by Helen Gosney
Bimm and Cris looked at each other, shocked and appalled, as Rowan stared into the fire once more, twisting the ring around and around on his little finger. They waited patiently for him to speak again, if indeed he was able to. The poor man looked devastated, his memories all but overwhelming him. Bimm wished with all his heart that they hadn’t started this.
**********
6. “We can’t do anything for them…”
Rowan hadn’t planned on delivering Zara’s baby himself, though like all foresters he was perfectly capable of it. To the foresters, childbirth isn’t considered to be strictly ‘women’s business’ at all. Some of the little villages and settlements are very isolated and far from such folk as midwives and healers, so all forester children are taught to cope with birthing babies and much else. Many a forester’s wife has been grateful for her husband’s expertise in midwifery. Young though he’d been when he’d left Sian to join the Guard, Rowan had already delivered a couple of babies and more than his share of foals, calves, kittens, puppies and every other sort of creature that was part of the foresters’ lives. And after he’d joined the Guard he’d found he was the one the horse doctors turned to when there was a difficult foaling. So he was well experienced in the process of delivering infants, and though he’d never say it to Zara, birthing was birthing, no matter who or what the mother was.
Zara had lain awake for a while, wide-eyed and worried as Rowan slept peacefully beside her. Finally she’d touched his shoulder lightly and whispered his name. He was a light sleeper and one of those who wake up already alert. He’d smiled at her as he put his arms around her and cuddled her close.
“Hello, Zarinya, my heart… what is it? Shall I rub your back for you? I promise not to use horse liniment.”
“Rowan, the… the baby’s coming…”
No. Surely not. Their baby wasn’t due for nearly three months yet and everything was going so well. Rowan’s heart sank; he didn’t want to worry her more than she already was, but he couldn’t keep the concern out of his voice.
“Are you sure, Zara love?”
She nodded, her beautiful dark eyes wide and frightened.
“But, Rowan… Rowan, it’s too soon…” she almost wailed.
“Aye, ‘tis… but…” he stopped as he heard a series of piercing screams from somewhere not far away.
“Oh, Bloody Hells!” he said, “That sounds like Bella!”
Much as he liked Fess’s wife, she could be a featherhead sometimes, he thought. But they’d all been excited when she’d fallen pregnant and even more so a couple of months later when Zara had found that she too was to bear a child. The two friends had happily compared their growing bellies and woven silly fantasies about their babies’ futures. Of course they’d be best friends as their parents were. For some reason, Zara was convinced she was having a boy; she’d already named him Liam, but if Bella had a little girl… Rowan and Fess had overheard some of their nonsense and laughed themselves silly.
Rowan certainly wasn’t laughing now though. He thought Bella and her baby would be all right as she was close to her time anyway, but Zara was barely six months along and it was simply far too early for her baby to be born. They’d arranged for her to travel to Sian in a couple of weeks for the birth, as she desperately wanted for Rowan’s sake, but he simply couldn’t go with her. It’d broken his heart, but he had to stay in the garrison as the Commandant finally mustered the troops from the eastern and southern parts of Wirran to Den Siddon to see off Duke Rollo of Plait. The Duke’s actions had become more and more aggressive and violent and they couldn’t be ignored any longer. Rowan’s fears about the man had proven to be all too well founded.
A few minutes later Rowan heard someone running from the garrison’s married quarters towards the Captain’s Cottage he’d moved into after he’d wed Zara under the Forest Giants a little more than a year ago. He pulled on some uniform trousers and, bare-chested and bare-footed, pulled the front door open as Fess raised his fist to pound on it.
“Rowan…! Rowan! Bella’s having the baby!” Fess panted. He looked wild-eyed and panicked in the darkness. He did have a shirt on as well as his trousers, but it was buttoned very badly, and he was bare-footed too.
“Calm down, Fess. Calm down! She’ll be a good while yet,” Rowan tried to stop Fess from panicking further, but he knew that Wirran men were strictly forbidden to actually do anything other than pace uselessly outside the door while their wives gave birth, and most weren’t well equipped to do more than that anyway, “Fess, you’ll have to go and get a midwife. You know where they live… about three houses outside the garrison gates on the left hand side. Kerran, one of them is and the others are, um, Kitty and Teodora. Or send one of the lads on the Gate. Send young Benni, he’s got the most sense. I’m sorry, I’d go for you, but Zara’s in labour too. I can’t leave her.”
Fess stared at him, shocked.
“Zara? No! She can’t be!”
Rowan shook his head.
“No, she can’t be, but she is. Fess, ask the midwife to come by here after she’s seen Bella, will you?”
“Aye, I will. But, but Rowan…”
“The midwife, Fess! Go, you idiot!” Rowan pushed him in the right direction and watched him run off. Truly, these Wirrans could be hopeless, he thought as he hurried back to Zara.
A bit later, he opened the door again to a very flustered and dishevelled-looking midwife.
“Are you sure she’s really…?” the woman began.
“Of course I’m bloody sure! Do you think I don’t know…?” he stopped suddenly, shocked at himself. “I’m sorry, Kerran, my apologies. I shouldn’t have spoken to you so, but aye, she truly is having the baby now. Mightn’t take too much longer either, I think.”
