Fourth Verse
Never was wind so alive as during Jael’s ride home. It whirled through her hair, whistling passed her ears like the song of a thrush—enlivening, so that even hackneyed Troy broke from his usual trot, galloping down the road like some knight’s great destrier. At least, that’s how Leonhardt imagined her steed as she abandoned the beaten road for Herbstfield’s forest valleys. They were wind between the hills and trees. It was her secret path to and from the chapel, and it halved what should have been an hour’s journey. But it wasn’t saved time driving her through brooks and branches to where the hills laid low under cover of a weeping tree.
It was Jael’s sanctuary from chastising eyes: an untended meadow below a hilltop farm, a field white with chamomile, and a rocky pond overrun by blooming moss and lichen. The ancient weeper’s arms maintained the wild garden; in its shade, the grass grew no taller than the tops of Jael’s boots. She couldn’t believe it was true the first time she saw it—that such an escape from the endless fields of wheat and barley laid just a stone’s throw from home. Now, the meadow was as familiar to her as was the chapel. Every church day morning she visited after the sermon to meet with the keeper of her secret sanctuary.
She had discovered him a year ago, stranded just off the market road, stuck in the mud between two over-grazed slopes pulling a meat-laden cart. One of its wheels had broken—cracked on a boulder jutting up through the mud—and the man was struggling to replace it on his own. Jael had reined in alongside him and slung to the ground with a happy plop.
“Come on! Put your back into it!” her younger self japed—a habit she’d picked up working the fields with her father, teasing one another to hasten the day.
The stranger did not laugh. He was holding his breath, kneeling, red-faced bearing the weight of his cart on one shoulder, a spare wheel in his opposite hand. But the iron tyre and wooden spokes were too unwieldy. As soon as he aligned the wheel with the axel, the cart would shift or he’d sink into the mud. It must have been a dozen times before he finally gave up.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she teased him again, amusing till he pressed his hands on his knees and rose to at least a full six feet. The cart vanished behind his broad chest and shoulders, as did the sun behind his head. Leonhardt had to crane her neck just to look him in the face. He was staring back at her with squinty brown eyes. His cheeks and jaw were round and naked, his sandy hair pasted to his face.
“God bless you, M’lady. Now, if you’re finished, I’d appreciate some help.”
Jael stood shocked by the softness of his voice.
The stranger touched his palm to Leonhardt’s forehead. His hand eclipsed almost half of her face. “M’lady? You’re not sick, are you? Your face is all red.”
She bat his hand away. “No, I’m not sick; and I’m not ‘M’lady’ either. My name is Jael Leonhardt.”
“You sure sound like a lady with a name like that,” he said. “I’m Zach. I herd goats. Now that we’ve been introduced, could you give me a hand?”
“I thought you’d never ask. You sure as Hell need it,” she answered, knowing full well that he already had. Zach was polite enough not to point that out, however. Instead, he shrugged and propped the wheel on its edge then rolled it over for Leonhardt to hold. Jael shook her head. Replacing a wheel was hardly a task for her. She wanted to show this stranger what she was capable of, so she knelt beside the flatbed and bore it rough edge on her shoulder. The weight was ungodly. Eyes shut to the pain, for the first few moments, she could hold it. Then, slowly, she felt as her form began to break: back bowing, legs shaking. Another second and the cart would be her grave.
“Hurry it up!” she exclaimed, but it was too late. Her body gave way. Her heart stopped while she waited for the cart to come down on her collar bone. It never did. And when Jael opened her eyes, she found the wheel on its axle and Zach above her, sitting atop the platform.
“Come on, M’lady.” he said, smiling. “Put your back into it, why don’t you.”
Leonhardt smiled as well, something about his squinty brown eyes stealing her attention from her sore shoulder. Even as they went their separate ways, she couldn’t take her mind from the feeling. It haunted her for days on afterward, so much so that the following Lunday, on her way to church on that same stretch of road, she slowed Troy to an amble and gazed between the hills, praying that she’d see him again. And so she did for weeks on end after.
