by Kim Wilkins
Ivy scrambled to her feet, catching Eadric in her arms. He started to cry now. Ivy turned his face up to her. Already a dark mark swelled on his chin. The skin was not broken, and a quick check revealed all his teeth were still in place. The blow had not been as hard as she feared, then. Surely it was just a smack. It had only looked bad. She pressed him against her, heart thumping, mind racing.
Crispin threw open the door. He was hastily dressed, his boots in his hand. ‘I think we all need to cool down,’ he said, forcing a light tone. ‘That’s quite a temper you have on you, Eadric.’
Eadric pressed his face into Ivy’s skirt and would not respond. Ivy could not bring herself to speak either.
‘I will see you tomorrow,’ he said, crossing the room and heading out the door.
Quite a temper.
Was he blaming Eadric?
‘Show me your face,’ Ivy said, pulling Eadric over by the fire.
How had she missed it? His chin was gashed open. She glanced down; her dress was covered in blood.
‘Open your mouth?’
He did as he was told and this time she felt every tooth. Two came away under her fingers.
Ivy’s stomach roiled and her head swam. She sat down heavily. A moment later, a little presence arrived beside her. It was Goldie. She stroked Ivy’s head.
‘Is Edmund still sleeping?’ Ivy asked.
‘Yes,’ Goldie lisped. ‘He missed it all.’
Eadric climbed into her lap and she held him as he cried, and Goldie held Ivy as she cried.
Quite a temper.
Ivy screwed her eyes shut. Clarity was sharp, blinding. Crispin had blamed Eadric for the blow. Just as he blamed all his little unkindnesses on Ivy. This realisation provoked not anger, but a sense of desperate helplessness. How was she to get herself out of such a relationship? He had proved he would use force against her and her children. He had an army at his disposal and she was not so stupid as to think she could persuade them to do her bidding instead. Crispin had no doubt sown and tended ill-will towards her for years. Not a single member of her dead husband’s family would come to her aid. Nobody would be afraid of her own connections, if Bluebell’s kingdom was hobbled.
She had no power. She hung on to the rule of Sæcaster only by a slender thread, and that thread was tightly controlled by Crispin. Crispin who had knocked out two of her little boy’s teeth.
Ivy leapt to her feet, brushing off the children, and began to pace. Where was she safe? Where were the children safe? Did it matter whether or not she held on to Sæcaster, if it meant being subjected to Crispin’s violent control? She was a princess without Sæcaster. Bluebell was always annoyed with her, but she wouldn’t let her starve. Yes, there was war in Ælmesse, but Bluebell was a formidable king.
It was to Bluebell she must go, and take the children with her.
The moment she made the decision, the anxiety fell away. Tomorrow morning at first light – before the new nurse arrived, before Crispin had a chance to blame her somehow – she would pack up the children and be gone.
Ivy didn’t sleep, apart from snatches where exhaustion overwhelmed her. She changed her mind a thousand times during those long dark hours. Told herself Crispin loved her. Told herself she was overreacting. Then she remembered the gash in Eadric’s chin that she had pressed a cloth against for an hour before it stopped bleeding and the fact of it was so shocking all over again that she had to squeeze her eyes tight to stop herself crying. Maybe she was a fool, as Crispin liked to tell her. As everyone liked to tell her: even her own sisters. But for the children’s sake she had to be better than a fool. She had to be a champion.
The morning light was grit in her eyes. As the dark left the room she could see Eadric’s injury, a purplish swollen gash that was at violent odds with his soft sleeping face. She rose and began to pack. A bag each. Her dead husband’s old leather bag that he had once kept his documents in. Her sons’ little messenger bags that were usually used to take toys on a holiday. Goldie’s practical backpack that she had arrived with. In them she stuffed toys, rich objects she could sell along the way, shoes … she was already running out of room.
Then Goldie was at her side, her face sleepy. ‘What are you doing?’
‘We have to go,’ Ivy whispered.
Goldie nodded as if to say, We do. ‘Don’t pack those things,’ she said, pulling out the toys and other large objects. ‘They will be too heavy. Do you have coins?’
