‘Efflin needs him,’ Tarens insisted, hunched over the steaming pot. ‘Whoever he is, wherever he came from, I won’t run him out. If you aren’t willing to mind his wet clothes, I’ll handle the problem myself.’
‘I’ll waste time drying nothing,’ declared Kerelie, in her way just as mulishly stubborn. ‘Those shameful rags aren’t fit to be worn. You’ll throw them into the midden at once. Then find me something of Uncle’s that I can cut down to size. Stay out of my hair, and I’ll have the work finished before your pet visitor wakes up.’
Autumn 5922
Caller
He awoke, still without recollection of name, and discovered that somebody thoughtless had taken his only clothes while he slept. The virulent sting of his anger surprised him. If the meddler’s intentions were kindly meant, his sorry rags had been everything that he owned in the wide world. Surely worse, the pathetic possessions provided the last link to the wretched existence that only the wear on his body recorded. Practised instinct endowed certain knowledge by rote.
The croft proved as much. Without ever touching the tools in the barn, he grasped their function and use. His rough hands insisted he had worked the earth. The calluses welted over the scar on his palm told of the scythe, and a lengthy acquaintance with rake, hoe, and ploughshare. He knew how to preserve jam, dry fruits, and weigh the measure of salt needed to pickle vegetables. He had smoked butchered meat into jerky. From habit ingrained by the seasonal cycle, he had endured a hermit’s existence, scratched out in the ruin where he had recovered awareness.
Husbandry kindled no passion in him. His acute craving burned beyond hunger, that such country wisdom did not tap the greater part of his experience.
Whenever he listened too closely, his refined senses unfurled and extended. Too far and too fast, he dropped into perceptions that frayed his awareness of self altogether. Or else he lost his inner balance and tumbled into deepened Sight that tracked mental engagement as colour and light, and grasped the drift of emotional currents distinctly as an unreeled melody.
Shaking, afraid, all but unmanned – he did not know why! – he became overwhelmed by the force of sheer gratitude. The mere touch of warm sunlight fallen through the window-pane shocked his skin with ecstatic intensity. Upended again, almost hurled to delirium, he shut his eyes, hard. Frightened, he grounded himself back into the texture of solid surroundings: the coarse weave of the linen sheets and wool-blankets that covered his maddening nakedness.
Unmoored and desperate, he affirmed what he knew as a recited litany to impose calm: he was in Tarens’s bed. Clad in a shirt too large for his frame, cut from cloth that smelled faintly of lye soap. Unsure of his voice, he silently mouthed the name of his benefactor. ‘Tarens.’ The unspoken syllables let him savour the thrill: that he might have a friend although his tongue felt too clumsy to dare attempt speech, even in solitude.
Once, he had loved music. The vague recall tugged, as estranged as a language elusively veiled beyond meaning. Perhaps even, he had been a singer. The idea terrified him to goose bumps, and contrarily, eased his sped heart. The galvanic dread gripped him, that if he found the nerve to try sound, he would utter no better than a rusty croak.
The grotesque possibility of such a failure slammed him back into paralysis. To shake crushing anxiety, he reopened his eyes. This time, his survey encountered the breeches. Facetious female generosity had left them for him, folded on a nearby chair. The loss of his own garments stung him again. What other clue did he have to reveal the person he had been?
Too late for regret, that weakness and sleep had relaxed his wary defenses. He could sulk and stay naked, or else bow to the straits that forced Kerelie’s high-handed charity.
If he must arise vulnerable under her roof, he intended to stay unobserved. In adamant privacy, he tested his untrustworthy senses one cautious layer at a time. Gently, he reined in the torrent that rushed to burst through his restraint and strand him in dizzy bewilderment. Control did not come easily. Somewhere before, he had faced dangers that demanded an exacting degree of tuned reflex and receptivity.
But whatever shadowy perils once stalked him, in whatever forgotten strange space, their spectre stayed hidden. Nothing untoward lurked here in this cottage. Only quiet lapped against his awareness inside these homely white-washed walls. Around him, the empty room was unthreatening, the air still in the silk fall of sunlight.
