The Starthorn Tree

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘I cannot call upon the Erlrune in rags,’ Lisandre said obstinately.

  She darted a look at Briony that was oddly anxious, and the little seamstress said reassuringly, ‘Of course not, milady.’ She sighed. ‘I shall need to be a-spinning some new silk, having only a few bobbins of thread with me. It shall take some time, I’m a-feared, milady.’

  ‘Very well,’ Lisandre replied, obviously mollified. She gave her face one last dissatisfied scrutiny then gave the mirror back to Briony, allowing her to wash away the mud smears with a warm, damp flannel.

  The others washed too, all but Mags, who had obviously decided to wear her grime like a badge of honour. Even Pedrin found himself wishing she would consent to a good scrubbing. In the close confines of the tree, she did smell a little too much like wet dog.

  Warm and pleasantly full at last, the children began to feel sleepy. They wriggled down into the pine needles and leaves, watching the mesmerising dance of the flames through the crack in the tree-trunk. Rain pattered on the leaves. Sedgely began to snore and soon both Durrik and Lisandre were asleep too, worn out by the exertions of the day.

  Only Briony did not snuggle down. She took down the red dress and spread it across her knees, examining the many rents in its silky fabric. Then she drew out a spool of red silk from her sack and threaded a long silver needle. It flashed in the low glimmer of the night-light as she began to sew, swiftly and deftly.

  ‘You should try to get some sleep,’ Pedrin said drowsily. ‘Need you do that now? Surely me precious milady doesn’t expect you to sit up all night a-fixing her stupid dress?’

  ‘We need to be on our way again tomorrow,’ Briony replied softly, not lifting her gaze from her task. ‘Time’s a-running out.’

  ‘But ’twill take you all night to sew up those holes,’ he protested, rousing himself from the heavy exhaustion dragging him down.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ he said rather inadequately.

  ‘Of course ’tis not fair,’ Mags said passionately. ‘When are the starkin fair? They grow fatter and richer on the toils of our bodies, and what do they give us back in return? Naught!’

  Briony glanced at her. Her eyes looked very black. ‘I doubt they’d agree with you,’ she answered mildly. ‘Besides, not all starkin are like that. Lisandre’s father, the old count, he was always very just, I’ve heard.’

  ‘No doubt she’s the one that told you so,’ Mags said sarcastically. ‘Did you ever see aught like the way she drooled over herself in that mirror? Talk about vain!’

  ‘Well, mebbe she is,’ Briony said. ‘But she’s starkin, you see. I’m so glad I’m not starkin! All I have is the skill of me hands, but I am free to go where I will and do what I want. Lisandre’s not. She’s a prisoner of her own beauty. It’ll fade one day and then she’ll have naught. Look at Lady Donella, the chief lady-in-waiting. She married well, because she was beautiful, but now her husband’s dead and she has naught left. ’Tis very sad. And Lisandre is a-feared for her own mother, now her father is dead, can’t you see that? If Count Zygmunt dies, Lisandre and her mother will be destitute, unless Lord Zavion cares for them. Her only hope to be free of him is to marry well herself, and then she’ll have to submit to her husband instead of to Lord Zavion. Do you wonder she’s so a-feared?’

  Briony was leaning forward, her hands clenched to her breast, all her face aglow in her passionate desire to make them understand. As usual, Pedrin felt his emotions swayed by her so that he was filled with pity and dread for Lisandre. He glanced at the starkin girl and saw her face relaxed in sleep, all the stubborn pride and determination smoothed away, her mouth drooping softly so that she looked sad and vulnerable. He did not want to feel compassion or sympathy for Lisandre. He hated the starkin, and his hatred was just. He looked away, hardening his heart, his teeth clenched together.

  ‘She don’t seem a-feared to me,’ Mags said, though without her usual conviction.

  ‘Don’t she? She does to me. Very a-feared and very lonesome.’

  There was a long, thoughtful silence. Pedrin found himself wondering how Briony saw him. With a rueful grin he decided that he did not really want to know. She saw things too clearly with those strange, changeable eyes of hers. A little self-delusion never hurt anyone, he told himself.

  Mags had rolled away from them, huddling her arms around her shock of matted brown hair. He heard her mutter something to herself, though the only words he caught were ‘spoilt rotten . . . like all the starkin.’ She almost sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.

