Jackaroo

by Cynthia Voigt

  They came that evening to a hovel shared by three rough men, with a pen nearby where two scrawny goats were kept, and an open shed for the goats to shelter in. The men wore shapeless rags. Hair covered most of their faces. They stood before the hut and heard Gwyn’s request, their eyes, when they thought she did not watch them, searching out one another’s. Finally, one of them put out his hand for the coin Gwyn offered. An old scar ran like a ravine down his cheek, starting at the corner of his eyebrow and disappearing into his mustache. “Them’ll sleep inside. We’ll have the shed,” he said, and as they moved toward it, Gwyn saw that the youngest of them dragged his right foot as he walked.

  Gwyn hid her thoughts, glad of the knife at her waist, glad she knew how to use it, glad of whatever protection traveling with Lords might offer her. She left Burl to tend to the horses while she opened the door.

  Foul air swept out at her, sweat and urine, old food and smoke. It was the only shelter they had, so she stepped inside, her eyes sweeping the room: a small table, a fire within a circle of stones in the center of the dirt floor, most of its smoke going out through a hole in the thatched roof, the cracks in the windowless wooden walls stuffed with straw to keep the wind out, no shelves, no furnishings but two benches and the blankets tossed around.

  The Lords had followed her inside. The Lordling huddled close to his father, who seemed to notice neither the filth nor the stench.

  Well, Gwyn thought, the Lords would be safe enough for a night, and warm enough. These men wouldn’t dare attack them here—not when it would be possible to track the two to this place. She herself didn’t expect to sleep that night. These three were not men you closed your eyes on.

  First, though, the Lords must be settled and fed. She tidied the room as best as she could and set bread and cheese on the table. While the Lords ate their silent meal, she brought in and stacked by the door the wood Burl chopped. She cleared away the food left remaining and nodded at Burl, the signal that they could now leave.

  “Innkeeper’s daughter,” the Lord spoke at her back. She turned, to hear what he wanted. “It would be better if we all slept inside tonight.” His voice was clear and cold, like a sharp wind overhead. For a minute Gwyn could not find words. She hadn’t known how much she was dreading the night to come.

  “For all of our safeties,” the Lord said, misunderstanding her hesitation. “Although I would almost welcome an open fight with an enemy I could see to put steel into.” He added this last distantly, not really speaking to her, his hand at the hilt of his sword.

  “Yes, my Lord,” Gwyn said.

  The long winter evening stretched out. She and Burl ate, hunkered down by the fire. She melted a bowl of snow to drink. The Lord sat at the table, his book open, making marks. The boy sat silent, watching his father, until he fell asleep. Gwyn moved him to the floor, covering him with one of the blankets from the Inn, which were clean. Then she went back to sit with Burl, their backs to the wall, both under the cover of cloaks. The fire burned steadfastly. At last Burl pulled out his pipe and played a few soft lines of melody. The Lord looked up and nodded to him, as a Lord would to the servant of a servant, giving permission.

  The music played, the Lord worked at the table, and Gwyn closed her eyes, thinking that she was grateful to the Lord for saving her a sleepless night, thinking that she did not know where they were going, although he seemed genuinely to be a mapmaker, thinking that the boy was strangely still and silent for a boy.

  At first light they left, making no farewell to their hosts. They traveled for a long time, well into the morning, high into the hills, keeping together. Finally, the Lord pulled up his horse and took the long book and his charcoal out of the saddlebag. He worked silently, turning page after page. At last he took the lead line and moved off, more quickly now, leaving Burl and Gwyn to follow.

  When they caught up, the two horses were standing tethered before a great rock face. A trickle of water fell down it, to form a small pool, its surface sheeted with ice. From this pool a little stream moved away under its own coating of ice, heading south.

  Gwyn put down her load and looked up from the stream, following the course of water backward to the pool, then up. Her eyes went up, and up, and still up, where the rock mounted above her, taller by four times than the walls of Earl Northgate’s city. Water slid down over the rocks and great icicles hung from the stone outcroppings. Thick and heavy as a strong man’s legs, the icicles pointed down. The only sound was the secret movement of the water.

