Lucien

by James Moloney

  Tamlyn submitted manfully, even if he did suck in a sharp breath every so often. Afterwards, Birdie bound his hands with bandages.

  ‘This will keep out the dirt. Your hands will hurt more if they fester.’

  We were famished by this stage, but at the table poor Tamlyn encountered a new problem. He couldn’t close his hand around his knife.

  ‘Silvermay will have to feed you,’ Birdie said.

  At first, I was aghast at the very idea, but it soon turned into a game, one that Tamlyn was content to play along with.

  ‘Open wide,’ I instructed, and he immediately obliged, his lips closing over the spoon with a smile. I made a show of dabbing at his chin, even though there was no need.

  ‘I would be happy if you fed me this way every night, Silvermay. There can’t be many nursemaids as pretty as you.’

  ‘I’m a mess,’ I told him, suddenly aware of how I must look after a day in the fields. ‘There’s dust all over my face and sweat streaks on my forehead. You must be seeing someone else.’

  ‘I see no dust or sweat. And that tattered dress shimmers more than any silk gown I saw in Vonne, as long as you are wearing it.’

  I shoved a spoonful of turnip mash into his mouth before he could say any more, then checked over my shoulder to find both Birdie and my father pretending they hadn’t heard.

  Tamlyn saw the glance towards my parents and held his words — although he had little choice when I was spooning in the food faster than he could swallow it. He was eager for every mouthful, too, reminding me of another I had fed this way. Suddenly Lucien was there in the room, as solidly as if he had been transported across the sea by a magic greater than his own.

  ‘Is Lucien really dead?’ I whispered.

  While the rain grew heavier outside, I swapped the bowl for another that sat waiting at my elbow and fed the first spoonful between Tamlyn’s lips. This went on silently until the second bowl was gone, and by then the weariness had taken hold of Tamlyn again.

  ‘You will feel better in the morning,’ I said.

  ‘No, I won’t. Tomorrow, every muscle in my body will ache like demons. I am one of the commonfolk now. It’s what I asked for.’

  With Lucien so strongly in my mind, his powers making such a contrast to Tamlyn’s discomfort, I couldn’t hold in the tears. They escaped onto the bridge of my nose, trickled unchecked to the tip, then dropped into the bowl.

  ‘It is what I asked of you,’ I corrected him. ‘And now you regret it?’

  ‘Yes, Silvermay, tomorrow I probably will,’ he answered with a sigh.

  ‘Then you do regret giving up your powers. No Wyrdborn would ever need to be fed by a nursemaid.’

  Tamlyn sat back suddenly, wincing as though I had carelessly grasped his hands. Then, without offering an answer, he stood up carefully, as a man must do when he can’t use his hands to steady the chair, and went out into the rain.

  I looked again at my parents, who didn’t try to hide what they had heard this time.

  ‘Go after him, girl,’ said Birdie. ‘He wants to speak to you alone.’

  I followed Tamlyn out into the wet darkness and found him sheltering under the wide eave where once he had sat all night keeping watch over Nerigold.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s you, Silvermay. You have asked me that question a dozen times, in different words, maybe, but the meaning is the same. You’re worried that any regret I feel will turn me against you.’

  ‘And will it? I couldn’t bear it if you hated me for what you have become.’

  ‘Nothing will turn me against you,’ he said vehemently. ‘But there doesn’t seem anything I can say that will convince you.’

  I began to cry again.

  ‘You’re exhausted, just as I am,’ he said, ‘and you have every right to be. Weep all you like.’

  And he came forward to embrace me, not an easy thing to do when the slightest touch would set his hands on fire.

  ‘Maybe words are not enough to answer your question,’ he said tenderly, into my ear. ‘Tomorrow I will look for a way to show you how much you mean to me.’

  My second awakening in the delicious embrace of my own bed brought the same joy, or at least until I moved a little to settle deeper into the mattress. The ache began high in my neck, skipped merrily down through the muscles of my back, spreading out to my arms along the way, jabbed my hips and bottom with a dozen sizzling daggers and continued along my legs to the very tips of my toes.

