Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  She turned back to Sal, then rushed to put her arms around the poor frightened girl with her cheek to Sal’s cheek. “I don’t believe in the banshee, Sal, do you?” Rhia whispered. “Though if she’s real, tonight would be the night for her, that’s certain.”

  Chapter 9

  Thaddeus finally came stumbling back over Sal’s threshold.

  “Nothing,” he panted, bending forward with his hands upon his knees. “I searched to the edge of the trees and then beyond, but whoever she was, she . . . wouldn’t be found.”

  Without looking in his direction, Rhia took Sally’s hand and led her right smartly out the door and onto the foggy stoop. There Thaddeus joined them, taking Sal’s other arm.

  Near tears, Rhia turned to him and blurted, “Why’d you run away into the darkness like that, Thaddeus? The night is unknowable, as you yourself said!”

  She instantly regretted such sharp words, but she’d been scared nigh to death, left alone with Sal after glimpsing such a phantom just outside their very window!

  “Truly, I’m sorry,” he answered, all contrite. “It’s just that, well, I saw someone outside, and as she seemed much too young to be venturing in such weather, I didn’t think except that I must pursue her before she misstepped. She was just a child, Rhiannon, much the age of Daisy, I’d say. Do you have some idea who she might be?”

  Oh, Rhia knew right well! The spectre at the window had been too young to be the hideous banshee, so she could only have been the ghost of Primrose, Daisy’s twin. If a child died unbaptized, her spirit would become a ghostly will-o’-wisp, wandering through the fog and marshy places until a great many strong prayers blew her finally safe to God’s arms! Even Mam believed that, and had been careful to have Rhia baptized while she was still but a babe.

  Still, Thaddeus might consider that mere superstition, so she’d keep it to herself. “I’m sure the fog presented some shape you took to be a girl. The mists and clouds oft trick the eyes of strangers who first venture here.” Then, “Let’s hurry some, Sal,” she ordered briskly, pulling her along.

  “Wait,” Thaddeus protested, “what about the other cottage? Isn’t there someone to be brought from that place as well? A light burns in the window.”

  Rhiannon glanced toward that drear cot and felt the hairs prickle atop her head. It was bad enough venturing near the Man Who Sleeps in broad daylight.

  “Mam has put a candle in that cottage out of courtesy and habit. We need not bring the man who dwells there, as he’s past fearing darkness and would not know the difference if he was placed in the midst of a rollicking festival.”

  Rhia knew that all her life she would remember that night. As they seven sat wake for Ona and Primrose, the fog remained a swirling white sea outside and the firelight danced shadows upon their walls. They seemed to her the only people on earth, with all outside become a churning void holding nothing much at all, as before Creation.

  It was a sad and fearful night—but also, to tell it true, an exciting one.

  She’d remember the look of Granna and Daisy seated there together close, candleglow lighting their pale faces, the one deeply lined and the other angel smooth. She’d remember how the reeve oft got to his feet to tend the fire, then returned to sit close beside Mam on the short bench, finally daring to slip an arm around her shoulders. She’d remember Mam leaning against him, sighing as though home from a journey.

  As the night wore on, and with Mam asleep who might have tried to stop her, Granna told an ancient story or two. She told of Sir Gareth burying a nail from the True Cross somewhere in Clodaghcombe Forest, then finding that same nail in his soup seven months later. Then she told of Sir Gawain falling in love with a mermaid princess and disappearing under the waves beneath the high crag of Clodaghcombe until finally Mistress Moon, right jealous of the mermaid’s siren charms, pulled that knight to shore a year and three days later.

  “Handsome Sir Gawain was half-drowned, of course, and crazy as well with longing for his lost fishy love,” Granna told it. “In fact, he stayed nitwit for a good while, until every single part of him had dried out, including his beating heart.”

  And then, her mood shifted, and she launched into telling of the long sleep of King Arthur, ending with the favorite hope among all Welsh Brits that soon he’d rise from the grave to punish their various invaders. This was the most sacred of all the stories Granna safekept as an official Welsh teller, and she got more and more worked up as she told it.

