Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  “Rhia? Did you see what I saw?”

  Rhiannon whirled to face Thaddeus, who’d just stepped from the shadows she herself had come through along the nether side of their cot.

  She placed her hand upon her hip and glowered at him.

  “I guess you mean did I perceive the horse and rider. But you may well mean did I perceive the man who slept and now kneels within our church! How dare you not side with me as I begged Mam to go check on him, Thaddeus! Then, alone, you checked on him! I take that very, very hard! He’s my sometime lunatic invalid. Mine!”

  Her voice had risen above the whisper required by the place and the hour. She recovered herself and leaned an ear toward the house, nervously listening for ill effects. But within the cot, Granna still snored her finest, which was a good mask for any sound less than typhoon. Thus Rhia felt free to continue her complaint in a strident whisper.

  “Thaddeus, you’ve treated me as a child with this!”

  Thaddeus had his hands tucked into his sleeves. He looked nervously down at the knobs of his wrists and cleared his throat. “You’re mistaken, Rhiannon,” he said simply. “My fear was not that you were too much child, but that you were too much . . . grown. I would worry for your safety in any man’s night chamber.”

  She blinked.

  “Besides, folk oft regard a monk as safe confessor, if he comes alone.” He dared a glance at her from under his brows. “It’s embarrassing, really, to be trusted as we are. For where gossip’s concerned, all the holy brothers I’ve e’er met could hold their own with your Granna’s cronies at the ale booth, and that’s a fact.”

  Rhia bit her lips. “Will you joke me from my just anger, Brother Thaddeus?”

  “If I can,” Thaddeus admitted with a shrug. “For as you’ve said, you are my sister whilst I’m here, and I’d not have you stay upset with me.”

  She sighed and gave him a begrudging smile, then grew somber.

  “Thaddeus,” she whispered, “did Jonah tell you that he ripped the clamshell off Sally’s shift because it had belonged to his bosom friend?”

  “Jonah?” Thaddeus looked surprised. “Forgive me. I did not know his name, and now you tell it, I find it intriguing. Jonah, as you’ve called him, only talked with me of spiritual things. He said he’d wrestled with demons and was wearied to the bone by it. I could see he told that true. He asked me to accompany him to the chapel, and we prayed awhile, then parted ways. I was not made privy to any details of his life.”

  Rhia nodded. “Even now he prays within the hermit’s tomb. He says the shell is pilgrimage token, and that he and his friend Aleron prayed ofttimes at such shrines. He believes his friend is dead, Thaddeus. Murdered! He says if Aleron still drew breath, he wouldn’t have surrendered that token. That’s what set him to wailing when he saw the shell on Sally. Though the wailing was a boon, really, as his extreme misery seems to have burned away the foggy threads of his confusion. He’s remembered himself at last.”

  Thaddeus murmured, “Jonah is a very unusual name in these times. Though if you were lost at sea, then cast upon the shore in a rough state, it might suit you to take such a name for yourself.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then but she already knows. Thaddeus shrugged and smiled. “I believe I can now find sleep, as you must, too. Just tell me one more thing, Rhia. Your granna says you gave the shell to Sally, so where exactly did you find it?”

  She thought. “Well, I found it at the crossing of the river just where you come out of the ashy trees at the trail’s end, then a little ways toward the edge of the barley field. It gleamed in the water near the nut tree, the one with gnarled roots. Why do you ask?”

  Thaddeus frowned. “No special reason. Just curious is all. I bid you a good night, Rhia, what’s left of it. Sleep well.”

  He turned to walk back to Jim’s cot, but Rhiannon hastened after him. “Oh no you don’t! Brother dear, I will right now strangle you with the rope around your waist if you don’t spill your thoughts!”

  Over his shoulder, he said, “You’ll sleep better not knowing them till the morrow.”

  She reached and grabbed one dangling end of his waist rope, making to wrap it round and round his neck.

  He turned, his hands raised in submission. “Well, then, Rhiannon, since you’d throttle your dear brother merely to assuage your flaming curiosity, here it is. Almund has shown me the exact place where he discovered the body of the man Jim stands accused of killing. He asked me not to reveal it to your family, in respect for your peace of mind when you pass that way. But as you plan to rough me up, I’ll save my neck by telling you that it was right exactly at the gnarled roots of the large nut tree.”