  ‘I didn’t know I had so many muscles in my body,’ I groaned loudly, expecting Birdie to hear me through the curtain and reply with cold-hearted sympathy. Instead, silence.

  Gingerly, I worked my way out of bed and into my clothes — not the rags of yesterday, but a dress the colour of red wine, an old favourite. I didn’t look too bad in it, either. Last night Tamlyn had told me he saw only me, as though what I wore made no difference, but I wasn’t about to fall for such nonsense. With my hair brushed and tied back into a ponytail that danced well down my back, I went looking for someone to complain to about my aches and pains.

  As I’d already guessed, there was no one in the house. I poked my head outside and spied all three of the faces I was looking for huddled close over the small oak table my father had made so that Birdie could sit at it on sunny days making her medicines. They were so engrossed in conversation they didn’t see me coming until the splash of my shoes in a puddle made them look up.

  ‘What plans are you three cooking up?’ I asked.

  They stared at me as one and I was certain I caught a glimpse of guilty surprise in each face. Then they smiled, and Tamlyn rose from his chair. Immediately I saw the same tentative movements that kept me to a slow walk.

  ‘Is it as bad as you expected?’ I asked.

  ‘Every bit,’ he said, stretching and making a face that wasn’t entirely put-on.

  ‘What were you talking about just now? It looked very serious.’

  ‘Nothing. Birdie wanted to inspect my blisters, that’s all.’

  Oh, and how did she do that without removing the bandages, I wanted to ask, but he was speaking again.

  ‘Your mother says the best way to get rid of the stiffness is to work the muscles.’

  ‘It is, but I should warn you, it will hurt.’

  ‘At first, yes, but once the muscles loosen, the pain lessens. I’ve already tried it.’

  Birdie had slipped inside the house by this time, leaving us with my father.

  ‘Come with me to the barn,’ he said. ‘As Birdie says a little work lifting and sorting will be good for you.’

  I went with them and while Tamlyn helped Mr Grentree stack bales of hay in the far corner, I tried to find out from my father what the three of them had been talking about.

  ‘Tamlyn wanted to know when the religo’s men will return,’ said Ossin. ‘Nettlefield is right, you know, Silvermay. They will take him for the fighting if they find him here. There is something he wants to do before then.’

  ‘Something you can help him with, but not me,’ I said, feeling left out in a way I hadn’t since I was a little girl.

  ‘He needs our help, yes, but you will have a role to play,’ he said, and to my surprise he kissed me on the forehead, which was another memory from my childhood.

  When others came to help in the barn I went to see Hespa.

  ‘Tamlyn’s going to hide from the religo’s men,’ I told her. ‘That’s what they were talking about. He’s going to live in the forest like the brigands who robbed us. He wants my parents to leave food for him in a special hiding place, I’ll bet.’

  ‘At least he won’t be part of the fight. He won’t die like poor Obie did. You should be pleased, Silvermay.’

  ‘I am, I am!’ So why did I feel tears at the rims of my eyes?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered into the crook of Hespa’s neck when she took gentle hold of me. ‘This is silly. Of course he needs to get away from the village — far away, so they won’t take him
as a new recruit.’

  But the more I imagined Tamlyn far away in safety, the more I spilled tears like Delgar’s fountain in Erebis Felan.

  Hespa loosened her hold on me, then stood away altogether. ‘I’m missing something. You’re pleased he’ll be out of the fighting and at the same time you’re miserable?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not making much sense, am I?’

  ‘You would if you’d tell me what’s really upsetting you.’

  She waited for me to come out with it, but when I merely shrugged a second time and held my hands open to show how empty of explanation I felt, she tried to fill the void for me.

  ‘You’re worried wolves will get him, is that it?’

  I shook my head. Wolves were rare in our woods unless the winter was especially harsh.

  Hespa tried again. ‘Other runaways will slit his throat?’

  I hadn’t thought of that and immediately my hand flew to my own throat. But no, that wasn’t it, either. When my friend seemed about to make a third suggestion, I put up my hand to stop her.

