Chains of Gold

by Nancy Springer

  “Arl!” I called to him.

  “You talk to him, Cerilla,” Bri said.

  “But I have never been in the world much—”

  “Surely you have dreamed.”

  “I dream of people. Of love, friendship.”

  Briony turned away and went back to his worktable.

  “Do you feel that too, Arl?” I appealed to him. “The warm hearth fire, and the cup of the house served to the guest. It need not be a grand house, not a tower keep, only snug, a cottage. And a dog by the fire, a dog with warm brown eyes, and some chickens by the door. And—a cradle.… And the corn growing nearby, golden. Arlen?” I waited. “Arl, can you hear me?”

  He moved one hand just a flicker and whispered something. I could not hear what it was, but I nearly wept with joy, for I knew then that he was going to be well.

  He moaned and muttered and whispered from time to time all day. Bri and I took turns talking to him, and sometimes he seemed to move or speak in answer to my voice. Toward evening Briony gave him another potion—a better one, stronger, he said, as it had had more time to steep. And he said a sort of charm he had composed about swans and swallows and the little crowned wren. Briony told me to sleep that night, but Arlen kept me awake with tossings and groanings and senseless mumblings; sometimes he nearly shouted. The sounds were as sweet as birdsong to me, sweet as bells that hail the dawn after the long dark night.

  In the morning we gave him broth and bread and wine as well as a potion, and he took them all eagerly, though he seemed hardly to know where he was. Then he slept, now that the time for sleeping had passed and I was waking. But sometime before midday he opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Rae,” he said, holding out a hand toward me shakily, and I went and drew him up toward me to kiss him.

  “Ooch,” he said, “that hurts.”

  He was too weak to talk much, and he spent that day eating everything that we would give him. Some of the color came back to his face. And we changed the bandages; the swelling had gone down, and the wounds looked as if they were beginning to heal. I believe Arlen had not been aware, before, of his many injuries, and as he took accounting he seemed shocked and sickened, although he had recalled himself sufficiently to refuse to cry out in pain. We could see that he was not entirely indifferent to it, however. Afterward I went to him and took his head in my lap, auburn hair and white wrapping, and he lay there and looked at Briony and asked what I had not dared.

  “Why are you helping us?”

  “Professional challenge,” said Briony crisply.

  “Love of craft,” I remarked wryly to Arlen, “has made him devote days to us, turn away others, lose sleep for your sake, spend his winter’s supply of food on us …”

  Briony stared straight at us with a flat brown face and black expressionless eyes, as if daring us to think otherwise.

  “Something hurtful has changed,” Arlen said to him at last. “Thank you.”

  The next day, when he was stronger, he told us what it was.

  “I felt as if—all reason argued against it, but I felt somehow that I had failed. That I had betrayed my calling, that I was a coward and a renegade for not dying. Lonn’s death reproached me. He and all the others had died. Why did I deserve to live?”

  “Arl,” I exclaimed, “there is no deserving about it! Only living.”

  “I know that now.”

  “But why did you not tell me how you felt?” I sat holding him in my arms again, head and upper body cradled against my shoulder, my bosom.

  “I did not understand it myself. It was all so—unthinking.”

  “You were feeling as they had taught you to feel,” Briony said.

  “Yes. But now I feel differently.” Suddenly he sat straight up, out of my arms and unsupported, and he looked hard at the apparition that wavered at the center of the room.

  “Lonn,” he said to it, “I am going to leave you behind.”

  “How did you know?” I marveled.

  “I always suspected. It seemed so apt that he should haunt me. But now it no longer seems fitting. For, let the dead think whatever they like, the reward is mine. I am alive. Alive!” He suddenly gave a great fierce shout of laughter; defiance rang in it, and joy. The presence of Lonn shrank visibly from that joy.

  “Alive, breathing, loving, beloved!” Arlen cried. “With a body for pleasure and a true love to cherish and the wide sky for riding under. It is all mine, for any reason and no reason, and I embrace it.” He sank back against me, his strength gone for the time but his green eyes shining. “So leave me to it.”

  The presence of Lonn went out, leaving the air of the soddy clear again.

