Against a Darkening Sky

by Lauren B. Davis

  He’s a poor dissembler. Whatever Caelin thinks of her, the quality of her heart does not concern him. She scans the stains and muck on his tunic.

  “I’m horrible, am I not? But I can’t keep up no matter how I try.” He looks around the hall. “It happened so quickly. I don’t know what we’ve done to so displease God.”

  Although Wilona could easily tell him what he’s done, instead she says, “I need water, and lots of it, to boil the herbs. And you must get slaves to clean away the filth. Burn the discarded bedding outside. Squalor darkens the spirit.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  It’s remarkable the way he defers to her.

  “You, girl!” Wilona grabs the sleeve of a slave carrying an armload of soiled cloths. “When you’re done with that, get apples and make juice, as much as you can. If there are any browned apples lying about, use them first, and cut the rest and leave them until they brown and add some pulp in the juice. Have the mothers give it to their children. They must drink.” The girl skitters away, nodding her head. “Is there a pattern?” Wilona turns back to Egan. “Were they in a group? Was there a feast? Some way for them to be elf-shot at once?”

  “Not that I know of. Many of the women were at the river, washing clothes yesterday. The children with them, I suppose.”

  “No mind. What’s done is done.” She points at the braziers. “What are you burning?”

  “Angelica mostly, mixed with pine resin and bay laurel.”

  She raises an eyebrow. It won’t do to let him see her surprise that he knows such things. “We’ve work to do. Tidy yourself, and then come back and help me. And open the windows and doors before I start vomiting myself. We’re safe from airborne venoms until the sun goes down. Did they teach you nothing in that monastery?”

  She goes from patient to patient with authority, determining who’s in most need of help. The children are the worst, and two small boys barely respond when she pinches the back of their hands. The skin tents up like that of a dried-out old woman. “Give them water, until you have juice, and then juice, by the spoonful if you must, but give them a full jug each, right away,” she says to their mothers, Begila and Sunild. An old man she recognizes as one of the shepherds lies still as stone, a puddle of bloody feces around his bed. What is his name? Ulfrid? Ulfric? Ulger. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Ulger?” He doesn’t blink and his mouth hangs open, although he barely breathes, revealing a swollen, woolly tongue. Wilona puts her palm on his forehead and says the charm for the dying.

  Lady Elfhild lies two pallets over, just on the other side of the tapestry, her golden hair matted and her skin fish-belly white, stretched across her high cheekbones. Her lips are cracked and bleeding, and she gazes up at Wilona with glazed, sunken eyes. She lifts her small hand and takes hold of Wilona’s tunic.

  “I’m thirsty,” she whispers.

  Wilona calls out to a slave carrying water. “Bring that here,” she says, taking a cup. “Why are you here, Lady, and not in your quarters?”

  “My daughter, my husband,” she says softly. “And the people …”

  Wilona nods. She wants both to protect her child and Lord Caelin and to show the people she’s no more important, in this time of peril, than they are. Wilona thinks more of the woman for it. “Are you vomiting?” When Elfhild shakes her head, Wilona holds the cup to her lips and uses her arm to support her head. Elfhild drinks with her eyes closed.

  When she has drained the cup she grabs Wilona’s hand. “There’s something else.” Her other hand goes to her belly.

  “How far along?”

  “Three moons.” She must notice Wilona’s look, for she says, “My lord, Caelin, returned only briefly, and Margawn wasn’t with him.”

  “I’ll fashion a special charm for you, if your husband doesn’t forbid it.”

  “You are good.” Elfhild holds Wilona’s wrist. “I’ve always said so.”

  “You’ve been a friend, Lady.” Wilona hands the cup back to the slave and tells her to keep giving fluid to all who can drink, and after the juice, to give clear broth.

  “Go to them,” says Elfhild.

  Wilona nods and makes the signs of protection in the air above the lady.

  Roswitha is pale, and her face is damp with sweat, although her teeth are chattering. Next to her pallet is a bucket half filled with slop. Putrid, to be sure, but there’s no sign of blood. “Any bleeding?”

