by Vicki Grove
“Woman give a care to signal ere you halt, please!” he complained. He reached his stick to retrieve his watch cap, knocked clean off his head by the force.
Granna seemed not to even notice the small havoc she’d caused. “The woods be strangely changed right here,” she said in a quick, tight way, cupping her ear with her hand. “Do ye all not perceive it?”
Rhiannon held her breath, listening. What with taking charge of Daisy last night and then all she’d had to think about this morning, she’d clean forgot about the stone folk she and Gramp had perceived on the beach yesterday. But now they came rushing back to her mind, clothed in their eery stillness. They’d been clustered on the part of sand that stretched just below this ashy part of the trail, hadn’t they?
“The wind is all it is,” she said quickly, swallowing her feeling of dread. “It’s died down so sudden, that’s the change. The stillness is all you hear, Granna.”
But there was something amiss, and Rhia well knew it. She could hear a faint clicking, like locusts, only not really like locusts at all. And she thought she perceived ghostly shadows slipping through the new ash leaves, darting from tree to tree.
“Or it’s red deer, mayhaps,” she added in a whisper, holding Daisy tighter.
“We’d best move on,” Jim said gruffly. “This steep ledge is no safe place to tarry.”
Granna didn’t argue, but straightaway resumed her downward trudge. She wasn’t one to be bullied into speed, so Rhia was all the more certain that Granna suspected something fearsome in those ashy trees and had decided she must hurry them past it.
Shivering, Daisy circled Rhia’s neck with her small arms and circled Rhia’s waist with her small legs and pressed her face against Rhia’s shoulder. The child felt it, too, then. Breathe in, breathe out, keep watch on your feet, keep your wits, Rhia cautioned herself.
It seemed endless, that fraught trek through the shadows. But then suddenly as one wakes from a bad dream, they came from the dark shawl of woods into glistening sunlight and the last short stretch of the trail, which was none so steep as before and none so rugged. In the distance you could see the quay with its English boats and also several Welsh coracles, tiny craft made from oiled hide and shaped like tortoise shells. Rhiannon’s father had owned one for fishing and carried it to the water snugged onto his back. Rhia remembered laughing at that when she was small.
Daisy lifted her head from Rhia’s shoulder and squirmed, eager to take her own feet.
“Not quite yet,” Rhia whispered, holding tight.
Before she’d let Daisy go, she scanned the part of the beach now spread on their left and a little below. The endless water lapped at the white sand like the large blue tongue of some huge dog, but where the stone people had stood yesterday, the shore was empty.
“The Lord be thanked,” she whispered, putting Daisy to her own feet.
“I saw monsters in the woods,” Daisy mentioned in a tiny voice. “I did!”
“You saw red deer and squirrels.” Rhia forced a laugh. “Silly thing!”
If only she could convince herself that her own imaginings were silly. Because by the time they went back this way, the shadows would be much, much longer . . .
“I can see the castle!” Daisy suddenly cried, clapping her hands. Rhia squinted into the distance and gratefully focused on that splendid sight.
The motte, as the Normans called the man-made mountain beneath the castle, had been built up on the beach by order of King William just after the Conquest. The local peasants had used the glistening beach rock to construct it, then on top of it they’d built the tower, gatehouse, and stockades with huge burnished oak logs from Clodaghcombe Forest. When the sun shone bright as it shone today, the whole thing, sandy motte and oaken castle, seemed to be crafted from the same big chunk of sparkling gold.
How could ancient haunts thrive in the vicinity of such a modern wonder? Rhiannon felt the phantoms of the woods give up the last of their clinging hold. The power, might, and sheer beauty of the castle could fend against anything!
She crouched and pointed, her arm around the child’s waist. “Look how you can see the goings-on inside the castle bailey from way up here, Daisy. What a view! Our own high trail is the only place in the shire to have such a vantage of the country all round, wouldn’t you say so, Granna?”
But Granna had no interest in praising their trail.