  Cold, it was entirely cold: the great gray rocks covered with ice, the icicles hanging down like giants’ daggers, the snow fields rising above and the cold gray sky overhead. The air bit at Gwyn’s lungs. The water moved with cold little musical sounds into the streambed. The water was black where it showed beneath the ice. Beautiful too, somehow, in the opposite way to the beauty of a field coming to crop under the farmer’s hand.

  “This is what we came to find.” The Lord spoke. His voice suited that frozen landscape, Gwyn thought; the high wind his voice carried was a wind that would blow here among these frozen rocks, down from the high peaks of the mountains.

  He took out his book and made marks on a page. Gwyn turned away from the mountains to follow the stream down the narrow ravine it had made for itself. She couldn’t see far, but she could see to where it disappeared between bare hills.

  The horses stamped restlessly, but neither the Lord nor his son seemed troubled by that. High over the little plateau where they stood, a fierce wind blew up. But it blew far off overhead, beyond the clouds. The Lord turned his horse and they crossed the narrow stream to follow the rock face to the east, watching it gradually descend to become part of a craggy hill. Snow blanketed all this high land, blown up around the trunks of the few trees, weighing down the arms of evergreens. “There,” the Lord said, pointing with his arm, “is the eastern pass. When the snows melt, the pathway will be visible.” He pulled out his book, made some marks, put it away again. “We’ll eat now,” he said to Gwyn. “We’re going back to the Inn, and we’ll want to travel quickly, I think. There’s weather behind us and”—his eyes turned to Burl—“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had been followed through the morning.”

  “Nor I, my Lord,” Burl agreed calmly.

  Gwyn looked at Burl in surprise, but he had no more to say. She should have thought of it. She looked around behind them. But nothing moved on the landscape. Although, she thought, her eyes searching out the distant shapes of hills, the clusters of trees, a man—or three men—could follow their tracks, unperceived.

  They all rode that day, Gwyn and Burl up behind the two Lords. Gwyn rode behind the Lordling, his father holding the long lead line. The horses moved steadily. They did not halt for the Lord to take out his book until midday, and even then he worked hastily, making few new marks on the pages, hastily folding closed the big leather book, moving them on without even time to eat.

  Even with their steady haste they were not near any habitation when the light began to fail. The wind at their backs had risen and cut sharply. The horses held their heads low. They had come back to the gentler rises and thicker woods, but they had not yet come within the inhabited lands. At nightfall they stopped beneath a tall bare oak and separated immediately for a few moments to answer their bodies’ needs. Burl gathered sticks to make a small fire, around which they huddled, cloaks pulled close around them. They were four dark, faceless figures beneath the dark night and the wind. Gwyn took down the food bag and cut off chunks of cold cheese, which they ate standing up. The black sky hung heavy over them. A dark wind blew through the bare trunks of trees, lifting the broad arm of evergreens.

  Without warning, without preamble, snow erupted around them. The little fire hissed, and the dark air was thick with flakes. Gwyn waited for the Lord to speak, but he remained a tall, silent, dark shape. The wind gusted down, swirling snow into her face. The fire went out. Finally Gwyn said, “I’m not sure, but we’re no more than a day’s journey from the
Inn, think you?”

  Burl didn’t answer. The Lord didn’t speak. She had probably overstepped her bounds, Gwyn thought; but she thought this snow was coming down after them like a blizzard, and they’d not survive many hours without shelter.

  “The horses will be more tired after a night in the cold, without food,” she said. The wind caught her voice and carried it away, howling as if pleased with its treasure.

  Nobody answered her.

  “We’d be wise to travel on,” Gwyn went on, stubbornly. “My Lord?”

  His hooded head turned toward her, as if he had forgotten he wasn’t alone. She wondered, briefly, if it pleased him to lose his life, and theirs with it. “Two grown men is a heavy burden for any beast,” he said.

