Jackaroo

by Cynthia Voigt

  Gwyn knew where they were, as surely as if the old woman herself had opened the door to them: Old Megg’s house, not an hour from home in good weather. Her shivering ceased.

  The Lordling did not want to wake up, so she had to drag him over to the bed and lift him onto it. She took off his cloak, rolling him out of it, grateful that he was so light. He was not sleeping easily and his skin was cold to touch, but he did not wake as she pushed him under the blankets of the bed and then spread his cloak out over him.

  Clutching her own blanket around her shoulders, Gwyn returned to the fire. She put on two more big logs. She bent to pick up the saddlebag from the floor and set it on the table. She wished the fire had been burning long enough to warm the stones surrounding it, so that she could sit with the warm stones at her back. She sat in front of the fire to unlace her stiff boots.

  Light danced inside Old Megg’s house. Wind swirled around it, crying out in a hollow black voice. The boy whimpered. Gwyn wrapped herself around with the blanket and lay down. She fell asleep immediately.

  When next she woke it was to the chill of a dying fire and the wailing of wind. A faint light illuminated the room. Gwyn looked up at the shuttered window and saw pale lines around it. She turned to the fire, stirring it up, adding wood to it.

  Then she noticed the Lordling sitting up in the bed, staring at her. She wondered how long he had been awake.

  Gwyn put her boots on and cloak, now dry. She opened the door to a wall of whirling white flakes and pulled it quickly closed behind her. The snow had piled up over her knees. She shoved through it around to the left, toward the pens and the privy; but out of the shelter of the little hut the wind tore at her and she had to turn back to the wooden wall before she should lose her way. In a blizzard, men had died between house and barn, wandering off lost, unable to see their way back to safety. They would have to use the side of the house as a privy, until the snow ceased. But the Lordling would require his privacy, she thought with a sigh, so when she made her way back to the door of the house she trudged on through the snow to the right, making a path that turned the corner to the side opposite that which she had used.

  Inside again, her cloak spread to dry by the fire, her damp skirts hanging cold at her legs, she considered the problem of food. The Lordling sat motionless on the bed. He looked pale and lifeless. His hair hung tangled and his eyes looked as if they did not register what they saw. He did not move. He did not speak.

  Gwyn took a large bowl outside and filled it with snow. Some of that she transferred to a cooking pot. When this had melted, she added oats and swung the heavy pot over the fire, hanging it on the iron bar fixed into the stones at the side of the fireplace. The Lordling slid out of bed and came to sit at the table. He looked younger than Tad, despite seeming to have no more strength than an aged man. Gwyn sighed again, leaving the porridge to bubble over the fire.

  “Your privy area will be out the door to the right. I’ve made as much of a path as I can.”

  He left the table fast enough at that. Tad would have been squirming and complaining, she thought, wondering how it was that this Lord’s son was so different from her brother. She’d like to see Tad sitting so quiet, saying nothing; that would be a pleasant change from his usual behavior.

  She trickled honey over the top of the Lordling’s serving of porridge and stood behind him while he ate it hungrily. Then she removed his bowl and spoon. “I know this house,” she said, as she served her own food. “It’s not far from the Inn. When the snow stops we can easily go there. Until then we’ll be safe enough.”

  He said nothing. She turned to see if he had a question before putting her spoon into the porridge. It wouldn’t do to eat when a Lord had an answer he required, whether he was a child or man.

  “What happened to the mare?” he asked her.

  “I turned her loose last night.”

  He drew himself up, stiff with displeasure.

  “There was nothing else to do,” she told him. “She’ll have made it safely to the stable, I’m thinking.” His expression did not change. Why was he looking at her like that, Gwyn wondered, and he was only a boy after all.

  “My Lord,” he reminded her.

  “My Lord,” Gwyn repeated, trying not to smile. If that was all, just the proper form of address, it was nothing. “I apologize for forgetting.”

  The little head nodded at her, all dignity despite the sleep-tangled hair and rumpled clothing.