‘Some.’
‘In a purse, under your dress. We only need the shoes on our feet …’ Here she removed the shoes Ivy had packed. ‘And one change of clothes in case we get wet. Fire oil. Flint and steel. Waterproof cloaks and something to sleep under.’
‘We’ll sleep in inns.’
‘You will be found if you sleep in an inn.’ Goldie frowned here, and Ivy wondered how many times Gudrun had said this to her. ‘The only way to make sure we are not found is to stay off the main roads and sleep outside.’
Sleeping outside? The boys would have fits. Perhaps this was not such a good idea after all. Perhaps she could solve this problem through trying hard to keep Crispin happy, making sure he wasn’t around the children as much. His plan to send them to school would actually keep them safe. Then she glanced at Goldie, who was looking up at her with giant innocent eyes. Learning from her how to be a woman.
Her own boys. Learning from her what men were able to get away with.
She swelled with a strange pride. Crispin thought she would put up with it. He would rejoice in telling her she was stupid and she’d never survive a day on the low roads, sleeping under waterproof hides. How sorely he’d underestimated her. She was a daughter of the Storm King of Ælmesse.
‘Yes,’ Ivy said. ‘We will sleep outside.’ She drew Goldie close. ‘My clever girl, what else do we need?’
Nineteen
A lost child was a cause for the village to grieve; but a second lost child became a cause for the village to panic. Five days after Irtex’s death, the sky clear and the stars cold and distant, Rowan spent hours in the dark, calling a new child’s name over and over – Iona, Iona, Iona – until the name became meaningless, all words became meaningless. Poor little Iona: stolen in the dusk after she slipped out against her mother’s orders, to find her kitten.
All week, children had been locked inside from afternoon to bright morning light. But then the hag became bolder. Scratch marks had been found on shutters she had tried to open from the outside. One child had glimpsed her hiding in a hen house, waiting for the twilight. Adults, however, did not see her; not the worried mothers nor the protective fathers, not the bands of warriors Heath sent out every evening to hunt her. Finally, pets had started to go missing during the day, only to reappear whining or miaowing outside houses in the dusk.
Iona, who loved her new kitten, had been too young to understand the warnings and her mother, distracted by newborn twins, had not heard her slip out. She was found warm but dead as the first light of dawn broke on the horizon.
Rowan heard rain when she woke. She lay there a long while, eyes still closed, listening. Horror and guilt returned to her fresh and cold. She had let the hag in; now two children were dead.
The door to her bower opened and Heath’s voice boomed in. ‘Training.’
Training. In rain and mud and dread.
‘I will be up soon,’ she muttered.
‘Up now,’ he replied as he closed the door behind him.
Rowan didn’t tell him she didn’t feel like training, not with another innocent’s death on her conscience. Her fear of being blamed and losing her ability to someday lead the Moonhorn tribe made her silent. She rose and dressed in trousers and tunic, plaited her long hair.
Heath was sitting by the fire, eating a bowl of porridge. Rowan sat next to him, but couldn’t bring herself to eat.
‘Not hungry?’
She shook her head, almost said she was unwell so she could stay home; but she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts al
l day.
‘A warrior needs to eat.’
‘I’ll eat later,’ she said, pulling on her boots.
The clouds sat low over Druimach. Rowan could taste the mist on her lips. She followed Heath down over wet grass and slippery leaf-fall, out under the wooden arch to town and down to the training field in the misting drizzle. Soldiers were gathered, stamping their feet and rubbing their arms against the cold. As others arrived, Rowan led them in a warm-up, while Heath set up targets for spear practice. The mist didn’t disperse but the sun came out beyond it, sending pale yellow light across the wet field. As soldiers ran up and down, throwing and then fetching their spears, their boots churning up cold mud. Rowan was part of the exercise, running up and back. She enjoyed spear practice much more than sword practice but she did not excel at it the way she excelled at archery – she liked to be a long way from her enemy. Rowan worked hard, heart pumping and lungs raw in the cold air, keeping her focus on anything but her problems. The dark dread. The hag.