  “He was your friend,” I said to Arlen, puzzled. “Why would he wish to trouble you?”

  Arlen shrugged, then grimaced with the pain of his shoulder wound and lay back with a sigh. “I do not think he means me any harm,” he said. “It is only—I do not know what he wants of me. Perhaps nothing. Do you know, Briony?”

  “I suspect he does not desire anything of you,” Bri said, “any more than I do.” His words seemed plain, but the look in his black eyes was opaque.

  NINE

  We stayed with Briony until the warmer days of springtime came. Arlen was up and about within a week after Bri’s cure, but he did not regain his full strength soon, for we had both been worn down by winter. And it was a joy to live within the warmth of the soddy, to sleep on a soft pallet, to cook good food on a fire—I learned to cook somewhat, those days, when I was not coughing. For as soon as Arlen was on the mend I took cold. Briony showed no inclination to be rid of us, so we stayed.

  Our good mandrake gave us the freedom of his home, and sometimes he left us to tend it. Every fortnight, on the eve of the dark moon or the full, he would step out into the dusk and be gone as if whirled away on a horse of air. And with the dawn he would return, exhausted, and spend the day buried in earth in the deepest shadows of his soddy before emerging to speak with Arlen and me once more.

  Arlen was fascinated by Briony, his craft, and his books, especially his herbal. He had never been taught to read, not on the Sacred Isle, but I knew how, for reading was one of the useless things that ladies learned. So, as Briony had no objection, I would sit by the hour and read the herbal aloud to Arlen. Afterward he and Briony would have long talks, and they would stand about studying the dried plants that hung from the rafters. When the early spring herbs began to sprout, Briony would go out into the copse or onto the moorlands to look for some he needed, and often Arlen would go with him.

  Spring. The trees budded, ash and oak. The heather bloomed. The swallows returned to nest, as Briony had promised they would. The winter, which I had felt might go on forever, was over. White birches put out pale green crowns.

  One day, when the sun shone as warmly as I had felt it since—before everything, since I was a maiden and my father’s pawn—on a sunny day I went out to draw water for washing. My cough had left me, so I had been doing a great spate of washing, our clothes and everything we owned, including ourselves. And as I brought the wooden bucket up out of the dark opening of the well, there lay a small snake inside, coiled up in the water, a serpent as green as an emerald and as sparkling bright, and it raised its head to look at me. I went rigid for a moment with the shock of seeing it there in the bucket, but then I realized it would not hurt me, for it was not an asp but some other sort of snake, graceful and very beautiful. I took the bucket softly and poured out water and serpent into the heather; it looked at me a moment longer before it slid away. Then I knew that it was as I had suspected, that I was with child.

  I gave up thoughts of washing for that day.

  “We are going to have to decide what to do,” I said to Arlen that evening at supper. “We cannot stay here forever.”

  “Especially,” Briony put in, “as you are pregnant.”

  I glared at him in surprise and vexation, for I had planned to tell Arlen that myself, later, in private.

  “Well,
” Briony said mildly, “if you are going to leave the messengers of the goddess lurking about.…”

  “Are you really?” Arlen was looking at me with his chin hanging in an uncouth way. “I mean—I know nothing about it, but are there not—indications …?”

  I felt suddenly embarrassed, and I blushed. “I thought at first it was because of—the cold, the bad food, everything,” I mumbled.

  “You mean—you have been? Since our first times—together?”

  I remembered those days, that passion, and wished I had not remembered while Briony’s inscrutable gaze was on me, and flushed still more hotly. Arlen looked stunned.

  “Great goddess,” he said, and then he grinned. “As if we did not have trouble enough already,” he teased me.

  Briony brought out the wine, and we had a small celebration. Arlen gave me a ceremonial kiss, for fertility, and one far less ceremonial, for my own sake. But after that was done with, Briony called us to order.

  “Arlen spoke more truly than he knows,” said Bri darkly, “concerning trouble.”

  We sobered and sat one on either side of him at the table, listening.

  “Rahv and his men will be hard after you, once the weather favors. Indeed, rumor has it that already they have set out, though the spring floods have not yet dried.”

