Snatching a breath, she cried out, “I say aye!” The loudness and steadiness of her voice surprised her.
An astounded silence fell. People turned, searching for the speaker. Those people near Joan stared at her.
Joan’s face felt hot as a metal spoon held at a fire. She wanted to run back up the stairs and hide, but that would be cowardly. Stepping closer to the table, so she could be plainly seen, she threw up her head. “Aunt, you are a fool. Aye to it, in my father’s name. Aye, I say!”
She looked down the room and saw her aunt’s face, thunderstruck and furious. Feeling giddy, and close to laughter, Joan said, “I am Laird Brackenhill’s daughter and heir. I have as much right—or more—to speak for him as his sister! I say aye! Grannams will stand with Sterkarms!”
Sandy gawped at her and others drew back, as if she might be dangerous. Her aunt’s face had turned bright red, which was funny, if frightening. “Joan!” her aunt shouted, and Joan laughed. Her aunt couldn’t reach her. The excited crowd, pressing forward and leaning over the table to catch sight of Joan, hemmed her aunt in. Joan was safe from her—for now.
“A silly lass!” Mistress Crosar said. “Thou’rt bigger fools even than we thought if tha listens to her. She no speaks for her father, nor for anybody.”
Per May looked across the table and his eyes, so pale a blue they were almost silver, met Joan’s for a moment. They sent another of Love’s shafts slamming into her heart. The look told her that he understood everything. He knew that she loved him, and he loved her in return.
“If we mun fight Elven alone,” he said, and only then dragged his eyes from Joan to look at Master Yonstone and Mistress Crosar, “and guard our backs against you, I’ll waste no more time. Master, shall you give us safe conduct from here?”
He was so noble in the face of her aunt’s stupidity. His words brought tears to Joan’s eyes.
Master Yonstone didn’t want to answer. He glanced at the angry Mistress Crosar and his son. “Mistress—” he began.
Mistress Crosar said, “Has it ever been possible to trust Sterkarms?”
And Sandy Yonstone, that clod, cried out, “You say well, Mistress!”
Per May repeated, “Master Yonstone, have we safe passage?”
“Aye!” Master Yonstone glowered around his hall. “You all hear—I grant them safe passage from our land!” He pointed to some among his people. “Give them horses and all they need. Any who hinder or harm them shall answer to me!”
Per May tried to lead the way toward the hall door, but Yonstones blocked his way—deliberately, Joan thought. Per May and Sweet Milk had to shove their way through, jostled as they went. They put the Elf-May between them and tried to protect her from being crushed. Joan’s heart squeezed. He was so gallant!
Behind them, Changeling Per had an easier time, as he held the nervous Cuddy by her collar, and people pressed back from the jaws of the big hound. Still, it was slow going to reach the door.
No one, Joan saw, was looking at her any longer. She stepped back from the table and hid in the crowd. All around the packed hall, people chattered about what they’d seen and heard. Her aunt was talking to Master Yonstone.
Joan took another step back. People made way for her and, almost choking on her heart, she slipped toward the door. A groom, reeking of horses, stood aside for her to pass onto the landing. If any noticed her leaving, they would assume that she was returning to the Yonstones’ private chamber.
Instead, she ran across the landing and down the tower steps, hidden from view by the people who crowded after her. They were surprised to see Laird Brackenhill’s daughter among them, alone, but it wasn’t their place to question her.
All the people on the stairs, Sterkarms and Yonstones, mixed together, and Joan darted for the bright light of the door, emerging onto the small paved yard before it. Many alleys led from the yard and Joan ran for the one leading to the gatehouse.
In her hurry, she’d forgotten to put on pattens and, without them to raise her above the mud, her thin slippers seemed to find every puddle and her skirt slopped into mud and rubbish. Near the gatehouse, she stopped, needing to think. There would be guards. With Sterkarms within the walls, they would be alert, and would recognize her. She needed some way to hide her face and clothes.
