Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  “I thank you for the warning, sir,” Tsafrir said respectfully. “Our ultimate destination is Ashqalêth, but we shall bear in mind your timely rede.”

  Gearnach nodded again. “Derry Meagher is the place I speak of. Good day to you, Tsafrir of Bucks Horn Oak.”

  “And to you sir. Fare well.”

  Tsafrir and his companions moved to the side of the road as the squadron of mounted knights cantered by, their harness jingling, their chariots and wagons clattering. When the last of the warriors had passed, the liegemen resumed their journey southwards.

  “I rejoice that I do not have to cater for such a large quantity of hungry soldiers,” observed a deep-chested fellow with grey whiskers. He and Tsafrir looked to be about the same age—close to sixty Winters. “It is enough that I cook for the household of the duke.”

  “For my part, Yaadosh,” said a third man, “I rejoice merely that your culinary skills have improved vastly since your youth.”

  Yaadosh tapped the side of his leathery nose. “Ah, but when a man is employed in the work he relishes,” he said, “one cannot help but raise one’s skills to a more excellent quality. Much as your juggling has mended, Michaiah my lad, you having spent years as conjurer and entertainer.”

  Tsafrir, who had remained silent since their brief exchange with the knights, now spoke. “Such a wonder!” he exclaimed. “We have met Two-Swords Gearnach. Everyone speaks well of him, from Narngalis to Grïmnørsland. He is reputed to be an honorable man, fiercely loyal his sovereign. King Uabhar instills into his troops, indeed into his own family, the precept of ‘Loyalty Above All,’ and Gearnach is a paragon of that precept.”

  “I deem he is also a man of compassion,” Yaadosh observed.

  “Compassion, yes,” rejoined Tsafrir, “for recall the tale from some years ago, about how he cut down the assassin who tried to hang herself from the Iron Tree in Cathair Rua, and thereafter the woman was rehabilitated, and she made the great Garden for the good of all, and became the Crone of the Herbs. If not for Two-Swords she would have died and the Garden would never have grown in that wasteland.”

  Ahead of the travelers, masses of grey clouds billowed slantwise through the sky, as if tightly massed chimneys from acres of manufactories were pouring out smoke. The highway meandered through a lush water-meadow before climbing a wooded slope. Blackbirds were warbling in oak, beech and alder. Red admiral butterflies dodged through the leaves.

  “I would that we might hasten our journey through Slievmordhu,” said Michaiah, whose nag plodded laboriously. “Everybody we meet informs us of the increase in attacks from the mountain clansmen. I am too old to be beating off bandits. I’ve already done my fair share of hewing ugly heads. These visits to R’shael seem more arduous every year. I am always pleased to see our old friends, but I’d just as soon be home amusing the grandchildren with sleight-of-hand.”

  “Ach!” Nasim snorted. “You are talking like a greybeard!”

  Michaiah’s eyes crossed as he looked down at his own chin. “A greybeard is what I am,” he said. Then he added, wonderingly, “Where did the years go?”

  A few days later they crossed the hills into Slievmordhu. Bordered by luxuriant oak woods, the road climbed a low ridge. As the riders breasted the rise, catching their first glimpse of a small village about half a mile away in the valley below, a band of armed men sprang out from the trees to bar their way. The guards wore Sir Reamonn Meagher’s coat of arms, for he was lord in those parts and they were in his service. They challenged the newcomers and would not let them pass until they were satisfied as to their identity and the peaceful nature of their business.

  “We wish to break our journey,” explained Tsafrir, “mayhap to take a drop of ale at your inn.”

  “The inn at Derry Meagher was lately burned to the ground,” the patrol captain grimly informed the visitors. “But you can get ale at the brewer’s house.”

  The travelers turned off the highway onto the meandering byroad and made for the settlement. Beyond the hills on the horizon, massed rainclouds were still blowing across the skies, and a scattering of dark birds winged eastwards. Cloud-reflections drifted beneath the glassy surface of a duck-pond.