  We sighed. “Another season of riding,” Arlen said.

  “Well,” said Briony, “if you will accept the advice of a mandrake.…”

  We turned to him attentively.

  “Ride north and east, toward the Mountains of the Mysteries. Few folk dwell there, even fewer than live here, for those are awesome lands, too wild to be readily put to the plow. Also the mountains form a barrier, and there are other barriers less defined.… For many reasons, those lands are neither farmed nor traveled for trade, and so the region lies feral, of no interest to lords or even robbers. You may find some strange folk there, but no lords and no petty kings. And land is free for the settling.”

  “You think my father will not pursue us there?” I asked, too eagerly.

  “I have no way of knowing where your father will or will not pursue you. Cover your traces more thoroughly this time.”

  As there would be no more snow, that might be possible.

  Arlen’s eyes looked moss green, for he was thinking. “How long will it take us to get there?” he asked Briony.

  “Not overlong. If you ride quickly, you should arrive before Cerilla is too big to fit on the horse with you.” He barked out a noise that might have been a laugh and walked back into his earthworks to sleep, if what he did there could be called sleeping. And Arlen and I went to our bed.

  My news put a surge of energy into Arlen. The next morning he arose betimes, before the dawn, checking gear and packing the provisions that Briony gave us. And as soon as the sun was up he took our borrowed bedding and walked to the homestead to return it and to fetch Bucca—he went instead of me, for I would not cross the esker if I did not have to. I had told him what had happened there, but though he did not doubt my word he could scarcely believe me—an irrational state, but human. He did not remember the serpent, at any rate, and went fearlessly, and brought Bucca back without incident. Bucca looked glossy, well fed, and more than a little troublesome. Arlen also brought gifts of clothing and food, appeasements from the folk who had refused to aid him. We bore them no grudge, but evidently they bore some against themselves.

  While the day was still cool we were ready, and Briony stood at the doorway to see us off. I went to him and embraced him and kissed him on the cheek—the first time I had touched him, and I felt sure he would not know what to make of my affection, as indeed he did not. He looked utterly startled and did not know how to return the kiss. Then Arlen hugged him as well.

  “Great goddess have mercy,” Bri said.

  “A thousand thanks.” Arlen gripped his brown hand, the mandrake hand that had brought him back from death.

  “And a thousand good wishes go with you, Arlen. And with you, Lady Cerilla.”

  “May the powers be willing,” I told him, smiling, “I’ll be no more a lady.”

  “Why, then,” said Briony, with some small touch of mischief in his voice, “you’d do well to take a less ladylike name. Should I call you Rae?”

  “It is the best of names,” I said.

  “Call her what you like,” said Arlen, “and I will never dispute you.” And from that time forth I took the name of Rae, with him and with all others, and Arlen found other endearments for me.

  We rode away, waving our thanks and our farewells. The springtime days were warm, the nights pleasant, and we had food and everything we needed; we rode steadily, and as we asked no favors of any folk we left no trail of rumor, or very little, for we avoided even the workers in the fields when we could. Nor did we leave much trail in fact, for we took a twisting course around the eskers, keeping to the stony ground to hide Bucca’s hoofprints. As we traveled on, and the horse’s hooves did not crack, and no one seemed to notice us or pursue us, our hopes grew that all would yet go well.

  It was not until we ran out of food and needed to ask for hospitality that I realized all was not as I had thought. We approached a woman planting in her garden, and she looked up at us with a smile—but within a moment the smile became a puzzled frown, and even as I gave her greeting the puzzlement turned into a grimace of terror. She ran into her home, banging the heavy door into place behind her, and began to wrench at the window shutters, panting and gasping in her fear. I looked at the air a slight distance to my left. The presence had come so gently again I had not noticed it. Or perhaps I was so accustomed to it that I no longer noticed. No matter, for there it was.

  “Lonn’s back,” I told Arlen.

  “I know,” he said grimly, turning Bucca away toward the open moorland, where we would trouble no one. Once we had gone a little distance, though, he stopped and swiveled around to face the Presence.

