by Blake, Laila
“Tell me about the girl again,” he huffed, as he twitched with nervous energy. At home, he was given to pacing when he was angry and concentrating. The two steps this way and two steps that, which he had at his disposal here, would hardly relieve that need.
“I have told you all I know,” the witch insisted, as she patiently ran the comb through the hair of the girl, who stared at the young nobleman with large, liquid eyes. He didn’t like it and after a moment’s hesitation, tossed the girl a coin.
“Go get my horse some water,” he ordered and the girl rose to her feet with uncanny grace, picked up the coin without letting her eyes stray from his face and finally left the room. The young man shuddered.
“Tell me how I can make her agree to it, then,” he got out impatiently once they had their privacy. His eyes turned back to the old woman whose predictions he had come to put a certain tacit amount of faith in, and finally he dropped down on a chair.
“What happened today?” Iris asked, not unkindly, as she cleaned the comb, and then her hands. She rose from the low seat to potter around with a kettle.
“I just … I simply can’t seem to gain the king’s favor,” he got out in a rush of frustrated honesty. “Whatever I do, he doesn’t take any notice. He just watches and cheers on some of the other bloody sycophants!”
The old woman poked at the fire in the cast-iron stove and then turned around to him with a low shrug.
“People find it easier to flatter those beneath them, sir,” she said.
It took him only a moment to understand and it made him shake his head wearily, but not without a trace of satisfaction.
“That’s treason,” he replied with a sigh, looking bored while the old woman shrugged. He was a good hunter, one of the best in the party and he was known for his favorable looks all over court. With his blond hair waving in the wind, sky-blue eyes and noble features, the young Sir Fairester outshone many. There was a grace in his masculinity that few possessed and he knew how to use it to his advantage with women and men alike.
He untied the hare from his belt and tossed it onto a table. Not unlike the king, he was not averse to flattery.
“The point is,” he continued, “he won’t ever grant me my own lands or title. So … we have to go back to the girl. She wasn’t that ugly. Strange, but not ugly.” He sighed again and ran his hand through his blond hair. “I hardly even have to see her once we’re married. So tell me; you said you know. How do I make her mine?”
There was shame in that question. A man who had little difficulty seducing almost any woman at court had fallen short with that particular cold fish. Maybe it was the mountains or the colder climate in the east, but he didn’t think she’d even smiled at him once.
“You paid me for revealing your most likely path to greatness, Sir,” Iris crooned, lifting one strange little flagon to her eyes, inspecting its content before she reached for another. Letting him wait, she finally met his eyes again and cocked her head to the side.
In that moment, the little girl entered again. Her feet were bare and dirty and she smelled of hay.
“Keep her away from me,” Fairester sneered with mild distaste. “You want more payment, then?”
“I would never … young sir. But wooing a woman; there is no one way, no one potion. I cannot do it from here … ”
The little girl smiled and sank onto the leather pouf in the corner, as she watched the proceedings with the same quiet focus that had made the young man so uncomfortable before. Already he wanted to leave again.
“You want to come with me,” he stated as he eyed the witch. “You want employment.” Considering her living conditions, he couldn’t blame her. Even the lowest seemed to have a desire to better themselves. “All right. You will wash, and I will send someone with robes. You can come as my adviser.”
“Sir is too kind.”
“Keep the rabbit,” he said, getting up from the chair with another sweeping glance around the shabby little room. He reached into his pocket, placed two smaller coins onto the table and put his purse safely away again. “I will send word when I know more about the departure.”
Before he hurried outside and with his hand on the door, he looked back, his eyes darkening.
“You had better do your part, witch, or you might find the sharp end of my generosity. Understood?”
When the woman nodded and bowed, he left with a feeling of satisfaction. The old wooden stairs creaked as he hurried down to find his horse brushed and watered, and happily munching on some hay. He patted the stallion and then mounted, a head full of plans and strategies as he gave the animal’s flanks the sharp ends of his boots.
At that moment, a lithe little form melted out of the shadows at the other side of the road, smiling, as she set to follow him through the narrow streets.
• • •
Back inside, the little girl slipped off the pouf to kneel back in her original position. Silently, she waited until the wizened woman brought back the comb and the bowl with the sharp-smelling liquid. Unmoving and with her hands resting on her thighs, her eyes scanned the room; the door, the place where the man had settled down, the dead hare he had slapped onto the table, even the places on the ground where his feet had stood.
Moving more slowly than the girl, Iris finally sat back down, placed the bowl on the low shelf to her side and dunked the comb into the liquid. She picked back up where they had been interrupted. Her hands were efficient and gentle as she scraped the comb’s teeth over the girl’s scalp, trapping the tiny vermin eggs. The domestic scene was not interrupted by tears or complaints. The girl simply sat, her large, liquid eyes finally closed as she turned her head this way and that at the old woman’s tugs and gentle pushes.
“It worked, then,” the girl finally said, not moving to look up.
“So it would seem.”