Summer succumbed to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring. Still, Jael had not seen him again, and in that time her faith had waned. She’d ceased watching for him on the road or listening for his name in conversations after church. She hardly prayed for her stranger anymore, nor did she dare mention him to anyone but God. She didn’t need more torture from her peers for falling for a farm boy.
As if he’d want an ox like me, thought Leonhardt one early spring morning. It was Lunday, and Jael was late for Gavin’s sermon. The previous night’s rain made mud of the road and had yet to let up. And she was stuck—Troy’s hoof had broken on a rock jutting through the dirt. She looked around: gray skies, bare hills, and a horse who refused to budge. Then the wind kicked up, and there was a flash in the distance. God, get me out of this storm, she’d prayed without a thought of Him actually coming to save her. She wasn’t Camilla, after all, no matter how much she wanted to be. So when an angel came trudging from between the hills, she thanked God and promised never to doubt Him again.
Zach was hauling that same roughhewn cart piled high with salt-packed chevron and a waxed tarp to keep off the rain. He had no wax for himself, though. The man was covered with mud up to his waist, his hairy chest sandy-blonde through the white of his linens as he shivered. The wind howled, and in the distance, the drum of thunder drove Troy wild. The old hackney whinnied and bucked as much as he could on three good legs with Jael beside him, tugging at his reins. But there was too much pain and fear in the animal, and she too was afraid—that he might bolt or turn and trample her if her hands cramped in the cold and she lost the reins. Then suddenly there was Zach standing next to her, Troy’s harness in hand, gently dispensing his strength as he tamed the horse with whispers. He spoke to Jael as well, though what he said she could not hear over the wind and thunder. She only remembered following him, dumbfounded as he coaxed stubborn Troy between waterlogged hills and through a maze of streams and forest.
They didn’t venture long before the canopy thickened, and the sun and rain waned into misty twilight. Zach tread swiftly despite the dim, like he’d travelled this path a thousand times. He had, he explained to Jael. It was the valley pass his folks had always taken between their knoll and the market road. He pointed to a fallen alder, branches bare and roots torn from the hillside. It had been cleaved in two, and each half was pushed apart wide enough for four men abreast—or for a cart.
“That way,” Zach told Leonhardt, “goes up the hill to the house. This way,” he nodded toward the stream they’d been following, “this way goes to some place special.”
The meadow: the weeper, the pond, the chamomile—though none had bloomed that stormy morning. Still, it was beautiful in Jael’s memory. They tied Troy to a looming branch and sat on the huge roots stuck up above the soil—just to wait out the rain, they’d told themselves—then Jael would go home with her injured horse and he’d return to his cart and depart for the market. But the storm lasted for hours, and with nothing else, they went to talking—about their homes, their families, their dreams. They didn’t seem to notice that the rain gave way till the late afternoon, and even then, they made excuses to stay and to meet again next Lunday morning.
Since then, all those months ago, neither Zach nor Jael missed a single day. Their first planned reunion, they spent hours after Gavin’s sermon lying on the grass and chamomile, sitting by the by the pond discussing everything they could think of. She learned that Zach took care of his siblings and mother, that he was made man of the house when his father died of winter fever two years befo
re, and that since then he’d spent almost every second of God’s gift of life tending to goats, hauling meat off to market, or working the harvest for other farms. She also learned that though he loved his family, he knew his mother would be gone soon—taken by consumption—and that he hoped to save up for some land of his own once his youngest brother was grown enough. A peasant’s cup dream, yet after hearing it, Leonhardt was embarrassed to tell her part. She hadn’t the tragedy he had. Her father was still alive and well, pulling a plow at almost fifty years old; nor was her mother close to death. And Jael was an only child—a rare thing, and blessed to have been born to a holy, lettered knight. She’d been gifted with reading and writing and fighting with a sword. She told Zach that she was the son her father never had and that she was happy to be. He laughed back then—not mockingly. He understood what it meant to pursue an impossible dream.