  Roswitha shakes her head. “Oh, but the cramps are terrible.”

  “But you can get up to use the bucket, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” She holds her hand. “You’re not so bad. You’ll be back with your husband and child in no time.”

  “Do you promise?” Roswitha’s nails dig into Wilona’s arm.

  Wilona looks at the woman’s innocent, round face. How hurt Wilona had been when she wasn’t asked to attend the birth of the new baby. A small, feral, cramped, and slinking part of her would like to inflict a little of that hurt back. Roswitha’s eyes widen, her bottom lip trembles slightly, and then she’s overtaken with chattering again. Wilona disentangles her hand from Roswitha’s. “I promise,” she says.

  As she passes down the line of pallets, she notes that old Ulger’s spirit is no longer among them. She pulls a cloth over his face, and the woman sitting watch over her child next to the body gasps. A male slave hunkers near the fire, trying to stay within the protection of the smoke. “You there!” Wilona snaps her fingers. “Wrap this body.” She looks around for Egan and beckons him. “Where did you put the bodies of Hiroc and the child, Aylild’s child?”

  He looks past her and sees the shepherd’s motionless form. He falls to his knees beside the bed, making the sign of the cross. “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

  “Pray later, priest, we’ve work to do now.”

  He turns to her, and she draws back from the pain in his eyes. Can he care as much about this low-born shepherd, barely more than a slave, as he did for Dunstan’s malformed son?

  “A moment, Sister. Evil must stand aside while I pray for this man’s soul.”

  “When it suits you then, have the body placed with the others. It does the sick no good to rest among the dead. Tends to make one lose hope, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “We are in God’s hands, Sister.” He closes his eyes and lays his hands on the man’s chest. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei …”

  She leaves him to it, and enlists another servant into organizing the herbs and roots, tinctures, and decoctions. Within the hour, the hall has quieted and the air is less foul. Once the medicines are ready she goes from pallet to pallet, deciding which remedy to use. Even though Egan follows behind her, she makes the sign of the healing, protective rune uruz above every head. Each patient drinks the bitter brews of oak bark, bilberry, meadowsweet, and strawberry leaves. She sings the sacred song against elf-arrows:

  “Out, little spear, if you are here!

  I stood under the yew, under a shield of moonlight,

  Where the mighty women gather their strength.

  Out little spear, if you are here!

  If there is anything here shot in the blood,

  Or shot in a limb, may your life never be harmed;

  If it was the shot of elves,

  I will help you now.

  This to cure you of elf-shot,

  I will help you.

  Be you whole, may the Goddess help you.”

  Egan follows her, intoning his own prayers. “Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum …” He sprinkles them with water from the holy well and makes the sign of the cross. She wishes he would stop, fearing one action will cancel out the other, but she has no authority over him. If he intends to mitigate her power, she will in turn mitigate his.

  “Seithkona!”

  She knows the booming voice immediately. Lord Caelin is standing by Lady El
fhild’s pallet. Wilona places her hands on her hips. He called for her, asked for her help. He needs her; let him treat her with respect. She raises her chin. She’s not quite as defiant as she pretends, but she’ll not admit that. “My lord, I’m pleased to see you well.”

  He strides toward her, slaves and servants scattering from his path. When he stands before her, glaring down, it’s all she can do to keep her spine straight. She imagines a span of brown wings above her, and there, the soft sweep of feathers …

  Caelin’s voice is like the growl of a cornered badger. “I warn you, girl, it won’t go well with you if my wife dies.”

  Perhaps it is Raedwyn’s influence, but for an instant she sees past Caelin’s bared teeth and claws to his heart. He loves his wife and is afraid of his powerlessness. She puts her hand on his arm and he glances at it in something very much like shock. “I will do everything, everything, I can, use every scrap of my skill and knowledge to serve you and the lady, Lord Caelin. I am, as ever, bound by my honour and my affection.” Let him take that any way he wishes. “And now, let me work, my lord. There’s much to do.”

  “Get on with it, then,” he mumbles, but the rage has left him.