  “Lonn, go away,” he said, levelly enough. “You are turning folk against us.”

  Nothing happened. It was only a watery place in the air, a sort of shimmer or thickening, and it stayed there.

  “Lonn, go!” said Arlen more forcefully. “Go back where you belong.”

  He stayed.

  “What are we to do?” I whispered to Arlen. “He went before when you ordered him to.”

  Arlen shrugged and lifted the reins. “We’ll ride,” he said. “He went before because he wanted to, for some reason. I thought as much at the time. I have no sorcerer’s power and never did. But Lonn was mighty in magic.”

  “Well, how did he come to be so mighty in magic?” I grumbled, vexed.

  “The tale has it that a serpent crawled into the cradle with him when he was a baby.”

  That silenced me. Such, indeed, would have been a mighty conferring of power by the goddess.

  “Perhaps he will grow tired of following us,” Arlen said after we had ridden for a while.

  I am afraid I snorted scornfully.

  “Confound it,” Arlen burst out, goaded, “how am I to spurn him, even in death? He is—you know what a friend he is. What he has done.”

  “He is a nuisance,” I soothed, “but nothing worse.”

  Few folk lived in those parts, at any rate, who could have given us food. We foraged. We came out of moor and esker into a moist, woodsy country, where wild asparagus grew along the shady slopes above streams, and a plant with a single folded petal of green or purple. Lady’s hood, Arlen called it. Acting on a strange prompting one day, I dug one up. The root was large, and I rubbed the dirt off it and kept it.

  “We should cook this and eat it,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Arlen asked. “I thought you were kept always castlebound and ignorant of anything practical.”

  I sighed, oddly reluctant to tell him the truth. “Lonn showed it to me,” I admitted. “Things under earth seem to be in his province.”

  “Oh.” Arlen sighed also, then accepted it, digging up more lady’s
hood himself. “Well, as a matter of fact, I think Lonn is right,” he said. “I have been told these thing are famine food.”

  They were tolerable, boiled. But I did not see how we were to last so, foraging, all summer.

  Those were pinched times. The going turned from farmland and pastureland to woodland, with not even a byre to plunder for cattle feed—I, for one, was not above a bit of thieving by then. There were brown mushrooms growing in the loam, chainmail mushrooms they were called, and we would cook them with the wretched lady’s hood. Also, we learned to eat greens. That was all.

  And so, by degrees, and not even knowing it, we came into the primal forest.

  Knowing came to me with a chill one day when I heard the yap of a fox at midmorning and looked about me. My arms tightened around Arlen as if in a spasm, and he stopped the horse, startled.

  “Arl,” I whispered to him, “this place is the wildest of all wilds.”

  All was dim, mossy, ivy-twined. The most immense trees loomed, towered, as if they had been there forever, and the great butts of ancestor trees had fallen in the shadows and were rotting with an orange glow amid thickets of bracken. Ivy chains trailed down, touching us; I shivered and shrank from that chill touch.

  “So much the better,” Arlen said bitterly. “There are no Gwyneda here, or lords’ henchmen either, to harass us. Only beasts.” He sent Bucca onward.

  We fought our way through ivy and thickets and around the great logs, trying not to break branches, trailing one that broke despite us to scrape away the hoofprints in the soft forest loam. Soon we came to rippling fens where the trees stood white and skeletal, dead, and the midges swarmed. We gave up trying to hide our traces, leaving deep tracks as we found our way around and through them. And beyond them at last, on firm ground when evening fell, we heard the howling of wolves.

  “Sleep,” Arlen said wearily, for we had nothing to eat. “Sleep, and never mind my cousins, the boys with the silver whiskers. They will not harm us.”

  We slept, even all bitten as we were, for the midges had been feeding on us; we lay close together under our blanket and slept as deeply as if we had been drugged. And when we awoke at dawn the wolves were sitting about us in a circle, with the sunlight of the new day sending up silver lights off their thick fur. They sat, respectful, and we lay and looked up at them in profound respect for their gleaming teeth and powerful jaws. Then, seeing that we were awake, they got up and trotted away. In a moment nothing more could be seen of them in the greenish shadows.