by Vicki Grove
Yet none dared touch the trees of Wythicopse with an ax.
Most thought of it as a site of ritual from the olden days, mayhaps marking a place where the land of the dead reached up to meet the sunny world of the living. For sure, it was best left untouched in its broody mystery. A faery site it most likely was, but not like the enchanted places in Clodaghcombe Forest that Rhia knew well. Nay, this place seemed wrapped in a damp gloom that even the brightest sun could not dispel.
Pride stopped Rhia from admitting her fear and digging in her heels to slow them down, but she felt blessed relief when, still some little distance from the walled grove, Maddy all of a sudden flopped down to the grass and let go Rhia’s hand so that Rhia could flop to the blessed grass as well. They both lay on their backs there, gasping for air as their ears rang and the blue sky spun round and round above.
“I’ve lost . . . my left . . . shoe,” Rhia panted, when she could.
“We’ll find it,” Maddy said with her usual simple confidence, plucking up a stem of daisy to chew.
Rhiannon would have enjoyed having Maddy’s sort of breezy confidence herself, but you had it or you hadn’t, and there were always too many questions in Rhia’s mind for her to ever have it. Such as, what were they doing in such a fraught place?
Still, she raised up on an elbow, feigning nonchalance. In fact, she plucked her own daisy stem, gave it a chew, then asked, “Well, Maddy, what’s this wonder of yours?”
Maddy sat up and smiled mysteriously. “It lies just over the brambly stone wall, within the circle of poplars. Don’t fret, Rhia, we’ll go there in a moment.”
So Maddy did plan on breaching the forbidden walls of Wythicopse Ring! Rhiannon near choked on the daisy stem she sucked. To climb over the walls of Wythicopse was not to be done lightly, and all that Maddy ever did was done lightly.
“But Rhia,” Maddy continued, breathlessly. “Right now I must tell you something before I burst! Something I’ve told neither Nedra nor Ginny!”
At that, Rhia eagerly sat up knee-to-knee with Maddy. She oft felt the outsider of the four, and to hear she was picked first to hear a secret was welcome. “Tell! Tell!” she urged, as the wind began drying their skirts and lifting their hair.
“Oh, Rhiannon, saints bless me!” Maddy whispered, throwing her apron over her face, then peeking from its edge, all flustered. “I’m fearfully in love! Oh, Rhia!”
Rhiannon’s hands flew to her face. “Is it Willard who helps the smith?”
Maddy, giggling, shook her head.
“All right then, Oswald the carpenter’s boy? Or Rufus who lives in the mill house with his grandsire?”
Maddy leaned forward and took Rhiannon’s hands. “Oh, Rhia, those are merely town boys! Good friend, I’m in love with Frederique, a squire visiting at the manor house!”
Rhiannon gasped. The sun had gone under a cloud, and a chill wind suddenly blew up from the marsh. An ill wind, if ever Rhia had felt one.
“Oh, Maddy, the earl’s own son? You can’t love the earl’s son, Maddy!”
“Not the earl’s son, Rhia. That would be Roderick. Frederique is one of Roderick’s bosom friends, come last winter to squire with him! Roderick is paunchy and dull, with limp hair and a pout. But my Fred is so handsome and gallant, I melt upon merely thinking of him!”
To tell it plain, Rhiannon felt sick at the thought of Maddy fallen for an aristocrat. Had she forgot that she was only a peasant girl, exalted to do work in the manor house by her strong good looks and neat habits? This was entirely unnatural, and layered with danger upon danger.
Rhiannon swallowed and licked her lips. “Does Frederique . . . does he know of the love you hold for him?”
Maddy squeezed her friend’s fingers, demanding an oath. “Swear to tell no one what I’m telling you, Rhiannon! Swear it as a vassal swears fealty to his lord.”
Rhia squeezed Maddy’s fingers back. “I so swear.”
“All right,” Maddy whispered, shivering with happiness. “He does know, Rhia, and he swears he loves me just as well! He does!”
Rhia gave Maddy a smile, though a cautious one.
Maddy nodded toward Wythicopse Ring. “We meet right there, inside the stone-clad circle of sacred poplars, where we won’t be seen. Frederique says none will dare venture into the dragon’s chamber! It’s spooky—you’ve got to see it, Rhia! Come on!”
