A Sterkarm Tryst

by Price, Susan;

  “And would no have been sick but for that limmer!” Per said.

  Mistress Crosar allowed a pause. “I am sad for Elf-May’s illness, but you mistake if you think it any doing of my brother’s daughter. Elf-May drank tainted water—”

  “Aye,” Per agreed. “I ken fine well who tainted it!”

  “She would no stand there, now, but for me. I ask a favor in return, Master Per. Give my brother’s daughter thine name and save her honor.”

  Per’s angry answer was stilled by his father’s hand on his arm.

  “We shall make a settlement,” Mistress Crosar continued. “My men tell me our tower at Brackenhill has been slighted and some of our crofts burned—but I think we suffered less than you. Wed my brother’s daughter, add your lances to ours, and Grannam stores shall be opened to Sterkarms. Grannam gold will build Bedesdale Tower again.” She put her hand to her chest, as if her words pained her. “Sterkar … Master … Never did I think to say those words! All changes, all changes.”

  Andrea felt the strength leave Per. Looking into his face, she saw him biting his lip. Tears stood in his eyes. It was hard for him to defy his family. To the Sterkarms, family was survival, safety, life. How could he let the tower lie in ruins and the people go hungry simply to please himself?

  She shook off his arms and pushed herself away from him. The words of the song came back to her:

  For this green earth it shall wither,

  And Sun Herself delay,

  ’Fore I by any word or deed,

  My own true love betray.

  She almost smiled. The sun was going to be delayed.

  Per looked at Joan Grannam. “Be this what you want? I give you fair warning: I’ll take you for your family’s gold and stores and that alone. And if any harm comes to my Entraya, I’ll see you burned.” He looked at Mistress Crosar. “Be this your wish for your brother’s daughter?”

  Mistress Crosar closed her eyes and turned her head aside slightly, as if thinking. Joan Grannam simply stared at Per.

  “Good lad,” Gobby said. “Bonny lad.”

  “Entraya.” Andrea turned when Per said her name. He spoke in his usual hoarse, carrying voice, making no attempt to lower it. “This be for family. Only for family.”

  Andrea felt as lumpen and unresponsive as clay. Whatever he said, it would be Joan Grannam in his bed, Joan who would wake beside him, Joan who’d sit at table with him, talking. If—no, when—he was hurt, captured, or killed, it would be to Joan that word was brought. It felt as if her heart was being clawed from her.

  Gobby said to Mistress Crosar, “A declaration before witnesses? Will that satisfy? We have no priest, but you’ll no—”

  “Mistress,” Sandy Yonstone broke in. “This be a mistake.”

  “But no concern of thine,” Mistress Crosar said. “Master Sterkarm, I would not wish such a hedge wedding for my brother’s daughter, but needs must. Le … Changelings, do you cry them? Let Changelings bury their man. That be decent. Then wedding. They shall use my ring. Kirking can follow later.”

  “Let’s about it, then,” Gobby said. He took Per’s arm and towed him toward the bothies. Both Big and Little Toorkild fell in behind them, and when Per turned to look back, Andrea was blocked from his sight.

  Andrea remained on the deserted path. In the quietness, she heard some small creature creeping through the briars. The words of a song ran through her head, to a slow, plaintive tune:

  A young man, he will woo thee,

  But when he has thou won,

  He’ll turn him around and leave thee

  All for some other one.

  She was startled to find Sandy Yonstone near her, his arms folded. His miserable expression made her laugh. “Both of us jilted!” He stared, because she’d spoken English. It didn’t seem worth the effort to explain, and she walked away.

  Come all of you young lasses

  And this warning take from me—

  Never try to build your nest

  At top of a high tree.

  For its green leaves soon will wither,

  And branches all decay —

  And beauty of your young man,

  Will fade, will fade away. …

  46

  16th-Side A:

  The Sterkarm Shieling

  Andrea • Joan Grannam • Per May • The Changelings

  It’s an ill-omened wedding, Andrea thought, that starts with a funeral.

  The Changeling Sterkarms had Toorkild’s permission to bury Changeling Per near the shieling, close by Isobel’s grave. While others argued about weddings, the Changelings sweated to dig a grave in the shallow soil.