“No… it’s too soon… the baby can’t possibly…” Kerran’s voice trailed away.
Rowan bit his tongue before he said something he’d really regret.
“Captain, every pregnant woman in Den Siddon has gone into labour tonight… and I’m not exaggerating. Every single bloody one of them! And nothing the healers or any of us can do has stopped the ones like Zara who are just… just too early. We can’t do anything for them…” Kerran looked and sounded close to tears.
“You go then, Kerran. Go and help those you can. I’ll look after Zara; I truly do know what to do. We’ll be all right.” His heart was already breaking, but he knew it was simply too soon for his child to be born and now his main concern had to be for Zara.
The midwife looked up at him, the only sensible man that she’d seen so far that night, and that included the healers. She sighed.
“I’ll come in and give her some potions, but… I’m sorry, Captain. I know how much you both want this baby.”
“Aye, we do. But we… we’ll get through this somehow. We just have to…”
He was helping Zara to walk around a bit when she squeezed his hand and looked up at his worried face. Of course she knew what the answer to her question would be, but she simply had to hear it from him. She loved him more than she’d ever thought it possible to love anyone and she trusted him absolutely; he’d never lie to her and he wouldn’t hold out false hope as the midwife had tried to. She didn’t want him to.
“Rowan, love… we’re going to lose this little one, aren’t we…?” she said quietly.
“Aye, Zarinya my heart, we are,” he said as he kissed her gently, “I’m so sorry, my love…I’m so sorry…”
He’d held her and they’d wept as all around them in Den Siddon and everywhere in Wirran the joys and tragedies of the night unfolded for other parents too. Eventually Rowan cradled his baby in his hands: a perfect little boy, with his father’s dark auburn hair and his mother’s big dark eyes… but small, so very, very small.
The baby’s tiny hand closed over Rowan’s finger with surprising strength as it fought for every breath, but he knew that there was only one possible way for the struggle to end. He blinked away tears as he whispered, “Arrinas ela�
�u, Liam, lyrion d’Rowan y Zarinya,” the traditional foresters’ greeting for a newborn son. Welcome in love and joy, Liam, beautiful child of Rowan and his beloved Zara. He kissed the precious little mite and passed him to Zara.
“A little boy, Zarinya… we have a little boy, our little Liam, but…” he couldn’t say anything else.
“Hush, love. Hush now… let me see him. Let me see Liam. Oh! He has your hair…” as she looked at him and cuddled him and kissed him, the baby’s brave gasping breaths slowed and stopped.
Rowan and Zara clung together, weeping, the baby cradled in Zara’s arms. Zara sighed and leaned against Rowan’s chest a little more heavily and for a few moments he thought she was sleeping.
Fess found them there a couple of hours later.
“Rowan! Rowan! We have a little boy! Bella’s had a little boy, and he looks just like…” Fess’s excited voice faded as he took in the scene before him.
Rowan had done all that was needful and Zara lay peacefully in the neatly made bed, freshly bathed and with her hair combed into a glorious dark cloud around her head, the gold and silver marriage bead woven into a single narrow six-stranded braid at her temple glinting softly in the lamplight. Her silk nightgown was fresh and clean and creamy white and her tiny baby was wrapped in a silken shawl and snuggled into the crook of her arm, his auburn hair bright against her black curls. Rowan was holding them both and Fess thought they were all asleep. He didn’t notice that Rowan’s gold and silver wedding ring gleamed on Zara’s hand, and hers on his, as is the Siannen custom, but he could have kicked himself for intruding on such a private moment as Rowan stirred and raised his head.
He turned his desolate, tear-drenched face to Fess.
“Zara’s gone, Fess… she just… she just died, just like that… Fess, I’ve lost them both…”
**********
Rowan shivered suddenly in spite of the warmth of the fire. He was trembling and very pale, his eyes filled with tears, and he hoped he wasn’t making too big a fool of himself. He couldn’t tell Bimm and Cris about Zara and baby Liam, it still hurt too much, but it was suddenly very important to him to finish the terrible story of Messton and Trill now that he’d got this far. A quick glance at the others reassured him. They looked stunned by what they’d heard.
“We ran Rollo to earth in a tavern... he was roaring drunk and his men were, too - all of them so drunk they could hardly stand up. They hadn’t believed we’d follow them so far… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look more surprised than Rollo was when he realised that we were there, and the tavern was surrounded and he was trapped like the cur he was...”
“What did you do?” asked Cris, shocked to the core.
“He refused to surrender to us, so I set fire to the tavern and we killed any of them that tried to get out,” said Rowan bleakly. “We made sure there was nobody still alive in the town, and we set free any animals that we found, and then we let the fire spread and burnt Trill to the ground...”
They sat in horrified silence for some time, appalled by the dreadful tale.
