Lady of Weeds, page 16
part #2 of Lady Series
“Perhaps you’ll have need to come to market again next week,” she said.
Eurion blinked at her, but accepted without question that the time for satisfying his curiosity was over. He said, “Really? I thought you didn’t want me to go for now.”
“There were some people I thought it might not be good for you to meet,” she said. “New to the village. When you’ve recovered your memories, perhaps you’ll know them.”
“Oh,” said Eurion, his mouth dropping. “Was that why you didn’t want me going to market?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” he said again. “I thought—I thought perhaps—”
Carys waited for him to finish the thought, but he only sighed.
When she began to eat her cawl, he said gloomily, “There are a lot of people to meet at the market. Why should I know these ones?”
“I don’t know if you do know them,” Carys told him. “But one of them could be your sister. If she is, it could help you to remember where you came from.”
“I don’t want to go,” Eurion said, wrapping his arms around his knees. “I don’t have a sister. I don’t remember a sister.”
“You don’t remember anything.”
“I’d remember a sister if I had one,” said Eurion, with certainty.
“Perhaps, perhaps not. I could have some time to take you to see them as soon as tomorrow. It can’t hurt to see if she recognises you.”
“I don’t want to go,” Eurion said. “Not tomorrow, Lady! Let’s go another day—let’s wait until next market. I don’t think I’m well enough to walk all the way up to the village again. I sneezed today.”
“Very well,” Carys agreed. It was as she’d thought; Eurion wasn’t well enough to be travelling here and there. “Put the blanket around your shoulders.”
“All right,” said Eurion, smiling sunnily at her, but when Carys rose later on to wash the dishes, and returned, he was fast asleep with his cotton-clad shoulders still exposed to the air and the blanket pooled around his waist.
She rolled him slightly and tugged the blanked up around his chin. There was time enough to be taking Eurion to Ma Yong Hwa. For this week at least, she would try alone to bring back Eurion’s memories.
Chapter Ten
Eurion was still asleep when Carys left the cottage the next morning.
Asleep, or pretending to be so, Carys found herself thinking. That led her to wonder why she thought so—why, in fact, she was still thinking about Eurion when she had more important matters to be attending to. It was high time she stopped allowing herself to be distracted by the temporary sunshine in her life and turned her mind to recovering the memories that were so important to her. More, in trying to return that sunshine to its rightful place, wherever that was.
That decided, Carys came to the conclusion as she trudged toward the seashore, that Eurion had been pretending to be asleep. Unusually enough, Eurion was avoiding her attention. Why was that?
He had been eager to avoid the village this week, too, which was just as unusual. He’d been happy to learn she wouldn’t allow him to go before he learned of a possible sister, too; so that wasn’t necessarily the issue.
Once at the seashore, Carys released the handles of her cart, allowing the legs to drop into the sand with a soft thump. Whatever ailed Eurion, it had begun before she left for the markets yesterday, and worsened when she came home.
She frowned toward the sea, stepping from sand to rock without any thought in the familiarity of the action. Was it possible that Eurion didn’t want to get his memories back? Was it possible that he had none to remember—either because he’d already remembered them, or because he’d never forgotten anything in the first place?
If he’d already remembered them, there was a reason he was staying. Did he remember about the belt he had been carrying? Was he, perhaps, looking for it? Carys thought about that and decided against it; Eurion was too glad to see her when she got home for him to have been spending his days searching the cottage for the belt.
Unless he had never forgotten anything. Or there had never been anything to forget.
If he had never forgotten anything, then Eurion was capable of much greater dissimulation than she’d given him credit for. She had believed him completely. If there had never been anything to forget, that was worse: it meant he was in her house for a particular reason, and one not necessarily related to his mysterious appearance. Eurion had been only the first of several unusual arrivals. Steele and Ma Yong Hwa arriving so quickly after him, and both with an eye to finding a certain mysterious something that neither would talk about. Was Yong Hwa really looking for his wife’s half-brother?
Carys gathered seaweed with a mind no more than half on her occupation, and found herself having to pick up tiny pieces that remined after her first sweep of the pool she was clearing.
“Nonsense!” she told herself in annoyance. There was no reason to be suspecting that Eurion remembered everything, or that he’d never forgotten. And yet, she couldn’t help but think about it; and regardless of which way the truth lay, there were either memories she needed to unlock or a secret she needed to reveal when her work was done for the day.
There was no sign of Steele for the whole of the morning. It should have made Carys feel better, but instead, it made her feel more on edge. She didn’t like not knowing where he was, or the feeling that he could be wandering near her cottage and Eurion.
In spite of her unease, it was a good day on the shore. There wasn’t much in the way of seaweed to be collected, and several things had washed ashore. These things weren’t washed ashore in the normal way, along the edge of the water, but through the pools. Carys didn’t know how deep some of them were, or where their waters drew current from, but some at least must have had currents that started in villages further along the coast, or even the castle headland, because most of the things she collected that morning were Sunderland in origin: some jewellery, a wooden bowl or two, and a small toy horse, thrown up amidst the seaweed.