  Yanet and Kaitlin laid the body out. “Dear, dear,” Yanet said, on seeing the wounds in stomach and throat. There was no linen for shrouding, so Changeling Per went to his grave in the same stained blanket he’d been carried in.

  Andrea stayed well away. She’d lost the living Per. She couldn’t bear the notion of preparing his image for burial.

  Nor did she want to help with wedding preparations, so she joined a search for fuel. With a troop of other women, she trudged over the moor, carrying an increasing load on her back. By the time they trailed back to the bothies, Changeling Per’s wake had started.

  The shrouded corpse lay on a turf bench outside a bothy, flickeringly lit by the same fire that warmed the mourners. All were welcome, the Changelings said, even Grannams. They apologized for there being little food and even less drink.

  Andrea could not look at the bundle that had been Changeling Per. Nor did she want to meet the living Per or Joan. So she went to the fire where most of the women gathered, took a wooden bowl from a stack, and held it to be filled with a thick mess of oats and vegetables. Unhooking her horn spoon from her belt, she ate hungrily.

  Dark figures passed to and fro against the wake fire’s light. Murmuring voices, mingled with the rustling of wind in the trees and the stream’s running. Someone laughed. The sweet, sad music of an elbow pipe carried on the air, along with night scents of earth and smoke. Voices rose to meet it.

  “His hounds are to their hunting gone.

  His falcon gray has flown.

  A grass green turf beneath his head

  And at his feet a stone.”

  “Poor laddie.” Yanet stepped into the firelight. “A long road from his world to Elf-Land, and then here. Now he walks a longer road still, all alone in dark.” She sighed. “For all he did, I hope he finds his own waiting at road’s end.”

  Andrea shook her head and moved away. She went to the stream and sat beside it in the dark. The sound of the running water was louder, but she still heard the singing.

  In the early morning, while the light was still gray and the air damp and cold, they carried Changeling Per from the bothies, on a stretcher of lances and cloaks with both Sweet Milks, Per May, and Toorkild acting as bearers. They left a silver trail through the wet grass and sent disturbed cattle blundering away.

  Andrea, exhausted after a sleepless night, kept to the back of the small crowd. She watched Per May help to lower the body of his other self into the grave. Changeling Sweet Milk placed a fresh green turf beneath the corpse’s head and tucked a leather bottle near where one of its hands would be. “For road,” he said. “Gan quick.”

  All the Changeling’s men placed bowstrings, bone dice, or small gifts of food beside his body. “For road.” Some wept. Soon, almost everyone around the grave was sobbing. Even the Grannams lowered their heads and kept respectful silence.

  There was no priest, but Mistress Crosar, in Latin, asked Holy Mary, Mother of God, to pray for the gathered sinners now and at the hour of their deaths. Handfuls of earth were thrown onto the shrouded body with a pattering sound. Andrea went forward and threw a handful, but quickly withdrew into the crowd.

  With that, the funeral was over. Chil
dren ran about again, shouting. Most people straggled back to the bothies, but the Changelings remained to cover the grave with earth and stones. The largest stone they set at its foot, as a marker.

  No one was in the mood for a wedding, but Mistress Crosar could not rest until it was made and witnessed. With Kaitlin and Yanet acting as her maids, she went about the bothies, offering platters of what food they had—bits of broken bread and dried fish, mostly—and calling people to come and witness. Andrea wanted to hide … and at the same time, to find a place in the front row where she could smile at Per as he made his vows.

  With others, she walked past the fires’ gusts of heat, smoke, and whirling sparks to the end bothy. Kaitlin joined her, leading Wee Peerie by the hand. Linking her arm through Andrea’s, she said, “Never mind. Every body kens fine well he loves thee.”

  Joe, coming up behind Kaitlin, said, “He keeps his word. That I ken.”

  No, Andrea thought. Per keeps his word to other Sterkarm men. He has nothing to gain by keeping his word to me. But she took the little boy’s free hand and said, “Let’s gan see wedding!”

