Walk the Wild With Me

by Rachel Atwood

  “Yes, Brother Luke. You told me that just yesterday.” And the day before and the day before that. “Here we are, Brother Luke. Your garden. I’ve put a bench here beside the lavender. It’s starting to bloom and smells wonderfully.” Unlike the old man who had that sick, old smell about his unwashed body. The hospice workers had decided not to subject him to the cold water of a bath. It sent him into bone-racking chills for hours after. His skin was now as thin as old and scraped parchment . . . and the same color.

  Carefully, Nick guided Brother Luke to sit on the stone bench that had warmed in the sun.

  “Lavender. Heavenly flower. I remember when I first planted this cutting, such a tiny slip of a thing. And now look at it. Bigger than the biggest cabbage. Nearly a full arm’s length across. My people knew how to grow things in places they didn’t want to take root. The Green Man can breathe on a cutting and make it eager to grow.”

  The lavender was now six plants, each a full arm’s length across. The tiny slip of a cutting had had forty years or more to propagate, with or without assistance from the Green Man.

  “Tell me about the St. John’s wort, Brother Luke. Tell me how to make an unguent out of it.” Nick sat at the old man’s feet with a portable desk, parchment, ink, and quills stashed beneath the bench. He and his charge had sat here most every afternoon, after Terce prayers and readings. Most days he needed to prompt Brother Luke only once for the retired herbalist to ramble on about a single plant until Sext. Today Nick had asked five times about the delicate plant sheltered in a corner of the stone wall where it caught the sun and suffered no wind. He hoped that being outside with the wort in full view would trigger the proper memories.

  “Ah, St. John’s wort. I took my cutting it in Tuscany on my return from the Crusades. Such a lovely little plant. Did you know that you can crush a leaf and add it to the stewpot at the last moment and turn ordinary chicken broth into a marvelous delicacy?”

  “Yes, you told me about that. What do I need to do to it to turn it into an unguent? You need an unguent to soothe your aching joints.”

  “Not as long as I sit in the sun. The sun in Tuscany is quite bright and soothing. It adds a gentle warmth to my swollen knuckles without blinding me with glare. I should wear a hat in the Tuscan sun, but it would block the light that warms my mind, and sparkles with ideas. . . .” Another breath and Brother Luke fell asleep, sitting up, head dropping to his chest.

  Nick sighed and put away his writing tools. He pulled his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms across the top of them.

  After only a few moments, his body twitched with inactivity and his mind wandered toward the copse and beyond that to the forest. “I wonder what you are doing today, Green Man, Robin Goodfellow, and Herne. I would join you and learn more of how you spend your days when you aren’t dancing on the village green or besting the sheriff at butts.”

  Brother Luke snorted and roused. “Add some lavender to my bath. A warm bath in Acre . . .”

  Nick grabbed the old man’s arm and hoisted him upright, turning and guiding him toward the infirmary which, thankfully, opened directly into the garden. “Time to return to your bed, Brother. You need your rest.”

  “Rest. A beautiful thing is rest.” He was asleep before he settled onto his bed.

  Nick scuttled out of the infirmary and into the garden again. But he did not stay near the warm bench with the restful scent of lavender. At the base of the stone wall, he jumped as high as he could and grabbed the overhanging branch of an old and sturdy apple tree. From there, he pulled himself upward, not quite so difficult as it was only a few months ago.

  When he knew that no one followed him or spied on his activities, he grasped the branch with both hands and lowered himself to the ground on the other side of the wall. Then he clung to the tree while he caught his breath and caressed the bark with thanks for the assist. In the back of his mind, Elena recited a prayer to the tree. Nick mouthed the words though they seemed alien to what he’d been taught.

  Moments later, he strode out across the orchard. His sandals slid a bit on the lush greenery that was still damp with dew, never quite drying out in the shade until Midsummer or later. He set his feet more carefully.

