Wynter's Thief, page 18
The sun peeps from behind the eastern slopes, and light strikes like an arrow on the highest rooftops, painting them gold. And it is then that something deep stirs in me, a dream, or a memory. That bridge is familiar, and the way the rooftops march on up the inner lanes to the topmost tower of the castle there. I look at the bridge again and notice an oak tree between it and the town, just outside the walls. And then it crashes over me – the shouting and the agony, and the sight of Meredith’s body swinging from that tree.
I turn away and would run back the way I have come, except that, of a sudden, I hear hoof beats on the road behind me and I barely have time to hide in the undergrowth. Riders go past while I crouch there, not daring to look, trying not to gasp from the pain in my ribs. As they clatter across the stone bridge, I lift my head, see there are three of them. As they approach, the city gates swing open, and a gateman comes out to greet them.
At the same time, people head out with scythes and sickles, to finish the harvest. Their voices float to me on the morning breeze; the laughter of women and the deeper voices of the men. They are happy, on this their last day of harvesting. It will be a feast for them tonight, and revels in the fields with fires and dancing and music.
Feelings pour over me: thoughts of other harvests here, which Meredith and I helped to bring in; memories of sitting beneath that bridge on rainy nights, under a little tent Meredith made from a wagon cover, eating stolen apples and cakes, while the river roared by; memories of festivals and markets, music and solemn hours in church. I had forgotten how long Meredith and I lived here in Bryn, and how fine life was with him. Mostly I have remembered only the terror of the day we were blamed for what we did not do, and his hanging, and my branding. How strange that I should find myself back here, on this of all days.
I wait, resting, while more people leave the city to wend their way up the lanes to the harvest fields. Wagons rumble out, and children lead out cows and pigs to graze on the common land between the woods and town. They do not come near the road. All morning I rest, trying to decide what to do. One good thing about the pain in my head and ribs – it takes my mind off hunger. Yet I know I’m not fit to travel much more. I cough up blood, and the pain dizzies me.
About noon, when a wagon comes out with food and barrels of ale for the harvesters, I go down to the bridge, cross over and slither down the steep bank to the place where Meredith and I once hid. Concealed from curious eyes, I nestle in the grassy nook under the overarching stones.
There I stay, drifting in and out of troubled sleep. Sometimes horses trot across, and twice I hear wagons roll overhead. Two boys come down to fish, chatting and jesting, but they do not see me. I am again put in mind of Meredith and me, and am torn by grief sharp enough to make me weep. God’s bones, I am feeble!
Dusk has fallen when I wake fully. Trembling with hunger and fever, I barely have the strength to crawl up and peer over the riverbank at the town. I see the last wagons going in, loaded with sheaves. Already they are lighting fires in the far fields, and the smoke twists up into a sky faintly green where the hues of sunset meet the deep blue of the night. It is a gorgeous evening.
I go back to my hiding place and groan as I sit down. My hands are slick with sweat; sweat trickles down inside my clothes, and I shake like a greybeard. I swear an awful blasphemy. I have a right good fever going on, and it is the last thing I need.
Later, I hear sounds from the fields: the high, wild strains of fiddles and pipes, and occasional shouts of laughter. They mingle with the gurgling of the river coursing past my feet. I try to climb up to look out again but am too weak from pain and dizziness. No doubt if my nose were not broken and so full of clotted blood, I would smell the fires, the mutton roasting on the spits. My stomach grumbles, and I bend my head into my arms and wonder when I will be strong enough to go and steal food. For that is the only way I shall get it.
Dozing, I drift into a dream that is frighteningly real. Sounds thunder over me, and there is terror and chaos all around. At first I think, in my dream, that I am Meredith in battle, and the savage shouts are soldiers in the killing field; but then I hear the words, and a worse terror falls on me. Even in my distress I know it is a dream, one I have had many times, and I struggle desperately to wake myself up. But the dream sucks me down into the violence and uproar, and in despair I know what is going to happen.
“Hang them!” the voices scream. “Hang them both!”
