A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  “Where did you pick up the Grannam witch? And where have you left Per?”

  Andrea smiled, but shook her head, too tired to answer.

  A man on the horse’s other side, catching Per’s name, said, “They changed our Per May with Grannam witch! Gave him as hostage!”

  Andrea spoke then, in Sterkarm. “‘Grannam Witch’ saved my life.”

  “Aye,” said the man, unabashed. “Elven and witchen. They stick together.”

  When they reached the bothies, it was clear that Yanet had taken command. A family occupying one of the central bothies, nearest the fires, was dragging their belongings away to another, Yanet having claimed their bothy for Andrea.

  The stretcher was unhitched, and Andrea was soon made comfortable inside the commandeered bothy. A dish of brose was brought to her, with fresh blood from a cow’s vein stirred into it, because she needed strengthening.

  “But tell her nowt about blood,” Yanet said. “Elven be squeamish folk. In some ways.”

  No sooner had Yanet settled Andrea than a crowd of sick and hurt folk gathered at the smoky fires for her attention: an overhot, grizzling child; a woman whose foot had been stamped by a cow; a man with a badly cut hand.

  Joe found himself running triage, sorting out those who needed help quickly and those who could wait. Somewhere in the middle of that, he found that Yanet had recruited Mistress Crosar’s help and the Mistress was playing a blinder.

  The Sterkarms glowered at the Grannam witch at first, but when Yanet was seen to consult her, she began to be trusted. “She has book learning,” Joe overheard, though whether it was a compliment or not was hard to tell.

  In the days following, it became clear that Yanet and Mistress Crosar ran the whole camp. Hardly a moment passed without one of them saying fetch that, tidy this, come here, go there. Not even Toorkild was safe.

  Andrea was their most favored patient and lay in state on a bed of fern in a bothy’s corner. In a spare moment, Joe took a stone from a fire, wrapped it in a shirt, and carried it to her.

  “I’m a lot better,” she said, when he asked. “I’d get up, but Yanet says she’ll thraip me if I do. She keeps feeding me porridge with added blood. Have you tried it? It adds a certain tang. But I’d rather have yogurt.”

  Joe laughed. “Forget that, hinny. And indoor lavvies and clean water.”

  Thinking of all she’d given up, Andrea sighed. “Is Per safe, do you think?”

  Mistress Crosar

  The squawling child was dirty and ugly but precious to the young mother who leaned anxiously toward her. “His teeth be coming,” said Mistress Crosar. “Oh, my dears, if I was at home with my stillroom at hand … Never mind.” Plucking at her throat, she drew a string of amber beads from within her bodice. A branch of polished coral hung from it. “Let him chew on coral. Tha canst bring beads back when he be a mite better.”

  The young woman stared in astonishment. Mistress Crosar, looking beyond her, saw Toorkild Sterkarm walk by and hung the beads about the mother’s neck. “God be with thee.” Hurrying away, she caught Toorkild at a fire, where he sampled whatever was in the pot. “Master Sterkarm, I will have a word with you!”

  Toorkild turned his glare on her. Before he could speak, Mistress Crosar said, “Spare yourself trouble, Master Sterkarm, of being rude to me. I can be as rude as any, but it takes us nowhere. I will speak with you, Master Sterkarm, about my brother’s daughter and your son.”

  “Well, my laddie be no here. Thanks be to thee.” Toorkild hunched his shoulder against her.

  All sorts of servingmen and women edged closer to their fire, to overhear. Mistress Crosar ignored them. “Master Sterkarm—” Toorkild moved away from her, but she followed, striding to stay with him. “Neither be my brother’s daughter here, but God willing, they are both safe, and my brother’s daughter needs a husband.” She ignored the sniggers from behind her. The sniggers of Sterkarm hinds were of little matter.

  “What be that to me, woman?”

  “Why, your son needs a wife.”

  Toorkild made a stand at the door of his bothy. “Little trouble my laddie’ll have in finding a wife. I wish thee luck with that wee trollop of thine, Mistress.”