  Just as he straightened, Father Blaine and Prefect Andrew came through the gate from the courtyard, speaking softly as they negotiated twisted pathways through the orderly rows of fruit trees.

  Hold your breath, Elena guided Nick. Walk slowly, careful not to make any noise.

  Nick drew in as much air as he could and held it, feeling his chest swell and his stomach contract. Careful to stay out of sight of the two men, he slipped from tree trunk to tree trunk. Unfortunately, none of them were thick enough to hide behind while he replenished his breath. He had to move quickly. From tree to tree, to bush, to the shadow of the laymen’s lodge, he hastened. Then he stepped quickly onto the flat stones crossing the broad creek that watered the gardens and orchards. On the third slick step, he teetered, windmilling his arms for balance.

  The world grew dark around the edges of his vision. His head seemed to disconnect from his body. The sun glinting on the burbling water brightened to starbursts, near blinding him.

  He flailed for balance. Failed. Fell. . . .

  Ten

  Queen Mab tapped her dainty foot in disapproval.

  Jane responded by applying more strength to her scrub brush. She hated marble floors. They showed every scrap of dirt tracked in on the boots of faeries. And Jane had to scrub them clean every day, before she attacked the piles and piles of mending. Queen Mab was never satisfied with the cleanliness of the tiles, nor with Jane’s nearly invisible stitches.

  How many times had she scrubbed this floor? Ten times, maybe a dozen? Her memory of the back-breaking chore grew fuzzier. The harder she thought about it, the less she remembered.

  Back home, before she’d run away, the pounded earth floor didn’t need scrubbing, just a sweep now and then.

  She’d worked hard at home, caring for the wattle-and-daub hut and her father and four brothers. She worked harder for Queen Mab. And needlessly. At least for her family, she knew that her cooking, washing, mending, tending the chickens, and caring for the kitchen garden meant they all had food in their bellies and clothes on their backs.

  Thoughts of her family took her mind back to the May Day festival. She had seen and recognized Little John right off. Hard to miss a man who stood a full head taller than most of the men she knew. He hadn’t changed. But of her father and brothers, she’d seen none of them. Unusual. She’d never known any of them to miss the races and wrestling matches or flirting with the younger maids.

  This year, she’d seen only boys from the abbey.

  Where was her family?

  Had the sheriff imprisoned or killed them for some small offense?

  But then the sheriff she’d seen stringing his bow was not the same man who’d held the office two days before she ran away.

  Her head spun with questions. She looked up at the openings in the ceiling that gave glimpses of the sky, sometimes bright with sunlight, sometimes dark with glints of stars.

  Faeries rarely slept and barely noticed the state of the sky.

  She had to stop and think. Had the wheel of stars ever changed since she came here?

  “Your Majesty.” Jane rose to her knees and placed her palms together in an attitude of begging.

  She had never seen a king. But she knew that if ever young King Henry—the second of that name—should ride through the village, she must address him as Your Grace. He ruled by the Grace of God, not his own majesty. Apparently, Queen Mab ranked higher than the King of England.

  “What now?” The Queen of the Faeries stopped in her retreat from the hall to her clean bedroom. Not a bed for sleeping in but for other sport.

  “Your Majesty, how long have I had the honor of serving you?”

  “Oh, I
don’t know. A while.”

  “But how long is a while? A few days? A week?”

  “Longer than that, I’m certain. You came to us when the leaves had turned bright yellow, orange, and red. So pretty. And now we have celebrated May Day.” She dismissed Jane with a flick of her fingers.

  “Three seasons, then,” Jane mused.

  “Oh, at least. Probably more than a year. Time runs differently here than out there.”

  “A full year and more?” Jane gasped. She didn’t feel . . . well, yes, she did feel older, wearier, with more aches in her knees and her fingers. But . . .

  “Is my family still alive?”

  “Who cares? You’ll never see them again.” Mab turned her back on Jane and proceeded into her private chamber. “The passage of time and events matter not to us. We pay no heed to changing kings or the death of mere mortals. Now I must rest. Today has been most trying what with the festival and all. Send Bracken to me. He has not visited me in a while.”

