Spear, page 3
* * *
THE GIRL REMADE her shoes with thicker soles suitable for a long journey; she cut back her hair to fit under the leather cap, and slowly let herself understand why she was collecting or making or repurposing many things they already had—flint strike light, a second hatchet, whetstone and leather water bottle, needle and thread, wound herbs. So on the day she found herself binding her breasts and dropping the fish-scale shirt over her finest wool tunic, her heart tripped for a moment but she was surprised only by it being today that she could no longer wait. She nodded, and after a moment cinched her sturdy belt around her waist and from that hung her own knife—the other, Talorcan’s, she would leave for her mother—and the bright purse. As the embers in the hearth began to dim, into that bright purse she put the worn silver coin and flint stone arrow point with the carved spiral she had found but not yet given to the young farmwife, the carnelian ring, and her careful bundle of tinder, which left room for the whetstone, a coil of spare twine, half a lamb sausage, a twist of fruit leather, one withered apple, and a wrapped lump of grey bog butter dug from their cask. In her belt she tucked the hatchet. And then she hung the baldric over her shoulder, and from that the sword tied into its scabbard. She set her hand on the hilt and settled the unaccustomed weight.
The girl looked at the only home she had known, the furniture she had built with her own hands, the beautiful bowl by the hearth still as new as the day the smith made it, and at her mother, who sat as though made of stone facing the cooling hearth with her back to the entrance and to the girl.
“Mother?”
Her mother did not move and made no sound. And the girl saw for the first time that here and there the heavy bronze glinted with streaks of tin.
“I have need of a name.”
Silence.
“I must go. But I’ll keep safe, and I will be back.”
She put on her cap.
“Mother?” She took off the cap so she might hear a reply. “Elen?”
Nothing but the sigh of embers into ash.
At the cave mouth the girl took the spears from where they leaned against the rock, and lifted the leather door curtain.
“He will find you,” Elen said. “Beyond this cave and this valley he will scent you on the wind. And when he does he will come to claim what is his. I will never see you again. I loved you, child, loved you so much I did not name you, for naming calls. But now you are leaving, and I will give you your name. The four treasures of the Tuath are the sword, which is given, the stone, which is hidden, the cup, which I have, and the spear. You are that spear. You are my Bêr-hyddur, my spear enduring. You are Peretur. Know that I do not remove my ward, and under my geas will remain hidden, even from you. Know, too: you have broken my heart.”
And the girl, Peretur, longed to run to her mother, throw her arms around her as she had as a child, and be folded into her warmth and woman smell and never have to face the outside world alone. But she did not, for then she would never leave. And now that she had her name, she understood that a name was only part of what she searched for. She must find the rest. “Fare well,” she said. And stepped from the cave.
Outside in the clearing her feet faltered but she walked on, through the thicket, and once on the other side she felt in her heart a snapping, like the parting of a sinew.
* * *
SHE HAD A horse now, a sorry-looking gelding with a bony face who had been badly treated by his former owner. He had come to the girl’s hand willingly when she called, then patiently taught her how to ride, though he refused the bit.
After some months on the road she was taller still, her muscles hard but her smile more ready. With so much time in the sun her heavy brass hair gleamed with strands of gold. She found she liked the company of others, liked exchanging a week’s work—as she travelled east the land grew flatter and richer, and shepherds became farmers, and there was always work—for ten days’ food for herself and Bony, or five days’ work for new breeks in good green wool. She longed for fine dyed leather, like the Companions of the king—Arturus, whom only the Companions called Artos—but such leather was expensive and only to be found in the company of kings. Those she met were wary at first—they saw the horse and sword, they saw the fish-mail and spears and heard the way she spoke, and hid their gold and their daughters. But she learnt to hide most of her strength, hide her real self, drop her voice, and use the rougher tongue the common folk spoke on the fellside; she learnt to use her soft face, hard muscles, and sweet smile to remind them of some son or nephew or long-ago sweetheart. And then they saw the careful mends of mismatched gear and the missing pommel stone, the bony unbitted horse, and set aside their misgivings for a while. Then she would tell them her name, or part of her name—Per, a stripling making his way to Arturus king’s court at Caer Leon to offer his services—and they would look at the old sword and shake their heads, and tell him, not unkindly, to go home, go back to his ma and da and not get mixed up the doings of high folk. She would smile in her turn and simply repeat that she would find her way, if they would only give her directions. And they did, and more besides. One bold farmwife—Call me Blodwen—when her husband was unhitching the oxen from the plough, took the girl’s hand, kissed her on the cheek, and whispered in her ear that she reckoned she could help Peretur find his way around quite handily, then placed the girl’s hand on her soft yielding breast, mouthed Moonrise, closed one bright brown eye in a knowing wink, and went to see to her husband.