The other few items were by the pools, but they were placed there neatly. Suspiciously. A small box that didn’t seem to have any opening or latch, slightly bigger than Carys’ hand, a soggy, embroidered handkerchief, and a short dagger.
Carys circled them for some time, collecting her seaweed. It was obvious that the selkies had left them for her, and she wasn’t sure why. Most obviously, they could have been left to draw her dangerously close to the bottomless pools. In this case, Carys was inclined to think that they had been left for some other, though equally mischievous, reason. They were close to the pool where she had found Eurion, which probably meant that either the selkies had left them because they pertained to Eurion, or they wanted her to think that.
Carys took them once she’d loaded her cart, smiling faintly. If she couldn’t bring back Eurion’s memories before the next market, she would take Eurion to see Ma Yong Hwa and his wife. The selkies might mean mischief by it, but Carys would use it if she could.
Eurion was practising his swordwork outside the cottage when she got back to the cottage, but he stopped to see what she’d brought home. He was interested in the dagger, if not the handkerchief, but it was the box that really caught his attention.
“It’s a puzzle box, Lady!” he said, chuckling beneath his breath.
Carys watch him turn it over, her hopes high, but although he had it open in just a few moments, the contents were uninspiring—a small book with no inscription to its first page, and a medallion with two sides to it, like a coin.
She took the medallion from him, turning it over, and asked, “Is it yours?”
Eurion shrugged. “I don’t know, Lady.”
“You opened the box.”
“Yes,” said Eurion, in an explanatory sort of way, “but that’s because it’s a puzzle box. If it’s a puzzle box, I have to open it.”
Carys accorded that a small, dry sniff of laughter, and asked, “What about the book?”
“I don’t know if that’s mine, either,” he said.
“Can you read it?”
“Of course I can read it!” Eurion sounded offended. “I learned to read!”
“I see,” said Carys, more dryly still. Perhaps she would try him with a Sunderman book—Eurion might speak Sunderman with no trace of accent, but the small book was written in Eppan script.
The next day when she got back from the seashore, Eurion was using the dagger to make holes in one of the trees just outside the hedge that shielded the back of the cottage from the village bluffs. He was throwing from a distance of perhaps twenty yards, with differing levels of success, but it seemed as though it should be a good exercise for his memory as well as his body, so Carys only stayed for a moment to tell him to pick a different target before she went inside.
Eurion obliged, but his eyes asked a question, even if his mouth didn’t, and Carys found herself for once answering an unasked question.
“There’s an alcove there,” she said. “It’s hidden, but if the tree beside it is marked, it won’t stay hidden for long.”
“All right,” said Eurion.
As she turned to go into the cottage, she heard the dagger hit another target, and smiled at her own surprise. There was no reason for Eurion to come in just because she was home.
* * *
Carys left Eurion to himself for several days. He seemed interested in the small book of Eppan script, even if he was uninterested in the puzzle box now that he’d solved it, and he added throwing practise to his sword practise.
All very good for him physically, thought Carys to herself as she returned to the cottage on the afternoon of market day, rather annoyed; but no use at all for regaining lost memories. She had had high hopes of that little book. She had even had Eurion read to her from it—he had been very surprised to find himself reading Eppan aloud, and Carys could almost see the thoughts turning over in his mind as he realised it wasn’t Sunderman he was reading.
But if his memories couldn’t be recalled by peaceful means, perhaps a more forceful method was required. There was always Ma Yong Hwa and his wife, but Carys thought she would prefer to be in control of the recall; there was too much she would prefer to keep private to welcome a third and fourth party to the occasion.
So on market afternoon, when they should have continued straight up the path to the village, Carys turned the cart down a side-path just beyond the cottage hedge instead, and let down the handles of the cart in the shade of a large tree.
“Isn’t it market day?” asked Eurion, watching her.
“It is.”
“Are we not going to market?” He asked it with his head tilted on the side—cautiously optimistic, Carys thought. A slight cloud passed over his face, and he asked, a little suspiciously, “Why?”
“We’re going for a walk first.”
Eurion’s face brightened immediately. “Yes, Lady! Where are we going?”
“We’re still going to the village,” she added. “But we’ll take a walk first.”
“Is it pretty, where we’re going?”
“I suppose so,” Carys said, slightly baffled. Pretty or not didn’t matter; the important thing was to go to sandy beach rather than rocky beach—safe waters and not treacherous ones. Waters, moreover, where it was less likely for Steele to be lurking in hopes of treasure washed ashore.
Eurion seemed to be content with that; he kept up with her long stride without asking questions, quieter today than he was wont to be. He didn’t even ask what she was about when she led him across the high bridge of grassy land that separated her rocky seashore from the further, sandy seashore, and led him down under the shade of that bridge to the beach below.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, smiling at the sand that Carys knew must glitter to his eyes. He would have stayed to gaze longer at the cove, but she tugged him along by the front yoke of his shirt.
She seemed to remember a cave along this section of coastline—a scooping, sandy thing with a cool, shadow-laced interior and startlingly blue water lit by a hole in the cave ceiling above—saw it even as she pulled at Eurion’s shirt.