  Wilona cannot help but believe the spirits are softening him. They are mysterious, intervening here but not there, now but not then. “We’re in the hands of the gods, in the web of wyrd.” She turns away without waiting for a response.

  Ricbert is lying down when she reaches him, the last in the line.

  “Drink this.” She hands him a cup of the medicinal tea, full to the brim. “All of it, and I’ll leave more. You must drink until it’s all gone.”

  He grimaces at the taste. “I think I might be ready to die.”

  “If you can make jokes, I’m quite sure you will not.” She looks in the bucket. Yellowish, not red, and with a little solid matter. Good. It takes him several more attempts to drink the brew and he gags. “Oh, be brave, my lord!”

  He looks up, his expression tired and wry. “I always said you were a dangerous woman.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she says. “Wait until you see the bland food I will make you eat for the next week.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever eat again.” He pats her hand. “We’re grateful. And I’ll say so to Lord Caelin when I can. He’ll be in your debt when Elfhild’s well again—”

  “The gods willing,” interjects Wilona.

  “Then perhaps even I will pray,” he says, and smiles weakly.

  As she ministers to the ill, Wilona feels the room shift and shimmer; she sees small pinpricks of light here and there in the corners, some bright white, some reddish dark. Above her is the flutter of wing and feather, the smell of the heather, the gorse-dappled moors on a star-bright night. She watches the faces of the ill, looking for strange smiles, or oddly tilted eyes, or any expression of pleasure, all of which indicate an evil elf has taken hold. When she passes by Aelfric a chill runs through her, for surely that wide, twisted smile means he’s been overtaken by dark elves. He spasms, rounds his back, and a noise like a clap of thunder explodes, releasing a toxic cloud. He sinks back on his pallet, the look on his face an almost humorous mixture of pride and relief.

  “I think you’ll live, Aelfric, but you may kill the rest of us.”

  And on and on, as the day slides into evening. The doors and windows are sealed against those evil things that make use of the darkness. She prays and gives medicine, cleans up the filth and gives medicine, prays … One by one the ill fall into sleep, some more fitful than others. By daybreak it’s clear no one else will die, and the dark elves are banished back to their own land.

  In the morning the servants throw the windows and doors open to a new day, and let in the waiting friends and families. Wilona, packing up her now-diminished stores of herbs and roots, watches Dunstan rush in, the baby in his arm, to find Roswitha. Ricbert is resting on his side, sleeping peacefully. Now that the tide has turned, Lady Elfhild has returned to her private chambers.

  Egan appears beside Wilona and takes her hands in both of his. “I’ve no idea what I would have done without you, Sister. Surely God has, once again, sent you to me.”

  The monk took her hands like this the day they buried Touilt. Whatever makes him think he has the right? She feels as though she’s been run through the bramble with a hundred-pound rock tied to her ankles.

  “And tell me, had it gone otherwise, had the gods decided many would die, would you still have been grateful for my help?”

  He looks as if he’s been struck and flushes. “You think I would have blamed you?”

  “It occurred to me, and Lord Caelin was quite clear on the matter.”

  Shockingly, his strange eyes are watering. “Lord Caelin says you will receive reward for what you’ve done! But, if you felt this way, then why, dear sister, did you come?”

  It is a fair enough question. And as she opens her mouth to speak she realizes she’s not entirely sure. “I care for these people. They were mine before they were yours. I’ve known them most of my life. Do I seem so fickle?”

  Egan presses his palms together beneath his chin. “I think you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met. I would not have blamed you. I hope you believe that. Not only do I think you’re a good person, but I have such faith in the Lord Jesus that, had the sickness overcome us, I would know it to be God’s will, more mysterious than I can understand, and often painful, but His will nonetheless. I would know we didn’t walk in sorrow unaccompanied, and I would take comfort in that, rather than seek to blame the innocent. The power of darkness cannot be denied, but I trust God more than I fear the devil, and I see no evidence of darkness in you, Sister Wilona. I thought you knew that.”

