Rhiannon
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
The Pilgrim Resumes His Journey
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2007 by Vicki Grove.
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for Mike, always
25 November, 1120 The White Ship
“The Prince went aboard the White Ship with one hundred and forty youthful nobles and ladies of the highest rank. All this gay company with their servants and the sailors made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship. ‘Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen,’ said the Prince, ‘to the fifty sailors of renown. My father the King has sailed. What time is there to make merry here and yet reach England with the rest?’ ‘Prince,’ said Fitz-Stephen, ‘if we sail at midnight, my fifty and the White Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in your father’s fleet by morning.’
“The Prince commanded them to make merry; and the sailors drank the three casks of wine; and the Prince and all the noble company danced in the moonlight on the deck of the White Ship. When at last she left the harbour there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were set, Fitz-Stephen at the helm. The gay young nobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of bright colours, laughed and sang. The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder, for the honour of the White Ship. Crash! A cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry the people in the vessels of the King heard faintly on the water. The White Ship had struck a rock. Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat. ‘Push off,’ he whispered, ‘and row to the land. The rest of us must die.’
“But as they rowed away from the sinking ship the Prince heard the voice of his half-sister calling to him. He cried, ‘Row back, I cannot leave her!’ As the Prince held out his arms to catch her, such numbers leaped in that the boat was overset. In that same instant the White Ship went down.
“Only one man survived to tell the tale—a butcher from Rouen. For three days no one dared to carry the news to the King; at length they sent into his presence a little boy who, weeping bitterly and kneeling at his feet, told him that the White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, and never afterwards was seen to smile.”
Charles Dickens, A Child’s History of England from William of Malmesbury (1085-1143)
A Wayfarer Meets a Dire End
Everyone knows that even the sunniest forest on the mildest of afternoons is filled with poison-toothed wild pig and ferocious packs of wolf. And some say that when one nears Wales there are other things lurking in the shadows as well, enchantments and the like left from faery days. Yet naturally some folk will venture the forest paths anyhow.
The young wayfarer was such a one. He was on a noble quest, and though after many days he’d found no trace of what he sought, neither had he come upon especial mischance. Until, that is, one nightfall found him fogged completely, adrift upon his steed as a sailor in a tossed boat, caught in that swirling brew that oft sneaks from the Welsh Sea and crawls up over the beachy land, right into the northern Wessex forests.
He soon enough lost the woodland track and could discern no stars for direction.
The last to talk to him, at least in this world, was a stout woman gathering firewood in that part of the forest. His horse reared at the sight of her rump as it suddenly loomed from the foggy swirl like some broad and not easily skirted boulder. She was bent over picking up branches, and for her part, she noted not the wayfarer’s approach and was some startled herself, as fog tends to mute sound, especially coming from behind.
“Sirrah!” the woman scolded when she’d heaved herself upright and turned to face him with her knuckles upon her substantial hips. “Have a care, if ye please! I’m some lame these days and would not be toppled to the ground by your stampeding mount!”
Well, his steed was picking the way, never stampeding, but the wayfarer was too relieved to see a human face to quibble with the rude manners of this common woman.
He dismounted and addressed her quite courteously in her own Saxon tongue.
“I beg you pardon me, madame, as I’m some lost.” He smiled sheepishly as he took a coin from his pouch. “Pray, can you direct me to the nearest settlement?”
The dame’s eyes widened and she reached for the coin, bit it, found it solid, and pocketed it. “You’re in luck, young sir, as Woethersly’s just some short distance,” she said coyly, holding forth her palm and leaving the direction open unless he’d buy it with a second coin. Her eyes then hit upon a small sparkle there upon his bosom. “I’d take that charm of yours for the information,” she suggested, reaching toward it.
He stepped quickly back, covering with two fingers the tiny silver pin that held his cloak together at the throat. “Good lady, I could never part with this shell, as it is a sacred token of my pilgrimage to the crypt where Saint James himself sleeps eternal.”
She raised her eyebrows, pulled in her lip, and crossed herself, some impresse
d.
“Go some twenty paces back the way ye’ve come and you’ll find the trail,” the stout dame instructed, jerking a thumb in that direction. “Go left on it. There’s only one fork from here to town. Go left at that fork to reach Woethersly, see? The right fork ye never want, as it crosses the common barley field outside the town, then goes through the river, then takes ye to the beach and straight up the invalid trail of Clodaghcombe Bluff!”