They both fell silent, with only the scraping of the comb and the soft wet noise of fingers being dunked in liquid every now and again. Night was falling outside and the noises of the city began to quiet down, exchanged for the more domestic sounds from the floor below them and the surrounding houses.
“He is not very nice, is he?” the strange child finally said again, wrapping her skinny little arms around her knees so that she could look down at her dirty feet and wriggle her toes.
“He is who I have,” came the response. Quiet, impatient. “Are you staying for supper? It appears I am cooking rabbit.”
The girl wrinkled her nose and shrugged, but she didn’t make a move to leave when Iris put the comb away and got up to inspect the animal she had been given. It was fat enough, old and likely not as tender as it could have been, but it was a gift and a free meal. She efficiently slid her knife along the furry belly as she started to skin it.
“He only cares about the title … ” the girl finally said again, as she watched the woman’s hands, red with the specks of blood where the skin didn’t come off cleanly. She seemed somewhat hypnotized by the effect, by the breakable little bits of flesh and skin that parted a living thing from a dead thing.
She only looked up when the woman’s hands stilled and she realized that she was being stared at. She lifted her eyes to meet the woman’s head-on and without apparent shyness or fear.
“I am not trying to find that girl some childish ideal of a husband,” Iris offered in a clipped voice that crackled with age and frustration. “It is not up to me to make her happy. That’s not on me, Maeve.”
The girl Maeve stared back and narrowed her eyes in warning. After a long moment, the old woman looked away first, back down at the half-skinned carcass.
“He is who I have,” Iris finally repeated with a shrug. “And you — you have been here for too long if you start picking up vermin like some human. Since when is that safe, then?”
Again, the girl only offered the o
ld woman a glance that might have made the hairs rise on anybody else’s back, but the experienced witch just paused the knife and raised her brows, unimpressed.
“What?” Iris asked the girl.
“You don’t have any love for her?” Maeve had gotten to her small, dirt-specked feet and leaned against the table. Her tender little fingers moved to Iris’ arm and the old woman didn’t pull away.
“No,” Iris answered quietly. “And don’t look at me like that. You call her my sister but you’ve never let me meet her, so … don’t put that on me. You have no right — you know that — no right to call yourself mother to either of us.”
Maeve looked stricken. A heartbeat later, she nodded but her eyes had lost none of the silent demand. Iris was used to it — but it would never stop feeling entirely too strange to see a child’s face with her mother’s ancient expression. Caught in a stalemate, they both fell silent, listening to the harsh sounds of the knife parting flesh from bones.
• • •
Devali was fast. Her legs were short but muscular and in the busy evening hours, she had an easy advantage against a horse. Fairester was easy to follow back to his family’s city estate; a large house and well protected. Devali, however, didn’t mean to attack anyone. She just swished her skirts and walked up the servant’s entrance.
However much the head of staff had meant to send her away, by the time she leaned against the doorframe in a way that ever so accidentally exposed the sliver of skin between her tight blouse and her skirts, he had forgotten all about that. Devali was given fine maid’s garb and by the next day, had secured the job of knocking at the young lord’s chambers at night to take him that last drink he’d rung for.
Niamh had been right. Humans were easy. So very easy.
Chapter Two
A robin was chirping its song across the white-blue pre-dawn light. Mist was rising from the ground, damp and crisp and only just reaching the lowest branches of the apple trees. Dew turned spider webs into intricate jewelry, too delicate to touch.
A young woman stood on a field, her eyes closed as she breathed in the cool morning air that had left infinitesimal drops of water in her crown of messy red hair. Fresh and perfect, she could imagine herself soaking it up, drawing it inside of her as though she could store freedom like food or drink or knowledge.
It was too late to hide; she could hear them coming. Horns sounding in the distance, the hard drumming of iron-clad hoofs, tearing into the damp morning earth. The occasional shout or command was still the only human sound heard in the waking world where pantlers and chambermaids, butlers and stewards were just stretching their limbs against the breaking morning, rousing themselves before the bustle of activities their long, hard days held in store. Outside the castle, however, the voices and shouts were an unwelcome and jarring intrusion in an otherwise silent world.
Standing on a rough dirt road between one of the Rochmond’s famed apple orchards and the little brook that bubbled down from the near forest and into the fabled Lake Coru, the young woman remained still as the horses drew closer and the shouting ceased. When the horses came to a halt in front of her, forming a vague crescent, their hoofs flung flecks of dirt through the air. As she lifted her hand to her cheek to wipe one away, her eyes finally focused on the captain of the guard jumping off his horse.
“Milady,” he uttered, as he bowed low and stiff. He took in the sight of her white nightgown, its hem stained with dirt and dew, rough leather boots sneaking out from under the ruined fabric.
“I don’t remember inviting you to my morning walk, Sir Clifton.” It was the calm voice of someone who had been awake for hours, alone and at peace, before being interrupted, but not surprised. She finally gestured the man to stand up straight, wrapping her white arms around her chest in an effort to establish a hint of decorum. She suddenly felt the crispness in the air a lot more now that it was laced with voices, the smell of horses, the sight of men in coats. A night alone, completely alone in nature had grounded her, but the discomfort crept into her body with every passing moment, every glance, every sound.