  “Ah, yes, the great king lies asleep in a hidden cave across the bay in fair Wales, see? And his knights sleep as well, nigh ready to jump to their likewise sleeping steeds at some close time. Oh, and then you’ll see these present marauders scramble! Doubtless very soon now these Normans shall be given the boot! Aye, their days for sure be numbered, these haughty mountain-makers brought to these shores by thieving William!”

  Right here she spit upon the floor, and Rhia burned with humiliation. She glanced at Thaddeus, sure he’d be angry at this description of his own Norman kin, followed close by such a gobbish and putrid sign of disrespect. Yet what could possibly stop Granna except Mam? And Mam was there asleep against the reeve’s broad shoulder!

  But Thaddeus merely leaned toward Granna, his elbows upon his knees and his eyes alight with pleasure. “Good lady, never have I been in the company of such a fine teller. Now, pray, is there a story behind the name Rhiannon calls your resident groshawke?”

  He turned to Rhia and smiled a teasing smile.

  “Hee, hee!” Granna responded, slapping her knee. “That name would for certain be Gramp, and your request is welcome, monk, as you’ve asked to hear my favorite tale. Though I’d never tell it whilst Rhia’s mother was awake, and neither, if you notice, will Rhia call that bird Gramp in her mother’s hearing. Still, as Aigneis appears to soundly sleep, I could bring myself to transgress a bit. Granddaughter, would you have me tell the tale of your great-grandfather’s birding upon the field of Senlach?”

  Rhia bit her lip and dropped her eyes, discombobulated by the monk’s requesting this most personal and pagan of all Granna’s stories. Her mother’s voice scolded hard against it in her head. Rhiannon, you’re not to listen when your granna talks of spells and incants done for the changing of folk to birds or bird to folk, or for the moving of stones or the making of trees to speak the human language, you understand? Such ancient storying borders on dire sacrilege in these modern Christian days!

  “All righty then, since you insist,” Granna spoke, giving up a wait for Rhia to decide. She cleared her throat with a large flourish of sound. “Well, young monk, ’twas in the Year of Our Lord 1066 and I was but a small girl. My da was far away in a place called Senlach, serving our brave Saxon ruler, King Harold himself. And when he’d been gone a good little while, I chanced to look into the fire one morning and there in the flames I saw him clear as could be, going hard with his battleax against a soldier with strangely cut hair and seated upon a gray horse.” Granna leaned toward Thaddeus and spoke confidentially. “By the by, that’s when I found out I had the special sight, see? When in the firepit right in our cottage but so many years ago I watched my own dear da upon a distant battlefield, struggling with all his might to fight off that horsed . . . invader.”

  Granna paused here to spit another gob, her faithful practice at any mention of the foe come across the sea with William. Then, leaning back against the wattle, she pitched her voice lower and grew dreamy-eyed and somber, as here started the grim part of the tale.

  “Later that morn, I felt a jab to my own neck. And didn’t I know it for the phantom wound it was? Ah, sure enough, I peered again into the firepit and this time saw my dear da bleeding fierce with an arrow clean through his poor neck. And I saw as well a great groshawke rising from an apple tree nearby the carnage, and what could I think but that it was meant to carry my da’s great spirit, since his own flesh and blood was about to give out? And so I said into the firepit the words of a spell I’d heard my own granna say a time o
r two. I said it at the very moment my dear da’s body fell and was trampled by a horse, and his soul rose into that fine bird, it did. Timing’s the thing with any good spell and much else in life. Remember that, monk, as it may come in handy.”

  This was ever Granna’s favorite piece of advice, but Rhia dared not look to see the monk’s reaction. He’d surely not hold with spells, whether done at the right time or not.

  “And three days later, that same great groshawke came flying straight into our woods, sped clear across Wessex to our high bluff!” Granna concluded. “And it’s my fine da guarding us still, Rhiannon’s great-grandda. Rhia will tell you that we never so much as doubt it. Go ahead, granddaughter—tell the monk that we do not doubt it in the least.”

  Rhia’s ears rang at this challenge. For truly, she did not doubt it, not much, which is why she called their groshawke Gramp, though not in Mam’s hearing. After all, Granna was a member of the venerable Welsh filidh, and those respected storytellers might exaggerate some, but everyone knew they did not lie. At least not so very often.

  But what could be less Christian than believing the spirit of a man might take the feathered form of a hawky bird?