She knit her brow and clucked her tongue, but the wayfarer’s heart had taken a quick leap at that word invalid.
“Clodaghcombe Bluff, you say? And pray, what might be this . . . invalid trail?”
And now she looked at him as though he were a true dunce, as this is how some provincial folk view the stranger to their realm. “Surely ye know that just beyond Woethersly a great bluff rises straight up from the sea, nigh piercing the ivory floor of heaven itself? Oh, sir, surely everyone’s heard of high and steep Clodaghcombe Bluff!”
“I’ve never,” he said softly. “Tell me more.”
“Well, see, there’s a small stone church up there in those clouds,” she began. “ ’Twas built by some ancient hermit, hundreds of years past. And there’s some few cottages built in a circle close around that hermitage. And there’s three women what lives up there atop the bluff in one of those cottages. In fact, the eldest up there is a friend of mine from girlhood, Moira’s her name. The others are her daughter and granddaughter. They three are Welsh by descent, see. Moira tells it that she and her family’s first great-granddames were seabirds flown across the bay from Wales!”
“If you please,” he prodded softly, “I’d hear now of why you called the path up the bluff an invalid trail. Why that word, invalid?”
The dame threw up her hands. “Ha! And who else would take that blasted trail, I ask ye? None would for pleasure climb up the bluff.” She took time for a large sigh, then added, “Of course, if you’ve a helpless invalid or idiot on your hands, someone born witless or become crippled by injury or otherwise smitten by mischance or dire brainpox, well then, it alters the situation. In such conditions it’s well worth the risk of the hike to lug that poor soul up to them three women atop the bluff. The red-haired daughter’s the one what nurses, with the others to help. Moira, Aigneis, and dark-eyed Rhia. They three nest atop that crag and care for all hard cases handed off to them. The place is for dying, see, not for healing. What can be healed sweats it out here below. Why, I myself am gouty in the leg, with many blisters upon me as well, and when the heat comes, I—”
The wayfarer quickly remounted. “Good dame, I thank you again for your trouble, and now I must ride. But first I’d escort you safely home, if you’d like.”
With a pleased smile for the flattering offer, she waved that away. “Ach, and my own son is right here, working alongside me! He would not hear of me coming into such weathers alone, would ye, Arnold?” As she’d got no answer, she turned to peer into the fog behind her. “Arnold, show yourself!” she right out bellowed.
Some moments later a young man with muddy britches and a feathered hat came into view, scratching his stomach and dragging his heels.
Nodding coolly to the son, then more deeply and courteously to the mother, the wayfarer took his leave.
“Mind you stay left at the fork!” the dame called after him. Then she stooped to pick up the pile of sticks she’d gathered and thrust them roughly into her son’s limp arms.
“Would that you had such a care for your mother’s aches and miseries as that well-speaking stranger had,” she grumbled as she began the trudge back to their cottage.
“What’d he want?” the son asked, yawning large. “He looked rich to me.”
“He wanted a friendly chat,” she answered. “And direction to the town.”
“He better have paid you,” groused Arnold. “He better have paid, and well.”
The wayfarer took the right fork and crossed the common barley field in good order. There upon its far edge was some watermeadow, and then the River Woether flowed across the trail, just as the dame had told him it would. His horse easily stepped through, as the river’s ford was well marked by many centuries of crossings. Cold mist rose and curled thick above the fast-flowing river, joining with the fog from the choppy sea, which was quite nearby now. In fact, looking to the right, he perceived, at just a little distance, the eery glowing torchlight that marked the town’s quay. He could make out several boats moored there, and some movement upon the dock that sent the mist spiraling. At this time of night and on the edge of such wilderness, it was likely pirates were afoot.
The breeze brought a putrid smell from the beach that made him grimace.
He pulled his cloak closer and set his face toward the unknown forest ahead of him, as his destination was neither the sea on his right nor the town on his left. He was after the bluff trail, the invalid trail, and he tried to perceive the entrance to it through the murk.
He was all concentration, leaning forward in his saddle and squinting into the darkness, when he sensed a disturbance in the fog behind him. Tightening the reins of his steed, he clucked to his mount, meaning to turn and see what approached.
But he felt a sudden astonishing pain, and all before his eyes went red, then black.
