Wynter's Thief, page 7
“Think what?” she asks, leaning on her broom. Dust shimmers about her, and I think of that day I first saw her, striding along with the divining wand in her hand, dust from the fields like a golden cloud all around. That day she seemed wonderful to me. And she still does, but right now, something about her vexes me.
“What do you think, Fox?” she asks. “Spit it out.”
I say, all in a rush, “I did not think you would try to rule my life. I thought we would just go on travelling together, from place to place. I told you before, Wynter, I am a free man. Solitary, answerable to no one. I won’t be tied down, not by you or anyone. I don’t like this place, and I won’t be made to stay here.”
“I am not telling you what to do, Fox,” she says. “You have a choice. You can go or stay. But I am staying here, for a little while at least.”
I gaze at her, nonplussed. What to do – leave her here alone and go back to wandering, or stay awhile and keep her company? I am pricked by the feeling that I am responsible for her, since I was the one who set her free. I remember how Meredith looked after me, and think that perhaps it is my turn, now, to look after someone else. I am torn betwixt my feelings for her and the free life I am used to.
“What you decide now doesn’t have to be forever, Fox,” she says, smiling a little. “One day at a time is all we’re given.”
I can’t help smiling back, despite my unease at her uncanny way of reading me. Of a sudden, I make up my mind, cover misapprehension with tomfoolery. Bowing low, I say, “I am at your service, lady. I shall go and fetch that bracken for our beds.”• • •
Wynter sits on the far side of the fire, cross-legged, hands folded in her lap. She watches the flames, her amazing eyes shadowed under her lashes. Smoke swirls about her, and she seems mysterious, alien and unreachable.
I am exceeding glad that I am with her, though I find her hard to read at times. In our time together these past days travelling, there have been moments when we laughed and joked, and I was certain of her liking for me; but at other times I caught her watching me warily, like a deer in the forest when it is disturbed, before it realises the danger it is in. Does she think me dangerous? I sense she does not trust me. During the past three nights in the woods or fields, I would have lain close, to keep her warm and safe against the unknown dark; but always she lay down a little way apart, and seemed to draw an invisible line about herself, which I knew not to cross. She is a mixture of distrust and friendliness, and I never know how to be with her. So I act the fool, and that at least keeps the air easy between us. I don’t know why she doubts me, since she knelt before a ravening wolfhound and trusted it not to rip out her throat. Perhaps it is people she can’t trust – people like her father, and the treacherous priest, and folk who love her for her divining gift one hour and howl for her burning the next. By the saints, I understand well that kind of distrust!
And so I watch her now and wonder what thoughts she spins in her head. The firelight dances on her skin, and she is all gold, the colours of honey and summer grain when it is rich and fine. But I look beyond her at the shadows on the mud wall, and it seems that in the leaping blackness demons dance; and fear crawls over me again. I close my eyes, hear the echoes of strange voices, angry and violent. Then a dog barks afar off, and immediately I’m alert. Still it barks, and a man shouts. Wynter hears it too. Her head jerks up, and she looks afraid.
“Sweet Jesus!” she whispers. “’Tis Father Villicus, with the constable from Nettle Hill! You were right, Fox – we should not have stopped here!”
“Is that one of your special knowings,” I ask, “or just a fear?”
“A fear,” she whispers. “It is always a fear. That he will come.”
Getting up, I pull the door open and peer outside. Wynter is close behind, her hand clutching the back of my shirt. We listen, but hear only silence.
“The priest and constable would not have travelled this far,” I say, trying to sound confident, though I suspect she will know my doubt. When he’s on to something juicy, Father Villicus sticks like a leech to a liver.
Then the dog barks again, and sheep are bleating.
“It is a farm,” I say, relieved. “There are other houses near, Wynter. Wait here, and I’ll go and look.”
But she comes with me out into the blackness of the wood, still holding on to my shirt. We stumble downwards through the undergrowth. We have not been this way so far from the cottage, and I discover that we are on an overgrown path. A night wind blows in our faces, delicious with the scent of woodsmoke and roasting meat. Wynter groans softly behind my back, and my stomach grumbles loudly, making her giggle. Of a sudden, we are past the last trees, and spread before us is a small, circular valley. A full moon hovers over it, and we see clearly.