Maddy jumped to her feet, hoisted her skirts, then ran straight to the brambly wall and began to scale its stony side. Rhia watched her openmouthed—the dragon’s chamber?
“Will you come, or will you gape like a fish all day?” Maddy called over her shoulder.
A friend is a friend when all’s said and done, especially when a secret’s been told that binds you oathlike to the other. Rhia took a breath, then jumped to her own feet, then ran to the copse and climbed the stone wall, trying not to think, nor to imagine. She followed Maddy right to the top, then slid down the mossy stone of the other side and landed upon her knees within that eery, enchanted place.
“What did I tell you?” Maddy asked in a whisper, which seemed the manner of speech called for inside this walled circle of swirling shadow and mist. She turned in slow circles with her arms outspread. “Have you ever felt such a place in your entire life, Rhiannon?”
“I’ve . . . not,” Rhia whispered.
No leaf rustled within this glade, and no bird sang. It was a frozen place, thick with twisty vines that felt grabbish as fingers clutching at your ankles.
“Maddy, I feel we’re being watched,” she whispered.
“I know,” Maddy whispered back. “I always have that feeling here, though Frederique says that’s nonsense. And isn’t this place romantic , Rhia?”
Rhiannon pondered that as Maddy skipped off a little ways, then settled on her knees before a broad mound of violets. “Here, Rhia, hurry!” she called.
When Rhia’d knelt beside her, Maddy slipped her fingers far as they’d go into the soil and easily lifted that mossy violet mound right off the earth it grew from! She placed it like a huge pudding onto the nearby grass, then knelt to brush away dirt from deep in the soily pit where the violet had been.
“Frederique placed that violet clump atop what I’m about to show you, to conceal it and mark it,” she whispered. “He and his mates found what’s beneath here when they were riding one day. Their horses scuffed up the ground and exposed a bit of her brow, then they dug out more of her with their swords.”
“Her?” Rhia looked into the small pit and saw a face staring right back at her! She cleared more dirt to find a woman made all of tiny colored stones, a picture lady with a leafy crown upon her head and a swallow bird upon her shoulder. And there was a red, red rose grown up along her white sleeve, it being made of those same little stones.
“What magic is this?” Rhiannon breathed.
“You’ve seen nothing yet.” Maddy jumped to her feet and ran along, then knelt and pulled a deep cap of mud and vines from another small section of the ground.
When Rhiannon hastened to look into that second hole, she was peering at a picture of a hare made of those same tiny stones, no single colored stone so large as a silver penny, all put side by side in shades of brown with some pink along the ears and tail and upon the nose, just as a hare would have in life!
“Everywhere we dig within this circle, the ground beneath is covered over with such pictures,” Maddy whispered. “Frederique thinks they lie in one great wall beneath the earth within this copse, and Leonard says they’re made to form a seal above a great chamber dug to hold the Dragon of Cymrhough. Or perhaps the Dragon of Brynourth. Leonard says the chamber surely holds one or t’other of those two ancient dragons, and that the beast is sleeping under strong command from some great wizard of Arthur’s time, mayhaps the great Merlin himself! Leo says he longs for a chance to slay it, but not as it sleeps. He would wait until it awakes so he might have the sport of the chase!”
Rhiannon sat back on her heels, speechless.
&n
bsp; “Leonard is as handsome as my Fred, or nearly, and the best at swordplay of the squires. He fears nothing, I tell you, and he has curls to his shoulders, near as light as your own are dark, and a dimple in his left cheek. Roderick the Paunchy Whiner, Frederique the Handsome, and Leonard the Rough and Tumble. I made that up, but it fits them well indeed. The other four squires are younger and of no account, and they ride a bit behind. I tell you, Rhia, that was I not so fearfully in love with Fred, I would most certainly love Leo, as he’s strong and fearless as his namesake beast, and he—”
Rhia, still stunned by her surroundings, finally interrupted. “What’s over there?” She pointed over Maddy’s right shoulder.
Maddy frowned and rolled her eyes. “Have you not been listening about Leo, Rhia?” She sighed and looked over her shoulder. “Well, beneath that hump of moss is a man in a white robe riding a donkey. And beneath that spot where the wild onion sprouts is a man hunting with two dogs, all sinfully naked but for a shawl around his neck.”
