Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  Watching the actions of the cat, Rhia murmured, “As for the murdered man whose wounds we must touch tomorrow, I think someone in town’s merely harbored a vagabond, then cut him to death for some coin he told of having.”

  Mam was crushing feverfew she’d taken from herbs strung on the rafters. “Merely, you say? You sound pretty casual about that poor soul’s death, Rhiannon.”

  Mam sounded miffed, and Rhia felt unjustly rebuked. “Well, it’s ... it’s a crime and a sin as well to harbor vagabonds. Or to vagabond yourself. ‘You reap what you sow’ is what Vicar Pecksley would have to say about it. It’s the way of things is all I meant.”

  Mam said nothing. Lucy dove beneath the rushes and came up with a small mouse. It struggled, jerking and twitching in her jaws.

  “Out with that!” Mam cried, shivering her disgust. “There’s too much talk of killing in the air today for killing under our own roof!”

  Rhia deposited Lucy and her unlucky prey outside, then wandered back to the bluff’s edge to finish the morning’s job of seed gathering she’d really not started at all. Gramp shook free of the tree roost where he’d been napping and drifted drowsily above her.

  When they reached the jutting crag, Rhia quickly made piles of the scattered fennel seed that’d blown from the kerne, then gathered next the tiny purple berry seeds that had separated from the droppings of birds. Today as always there were a few scattered seeds that were strange to her, brought from far lands by the mist, the wind, and the birds.

  She glanced at Gramp, settled on his holed rock. “We got our first rye from wind-borne seeds, and our first yellow beans. Also, an ivy that sends itching boils all over you. But bad will come with the good, and good with the bad, Granna always says. Also, you reap what you sow. Why should Mam be cross with me when I mention a heathen vagabond’s bloody fate, seeing he brought it down upon himself? It’s God’s way of dealing with things, wouldn’t you say so, Gramp?”

  Gramp narrowed his eyes, which Rhiannon took as agreement.

  Sighing, she sat back on her heels to search the waters. The fine black boat sent from the earl had long since sailed out of view, and no other craft were in sight. In truth, little of Woethersly could be seen from the bluff because of the thick trees, though you could see the shadow of the castle Lord Claredemont kept for the earl, who himself kept it for King Henry. All that “keeping” and not a single person lived there for more than a week or two at a time, to hunt or somesuch thing. The castle was a deep purple stain stretching far across the blue water. On this clear day, Rhia could also see beautiful Wales floating green in the far distance, touched by the shadow of the castle tower as you might touch a small tuft of grass with your finger.

  Shading her eyes, she looked for the place her own da and Mam’s da slept beneath the waves. She spotted the small whirlpool of sudsy foam where their tiny fishing boat had capsized, and as always when she spotted it, she whispered a prayer for their souls.

  That whirling water opened with the devil’s own quickness was how Granna told it, though it was a story she claimed she had barely the heart for, even after these twelve years. Had it not come on so quick, I might have found a spell to turn my dear Egan and your fine da into mermen ere they sank from sight—

  “Crrrr-awwk. Crrrrrrrr.”

  Startled from her daydreams, Rhia demanded, “Gramp, what do you spy?”

  She dropped to her stomach and crawled to the very edge of the crag, then stuck her head out so it was pillowed by thin air. She craned her neck to look to the far right, just as Gramp was doing. And soon enough, she saw it, too.

  A cluster of great sea boulders arose on the beach where no such cluster had been before! But no, Rhia finally made out that it was rather a group of people, huddled together on the sand like you’ll see oxen huddled of a winter’s night. They wore long robes and cloaks the colors of the rocks, all grays and blacks and browns, though a warm spring day like this called for much lighter gear. Even their faces were covered—some by hoods, some by bits of cloth. Some of them had walking sticks like Jim’s thrust up under their armpits. But it was the way they stood that sent a shiver down her spine. Yes, like oxen, not like humans, who shift and reposition as they stand, thrusting out a hip or hiking up a shoulder, too impatient to freeze in place so completely.

  “Gramp, they stand so still,” she breathed, and a shiver went down her spine. “They seem like an ancient group of standing stones. How very strange.”