  “Well, I . . . I believe, well . . .” Rhia stopped, flummoxed and flustered.

  “Hee, hee!” said Granna, who was always amused by Rhia’s thick tongue when she was put betwixt and between. Then, spent from her telling, Granna found her still-warm pipe there upon the lap of her skirt, clamped it fast between her teeth, closed her eyes, and was very soon snoring.

  Daisy sank her bright head to Granna’s comfortable lap and dozed as well, just like her own namesake flower will go withered for the day when the sun is gone.

  Sal had slept deeply for some time on the pallet Man had made for her near the fire pit.

  The young monk said not a word but got to his feet and walked to the foot of the deathbed of Ona and Primrose, kneeling there to pray. He raised the hood of his robe, and Rhia could not see the expression on his face. The colors around his fingernails made him look a bit like a painted church-wall saint. Above him, in the thatch of the ceiling, a family of swallows watched down, their thoughts their own, their bead eyes reflecting the flame.

  She determined to pray as unceasingly as Thaddeus did, partly to direct the souls of Ona and Primrose, and partly for the poor stranded lepers, and partly to petition God about Jim, who was much on her mind. But mostly, truth be told, to show the monk that she, too, was pious and righteous and could kneel through the night.

  But presently, she sank down to her side and sleep took her in its arms. The flesh must yield when the day has held a long vertical hike in the fog as well as a jaunt to a dragon’s den and then also the unthinkable arrest of a hobbled friend.

  And other things equally exhausting, feelings and such.

  When Rhiannon next opened her eyes, it was past dawn, and everyone seemed gone from the dim cottage excepting Daisy and Granna. Granna looked awake enough, though pinned to her place on the long bench by the deeply sleeping child.

  “Where is everyone?” Rhia whispered across to her, scrambling to stand while jerking round her twisted skirt and batting the unruly hair from her eyes.

  Granna nodded toward the door with a smile that clearly said, About their business, sleepyhead, wherever do you think with the morning half gone?

  Rhia spotted her shawl upon the floor and retrieved it, scooping Queen Matilda out and placing her upon the floor reeds near the bench where Daisy slept.

  “I’m sorry to disturb your royal majesty’s royal sleep, but I need this piece of clothing,” Rhia mumbled to the insulted-looking tortoise. She then gave a quick sign of the cross before the peaceful dead, bent to kiss Granna’s cheek, wrapped her shawl around herself, and headed outside, still groggy.

  The sun was shining so astonishingly that she raised a hand to shelter her eyes as she stumbled to the brook. She splashed her face, then sat back upon her heels. With golden breath the sunny wind had blown the fog completely back to sea. Everything up here sparkled and shone like the Garden of Eden.

  In fact, the buds had finally begun opening this morning. The orchard was blotched with pink and white blossoms, fragrant even at this distance, and the green collar of the woods was fringed in the fine jewel-like purples and yellows of crocus and forsythia.

  “Where is everybody?” she called. No answer. “Gramp, where are you?”

  Gramp came swooping from the woods to settle upon the crucked top of the chapel roof. He then looked down between his own splayed feet at the chapel door below.

  So, the others were inside the church, gathering the things they’d need for the funeral.

  “Thanks, kind sir.” She gave her face another hard splash or two, then pulled her long hair back into a quick knot, ran to the chapel, and burst through its open door.

  The chapel was so dim and gloomy after the brightness outside that she could not see a thing at first. There were two small, slitted east windows up near the altar, and golden light poured through them like honey. It would be hours till the sunshine reached through the thick, stone casements of the side windows, though, so all else was cold, shadowy stone, dark and ancient timbers, and soot-grimed daub. The shovel kept in here was gone, as well as the cup and plate for the sacraments. The people she’d come looking for were gone as well.

  With a quick sigh, she turned to leave, figuring the others must be already preparing the grave and that she’d join them at the stone circle in the woods.

  “Rhiannon? Have you seen the remarkable pictures above these windows?”

  She whirled back around and this time noticed Thaddeus standing alone near the altar, looking up. Surrounded by the thick light that fell upon that little area and that alone, he seemed transparent, his pale hands and face washed nearly invisible.