But then, about two hours into training, she caught the flap of a black cloak at the corner of her eye.
Everything stopped around her. She froze. Her eyes realised a long time before her brain did that it was simply the innkeeper’s wife collecting parsley at the edge of the field, but she was incapacitated for long enough that another of the soldiers ran into her, shoving her into the mud. Then he tripped on her, and the other soldiers started shouting and stumbling over each other in trying to pull up.
Heath strode over. Rowan assumed he would offer her a helping hand and some words of comfort, but instead he shouted, ‘Keep your mind on what you’re doing, thoughtless child!’
Child.
A range of emotions moved through her. Guilt. Anger. Even understanding: Heath was as worried about the safety of the village as she was. But the thing that stood out the most was shame. Her face flamed with it. He had treated her like a fool, in front of everyone. In front of the army she one day sought to lead.
Wordlessly, Rowan climbed to her feet.
Perhaps she was too angry to be wise.
Heath’s humiliation of her, her own exhaustion and dread: perhaps they wore off the edges of her good sense. Because she knew what she did was wrong, even if it seemed the very best solution.
She arrived home earlier than Heath, who stayed back to sort out a problem among a group of his weaker swordsmen. Afternoon light was still bright, and Rowan washed off the mud and pulled on fresh clothes, and busied herself cutting up turnips and carrots for a stew. When Heath still hadn’t arrived by the time the shadows outside were growing long, she became irrationally furious with him. Had he left all the afternoon’s housework to her? Did he simply assume she would take care of the food and the sweeping and the fire while he was out among his men, deciding and commanding and making things happen in the world? As if she was nothing? As if she was nobody?
He had no idea. He had no idea how powerful she was.
She slammed out of the house to fetch more fuel for the fire from the rough wooden box. Already the village had gone quiet, as parents drew their children inside and blocked doors and shutters. Rowan took a moment to breathe in the crisp air. Heath would be at the alehouse by now, no doubt drinking the ridiculously strong Ærfolc beer and regaling the childless, who were the only ones to venture out, with stories of his exaggerated brilliance. Rowan thought about the way he stood – his legs always a little too far apart as if his bollocks were too big for comfort – and it made her wild with crazy rage. She hated him tonight. Hated him.
Then she heard the sound of little footsteps, and a tremulous voice calling, ‘Mama?’
In an instant, Rowan’s blood was alive with heat. She dropped the wood and ran, scooped up a little girl of about two with wild curly hair, who was heading towards the edge of the town.
‘You mustn’t!’ she said.
‘Mama!’ the little girl wailed.
‘Come inside.’
Rowan carried the child to the house and kicked the door closed behind her. She deposited the little girl by the fire and crouched in front of her.
‘What is your name?’
‘Mama gone.’
Ice crawled down Rowan’s spine. Was this the hag’s new trick? Instead of making puppies and kittens disappear, was she now making parents disappear?
‘I’ll find your mama. But you have to tell me your name.’
The little girl sniffed. ‘Maewyn.’
‘When did you last see your mama, Maewyn?’
‘Mama gone.’
‘Do you have a papa?’
Maewyn shook her head.
‘Brothers? Sisters?’
Again the shake of her head.
Rowan closed her eyes. She had to act fast. She didn’t want to endure another night of searching through muddy woodland, only to be greeted with death in the morning. The hag was bold and clever and needed to be finished off. But could such a thing be killed?
If she hadn’t been so angry she might have gone to find Heath and asked for his advice, but she was so tired of his advice. He knew no more than she did; he simply had the authority to believe everything he said was right.
Then the idea glimmered in her mind: she didn’t have to kill the hag; she could banish her back to the other side of the crossing where she had come from before Rowan had unwittingly released her.
To do that, Rowan had to lure her to the crossing.
She looked at Maewyn, and knew what she had to do.