A village nestles in the hollow, smoke drifting towards us from the chimneys. In one part of the valley the moonlight gleams on a small lake. Nearby is a manor house with sloping roofs and high chimneys, its leadlight windows orange with firelight. All around, the moon-drenched valley is dotted with cottages and larger buildings, workshops and a smithy, perhaps. Pale lanes meander between the houses, and low walls contain cottage gardens, sometimes with tiny huts for pigs or hens. All around the village lie fields of ripening wheat. Past the fields, on low hillsides, sheep graze within stone enclosures. Shepherds sit by small fires, keeping watch for wolves or bears. Beyond the sheep, the land climbs steeply to the surrounding hills, darkly cloaked with woods. Also on the village edge, on flat land where cut trees lie round about, something is being built. The walls seem very high, so it is not a house. Maybe a church.
A long time, Wynter and I stand gazing. The bleating of sheep comes to us across the valley, and somewhere a dog barks.
“It is beautiful,” whispers Wynter. “A little world surrounded by hills. What village is it, do you know?”
“No, I don’t,” I reply, though something stirs within me, a kind of longing I cannot understand. I think it is because it looks safe and tranquil, and I wish with all my heart that I could make a home in a place like this and not have to be always on the run. No matter where I go, or how faithfully I keep the laws, somewhere, sometime, someone commits a burglary, and I am always the branded outsider, the one they blame. I cannot count the number of times I’ve been forced to flee a place I liked. Though I say I like to be a solitary man, a sojourner free as the wind, in my innermost being I yearn for a place to call Home.
As if she knows it, Wynter says, “On the morrow I’ll go down there and see if I can find work. Perhaps I’ll find work for you too, and we can stay here awhile.” I say nothing, lost as I am in my strange yearnings, and she looks up at me, her face earnest in the moonlight, and lovely. “Think you it is a good plan, Fox? Or do you still want to leave?”
“A good plan,” I reply, and we turn back towards the woodsman’s hut. But the moment my back is to the village and we enter the trees and ascend the hill, the foreboding falls on me again. Inside the hut, the fears come thick and fast, and I inwardly berate myself for being a fool, while I am busy getting the door upright and closed. I push slivers of firewood hard between the door and lintel to wedge the door in place. By the time I finish and have the cottage reasonably secure, Wynter is snoring softly on her back beside the fire. I don’t know how she can fall asleep so fast.
A long time I lie awake, battling impenetrable fears. When I finally do sleep, I dream of angry voices, and giants looming all around, faceless and malevolent.
• • •
Widow Grindle, a buckled crone with wrinkled skin sagging from her bones, squints into my face as she hands me the axe. Her eyes are edged with cloudy blue, and I suppose she is half blind.
“Chop those branches up for firewood,” she says, words whistling out between her toothless gums. “The maid can stack it inside the house.”
“We’ll give you a good day’s work, mother,” promises Wynter cheerfully, from behind me.
“I’ll give you three pennies each,” the widow says. She adds, shooting a mean look at me, “But steal that axe, and you’ll get naught but a black eye.”
“You’ll have to catch me first,” I mutter, and she grips my sleeve, her face sharp and ireful. Not deaf, then. Maybe not blind, either, since she peers suspiciously at my brand.
Wynter asks the crone, “What village is this? ’Tis a pretty place.”
“This is Ocken Underwood,” she replies. “In Buckinghamshire. This valley belongs to Lord Rathborne. A kindly man, though he doesn’t suffer fools lightly. So mind yourself, or you’ll be answering to him. Now get to, both of you. I’ll not pay you till you finish the work to my liking.”
All day it takes, for me to chop the hefty branches and split them into lumps small enough for the old woman’s fire. Wynter is busy stacking the pieces in rows inside the house. I am not allowed in there, on account of my brand. But it is good work, the axe is honed, and I enjoy the exercise.
As Widow Grindle pays us, she says, chomping on her gums, “You could get work at the new church. I hear they be looking for labourers. They only started building seven months ago, on account of the saint what appeared. The new priest wants it built quick-like. There will be healings when it’s done, and miracles.”