  “And why need I luck, Master Sterkarm? By cause your son abducted my brother’s daughter. He spoiled her chances.” Toorkild scowled. “I ken well what kind of answer you mean to give me, but think on. Marry your son to my brother’s daughter, and we shall stand friends. And as that Elven gate seems to swing like an alehouse door, it will be a good thing if Grannams and Sterkarms stand together.”

  “None so long ago, woman, tha sang a different tune!”

  “Aye, well, Master Sterkarm—a piper who kens but one tune soon wears out his welcome. Now. Wedding your son and my brother’s daughter …”

  16th-Side A:

  Wild Country

  The Changeling Sterkarms • Joan Grannam • The Grannams • Per May

  Joan cried out, “He be right!” She startled Grannams and Sterkarms alike, even Per May, whose words she was agreeing with. They all looked at her as she sat, half-dressed and as bedraggled as any wandering beggar, in front of Sweet Milk. “Can you no see? Elven want our land and we must fight them together or watch them destroy us family by family!”

  No one answered her. Sandy Yonstone thought he knew why the Grannams were silent. She was their laird’s daughter. It was, then, up to him. Walking his horse to the head of the Grannams, he said, “Mistress Joan, you must allow—”

  “I speak in my father’s place.” She pushed back her long hair. “I speak as Richard Grannam of Brackenhill, and I order you—”

  “Lady!” Aidan Grannam called.

  Joan yelled, furious, “I order you! Master Yonstone, close your mouth! You have nothing to do here, you are no Grannam! I order you to join with Per Sterkarm and ride with him against Elven. I appoint him my captain! Obey him!”

  Per, standing beside Sweet Milk’s horse, swung around and looked up at her, his face dismayed. The Grannams leaned from their horses to hiss at Aidan, who had nothing to say. He had never before heard Joan Grannam speak so fiercely or say so much.

  Angrily aware of the Sterkarms’ enjoyment, Sandy said, “Mistress Joan, lacking your father, you should look for advice to—”

  “To you? And who be you? A Yonstone! And who be these with you? My father’s servants! Harken! While my father be no here, I be my father!” Some Sterkarm sniggered—until Sweet Milk and Per May looked at them. “If you wish me to speak well of you when I see my father again, obey me now as you would my father. Now, will you ride with me and Sterkarms? Or gan your ways?”

  Both Aidan and Sandy felt as if they were asked to swallow stones. They could ride away and leave her with the Sterkarms. They could fight the Sterkarms for her. Or they could obey her and join with the Sterkarms.

  To report to Mistress Crosar, or Richie Grannam—or, even worse, to their captain, Davy—that they had left Joan in the hands of the Sterkarms was unthinkable. Equally unthinkable was to fight when she might be hurt. They quailed at the thought of telling Mistress Crosar that her niece had been killed—or disfigured by a sword cut.

  But join with the treacherous, murderous Sterkarms? That was against all teaching, experience, reason …

  Per May looked up at Sweet Milk and Joan, seated above him on horseback. “We’ll gan back to shieling and—”

  “We gan back to Elven,” Sweet Milk said.

  Per grasped Sweet Milk’s knee. “But, Entraya. She be sick.”

  Sweet Milk looked down at him from the shadow of his helmet. Per May was made to know that this was not his Sweet Milk, the foster father who’d always been more like a protective older brother. This was the Sweet Milk that other people knew.

  Loosing the man’s knee and stepping back, Per said, “I’ll gan my ways alone.” The st
range Sweet Milk shook his head. Per changed his form of address, because this Sweet Milk was not his familiar friend. “You’ve no need of me. I’ll gan—”

  Again, Sweet Milk shook his head. Joan had appointed Per her captain. The shaky alliance with the Grannams would be harder to manage without him. Per opened his mouth to say that he would appoint Sweet Milk captain in his place, but was silenced by a hard blue stare. “I’ll gan with you,” Per said, but felt his heart straining from his chest, like Swart straining against a leash, toward the distant hillside where Andrea lay.

  Aidan Grannam made up his mind. “We be your men, Lady.”

  “I thank you,” Joan said. “Master Yonstone?”

  Sandy looked aside. He couldn’t force an answer past his teeth.

  Joan looked up at Sweet Milk. “Let me down. Find me a horse.”

  Sweet Milk helped her slip down from the horse’s back, and Per steadied her as she landed on the ground. She smiled at him.