Rowan gripped the little girl’s hand as tightly as she could without breaking the child’s bones. Buoyed by the promise of finding her mama, but only if she did exactly as she was told, Maewyn had become perfectly compliant. Rowan’s heart thudded so hard that she swore it made her ribs jump. She had slung her bow and quiver over her right shoulder. Sure-footed on the slippery leaf-fall, Rowan took the little girl down to the sacred grove, past the stone markers and into the circle. Here, she sat Maewyn on one of the flat rocks and crouched in front of her.
‘You want to get your mama back?’
The little girl nodded fervently.
‘How still and quiet can you be?’
A puzzled look came over her face.
‘I need you to sit still and quiet with your eyes closed for as long as you possibly can. And if you start to think you want to open your eyes or move away from this very spot –’ Rowan patted the rock with her open palm, ‘– you must remember that Mama is missing, and I am trying to save her for you.’
Maewyn immediately screwed her eyes shut, shifted about so that her hands were under her thighs, and went very still.
Rowan’s heart thudded. She could not fuck this up. She glanced around. Twilight. The hag would be hunting.
Rowan rubbed the girl’s knee and said, ‘I am very close by. Sit here quietly and whatever you do, don’t open your eyes.’
A little nod, then Rowan backed away among the hazel trees, crouching behind saplings, her feet sinking into the mud.
Rowan prepared herself for an unbearable wait. A minute passed and already Maewyn was wriggling herself into a more comfortable position. Every muscle in Rowan’s body was ready to snap forward. She took a deep breath.
Then the gloaming hag appeared, not two minutes after Rowan had left out the bait. She emerged from among the trees opposite, head up as if sniffing the child on the cold twilit breeze. Rowan held back: she didn’t want the hag to run and hide in the wood. She needed her a little closer to Maewyn.
The hag approached, dropped onto all fours. In the dusky light, Rowan could see her face and it made all her ribs shudder with chill horror. Age beyond measure. As the hag approached Maewyn and sniffed at her, Rowan thought she could see years disappear from her face. It was already starting. She was already siphoning the little girl’s youth and vitality.
Rowan loaded her bow without hesitation. Silent and swift the arrow flew across the clearing, lodging itself in the top of the hag’s shoulder. She fell back on her haunches with a sh
out of pain. Maewyn opened her eyes and began to scream. The hag reached for the child and Rowan shouted, ‘Run, Maewyn!’
The hag tried to climb to her feet, but Rowan was quick. She ran, kicked the hag over, and stood above her with a foot on her chest, arrow loaded and aimed at her heart.
The gloaming hag smiled. ‘You can’t kill me, I am already dead.’
‘I don’t want to kill you. I want to send you back where you belong.’ Rowan let the arrow go. With a satisfying noise, it lodged itself in the gloaming hag’s chest. Blood, black in the twilight, bubbled out. Rowan dropped her bow and dragged the hag – her breathing laboured, clutching at her wound – to the centre of the circle.
Rowan leaned down and ripped the woman’s black cloak off her, opened the crossing and kicked her body to the other side of the wood. Then the crossing snapped shut and the gloaming hag was gone.
‘Maewyn?’ she called. ‘Maewyn?’
The little girl edged out from behind a tree. Rowan draped the hag’s cloak over one arm and scooped up the child with the other. ‘Let’s find your mama.’
When Rowan returned to the village square, bespattered with the hag’s blood and leading a terrified Maewyn and her mother out of the woods, Heath was already assembling a squad to hunt for them. Half the army was there – the army Heath had embarrassed her in front of that morning.
Rowan saw the relief cross Heath’s face in the light of his flaming torch, but she saw that relief change to something else too when she held up the hag’s cloak and said, ‘I finished her.’
The cheers that went up then were deafening. Doors opened, people emerged clutching their children against them. The word moved quickly between them. Rowan had defeated the gloaming hag, had saved little Maewyn and found her mother tied up in the woods with rope stolen from Heath’s own armoury. One by one, or sometimes in large groups of hot bodies, the villagers thanked Rowan with slaps and hugs and sincere eyes. Finally, as the innkeeper was bringing a table and jugs of beer to the village square and a group of men lit a bonfire and an impromptu celebration was had as the hag’s cloak burned, Heath approached her.
