeing his boots and legs in her way, stopped. The maid, slightly behind her, said, “It be Master Sandy, Mistress.”
Joan arranged herself, hands linked before her, head lowered, eyes cast down, and waited. She seemed calm, but inside felt slightly sick. What Alexander Yonstone wanted she had no idea, and she was uncertain of what was proper for her to do or say in the circumstances. She wished he would go away and leave her alone.
“I … ah …” Sandy was breathless, as if he’d run a mile. “I wanted”—he cleared his throat—“to give you these flowers.”
Joan made no attempt to take the flowers and didn’t look at him.
“ … I thought … you might like them,” Sandy said.
Why, Joan wondered, did he want to give her flowers? What was she supposed to say? Her heartbeat quickened again, and she felt her face flushing hot—and then she realized. This was courtship! Her aunt would be pleased. Joan slightly inclined her head toward the maid, who reached past her and took the flowers from Sandy with a smile.
“Pretty, Master! My mistress thanks you.”
Sandy gave the maid the corner of his eye, wishing her at the bottom of the river. The maid, guessing his feelings, grinned at him. He continued to stand, lumpishly, in front of Joan, blocking her way. He felt the sweat of embarrassment on his upper lip and under his arms. He could not think of anything to say. Desperately, he said, “No flowers be as beautiful as you!”
It was the sort of thing said in ballads, and for an eye’s blink, he thought himself rather fine—but then saw the maid sniggering into her hand and felt his face scald.
Joan didn’t snigger. Still looki
ng at his boots, she said solemnly, “You shall have thanks, sir, for your kindness.” She’d thought this a suitable thing to say, but when she heard her own words, they seemed clumsy and dull.
Sandy was thrilled by her graciousness and felt himself rather fine again. “May I walk with you, Mistress Grannam?”
Still studying his muddy boots, Joan hesitated. Would her aunt be angry with her if she accepted this young man’s company? The maid was with her, so she wouldn’t be alone with him. And her aunt had him in mind as a possible husband for her, so surely … ?
“My mistress is walking to gate,” the maid piped up. “To look at country.”
Sandy smartly turned himself in that direction and stuck out his arm. “May I offer you my arm, Mistress?”
With a slight nod of the head, and a murmur of thanks, she laid her arm and hand lightly on his. At the almost imperceptible lightness of her touch, Sandy felt a thrill trickle through him, a stream both hot and cold. Her pattens made her taller, but her touch reminded him how insubstantial she was—as vulnerable and delicate as the wilting flowers in the maid’s hot hand. He had to make her his wife. Only then would he be able to guard her and keep her safe.
They walked away from the tower, taking the broadest, cleanest alley, which led past the stables and kennels to the tower’s gate. Joan turned over in her mind everything that she might possibly say. With halting politeness, she managed, “It gladdens me that your father let us stay.”
Sandy said nothing. After a quick peep at his red face, Joan realized that he felt as awkward as she did. She gained a little courage. This was courtship, was it? Well, move the business on! The sooner she was married, the sooner she would be away from her aunt—and if she married Sandy, her mother-in-law might be manageable. “Your father’s tower be fine,” she said, turning her face toward Sandy. She smiled, not quite at him but looking past him, at the stable’s thatch. “Your bride will be glad when she sees it!”
His bride? Sandy’s thoughts clattered about, and he was dazed anew by the perfect beauty of the face turned toward him.
“I—aye.” Ask her if she will be that bride, he told himself. Ask her! But he didn’t dare. At least ask if he could call on her—or should he ask that of her aunt—and was it permissible to ask at all with the country disturbed by Elves? His heart thumped and skipped in his chest as if he fought lions.
Pride fought in him with practicality, and it was a relief to hear a commotion ahead. Men ran down the alleys, gathering at the gate. There were shouts, exclamations. They looked around, as if for instruction.
“Stay,” Sandy said, made sharp by surprise. He had taken a step away before he felt, guiltily, that he had spoken as if to a hound. “Pardon me, Mistress. I mean—be so kind, wait for me a moment if you would be so good.”
Striding to the gate, he demanded, “What goes here?” It occurred to him that he must look commanding to Joan Grannam, and he added, “Tell me now!”
One of the men dropping the heavy bar across the gate said, “Sterkarms!”
“What?” Sandy’s heart thumped to a different rhythm. No news of the Sterkarms was ever good. It meant a raid, a robbery—trouble of some kind. From the knot of men, smaller, slighter figures emerged: herd boys come down from the hills bringing word of what they’d seen.
“Sterkarms,” one boy said, gabbling eagerly into Sandy’s face. Another said something about Per May’s twin, but that was nonsense. The May didn’t have a twin. God cared for his people, and so he had Sterkarms come singly. “They carry green branches!”
Green branches? Sterkarms wanting to surrender or talk? No. It was a trap.
“They’re coming!” a boy said.
A silence fell. The men all looked at Sandy, waiting for him to speak.
Another voice broke in on them. Quietly, it said, “It will be because of Elven. Sandy, you must fetch your father.”
All the men looked around to see Joan Grannam standing there, her eyes lowered and her hands folded before her, as a modest woman’s should be. But it was Joan Grannam who had spoken.