Tarens’s preference enjoyed rough-hewn pine furnishings, either whittled with whimsical animals, or else adorned with jaunty charm in painted patterns of vine-leaves. The floor-boards were gouged where he scuffed his boots. His sturdy clothes-chest displayed spirited dents inflicted by his quick temper. But the fierce, loyal eddy of Tarens’s bright presence was not here to safeguard a stripped stranger’s dignity.
The purposeful clatter from the kitchen downstairs bespoke the defensive sister. Immersed in her habitual prickly noise, she ransacked a cupboard like a butcher who had misplaced a favourite knife. Her bustle sang of annoyance and worry, but no longer streamed the rank copper taint of fear from the evening before. Therefore, the bout of illness that threatened her older brother would have improved. Tacit listening confirmed this. Efflin’s hacked cough emerged muffled, removed from the kitchen fireside to the downstairs bedroom. Though the sick man’s being rang yet with the fraught overtones of high fever, he no longer gasped for every clogged breath. Yet the dark vortex he carried still weighted his heart: the core flame of his vitality stayed wrapped at low ebb, sapped by a secretive bundle of pain.
Snagged in the midst of this tight-woven family, the upstairs visitor broke his tranced reverie. He tossed off the annoyance of the itchy blankets. Acutely ashamed of his burdensome presence, he placed slender feet on the floor-boards and rose. Soundless in movement, he fingered the pair of brown breeches given for his use. The homespun wool had been cuffed at the ankles to suit his shorter stature. Kerelie’s neat stitches hemmed the turned seams. Her delight for needle and thread touched his spirit, a dance of harmonics that soared far above the range of natural hearing. He stroked the cloth and also sensed the whispered urgency of her unease: that some later short-fall might wish back this old garment to mend a brother’s torn jacket or patch up a moth-eaten quilt.
Lip curled at the thought of wearing such chafing anxiety next to his skin, the destitute supplicant dressed himself. The breeches, made for a much broader build, threatened to slide off his hips. He would need a string to secure the loose waistband if the household insisted on decency. His beard stubble prickled; his jet hair hung tangled. Yet he had been offered no comb and no knife, far less soap and basin to shave. The napped hose provided at least had no holes. Since borrowed shoes appeared nowhere in evidence, he padded into the hallway on stockinged feet.
A narrow passage with creaky, pegged floor-boards led him to another bedchamber. Dust filmed the thresholds of two more rooms with shut doors, both shadowed and uninhabited. Too respectful to pry, he ventured the stair towards the kitchen, determined to right his disgruntled pride and amend his overlooked grooming.
He was halfway down and still masked in gloom when the sharpened ripple of an inbound disturbance flicked over his sensitized nerves. He froze, unsettled by split-second warning: another person strode towards the cottage, not expected by the known family inside. Survival reflex prompted him to expand that initial assessment. Still strange to himself, he quashed that fierce impulse: locked down the swift expansion of his perceptions hard and fast, before he lost his grip. Unadorned hearing already informed him that the caller was not a close neighbour. Through the hearth-fire’s crackle and the on-going rattle of Kerelie’s heedless industry, he picked up a stamped hoof and the restive jingle of harness bells from outside. A carriage and team handled by a groom was being tied to the pasture fence.
Nothing like Tarens’s straightforward tread, the passenger’s step minced along the mud path, then thumped up the porch stair from the garden. Then that someone, unknown, and bullishly male, knocked
at the kitchen-door.
Kerelie’s skirt swished, a brusque rustle that bespoke surprise as she passed the pine trestle, crossed the braid rug, then scuffed over the slab at the entry and lifted the latch. The squeak of the door-panel’s crooked hinge was followed by speech, enlivened by recognition.
The listener’s ear ignored Kerelie’s greeting in favour of tracking her tone: she was annoyed, even felt imposed upon, which tagged the fellow as invader. But perfunctory courtesy obliged her to invite the unpleasant caller inside.
As her platitude brought his unctuous acceptance, frustration spiked the rampant dislike she smothered behind genteel manners.
Shameless, the eavesdropper poised in the stairwell chose not to retreat. Since the secretive vantage provided him with a covert view of the kitchen, he settled down in cat quiet as the pushy visitor shoved into the cottage. The man’s fruity voice and deliberate gait foretold the portly build that shortly emerged into view.
