by J. August
*
I SPENT the next couple of days finding my feet in the village. Because here's the thing: I needed another death. It was cold, but there it was. I'd come all this way and at first I'd told my tale in every village, furiously, because I was ready to strangle the herbman and planned to, and they'd laughed. Then they'd thrown me out. Old Alric had spent his life among these people, he'd helped bring half of them into the world, and here was some young stranger from the city trying to tell them the sickness was his fault? I'd had rocks thrown at me in a couple of places and that's the sort of thing that teaches a man patience. So I needed to find out what he was doing. I needed proof. It was the coldest thing I'd ever done, but I'd have to wait for someone else to die.
Once I saw how things were settled at Holm's Steading, I was glad I hadn't blurted the whole thing out in a rage. Alric was right at home there. It was a rough place: no more than a handful of ramshackle cottages inhabited by farmers working on strips of land hacked out of the surrounding woods. The sickness had got them all rattled; there were amulets everywhere and crude charms nailed to doorposts or window shutters. Eafa and Cearl's wife and little Sexberg might have recovered, but others hadn't. Two plots of freshly dug earth scarred the graveyard and Alric was in and out of several cottages, including that of the biggest landowner in the village. The man's son was sick, a youth about the same age my cousin had been when he died.
A month earlier, or two, I might not have managed to keep myself from throttling that old herbman and then it'd have been murder, which meant a hanging - so I told myself. It didn't much help. I'd spend every penny I had on an altar to the gods below, I vowed, and that didn't much help either, but it was something.
Alric's girl was out and about as much as her master. I saw her slim ankles vanishing between cottages often enough or returning with armfuls of herbs from the fields and the fringe of the woods. If she noticed me at all, she gave no sign of it. After a few such sightings, I took care to cross her path one morning. I wanted to see if she was willing to talk about her master, whether she was aware of what he was doing or why. I wanted to know if he really knew how to cure the sickness he was spreading. How he was spreading it, and whether it was poison or witchcraft. There was a lot I wanted to know. Maybe she could tell me some of it. And it didn't hurt that she was such a pretty thing. I wanted to put a name to her face as well.
I found her in the graveyard, gathering bindweed behind a fresh grave. I remembered all those buried lead tablets. "Afternoon," I said politely, and repeated it a little louder when she seemed not to hear me. "You're the herbman's girl, aren't you?"
She looked up at that. Her eyes were as blue as cornflowers and deep enough to drown in. "Yes," she said. Then she went back to filling her bag with bindweed.
I would have been offended, but the way her tunic rode up showed off her legs to perfection. She had splendid legs: long and slender, smooth as silk. I said, "I'm Sabert. My friends call me Saba. I used to be a soldier, before I walked the gods' road."
Silence. "What's your name?" I asked.
"Ann," she said shortly.
It wasn't an Alban name. "Are you a Raider girl, Ann?" I asked her. "I can hear you're an outlander."
From the way she was tugging at the bindweed, Ann was starting to get annoyed. "I come here from Tirannin Isles," she said. "Not long since. Now I learn your language."
"You're learning very well," I said, as kindly as I could. "Why did you come here? Were you indentured to Alric?"
Tug, tug. "What is 'indentured'?"
"Did he give your parents or someone money so you would serve him?"
Ann shook her pretty head. "I ask him," she said. "I want to know to use plants."
That surprised me. "And your parents let you?"
"My parents -" she said, and stopped. After a moment, she went on harshly, "They send me here. My grandfather did. I not go back."
Her hair was working free of its knot and falling untidily around her face. It should have been braided with wildflowers and ribbons. I looked at her and thought of burly yokels and tumbles in haystacks and, inevitably, severe old grandfathers. I'd met a few of them while I was soldiering. "That was hard of him," I said, although my mind was dwelling on the haystack. "Does Alric treat you well?"
Ann gave me a blank blue look. "Alric is good man," she said and held up her bag of bindweed. "I go now. Take him this."
I caught her arm before she could move off. "Wait," I said, though she looked decidedly affronted and shook off my hand with all the disdain of someone brushing away a spider. "Is that for the tablets? The ones he buries at the crossroads and gives to people who catch the white pestilence? Are they really meant to help?"
"Alric thinks so," said Ann and rolled her eyes. Her kissable mouth went down in a way that told me just what she thought of that. "Is no good. Will do nothing. No magic in metal and bone. But Alric thinks it helps. Now I go."
This time I let her. Off she strode between the wooden grave-markers on those splendid silky legs, and I watched her go and thought of haystacks and wondered what she looked like naked. She'd need someone to look after her once her master had been exposed.
I met the old man himself a little later, by chance. "Oh, it's you," he said glumly. He was slumped on the bench outside the alehouse and he looked about ready to die of tiredness. "The pilgrim. Haven't you left yet?"
"I'm waiting for the dark moon, so I can walk with the goddess," I replied. It was the sort of thing a real pilgrim would have said. I'd met plenty of them since leaving Alba. "How's the young man doing?"
"Ricbert's boy? As well as any of them."
He didn't sound very hopeful. "I met your girl earlier," I said. "Gathering bindweed."
"She said you'd been bothering her," said Alric. "I wouldn't, if I were you. It won't get you anywhere."
Much he knew. I thought the girl couldn't be warming his bed after all, or he'd never have been so sanguine. "She's an islander? I took her for a Raider girl."
"You're not alone there. But I met her in Alba."
"She said she asked you to take her on because she wanted to know about plants."
"Well," said Alric and sighed. "She was straight off the boat and babbling all this nonsense her grandfather used to tell her about cities in the south full of wonders and magic and suchlike. She was going looking for them, she said. Between you and me, I'm not sure she's altogether there." He tapped his temple meaningfully. "I couldn't let her run off by herself, though. Y'know how it is. Anything could happen. So I said she could come along with me, if she wanted. Then she decided she wanted to know how to use herbs, so I've been teaching her. She's bright, at least, and her Alban's improved no end."
I thought about telling him Ann's opinion of his lead tablets. "Pretty, too," I said instead. "Here, Ricbert asked me to sit up with his son tonight, so I can remember him properly to the goddess. If you don't mind?"
Alric looked at me tiredly. "Why would I mind?" he said. "Go ahead. I'll be there."