That night before moonrise Peretur sneaked to the byre, saddled Bony, and fled without her payment. As she rode, her dreams filled with that yielding breast and warm breath and those luscious lips until she thought she might run mad. For a while she steered herself only to jobs with men, until she found some men also might make hot eyes and promises. The thought of kissing one of them filled her with nothing but refusal, and she knew she would not play with a woman who might feel deceived, so for a while she learnt not to speak to others at all but keep to herself.
Always she travelled south and east, following the pull of all that was bright and clear, the song and promise of the lake. She cut her hair shorter, kept her mail shirt in her saddlebag and her cap and sword tied behind the cantle half hidden by her bedroll, though there was nothing she could do to hide the spears. But more folk now carried spears, and there were more strangers, and a mix of folk—and now not all skin was pale, not all hair was bright, and not all men’s faces had hair. Folk became less wary. Soon she could stop at places thronged with people, a dozen, two dozen, so many she could turn aside interest deftly with a smile or a word, for she found speaking made folk less suspicious than not speaking. And in this way by the week before Harvest Day she found herself in a village three miles from Caer Leon.
* * *
THE VILLAGE WAS full of people, more people than Peretur had seen in one place at one time, three score or more. She found her way to the village well, where she helped an old man with a crooked back to haul a bucket for himself and his ass. He thanked her, and she mentioned all the people.
“Aye,” he said. “Harvest week. Crowds on top of crowds.”
“Any work for me, d’ye suppose?”
“No doubt, no doubt, a strong lad like you. Try Modron at the inn, or Hywel at the byre. Though either way you’ll need Modron’s word. Good day to ye, lad.” He and his ass moved into the street.
She filled another bucket for Bony and while he drank dipped out a cup for herself.
Thinking perhaps she should camp beyond the village, avoid all these people who filled her head with their concerns, she bent her head to the cup—and, with her first sip, into her mouth swam a fish, and another finned dreamily in the shadowed overhang of a lake bank, and her mind filled with a tall forest of underwater weeds through which an eel ribboned. She swallowed, and her heart filled with light, the light she had known as a child. It was here. Here.
She led Bony to the inn and byre, next to each other. The old man was right; it was crowded. And the street was so thronged he and his ass were not very far ahead of her.
She stopped a dull-looking youth in the street. “I’m looking for—”
Three children ran past, shrieking, startling the old man’s ass, which kicked out and in turn upset the pony pulling an overloaded cart, and between one breath and the next people were shouting, the ass braying, and a horse shattering the air with a panicked scream.
She dropped Bony’s reins, leapt for the ass and soothed it with a word, then hauled on the headstall of the pony telling it to Stop, stop, was it a gangling foal to get so confused by a mere donkey? It hung its head, shamefaced, and suffered itself to be led sweetly to the side so that people could come pick up the fallen sacks.
“Boy!” A thick-waisted woman was pointing to him. “You, yes you. I’ve work for you if you want it.”
Peretur patted the pony once more; he seemed settled.
“I’m Modron,” the woman said. “This is my byre and my inn. Come closer. What’s your name?” When Peretur came close, and gave her name, Modron gave her a piercing look, then shrugged. “Peretur is it? Well, Peretur, go find Hywel and tell him—tell his boy—I said you’re to sleep in the hay loft and eat with us. Aye, your horse, too. Start today.”