  She dropped the end of the waist rope and they stood staring at each other.

  “Just where I found the clamshell,” she whispered.

  Thaddeus nodded solemnly. “Rhia, I believe we may now call our murdered stranger by his Christian name. I’m most certain it must be ...”

  “Aleron,” she finished, quietly.

  Chapter 19

  Thaddeus had been right and Rhia would have slept better without knowing his thoughts until the morrow. A dead man with a name and a grieving friend is a different thing entirely from a gray stranger upon the butcher slab, touched by all but loved by none. He’d hardly seemed a person, then. Now, he did. Aleron. The name swam through her half-formed dreams, sometimes as an echo, other times as a Banshee screech.

  She snuggled closer to Daisy’s sharp little back, buried her face in Daisy’s tree-smelling tangled hair, and then fell into deeper slumber and dreamt she was wandering down a lonely trail in dense fog, searching for her drowned father. Aleron, sang voices in the fog. Your da is long gone—like Aleron, sang the gloomy fog.

  She woke from that awful dream shivering, and to warm herself she named in her mind the folk she loved, living and dead. For Rhia well knew that death cannot fend against love, and even the grave could not steal her father from her heart. Picturing his face, she drifted off again, this time to a short dreamless rest which ended when Daisy turned and jabbed a knee to her ribs so sharp, Rhia flinched backward, teetered for an instant on the edge of the sleep pallet, then lost that hold and landed upon the hard floor.

  She came to a sit and stayed there for a few moments, rubbing her hurts. Then she remembered the intrigues of the night and forgot all the slight pains of her thump in her eagerness to start the new day. She sped to the gap in the roof twigs, but found it still very dark outside. Gramp slept on the chapel roof with his beak in his wing. And what of Sir Jonah—did he still stay cramped among the hermit’s bones, or had he found it too rough and damp and made his way back to his cot? Thaddeus at least might be up and praying, as monks are said to rise before dawn for that purpose. She’d find him.

  But she might sleep one moment longer first. She sank to her side on the floor there in the corner and did not wake until the sun was full up, splattering the loft with patches of buttery light. Daisy and Sal were gone from the pallet, and those two never rose early!

  Down the ladder Rhia sped, her heart thumping at all she’d likely missed.

  “Granna, what’s gone on?” she demanded, for Granna sat alone, watching the firepit.

  “All are gone on, granddaughter,” she teased. “The two young men are gone off with your mother to take food and drink to those quartered in the woods. Sally and Daisy play out near the hives. They dress up the tortoise for a wedding they plan. The bride be grasshopper and the vicar a beetle they’ve caught. No, wait—one be grasshopper, the other beetle, though I don’t believe I was told which be which, whether the beetle be bride or vicar. Let me think on it and I should be able to—”

  Rhia was sore impatient with this. “So Sir Jonah explained everything, then?” she asked in a rush and with a scowl she hoped might make Granna desist with her talk of buggy weddings. “And he is no longer feared but rather welcomed in this house?”

  Granna took a breath, blew it out, and frowned at the
fire. “Oh, he’s given apology for taking Sally’s clamshell, if that’s what ye mean,” she muttered, “though he’s not offered to give it back. He says it belonged to his lost friend, the one he wailed about so when he went lunatic. He seems well recovered for one who’d put up such a powerful fuss, and polite enough, if you can trust such quick-found manners from one who’d lately raised such a howl some might have thunk him a true hellish demon. A handsome lad, now he’s come to hisself. Your mother’s much pleased that he’s healed.”

  Something was wrong. “Why don’t you like him, Granna?” Rhia dared ask.

  Granna turned out her pipe and tamped the cold ashes into her hand. “ ’Tis the flames don’t like him, Rhia. No, as the fire tells it, he’s not who he claims to be.” She threw the ashes into the firepit. There was a sharp pop and blue sparks flew high. “There! Can you not see the man-shaped shadow that flickers brightly in the middle? You’ll note that shadow has no face. This young man calls hisself Jonah, but the flames paint him faceless to say that is not his true identity.”