  As the vista opened out, the riders could see in the distance an ox-drawn wagon jolting along a winding lane, overtaking a goose-girl who was supervising her flock. A woman carrying a wooden yoke across her shoulders, a pail suspended at each end, was delivering milk up to the manor house, while two young men hauled sacks of oats from the granary to the mill.

  Berries were ripening on the hawthorn hedges, and starlings were squabbling beneath the eaves of stable and byre. The village’s three large fields flanked the road. It was close on harvest-time; wheat and rye hazed the north field with a pale yellow mist; oats, barley, peas and beans thrived in the home field strips, while three or four cattle grazed under the chestnut trees bordering the fallow southern field. Children walked up and down the furrows scaring off the birds. When they spied the riders they ran away, shouting in fright, destroying the impression of a peaceful idyll.

  Derry Meagher with its mill, its small brewery and its inn, was a settlement inhabited by about one hundred and eighty people. The mill and a row of thatched wooden cottages lined the stream at the bottom of the valley. Larger cottages clustered along both sides of the main street, flanking the walled demesnes of the slate-tiled manor house, the only stone building. Each dwelling, surrounded by gnarled apple and plum trees, occupied its own yard. Toddlers played amongst the chickens and dogs; they, too, fled when they caught sight of strangers riding into town. In the crofts behind the yards women leaned on their hoes, warily watching the riders from amongst rows of turnips and parsnips, beans and peas, onions, cabbages, and clumps of sage and thyme.

  The travelers passed a skinny fellow with the dazed demeanor of the slow-witted, who was sitting cross-legged by the roadside playing a merry tune on a bone pipe. After removing the instrument from his lips he sang,

  “Poor folk in hovels,

  Charged with children and overcharged by landlords,

  What they save by spinning they spend on rent.

  On milk, or on meal to make porridge.”

  “Can you not get it to rhyme?” Michaiah the songmaker muttered intolerantly as they went by.

  “Poor Rori and Cluny and Tipper, lyin’ cold in their graves,” the fellow sang heedlessly, before putting the pipe to his mouth and resuming his incongruously happy tune.

  As they passed along the main street the liegemen found themselves audience to the sound of low sobbing, which emanated from one of the houses. Men with fresh cuts and scratches on their faces and hands were mending a splintered door and affixing iron bars to windows. A linen bandage wrapped the head of one worker. Burdened by a bundle of kindling-twigs, a hunch-backed woman trudged past, one arm in a sling. Across the top of the main street, beside the grassy common dotted with sheep, a third group of cottages had been built. At the end of this row stood the inn, the brewery and the brewer’s house. Where the inn had once been, however, there was now nought but a blackened ruin. Most of the burned timber had been cleared to one side, and men were already beginning to reconstruct the building on its original chalk footings. Using a block and tackle, they were hoisting the first of several enormous pairs of wooden crucks, whose bases were to rest on large padstones built into the foundations.

  The first raindrops of a light shower commenced to patter down, and the visitors were glad to find shelter within the brewer’s house. Dark and warm was the interior; a long room with a byre at one end, occupied by a few sacks of barley and several twrelve-gallon vats, and a half-height chamber containing sleeping quarters at the other. Smoke from the open fire pit escaped through a hole in the roof. A deep stew-pot cast in bronze hung from a tripod over the coals. The rafters of the great crucks arched overhead, while underfoot the hard-packed clay floor was well swept.

  Within this house the visitors found hospitality and good brown ale. Oonagh the brew
er served them; a rosy-cheeked woman with the stamp of good nature on her countenance, overlaid by recent woe. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing the raised red weals of her scalded arms, a mark of her profession.

  “I would like a rissole,” Yaadosh began without preamble, for his stomach rumbled. “You say you have none? What about sausages, do you make sausages? Are there any eggs? Chicken?”

  “I have no penny to be buyin’ pullets,” Oonagh responded matter-of-factly, “nor geese nor pigs, but I have two green cheeses, a few curds of cream, a cake of oatmeal, two loaves of beans and bran, baked for my children; and 1 have parsley and pot herbs and plenty of cabbages. There’s pottage warmin’ on the hearth; take a bowl and help yourselves!” And with that, Yaadosh and his friends were satisfied. They fell to with good appetite.