So it was that Hywel—not Modron’s husband but the deaf man who ran her byre—came to rely on Peretur. And by the third day Modron and her daughter, Angharad, and Hywel and his son, Rhodri, who sometimes listened and signed for him, would have been hard put to remember how they had managed without the stripling with the knack of calming horses, and around whom everything seemed a little better, a little easier. On the second day, when they were mucking out a stall, Rhodri took her into his confidence: He was to marry Angharad—“Angharad Ton Felen,” he said in a voice filled with longing, Angharad of the Yellow Wave—it was quite understood. He would marry her now, today, but she said she was not yet ready.
And indeed Angharad, a lively young thing, paid more attention to her customers than to Hywel’s son, whom she treated with offhand kindness. She paid attention, too, to her mother, when she must. And then she began to pay attention to Peretur. At first it was the glance that lasted a little too long, and then standing close and resting a hand on a strong shoulder as she leaned to help Peretur add hay to the net in the stall. Then the long, searching look, the uncertainty, the hitch in her breath, breath that touched Peretur’s cheek and told her of Angharad’s longing to reach out, to touch, to taste her throat and, in turn, tip back her head and let her own throat be kissed. And Peretur, drawn like a horse to water, one day shifted a little closer, and let Angharad take her hand and turn it over in the shaft of light coming through the gap in the byre roof and stroke it, stroke it again like a cat, until Peretur felt herself rising to the touch, and Angharad slid her arm around Peretur’s waist and whispered, “Kiss me.”
Her lips were soft and plump as rain and Peretur wanted to plunge her hands deep into her golden yellow hair, deep under her skirts to the soft places beneath, and she could feel their hearts thundering like horses, like horses yoked and racing together, pulling towards the same goal, breath tearing in and out, in and out.
Angharad pulled back, breathing hard. She searched Peretur’s face. “Whoever you are, Peretur, I would have you.”
And Peretur, not knowing what else to do or how to explain, took Angharad’s hand and placed it on her own belly, then, with a questioning look, lower, and when Angharad did not pull away, lower still, between her legs.
“Oh,” Angharad said. “Oh.” Then, her cheeks flaming like sunset, she put both hands on Peretur’s waist, looked directly at her, and said again, slowly and clearly, “I would have you. I would have you now.”
And they climbed into the hayloft and stayed for some time.
In the next few days they did this many times, and it was the finest week of Peretur’s young life, and she could not hide it. Rhodri would watch the stripling whistle as he brushed the horses, and laugh out loud for no reason, and hear Angharad singing when she thought no one could hear, and he would look hurt and puzzled. The tide of life ran so strong in Peretur that she could not stop if she wanted to, and she did not want to, but it was her gift to soothe worries and calm nerves, so she soothed Rhodri.
Early morning of Harvest Day, Peretur was filling a bucket at the well, and swirling the water to and fro with her hand, half dreaming, when the lake sang to her, and today the lake’s song was strong and insistent and it was for her. She felt she might fall in and never come out, and when a bird landed on her arm, as they sometimes did, and whistled, it took a while to make sense of the thread of worry woven into the notes, a thread that in words was a memory of mother and daughter talking as they shelled peas.
“—get hurt.”
“He won’t hurt me, Mam. Per is … not like other men.”
Modron snorts. “Child, I have eyes.”
“Oh.” The sound of a river of peas pouring into a bowl. “Well, Rhodri doesn’t.”
“No, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. But Peretur will hurt you—No, let me finish. He’s kind, yes, but he will hurt you nonetheless, because he will leave. This is not his place. You’ve only to look at his eyes.”
Angharad has a smile in her voice. “And they are such dreamy eyes.”
“Oh, I’ll grant you that.”
“And did you know he has a sword? He showed it to me. It’s old, and I think it would break if it hit anything, and he said only that he found it. But can you imagine Rhodri with a sword?”