  Gwyn swallowed, swallowing back as much anger as fear. “Burl and I can walk. The horses will know their way back to the stable.” She and Burl could walk, if they had to; if they were just given permission, they could start off. What they couldn’t do was stand here doing nothing.

  The voice did not alter expression. The Lord spoke in slow and stately measure: “The Innkeeper would not be pleased if I returned without his daughter.”

  Anger took over. With a blizzard blowing thick around them, the chances were Gwyn would not be held responsible for her words. “The Lords do what they will. The Innkeeper knows that as well as any man.”

  If they were to go on foot, with the storm around them at night, her sense of direction would be useless, and she would not be able to see a familiar landscape even if she stumbled upon it. She took the bags of food down from the mare. They would at least keep the food with them. But the longer they stayed talking, the slighter their chances of survival. “You’d do well to tie the boy onto his mare,” she advised the Lord, not bothering to disguise the scorn in her voice.

  “Innkeeper’s daughter,” he answered her in that distant tone, “whatever the people might think of their Lords, I would not be the man who left a girl to die while he took himself to safety.”

  “I stay with Burl,” Gwyn told him.

  “Then you’ll be traveling with my son and me,” he answered, still distant, but she could have sworn she heard a smile in his voice—if the high peaks of mountains could ever be said to smile. “Leave the food bags here. We’ll ride as before, and we need no extra weight. The mare will have to carry this one bag.” He moved to loop the bag holding the long book onto the mare’s saddle. He put the Lordling up on the saddle and tied him to the horse with the lead rein. Burl gave Gwyn a foot up, and the Lord put the reins into her hands. “You need do nothing,” he told her.

  She nodded, looking down at him. It would be beyond her place to apologize to a Lord. They did not need the apologies of the people. “Give the mare her head. We’ll try to keep together,” he said. She did not think she needed to tell him that it was unlikely they would succeed in that. Gwyn sat with the Lordling’s body up close to hers, her arms around him to hold the reins, her legs hanging down. The Lord mounted the stallion, who was almost invisible in the thick snow. He pulled Burl up behind him. Then the Lord turned around. “Son, you would be wise to sleep this night through, as much as you can.” The slight figure in front of Gwyn did not stir. They set off.

  The wind, at least, was behind them. The mare moved with her head low, her four feet steady. Gwyn bent her head too and held the reins in one hand, while with the other she held the Lordling about his waist. The long cloak, her long skirt beneath it, the heavy socks she wore and her thick boots all gave some protection to her legs. But not enough—for the cold still bit most sharply there.

  She had no sense for how long they traveled thus. All she could hear was the wind at her back and the mare’s breathing. She did not know when she realized that they were alone. She dozed off and woke herself—afraid she had been asleep for hours but knowing it had been only the briefest of times. The Lordling did sleep, she thought, his body relaxed against hers, held up by her stiffening arm. Time passed, and she had no idea how much. Nothing around her altered, the dark wind roared, the thick snow blinded. The mare would make her way back to the Inn, if she could. If she couldn’t, well, then, they said that freezing was an easy death. Gwyn emptied her mind and huddled closer to the Lordling, for the little warmth his body could give her. He was shivering now.

  In the darkness, she almost missed the square shape. Something opened her eyes and cleared her mind, and she saw it briefly outlined there. The mare plodded on, but Gwyn pulled her up. A shelter on the hillside. It was no more than four steps away.

  “Wake up, my Lord.” She shook the Lordling’s shoulders. His head lifted. “There’s shelter. We must untie you.”

  Her stiff fingers worked on the ropes, hampered by heavy mittens. When he was free, she slipped down into snow that reached up to her knees. Her legs collapsed under her and she fell. Struggling up, she pulled the Lordling down into the snow beside her. He didn’t resist.

  The hut was abandoned, that was clear. No smoke rose, no light showed. Gwyn uncinched the saddle, holding the Lord’s saddlebag high to keep it from being buried in snow. She slipped the bridle over the mare’s head and struck her once on the rump. Even if they had found shelter, that was no use to the mare. The mare was heading back to the Inn, Gwyn hoped. She would move more safely without bridle and reins, more lightly without the saddle and riders. The mare’s only chance was her horse’s instinct for the stable.