  Rhia fell to remembering how she’d dropped to her knees in the night upon first seeing Sir Jonah newly come to himself. Granna was suspicious of him, fearing him a danger, mayhaps even a demon. But Rhia’s hunch was opposite. She feared him not, but felt boundless pity for him if the impossible proved true and he was who he certainly seemed to be. A mere man, young at that, with a princely load of guilt to somehow bear.

  Hearty voices just outside showed Mam’s party of three to be approaching. Rhia shivered off her thoughts and hurried to the door, throwing it open to them.

  “It’s about time you showed your face,” Thaddeus teased, shaking his head.

  Mam smiled in a harried way and dumped the empty baskets into Rhia’s arms so she herself could loose the tie of her cloak. “Daughter, Jonah and Thaddeus wish you to show them where you found that little shell the other day. So be off, and when you’ve all returned from your endeavors, we’ll be ready to eat.”

  Rhia stood much surprised, as she had, of course, promised Sir Jonah at their midnight meeting to do that very thing, but was set for a good resistance to it from Mam. It was, after all, a long way down the trail, and she’d not done her chores what with the late rising. And there was further need for her to help with the cooking, and then . . .

  Mam grabbed her elbow and pulled her to a turn, then whispered harshly into her ear, “This young Jonah will not let the matter rest a single moment! He tires me out with his pestering so that I’d take a stick and knock him back asleep with it! Please, daughter, take him from under my feet e’er I lose my composure and go to howling!”

  Mam then covered her mouth with her hand and giggled with shock at herself, and Rhia, much surprised, laughed along.

  The day had started bright and clear, but the sky gradually clouded over as the three took the trail downward. Then thunder rumbled. Every so often a stiff breeze came up and tossed the budded treetops. It was Rhiannon’s favorite kind of weather, as it seemed unpredictable and kept each hair alert upon her neck, each bit of skin feeling well alive.

  Thaddeus led, with Rhia in the middle, then Jonah bringing up the rear. They daren’t go too fast, as the recovered invalid surely had not fully regained his strength after so many days of near fasting. In fact, both Rhia and Thaddeus cast many watchful glances back at him, ready to rest if he seemed in need. But his will to learn the fate of his friend was indeed powerful, and it lent him amazing stamina. Rhia thought his iron will was mayhaps the most striking thing about him, when nearly everything about him was right striking in some way or other. His eyes blazed blue and his gaze was forthright. His hair was not the burnished red of Mam’s, but rather the orange of maple leaves in autumn. It grew straight out from his head in all directions, as though it too were willful and would go where it pleased.

  She decided willful was indeed a good word for everything about him. His way of walking, his quick reach, the way he kicked the undergrowth aside and thrust with his arms to clear the brambles from his way. His wrists and forearms became scratched raw from that in no time, though he didn’t seem to mind.

  Thaddeus went his usual sure way down the trail, moving swiftly but with care, dodging what might be dodged and easing aside all else that blocked his way. Whereas Jonah, by contrast, trampled his way forward. The natural world could take care of itself or perish, for all he seemed to care. Rhia wondered—had soldiering made him so? Or had a certain boldness in his makeup been what had led him to soldiering in the first place? Either way, unless he learned more patience, Rhia suspected he’d have a hard time sticking it out for very long in his new vocation as penitential pilgrim.

  “Rhiannon? Earlier this morn I told Jonah our suspicions.”

  “What suspicions?” she asked Thaddeus, though she really meant which. It seemed to her that these days since Jim’s arrest, dire suspicions swam everywhere around, plenteous as eel in the miller’s pond.

  “I’ve told him of the murdered man found just where you found the token,” Thaddeus answered. He stopped his measured tread and turned to face them, bowing his head to show Jonah his respect.

  Rhia likewise stopped and faced Jonah. “I’m right sorry for your loss,” she said quietly. “If it was your friend who was murdered on our shores, I mean.”