“Milady was not in her chambers when my Lord Rochmond noticed her absence,” the captain explained, his voice involuntarily rougher to fight the onset of embarrassment. She was hardly dressed to receive a gentleman, much less to be standing surrounded by six rough-and-tumble men of his guard.
“And he sent you to slap me in irons?” she asked, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly. “Tie me to your horse, captain, and drag me back?”
The captain could not hold her gaze. It would have been shockingly impertinent, especially considering her state of undress. But more so, she had the dark innocence of a hurt child that shone through any bitter and condescending superiority she might throw between the strong man and her feeble woman’s body. It was disconcerting and in the rising mist, between bird-song and the whispering brook, she held an eerie quality that wasn’t quite as noticeable when hair was braided and coiled, when she was dressed in heavy, embroidered fabrics, walking the warren of passages and hallways of her father’s castle. If a woman was to talk back, the captain pictured haggling fishermen’s wives and shrieking old hags. The collected and quiet irony of the girl in front of him went through him like a knife, with her witch’s hair and piercingly calm eyes that contrasted so strangely with her shaking hands. She tried to hide it, but Frederick Clifton had seen it many times.
“His lordship was worried for milady’s safety,” he finally brought out. Stiffly, he tore open the shiny buttons of his coat, slipped it off and held it out to her. When she took it, it was more for the sake of his discomfort than her own and she swung it over her shoulder with a carefully trained careless gesture. It hung down over her knees; the grotesque image made her look even more like a child; a wrong child, somehow.
It was a game to her, he thought, a game in which she held no stake but that might leave him whipped or expelled from his Lord’s service. A child still; precious and indulged.
“Lenner, ready your horse for Lady Rochmond.”
As if on cue, the youngest member of the guard led his brown stallion into the semicircle and unfastened his saddle. The men were pointedly not staring at the girl, who looked so little like their lady that the deep trench between their classes blurred. The horse, picking up on the tension, nervously perked up its ears, trying to move until a second member of the guard closed a strong hand around its reins.
Sir Clifton cleared his throat and the young woman looked up again. She didn’t fight them, nor did she deign them with another comment until the sidesaddle they had carried along was in place.
She uttered a careless “Thank you,” to the boy who would have to walk home and who offered her his interlocked palms as a mounting block, and then hoisted herself up onto the horse, leaving a dark smudge of mud on the boy’s hands.
She would have preferred walking back by herself, but she had been found and she could do without the dubious pleasure of being ordered around like a child by an aging soldier. She had endured enough humiliation for one morning.
Clicking her tongue, she fastened her hold on the reins, turned the horse and then rode ahead of the men back toward the castle, hoofs still much too noisy in the misty morning air and her mind already buzzing, her chest already aching again.
• • •
“You promised, Moira.”
Lord Rochmond was standing in the drafty entrance foyer of the castle, his short salt-and-pepper hair still ruffled with sleep, but his eyes alert and angry. He had his arms folded across his chest as he took her in; her muddy nightgown, the rough coat that certainly didn’t belong to her, the dirty shoes. She smelled of earth and horse. He exhaled a deep sigh and shook his head.
“Thank you, Sir Clifton. That will be all.”
Once the captain was dismissed, Moira’s hands unclasped and the coat fell open. She shive
red a little. Her face still carried traces of that lush roundness of a child but she didn’t look like one at all with the dark circles under her eyes and the almost translucent pallor of her skin. Neither did she look embarrassed or apologetic.
“I did not promise,” she said quietly, only now meeting her father’s eyes. He was an intimidating man, broad and tall, strands of grey in his dark hair and his bushy eyebrows. “I agreed to try and limit my walks to the confines of the castle. And I did try. But there were guards in the courtyard.” Her voice petered out when she finished, she knew it was the kind of explanation that only made sense to her — the idea that sometimes, just the small sound of someone breathing so close, the creak of a leather boot, the metallic clack of a sword being moved in its sheath, could make her skin feel like it was attacked by a swarm of little insects, crawling and tickling until she wanted to scream. How could that make sense to anyone?
As expected, the aging lord uttered an audible sigh and held out his arm to gesture her inside. The discussion was far from over, but it was cold and she needed to get dressed. The entry foyer was no place to chastise a lady.
“Try harder,” he grunted as he followed her into the hall and up a narrow staircase toward her chambers. “You are acting like a little girl. You’re a woman now, with appearances to uphold.”
It was his own fault, he knew. Moira was his only child. Girl or no girl, unusual or not; he had never been able to deny her much of anything. She had grown from that strange but beautiful little girl into the young woman that was walking next to him so fast, he had never really found a way to adjust the way he felt about her or treated her. He reminded himself often, that it wasn’t wrong to dote upon one’s daughter but just as often, she acted in one of those odd ways of hers and reminded him that something had to change. Her sojourns weren’t safe; the rumors that were beginning to spread about her could harm her and she really had to start considering marriage to one of the suitors who came to the Bramble Keep from time to time, searching for a profitable wife.
