by Anne Brooke
Something wet flowed from her eye and she brushed away her weakness, cursing herself for being nothing but an old fool. Because she and Frankel had both assumed Lord Tregannon would be the one to bring peace and healing to the lands and people he owned. This had failed to happen. Instead, their Overlord had hidden himself away in his shattered private rooms and only taken the minimum of the food she’d prepared for him, barely enough to keep a child alive. Something else was needed.
Maybe, with the terrible lack of any other choice, that something was the scribe.
No. She clenched her fists under the thin blanket and tried to breathe calmly. That murderer had brought misery and death to these lands when he arrived here. She could never forgive him for it, no matter what Frankel said about the need to let hatred go. For how could she ever let it go when so many of her friends and neighbours lay dead and their families destroyed? No, she would never forgive him. She would hold onto the knowledge of what the Lammas Lands had once been and she would never let it go. Whatever plan the scribe had to work his devious way into the confidence of the remaining villagers, she would stand firm against him. She swore it to herself. There and then, in the darkness, next to her sleeping and unsuspecting husband, she promised herself she would not allow the scribe to go unpunished, she would not allow him even to live. No matter if the fearful mind-cane destroyed her for it. The sacrifice they needed would be the murderer himself, and nothing else could save them. Odd how the acknowledgement of her decision and this new understanding brought her the kind of peace inside she had not known for a long season. It made her smile.
And so, finally, in the lighter hours of the morning-cycle, Jemelda slept.
When she woke, the space in the bed next to her was empty. That in itself was unusual but, this day-cycle, not surprising as she had only fully slept the last quarter of the night. So she gathered herself together, clutching her night-tunic around her, and padded into the kitchen.
Her husband had already washed. She could see the faint sparkle in his grey hair, and the basin and jug stood off-centre on the work space next to him. He was staring out of the window and did not hear her approach. For a while she stood next to him, quietly, appreciating the warmth from his skin. Both of them stared out at the snow. It was the first solid fall of this winter-season.
She took hold of his hand. His fingers curled around hers and it was then she spoke at last.
“How long will it be before we begin to die now that winter is truly here?” she whispered.
Frankel had no answer for her, not to that question. He only squeezed her fingers and sighed.
After a while, she extricated herself from his comforting hold and busied herself preparing breakfast for Lord Tregannon. Frankel watched her. She could feel his eyes on her every movement.
When she could stand it no longer, she dropped the wooden spoon she had only just taken up. It fell with a dull clatter into the washing basin. Then she swung round to face him.
“All right,” she grumbled. “What is it you want me to do? Make food for the murderer also?”
He simply smiled. “Jemelda. I know you will do the right thing. I have been married to you for too long not to understand that. But it seems to me if you are to test the man in some way, then he may need strength for what is to come.”
It was always the same, she thought. Frankel’s pure reasonableness unwomanned her each time. He knew too well the path through her defences. Still, his trust in her made her smile. Though, right now, she knew there were secrets hidden behind it which neither of them could fathom.
“I will feed him what we have to spare,” she answered, lowering her gaze from her husband’s steady eyes. “For your sake only. Then we will do what we have to.”
“When will you gather the people, my love?”
Jemelda lifted her head to the ceiling, as if she hoped she would find inspiration there. She knew she would not.
“At the midday hour,” she whispered at last. “The old traditions tell us that is best for great matters.”
“Yes, and for deadly ones too,” her husband replied.
Third Gathandrian Interlude
Annyeke
The Square of Meeting was covered with freshly-fallen snow and Annyeke shivered in the familiar warmth of her cloak. She had been waiting here for nearly three hour-cycles now since the sun had been bright enough for walking, although she had occasionally retreated into the nearest remaining safe area of the ruined Council building when the cold became overwhelming. Slowly the people had gathered and, one by one, the elders had joined her, beginning with the Chair Maker, a fact that had for a moment made her smile. In Gathandria, you could always rely on a carpenter to be early. He must have been hard at work even before his arrival as his hair was sprinkled with wood-shavings. Annyeke had to quell the urge to brush it off him. She didn’t like to think anyone brought out the maternal urge in her, foster son or no foster son.
Still, thinking about family had brought to mind the deep truth she should have remembered yesterday morning when the elders had arrived. The Chair Maker’s wife, Iffenia, was dead. How she had betrayed them at the last, and the terrible reasons for it. What kind of a First Elder was she if she had forgotten it, however temporarily? She must remember to think of other people too, in their individual needs, not just of the land and her immediate family.
Now she reached for the Chair Maker, put her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry about Iffenia. I should have spoken of this yesterday, but your sudden arrival here – the presence of all the elders – surprised me. I have no excuse, but I’m sorry.”
His eyes clouded and he nodded. She could feel his grief stirring from the depths of his mind – flickering shades of dark green and black – and she withdrew her hand to avoid intruding on what would be private. Sometimes thoughts were shared without the intent to do so. Before she could step back, however, the Chair Maker grasped her fingers and spoke, again aloud, although she could hear his words echoed in her mind.