Pinkly shaved over his pouched chin, he claimed the only padded chair from the trestle, and buckled the rug in his grunted effort to haul the seat onto the slate apron before the hearth. There, he settled, oblivious, or else uncaring, that his planted bulk blocked the heat that kept the rest of the croft cottage cozy. His clothes and tweed jacket bespoke country origins, a surface impression spoiled by the gleam of a tailored silk collar and gold rims on his oyster-shell buttons. He provided a gift. His fussy, scrubbed hand bestowed the package on Kerelie as though grateful acceptance was his rightful due.
Which presumption made the unseen witness bristle. Restraint kept him still, while Kerelie took the man’s bundle of charity with clipped distaste. She unwrapped a glass phial of cough syrup, then a string-tied packet that faintly wafted the astringent fragrance of cailcallow.
The silent lurker understood herbals: somewhere, he had been well taught to know their virtues by their subtle essence. These dried, crumbled leaves had been cut under daylight in early summer, when rain and hot sun spurred fast growth, and diffused the medicinal efficacy. More, the plants had not been sung to, or touched by gratitude when they were gathered.
Unlike the stringently potent root-stock his own hand had collected last night, under influence of the autumn moon.
‘. . . must have heard about Efflin’s condition,’ Kerelie was saying. Her thick fingers, most reverent with anything cloth, refolded the packet and knotted the string.
The little pause floundered.
Her caller shifted, then cleared his throat. ‘I’d not heard your brother took sick, not precisely. Yesterday’s rumour said the apothecary refused to accept Tarens’s coin. You did send to Kelsing to fetch these same remedies?’ A suggestively weighted interval ensued. When Kerelie said nothing, the visitor added, ‘If Efflin’s down with a cough, surely you’ll need better help than a pennyweight parcel of herbals.’
The words kept the pretence of polite conversation. To the sensitive listener, such windy noise could be plumbed for the strains of true nuance: this predator had been stalking the family’s rough straits, poised for his moment to spring.
‘We have managed,’ said Kerelie, bitten to a snap.
From the stairway, the vagabond shared her contempt. The pervasive, bracing reek filled the kitchen: of stronger medicinals already provided for the ailing brother’s recovery.
‘Efflin’s sniffle’s improved,’ Kerelie dismissed. ‘The winter wheat’s being planted, besides. That’s hard work aplenty to fill our day.’ Her tart inflection meant anyone else underfoot clearly wasted her time.
‘You’d begrudge me a stirrup-cup?’ the caller pressed, although he had travelled from town, sleek under the comfort of carriage rugs. ‘Saffie always boasted your late uncle’s spirits took the bite off a brisk day.’
Cornered again, Kerelie sighed. ‘We sold off the whiskey. As you’ve been aware. Or didn’t I hear the complaint that your man lost the lot to the justiciar’s house steward?’
The stiff quiet deepened, coloured by her regret, that the corn still also had gone to raise cash, which was why the family had not made the mash this year to ease their stark hardship. The lurker had noted Efflin’s delirious rant, bemoaning the loss of the revenue.
‘If you’re chilled,’ declared Kerelie at freezing length, ‘I can offer you unsweetened rose-hip tea.’
The caller deferred with a smile that belied the miserly flint in his eyes. ‘Your company might warm a man well enough. That’s if you’d consider unbending for an hour’s playful enjoyment.’
‘Is this a courtship?’ Kerelie banged down the pan just unhooked to boil water and glared fit to singe her oppressor. ‘If so, then shame on you! My affection cannot be bought by a miserable bottle of cough syrup!’
A kindly man should have been taken aback. This one stood up, his shark’s smile all teeth. Surly confidence carried him across the room like a blast of cold air. That frisson of chill brushed the furtive watcher. His rapt quiet turned poised, where he crouched on the stair.