  For a moment, Jonah looked at the ground and was silent. Then he said, “Things point that way, and now I will know the murderer. Thaddeus says there were pirates docked here that night, and that your reeve saw fit to let them go along their way.”

  “I’m sure Thaddeus has told you as well that Almund determined they were too sick to move about on the night of the crime,” Rhia explained. “Our reeve and the bailiff searched their boat and found nothing that pointed toward local mischief.”

  “And what’s your take on this Arnold Mopp fellow?” Jonah demanded. “Thaddeus says he, too, was interviewed as a suspect several times, but never arrested.”

  Rhia shrugged. “He lives in the cottage nearest the ford, but his mother swears he was at home with her that night.” She sighed. “Everyone knows Arnold thieves what little things he easily may, but to tell it true, I believe he lacks the . . . well, the ambition to commit and conceal a blood crime. He’s a laughingstock in town, as he pilfers only the goods of old widows who cannot easily chase him down and punch his ears for it.”

  “Aye,” Jonah said grimly, “a murder would indeed take effort. Though Thaddeus tells me your one-legged friend Jim is accused, and surely he, too, would have little ability for such brutal work. Though Jim did live upon the bluff, not so far from the scene of this crime. That might cast especial suspicion upon him, might it not?”

  Something inside Rhia flamed. “Jim would not swat a flea though it were in the act of biting him!” she insisted hotly. She closed her eyes and took a breath. “But you have a right to know that in truth, Jim happened to walk the woods that night. He surely was nowhere near the crime or would have told what he saw of it! He surely stayed nearby the settlement, and he certainly is as innocent as any of us upon the bluff!”

  “Jim walked the woods?” Thaddeus echoed softly.

  “It seems many were stirring that fateful night,” Jonah murmured. “Who else?”

  “Well,” Thaddeus told him, “I saw no reason to mention the lepers when we spoke of this earlier, but they were certainly brought to these shores and left that night. But as you’ve seen this morning, Jonah, they stay apart and do not speak. In fact, they were asked by our reeve if they’d witnessed anything amiss upon the beach or in the wood, and they merely dropped their eyes and made him no reply, which surely means they’d not. They are thought to oft be vague of mind with their disease, though I myself believe that’s more prejudiced opinion than true fact. Their silence has more to do, in my thinking, with their own deep feeling that they are not worthy to voice their thoughts aloud. It’s hard to overstate the damage done to their sense of worthiness by those who would set them apart as unclean, or sinners, or worse.”<
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  Thaddeus had gotten wound up in this spiel, and he covered his lips with his fingertips, bidding himself leave the subject at that juncture.

  Jonah stood dejected. “Poisoned pirates, a lazy petty thief, the gimp Rhia defends so strongly, and these diseased folk. All were in the woods that night, yet none seems a right likely murderer and none saw a thing. And what of their ears? You’d think someone would have heard the scuffle, or the sound of Aleron’s desperate screams as he took such grievous wounds. You’ve told me, Thaddeus, the murdered man was stabbed seven times. Seven knife wounds cannot be had by anyone silently.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Thaddeus said thoughtfully, jabbing the air with a finger. “I hadn’t considered that. It would not have been an instant death, and his calls for help should have been heard.” He pinched his chin, puzzling over this new element as he turned and led them in silent procession downward again.

  The grumbling thunder joined them as a fourth, not-so-silent companion.

  It was raining steadily by the time they reached the ford. Rhia pulled her soaked hair into a dripping knot, then crouched in the shallows to show the other two the exact spot where the little clamshell had shone in the water on that other, sunnier day.

  “False sunshine it was, though, since Jim did not come home with us that afternoon,” she mentioned sadly. Then she added in an even quieter voice, “And your loyal friend Aleron, Sir Jonah, had given his soul to God just the day before.”

  Thaddeus nodded toward the nut tree that rose straight and tall just feet from where they crouched. “The spot Almund showed me was right there, near the submerged roots. The murdered man wore nothing but a flaxen tunic and had no possessions upon him. Almund figures his outer clothing was taken as booty, along with whatever coin he had, and that thievery was the motive for the crime. I saw no reason to disagree with the reeve’s thoughts on it, though now . . .”