But that very evening was like waking from a dream. When Jael arrived home, her parents greeted her with a vicious interrogation that let on into the night. It was rare that she fought with her father and rarer that he’d be on her mother’s side. In the end, she confessed as to where she’d been, as to what she’d been doing, and with whom. The words were like a witches incantation, conjuring Hell itself inside the Leonhardt house until the sun rose again and she could escape into field work. After that, she and Zach were limited to the time she had—time stolen from an hour’s ride after church on the market road. They’d made the most of it, but now, as Jael coursed like the wind into their hidden meadow, she wondered how he’d react when she told him what happened.
Zach was already seated beneath the weeper by the time she arrived. He was skipping rocks atop the pond, whistling and smiling as the wind cut through the trees, cold as icicles. Jael bit her lip and dismounted, watched him watching her while she tied her horse to some low-hanging branches. He looked younger than twenty-four, she thought. His bare chin and small eyes were too innocent.
“That Gavin sure likes to keep you,” he called.
Leonhardt felt as though she’d swallowed her tongue as she crossed the grass and sat beneath the weeping tree. She wanted anything save for a sad farewell, yet sitting next to him, it was all that seemed possible.
“What’s wrong?” asked Zach. He laid an arm around her shoulders. “Did someone say something hurtful at church?”
“No,” Leonhardt managed. She struggled to find the words and put them in order, so much a maelstrom were her head and heart. “We had a special guest at the chapel today. A bishop from Pareo—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you who it was. He asked some of us go with him back to the capital.”
“You mean to say he asked you?”
She couldn’t hiding anything from the goatherd. “He said I might be allowed to join the Cross.”
Zach chuckled, said to stop teasing him.
Jael looked him in his squinty brown eyes. “I’m serious.”
There was a pause as belief sunk in, then at once Zach jumped from the weeper’s roots. His cheeks were glowing; he didn’t understand the ramifications. “Swear to God, that ain’t no lie. The Cross, he said? Are you sure he’s got the authority? I thought you said that was impossible.”
“I’m sure,” Jael replied. “It was Saint Paul himself.
The goatherd slapped his leg. “Now you’re playing with me. The saint in Herbstfield? Good God, Jael, what are the chances? This is a miracle!… Why aren’t you smiling?”
“We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? And your father says you can go?”
“He doesn’t know yet. You’re the first one I’ve told.”
“Damn, the world moves fast. Tomorrow…then this will be the last time,” it finally dawned on him, but that was only part of Leonhardt’s guilt.
She’d told him her dream of being a knight at the very beginning, yet never did she reveal all that entailed. His only impression of knighthood came from farfetched tales of heroes slaying dragons and marrying princesses. But the Saint’s Cross and the Temple Guard—they were holy orders. Their oaths were those of poverty and chastity; their service was life-long. If Jael were ever to see her dream come true, it would spell the end of the two of them. She knew had to tell him, yet she couldn’t find it in her heart.
But just then, the glowing goatherd took Leonhardt by the hands and swept her from the roots. He pulled her up and into his chest said how happy he was for her. And he meant it, too. The Zach she knew couldn’t lie to save his life, nor could he hide his sorrow as he said, “this is the last time.”
“Yeah,” Jael replied, fighting inside to say what she meant. You have to tell him. Instead, she did something she’d been wanting to do but could never work up the courage. She kissed him—her first real kiss; and when he kissed back, a warm buzz washed over her like a pair of thrumming wings. A quarter minute passed before they separated. Jael felt light headed; she been holding her breath.
“That was a cruel thing, you did.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “this is the last time, so I—”
Zach stepped back, looked west and into the forest, asked, “How long will I have to wait before I get another? Pa’s service was ten years before bought the farm.”
He doesn’t understand. You have to tell him! But she couldn’t bear it. “As long as it takes to earn my knighthood. It’s different for everyone.”
“On your own time, then. I swear, you women are like the weather, hard to plan around and always doing something unexpected.” He smiled, hoping the joke might evoke a laugh, yet all it did was stoke the voice inside her head.
Tell him!