“I understand, and I am grateful for your words,” he said, and his voice was low and hoarse, as if the dust from his studio had lined his throat. “But was your forgetfulness due to anger as well, Annyeke? If it was, then it is a dangerous thing. I do not warn you of this. I simply tell you.”
Biting her lip, Annyeke nodded. The chastisement – for she could well recognise it for what it was, no matter the soothing phrases accompanying the sting – was well deserved.
“Thank you,” she said.
For a moment, she thought a sharp surprise glittered from his mind but it was as swiftly packed away. Perhaps he was unused to First Elders accepting any kind of correction from their Council. Well, a woman was now in charge and things were different.
“Indeed, First Elder,” the Chair Maker said with a smile, and Annyeke realised she had been interpreted – correctly – once more.
In the cold half-light of morning over the city she smiled back. And said what she hadn’t anticipated saying.
“Tell me about your wife.” She blinked. “If you wish to, I mean.”
He looked at her fully, for the first time.
“I would like that very much,” he said. “But here I think words might be a barrier to our thoughts. May I?...”
After an almost imperceptible pause, Annyeke nodded, and the Chair Maker lifted his hand to her forehead, to facilitate the connection between them.
There, in the morning’s chill quietness, and for the length of the start of a summer story, he told her his tale. About his wife, about himself and about the carving they had made.
******
I never expected to be married to one such as she, tall and elegant and beautiful, the Chair Maker said. Why should I when I am and have always been as you see before you? Round and small, like a stone smoothed by the rushing waters over many year-cycles. I loved the woman who would become my wife for many moon-seasons before she even knew I lived. When I was learning my trade in my father’s workshop, she would come fr
om the region of glass-makers to choose offcuts for the fires her people needed. The first time I saw her, she was wearing a long green dress and the sky lit up her hair. In those days, it was bright yellow, with a hint of gold. Later of course, as is the nature of the seasons, her hair became grey, as it was when you knew her. But what you see in one instance of knowing is never the sum of what a Gathandrian, or indeed any person, can be.
So I treasured the moments when she would come to us, not knowing then why I did so. I was too young to understand fully the ways of the mind. How love comes when it is least expected, and how it can root itself in your thoughts, so it can never be broken away. Then, one day, when the autumn-season had begun to wrap the trees in red and gold, my father was out selling our wares at the market, and I was in the workshop alone.
I knew something was about to happen even before I saw the shape of Iffenia at the threshold. I sensed a change in the air, something tingling my skin, and I dropped the chisel I held and turned to greet her. She, a daughter of the glass-makers, and I a son of a mere carpenter. So far apart in the city and peoples we moved in. For Gathandria was not equal and full of justice, as it still isn’t.
Back then, her presence thought-startled me. I did not have my father to act the part of host, for however short a time, and neither could I think that today we had any offcuts large enough for burning. She had only visited three day-cycles previously. We were not expecting her for at least another five daybreaks. Stumbling upward to greet her, I could sense the dust settling over my hair and I brushed it away as best I could.
It was then she spoke my name, for the first time, I think.
“Bayard,” she said. “I saw your father at his market stall, but I did not see you.”
And then she stopped, as if she had already said too much, and looked away from me. I did not want that to happen. No, I wanted her to keep looking at me until my father returned, and beyond. I wanted her to keep looking at me always. I was only twenty summers old and she just nineteen, but I knew then. As if it had always been obvious.
To keep her there, I spoke. My voice sounded too rough and I had to say the words again before she understood me.
“If you wish, I can show you some of my father’s carvings,” I muttered. “I am afraid we do not have enough offcuts for your glass today.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “Thank you. I would like to see those.”
I led her to the smaller room at the side of the studio. This morning, neither we nor the few men who worked with us had had time to tidy the carving-space before leaving for the market, and I had put off the chore until nearer the evening. Now I wished I had done it at once. The low benches covered with woodshavings and the temporarily abandoned table-work seemed shabby, and I hurried to open the window wider and clear a space for her to sit.
She did so, gathering her skirts around her and gazing up at me in expectation. It felt as if my tongue were too big for my mouth, and I reached for my father’s latest work in order to cover the flush on my face.
“This one,” I said, showing her the panel of a door on which my father had carved a delicate amber tree in full flower. “This one he is still working on, but it will soon be finished. It is for the theatre.”
Iffenia took the panel in her hands, her fingers brushing against mine for a moment, and I remember holding my breath for a heartbeat. She laid the carving on her lap, unmindful of the dust settling onto her clothes, and gazed down at it.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “The feel of it is so much warmer than glass.”
I had never thought about how different materials might be before. I was so used to working with wood, carving it and drawing out the hidden shape of it, that I had made no comparison with other trades. If I had thought of it at all, then the way glass was fired from heat would have made me think the opposite from her, but of course the glitter and near invisibility of its final state was very different to that of wood, which is a comforting presence wherever it may be.