Eurion followed her willingly across the sand and into the cave, laughing at the antics of a couple of sand otters that had found the entrance and were taking a sand bath there. He didn’t question why Carys should take him there.
It wasn’t until Carys waded thigh-deep into the blue waters that he said, “You shouldn’t swim in skirts, Lady. You’ll drown yourself.”
“I’m not swimming,” Carys told him. The water swayed in a gentle back and forth: it wouldn’t get any deeper until the tide came in. “And the water is only this deep. Come in.”
Eurion did as he was told, his eyes bright, and the sun through the hole in the cave ceiling caught against the gold of his hair. The dark roots there were clear to see these days; it occurred to Carys that she would have to cut his hair soon.
Eurion waded over until he was in front of her, and smiled curiously at her. “What is it, Lady?”
“Your hair needs to be cut,” said Carys, too busy with her own thoughts to censor what she said. Eurion was taller than she had thought. If he was shorter than she was, it was by the merest hair; moreover, while he was certainly skinny, Carys was no heavy weight herself. She only hoped she remembered the particular trick she had learnt once.
She stepped forward, hip to hip with Eurion, and put her left hand on his chest, near the shoulder. “Remind me later,” she said. “To cut your hair.”
Eurion’s hand came up to cover hers, his eyes unwaveringly on her face, and he said quietly, “Lady?”
Carys curled her right leg around his left, trapping it between both of hers, and sent him tumbling over backward into the water with the hand on his chest. Eurion flailed but couldn’t catch himself, and Carys had her hands around his neck in a moment, forcing his head beneath the water.
After the first, wild flail, Eurion didn’t fight back. He didn’t try to free his leg or to kick with the other; he simply stared up at her through the moving water, his mouth opening and closing a little as he ran out of air.
Blue and green shadows passed over his face in ripples, the hair standing out from his head in a golden aureole, and a last a gasp of bubbles left his nostrils. The eyes looking up at Carys were dazed, then dreamy, until she didn’t dare leave him there any longer.
She hauled him up and out of the water, and Eurion clung to her, coughing water, vomiting it. Carys allowed him to rest there, sagging against her, then drew him to shore again, step by careful step.
He collapsed on the sand, shivering, and said, “There was a cave. Not like this one—dark above and bright blue beneath. There was something in there with me.”
Carys dropped down beside him. “Is that all you remember?”
“Nearly,” said Eurion. “Lady, you’re really frightening, you know?”
“I know,” Carys said, hardening her heart. “What else do you remember?”
“Hands,” he said. “Or maybe it was teeth. Pulling me down through the blue. There was a maze there, but I think I died.”
“You didn’t die.”
“No,” Eurion said. He rubbed the side of his head in a perplexed sort of way, and said, “Perhaps I was supposed to die.”
“Nonsense,” said Carys. “You were taken by the sea and by the—at any rate, the sea spat you back out. It was decided that you were to be kept alive.”
Eurion, his arms wrapped around his knees, gazed at her and asked, “Is that why you saved me?”
“No,” Carys said. “I saved you because everything that washes up on the shore is mine. My responsibility. Come into the sunshine.”
She rose and left him there without waiting for an answer, and he followed silently into the sunshine and the warmth of the sand.
“We’ll come back here another time,” she said. “If you still can’t remember everything. This will do for now.”
“All right,” said Eurion, surprising her. “But you don’t have to come in, Lady. I can do it by myself. You don’t like being in the water, do you?”
“You’re not the only one the sea spat out,” Carys told him. It amused her, distantly, that he should be concerned about her when she had just terrorised him in the water; it seemed to her that he should remember that fact, so she said, “And if you’ll think back, I’m the one who nearly drowned you for a second time. Perhaps you should be more concerned for yourself.”
Eurion grinned, and that startled Carys even more. “You didn’t nearly drown me,” he said.
“I saw your eyes,” she said. “I know that look.”
“The sea is salt, but it’s clear,” said Eurion, his eyes glowing. “And I could see your face, too, Lady. Don’t forget that.”
Was he teasing her?
He took a few steps backwards, his eyes still laughing at her, and asked, “Shouldn’t we go to market now, Lady? I think we’re late.”
They walked back across the grassy cliff in silence, and this time Eurion led the way, the salty spikes of his hair catching the late afternoon sun in golden strands.
It wasn’t until they were level with the cottage that Carys saw Steele, flanked by two other men, approaching from the rocky shore side. She didn’t think; she simply seized the still-damp Eurion and shoved him into the alcove. Woven of boughs and surrounded by greenery, it was a quiet place for her to hide away from villagers who weren’t welcome at the cottage. It hadn’t been used as a necessity since well before Carys’ tenancy at the cottage, but she knew it had saved the life of one of her predecessors.
“Who are they?” asked Eurion, in a whisper. “Why do they all have swords?”
Carys didn’t answer him. Instead, she said in his ear, “Stay here,” and released his arms. The alcove was a safe place, away from Steele’s far-too-penetrating eyes.