“I had a fine vantage when I was a girl, all right,” Granna muttered, resuming her downward trudge. “Afore that mountain was built by these invaders where God’s beach had once stood. And now I hear tell they’ll be building all over again in stone! Stone! There’ll be the crushing of some workmen’s good skulls. Saxon skulls and Welsh skulls and none of them Norman, you can wager on that. Why, if . . .”
Granna raved on quite contentedly as she went, and Jim followed a few good yards behind her, not eager for another of her quick stops to tilt him off-balance. Rhiannon stood up but stayed still a moment longer, clutching Daisy’s hand.
She’d just spotted a lone walker on the beach, someone she’d not seen around before.
“Rhiannon, why are the pretty red flags no longer flying from the castle towers?” Daisy asked quietly. “Once my mother brought us to the beach and I saw that the castle flags were red and had yellow lions on them. I liked the lions.”
“All King Henry’s castles fly black flags just now, Daisy,” Rhia murmured, her attention elsewhere. “Prince William Aethling lies drowned beneath the waves.”
Not much beyond her own age, she’d have said the walker was, long of limb and graceful in his movements. He wore a coarse black robe snatched up at the bottom and hitched into his rope belt so his legs to the knees were bare for wading. A young priest, then, but with straight and shiny brown hair blowing in the wind, not tonsured, priestly hair at all. His eyes were deep-set above cheekbones so high and sharp they’d purple shadows pooled beneath them. He seemed to be thinking about something, surely something extraordinary and important from the intelligent look upon his face. His feet were skinny and white. She thought them comical and smiled.
“Rhia!” Daisy squealed, jerking her arm.
Rhiannon had nearly stepped right off the trail and into thin air.
Chapter 5
Now they had finally reached the flat land with Woethersly in clear sight, but they’d still the River Woether to ford and then the common barley field beyond to trek through.
“I wonder where upon this riverbank the foul murder was committed,” Rhiannon murmured as they waded the shallow crossing. She kept her eyes on little Daisy, who splashed and whirled, laughing with delight as she slip-slid over the smooth river grasses.
Granna put a hand on Jim’s shoulder to steady her crossing, then again used him for balance while she turned her wet shoes to pour out the river rocks. Patient Jim grunted and leaned hard on his stick so’s not to topple as Granna took a penny from her waist pouch and bit it till it was bent and killed, then threw it over her shoulder into the river. This was a thing she did each time she came to town, for protection from all the evil that had overtaken the place since she was a young girl, back when the Saxons were still in charge and all was well with the world.
Daisy ran to crouch near the small splash of Granna’s coin, and Rhia bent beside her. They looked at the glitter of it sinking as Rhia whispered, “In olden times coins were given to rivers for luck, Daisy. Granna still believes a bent coin will guard us from mischance on this journey to town, and who’s to say her nay?”
Then something caught Rhia’s eye there in the fast water, just a few paces beyond the coin. A clamshell it seemed, though it glittered much as the penny glittered. She waded close, pulled up her sleeve, and fished the little shell from its rocky bed, and the shiny thing bit her, just as if it were a living clam! She sucked her pricked thumb as she turned it over to explore it close. A tiny pin was fastened to the back of it. How very strange . . .
Then suddenly, the ground was ashake and a grou
p of horsemen was right upon them, bursting from the woods as though summoned from hell itself. Rhia just had time to take in a swirl of bright color and flash as she slipped the clam pin into her waist pouch and sloshed frantically to the bank to grab up Daisy.
The careless riders had kicked up a fine cloud of rocky soil, and by the time Rhiannon had batted the air enough to find herself and Daisy a clear breath, the pack of them had galloped on across the river and disappeared into the copse of ancient willow trees at the south edge of the manor’s private grounds.
“Not everyone that can afford to ride deserves to ride,” Rhia complained loudly. She put Daisy to her feet, ripped out the grapevine pieces holding her own painstakingly constructed horse’s tail in place, then bent and threw her loosed hair forward to shake out the dust. “The nerve,” she stated when she’d straightened back up.