‘Must you stall until poverty leaves you as sour as a worm-eaten fruit?’ The caller stepped close and crowded himself against the reluctant young woman’s side. His covetous touch fingered the decorative garlands embroidered on her full sleeve. ‘How long will you defer the inevitable, Kerelie, and face that you must accept marriage? Soonest is best for the sake of your family. Why suffer a lean winter when your choice can spare your two brothers from beggary?’ Thick gold, his ring glinted, as he slid his eager palms up her arms to embrace her.
Kerelie’s adroit counter-strike elbowed the water pail. ‘Oh dear!’ As her splashed suitor jumped backwards, she blotted her soaked cuff on her apron and surveyed the puddle that flooded her hem-line and seeped into her scuffed leather shoes. ‘I’ll just step out and put on a dry skirt. Do me the courtesy while you wait? Shout outside for Tarens to draw a fresh bucket. If you insist upon staying for tea, he’ll certainly want to join us.’
Yet the caller refused to cede his advantage. ‘Why this belated concern for propriety?’ His expensive, waxed boots defeated her ploy: he advanced without scathe through the water, and captured her wrist. ‘Your older brother’s now head of your household. If his well-being’s improved, as you claim, and if he doesn’t favour a match, then why has your family’s upright westlands decency left you on your own to receive me?’
But she was not alone. The lurker on the stairway uncoiled and moved, his timing impeccable.
Tarens sighted the flashy carriage from the far side of the field, where he muscled the ploughshare down the next furrow to till the last acre left fallow. He paused only to knot the reins of the ox. If the beast broke its harness and wandered at large, he would deal with that nuisance later.
‘Grismard! You dung-feeding maggot!’ The opportunist had tried worming in once already, before Uncle’s corpse had grown cold. Swearing fit to scale a bagged viper, Tarens charged over the welter of newly turned clods, hampered painfully by his puffed ankle.
‘If that creeping slug’s laid hands on my sister, I’ll wring his greasy neck!’ Unless Efflin managed to totter erect first and gut the man’s paunch with the poker.
Tarens gasped another breathless obscenity. Lamed, he could not vault the fence. Forced to take the long way around through the gate, he sprinted at a hopping limp to the cottage, scrambled up the stone steps, and bashed open the door.
Inside, tubby Grismard stood in a puddle, backed up with his spine bowed against the hard edge of the copper-lined sink. The vagabond faced him. At least a head shorter and one-third the weight, the fellow should have been harmless. All the more, since the hand gripped to stay his loose trousers disarmed any threat at the risk of buck-naked embarrassment. Yet the feral green eyes pinned on the disgruntled suitor drained the man’s salmon flush to fish-belly white.
‘Grismard!’ Tarens opened in venomous delight. ‘Don’t you look like the bloke who just pissed his own breeks.’
‘Who’s your unsavoury visitor?’ snapped Grismard, chins quaking with sweaty u
nease.
‘That’s the foot-loose vendor who sold me the herbals,’ Kerelie smoothed over, shaken. The relief that acknowledged her brother’s arrival stayed charged with alarm, that something beyond a straightforward brawl might erupt in her sensible kitchen.
Tarens traipsed forward, thumbs hooked in his belt. A grin pasted over his clenched jaw, breathing fire, he kissed his sister’s scarred cheek. ‘You’ve scrounged some old clothing the peddler wants in trade?’
As though cued, the vagabond stepped back and unpinned his discomfited victim. He raised one arm and displayed his oversized raiment as if pleased by an exchange for his wares. The ferocious edge did not leave his eyes. He stayed placed between Kerelie and the importunate caller, no matter that the breached door to the kitchen flooded him with icy air or that the ludicrous fit of the breeches threatened to strand him, half-stripped.
‘I was planning to make tea,’ Kerelie announced to stem a burst of wry laughter.
Tarens snapped up the dangling line, ‘But at the moment, praise be to life’s set-backs, your sewing claims the more urgent priority?’ He strode forward, seized Grismard’s arm, and steered him on firm course for the exit. ‘Announce yourself, next time. We’ll be better prepared.’
The incensed visitor jerked himself free. ‘Best watch the quality you bring under your roof.’ He shot his cuff, yanked straight his mussed tweed, then warned in thwarted vindication, ‘Word’s hot about town, or haven’t you heard? The high temple examiner’s dispatched his diviners to hunt down a minion of Darkness.’