by Morgan Smith
As long as my grandfather lived, all this mostly stayed within certain bounds: Kevern was at least shrewd enough not to overstep when the current lord still had the option of designating another heir than his only daughter. There was his sister’s son as well, a man grown and well-known as a warrior, and nothing in our land-deeds could have prevented this as a choice. The manor-folk took their cues from their lord, and tended mainly to ignore my existence.
My mother was a different kind of threat. She was wildly changeable: at times filled with lilting laughter and careless affection that could, without warning turn into blinding rage over a servant’s clumsiness or a child’s misstep. Sometimes she gave me kind words and sweets, then beat me for having sticky hands, after. She might ignore Kevern’s treatment of me, she might distract him suddenly, allowing me to escape, or she might decide to join in: it was impossible to know just what could happen. She was beautiful and strange: I wanted desperately to believe the best in her, and so here the stoniness broke into a thousand grains of sand, and she trapped me, every time.
I don’t remember quite what happened, that one day. She must have been in one of her happy moods, and then we were in the stony-walled little shrine underneath the main hall, and she was drawing out the patterns with a bit of white chalky stone. Her “acolytes” as she named them - a couple of serving girls with a touch of the Gift, I reckon - watched, half fearful and half excited, their lips whispering whatever chants she’d taught them. There was smoke, and something overly sweet and cloying in the air, and I was crouched in a corner, filled with an almost paralyzing sense of wrongness I could not name.
She beckoned to me. I remember feeling sick, and I think I shook my head - nothing could have made me enter the circle she had drawn. She called to me, softly, beguilingly, and a part of me desperately wanted to go, I wanted her to be pleased, but I could not.
I remember the sound of my own whimpers, the drumming of my heart, and the way her face changed as she stepped forward to take hold of me, and the scream of rage when I turned, squirmed and ran.
I don’t know what might have happened. I have never known and I have never wanted to know. I had gotten as far as the first rack of bins in the storeroom between her shrine and the stairs, but she had me cornered there and was but three steps away when my grandfather arrived, grim and silent.
No one spoke. He walked calmly past her and held out his hand to me. I took it and we walked upstairs. The day resumed ordinary proportions: I sat beside old Badb the healer at the table and ate whatever scraps were doled out to me, I listened to one of the soldiers who had a strong tenor voice sing an old and familiar ballad, and then found a quiet corner and curled up in a ragged bit of blanket, closed my eyes and tried to forget everything.
Two months later, my grandfather was dead, felled by a bad cut that turned evil and poisoned him. My mother nursed him through three weeks of pus, pain and fever, indeed, would let no one else near him.
I was only a child, but I thought I could see the link, as clear as pure springwater. Being a child, an unwanted, unloved, cursed child, I assumed, for a long time, that the link was me, and that I had caused his death.
And even though that child recognized what a hell I lived once his mitigating influence was gone, it was still impossible for me to believe, in fact, what she had done. Even now, a tiny part of me hopes I wrong her, hopes she did not kill him simply because he would not allow her to do whatever it was she intended to do, that day below the stairs.
The changes came faster after this. The life I led got very much worse, with nothing to stop it and then, suddenly, about a year after Grandfather’s death, it did stop, in a way.
My mother was pregnant. Everyone seemed delighted. And it meant, for some reason, that no attention was paid to me at all. I had been banished from the great hall at mealtimes before my grandfather’s corpse had had time to cool, and now, although there was no kindness at all left in my life, and I had to more or less steal what food or clothing I needed, I felt something less than a target.
I wondered, though. Was it true, as people said, that I brought evil with me wherever I went? Accursed brat, they called me, when they called me anything at all, and nothing in my life had taught me otherwise. Would I curse my parents’ good fortune, even now?
I was nearly eight. If I stayed out of sight, no one inquired after my whereabouts, and it might be days between any forms of torment - Kevern’s attention was wholly on my mother and the expected babe. My days were spent out wandering in the woods or hanging about in shadowed corners, listening and watching and trying desperately to make sense of my world. Occasional slip-ups drew Kevern’s attention and inevitable cruelty - there seems no other word for it - but I got better at creeping about unnoticed. The entire world I knew was preoccupied with the imminent birth, and no one had any time to waste on me, for good or ill.
And so Meryn arrived into love and plenty, and there was even less time or energy for hating me, it seemed. She was plump and happy, a gurgling bundle of adorable babyhood, and everyone instantly was enchanted.
You might think I would be jealous, and so as an adult I sometimes wonder that I was not, but her charms caught me, as well.
I had crept into her room late one night, to see this marvelous creature that everyone was so enthralled by. Her wetnurse was snoring beside her, but Meryn’s eyes were open in the darkness. I saw them glitter, silvery-blue in the moonlight, and she smiled up at me, and I was undone.
It was as if she knew my every hurt, my every sin, and loved me still, and I - well, I was instantly hers, for life.
I was her older sister, and in my child’s mind, I suddenly feared for Meryn, an overwhelming and intense, unreasoning fear that only the tormented can know.