  The day dragged by. Gwyn sat by the fire, dozing occasionally. The Lordling sat at the table. He did not speak except to announce his hunger.

  At last, Gwyn roused herself to tidy the bedclothes, to feed the fire, to climb up the ladder to the loft and cut off some meat and stew it for a meal.

  All day the wind curled around the little house. Every time they opened the door the snow crowded in. Most blizzards lasted a day or so, but Gwyn knew that some storms could take longer, three or even four days, until the snow piled up as high as the eaves of the houses. They had wood enough for the winter, piled up against the side of the house. She chopped a good supply and brought it inside, to set it near the fire so that it would be dry when she had burned through the present supply. After she had served the Lordling his stew, with a chunk of cheese and a cup of melted snow, he climbed back into the bed. He pulled the covers up and turned his back to her. Then she could start bread for the next day, mixing flour with starter from the jar on the shelf and kneading the dough on the table that was at last empty for her to use. When she rolled herself up in a blanket beside the fire, the wind still blew with undiminished strength. She hoped the boy would sleep late and not expect his morning’s meal early.

  Gwyn was awakened in the darkness of deep night. When she opened her eyes she did not at first know what had roused her. The fire burned low, but was well banked. The wind howled around the house. There was a queer whimpering sound to the wind now, she thought, drifting back toward sleep before waking up again. . . .

  That wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t outside either.

  Gwyn got up and went over to the bed. It was the Lordling whimpering, his body stiff under the blankets. In the shadowy light she saw his cheeks shining and tears coursing out of his closed eyes running down toward his ears.

  He must be asleep, she thought, or else he would have turned to bury his face in the pillows. He must be dreaming, she thought, but what dreams could a Lord’s son have that would cause such weeping?

  His eyelids flew open and the watery eyes stared up at her, unseeing. He hunched up in the bed, his mouth working.

  What must he be dreaming, Gwyn wondered as his mouth opened. He looked as if he were screaming, but no sound came from his lips. She sat down beside him. He was only a boy, after all, caught in a nightmare. She put her hands on his shoulders. He was shaking.

  “Osh aye,” she said, her voice gentle, as if she were talking to a nervous animal. “It’s quiet you want now, my honey, my lamb. Quiet now, quiet.” She remembered from long ago her mother’s voice saying those same words in that same tone into her own ears when she was frightened.

  The Lordling’s eyes poured tears and stared over her shoulder, at nothing in the room. His mouth moved, making no sound.

  “Quiet now, there’s no harm to you, no harm here, no harm while I watch,” Gwyn crooned at him. “Quiet now and wake, my honey, my lamb. Time to wake up.” She put her hands against his wet ears and rubbed his cheeks with her thumbs, watching his eyes. “A bad dream,” she said, “naught but a bad dream, wake up, lad, naught but a dream. Wake up, lad, so you can sleep again.”

  The eyes saw her. The body was stilled. He stared at her, and Gwyn removed her hands. He slid back under the covers and closed his eyes.

  Gwyn returned to her place by the fire, troubled. What could a boy dream of that would sorrow him so? Tad dreamed and woke quickly, and when he woke the dream slipped away so that he could smile at you and turn back to sleep. Although this boy’s eyes saw her, the dream did not slip away.
She knew now, as surely as if she lay beside him, that he was awake still.

  Fear for his father, she guessed. She would try to reassure him in the morning. She would tell him how close they were to the Inn, again, in case he had forgotten that. If he chose not to hear her, there was little she could do about that.

  When she woke in the morning, her first thought was for the Lordling. She turned her head and saw him sitting straight up in bed, looking at her. Clumsily, she rose up. He turned his face away.

  Gwyn built up the fire, then went outside to clear paths to their privy areas. The wind was down, but the snow still fell thickly. Over the night it had piled up again on the paths, as high as her hips. Using her legs and heavy skirt as a plow, she walked through it. As soon as she went back into the house, he went out.