  “We heard your village has lately suffered a fearful raid,” said Tsafrir, while Oonagh slammed extra wooden spoons and trenchers onto the table-top one by one, as if striking down imaginary enemies.

  “Aye,” said the brewer, “and we are all on the lookout for Marauders. By the Black Dice! If they return they will not be farin’ as well as they did the first time.”

  Yaadosh dunked a hunch of rye bread into his pottage. “Why? What happened the first time? Did nobody raise the hue and cry?”

  “It was gettin’ dark,” Oonagh said. “The monsters came creepin’ through the oak-woods, where some of our youngsters were out late, gatherin’ kindling. The poor little tykes saw them comin and oh, they were so scared they hid themselves without makin’ a sound. Slevin spied them too, the swine-herd; he was herdin’ his pigs back to the sty, but he was not swift enough to bring the news before the raiders reached the village, for he is somewhat crippled in the legs, and then Renny the goose-girl was goin’ home along Thatcher’s Lane flickin’ that old tardy gander with her switch and she clapped eyes on what was comin’ and dropped her hazel stick and started screamin’ and the geese ran all about honkin’ madly, but by then they were already upon us.”

  “What did they take?”

  “They took three lives, that was the worst of it, the trio of brave men who tried to stand against them, Rori and Cluny and Tipper, and they hurt some others badly, and they made off with livestock. They ransacked the blacksmith’s, stealin’ spurs, arrowheads, scissors and knives, they broke into the granary and carried off sacks of grain, they beat the baker to within an inch of his life and stole as much bread as they could lay their hands on. I had three fat hams curin’ in the smoke above this very fire. Gone, all gone.”

  The visitors expressed their sincere sympathy.

  “I was hearin’ the geese, and Renny’s screams, and I ran to look out the winder. I shall never forget what met my eyes—” the woman sketched a lucky sign in the air “—for I am still sick from the sight. There was poor Rori, and those giants pushin’ him to the ground with his arm all bent up behind his back, and then one o’ them seizes a milkin’ stool that had been propped against Rori’s house and brings it down over the poor man’s head. Rori’s face gets all over splattered with blood and this murderer, he scoops the blood in his claws and smears it across his ugly muzzle like some trophy he’s proud of, and another picks up the stool all splintered, and licks the blood off it like it was delicious as honey, and then both of ’em rolls their eyeballs up inside their sockets till only the whites is showin’, and lifts their upper lips and bares their fangs like crazed dogs, all the while standin’ over poor Rori dead on the ground. In the name of the Spinnin’ Hag, I ain’t never set eyes on any thin’ so disgustin’.” For a moment Oonagh could not bring herself to say any more without breaking down, and fought for composure. Presently she went on, “I just had enough time to bundle my youngsters and myself into our hidin’ spot beneath the trapdoor before the monsters burst in. Oh, but I wish I’d had a vat on the boil; I’d have been after pourin’ the lot over them. Our lord Sir Réamonn says he will go to the city Sanctorum to make generous offerin’s to the Fates on the village’s behalf. Our lord says we must have displeased them somehow, for by unlucky chance it was just after the king’s garrison had withdrawn from Meagher Manor’s demesnes that the attack was sprung. Had the raiders come just a sevennight earlier the king’s soldiers would have been here to protect us.” After drawing a long breath the brewer went on, “But our lady declares the Fates were not displeased and Sir Reamonn should be savin’ his tithe-coin, for in the middle of the attack who should come gallopin’ into Derry Meagher but Two-Swords Gearnach himself, and a whole column of excellent knights at his back!”

  “Praise Ádh!” Michaiah said. He swigged from his tankard.

  “They thrashed the reavers all right, and put an end to their pillagin and murderin’. Most of the monsters fled, and Gearnach’s men rode them down; some escaped though. One who went after them was slain, it was Lieutenant Mac Seáin, Gearnach’s second, also a lifelong friend of his, so we found out after, but Two-Swords was lively with the battle-lust hot in his blood, and when his men brought word of his lieutenant’s death, he got into a fury and leaped upon his horse and galloped up Main Street, screamin’ blue murder. He leaned from the saddle as he rode, and snatched up a fiery brand—oh, by the Bell of Míchinniúint, he was like some madman, spittin’ blood and foam. I think he had lost all reason in that moment and did not know where he was, for as he passed the inn, he plunged the torch deep into the dry thatch shoutin’, ‘This place I name the bane of Mac Seain, for had he never come here he would still be livin’!’ And our inn went up in flames.”