“Jael,” Zach continued, serious now, “I want to make you a promise, and you’re going to make me one too. I swear from this day onwards, my heart will be for you and nobody else, and that when you come back to me, I’ll have that little plot of land ready for the two of us. I promise, Jael. Now promise me that you’ll come back one day, and that when you do it will be the two of us together.”
“I promise,” said Leonhardt, hating herself for it.
†
Troy’s hooves hammered the hills harder than ever before. Still, Jael spurred him on, desperate for the pounding to stamp out her guilt. It did not, nor could the cool winds burn away her tears, yet at least they reddened her cheeks enough to hide that she been crying. Telling her father would be tough as it was. She didn’t need another inquisition. Though maybe Dahilla will be happy for once. The thought brought her no peace. Gritting her teeth for what was to come, Jael cut out of the forest and back on the road just out of sight of the Leonhardt farm.
Home: twenty-some acres of golden-brown and green surrounding a house, a little barn, and a meager stable. The road wound around it all and branched toward the front of the house—a minute’s travel at an amble, and foreign ground to Leonhardt. Her path had always been straight as an arrow, darting between rows of barley and whatever else she and her father could grow. Often she’d come home from a sermon to find him with a barrow of radishes or cabbages or turnips. Though not this day. It was only Jael and Troy and a gray-stone chimney billowing at the rear of the house. The kitchen fire was burning, its smoke carrying the odor of beef and bay leaf stew. Even in the stable, her mouth watered, so savory was the scent—rich and warming—she tied her horse and entered the kitchen through the rear door. One step inside and it all smelled sour.
Dahilla Leonhardt was buzzing about their little kitchen, setting dishes, and stirring stew, utterly oblivious as her daughter crossed the room and stole a stool at the table. For minutes, Jael watched her. It was not unusual to stumble upon her mother escaped away in her own faerie-tale world. Dahilla seemed half a faerie herself, the way she flitted through the house on bare feet in her lilac, silk—weightless, like a girl of thirteen. She’d been about that age at the Summer Tourney eighteen years ago, and since then, little had changed. She was still slender as a knife and blonde and fair, her eyes like cloudless sky, and even her gown was the same. Every few years,
Jael’s father would hire the tailor to undo the threads and sew her a new one—an expense they could hardly afford. It would be worth it, she thought, if he could remake her mind as well.
That there was a time when Jael loved her mother was hard to remember. Those memories seemed more like fantasies. Had they really all gone to market together to have a dress measured for Jael’s thirteenth birth year? Was it truly her mother who picked out the color—jonquil, like the garland she had worn on the day of the Summer Tourney. “The day I met your Father,” Dahilla told her years ago, “I was the prettiest maiden in sight of Castle Aestas, and you’ll be just the same. I know it. You’ll make a happy wife to a lord’s son or one of his noble knights.” They were promises which filled Jael’s girl-head with wonder. Only, the gown was never made.
“Oh!” her mother gasped, dropping the cook pot, its clangor snatching Leonhardt from her reverie. Stew spattered the floor. Both women stared breathless, panting. Dahilla was the first to speak. “Good Lord, Jael, you scared me. When did you come in? Is it that time already? I thought for sure I’d have the table set in time.”
“Gavin’s homily finished early today,” Leonhardt lied. It was her meeting with Zach that ended prematurely. Her eyes were on the spilled stew—a small mess. There was plenty left in the pot, and what was lost would be quick to clean up. But then she saw the splotch: a globule of brown clinging to a lilac fringe. Dahilla had yet to notice this stain on her dress, and Jael sought to keep it that way. When her mother turned to take a rag from the water trough, she flew from her seat to the beef and bay leaf puddle. “Let me,” she said, begging the cloth from her mother’s hands. On elbows and knees, she went to scrubbing, waiting, watching for the opportunity to sneak the splotch from the edge of her gown. Too far, too fast, and too flighty did Dahilla dance around the table, pouring stew into pewter bowls. Jael couldn’t reach the spot without being found. Then the roar of a man shook the farmhouse. Ricard Leonhardt stormed the rear door.
Salt, Sand, and Blood Page 7