  Per waited outside the bothy. It seemed he’d prepared for his wedding by pulling a doublet over his dirty shirt and brushing the grave soil from his hands. He couldn’t have many changes of clothes at the shieling, but he could have borrowed a cleaner shirt. Andrea was pleased that he hadn’t.

  Richie Grannam, Laird Brackenhill, sagged between two of his men, who held him up. His head was sunk on his chest and he didn’t appear to see or hear anything. For him, Andrea felt sympathy. If he didn’t, or couldn’t, recover himself, what would be done with him? Who would lead the Grannams if he was incapable?

  Mistress Crosar ducked from the bothy, followed by Joan Grannam in all her wedding finery. The dirty man’s shirt she’d worn earlier could be seen poking from the neck of her dress. Probably no suitable chemise could be found.

  The dress itself was of rust-colored wool, barely ankle-length and short in the sleeve. Plainly, it was borrowed from a working woman, and Andrea glanced around, trying to spot someone in her undergarments.

  Joan’s face had been washed, and her fair hair combed smooth, spread loose about her shoulders. A wealthy bride was usually crowned with a wreath of roses or orange blossoms, but that being impossible, a wreath had been fashioned from woven grass and wildflowers. Joan looked lovely, Andrea grudgingly admitted: a wood-maiden wild. But as both loose hair and wreath declared her a virgin, there was malicious sniggering among the Sterkarms.

  Perhaps this Joan would have a happier life, in this world, as Per May’s wife than the Joan who, a world away, had married Changeling Per and been murdered by him. But she still wasn’t going to have it easy. Andrea tried not to be glad.

  Gobby Sterkarm bent his head and spoke to Richie Grannam, perhaps reminding him that he had a daughter to give away. Laird Brackenhill gave no sign of having heard. After a moment, Toorkild Sterkarm took Joan’s hand and brought her to stand beside Per, who turned from her and stared at the distant hills. This was not lost on the crowd. A murmur of laughter went around the fires.

  It was a strange wedding: held without a priest of any kind, in a muddy space at the center of a ring of smoking fires and turf huts. Several hounds nosed among the guests, and horses snorted and tore grass nearby. The wedding guests were even more heavily armed and hostile than the usual mob of relatives and friends Andrea was accustomed to 21st side.

  “The vows!” Gobby said. “Let’s be done.”

  People hushed, and the crackling of fires, horses’ tearing of grass and bird calls from the moor all seemed to grow louder. Everyone waited attentively, but neither bride nor groom spoke. Joan looked away from Per, who still looked at the sky.

  “I, Joan, Richard’s daughter—” Mistress Crosar prompted.

  “I, Joan, Richard’s—” Joan heard her own voice ring out and stopped short. Her aunt poked her, and she choked, but then shouted: “I, Joan, Richard’s-daughter Grannam, of Brackenhill, take thee, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, for my husband.” She even ended by looking at Per.

  Per lowered his gaze to the fire in front of him but said nothing. He swayed slightly as Gobby’s hard finger prodded him from behind. He raised his head, but rather than look at Joan, he scanned the faces about the fires, seeing many that he knew. Poor crofters who grubbed a living from moorland fields, widows who sometimes begged for scraps or work, many who had lived and worked at the Bedesdale Tower before the Elves slighted it. All their lives would be eased by an alliance between the Sterkarms and Grannams.

  Gobby poked him again. “I,” Per said, as if startled. “… Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, of Bedesdale … take …”

  He could not shape his mouth to make the next sound. Have sense, Gobby had told him. He was young and had plenty of time. The Grannam lass might die in a year or two. Then he could marry his Elf-May or anyone else he fancied. But Per had watched himself twist in pain. He’d looked down on his own face and stuck a knife into its throat. He knew that counting the time left to him was like carrying water in a sieve.

  The distant, piercing song of a lark drifted down from above, startling him from his thoughts. He drew a long breath, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, of Bedesdale, take … Take …”

  Another sharp dig from Gobby bruised his ribs.

  Per straightened. He had needed that prod. He shouted in the voice he used to carry across valleys. “I, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, of Bedesdale, take as my wife, for so long as we both live, taking no other—”

  Andrea, hearing that voice, turned and pushed through the crowd, meaning to go to the stream, where she could be alone. Irritably, she shook off the arm of someone who caught at her.