  “The festival was not today,” Jane muttered, careful that her words did not reach Mab’s elongated ears. “I know I have slept at least twice since we ventured out into the world.”

  We pay no heed to changing kings or the death of mere mortals. Were any of her family still alive? She had feared her father and older brothers, as well as the man they had sold her to—the miller who had buried three wives already and had children older than she. She’d run away from them all. Did she care if they still lived?

  Her heart remained whole and free of ache at the thought.

  Or did it? Maybe the carelessness of the faeries had infected her, too.

  She returned to scrubbing the same patch of floor she’d scrubbed earlier, and the day before, and the day before, and she’d lost track of the number of days, years, decades that had passed.

  “I will never be free of her. I will never be with my love again.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks to fall unchecked to the floor.

  * * *

  Drip, drip, drip. Nick blinked away the moisture falling on his face. He must still be in the creek.

  Sunshine dazzled his eyes. Another drop on his cheek. Rain then, not creek water flowing freely over his body.

  If it was rain, then why was the sun so warm and bright?

  His fingers flexed and grabbed grass and dirt.

  Two more blinks and he was able to see a long shadow above him to his left.

  “About time you woke up,” a gentle male voice said. “I remember the first time I held my breath too long under Elena’s tutelage. I don’t believe I remained unconscious so long.”

  “Do I . . . know you?” Nick struggled to twist his head and see more than the long shadow. He hoped the speaker hadn’t noticed how his voice broke between words.

  The face of a wrinkled old man with a fringe of gray hair around a bald pate came into focus. He wore an ordinary brown jerkin over patched hose. A broad-brimmed straw hat lay on the ground beside his spotted hand. His other hand still held a leather skin filled with water—the moisture that had dripped on Nick’s face, waking him.

  “Tuck? The people of the village called you Tuck at the May Day festival. Before that you were an itinerant priest, the one who saved me from a burned-out village when I was tiny.” Nick sat up, flexing and testing each muscle on his arms and shoulders and back as he moved.

  The old man chuckled. “You have a good memory for faces, boy.”

  Look more closely, Elena instructed Nick.

  He blinked rapidly.

  Look beyond the clothes, beyond the present locations. See what few others can discern.

  “You . . . Are those horn buds on your head?”

  Tuck laughed loud and long, falling backward to sprawl on the grass. His mirth sounded like a ripple of wind through the tree canopy.

  “Of course, Elena allows you to see beyond what others can perceive. I doubt any of your friends in the abbey or among the Woodwose can see those faint shadows.”

  Look deeper. Look into your past.

  “I can’t see into his past,” Nick grumbled. “But I remember the man who pulled me from the burned ruins of my home.”

  “She said to look into your own past, Nicholas Withybeck,” Tuck said, coming back to sit beside Nick. “After I pulled you from digging through charred timbers searching for your mother.”

  “Your voice . . .”

  “Very good, boy.”

  “You speak as an educated man.”

  Tuck nodded.

  “The only way to get an education is to be born noble or enter the church. Since you dress as a common laborer, I have to surmise that if you have noble blood, your politics do not align with King John’s. That would explain your homespun. But if you took vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity before a sanctified altar, you would wear a cowled robe of a monk or priest . . . as you did so many years ago. If you are a senior member of the clergy who should have fled in exile to Paris or Rome but didn’t, then you’d have to wear common garb to disguise yourself.”

  Tuck raised his eyebrows, almost in surprise. “Someone has trained you well, young Nicholas.”

  “Abbot Mæson.” Nick bowed his head. Old as he was, the abbot looked younger and less careworn than he had a few months ago when he left the abbey in the middle of the night, in a hurry, taking with him only a small sack of personal belongings. No robes, no assistant, no scrolls. If he had any coins with him, he’d hidden them well.