  A Sterkarm man brought forward a couple of spare horses. Per boosted Joan into the saddle of one, and there she sat, dressed in a man’s shirt and boots, her face excited and shining. With another smile for Per, she cried, “We ride with Sterkarms!”

  From among the Grannam horsemen, someone called out, “But we’ll no shake hands with ’em!”

  Per swung up onto his horse. As he settled in the saddle and reached to tighten the girth, he shouted, “We’ll be too far in front for shaking hands!” The Sterkarms laughed.

  Sweet Milk silenced them with a raised hand and repeated the question he’d asked at the beginning: “Elven. Where be they?”

  Aidan answered sulkily, “In Teivedale—staring at sky. We shot them.”

  “Take us to them,” Sweet Milk said.

  The bodies lay among the scrub, their flesh white and blue and puce. In the two days since they’d been killed, the bodies had been stripped of clothing, boots, packs, and even weapons. Birds and foxes had been at them.

  “Lady,” Sandy said. “Stay back.” He kept his horse beside hers, to guard her, though he was too angry to look at her.

  Both Grannams and Sterkarms dismounted and went among the bodies, arguing, though Per May stood at his horse’s head. They needed a token, the Sterkarms said, to prove to the Elves that the Elvish men were dead, or why would the Elves believe them? They wanted to take a body, but the Grannams, if they had to ride with them, didn’t want to lumber themselves with a corpse.

  “Take heads,” Aidan said.

  “Elven will say we killed them,” Rane cried.

  “They’ll say that whatever you do.”

  Sweet Milk said, “Take heads.”

  From her horse’s back, Joan watched them set to their work—dirty, vile work. Men’s work.

  But Sandy’s order, and his certainty that she would obey, rankled. Women routinely cut up dead flesh, pulling out bloody innards, wringing chickens’ necks … Joan had done it herself, because her aunt said a lady should know how to do everything she asked her servants to do. Joan had turned her face away and screwed up her face at the smell, but she’d done it. She’d hated her aunt for making her, but her aunt had said that only babies could toddle away from unpleasant tasks and hope someone else would do them. A grown woman had to do whatever was in front of her to do and not complain. Especially if she expected others to obey her.

  Perhaps—Joan was not willing to accept the thought—but perhaps there had been more to her aunt’s teaching than a desire to make Joan’s life hard. If she wanted the right to speak and act for her father …

  Joan slipped down from her horse, leaving it in Sandy’s care. Ignoring his shout, she strode over to the men. Aidan bent over a dead Elf, hacking at its neck with a long knife. Joan tried not to look away.

  Aidan dropped the knife and reached for his ax. He whacked down the blade, then tugged the head away by its nose. Joan flinched but then said, “It be like butchering a pig!” The men laughed—except Aidan, who shook his head.

  The Grannam man called Buggerlugs held out a head to her. It dangled from his hand, the back of it toward her, its ears sticking out pathetically.

  They were daring her, watching for squeamishness, so they could laugh. She took the head, sinking her fingers into the hair, which was only like pushing her fingers into a dog’s hair. It was heavy and dragged her arm down. The men laughed again.

  Her heartbeat pulsed in her throat. She felt queasy, but if mere kitchen maids could gut chickens and fish, she could do this. Hefting the head, she walked back toward the horses. Instinct made her want to hold the head away from her, as if it might bite, but she quelled that, and made herself carry it casually by her side, though the flesh crawled on her back when it bumped against her leg.

  There was a note of approval in the laughter now, and that made it worth it. She wanted to see if Per May was impressed, but she made herself look ahead as if she didn’t care about anyone’s opinion.

  From their saddlebags, the Sterkarm men took something brightly colored and rustling. “Elf-Bags,” Anders said, proudly, opening one. “Smooth and fine as silk, but strong.” Its colors were deep and bright, and it was so fine she could see Anders’s fingers through it. He crumpled it, and it vanished in his fist, crackling like dried leaves, but then it opened to its full size again without crumbling. The bag was a marvel, an Elvish marvel.