Maddy giggled, but Rhia was far too dazed to join her in it.
“Now, watch,” Maddy instructed. “You can hear the great dragon’s breathing!”
She held back her hair with one hand and knelt far forward, putting her whole head and shoulders right into the hole! Rhia watched helplessly as Maddy then pressed her ear right upon the colored stones at the bottom that formed the pink-eared hare.
Maddy presently jerked up straight, her face flushed with excitement. “Yes, yes! I heard it plain! Now you, Rhiannon!”
She gave Rhia a little push from the shoulders so Rhia’s own head now ducked near the gaping hole. Rhiannon snatched her dark hair back and dared to bend forward until her own ear rested on the cold stone of the hare’s brown eye.
And sure enough, she heard a great and fearful sighing coming from below! The deep, strong whirl of sound beneath that dome of tiny rocks could only be the breath of a fiery dragon! No doubt they were tempting the devil here, she and reckless Maddy.
Rhiannon’s heart thudded and she pulled up from the hole, trembling all over.
Maddy clapped her hands, eyes wide with excitement. “Want to go again, this time over in the violet hole where the rose-bedecked lady lies?”
Rhiannon nodded. “I do!” she admitted, shocked by her own reckless decision.
Maddy and Rhia sat astride the brambly stone wall a little time later as two knights will sit atop a shared mount. Rhiannon wanted with all her heart to finish the climb over and run back to town. Also with all her heart, she longed to sit forever with one leg inside magical Wythicopse Ring and one leg out in the bright, common world.
What power there was in mysteries! How sharp and alive they made you feel.
“They say the age of the faeries has passed,” Rhia whispered. “And yet there really may be . . . things still afoot in our modern world that remain beyond any earthly understanding. Mayhaps even enchantments. Who’s to say?”
“Who is?” carefree Maddy agreed, laughing into the bright spring wind.
Chapter 7
They were running back to town side-by-side, galloping like colts with their skirts blown above their white knees, when Maddy began to spring her trap, or so Rhiannon later thought of it. Much as a forester will drape a concealed net for the taking of a hapless fox, Maddy had certainly trapped her into a plan that could only end in no good!
They were just past Gallux Hump when Maddy turned to her, calling, “You’re the only one I’ve shown who didn’t flee the dragon’s chamber, Rhia! I knew you wouldn’t, and I knew as well you’d be a true friend and meet Frederique’s mate Leonard there on Beltane Eve! We’ll party gloomy winter away together the evening before May Day brings in the spring—me and Frederique, you and Leo!”
Rhiannon stumbled but kept up her run, gaping now at Maddy.
“Before you say anything, hear more about it!” Maddy rushed on, puffing. She spotted Rhia’s lost slipper hanging on a nettle bush, swooped out an arm to retrieve it, and tossed it across to Rhia. “All the young squires will be there! Frederique said to bring the most comely girl I know for Leonard. And of all, you’re the very most comely, Rhiannon!”
But Rhia was not that easily duped. The others had surely said a firm no to this misthought idea!
“I canna meet you, Maddy,” she called back, stopping to gather her wits whilst she pulled her slipper back on. “I must go down the trail with Mam and Granna to Roodmas on Beltane Eve. I’ve promised them.” A tight excuse, and religious to boot.
But she could not look at Maddy as she said it, for ’twas a bald lie—the baldest. They three women held their own services upon Clodaghcombe Bluff, along with whatever invalids were able to attend. Vicar Pecksley sent up an acolyte with the sacraments for Roodmas, just as he did monthly for their regular worship.
“Only the old spend Beltane Eve at Roodmas, Rhia,” Maddy teased. She shook her yellow curls back from her face. “The young spend the night a-running the woods and jumping the field fires and flowering up the Maypole for the morrow! Your mother let you come down with us last year to the bonfire on the green, remember? So I’m sure she’ll let you come as well this year. When we’re bent and prune-faced, there’ll be time enough to go to Roodmas and repent our youthful follies!”
She laughed aloud at that picture, and Rhia couldn’t help but join her. But Mam had only reluctantly let her come down to the Beltane festivities last year, yielding to longstanding custom that allowed all who’d reached the age of thirteen to attend. And spending last Beltane with other girls laughing around a bonfire was different completely from this party Maddy had in mind. Mam would never consider it, not if she knew.