Reeve Almund Clap, chief overseer of Lord Claredemont’s lands, had taken up the habit of making rounds right at first dawn after foggy nights. And so it was he who first came upon the body of a young stranger lying in the shallows of the River Woether not far from the quay. The pale corpse moved its limbs in mimicry of life with the light current, and Almund quietly and respectfully dismounted and knelt in the frigid waters to make a close inspection. He concluded that the unfortunate man had been knifed, seven times all told, and stripped of all he owned. He assumed the wayfarer had been on foot, as there was no sign to inform the good reeve of the steed the man had been riding.
Even the prints of its hooves had been stolen by the sticky-fingered river.
Chapter 1
Most down in Woethersly were still groggy with sleep when the murder bell disturbed the peace at dawn that April morn, but Rhiannon had been wide awake for some time already. Not from Granna’s snoring, neither—though it had been a night of spectacular blastings. But rather because during the wee hours, the wind had switched south and spring had finally come blustering up high Clodaghcombe Bluff.
When Rhia could not keep still for another moment, she’d crept from the pallet and tiptoed to the corner of the loft where sparrows had last year built a nest, leaving a wide and breezy gap in the roof twigs where you could look down upon the world.
’Twas still dark, but Rhia’d lately discovered she much enjoyed the night look of things. The other five cottages atop their bluff shone in the moonlight, the glistening brook sewing them together with starry stitches. They seemed like faeries from the olden days of magic, dancing with joined hands around the small stone church. The church itself looked completely made of moonglow, or elsewise from the honey of Granna’s prized hives, which Rhia could just make out hovering ghost white in the misty distance.
She smiled at a lump of shaggy darkness upon the church roof, clearly visible against the bright stone steeple. It was certainly their groshawke, Gramp, standing vigilant nightwatch on behalf of all up here, they three women in this cottage and the invalids they cared for in the other five. Well, four at this moment. They’d a vacancy in their fifth invalid cot, now the ox-kicked yeoman had died of his dire injuries last month.
The moonlight sparked gold off Gramp’s ancient birdy eyes.
“G’d evening to ye, Gramp,” Rhia whispered through the darkness.
“Crrrr-awkk!” Gramp flapped his hoary old wings so the mites making their snug bed in his feathers were rudely awakened and went spiraling out into the moonlight like glistening faery dust. “Craaahawk !”
At that alarm, Granna gave an impressive last snore and sat straight up. “Thanks be to ye, God, as I’m still a-breathing!” she said heartily, her usual pract
ice upon waking. Then, missing some warmth, she felt beside her on the pallet and found only the indents of Rhia’s body in the wool-covered straw.
“Rhiannon, where’ve ye got to?” Granna called out.
Rhia grabbed her skirt from the peg. “I’m a-hurrying to bluff’s edge to gather whatever seed there be, Granna, ere the wind that brought it this gusty night takes it on along elsewheres!”
“But it be darkish, Rhia,” Granna warned predictably. “You must await the dawn afore it be safe to . . .”
But Rhia was by then pulling her rough wool skirt over her long flaxen sleep shift as she hopped down the loft ladder. She figured her distance from Granna far enough so’s she could pretend not to hear. “Be back later, Granna!” she sang out as she pulled tight on the waist cord of the skirt and knotted it. She grabbed the rawhide ankle boots that awaited her behind the ladder, finding them nice and toasty from the nearby fire.
Usually Mam would have slept beside the firepit, but just now she nursed poor burned Ona and her twins in their cottage both day and night. So without anyone else to question her (for a big and welcome change), Rhia skittered barefoot and light as a spider across their main room, grabbed her seed bag from the rafter, and hit out quite jauntily into the adventures surely awaiting in the mysterious night world.
Upon the stone stoop she sat long enough to pull on the boots and lace them.
It had been Gramp’s main business all Rhia’s life to heft off and fly above her each time she traveled to the rough lip of the high stone crag. So here he came, swooping from the chapel roof like some cumbrous stone gargoyle come alive.
“Is the wind not wondrous tonight, Gramp?” Rhia called up to him, bouncing to her feet. He teetered above her, straining to gain his wingy balance upon that same rough night wind she liked so well. Had he words, he might surely have naysayed her opinion, as the bluster of that gale provided him with only troubles. But that’s oft the way of it—the human has the go of things, and the beast is left with no choice but the go-along.