  Though Pedrin was very tired, he only drifted in and out of the verge of sleep, the dim glow of the night-light pressing against his eyelids like heavy golden coins, the constant rustle of the silk abrading his nerves. He heard Briony rise some time later and throw some more wood on the fire. The familiar crackle of the flames soothed him, and he slid deeper into sleep.

  When Pedrin next opened his bleary eyes, the little wildkin girl had laid down her needle and was bending her head over the ragdoll cradled in her arms. Feeling a sudden pang of contrition, Pedrin raised himself on one elbow. He was about to speak but bit back the words when he saw she was not merely seeking comfort from the raggedy old doll, as he had thought. She was slowly, carefully, extracting something from a hole in the side seam of the doll. He saw with a sudden squeamishness that it was the cocoon of some insect.

  She looked up suddenly and saw he was awake. For a moment she hesitated, biting her lip, then she said, very softly, ‘I couldn’t leave me silkworms at the castle, they’re the secret to me silk weaving. No-one else knows how to breed them or what to feed them, or how t’spin the silk. ’Tis why I have a place at the castle at all. Lady Donella would not take a little foundling child in out of the goodness of her heart, you know.’ There was a faint shade of bitterness in her voice. ‘So I had to smuggle some out. I would’ve taken more if I could—all the ones I left will die because no-one there knows what to feed them.’

  She laid down the ragdoll and hung the small yellow cocoon upon Pedrin’s toasting fork, holding it in the smoke of the fire. ‘I’m a-killing the larvae within,’ Briony said matter-of-factly. ‘Its cocoon is made of one long filament of silk. I shall spin the filaments of three cocoons together to make a strand, and then spin together three strands to make a thread. Then I shall have enough to finish mending the dress. I shall need to find a bush of kindleberries too, to dye the fabric red again. I saw a bush not far from here. I shall go in the dawn to gather the berries.’

  Pedrin nodded. ‘I hope it stops raining,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It stopped some time ago,’ she answered, pulling out the little drop-spindle from her sack and giving it a spin with one finger. ‘Go back to sleep, Pedrin. Don’t mind me.’

  He tried to think of something to say, but as always the right words eluded him, even in the familiar language of the hearthkin which they now spoke together. ‘I don’t,’ he said, and felt his whole body grow hot with inadequacy.

  She smiled a little, though she did not look up. ‘I know,’ she answered.

  TWENTY

  In the dark stuffiness of the hollow tree, the children all slept late. They woke to find long rays of sunlight striking down through the soaring trunks of the trees, the sky a shifting canopy of green and gold.

  Lisandre’s dress was hung up to dry from a branch, a waterfall of shimmering red silk. Scrambling out of the hollow tree, their eyes dry and scratchy, their mouths tasting like a bear’s den, all were stricken into an awed silence. There was no sign that the dress had ever been torn by thorns, ripped by rocks, slashed by gibberhog tusks, bedraggled by mud and rain, slept in or scrambled in. It looked like it had never been worn.

  ‘Leeblimey!’ Mags said. Once again there was a fierce yearning in her face. She stepped forward almost blindly, and lifted one finger to stroke the sensuous crimson shimmer.

  ‘Do not dare lay your filthy fingers upon my dress,’ Lisandre said fiercely. She s
tepped forward, tears on her face, and embraced a startled and wan-faced Briony. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘It was me pleasure,’ Briony answered, very gently. She yawned and added, without any acerbity whatsoever, ‘Though it may have been better if I’d mended it for you the night before we visit the Erlrune, for I have used up all me silks now and we still have some way to go.’

  ‘I shall not wear it,’ Lisandre said, her mouth still soft and quivering with surprise and pleasure. ‘Can we fold it so it will not crush? How did you do it? I did not mean . . . I’m sorry, Briony,’ she said in a rush. ‘It was horrible of me to make you sit up all night like that. I did not really mean you to. I was just . . . I was upset . . .’

  Briony nodded. ‘’Tis still damp, I’m a-feared. Do you really want me to carry it for you? I admit, I’d be sorry to see it being torn again.’