Meredith and I are standing on a kind of stage, a little higher than the crowd that howls all around, and Meredith pulls me to him and holds me close. “He is too young!” he cries. “He is but six summers old!”
“Then he’ll be branded!” bellows a priest. “But you’ll swing for thievery, by God!” And he and other men climb up and grab hold of me, and try to drag me from Meredith’s embrace. There is so much turmoil and shouting that I can barely hear, but Meredith leans down and shouts in my ear, “They have me at last, Fox. Be brave. Remember you were well loved. Be true to your heart.”
Then we are parted, and I am dragged, fighting and screaming, away. Several men hold me, and they force me to the hanging tree and make me watch what they do to Meredith. I try not look, but a man grips my chin and turns my face to the tree. “This is how you’ll end up, boy,” he says. “So look well.” And though in anguish I fight not to, I look and see how Meredith dies.
Afterwards they take me away to a shed of some kind. In its dim interior a fire burns in a brazier. Long-handled tools are there, the ends resting in the flames. A man takes one, and I see the tip of the iron glowing white hot. I kick and bite and scream, but the priest and two other men hold me down, and the smoking iron hovers in the hot air, comes towards my face.
I wake sweating hot and gasping for air. I can still see the smouldering brand, and for several moments my right cheek scalds, so vivid is the nightmare; then it fades, and I see the overarching stones of the bridge above me. Though I resist sleep, for fear of the nightmare again, the fever makes chaos of my thoughts, and I drift into other dreams, other memories. In some of the dreams, I am about ten summers old, wandering in unknown towns, fighting to survive. Hunger and fear haunt me. I live a shadow-life, lurking in solitary lanes, waiting for an opportunity to steal a loaf as it cools on a window ledge, or seeking an open door to a deserted kitchen with larders full of food. Fragments of memories flit over me: taking a loaf from a well-dressed lad as he goes home with shopping for his mother; stealing a pair of shoes from a doorstep in a backyard, and having a dog set on me; cutting the purse-strings of a merchant on a fine horse and fleeing for my life while he rides after me, the thunder of his horse’s hooves mingling with his roars of “Thief! Thief! Stop! Thief!”
In another dream I am myself twelvemonth ago, lugging crap buckets from rooms in an inn and emptying them into the river on the edge of town. The dream reeks of the stink. I feel again the dead weight of the buckets, the rising nausea at the stench. I have a cut on my right palm, and it is poisonous and exceeding painful. I have not slept a week for the pain and am like the walking dead, sick and stupefied from weariness, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. One day I fall over and spill the contents of the bucket on a bedchamber floor. Brutal and angry, the innkeeper takes hold of me, picks me up and throws me bodily into the street.
The agony of my face hitting the cobbles jolts me awake, and I lie staring up at the stone bridge again, the old despair flooding over me. Through my feverish thoughts I remember that I was never paid for those three weeks of work – a bitter reminder that I am no more than a slave, a worthless thief. And now, this morning under the bridge near Bryn, I know myself for a murderer as well.
I try to think of Wynter, the one joy of my pitiful life, but can only berate myself for ruining what we had. Fever-tossed, lost in misery, I sleep again. Sometimes I wake with a dreadful thirst and crawl down to the river. Lying full-length over the damp clay, my head and shoulders over the rushing blackness, I scoop up handfuls to drink and to wet my burning face. Then I haul myself, moaning, back to the hiding place.
Day comes, and I sleep and dream. The fever plays tricks with me, torments me, one moment with heat, the next with cold. At times I think I am being branded yet again, the fire engulfing all of me, or else I am being hanged alongside Meredith, naked and freezing in a wintry wind. Sometimes – the most blessed times – I feel Wynter leaning over me, her hair a golden balm across my scorching skin. But when I lift a hand to stroke her hair, there is nothing there. I mourn like a babe abandoned.