“That was King Henry and his knights, riding from King Henry’s castle!” Daisy sang.
Jim and Granna laughed, and Rhia recovered her good spirits and smiled along.
“We won’t see King Henry way out here,” Rhiannon told the child, combing the dust from Daisy’s hair with her fingers. “King Henry owns dozens and dozens of castles throughout all of England and much of Francia. The earl holds some three or four castles for King Henry, and Lord Claredemont takes care of this one for the earl. The earl himself comes sometimes to stay awhile in it and hunt in the forest hereabouts, but not often, as his wife dislikes the country life. Anyhow, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“I expect those riders be the earl’s son and his cronies, the young squires from the manor house,” Jim guessed.
“Well, our Rhiannon should know all about that,” Granna said with a jolly har-har.
Rhia rolled her eyes. “Could be them,” she said lightly, her chin in the air. “I’ve only seen them the once, when they arrived, and I’m sure I was much too busy just now saving Daisy from a deadly trampling to especially notice.”
“They’ve cleared land back of the manor house as a tilt field for them to practice their swordplay and horsemanship,” Jim eagerly told them. “Looks like they’ve also cleared more land in this vicinity since I had my accident and was took to your bluff. Cleared for an archery range, I’ll wager. I’d heard talk they’d be needing that as well.”
More land was being cleared from the bottom edge of Clodaghcombe Forest’s bright green skirt. In fact, Rhia could hear the ring of axes this minute as Lord Claredemont’s foresters assarted another piece of field from the forest trees for the lord’s personal use.
Suddenly, she was itchy with impatience, for the sooner they got to town, the sooner she could link up with her friends, who would certainly have a great variety of details about these reckless young squires.
Her friend Maddy and the others would doubtless know something about the handsome walker on the beach, as well.
Woethersly had no charter from the king to hold a fair, but a murder investigation would be the next best thing. As they reached the outskirts of Woethersly, they joined a steady stream of folk picking their way along the road that led to the center of town, most wearing what most surely was their best attire. The ladies were generally in their light woolens, as she and Granna were, but those able to afford it showed off finer spring linens. The men were in their cleanest tunics, girded at the waist, and their bracca were braided up with woolen strips to keep the bottoms from flapping in the road mud.
Though she saw no one in motley or other outrageous garb at that moment, Rhia knew that traveling entertainers might well be drawn by expectation of such a crowd, and merchants from as far away as the next shire might come to show their wares.
“Druce, good friend!” Jim suddenly called out as they neared the mill.
Rhia turned and saw Druce Hulce, the miller, stepping from his grain-storage shed.
“Well, the devil take me. Is that really you, Jim?” Druce called, hastening in Jim’s direction. “We’d expected ye to die, Jimmy, so bloodied up was ye that day ye was run over by them ox!”
Rhia bounced on her heels, eager to witness the happy reunion of Jim and his friend.
The miller’s wife, Ardith, meanwhile had come from the mill house and stood frowning there beside the turning wheel with her hands upon her hips. “Will you waste more time, Druce, when time’s been lost already this morn?” she called to her husband.
“Wife, do you not see it’s our good friend Jim?” the miller called back.
“I see that well enough.” Ardith stood glowering a moment longer, then went back inside, slamming her door so hard, it caused a breeze that sent a spray of water out from the mill wheel.
Druce turned back to Jim, all hangdog. “I’m sorry, old friend. With the murder trial on the square, we’ve made a late start with our work today.” He took Jim by the arm and added, “It’s a great shock you’ve given Ardith, Jim. We’d no expectation ye’d survived that runaway cart! All have took ye for dead, y’see.”
Jim squinted his eyes, thinking hard about that, then nodded. “Tell Ardith I regret it,” he said. “I’d not meant to give her such a jolt.”
Druce nodded too, looking down. “Well, good luck to ye, Jimmy,” he said gruffly.
“G’bye then, Dulce.” Jim turned away.
Daisy, catching something strange in the sound of his voice, stopped in her play with the ducks and skipped over to take his hand. The four of them moved along.