  ‘I’m afraid I will lose him,’ I said, surprised that my voice sounded so calm. ‘We won’t see each other every day, as we do now. We’ll drift away from one another because we’re not part of each other’s life, hour by hour. That’s how it has been for us for so long now, and I don’t want to imagine it any other way.’

  Hespa studied me for a long moment, then let out a sigh. ‘I wish I cared about one man as much as you do. I wish that being with one person was all I wanted. But there’s no one like that in my life. I envy you, Silvermay Hawker, now more than ever.’

  I left Hespa’s house wondering at her words. She wasn’t jealous of me in a selfish or mean-hearted way; she simply wished she had what I had and felt what I felt. We had spoken of being in love more times than there are stars in the night sky, and always it had seemed so far in the future that longing for such love would wear us out. Suddenly, it was mine, for there was no doubt what she was telling me. I loved Tamlyn Strongbow as much as any woman has loved a man. Hespa saw it in my face and in the way I looked at Tamlyn. Was it there in the way he looked at me, I wondered. My mother had said so, even before Tamlyn and I had left Haywode in search of Lucien. He looks at you as a man should when he’s in love. Those were her very words.

  What did Tamlyn see when he looked at me? A girl in rags, mostly, I told myself on that walk home through the mud of last night’s rain. No matter how carefully I jumped between the puddles, mud splashed onto the dress I had chosen as the best of a poor lot, dulling what little colour hadn’t already faded with the years. ‘Wine red’ I called it, but looking down now I saw little difference between its drab colour and the mud splattered around the hem.

  ‘I see only you,’ Tamlyn had told me last night. That was lover’s talk. He should see me at my best. I wanted to know, just once, that he wasn’t making allowances for the tattered clothes I wore, speckled by the blood of battle or smeared with dirt after a night sleeping in the woods. I knew he loved me, but still I wanted to look nice for him. Was that so much to ask?

  24

  Surprises

  I had worked myself into quite a rage by the time I reached home.

  ‘Mother, it’s not fair,’ I started, almost before I was through the door. ‘I barely have a dress that isn’t a patchwork of rags. Even this one. Look at it. It was yours before it was mine. Every dress I’ve ever worn was a hand-me-down from you or my sisters. Aren’t you embarrassed to see me walk around the village like this?’

  Birdie had her back to me while she stoked the fire. When I fell silent at last, she turned to face me. ‘You’d like a new dress. Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think it’s time you had one made just for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this sudden demand has nothing to do with the handsome young man you’ve brought back with you.’

  The smirk on her face was too much.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I look nice, like Hespa does? The only decent thing Tamlyn has seen me in was the yellow dress the Widow Wenn gave me. Another hand-me-down, and it ended up in tatters, as well.’

  I was ready for a long argument; to be the ram that butts up against every obstacle until it forces its way through.

  ‘You’re quite right, Silvermay,’ Birdie said. ‘We’ll go see what the cloth seller has for you. Today, right now, in fact.’

  ‘Now?’

  I couldn’t believe it. I’d charged the door with my shoulder ready for impact and she had opened it in my face. It’s a wonder I wasn’t lying sprawled on the floor. Was she making fun of me? But that suspicion died when she grabbed her shawl and led me out into the lane.

  The shock forced me into second thoughts. ‘Don’t you have to ask Father’s permission?’

  Birdie stopped to let me catch up. ‘Silvermay, there are some things a wife should consult her husband about, but a new dress is not one of them.’

  Cloth seller was just the right description for Mrs Horsfeld. She didn’t keep a shop, and she certainly wasn’t a dressmaker like the woman in the next village who sewed silk gowns for the religo’s daughters. But Mrs Horsfeld could tell the difference between good material and work-a-day cloth, so she bought leftover rolls of fabric that the merchants couldn’t be bothered carrying away with them after the spring fair. These she kept in a corner of her house for when the wives and mothers of Haywode came calling.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Mrs Horsfeld, who enjoyed a chat as much as she enjoyed the coins her customers dropped into her palm. ‘I’ll set out the samples for you.’