Eventually Rowan spoke again, very quietly, “When I finally led our few survivors back into Den Siddon, I found myself hailed as a hero...” he shook his head slowly as if he still couldn’t believe it. “We straggled through the gates, the whole hundred and twenty-seven of us, filthy and bloody and… and shattered… and there was the Commandant in his dress uniform, all bright and shining, waiting for us, and he was … well, he was very surprised to see me, the bastard. I just…” he shook his head again, “It all seemed so bloody futile, such a damned waste… I couldn’t see any honour or glory in any of it… and the battle, and the blood, and the noise… and what Rollo’s men had done… and… and Trill, and that poor baby… all of it... it all haunted me... I resigned from the Guard, I gave them back their damned medals... and I went home to Borl Quist…”
Tim Mouser nestled close against him as he hung his head and brushed tears from his face.
Bimm stared at him in amazement as he remembered some other travellers’ tales he’d heard in the last few months.
“It was you who got all those injured men home after they were betrayed…” he said slowly, “You’re the hero who … who got his troops home and… disappeared…” He could have bitten his tongue off as Rowan looked up at him, his face desolate.
“I was the one who couldn’t get them all home, Bimm. Not all of them. There was no bloody heroism in it…” Rowan said very quietly.
**********
7. “… there was nothing there...”
No-one spoke for a few minutes as they sat by the fire thinking of what Rowan had said. Bimm and Cris tried not to show their shock at the distress of such a strong, capable man, but having heard something of the horrors he’d endured they thought they could understand it.
“Gods... I had no idea… I’m so sorry, Rowan, “ said a very subdued Bimm.
Rowan, more composed again, raised his head; his hands were still now.
“So am I, Bimm... so am I... sorry for all the wasted lives and all the pain and destruction, sorry for all of it,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “You know, I’ve never thought of myself as being religious – we foresters aren’t, really, generally speaking – but like most of us I suppose I more or less believed in the Gods, or tried to anyway. Certainly on the odd times I used to go to the Temple I could always feel the Presence of the Gods, and they seemed to... I don’t know, show an interest in us, I suppose... you know what I mean...”
The others nodded. The feeling that the Gods were actually present in both Temple and Tabernacle, concerned for their people of Yaarl, had been a constant in their lives forever.
“But when my wife and baby died, I… I went to the Temple in Den Siddon to try and find... I don’t know what I was looking for, really. A reason for it all, I suppose. And there was nothing there... no Presence, nothing. I felt like I was talking to myself, and I’d never felt that way before...” Rowan hesitated, then continued quietly, “For a while, I thought it was my fault... I’d offended the Great Mother, or... I don’t know... I don’t think now that I was thinking too well at all... but I thought if I just prayed hard enough, I’d find the Gods again... but I didn’t... I didn’t… There was nothing there…” he shook his head slowly.
“One day, as I was praying in the Temple, I heard a woman crying. She was a young woman... pretty... and she was sitting there all alone, crying as if she’d never stop… she said her husband had died of a fever a year or so before, and…” he hesitated, shaking his head, his face very sad, “And she’d woken that morning and gone in to her children, two fine healthy boys she had… twins, she said, alike as peas in a pod… And she’d found them cuddled up together just like they always were, and… and when she’d tried to wake them, she… she couldn’t... her little twins had both died in the night. They were nearly seven. She asked me why the Gods would punish her so... and I thought of Zarinya and our little boy who was born too soon, and all the others that’d been born too soon on that same damned night… and I wondered the same thing…” his voice trailed off and he looked down at his hands, then across at Bimm and Cris.
“I think that was when I made up my mind that the Gods really didn’t care any more. And I was so... so angry, suddenly, that this poor innocent woman had lost everything for no reason at all... and so had I, and so many others, too… But there simply wasn’t anything I could do about it. …” he frowned. “And then we were sent to Messton. And after that, I was even angrier, I suppose. I was just so outraged at the whole useless waste of lives and... and the pointlessness, the futility of it all... I decided to go to the Forbidden Mountains... to Plausant Bron... and the Great Pavilion…
“And you know, it never struck me how arrogant I was, how presumptuous, to think that I could go to the Home of the Gods, to Plausant Bron itself, and... and complain about the way the Gods were doing things,” he grinned suddenly, “And when it did, I found that I didn’t care... if the
Gods didn’t like it, they could take it and stick it up their...”
“Rowan!” Rose interrupted from the doorway.
“Robes, I was going to say, Rose… robes,” Rowan said innocently.
“Of course you were, you ratbag,” she laughed, coming over to him and tugging his long auburn braid. Suddenly serious, she looked closely at him and said, “Are you all right, Rowan love?”
He twisted the gold and silver ring on his finger again as he thought about it. Finally he nodded slowly.
“Aye, I think maybe I am now,” he said. “For a while there I wasn’t right at all, but… now I truly do think that I am... at least a little better anyway.”
**********
Shana joined them a few minutes later, bringing with her a platter of cheese and fruit, a flagon of wine and a big pot of tea.
“Rose and I have seen off the last of the customers and locked the door,” she said, “We’re not wanted in the kitchens, so I thought you might tell us a little bit more of your story... Rose has told me some of it...”
Rowan had managed to pull himself together again, and he nodded unenthusiastically as he poured them all some wine, and tea for Rose and himself. He thought for a moment before he continued the tale.