Looking around, she saw a ladder, leaning against the wall of an outbuilding. Glancing behind, and seeing no sign of her aunt or maids, she set herself to climb the ladder. It wasn’t easy. Her muddy shoes slipped on the wooden rungs, and her heavy skirts tangled around her feet. But once at the top of the ladder, she found herself in a dormitory. Straw-filled mattresses and tumbled blankets lay on the bare wooden floors. Fleas, she thought, and twitched her skirts away from them.
For the first moment since she’d slipped from the hall, she had time to consider her actions, but it was impossible. Her thoughts scurried about madly, like frightened rats seeking a hiding place—now startled by the image of her aunt or father, now sent scurrying another way by the image of Per May, or the scene of a future married to Sandy Yonstone.
She needed a disguise. … Oh well, she’d had flea bites before—what were a few flea bites compared to her whole life? She snatched up the nearest blanket of thin gray wool.
Climbing down the ladder in her slippery shoes, spreading skirts, with the limp blanket unfolding itself was even harder than climbing up, but she did it and, at the bottom, paused to wrap the blanket around herself, hooding it over her head to hide her face. Stooping, she went on toward the gate, but paused as the Sterkarm party clattered by, followed by Yonstone servants jeeringly wishing them a safe journey. They barely noticed the stooped woman, wrapped in an old, stained gray blanket, who joined them from an alley.
The gatehouse and its guards was ahead. The Sterkarm horses clopped through the gate, the noise of the hooves rebounding from the stone roof. Behind them, Joan entered the gatehouse’s shadow. She lowered her head, allowing the blanket to flop over her face, and looked at the mud and water caught between the cobbles under her feet. Would a guard notice that she wore fine leather shoes with buckles? But they were so muddy now …
Light gleamed on the cobbles as she stepped from the gatehouse. The guards had not stopped her. She walked away from them, following the departing Sterkarms on the path that wound downhill. She even ran a little to catch up. The thin soles of her shoes made her feel every stone.
Oh, the exhilaration of those few running steps! No aunt to shout at her for being a hoyden, to preach at her, to slap her! No punishment, no humiliation for not following the endless, fussy rules. She’d thrown off the rules! And now she ran after a new world, where Per Sterkarm, so gallant and wise, would make everything new. She’d marry him, and there’d be peace between the Grannams and Sterkarms. It would be a new age. …
14
16th-Side A:
Outside the Yonstone Tower
Joan Grannam • Andrea • Per May and Joe Sterkarm • The Changeling Sterkarms
The Sterkarm footmen, trudging along at the rear of the party, turned hurriedly at the sound of running feet behind them. But it was only a serving maid, hugging an old blanket around her. They turned from her and concentrated on putting a good distance between themselves and the Yonstone Tower.
Joan stopped short, pulling the blanket close about her face. It was a sickening shock to realize how stupid and wrong she’d been.
A moment before, they’d been tame and obedient men like those who waited on her father, herding his cattle, running his messages …
When they looked over their shoulders and saw her, she knew how big they were, how thorny with beard and harsh with callused scars. They were Sterkarms and not obedient. They didn’t serve her father. And there were none of her father’s men nearby to guard her.
She looked back at the tower’s gatehouse and would have run back to
its safety, except that her aunt’s scoldings were a humiliation she knew all too well. She was so tired of being a scolded child.
The bearded Sterkarm faces, turned her way, had thrust on her that, soon, she might suffer worse humiliation than had ever been inflicted on her before.
She turned toward the tower—turned away—turned back again. If she returned, she would certainly be whipped and made to kiss the whip in thanks for correction. This time, the Yonstones would know of it. Sandy Yonstone, too. She couldn’t bear it and ran a few paces down the path.
The Sterkarms would not hurt her. It was silly to think they would hurt Laird Brackenhill’s daughter. If the twin Per Mays were Sterkarms, then Sterkarms could not be as bad as her family had told her they were. Their faces would have been twisted by their badness, would have been harder, sourer. Instead, they’d spoken simple good sense and had refused to rise to taunts.