  He’s putting others before his own wishes, Andrea thought. I should admire that. An excited face jabbered at her. People were annoyed by her leaving the party. Someone else dragged at her arm. She said, “Oh, leave me be!”

  Joe’s bearded face loomed at Andrea. Kaitlin bobbed up at her side, shouting, “Elf-May! Elf-May!” Gripping her arms, Joe and Kaitlin turned Andrea bodily and there was Per, swimming through the crowd to her.

  “Elf-May,” Joe shouted. “He said, ‘I take Entraya Elf-May.’”

  Per was reaching over people toward her—and the crowd lifted him and almost threw him at her. She put her hands to his chest, steadying him, and he clapped his own hands over hers. He gave her that wide, brilliant smile and said, “For this green earth shall wither and Sun Herself delay, should I by any word or deed my own Elf-May betray.”

  A cheer close by her ear almost deafened her. Yells and whistles rose from the crowd. Andrea sent a fearful look toward the fire where the wedding party stood, but the crowd hid them.

  “Say it!” Kaitlin shouted at her.

  “What?”

  “‘I,’” Joe prompted. “‘I, Andrea—’”

  “Don’t be silly,” Andrea said. Gobby wanted Per to wed Joan Grannam. The crowd swayed as someone forced their way through, and she would have bet good money on that person being Gobby. Making her vows to Per would not only start a feud—well, another feud—with the Grannams, it would start one with Gobby, too.

  Per shook her hands. “Entraya!”

  “Hurry!” Kaitlin said.

  People near them chanted, “Say it! Say it!”

  Joan’s face could have been no more white and stricken had she been stabbed. Toorkild Sterkarm stood grinning like a fool. Beside him, Mistress Crosar felt her back teeth grind together. They ground harder when she admitted that she must bear the blame. She had shaken hands with Sterkarms.

  Sandy Yonstone stood at Joan’s side, looking about at the Sterkarm crowd as if at a pit of snakes. Mistress Crosar’s gaze settled on him.

  “I, Andrea Mitchell, take—”

  “Elf-May!”

  “I, Andrea
Elf-May of—of—”

  Per, Kaitlin, and Joe shouted at her, “Bedesdale!”

  “I, Andrea Elf-May, of Bedesdale, take thee, Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm, to be my husband!”

  “And?” Per said, pulling her toward him, leaning toward her.

  “And? Oh!—For this green earth shall wither and Sun Herself delay, should I by any word or deed my … my own Per May betray.”

  And that was a binding marriage: a promise made before witnesses who would remember.

  Per clamped her to him with his arms around her shoulders and waist. Make the Elf-May your mistress, Gobby had said. Wait until Joan died. But waiting was for those who could be sure their own death wouldn’t come that day.

  Around them people chanted: “Per May and Elf-May! Elf-May and Per May!”

  “Long life and good cheer to them! A bairn every year to them!”

  The crowd thinned and a shout from Gobby told them why. People made off before Gobby could note who had blocked his path. And then Gobby emerged from the press, his face furious.

  Per said, “Wish us well, Father’s Brother!”

  Gobby couldn’t speak.

  As the rabble cheered, Mistress Crosar took Sandy’s hand and pulled him to stand before Joan, who raised her eyes to his.

  For Sandy, it was like seeing her that first time when love had smacked him in the heart like a loosed arrow. “Lady …” He wanted to say that she would never again be dressed as poorly as now, would never again endure such discourtesy, but there was so much to say, he couldn’t find room on his tongue.

  Joan took his hand. “I, Joan, Richard’s-daughter …”

  “Witness!” Mistress Crosar cried, beckoning Toorkild Sterkarm and Davy Grannam. A wedding was legal only if witnessed, and she wanted to be sure the Yonstones couldn’t deny it later. Though the Lord knew, in the ordinary way of things, they could never have hoped for such a marriage.

  Joan recited her vows with crisp clarity. Sandy, holding both hands and staring into her eyes, had to be prompted through his. But the marriage was witnessed and made. Toorkild Sterkarm embraced and kissed both groom and bride. “Long life to you both. I be glad for you, Mistress.”