Rhia could think of nothing to say as they walked, so hard did she feel toward Ardith Hulce at that moment. Granna had plenty to say on that same subject, but there was a loud racket now that made it hard to hear. The commotion—hammering and clanking, it was—got louder as they went through the rest of the mill yard and toward the main road, until finally Granna gave up talking altogether at the high price of leaving Ardith partly unscolded.
As they cleared the last of the mill buildings and came in view of the churchyard across the way, Jim gave a long whistle of surprise. Granna, Rhia, and Daisy stopped walking and stood agog.
Stone was piled everywhere around the church, and even in the road! Not merely the chunky stone ballast that was dumped from ships, but big squared slabs of beautiful gray stone. There were lots of men about, many of them dressed in the garb of artisans. Some were kneeling and hammering at that stone. Several folk Rhia recognized from the village were at work as well, doing the less exacting job of hauling cut blocks to parts of the churchyard. All that pounding and shifting of rock!
The line of folk going to the green stepped carefully around, the women holding high their skirts against the pool of stone dust hanging like heavy fog above the road.
“Well, for years I’d heard grand talk that the church was going to be built over in stone, and the castle tower as well, but until this day I’d ne’er seen a sign that it was more’n just gossip!” Jim told Granna, shouting to be heard. “Saints save us, it’s certain that things prosper greatly in fair Woethersly of late!”
And more great change progressed across the road. Where there’d been a collection of old sheds when Rhia had last been down here, there now was a cleared lot of ground. A high crucked roof had been raised, and the straight trunks of a great many ash trees made a framework beneath it. The whole thing resembled the bones of a huge and fearsome dragon, just waiting to grow flesh.
Jim gave a long whistle. “Whatever that’s to be, it’ll rival the manor house in size.”
Three wives of the town were coming quick down the road, bringing empty buckets for filling from the town’s water well. They shared merry talk as they ambled, laughing and poking with their elbows.
Jim beamed when he saw them. “G’day to ye, mistresses!” he called. “How does that good husband of yours, Adda? Say to him that Jim’s ready to come back and will be around right soon to see to that ax he wanted fixed!”
The three of them stopped and stared as though Jim were a ghost. The fat one in the middle put her hands over her face and right out sobbed, “Oh, Jimmy, that ax was mended
long months ago!”
The other two linked their arms through hers and hurried her over across the street.
“How came ye back in such a state, Jim?” one of them scolded over her shoulder, staring rudely at the stump of Jim’s lost leg.
Rhia felt a gorge rise in her throat, and she could not bear to look Jim in the face.
Even Granna, who always had a word or two, seemed stymied for any talk and merely stood there with her arms at her sides.
It was Jim himself who presently rallied them. He pulled his cap back upon his head and squared his shoulders with a heartiness he could surely not have felt.
“Well, let’s move along, then,” he said. “My own place is near here. My home lies just back from this churchyard, tucked prettily enough beneath two fine, well-grown willows. I’ve longed to show it to ye, and here’s my chance!”
And so they went on along, though Granna looked in the direction of the mill and bit her thumb hard at Jim’s false friends.
Past the church, the stone dust that hung in the air cleared a bit, but big patches of black on the ground showed where some burning had been done to clear a big lot.
Jim stopped walking. The wind kicked a bit of blackened grass against Daisy’s skirt, and Rhia bent to brush it off.
“Let’s hasten past this waste, Jim,” Rhia complained, “before we’re sooted good.”
But Jim was silent and seemed frozen to the spot. Rhia looked up to see him staring at one of those blackened patches. He spoke then, but as if in a dreamy daze.
“There was my cot, where the ground is black ashes in yon corner. Mark how the smoke still wafts? Willow burned green will simmer like that for a good long while.”
And then, something just seemed to pass right out of Jim, as if his spirit, so strong through all his torment of healing, now had met its match at seeing his home destroyed. They saw him sway a bit, and it was lucky there was stacked stone just beneath to catch him, for he would otherwise have surely fallen clean to the ground.