  Gwyn took the Lordling by the arm and pulled him behind her toward the hut. They had to go around to the front, where Gwyn pushed up the latch and entered, without any care for what might wait within. It was enough just to be out of the wind and snow.

  The Lordling stumbled in the darkness. She pushed the door closed behind them and waited to hear if a voice would greet them from the darkness. No voice spoke. The air inside was cold, but not as cold as the air outside, which howled overhead. This hut had been sturdily built.

  The Lordling lay down on the floor and Gwyn, wondering if she could find any light or build any fire in this darkness, lay down beside him. Immediately, she slept.

  Chapter 9

  GWYN OPENED HER EYES TO darkness, and cold. Beside her the Lordling twitched and kicked, mumbling incoherently under his fur-lined cloak. Gwyn’s arms and legs felt stiffened, swollen. She was shivering along her whole body. The realization of what she had done shocked her entirely awake.

  To just fall asleep like that . . . She was lucky she hadn’t woken up dead. . . . How stupid, you couldn’t wake up dead. Gwyn got onto her hands and knees in the darkness. The cloak dragged at her shoulders and caught at her knees. There had to be a place for a fire, either in the center of the room or along a wall.

  Her hands and feet felt like wooden blocks. Close around her, beyond the narrow walls, the wind howled and howled.

  But no air blew over them. So, she thought, there was no smoke hole in the roof. So, she thought, it would be a fireplace against a wall and, with luck, a tinderbox nearby and, with luck, something to burn.

  Crawling clumsily, groping with her hands, she came first to a pile of wood and then to the stones of a hearth. She clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering and stood up, keeping one hand flat on the icy stones that formed the fireplace. Groping upward onto unsteady legs, her hand found the mantelboard. Methodically, she sent her hand off to the right, until it reached the edge of the board, then to the left. When her fingers closed around the familiar shape of a tinderbox she was relieved, but not surprised. This house had been well made and well kept. With only her fingers to see for her, she tried to find kindling. In the fire-bed there were a few ends of logs, in the pile of wood some sticks more narrow than the rest. She set the tinderbox down close to her right knee and awkwardly, blind in the lightless air, tried to assemble a pile of kindling in the cold ashes. She made her hands move slowly, but her mind raced.

  If, if . . . There might even be food stored, and certainly blankets in such a well-kept house. A cold draft came down the chimney and wo
und around her neck, as if the wind outside were reaching in with long fingers. She opened the tinderbox with shaking fingers and struck it. A small spark jumped out and flashed away before she could even see what her pile of kindling looked like.

  Striking again, she worked her mind to keep fear at bay. If this wood did not catch, there would be a broom with straw, all she had to do was find it. Or the Lord’s book, somewhere behind her in the darkness. Paper would burn. Surely he wouldn’t begrudge her one sheet of paper to start the fire that would save their lives.

  In the end, she did have to use the broom, which hung on a peg beside the fireplace. She used it like a torch, lighting first the stiff straw and then, with that light to see by, shoving it beneath the pile of sticks. Light leaped up from the fireplace, but Gwyn didn’t dare turn around until she had fed larger sticks into the blaze and the final big logs had caught and begun to smoke, as the flames curled up from underneath them. The heat licked tentatively along her face, and she shivered uncontrollably. That was odd, she thought, clenching her teeth, trying to clench her shoulders to stop them from shaking. She ought to stop shivering, now there was a fire to warm her.

  She turned her back to the fire at last, unwilling to remove her cloak even though it was wet with snow. She saw the one small room of the house, the wooden table in the middle of the floor and the bed behind it covered with blankets. Quickly, Gwyn shed her cloak and moved across the room, to take a dry blanket and wrap it around herself.

  She had to strain her eyes in the weak light from the fire: shelves along one wall and the restless Lordling on the dirt floor near the door. She would have to move him closer to the warmth. There were dark, round shapes on the shelves. A side of meat hung over the loft. The fire burst into hot flames and crackled with joy at reaching its strength.