  Anders held it open for her, and she placed the head inside. He grinned at her, and before she could think of “keeping custody of her eyes,” she had grinned back. Glancing around, she saw other Sterkarm men grinning warmly—she seemed to have been accepted as one of them. If only Per would accept her …

  Sandy, his face furious, led her horse to her, stooped, and cupped his hands. She smiled at him, set her foot in his hands, and allowed him to throw her up onto the horse’s back. He opened his mouth to say something—doubtless some lecture—but Anders shouldered him out of the way to tie the bagged head at her saddle.

  Sandy glowered and returned to his own horse.

  Then Per May and Sweet Milk walked their horses up beside hers, and they moved off, with a Grannam woman leading a Sterkarm ride.

  39

  16th-Side A:

  The Sterkarm Shieling

  Toorkild Sterkarm • Yanet • Kaitlin • Joe • Andrea • Mistress Crosar • Davy Grannam

  From the turf bench outside the bothy, Andrea watched the doings of the shieling. A breeze blew gusts of peat smoke to her from the fires where women worked. Children trudged to the stream with wooden buckets. Cattle lowed from the meadow. She felt pleasantly tired. Nearly dying, it seemed, was relaxing. She could have been happy, had it not been for the nagging anxiety about Per.

  Shouts came from beyond the stream together with a pummel of hoofbeats. She took little notice. Children were always shouting, and horses were always coming and going. Then Joe emerged from the smoke, saying, “You’ll never guess who they’re bringing in.”

  Andrea sat up straighter. “Per?”

  “You’ve Per on the brain, you. Richie Grannam! A troop of his want to bring him to his sister.”

  “Oh my God,” Andrea stood up too quickly and turned dizzy. Joe took her arm. “They’ll kill them.”

  “I reckon there’ll be a bit of a stooshie,” Joe said. “You can’t stop them.”

  “We’ve got to try!”

  But when they reached the edge of the camp, the clash Andrea feared seemed to have been headed off. “Lay your weapons down,” Toorkild was bellowing, “and you may bide here.” He stood with Gobby and Mistress Crosar, surrounded by Sterkarms with drawn swords.

  “Aye,” said Yanet, coming to stand beside Andrea, “but we can be sure their food’ll no come out of Toorkild’s pot!”

  A Grannam man knelt before Mistress Crosar. Some Sterkarms whispered his name: “Davy Grannam.”

  Joe p
ointed out the stretcher slung between two Grannam horses. “There’s old Richie.”

  “Be Richie Grannam hurt?” Andrea asked.

  “Taken with melancholy, I hear,” Yanet said. “I’d dose him with thistle. Tha’rt looking well, lass. Pink in thine cheeks again!”

  “Thanks to thee,” Andrea put her arm around her and kissed her.

  “Ah, lassie, truth be told, it be Per tha mun thank.” She pulled back from Andrea, smiling at her. “From all I hear, if Per had no cast down his weapons and called on Mistress for help … Well, you’d both be dead as stones.”

  Per. Andrea’s arms ached along their length with the desire to be around him. “Where does he bide?” Andrea asked, longing for some simple answer.

  Yanet laughed. “Somewhere in world’s room.” She moved away to join those who led the disarmed Grannams toward the bothies.

  A song came into Andrea’s head.

  I looked over my left shoulder

  To see what I might see

  And there I saw my own true love

  Come running down to me …

  She wished that she could look over her own left shoulder and see that.

  Davy Grannam

  Davy tried to speak with Mistress Crosar, but first, Richie Grannam must be bedded down. The damned man was strong as a horse but would do nothing to help himself and had to be carried from stretcher to bothy.

  Then Davy’s attention was demanded by the problem of where his men would sleep and how they’d be fed. He assured the Sterkarms that he’d brought horses loaded with food, which he was even willing to share. He had not come to eat their food but to bring his sick laird to his sister.

  He had other reasons, too.

  After sending Aidan back to the Yonstones with Lady Joan and Per May Sterkarm, he’d stayed on the hillside, waiting to see what Toorkild Sterkarm would do.

  His men had found him there and reported that the Elves who’d threatened Joan Grannam were now all dead. But they’d had bad news, too: The Brackenhill Tower was taken by Elves. The news had been carried by herd boys, who saw everything and ran like mountain goats. The boys said, too, that Richie Grannam still huddled in his bothy at the burned croft.