  “For all fifteen years of my life, I’ve had to see those horrible things!” She hurried toward him, happy for the chance to say her age, though she’d given herself a few months she’d not earned as yet. “They’re said to be the Devil Dogs of Clodagh, painted there long ago to remind all of the perils of hell. Half-dog, half-dragon they are, with their long serpents’ tails double-hooked like the devil’s own pitchfork. The painter must have heard the local stories of such animals being trapped in a cave within our wood. When I was little, those awful pictures were all I could think about throughout the sacraments.”

  “That’s exactly the intent of paintings such as these,” Thaddeus murmured, moving closer to the wall and looking up at the gruesome dogs in fascination. “They’re meant to frighten children into staying quiet yet wakeful, no matter how the vicar drones on and on. The painter was really very good. See how the eyes shine with counterfeit life? I aspire to such truthful embellishments myself, though on gentler themes.”

  Rhia looked from the paintings to the monk, her eyes wide. “You’re a painter! That’s why your hands are stained as they are!” She was so impressed, she lacked words to tell it, though it surely showed upon her face.

  He shrugged and looked some abashed. “Painting is my great love, but please don’t think I’m master of it! I’ve been allowed to apprentice in the great scriptorium at Glastonbury. I’m to illustrate the walls of our church and priory in Woethersly, once they’re ready and limed for a smooth surface. It will be my first opportunity to do such a thing—a test of sorts. I’m nervous about how I may please, or displease, to tell it true.”

  Gramp, still upon the roof, chose that moment to give his wings a series of great stretching flaps. They were both startled by the sound, much magnified inside the empty church, then smiled at each other sheepishly.

  After a moment, Rhia ventured, “Thaddeus, did you consider that Granna’s story about our groshawke might indeed be . . . truth?”

  Thaddeus looked raptly and silently at the paintings to dodge an answer, obviously not wishing to offend her.

  Still, Rhia could not leave the subject without a further prod. In truth, she liked not the monk being c
ertain of such things when she herself was not.

  “And . . . and Granna also says that I myself, as well as she and Mam, came down from feathered granddames. You must admit, it would explain how we three came to be atop this bluff when everyone else has had their start upon the ground so far below us.”

  To tell it true, she expected he would dispatch that with a laugh. It did seem far-fetched, though there was oft a longing for flight that came to her in her dreams.

  Thaddeus clasped his hands behind him, his eyes still lifted and taking in the art.

  “I suspect your grandmother must have once been a great hooded owl,” he said quietly. “And your mother might well have been a pure white dove with a tuft of orange feathers upon her fair head. And you, Rhiannon, I believe have come down from a shiny winged rook. You are dark of hair and eye, and like that bird, you have a rogue nature.”

  She was not sure whether to protest or laugh. “I declare that I have no such thing!”

  He looked at her and grinned in a teasing way. “Then how are you capable of giving a blistering scold to important clergymen come clear from the court at Winchester to give advice on the church expansion?”

  “They deserved it,” Rhiannon insisted, her knuckles upon her hips. “You must admit, Thaddeus, that they did. They did.”

  Thaddeus smiled in a different, sadder way. “Yes, they deserved it, Rhia, though God forgive me for speaking thus of my superiors. Jim had a right to his cottage. They might have checked it the owner still lived, but it didn’t suit their purposes. They were too willing to trust your lord and your vicar, who themselves acted hastily and selfishly regarding poor luckless Jim.”

  At this sad mention of Jim, Thaddeus turned with a sigh to crouch with his back against the damp wall, then tucked his hands into his sleeves, shaking his head.

  Rhia paced before him, agitated and restless. “All saw the blood flowing from the murdered man’s wounds at Jim’s touch, but I’ll never believe Jim could, or would, do such a thing as murder.” Her eyes filled with angry tears. “Mam’s always giving me private instructions regarding Granna’s stories. She’ll say, ‘Now, Rhiannon, you’re not to be listening close to your grandmother’s tales of mermen or young women become willow trees and the like, as these things border upon the heathen lie. Well, I’ll allow Granna colors things up a bit, as any official Welsh storyteller will do! But exaggeration, hearing it or speaking it either one, just doesn’t seem very sinful to me, especially compared to awful things some . . . some fine Christians do all the time!”