  She was a practical woman, just like my mother, and most of what she offered was inexpensive material to make shifts for little girls who would quickly grow out of them. For a few coins more, we could have fabrics that didn’t feel like a turnip sack when you brushed your hand over them, and in brighter colours, too, but even these wouldn’t catch the eye in the way I dreamed of.

  Birdie lingered over a dark green material. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’ll look like a forest.’

  She laughed, then fixed Mrs Horsfeld with a more serious look. ‘Is this the best you have?’

  ‘I keep some for special occasions. It’s not cheap, you understand.’

  ‘We’d like to see it,’ Birdie told her. When she saw the surprise not just in Mrs Horsfeld’s face but also mine, she said, ‘This is a special occasion. My daughter has come back to me after I’d given her up for dead.’

  When Mrs Horsfeld brought the most expensive fabrics from her backroom, Birdie sighed in satisfaction. ‘This is what we want. What about this one, Silvermay?’

  I didn’t even glance her way, because my eyes had locked onto a material so like the blue of Geran’s dress in Erebis Felan that I was fighting tears.

  ‘That one,’ I said.

  I expected Birdie to say no when Mrs Horsfeld revealed the price, but she was full of surprises that day.

  ‘We’ll take the entire roll,’ she announced to the startled cloth seller.

  At home, the more hard-nosed mother I was used to showed herself. ‘The design must be simple. You’re not a religo’s daughter who dresses just to be seen. You will work around the house in this new dress, just as you do in any other.’

  My face fell when she said this, so she relented. ‘That doesn’t mean it won’t have style. Now get out of that red rag and let me measure you.’

  I am ashamed to say that I barely thought of Tamlyn for the rest of the afternoon, making a lie of all I’d said to Hespa. The drawing and measuring demanded all of my concentration. By the time the day’s light began to fade, the material was cut out and the skirt tacked together well enough for me to try it around my waist. Only the finest cloth fell in such even folds.

  ‘We’ll keep it a surprise,’ Birdie suggested when it was time for the men to return.

  While we shared supper that evening with Tamlyn and my father, all evidence of what we ha
d been up to lay hidden in the corner.

  The delicate work of sewing the seams was best done by the most practised hand and that was Birdie’s.

  ‘If you will do my work,’ she said the next morning, ‘I will spend the day on your new pride and joy.’

  It was a deal I was happy to make. I could barely wait for the dress to be finished.

  When I made my trip to the barn with bread and cheese for Tamlyn’s lunch, the sun was shining again from a cloudless sky. He was among the others, spreading the ears of wheat out to dry.

  ‘I have a surprise for you,’ I said, before I could stop myself.

  He looked down at my hands, which were empty now that I had given him the bread and cheese.

  ‘Not here. Back at the house.’

  ‘A cake?’ he guessed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A kiss?’

  ‘That would hardly be a surprise,’ I said.

  When I said this, everyone laughed, as though they were part of my secret.

  ‘I know what it is,’ Tamlyn cried. ‘A puppy I can train as a hunting dog?’

  ‘Not that, either. Food, kisses, a pet to play with — you think too much like a man.’

  ‘Because I am one,’ he said, putting his food aside to chase me until he had planted a kiss on my cheek.

  That brought even more smiles from the onlookers. He was quickly becoming a favourite among the old men whose sons had been taken away, and among the women whose husbands had gone with them. I wasn’t quite so pleased about that second lot, especially when some eyed Tamlyn with more interest than a married woman should.

  On the way home, I passed the inn as Mr Nettlefield was hauling a fresh barrel of ale up from his cellar.

  ‘Are you expecting travellers?’ I asked.

  Being Mr Nettlefield, he replied with a sneer. ‘Travellers. Ha! No one dares travel the road these days. Too dangerous.’

  Then why was he about to spike a new barrel?

  I soon forgot about Mr Nettlefield when I arrived home to find Birdie anxious for me to have another fitting.

  ‘The bodice is harder than I bargained on,’ she muttered, along with a few choice curses for the gods of needle and thread.