A turn in the path brought the Sterkarms in sight again. She stopped, her heart pumping painfully. But she had to be brave. She was a Grannam. She was Laird Brackenhill’s daughter and she did have more right to speak for the Grannams than her aunt. She would parley with the Sterkarms, as her aunt should have done, and join with them to fight the Elves.
On she ran down the path. At the sound of her running, the Sterkarms turned again. She let the blanket fall from her head and panted, “Oh … be so … Be so kind! Wait!”
The men were astounded. Some knew her face from glimpses on fair days in the city of Carloel. Others knew by her embroidered bodice and sleeves that she was not the field woman they’d taken her for.
The whole mass of them came at her, big, muscular, reeking of male sweat and smoke. She backed away, but bumped into one who was somehow behind her. Squealing, she flinched away from that big, solid body, and almost collided with those in front. They surrounded her.
One threw back his head, opened a hole in his beard and yelled, “Sterk-a-a-arm!”
The two Pers led the mounted men down the hillside, the horses at a walk, Andrea riding a little behind Per May. Cuddy loped with them.
The leathers of saddles and harnesses creaked, hooves clopped on the stony path—but all these sounds faded into the great silent space of moor around them. The view before them was of the valley below, the hills and a sky piled with cloud. None of the riders admired it. Their thoughts were on the need to be as far from the Yonstone Tower as possible before the Grannam witch persuaded the Yonstones to forget about their grant of safe passage. Their failure rankled, too. They’d tried something bold, but old enmities had defeated them before they’d begun.
From behind, a voice cracked through the quiet. “Sterk-a-a-arm!”
It was much more than a name when howled out like that. It could be a cry of triumph, a rallying call, a shout for help, a war cry, a warning. It raised the hair on Andrea’s neck.
Changeling Per swung his horse around, making a wide circle to avoid the other horses; left the path; and urged his mount up the steep slope. Per May turned to Andrea and yelled, “Stay!” He swung his own horse around, following his double. Cuddy coursed after them, body bending like a bow and uncoiling.
Andrea tussled with her own horse as it backed and fidgeted, heartily wishing she was on firm ground. A man on foot came and took the horse’s head. Thanking him, she slid clumsily from its back.
Most of the men, on foot and horseback, were heading up the hill to where the shout had been heard, but Sweet Milk still sat atop his horse near where Andrea stood. A few men had stayed with him. If they were being attacked from behind, somebody had to remain in reserve.
But Per—both Pers—had gone to answer the shout. Andrea set off up the path. She could think of nothing but sharp sword blades, lance heads, arrows, knives—but if Per was in danger, she was going to be there.
Changeling Per stood in his stirrups as his horse pounded up the path, snorting, throwing off sweat. As his footmen scattered to either side, he saw his wife.
She stood at the center of a knot of men, grinning with fear, her eyes wild. Joan Grannam. A girl from a rich family who lived in a tower and ate well every day, but was as thin as some starveling woman from a hut of plaited branches who ate nothing but oats and weeds. He knew because he’d seen the ribs sticking out between her flat teats, the knobs of her spine, her chicken-bone thighs.
The muscles jumped in his arm as they recalled the force needed used to stab into and slash open her throat. He felt the warmth of her blood pouring over his hand, and all but heard the thump of her body as it fell onto his father’s in the grave pit. Yet here she was, alive. It turned him cold to look at her—not with the frank fear of something that could be faced and overcome, but with the slithery, insidious fear of ghosts and witch work.
An eye blink later, Per May rode up, expecting to find armed Grannams and Yonstones attacking the Changeling men. Instead, he saw a frightened girl surrounded by Changelings, with Cuddy leaping around them. A skinny, scared girl, tricked out in velvets and embroidery, but draped with an old gray blanket. Her wide eyes searched all around her, and it was plain she didn’t know which way to run first, even though Elfie-Joe held out his hand to her, saying, “Be no feared, Mistress. I shall no hurt thee—you.” Joe had spent too long in Elf-Land, and never knew when to address people as thou or you.