Had the mood all been like that for my birth? No one said so, indeed, quite the reverse, but I already had observed how often people claimed to have had forebodings of doom after the fact. People like to believe they are wiser than they truly are.
I could imagine myself, looked for and wanted, and cossetted until something had happened to turn them all against me. No one ever spelled out quite why it was that I deserved to be so unloved, and my life had taught me only that adults were irrational and wayward, without any sense or logic to their likes and dislikes.
It could happen to her. Who was to say why or when? Who could predict what tiny infraction would cast her out into the wilderness I inhabited? What chancy moment had laid my fate on me? And because it had been a simple case of love at first sight, I was determined that she would not go unprotected. I watched over her, quietly, from the shadows, her silent and invisible champion, ready to sacrifice anything and anyone to defend her.
It never came to that, of course. Meryn went from strength to strength, her first tooth exclaimed over, her first steps delighted in, her first words repeated from one end of the hayfields to the other. She could do no wrong, in my eyes or anyone else’s.
What did happen was marsh fever.
Chapter Five
Most years, there’s no fever at all. Other years, a few people come down with it, and maybe they die but mostly not, and no one thinks overmuch on it. That year, when I was ten and Meryn just past her second naming day, it came with a vengeance. Old women used to tell of years like that, but it had been long and long since it had felled so many and so swiftly, long enough that even for those old crones it was a memory from their own grandmothers, told like fireside tales to scare the toddlers into being good.
Old Badb went early, along with three guards and a pair of serving girls, almost before anyone knew what was afoot, and by the time anyone realized that this was no ordinary marsh fever, half the servants were dead or dying, most everyone else was showing symptoms, and no one had the slightest idea what to do about it. It took the hardy and the hale almost easier than the aged or the weak: Kevern ordered the digging of a massive pit grave only hours before he, too, began to show signs of illness, and he did not linger. By sun-up the next day,
he was dead.
My mother shut herself up in her room, hysterically demanding that no one come near her and then, just as hysterically, demanding food and wine. A few hours later, she was found crawling on the stairs, delirious and begging for water. There was almost no one left to hear her pleas.
It had gone suddenly from chaos to silence. No one, I realized, was looking after Meryn by then: any still-healthy folk had fled. I found some unsoured milk and day-old bread, and fed her and changed her filthy nappies. She seemed unfazed by the strangeness, playing quietly or sleeping, while I hovered over her anxiously, watching for any sign of the fever. In the morning, I slipped out into the silent halls, scavenging for a little food and water, stepping casually over the dead and a few nearly dead people I had once known, and making it back to Meryn’s room, more preoccupied with what I should do if there was no food to be found on the morrow than with any thoughts of the horrors around me.
When the soldiers from Gorsedd came, we were the only ones left alive in the hall, and it had been the better part of two days since we’d eaten. I heard later that the outlying farms did not fare too badly, and quite a number of the villagers had survived, but here at the centre of the manor, there were only the two of us left to be saved.
It was late when we reached the castle at Gorsedd. I had heard tales - it is a high place with a long and honourable history, and a source of pride for my grandfather, to be allied with such an illustrious family. The relationship was tenuous; a collateral marriage some generations back, but it had been strengthened by overlapping fealties and mutual interests, and it seemed that the Lady of Gorsedd valued it as well. She was, I gathered, prepared to take us in, and see to our welfare till we were grown.
There was a fire burning in the hearth, and tall white candles set on the table. The Lady sat in a high-backed chair, the first one I’d ever seen, and her robe was deep red with a richly embroidered hem.
It seemed right to bow, although how I knew this is a mystery. No such ceremonies had ever come my way, but perhaps some bit of an old tale or song informed me. I set Meryn on her feet beside me and bobbed in what I hoped was the correct fashion. I had no idea what to expect - I had no reason to think that I would not be as reviled and loathed here as anywhere else, but if by my actions I could spare Meryn any pain or insult, I was prepared to accept whatever was given to me.
Meryn, having never encountered anything to fear in her life so far, smiled up at the Lady and trotted forward. Her eyes were on the heavy medallion that hung at the Lady’s neck, symbol of her priestly office. She reached the Lady before I could catch her skirts to hold her back, and reached up to her, murmuring “Pretty toy”, and I froze in terror.
“My Lady, she doesn’t know -“ I stammered.
But the Lady merely laughed, bending down to scoop Meryn into her arms and set her on her lap. Meryn clutched at the medallion and then put it into her mouth. I was very nearly sick.
“You have a liking for that, poppet? Well, the Goddess knows her own, certainly.” And she smiled at me.
“My poor girl,” she said. “You have had a dreadful time these last weeks. And how you must mourn your dear parents. But have no fears - you will find life here most congenial, I am sure. Indeed, my son is eager to make your acquaintance, since you are so close in age, and he needs to make friends with those who will help him rule here someday.”
I was put to bed in a tiny wall-chamber, with scarcely enough room for the narrow bed and the small chest set beneath an arrow-slit window, covered with oxhide to keep away the cold. There was a thick wool blanket on the bed, a tallow candle in a pewter dish and a cup of hot cider on the chest, and the woman who led me there asked if there was aught else I needed, and bobbed a curtsey before she left me.