Night comes – or is it still the day, clouded over? I wake to a strange sound, a hissing and dripping and trickling, and realise it is raining. I freeze and burn, thirst and dream. Rain comes down in sheets, and the riverbank is slippery with mud. Though sheltered by the archway of the bridge, I am damp. I cough, and the torture of it makes me howl. Sometimes I wake up in water, and discover I have scrambled down to the river to drink and fallen into the shallows. My boots are lost in the current, and my clothes are soaking wet. Once I wake up clawing at the mud, terrified I will be swept away and drowned. When at last I am in my hiding place again, wretched with cold and self-pity, I wonder why I am fighting so hard to live.
I do not know how long I have hidden here. I think it is dusk. The world is grey and grim, and I am in pain, in my body and in my heart. Ghosts of the past loom over me, but they cannot help. My life has come full circle, back to the place where I first knew I existed, and Meredith helped me. And all the days between his death and the day I saw Wynter were only a waiting-time for her. It was all so I would find her, my brief joy, my Wynter, my love, my almost-wife. But she is gone, and I am back where I belong. And the tree that took Meredith’s life is waiting there for me, not an arrow-shot away.
It comes to me now what I must do. There is a fate that was mine from the moment I was born, a fate sealed with the brand that was burned into my skin, and I no longer have the strength or the will to run from it. It is time to thank God for my brief Wynter joy, summon up what little courage I own, go to the sheriff of Bryn, confess the murder I have done and go to Meredith’s hanging-tree, and mine.
Narrative 12: Wynter
I am brushing my lady’s hair, smoothing the flowing locks across the white pillow, when I hear a commotion in the courtyard below her casement. Then it falls on me – the full force of an uncanny dread that has haunted me all day. I hear shouts: “Murder! Lord Rathborne! There’s been a murder!”
I drop the brush, and my mistress chides me gently.
“What is wrong with you, sweeting? I swear, you’re all thumbs today! What ails you?”
“There’s been a murder, lady,” I say, my voice trembling. “They are shouting it in the courtyard below.”
“Aye, I hear it too. But it is my husband’s worry, not ours.”
But it is my worry. I know that, with all my quaking heart. All I can see is Fox, Fox lying hurt and bloodied, and my world is falling apart. I kneel by the bed, grasp my shaking hands on the silken coverlet, try to pray, babble like a fool. He is dead. My Fox is dead.
Through terror and grief, I hear my lady call, and Summer comes running. She tries to lift me, but I slip down again and sit on the steps to the bed, my breaths loud and harsh and full of pain. Summer sits by me, stroking my back, and I hear her and my lady softly talking. My body aches, and a weight like doom is over me. I wish they would be quiet, so I could hear what is happening in the hall below. I want to hear, to know, and yet I dread to know.
At last I can stand, but slowly, for all my bones are sore. I feel as if my eyes have burst in their sockets, and I see through a red mist. It hurts to breathe, there is agony between my ribs, and I think he has been stabbed.
“I must go and find out, my lady,” I say.
She looks hard at me, her face lily-white, and I put up my hand and touch my nose, my eyelids, thinking she can see the wounds I feel. But my face feels normal to my fingertips. Within, I am pained with Fox’s pains.
“Go, sweeting,” my lady says. She nods to Summer to go with me, and my friend holds my arm as we descend the wooden stairs to the great hall.
I am thankful Summer is with me. I told her yesterday that Fox and I are wed, and she was warm in her joy for me. Halfway downstairs we stop, and I lean over the banister, wiping my hand across my eyes, so I can see.
A crowd of villagers is there, and Lord Rathborne is standing at the end near the long firepit, his arms raised for quiet.
“Who witnessed this thing?” he asks.
A few hands go up, though others shout that they heard it, or arrived but a minute past.
He says, “Only stay if you saw what happened. All the rest go. I’ll have no guess-work or wild notions. If you didn’t see what happened, leave now.”
Most of them go, grumbling, out the doors that lead to the courtyard.
Unnoticed, I sit on a stair to listen. Summer sits beside me, her arm around my shoulder. I shake from cold and pain, and an awful fear.
“You,” Lord Rathborne says, pointing a finger at one of the few men remaining, “you saw everything?”