It seemed that the girl might take Joe’s hand—but then she looked beyond him and cried out, “Oh, Mistress Elf! Be so good! Help me!” Per May looked over his shoulder and saw Andrea coming up the path.
Andrea, panting after hurrying up the steep path, took a moment to catch her breath. Joan’s beauty struck her anew, but she also remembered what a prickly, moody little madam she was. Still, she was only a little girl, really, barely sixteen, and Andrea hadn’t envied what she’d learned of her life in that other world beyond the Elf-Gate. She went to Joan as soon as she’d caught her breath and took her hands.
Joan’s grip on her fingers was painful. She said, “I mun gan with you! I’ll help—take me with you!”
From above, Per May hoarse voice rasped, “Lady, here you mun bide.”
Joan looked up at Per May for an instant, before pressing closer to Andrea. “Be so good!” she cried. The fear in her voice startled Andrea. “I come to fight Elven with you!”
Despite the danger, the men laughed, the sound ringing out across the moor.
“I shall speak to my father for you!” Joan said.
“Do that,” Per May said, “but you come no with us. We’ll have no safe passage with you among us.”
Changeling Per hung his lance in its saddle sling and set his horse to shouldering aside the footmen. He leaned down to Joan, offering his hand. “Lady—”
Joan’s heart leaped. Her father had sometimes taken her onto his horse like this, and she knew what to do. She grasped the offered arm, and Per Sterkarm—one of the Per Sterkarms—grasped her arm in a tight, hard grip, between the elbow and shoulder. She placed her foot on his stirrupped foot and felt herself fly up. She knew to turn herself slightly, and found herself sitting across Per Sterkarm’s legs, encircled by his arms.
Her face flooded with blood, turning fiercely hot and red as his arm pressed her tightly against his hard jakke and she felt his thighs beneath her. Her aunt would not approve—but her aunt, thanks be, wasn’t there!
Then the horse was moving under them, down the blurring path, passing from a walk into a trot with a clatter of hooves. Cuddy bounded after them. Joan clutched at Changeling Per’s jakke to keep from falling, but it was too thick, too lined with metal plates, to give her any hold. As the horse lurched again, she was forced to thrust her arms around his body and cling.
Everyone else—Per May, the other riders, Andrea, Joe, and all the other footmen—gaped after Changeling Per.
Then everyone, both on horse and on foot, followed with a din of yells, hooves, and tramping feet. They knew the Grannams and Yonstones w
ould be joining them as soon as they missed Joan Grannam.
Per May, bringing his horse alongside Changeling Per’s, cried, “Fool!”
Changeling Per laughed and called back, “Aye!” He’d been fool enough, in the world he’d left, to marry Joan Grannam, the daughter of his enemy, in exchange for Elf-Gold.
He’d been fool enough, it seemed, to believe the Elves when they’d murdered his father and laid the blame on the Grannams—a piece of cunning the equal of anything his father’s brother could invent.
He’d been fool enough to believe himself honorable when he’d cut the throat of a little girl, his wife, in revenge for his father’s murder—but if it was true that Grannams and Sterkarms both were the Elves’ fools, then killing that other Joan Grannam changed, in a breath, from honorable revenge to the low, dirty act of a coward.
There was nothing he could do to make amends to that other Joan Grannam. Her corpse rotted where he’d thrown it, a world away. But he could help this one.
He sang out,
“‘My horse is swift-footed and sure,
My sword hangs down by my knee,
I never backed off from a fight—
Come who dares and meddle with me!’”
15
16th-Side A:
The Yonstone Tower
Mistress Crosar • Sandy Yonstone
Mistress Crosar stood with her host and hostess at the end of the hall’s long table, watching the excited servants press through the door with loud, excited gossip that resounded in the stairwell. It wasn’t likely, Mistress Crosar thought, that there would be much work from them for a day or two.
At least the Sterkarms, having insulted everyone, had gone. “I am surprised, Master Yonstone, only that you admitted them.”
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 14