  ‘I’ll carry it,’ Lisandre said in a sudden rush. ‘You’ve carried all my things as well as your own all this way. I’ll take a turn today.’

  ‘That would be nice,’ Briony said. ‘Though the sack’s not heavy, except when I have to carry your cloak as well. That does get a bit awkward.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lisandre said. ‘I did not think . . .’

  ‘What will you wear if we’re to carry your dress?’ Briony said. ‘We have no spare clothes.’

  Lisandre look down at herself, startled, and realised she was standing in nothing but her lacy underwear. She coloured with embarrassment, instinctively wrapping herself in her arms.

  ‘You may wear me pinafore,’ Briony said. ‘’Tis just as long as a dress, really.’

  Lisandre nodded. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Briony answered with a smile. Her eyes were a brilliant sunshiny green, her rather peaky face flushed now with pleasure.

  Lisandre was rather an odd sight in the long, drab-coloured pinafore, with the long, lace-trimmed pantaloons poking out beneath, and Durrik’s heavy brogues on her feet. Mags crowed with laughter at the sight of her but although Lisandre blushed, she just shouldered the bulky sack and rolled-up cloak with grim determination and set off down the path with the others. Mags went with them, saying with an air of insouciance, ‘May as well stick around for a while longer, I s’pose. Got naught else to do.’

  In the sombre hush of the evening, the dark-clad trees wearing petticoats of mist, the six weary companions came to another high waterfall. Shaped in an uneven horseshoe, the river poured down, down, down in a white roar. The cliffs loomed wet and black above them. It seemed the only possible way forward was over a long, thin, mossy tree which had fallen many years before, bridging the river from one steep, rocky side to the other. The waterfall thundered past it and under it and sometimes over it, a turbulent mass of foam and lather.

  The children stood and stared in incredulous horror.

  ‘If we’re a-wanting to cut across the loop of the Even-lode, this is the place to do it,’ Sedgely said. ‘We either cross here and angle through the forest to the mountains, a-finding ourselves a pass through to the Evenlinn, or we climb up these here cliffs and follow the river. ’Tis a long, slow way, though, a-following the river. Weeks of walking.’

  ‘I can’t be a-crossing that,’ Durrik said, staring at the thin strip of the fallen pine, his eyes dark with fear.

  ‘We’ll just run a rope across for you young ones to cling to,’ Sedgely said encouragingly. ‘If an old, old man like me can do it, a young one like you should run across as sprightly as a wood-pheasant’s chick.’

  Durrik shook his head emphatically. ‘I can’t!’

  ‘I don’t much like the look of it either but if it saves us days and even weeks, I think we should do it, don’t you?’ Lisandre said cajolingly.

  All day Lisandre had been making a visible effort to be conciliatory towards the others, especially to Briony and Durrik. She had asked the crippled boy, with red staining her throat and cheeks, if his back felt any better, and had offered him her hand over several rough spots, until she finally realised he hated to have anyone notice his disability. After that she left him alone, though it was clear to everyone that she had been shocked and shamed by the scars on his back and was trying, awkwardly, to make some sort of amends. Mags did not like Lisandre any better for all her new-found sensitivity, scowling at her now and muttering, ‘Humbug.’

  ‘’Tis a-getting dark, mebbe we should set up camp and cross in the morning,’ Pedrin suggested. To his surprise, Briony frowned and gave a little shake of her head.

  The wildkin girl was usually the first to note signs of trouble in others and search for solutions, and so Pedrin looked at her in alarm. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ he asked, his hand moving to his slingshot for the first time that day.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I feel uneasy. I feel like we’re being watched.’

  ‘Watched by what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Summat . . . curious . . . yet implacable. It makes me . . . twitchy . . . Me fingertips are tingling.’

  Durrik gave a nod of surprised agreement.

  ‘Everything’s too quiet,’ Briony said and gave a convulsive shudder.

  ‘Yeah, too true, too true,’ Sedgely agreed. ‘Too quiet all week, if you ask me. Not that you ever do.’ He sighed in resignation.

  ‘We’re asking you now!’ Pedrin said impatiently. ‘Is summat out there? What do we do?’

  ‘Cross the river,’ Sedgely said placidly. ‘I already said that, but mebbe you warn’t a-listening? Never listen, the young of today, I often notice it.’