“What do you mean?” asks Wynter.
“Well,” the old woman quavers, winding herself up for a thrilling tale, “near a year past, our old priest, the one at the manor, he dropped dead awful sudden-like, and we had nobody to give us Mass. And then this new priest arrived, on his way to Canterbury on pilgrimage. He got lost and ended up here in our village. He stayed a night in the lord’s manor, and in the morning when he woke, he found he was struck dumb. The priest, not Lord Rathborne. Anyway, he wandered about a bit, this dumb priest, and then, of a sudden, he stood up in the marketplace, right in the middle of market day, and started preaching. Stood up on Dame Poggy’s table, he did, and squashed five of her halfpenny buns. She weren’t too thrilled, but he had the rest of us a-hanging on every word. It were a miracle, a right miracle!”
“Why, what did he say?” I ask, caught up in the tale despite my qualms about the priestly breed.
“He said a little saint, Saint Fenelia by name, appeared to him in the night, and told him that she had come to work wonders amongst us, to heal the sick, and especially bless our little ones. There’s been much ado about it. There are twenty mites at least, in the village, needing healings for one thing or another. Shepherd Pepin’s daughter is crippled, and there’s the lad Davy, who fell out of a tree and broke his jawbone and hasn’t been able to chew food since. There’s Little Linnell, who poked his eye out with a stick – even Lord Rathborne’s own physician can’t help the poor lad. And the lord himself is powerful pleased about the saint, seeing as his wife is with child again and like to lose it like the others. That’s why he’s pouring his fortune into the church for her, because this priest – Father Damian he is – he says Saint Fenelia is going to come back here to this very village, but he has to build the church first, with a special shrine. And that’s what they’re doing. Building a church for the little saint so she’ll come and heal us. And Father Damian, he’s staying to be our priest, and the shrine in his church will have people coming here from the whole wide world, from afar off as the land of the Turks, and the land of the Sciopods, what have only one big foot, and Ethiopia, where folks are roasted black by the sun, and even as far off as Scotland. Famous we’ll be.”
“And the lucky Father Damian will be mighty rich,” I mutter under my breath.
The old crone hears and jabs me with her bony finger, so hard I am sure she bruises my ribs. “You mind yourself, young fool. The day may come when you’ll want a miracle, and you’ll be glad enough then to cough up a few pennies for a cure.”
“I wish I could cough some up,” I say, “for then I’d not have to work.”
Widow Grindle snorts scornful-like and hobbles inside.
Wynter shoots me an angry look. “Have you no reverence at all?” she asks.
“Where it’s warranted, yes. But that Father Damian is all hot air and hog’s breath. Anyone could hold their tongue for a few hours and then start blathering about a stupid dream. ’Tis nothing.”
“Dreams are not stupid! Neither are they nothing. I had a dream myself, the other night, about this storm that’s coming. It’ll be here soon, you mark my words.”
“Is that so?” I say, putting up my hand to shelter my eyes, and turning all about, gazing up at the skies and the circle of hills all around. “Black storm clouds rolling in, over the hilltops? Thunder and lightning in the heights?” I turn around again, making a performance of searching the clear blue, then cupping my hand behind an ear, pretending for a moment to hear something. Then I say, “No. Nothing. Thought I heard a rumble of thunder, but it was a sparrow fart.”
She is so angry she punches my arm, and I laugh, which riles her up even more. She marches off down the road, and I follow.
“Sorry,” I say, catching her up. “Sorry. I shouldn’t jest about it. But you talked about rain yesterday, and still the skies are clear.”
She glances up at me, eyes full of fury.
Looking deep into them, I say, “There’s a wondrous storm going on in your grey eyes, though. Enough tempest there to rain on my revels and make me sorry.”
Her lips twitch, and she smiles.
On the way to our home in the woods we go down lanes that take us through the village, and early in our walk we pass the manor lands. A high wall surrounds the manor and its hall and courtyard and outer buildings. Smoke rises from a kitchen somewhere within, hounds bark and a horse neighs. I stop, a strange feeling gnawing at my bones. Not a bad feeling; a kind of haunting curiosity.