Perhaps it was this which spurred my companion on as she lifted her hazel-green eyes and looked at me with a question in her eyes.
“Will you teach me how to do such work?” she asked me. “I would very much like to learn.”
Such a question, shattering as it did the traditions of our people, made me take several steps backwards. “Why would you need to learn such a thing? You are a glass-maker. Your skills are far greater than ours. But-but in any case it would not be right, would it? If you insisted, my father could offer you tuition, but I could not do it. I’m sorry, but you see that, don’t you?”
Indeed there were so many pressing reasons why it would be impossible for one such as I to teach my craft to one such as Iffenia. In our city, people did not change trades unless for reasons of family; glass-makers were better thought of than carpenters; and for a young man to be coaching a young woman would imply a future stability which did not exist between us, and was never likely to.
My train of thought, muddled and flickering as it no doubt was in that dusty room all those year-cycles ago, must have been as clear to Iffenia as the parkland in the brightest sunlight.
She smiled. “And cannot things change, once in a while, Bayard? Are we not free to be whomever we wish?”
The way she said my name made me think of oak trees in the fullest leaf. As if something I had never imagined possible before might by some star-miracle be possible now.
I drew up a stool and sat down opposite her. The light from the window glittered over her hair and, this close, I caught the smell of lemonwood. A rare perfume.
There in the seclusion of my father’s studio, I gave Iffenia her first lesson in carving. I found an old apron for her to wear so her clothing would not be spoiled, and I dusted off our best working-stool for her use, angling it towards the light so she might not strain her eyes. Of course there are many tasks a carver must do before the wood can be released into the life it longs for. You must choose the right shape and type of tree for the task to hand. Apple-willow is the easiest for beginners, although its carvings do not last as long as those of an oak or river-cypress. And it is useless for larger items. Next, the wood must be primed with a mixture of olive and winter-grape oil. The one for soothing and the other for clarity. It is best to allow the wood to breathe in these gifts over a course of five day-cycles before one even considers how one’s hands can best mould it. But of course that morning, I longed to give Iffenia something to work with, so she would feel how the wood altered itself to her fingers, and how in return her fingers responded to what the wood conveys. For wood, as the legends tell us, is never silent. Whilst it is rooted to the soil, it whispers in the summer breezes and its moaning is heard during our winter storms. So, when the woodsman cuts the bark, its voice is neither lost nor destroyed. It speaks to us still.
I gave her the apple-willow my father was saving for our newest apprentice, and the smallest of the chisels. Her fingers were always delicate and white, even in the year-cycles to come, when her carvings became widely known around our city. Iffenia was always proud of her hands. I took an old carving from the nearest shelf. It showed the outline of a bird and a tree-rose that had proved useful in teaching and training for many. And I instructed her how to begin and how to keep the lines in perspective so the demands of the whole were not abandoned. The secret of carving is never to urge oneself onward. The importance of each cut, each moment of pressure between hand and tree cannot be underestimated. It is better to spend many day-cycles creating one simple piece than to create many pieces in a day. That is what the great sculptors know in their blood, and that, I tell you, is what Iffenia knew from the start. I am not a true sculptor and yet I saw how she was the moment the chisel nestled in her grasp. The colours of her mind flowed outwards through her skin and into the wood. Bright yellows and deep greens. I had never seen such combinations in anyone’s mind before, and I have not seen them since in anyone else. Others may say this indicates the division in her thoughts between what is
and what should be and that this was the reason why she betrayed you all to the mind-executioner. But I saw these colours as beautiful, and I still do.
Back then, the apple-willow responded to her presence in a way I had never seen for anyone in my father’s studio, and certainly not for me. It glowed first gold, as if some strange form of sunlight was warming it into life, and then into a steady cream colour. Like the ripening corn when the wind flows through it. Iffenia laughed and raised her dancing eyes to mine. I couldn’t help but laugh too, although my heart beat faster and I felt as if I were about to shout or run or perform some other act which would make those eyes smile at me again. I did not tell her that what was happening was so new and strange I did not know how to teach her anything she did not already guess at or understand. In a way I would never be able to.
And she was of the glass-maker’s family. I watched Iffenia carve her bird and her rose for the whole of that afternoon, and I remember it now as one of the best days of my life. The wood responded to her touch, melting its voice into her skin and freely giving her whatever she demanded of it. I too heard the wood’s song and lost myself in its warmth and calling.
That day, she created the best and most vibrant carving I have ever seen in a beginner. And though in the years to come, she was to surpass such work many times, it is the one I think of when I think of her. I have always kept it and I keep it with me now. She never knew that and I wish with all my mind I had told her so while I still could.
Five year-cycles after that, we became bond-partners. My father grumbled at our joining ceremony but his words were empty. He was brought up to think those who worked with wood were not suited for the makers of glass, but he saw the way Iffenia and I looked at each other – the bond which flowed between us – and he did not gainsay our desire. She gave me joy and I gave her laughter. It was a wise balance.