  ‘But the light is almost gone. We can’t be a-crossing that slippery old log in the dark,’ Durrik said, panic in his voice.

  Briony shrugged her shoulders uneasily. ‘I think I’d sleep better if we were on t’other side of the river.’

  Just then Sedgely leant forward, pointing with his stick. ‘Me poor old eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. What’s a-moving down there?’

  In sudden trepidation, Pedrin stared down the river. At first he could see nothing, but then a brief, shifting gleam caught his eye. Sunlight glancing on metal. He shaded his eyes against the glare of the setting sun and stared some more. Now he knew where to look he could see the furtive movements of forty or more soldiers creeping up on them from behind. His pulse accelerated so fast he had to grasp a tree-trunk to steady himself.

  ‘Soldiers,’ Briony whispered. ‘Though that’s not. . .’ She came to a halt, staring around uneasily. ‘This place is a trap,’ she said very quietly. ‘We’d best be a-getting out of here!’

  Pedrin rested his head on his hands for a moment. How could he have been so stupid to have thought the starkin soldiers had given up? They would never give up. He would be hounded all the rest of his life. He swallowed hard, saying gruffly, ‘No doubt about it, we cross that log and we cross it now!’

  ‘Why will they not leave me alone?’ Lisandre whispered. ‘Why is Lord Zavion so intent on recapturing me? He never liked me anyway.’

  ‘Mebbe he don’t want all the starkin a-wondering if he’s a-killing off the whole ziv Estaria family,’ Pedrin said grimly. ‘Anyways, he’s not a-giving up so we’d best be a-moving on—fast!’

  Hurriedly they gathered together all their various scraps of rope and knotted them together, then Sedgely took one end in his big bony hand and cautiously began to edge out along the slippery, precarious bridge. Durrik watched, clinging tightly to the same tree as Pedrin, looking like he was about to vomit.

  ‘You come up last, little missy,’ Sedgely said to Briony, ‘and bring along the bit of rope. We don’t want the starkin a-getting hold of it.’

  ‘But Briony will need it too,’ Pedrin protested.

  Sedgely twinkled at him from beneath his bushy white brows. ‘Yeah, mebbe so. Though with the blood that runs in her veins, she’ll be a-needing it less than you, young feller!’ He snorted with laughter then, with that last rather cryptic comment, turned and shuffled forward, arms held wide.

  Pedrin was too bu
sy watching the soldiers to puzzle over what the old man meant. The soldiers had still not seen them, and so were proceeding quite slowly, searching carefully for tracks and prodding under bushes with the butts of their fusilliers. The children had all crouched down behind the upflung roots of the fallen tree and so were hidden from view, while Sedgely was almost invisible in the dusk, his shaggy hair and beard as white as the weltering foam, his willow-leaf coat as green as the moss.

  At last the old man reached the far side of the fallen log, having to climb through a maze of old dead branches to reach the shore. In a few seconds the rope Pedrin held tightly in his hand was drawn taut as Sedgely tied it on the far side. Pedrin tied his own end firmly to a thick root and then nodded urgently at the starkin princess. Lisandre took a deep breath and then stepped out onto the log, holding tightly to the rope with both hands. Very slowly she edged her way forward, Pedrin sick with impatience and trepidation. When she was almost halfway across, he turned and said to Durrik, ‘Mebbe you’d best go next. Will you be all right?’

  Durrik hesitated then shrugged. He straightened up, tucked his crutch under his arm and seized the rope with one hand. For a second he looked as if he meant to say something, then he gave them all a strange smile and a wave of his hand. Without any more hesitation he began to sidle his way across the log, moving quickly, almost recklessly. Briony stared after him, frowning.

  Just then the sun slid down below the bank of heavy cloud into a thin line of pure, shining radiance at the horizon. The whole scene was lit up warmly, the long rays of the setting sun lingering on the fair heads of the two children making their halting way across the log. There was a distant shout, and Pedrin and Briony exchanged horrified glances. The soldiers had seen Lisandre and Durrik.

  ‘Hurry!’ Pedrin said to Mags. ‘Be careful!’

  She nodded and clambered up onto the log, giving them her gap-toothed grin before quickly and easily following Durrik, hand over hand.