  She pushed back from the edge, and there was a little tremble to her hands as she went to quickly pouching her seeds. Who were they, those stone people?

  What were they?

  Gramp continued his silent gawk at the beach with his old round head so far stretched forward that Rhia feared it might pop right off his stringy neck and go bouncing down the cliff like a befeathered ball. Mankind or monsters—even Gramp couldn’t seem to decide what the stone folk on the beach might be.

  Chapter 4

  Mam didn’t come back from nursing poor burned Ona till it was nigh dark, and when she came she brought Daisy, the less burned of Ona’s six-year-old twins, along with her. Daisy settled on a pallet Rhia spread near the firepit, sucking her fingers for comfort.

  Granna squatted to stroke the child’s forehead, murmuring, “It’s a miracle she’s healed so, when her sister and mother languish.”

  “She’s grown much better these last days, it’s true,” Mam whispered back, then she touched Granna on the shoulder and gestured for her to follow to a more private corner of the room. She gave Rhia a look telling her to do the same.

  “She’s not been willing to leave her mother’s side,” Mam told them both when they were out of Daisy’s hearing. “But this evening, she gave Ona a kiss, whispered into her sleeping sister’s ear, then slipped her hand inside mine. I believe Ona and Primrose may well die very soon, and the child somehow feels this.”

  Granna frowned and murmured darkly, “The banshee will come howling up our bluff at the smell of their souls. You must stay close to them tonight, Aigy, and shoo her away, else she’ll try to trick their heaven-bound spirits into taking the devil’s fiery path downward instead!”

  The banshee, a terrible shrieking ghost that was drawn to the dying, was one of Granna’s ancient faery notions. Most times Mam fiercely objected to Granna’s pagan thinking on such matters. Rhia braced for Mam to say that it was indeed dire blasphemy to go on about the banshee, and that certainly even if the banshee had once existed, she was without doubt burning with the devil in these modern Christian days.

  But Mam merely sighed. “I will be staying the night with them, Mother, but only because they’ll need the nursing.” She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, as she oft did when she was tired out. “Daisy will stay with the two of you.”

  Lucy, out of some catly sense of sympathy, ran to the pallet and began licking the wounds on the little girl’s arm and foot. Daisy smiled, then giggled at the touch. When Mam did not stop the cat, Rhiannon knew that Daisy was surely well healed. Mam held with animal spittle being of good use and soothing when a wound was almost mended, though dangerous when a festered place was still open or fiery-looking.

  “I’ll keep Daisy company down here tonight, Granna,” Rhiannon whispered.

  And so, with the cat between them, Daisy and Rhiannon slept beside the fire.

  Mam had not come home yet when Rhia awoke at dawn the next morning to the summon of the church bell down in Woethersly. The murderer hadn’t been found, then, and the laying of hands was indeed on for today. Seeing that Daisy still slumbered with Lucy curled about her feet, Rhia tiptoed outside and splashed her face at the brook, called good morning to Gramp astride the steeple of Bluffkerne Chapel, then hastened to fill a jug of the cold water to take to Ona’s cottage.

  Gramp followed and waited on the roof of that sad cot as Rhia quietly used her hip to push open the door. Ona and Primrose lay in a deep sleep and Mam was scooping ashes from the burned-out fire. She held up one hand to tell
Rhia to put the jug within the door frame but not to come closer, then she finished her job and came out to join Rhia. They quietly closed the door and walked away from the cot and into the cool morning air.

  “They’ve had a bad night and just gone off to merciful sleep,” Mam whispered. Her shoulders slumped and her voice was hoarse. “How’s Daisy?”

  “Sleeping still.” Rhia moved behind Mam to rub her neck, then asked, “Shall I stand watch over Ona and Primrose while you get ready to go down the trail?”

  “I nay can leave the bluff today with these two in such a state, Rhia,” her mother said in a way that brooked no argument. “Take Daisy down with you. The exercise will work the stiffness from the new-grown skin on her little foot. And Jim won’t hear of being left behind. He’ll hobble along slow, but he may prove some help with Daisy. Also, unless I miss my guess, your grandmother will be eager for going as well. As long as you take your time, you’ll make a plenty capable band of four, with you in charge.”