  Gwyn started a pot of porridge, her sympathy of the night faded. Young or old, child or grown, the Lords were the same. They would have just such a day as they had had the day before, long and silent. They would stay trapped here until the snow settled, or melted, perhaps until winter left the land, stay trapped as Lord and servant. That day, she decided, she would clean out the house entirely, do the job she should have done on the day she took the goat. What she would do the next day, she did not know. Many days like this and she would go mad from inactivity.

  The snow outside was piled as high as her chest where the storm had blown it up against the house. They could not walk safely through it, even the short distance to the village, or the Inn. She formed a loaf of bread and had it rising beside the fire before the Lordling returned to the room.

  She served him his food, watched him as he ate, then had her own. The only sound was the snow sweeping around the house. She scraped the bowls clean and went outside to refill their water bowl. He sat at the table. She set the bowl of snow by the fire to melt.

  “You woke me,” he said behind her, in his high boy’s voice. Gwyn stood up and faced him, careful to keep all expression from her face.

  “Nobody has ever woken me before,” he continued. She wondered if he expected her to apologize, but she wouldn’t do that. If she had erred, it was an honest mistake. She wouldn’t repeat it, but she wouldn’t apologize for it either.

  “I am in your debt,” he said.

  Gwyn lowered her eyes, trying to control her face. The dignity with which he spoke was so odd in a boy that she wanted to smile.

  “I know that I am young,” he told her.

  It was this that opened her heart to him. She curtseyed and answered him as if he were his father. “Yes, my Lord.”

  “We are very near to the Inn,” she told him then. “I would think the stallion could have made the journey easily.”

  “He was carrying two grown men,” the Lordling reminded her. She couldn’t gainsay that. “But the mare may well have arrived safely, don’t you think?” When he asked that he looked like any little boy, seeking reassurance.

  “A good chance, my Lord.”

  He sat down again and she busied herself with the tasks of the day. She shook out the bedclothes and replaced them neatly. She set more meat stewing in the pot and added one of the last withered turnips. She placed the risen bread within a covered iron pot among the ashes under the logs. She wiped off the shelves, which did not really need cleaning. Then she turned her attention to the cupboards built into the walls next to the fireplace.

  The Lordling sat at the table, turning the pages of the long book. Gwyn took up an armload of folded cloths to lay them out on the bed while she wiped down the inside of the first cupboard. Each cupboard had one shelf in it, so there was not much to carry. Moving behind the Lordling, she glanced over her shoulder. On the top of the page was a picture of three faces. Before she thought to stop herself, she spoke: “Those are the three men. From the hut.”

  “Had they murdered us, this might have identified them, when they went to sell the book. My father wrote it down underneath the pictures.” His fingers pointed to a line of shapes.

  Underneath the faces and the shapes, other lines waved and curved. Gwyn stared at them until suddenly she saw what they were. She did this by a trick of mind, as if she were a bird seeing a flat landscape from above.

  “It really is a map,” she said. She could identify the hills now, and a pathway among them; when she looked down on it as if from the sky, she could see what it pictured. There was the dot where the men’s hut was, and forests spreading back over the hills. Then she realized that she shouldn’t be standing so close, gawking. She moved quickly away.

  “I don’t mind, Innkeeper’s daughter.”

  Curiosity brought Gwyn back to stand behind him. On the top of the map a cross was drawn, with shapes at each end. It wasn’t part of the map, at least not that Gwyn could remember. “What is that?” She pointed.

  “The directions of the compass. N means north, S south, E east, and W west.”

  Gwyn stared at the signs. “The river runs to the south of us, so I can see why it’s the curved shape, but that one for the west should be the north, because even if it’s upside down it looks more like mountains.”

  It took him a minute to understand her. “No, they’re letters, they’re initials. I just named the letters. Listen: The letter N comes first in the word north, and E in east. Hear it? That’s S for south, and W for west. They’re just the initial letters.”

  “W doesn’t sound like west,” Gwyn pointed out. It didn’t look like west either, where the sun went down. It looked like upside-down mountains. She wondered if he was mocking her.