As if she knows it, Wynter stops and winds her hands about my arm. She says nothing, and for a long time we stand there in the dusty lane, looking at the courtyard walls and steep roof of the manor hall beyond. I can see a window in an upper room, its leadlight panes coloured red and gold, and I have in my mind a fleeting image of the room beyond that casement, reflections from the coloured glass playing over a tapestry on a wall. In those transient moments, I smell hemp or rope, and sense a carpet beneath my fingers, textured like rough velvet. I hear the rhythmic clack of a loom, and women laughing, and there comes over me a feeling of safety and contentment, so powerful it startles me and fills me with yearning. For only a few heartbeats, I am aware of those things, yet I know that I know what lies behind that upper casement.
Of a sudden, I am aware that Wynter is speaking my name, tugging at my arm. “There’s a wagon coming, Fox,” she says.
We move off the middle of the beaten road and watch the approach of what seems to be the cavalcade of some visiting lord or lady. The wagon is very long, painted green and gold, with a curved roof and scarlet curtains rolled up along the open sides to let in the air. Drawn by six horses in fine trappings, it is surrounded by mounted lords, all with fine clothes and gems and splendid hats. Their horses, too, are fine, with tiny bells tinkling on their harnesses and embroidered blankets under the saddles. As the wagon rumbles past, we glimpse someone lying within, on tasselled cushions and rich fabrics. Then it is gone, turning down the narrower road to the manor. We see the great gates open and servants running out.
“A rich lady visitor,” I say. And I wonder if she will stay in the room behind that upper window, with the rich carpet and the loom and the women who laugh. Then I shake my head to dispel the fantasy, for that is all it is.
“Not a lady,” says Wynter. “The person in the wagon is a man. I caught a glimpse of someone with a beard.”
I say, “A man wouldn’t ride in a covered wagon, like a woman.”
“He would if he was sick.”
We walk on, stopping at the cooper’s workshop for a wooden bucket in which to keep water so we don’t always have to go to the stream to drink. Then we go to the baker’s house to buy three loaves of fresh, round bread and two rabbit pies. We devour one of the loaves straight away, not having eaten since yesterday’s eve. As we pass through the marketplace, we stop at the village well in the centre. Leaning over it, we see our reflections deep down, mine dark against the shimmering sky, Wynter’s edged with gold.
“They are not short of water yet,” I remark. I look up, across the rooftops to the hills where a thread of silver winds down between the distant woods. It is a little river that fills the lake by the manor. “I suppose so long as that stream supplies water, the village will not go thirsty.”
We start walking again. The marketplace is empty now, but some stalls remain set up, faded awnings hanging limp in the breathless air.
“I’m going to buy a dress next market day,” Wynter says.
“There’s naught wrong with the one you’ve got.”
Slowly she turns, gives me an odd look, as if I am exceeding stupid. I realise, now, that the ragged hem is high above her ankles, and the sleeves are too short for her arms, and too tight. The bodice is tight all over, now I come to really look; the front is laced together by cords, stretched across the pale yellow garment she wears underneath. I suspect there are apples under there, ripe to be bursting out.
“This dress was my sister’s, afore she died,” she says, her cheeks going red. “It is too small.”
“I see that, now that I look closer,” I say.
The colour deepens in her cheeks, and she says, “I’d rather you did not look at all.”
“I only looked to correct my error.”
“Well, in looking, you committed another. Keep your eyes to yourself.”
“God’s bones – whatever I do, ’tis wrong!”
Frowning, she stalks on ahead, and I think how a bigger dress might conceal her slender, naked feet, the delicacy of her blue-veined wrists, the sweet curve of her spine and shoulder blades, her slender waist, her unaffected gracefulness; and I half hope she will make do with the dress she has. Then I quickly rein in my thoughts, lest she can read them. Stick with the foolery, Fox, I tell myself. You’ve more chance of making her laugh, than making her love you. And even that is dangerous to think. I realise it’s going to be a hard field to plough, this friendship; I never was much good at taming my emotions.