  The visitors exchanged glances of astonishment. “Were any lives lost in the burning?” asked Nasim.

  “Not a one, thank Fortune. And oh, but Two-Swords was most repentant afterwards,” said the brewer. “After he had cooled off no man could be more repentant than he. ‘Alas, for I am cursed with a terrible temper,’ said he, and he swore to make full reparation. Then and there he handed our reeve a full purse, with the promise of more to come from his personal coffers, which he sent for from the city. Gearnach is famous for bein’ a man of his word, and when the gold arrives we shall have enough to rebuild the inn better than ever it was. So you see, as trade for a little inconvenience, that part of the doin’s has turned out for the best.”

  Some more swapping of news took place, which included, to the surprise of the visitors, the revelation that in Cathair Rua of recent times, public slurs had been cast upon the previously immaculate reputations of the weather-masters.

  “What can the citizens be thinking of, to believe any slander about the most admirable benefactors of Tir?” Yaadosh cried indignantly.

  “The knowledge of that is not at me,” said Oonagh, “but where there’s smoke there’s fire, as they say.”

  “They also say,” said Tsafrir, “those who speak ill of others reflect badly upon themselves.”

  After paying the woman and thanking her for her kindness the liegemen took their leave, for the rain-shower had dwindled and passed. The fellow with the stunned demeanor tagged after them awhile, playing his bone whistle, as they walked their mounts along the byway leading out of the village.

  “The king’s much-vaunted parades,” the whistler sang out unexpectedly, “Of guards are charades/It is naught but a token/Be careful what is spoken.”

  In surprise, the travelers turned around to stare at the speaker.

  “The garrison mysteriously withdrew/Just before the raiders came through,” the fellow persisted, undaunted.

  “What are you raving about?” demanded Tsafrir.

  “Occasionally one or two/Marauders are caught and hanged, ‘tis true,” said the whistler, “But in confidence I tell ye/The hangings are staged mere-lee/To justify higher protection tax.” He waved a dirty hand as if merely bidding the party a cordial farewell. “Do not dare suggest that to loyal Gearnach,” he added in his singsong fashion, regaling them with a gap-toothed grin.

  “My friend,” said Tsafrir wearily, “it is to be hoped your loose tongue—”

>   “—and abominable attempts at poetry,” interjected Michaiah.

  “—will not repeat such rumors in the company of others. It is better not to even entertain such thoughts, lest you spill them inadvertently when you are in your cups.” Tsafrir tossed the whistler a brass farthing.

  “Be not troubled once ouncel,” the songster said happily, pocketing the farthing. “I can keep close counsel.” He fell behind, still waving. Turning their backs on him the liegemen resumed their journey. When they reached the highway they heard the piping of the bone whistle, rare and desolate through the oak-woods.

  “Quite the social reformer, is he not?” Nasim observed.

  “Why is it that fools always play some sort of musical flute?” Yaadosh mumbled into his beard.

  Michaiah, who was still wincing at the memory of the worst doggerel he had ever heard, made no remark.

  “More to the point, why is it that so many apparent fools are so wise?” Tsafrir returned darkly.

  “What?”

  “He suggested something I have long suspected.”

  Yaadosh, who had survived several battles and many Winters, shivered as the full implications of his companion’s words sank in.

  The road ahead of the liegemen stretched all the way to Cathair Rua, the royal city of Slievmordhu. There, upon the three crowns of the highest hill rose three clusters of stately buildings: the palace citadel of King Uabhar Ó Maoldúin, the Sanctorum of Slievmordhu, and the Knights’ Hall-—of strong, ruddy oak—known as the Red Lodge. As twilight closed in, the windows of all these structures glowed like eyes of flame.