  “Sometimes the names of the letters don’t match their sounds, but mostly they do,” he told her. “I have to go outside.”

  Gwyn turned the pages of the long book while he was gone, but was careful to have it open to the page with the faces when he returned. He hung up his cloak and brushed snow from his head before sitting down again.

  “Look,” he said. He took out a thin piece of charcoal, no broader than the twig of an apple tree, and made marks on the table. “North,” he announced proudly.

  “That’s an N,” Gwyn pointed.

  “As I said.” He wrote three other names underneath, in a line. “East, south, west.”

  Gwyn looked at them. “East and west have that letter, S, in the middle,” she said, thinking aloud. “I have an N in my name,” she said. “And a W too.”

  That reminded him, and he hastily rubbed out the words. “You’re very quick, Innkeeper’s daughter.”

  “Aye, that I am.”

  He looked uneasy, and she took pity on him. But she didn’t know how to tell him she’d keep quiet, without making him feel worse. “My mother tells me my tongue wags,” she said. That was the wrong thing to say. “But it doesn’t wag over serious matters,” she said.

  “I don’t know why the people must not learn to read,” he answered.

  “Well, my Lord, maybe the people need all their time for their labors.” She couldn’t see what use the knowledge would be to the people, how it could help them fill their bellies and protect themselves.

  He retreated into silence, turning the pages of the book. Gwyn went back to the cupboard, carrying piles of cloth and then, with a rag dampened in the melted snow, wiping out the deep inside of the cupboard. She had to reach in the length of her arm to clean the back walls, above and below the shelf. She left it with the door open, to dry out while the Lordling ate his midday stew and she had hers, after him, crouched by the fire. Then she replaced the piles of cloth. At that, she stopped. With many days to fill, it wouldn’t do not to have tasks waiting. Tomorrow she would do the other cupboard. There was no hurry. She sat beside the fire, her back to the warm stones, her mind empty. The Lordling sat at the table, turning the pages of the long book. She wondered again at his ability to spend long hours so quietly.

  Gwyn was beginning to feel painfully restless. The bread was baked, and she could no longer sit quietly by the fire. She crossed to the bed and pulled the shutter aside, to see that snow still fell, straight down now but st
ill thick. She would, she thought, go outside and clear their paths once again. At least, it would be good to get fresh air. At least, it would be something to do.

  The Lordling was watching her. His pale face revealed nothing. He had his hands spread on another page of the long book, another map. “We could be kept here until spring, Innkeeper’s daughter.”

  Gwyn nodded her agreement.

  “He’ll think me dead,” the Lordling said. “If they made their way to safety.”

  “The stallion is a big, strong beast,” Gwyn reassured him, climbing down from the bed and straightening the blankets.

  “As I think him dead,” the boy said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  He was a brave lad, no question of it, Gwyn thought. Uncomplaining although this misadventure was nothing like what he must be accustomed to. Tad would not have borne it so well.

  “I put my faith in the stallion,” she repeated.

  Unexpectedly the pale face smiled at her. “And your brother too, he is strong and big.”

  “Burl’s not my brother.” Gwyn was surprised into normal speech by the error. “He works for my father.”

  “He has an odd way of serving, then,” the Lordling said.

  Gwyn could not answer what she thought, so she answered nothing. Instead, she looked at the map under his hands. She saw the cross, with its initials. The marks that indicated mountains looked small at the top of the page. This map spread across two pages and showed dark lines at the south. “What is that?” she asked him.

  “It’s the Kingdom,” he told her. For a minute, she thought he would be able to keep quiet against his desire to show off his knowledge, but then he gave in. He was not so very different from Tad after all, she thought, as he explained to her where the cities were and which was the King’s High City, built on rich land where two rivers came together. These two rivers formed a third, which wound off across the kingdom to the west and south. This river ran along until it left the Kingdom, cutting through the forests to the southwest. Gwyn recognized the sign of the bear by a city up against the western mountains and asked, “Is that Earl Northgate’s city?”