  “Not all your loving brethren”—she sneers at the word—”have such visionary powers.”

  He hangs his head, and she goes back to her packing.

  “Sister Wilona, I know a little of your history,” he says after a moment. “How you came here haunted by visions of death, how your village was wiped out and you alone, by the grace of God, were spared.” He waits, as though expecting her to speak. When she doesn’t, he sighs. “I only mean to say, this must have been frightening for you—more for you than most. You have not only my gratitude, but my admiration. Pax tecum,” he says.

  Before she realizes what he is doing, he lets his hand hover over her head. She recoils, landing on the ground. “How have you cursed me, priest?” Faces turn toward them, startled, frightened, eager. Frantically, she makes the sign of Thunor’s hammer in the air between them.

  “No, no!” Egan says, kneeling beside her. “I only wished you peace, in the Latin tongue—peace be with you.”

  Her face flaming, she scrambles to her feet and throws the last of her things into her basket. As she stalks away, she turns back to him. “You keep your peace, and I’ll keep mine.”

  Outside, the bright promise of dawn has given way to a fine drizzle under a woolly grey sky. Wilona walks quickly, turning her face up now and then to let the warm rain wash over her, cleansing her of the smell of sickness, the rank fug of fear and feces. The air smells of damp grass and worms and earth. Some people greet her, no doubt wishing once again to be in her good favour. She ignores them, striding through the snickets, past the thatched huts, the gardens, workshops, the pigsties, the sheepfold, the meadow, until at last she comes to the river. She begins to run along the path until she’s a safe distance from the village and then stops. She strips off her muddy shoes, her tunic, and under-tunic and flings herself into the water.

  It strikes her body like cool silk, and she sighs. She floats for a while on her back, luxuriating in the feeling that the drizzly air and the river have become one, that there is no separation between that which is above and that which is below. She lets herself slide under the surface. She opens her eyes. The slippery green weeds ripple and bend; mud clouds puff up where her feet touch the bottom. Her hair slips loose from its braid and sways like the weeds. A school of little silver
fish dashes past. It would be so easy, so sweet, to live under the water, where everything is silent and fresh, away from the cry of human pain, away from the stench of human misery. How blissful to let the current pull and push her, free at last of all responsibility, all worry for tomorrow. Above her, at the surface, floats a patch of lily pads, and dangling from one are the long legs of a green frog. Silly, beautiful thing. Her lungs begin to ache and at last she must rise to the surface and breathe air again. Alas, alas …

  She paddles to the bank and grabs her clothes to rinse them out, since they’re wet already. When she’s washed away the last traces of illness, she gathers her things and slips the wet tunic over her head. She gathers twigs, hazel, oak, elm, willow, and tucks them in her basket.

  Before long she’s back at her cave, calming the joyous Bana. Later, with the pigs safe in the hut and the chickens in their coop, a nice fire built in the hearth, and a hare roasting on the spit, Wilona reclines on her bed of furs and reaches for a jug of plum wine. Her lips and tongue yearn for the sweet, warmth-giving nectar more and more often. Yet, with the jug halfway to her lips, something stops her. Egan’s hand hovering over her, and the strange words he muttered flash through her mind. She cannot afford to have her senses dulled. She cannot afford to drift into the tempting pool of forgetfulness. She replaces the stopper in the jug and puts it on the shelf.

  Wilona takes the twigs she gathered and holds them to the smoke. Seven times she says, “Turner be turned, burner be burned: let only good come out of this wood.” She spits on each twig, then breaks it, and casts the bits into the flames, where any curse Elfish Egan put on her will die with the fire.

  PART III

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The Month of Three Milkings

  Wilona walks up the mud-slick path toward her old home, Bana by her side. She rests her hand absent-mindedly on his back. She can no longer recall a time when Bana wasn’t with her. She smiles. Margawn was wiser than she gave him credit for, and she’ll have to admit that when he returns. She wishes there was some word from him. Longing for him gnaws at her like a hunger pain, and frequently she wakes up thinking he’s sleeping beside her, only to have her fingers reach for empty air.