The man stands with his hat in his hands, his head bowed. He is covered with powdered stone, from work. They all are; dust rises about them, glowing in the sunbeam that slants in from a long window. “I did, lord,” he says, and looks up. It is Simon, who witnessed our wedding vows. He bursts out, “It were my fault, lord! Oh, Christ have mercy! It were my fault!”
“No it weren’t!” shouts one of the others. There are several cries denying it.
Lord Rathborne raises his arms, and they are quiet.
“Your name,” says the lord, to Simon.
“Simon Jackson, lord.”
“Well now, Simon Jackson, tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning. Take your time. Since you all rushed in here howling murder, it is vital that I have the facts, and that nothing is left out. Think very carefully before you speak.”
Simon thinks awhile, then he says, “On Assumption Day, lord, I was witness to a wedding. It were Master Fox and Maid Wynter. I believe she works here for your wife, lord. For the Lady Adelaide.”
“Aye, she does,” says the lord. “I knew naught of the wedding, but that is of no matter. Not if it were done decently, the vows solemn, and witnessed.”
Simon nods. “Aye, sir. It were proper. It were very moving, they were both true-hearted and reverent about it. It were by the church, sir. The new church. Under the wall of the south transept, lord. I mean, where it will be.”
“Get on with it,” says the lord, saving me from shouting it.
“Well, Tom Machin fixed in his brain to play a jest on Fox, lord. He needed me to be a part of it, but I was unwilling, on account of it weren’t a jest at all, but a mean trick.
“Tom wanted me to forswear my witness of the wedding. He wanted me to say that there was no wedding, and that he – Tom, I mean – had been to see you, and that you had given permission for him to wed Maid Wynter. Tom knew that it would stir up young Master Fox, and he’d start a fight, and give Tom the chance to give his bones a right good bashing. Tom hated Fox, you see, but he couldn’t start a fight without good cause. I wanted no part of it, but Tom said he’d break my hand if I didn’t do as he said. I couldn’t work with a broke hand, and me and my family would starve, so I was forced to agree to be in on it, though it went sore against my nature.
“And so Master Fox goes past our shed, not half an hour gone, and Tom says, loud and mocking-like, ‘Ho there, Master Fox! I’m going to wed little Wynter. I have permission from Lord Rathborne.’ Or some such words.”
He turns as if to have his account verified by his friends, and they nod in agreement. Simon continues, “Well, Master Fox doesn’t take the hook, at first. He says that he wed Wynter on Assumption Day, and I – that’s meself, lord – was witness. And Tom, he jabs me with a chisel, mean enough to hurt, and says, ‘Tell Master Fox how you never witnessed any such thing.’ And I – Oh, Christ forgive me! – I said what Tom told me to say. I denied the witnessing, and the wedding. And Fox was mighty riled up. He struck Tom, and Tom hit him back, and didn’t stop.”
In hoarse tones he tells of Fox’s beating, and I weep, hearing it. In finishing, Simon says, “Master Fox was so badly hurt, lord, I doubt he could see. Of a sudden, he was thrown against a block of stone that had a mallet on it, and he picked up the mallet and hit Tom on the head. Got him in the bit betwixt his ear and his eye. It were a lucky blow, and I reckon if he hadn’t done it, Tom would’ve killed him.”
“Aye – that’s true!” calls out one of the others, and they all mutter in agreement. “He would’ve killed Fox, lord, and that’s a truth!”
Simon goes on, wringing his hat and clearly distraught. “And Tom fell like a tree chopped down, lord, blood pouring from a hole in his head. Then Fox wiped an arm across the blood running down his face, and looked at the mallet in his hand as if he’d never knowed it were there, and he threw it away. And then he ran. We tried to follow, but he were a quick runner, even with his wounds. We couldn’t catch him. And some of the men took Tom Machin to his home for his widowed sister to lay out for burying. And we came here to tell you. And every word is true, my lord, I swear it on the Holy Cross. And I were to blame more than Fox, for I lied for Tom. And I’m sorry, lord.”
There is silence, and no one moves. My thoughts are in turmoil, swinging betwixt joy that Fox lives, and terror that he will be hanged for murder.