  “Very good, my boy. When all this turmoil between King John and the Holy Father dies down, and I can return to Locksley Abbey, I will make you my assistant. Now you must tell me all that transpires in my abbey. Has Father Blaine totally muddled everything yet? I doubt that I want to hear how badly he stumbles without proper tutelage.”

  “First, you must tell me of Tuck and those horn buds on your head. It does not reason that one of the Wild Folk would rise to become Abbot of Locksley Abbey.”

  Tuck laughed again. “No, there is little logic in how my parents died during the civil war between King Stephan and Empress Mathilda more than sixty years ago. Or how my great-grandsire, Herne the Huntsman, decided I needed to remain with my human relatives rather than run wild in the wood. I am more human than Wild, after all. But my human relations had too many children of their own. So they gave me to the Church, as so many do. I found more than a home there. Elena found me and educated me far above my station. Just as she is teaching you. As I approached my majority, I realized I could do more for the Wild Folk, the Woodwose, and the common villagers as a priest than I could living in the forest—though I escaped as often as possible to taste fresh air and freedom. Thus, I followed my calling and took my vows. With those sacred words my horn buds retreated, became nearly invisible to all but the most perceptive. Then Elena said farewell, and I returned her to the niche in the crypt where she waited for you to find her. But I am still aware of her, still hear her when she speaks, if she wants me to hear.”

  “Power flows from the pagan goddess. Power is a temptation I should resist,” Nick repeated one of Father Blaine’s lessons—admonishments.

  “The fear of damnation blocks the timid from reaching for more than their class entitles them or serfdom binds them. Those who hold power fear having it taken from them. Think on that, boy, before you reject the guidance of the gentle goddess.” Tuck stood up and brushed fresh greenery from his clothing.

  “Sir?” Nick scrambled to his feet. “Sir, you have given me much to ponder. Please, sir, I need to know where I am and how I came to be here.” Nick turned in a full circle, finally noting a tall stone cross, with the circle of the eternal sunrise connecting each of the arms, in the center of a grassy triangle. Worn and faded knotwork carvings graced every inch of its seven-foot height and five of breadth. Three roads joining created the triangle of neutral ground.

  “This is her crossroads.”<
br />
  Nick cocked his head, silently requesting more information.

  “Come, look.” Tuck beckoned Nick forward and pointed to a place near the base of the cross.

  Nick bent double to inspect what looked like a flaw in the carvings. Even squinting, the details eluded him. So he dropped to his knees and brought his face right up close.

  “It’s Elena,” he breathed. Reverently, he traced the outline of the three-faced goddess surrounding a pitcher, and each figure carrying a lit lantern. His fingertips tingled with the contact. His chest swelled with peace and balance.

  “Aye. Crossroads are sacred. Have been since the beginning of time, long before the Romans brought the true Church to us and demoted the pagan gods to wild spirits with little power. However, Elena is the guardian of all crossroads. The Church made her a saint rather than acknowledge her goddess status. This crossroad, more particularly than most, is her domain. Each time you hold your breath too long, while invisible to the rest of the world, when you lose touch with yourself, you will awaken here.”

  “The guardian spirit of crossroads. That’s why she has three images each the same, each facing a new direction.”

  “You are not so far from Locksley Abbey. A quarter of a league down the road at most.” Tuck pointed behind him on the right side. “The sun dips toward the horizon. You have just enough time to run home in time for your supper, boy.”

  The old man stepped across the road in the opposite direction from the abbey, still carrying his skin of water on a long thong across his shoulders and chest, and disappeared amongst the trees lining the path.

  * * *

  The abbey came into view when Nick had run only a short way and rounded one bend in the road. Of the three roads that met at Elena’s Crossing, this one was the widest and most traveled—but nowhere near as developed as the Royal Road coming from the north. Deep ruts in the dried mud from wagon wheels made walking chancy at best. He kept to the verge, waving spritely to those returning home from the market, their carts carrying new lambs, cheeses, and produce they did not grow on their own plots in outlying villages.