“He will spoil you for Rhodri.”
“Don’t worry so. I know he won’t stay, and Rhodri will. I’ll be content with Rhodri when it’s time but, oh, Mam, for now Per makes my heart sing! And more than my heart. He is surely destined for greatness. Any who can make a woman feel like that when he touches her so—”
“Enough!” But with a laugh in her voice. “Take your joy, then, child, just tell me no more about it, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Peretur took the bucket to the kitchen, where the women were now chopping vegetables and affected to pay him no more mind than a carrot or half an onion.
An hour later she was at the well again, filling buckets for the horses, but this time avoiding the water, for she could feel fate thick in the air, when she heard horses jingling to a halt in the inn yard and three men swinging themselves down, slapping their leathers free of dust.
Modron called out, “Per! He’s my best lad, your honours. He’ll see you right. Per! Ah, there you are. Tend their lordships’ horses and tell Hywel to keep their tack aside in the special stall. Now my lords, if you’ll follow me I’ll set you up with the finest ale, served by the fair hand of my own daughter.”
And Peretur found herself looking at the backs of Cei, Bedwyr, and Andros as they walked away. The Companions of Arturus king, whom they called Artos, the bear. After a week listening to village talk, she knew something of his most trusted men: Llanza—Lance—was a special friend; Cei, his reeve; and Bedwyr, Andros, and Geraint—the egg-shaped man—his counsellors.
She led the horses one by one to stalls in the byre. They were fine beasts. She lifted off the saddle with the yellow-and-green leather, and ran her hand along the bay gelding’s flank. Cei was still an uneasy rider. The old scar there spoke to her of a rider kicking his mount at a thorn hedge, forcing it to obey, and riding on, not noticing the blood for an hour. Not a cruel man, not deliberately, but hot-tempered and jealous of his pride. One by one as she touched them, the horses nudged her hands with their velvet noses; she scratched them in just the places no one thought to scratch them; she found the burr in the tail of Andros’s fine-boned stallion that had been bothering him for days. Bedwyr’s mare was like Bedwyr himself: friendly, reliable, earnest. And when the horses were eating and half dreaming in their stalls, she carried the gear to the side aisle where special wooden trestles were built. Hywel was not there, so she got out the cloths and brushes and began to clean it piece by piece.
She had never seen such good leather: tight-pored and fine-grained, supple, well-shaped, and beautifully dyed. The metal rings were perfectly formed of uniform width and thickness, and the saddles had hanging flaps, notched with holes to vary length, with leather-and-metal loops hanging from them. What were they for?
“Don’t play with the stirrup, boy.” Bedwyr, leaning against a post, arms folded, voice easy.
“Stirrup?” She let it drop, stood back, looking at it. Ah, for the feet. “They’re new.”
Bedwyr stopped leaning. “How did you know?”
Because you did not have them when you rode through Ystrad Tywi in spring. But she could not say that. “I have never seen such things.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Per.” She deepened her voice a little. “Peretur.”
He came closer. “I know you, I think.”
“No, lord.” He was looking at her too hard; his eyes were startling against his dark skin, like burnished bronze, glowing and greening in summer sun. She remembered to use the rougher-edged words of the common folk. “I’m new come to this village.”
“You look … Well, for someone new, Peretur, Modron thinks well of you.” When Peretur found nothing to say, he shrugged. “I will just take a look at Lél before I go. Last week her off foreleg felt hot, and I would see how it is after today’s run.”
“There is nothing wrong with her leg, lord.”
“Is there not?” Bedwyr said. “Still, I would see for myself.”
He did, running his hands along the mare’s legs, then stroked her glossy coat, fingered her brushed tail, and did the same for the other two mounts. “And this was all your work? Just you, in this short time?”
“Yes, lord.”
He looked keenly at Peretur. “We’ve business just now with the farmers and local headmen, but when you’re done, come find me. Good work deserves fair reward, and we’ve need of a good byre boy in Caer Leon.”