I lay in the dark and wondered what sort of cruel joke was being played on me.
In the morning, the woman came back with some freshly laundered clothes and when I had dressed, led me to the hall, where I met my “cousin” (or so he named himself) Iain, and the others of my own age who lived here, learning those skills they would need to rule on their own lands.
I had never been taught so much as how to hold a sword. Now, it seemed this lack was a shocking thing - they were confused by my ignorance and inclined to mockery, until the master of arms arrived. He took stock of the situation and looked them over sternly.
“I’d rather start with a clean slate than have to train a gaggle of know-it-alls with bad habits to unlearn, like you lot,” he said coldly and set them to basic drills.
That was the day I learned that I was good for something, after all. Years of having to be alert for the tiniest signs of aggression, years of dodging kicks and blows, the hard-learned habit of watching people to comprehend their behavior, of listening and puzzling out the meaning behind the words, these were skills that were suddenly and almost frighteningly useful. Cowell only had to show me once how to stand, grip or move for me to take it in.
I threw myself into this new thing as if my life depended on it, and this was probably not short of the mark. I was prepared to practice for hours, at first because I could see that to fit in, I needed to catch up with the others. Even delicate little Nesta could beat me witless in a sparring bout at the beginning. But later on, it was for those moments when Cowell, not the most talkative man himself, would nod at me curtly, or say “That’ll do” and I would know that I had mastered one more piece of this mystery.
It was like a dance, the steps of which seemed especially written for me. Cowell had to order me to stop, some days, and I always put away my weapons with real regret, because it was clear, within a very few seven-days, that this was what I was born to do. I daydreamed, occasionally, that Kevern had not died, so that I could go back to Penliath and kill him: his once-reviled offspring wreaking vengeance…
It took a long time for me to take in that this was my life now - that my “curse” had not followed me. There would be no sudden, arbitrary change back to outcast status, my room was mine, and good, warm, serviceable clothes appeared when needed. I was expected and welcome at the table along the wall where the people of my own age and status sat together at mealtimes and I was, if not loved, at least accepted.
I never quite grasped this entirely, of course. I remained watchful, never venturing opinions until I understood what others thought, careful not to do or say things that might earn me mockery, anger or dislike. For myself, I think I wouldn’t have cared, but for Meryn’s sake, I needed to keep on everyone’s good side.
But it seemed my existence was not questioned here. After a bit, the idea that I had simply led a very sheltered life up till now became the common belief, and explained away any gaps in my knowledge. My reluctance to discuss the past was put down, I gathered, to overwhelming grief for my parents and I did nothing to dispel that notion. Inside my heart, I was entirely convinced that their deaths were the greatest piece of good fortune I was ever likely to experience, but that ingrained watchfulness served me well. I understood that to express this sentiment was to court disaster.
The Lady had gathered in some several young people whose parents jumped at the chance for their offspring to study under Cowell, a fairly famous swordsman, soldier and teacher, and from the Lady herself, who put in a few hours over the course of each seven-day, instructing us in such areas as history, proper respect for the Goddess, and such courtly graces as our positions required. Being able to live at a place where some considerable state was habitual meant that we would likely pick up the necessary courtesies and behaviors anyway, but the Lady liked to coach us in the finer details. There was the added bonus of meeting and becoming friends with people who might well ease our way later in life: had my grandfather lived, or my parents given any sort of care or thought to my potential future, I might have ended up here anyway, to learn, and to grow under the tutelage of more well-heeled and well-connected nobility.
I saw less of Meryn than I would have liked. She had been swept up by Lady Ilona’s personal atten
dants and borne away that first night, but the instant bond we had formed in her infancy had been strengthened over those strange days as the manor-folk died around us. She wept for me the second night, and would not be comforted till one of the women was sent to fetch me, and it became a regular ritual for me to visit her in the evening.
I was still a stone, a granite wall, where others were concerned: no teasing, no anger, no disgust could have touched my frozen heart, but when Meryn would run to me, shrieking with joy and throwing her chubby little arms around my neck, something deep inside me would break, just a little. It was a terrible weakness, I knew it, but despite that, I cherished it and would not willingly miss a moment in her company. She was the one true thing in my life, and I kept it locked up hard within me.
But as time went on, she began to have her own life, too. She was drawn naturally to the service of the Goddess, which was only to be expected in a place where the Lady ruled as priestess as well, yet there was more to it. Everyone remarked on it: she seemed born to the role, and there was talk of sending her, when she was older, to the holy isle for training.
“Not but what she won’t get a better education here,” Nesta pointed out. It was likely the truth. The Lady Ilona was famed everywhere for her knowledge and skill, there were those from Braide and other places, even as far away as Kerris, who sought her counsel on numerous occasions.
Still, there’s prestige in training at Braide, and the Lady was adamant that Meryn should have every advantage.
Nesta herself was here as much for this sort of training as for the courtly graces she might pick up, and the more advanced sword drills weren’t, originally, supposed to be a part of her life. That was Nesta’s own choice, and she was glib enough to have talked her way around the Lady’s initial objections.