Sandy caught smirks on the faces of some of the men, hearing him given orders by a woman. He went back to Joan, offering her his arm. “I’ll see you back to your aunt, Lady. You’ll be safe in tower.”
13
16th Side:
The Yonstone Tower
The Yonstones • Mistress Crosar • Joan Grannam • Andrea • Per May and the Changeling Sterkarms
The upper, private room of the Yonstone Tower was as plain and respectable as the hall below with its lime-washed walls, undecorated except for a narrow border of painted leaves around the windows. The stone hood over the fireplace was plain, too: no family emblem or any other decoration was carved there. It was pleasing that the Yonstones made no pretense to nobility they did not possess, but Joan found the room’s plainness depressing. A rude little thought said: What dull people. A shocking thing to think of their hosts.
She rubbed the bed curtains between her fingers. Their good, thick wool would keep out drafts, but they were plain and brown as the wool on the sheep’s back. A little decoration or color would have relieved the spirit.
There was no comfort in the place. Only one chair at the table, no doubt for Master Yonstone. If I marry Sandy Yonstone, Joan thought, I shall want a chair. I won’t stand, like a hind, to eat my meat. Bored with walking about the room, Joan went to the window and put her nose to it, though she had already discovered that she could see nothing from it except the thatches of outbuildings.
“Joan,” said her aunt, from the settle. “Sit. This fidgetiness be tiring.”
Joan remained at the window, pretending she hadn’t heard. When they’d left Brackenhill, she’d imagined she was riding off on an adventure. … Instead, here she was, shut up in a small room, with her aunt—while, out there, her father might be fighting, or even dying.
Company might have made it more bearable, but their hostess, Mistress Yonstone, was downstairs in the hall, or about the outbuildings somewhere, preparing for the arrival of guests. Master Yonstone and his son had gone off to meet those guests, find out their business, and possibly escort them back to the tower.
Sterkarm guests! Joan wanted to exclaim at this news, to jump up and down as the maids in the kitchen were no doubt doing. She was prevented by the weight of years of training. She had to maintain custody of her eyes.
Sighing, she looked over her shoulder. Her aunt, seated on the settle, was modeling the correct pose of a good woman: head upright, eyes closed, hands folded in her lap. She had to be feigning indifference. How could she not be curious about the Sterkarms?
Nearly all the raids, robberies, seductions, abductions, murders, and burnings Joan had ever heard of had been committed by one branch or another of the Sterkarm family. It would be interesting to see what such ill-bred ill-doers looked like.
Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, of Bedesdale, say. Gossip told that he was a well-favored man—exceptionally so. The maids whispered about him; she’d overheard them. They said he could have any woman he wanted, and had fathered his first child at thirteen. They’d giggled because fathering children so young was supposed to cause the green grass to blow long o’er a young man’s grave. Instead, the May thrived and had fathered several more children.
“It’d take a bloody good long shag to put a Sterkarm under the sod!” one of the maids had whispered and set all the others sniggering.
It would be interesting, Joan thought, to see Per May, such a bad lot as he was, and judge for herself whether he was as handsome as gossip said. He wouldn’t be, of course. Kitchen maids thought any man on horseback handsome. Laird Brackenhill’s daughter was harder to please.
There! The sound she’d been listening for: the beat of horses’ hooves on turf, the clatter of them on the cobbles in the tower’s entrance, the echo from the arch of the gatehouse. She sent a qui
ck glance to her aunt to be sure that the older woman’s eyes were still closed and then pressed her cheek against the window’s cold glass and lead. She still saw nothing but thatch. From outside, from below, came excited shouts, men’s voices, the ring of harness.
Mistress Crosar heard it, too. “Joan—come and sit!”
Outside, the noise increased and Joan lingered by the window. Hoofbeats echoed in the tower’s narrow ways, bouncing off stone. Voices spoke, but though she tilted her head, she couldn’t make out the words. The slanted edges of the narrow stone window baffled the sound.
“Joan!”
With clasped hands and lowered eyes, Joan left the window and sat on a stool by the hearth. Leaning toward her, Mistress Crosar said, “What devil’s got into thee? Remember whose daughter thou art!”
More sounds came from below, muffled by the stone walls: People entering the tower and climbing the lower stairs. Closer, louder footsteps announced someone running up the steps to their upper room, and then Sandy Yonstone whirled through the door. “Mistress Crosar!” Remembering his manners, he paused to arrange himself more becomingly and speak more courteously. “Mistress Crosar, my father asks if you would be so good as to come below and speak for Grannams?”
Mistress Crosar rose, smoothing down her skirts. “I thank thee, Master Yonstone. I shall.”
Sandy stepped aside to let her pass him in the doorway, and, as she did, he said, with polite excitement, “It will amuse you, Mistress. They have Elves with them—even Elf-May herself!” Mistress Crosar made a sound of contempt. As if she was interested in Elf-Mays! “And there be a man as like Per May as his twin!”
Mistress Crosar turned to look at him. “Twins? Sterkarms are no a family for twins. Corrie-fisters they have in plenty, but never a twin that I ever heard of. And certainly none to Per Sterkarm. He is The Sterkarm’s only living child.”
“I’ve seen them,” Sandy said. “They’re as like as one pea to another. Below, they’re calling it Elf-Work.”
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 12