  Rhia’s head nearly spun on her shoulders with all this. Mam couldn’t just ignore an order from the vicar to come lay hands, could she? And though Granna had spoken of Gimp Jim venturing the woods of late, could he travel on one leg and a stick clear down to Woethersly and then back up? And little Daisy, what of her childish step?

  Then she remembered Granna’s riddling talk about the “forgotten damned.” Would Daisy and Jim even be welcomed by the town? And if not, what might happen?

  Rhia quickly slammed the door of her mind on that last—too much to think about!

  “Crrrrrrrrrrrick.” Gramp eyed Rhia hard from his perch, telling her to buck up.

  Rhia took a deep breath. “Will you tell Granna that I’m to be in charge?”

  Mam smiled, but then, from within the cot, Primrose suddenly whimpered in her sleep.

  “Forget the seed gathering for today,” Mam said quickly, hurrying back to her patients. “But see that Sal gets her breakfast before you leave, will you? And look in on the Man Who Sleeps as well.”

  When Rhia took Dull Sal her morning gruel, Sally was kneeling on the rushes of her floor, tapping her breastbone with her hand and rocking herself to and fro. This was always her chief activity, though in fine weather Mam and Rhiannon would sometimes lead her by the hand to sit outside upon the stoop in the bright sunshine. Sal seemed mayhaps thirteen years old to Rhia, a beautiful girl whose delicate head was marked above her left ear with fine lines like the cracks in an egg that’s been handled too roughly, this from a hard cuff by her brother some months ago.

  Sally’d had no living mother when the thing was done. Her father and brothers had fashioned a carrying bed from two oak poles with flax matting stretched between them. The brother that had cuffed her fell to his death carrying one corner of itwhilst they brought Sal up the trail. No one mourned him much, as all thought it God’s just punishment for the brutal crime he’d done his innocent young sister.

  Rhia knelt beside Sal and began her feeding. “Good day to you, Sally,” she said.

  “I’ll have three of those fish,” Sal answered, grinning. This was her constant saying since that hard blow tot he head, the only bit of talk she wouldmake.

  Sal opened her mouth wide like a small babe will, and Rhiannon spooned in the gruel.

  “Some of us up here go down to lay hands on a corpse today, Sally,” she told in a hushed, suspenseful way. “There’s murder afoot in our shire!” Rhia thought it courteous to give Sally all the news, though clearly Sal had not the wits to take it in.

  “Three fish,” said Sal. “I’ll have three of those fish.”

  Rhia wiped the gruel from Sally’s chin and confided, “There’s a fine black boat from the earl himself that came and went as well, though I only saw it from afar. Not his pleasure boat what brought those young squires, but still, it seemed quite grand! Reeve Clap came up here yesterday to bring direct word of the murder to Mam, though he’ll take any excuse to see her, I’d say, wouldn’t you?”

  “Three of those fish,” answered Sal.

  Rhia combed Sal’s hair with Granna’s bone comb. “I’m glad your brother fell to his death,” Rhiannon whispered as she smoothed Dull Sally’s beautiful golden locks. She often said this, but that day she added, quite sassily, “I’m sure he burns with the devil.”

  Feeling both shocked and pleased with herself for that new bit of nervy talk, Rhiannon took her leave of Dull Sal and reluctantly went next door, to the cottage occupied by the Man Who Sleeps. She didn’t bother knocking, as he was far past hearing.

  He lay there on his bench with his arms crossed upon his chest and his ankles crossed as well, just as the four men arranged him who had carried him up to this cottage a fortnight past. No one knew a single thing about him, as he was found on the beach, but he looked somewhat noble with his strong-angled face and sharp beard. Therefore, they’d crossed his arms and also his ankles, as is done for a knightly Crusader.

  Privately, Rhiannon figured him for a pirate.

  No one could feed him much, though Mam got a bit of gruel to drip down his throat and oft stopped by to wet his lips from a crock of water they kept beside his bench.

  He wasted away, though the wasting was slower than you might expect.

  Rhia quickly wet his lips from the crock and left, as he plain gave her the willies.

  Gimp Jim was at their place when she got back to it, drinking a mug of ale Granna had given him and all beaming with happiness about that morning’s coming expedition.