“Wait!” Maddy then exclaimed, clapping her hands. “What an idea I’ve just had! Since you say your mother and grandmother will be gone to Roodmas, our party will come up through the woods and we’ll have our fun atop the bluff whilst they’re gone! Roodmas goes on for ages and ages—time enough for a fine frolic. And your chapel is perfect, so dark and private, with the benefit of a ceiling for keeping out the drafts. Wythicopse is romantic for sure, but it lacks a cover excepting the trees and so can get quite dampish if the dew comes thick. Oh, friend, what a fine plan!”
Rhia could find no scrap of anything to say, so preposterous was this notion. Maddy’d been up to the blufftop only once, when they’d both been very young girls, nine or ten. When Rhia’d shown her the ancient hermit’s stone chapel, Maddy had swirled in the gloom, dancing with the sunbeams that lit the ancient stones of the floor.
Mam had been scandalized when she passed the window and saw that dire misuse of such a holy place. So just think what she’d do if she could so much as hear Maddy speak of using the chapel for a “fine frolic” on the bawdy festival night of Beltane Eve!
“It’s settled then, Rhia!” Maddy pronounced, taking Rhia’s silence for the answer she desired, as such a headstrong girl is wont to do. “Whichever way it goes, the chapel or the ring, will be just dandy with me, now you’re coming. Your dark good looks will make a moon to Leonard’s sun! Oh, Rhia, I’m so relieved, as I couldn’t have found the nerve to go all by myself! And I cried at the thought of Frederique with those scheming girls from Francia! Not that he’d be tempted by their wiles, as he loves only me.”
Rhiannon could only feel agog at how Maddy had cornered her like Lucy would corner a helpless mouse. She could not think of a single way out of Maddy’s clutches. Beltane Eve was yet some days away, and in that time she might somehow think of an excuse Maddy could not reject. For now, though, it seemed she was trapped.
At the wall of the manor house courtyard they slowed to a walk and parted ways, as Maddy needed to lay the kitchen fire and get to her other appointed midafternoon chores. Rhiannon watched till her friend had reached the wide gate, then she raised an arm in farewell as Maddy saluted her likewise.
And in that moment, right before Rhia turned back around to rejoin the crowd in the green, she glimpsed a small thing she’d remember large on a day to co
me.
The fine timbered manor house loomed just the other side of the wide wall, and there in an upstairs window, standing with his arms folded, stood Lord Claredemont himself! He stared grimly down at the part-open flap door of the pavilion, where Vicar Pecksley was allowing one person at a time to enter and lay hands upon the dead man. With one gloved thumb, Lord Claredemont tapped his bottom lip. And then he gave one curt movement of his head, side to side, as though denying something said to him by an unseen speaker in the salon behind him.
Rhia caught herself then and looked away, ashamed for disturbing the lord’s privacy. It was just so seldom you actually saw him! Of course, he hadn’t seen her, and would have looked right through the likes of her even if he had.
Still, she felt flustered as she hurried on toward the ale-tasters’ booth. Several of Granna’s close cronies were in charge there, as only those who were female, of some substantial age, and of unsullied integrity were respected enough for the job of brewing the ale sold to the public. It was tempting to water it for added profit, is why.
As Rhia came up close to the thick oak table where the ale was served, a tiny lady in a gray dress was holding forth against a group of rowdies.
“I’ll serve no riffraff, nor those acting brash!” she said curtly, closing one eye and pointing a knife-sharp fingernail toward them. She noticed Rhia waiting for her attention and turned to her, letting the chastened rowdies grow thirstier as she spoke in a different, gentler voice. “Moira’s just now taken little Daisy and gone on along into the line for touching the poor dead body, dear. She told me when I saw you to instruct you that you’re to do the same.”
Rhiannon smiled her thanks and turned back toward the green to join the ragged line snaking toward the grim pavilion. The crowd had lessened a bit from before, which was good. Yet the proceedings moved slowly, slowly. After a while of standing there and barely moving, she sighed, scanning the line ahead for a sight of Granna and little Daisy. The sun at the midday hour was right hot, and she longed for the drink of cool barley water Granna’s crony at the stand would have given her, if she’d only thought to ask.