  “Little did I expect to ever see fair Woethersly again when I was carried up here all bloody and one-legged and done for!” he exclaimed, raising his mug in a salute. “Here’s to the fine sight the town will make!”

  Granna raised her own mug to his, but as Jim quaffed his ale, she jerked her head, signaling Rhia to join her in Mam’s medicinal corner.

  There, she was solemn. “Best these two, the child and the gimp, have us as friends close beside them and alert for hazards of all sorts today,” she whispered.

  “You still say they’ll not be welcome in Woethersly?” Rhia whispered back. “But Daisy’s just a child! And Jim is so funny and good-natured. Why, I myself would have hard feelings if someone’s ill-driven oxcart had left the path and run me over in my own toft, yet Jim bears no grudge. How could anyone bear hard feelings toward him, then?”

  Granna just looked for a long moment deep into Rhia’s eyes. Then she murmured, “Granddaughter, I hope you’re right and I’ve misjudged the feelings of the town. But we mustn’t count upon it, as my misjudgments happen so extremely seldom.”

  The sun was fair high in the sky when they set off down the trail. Granna led the way, then came Gimp Jim on his one leg and his stick, and Rhiannon bringing up the rear with Daisy’s hand tight in hers.

  “You dasn’t let go my hand for any reason,” she told Daisy every few yards, squeezing her small palm all the tighter. “The trail is treacherous if your wits aren’t about you at all times, understand?”

  Daisy would nod each time, three sharp dips of her head, her eyes wide and serious.

  To one side of them was the deep forest, and on the other was the sheer drop down to the sea, with bracken hiding the edge. The trail often changed, new pieces of it having fallen away from the rough kiss of the constant wind. One false step could be the last of you, as it had been the last of Dull Sal’s bad brother.

  “You look pretty!” Daisy suddenly chirped. “What’s that?”

  She was pointing to the sprig of wild cherry blossom Rhia’d painstakingly worked through the loose weave of her shawl. She’d pulled back her hair as well, knotting it in three places with grapevine so it swung to and fro jauntily as a horsetail, and she’d changed to her other skirt, the one Granna’d dyed deep red with beetroot. She was certain it was neither sinful nor proud to go wearing your best on such a day, since indeed it showed courtesy to the poor dead man. Still, she’d taken pains to avoid Mam’s sight once she’d donned this festive garb.

  “Jim looks fun
ny!” Daisy noticed then. “He walks with but one leg!”

  “Shush, now, with such talk,” Rhia whispered, breaking part of the cherry blossom to slip through a small hole in the bodice of Daisy’s shift. “You’ll hurt Jim’s feelings.”

  Jim had heard, but far from acting low about the childish comment, he pulled off his watch cap to reveal his wispy orange hair, did a one-legged bow to his companions, then danced a comical little jiggy hop to make Daisy laugh the more.

  To say it plain, though death was almost for certain making its gnarled way up the bluff to Ona and her worse-burned child that day, those going down the bluff began to assume some high spirits, as will happen when you’re traveling in good company on a fine clear day under the cool sun in the frolicsome spring. When Rhia came down the trail each month to take their things to market, to do her mother’s errands, and to gather town news, she was usually alone. Granna rarely went down these days, her knees ached her so. And Mam hardly as often as Granna anymore, being required at all times by the constant needs of her invalids.

  Rhiannon had forgotten how company makes a long, steep trail seem much shorter.

  As the path twisted and turned, over this boulder and around that oak, they settled into a companionable picking of the way, though studying to keep footed. Daisy turned out to be sure-stepping as a little goat, so Rhia concerned herself most with the two in front.

  They finally got nigh to the last big twist in the path, a zigzag through thick ash trees. Rhiannon hefted Daisy into her arms for safety, knowing that this stretch was especially treacherous but that once by it she could consider them past harm’s way. The ground would level out quite a bit then, and they’d be able to see the port and the castle in the distance, with watermeadows and fields stretching from them all the way to the town.

  “What was that?” Granna suddenly demanded, stopping in her tracks so quick, Jim ran right into her back, nearly toppling the both of them before he managed to right himself.