by Vicki Grove
Rhia awaited the rest of that sentence, and at the same time watched Jonah, who was engaged in returning the little clamshell to the spot where Rhia’d found it, leaving it as fit token to mark the place his friend had breathed his last. He’d pulled his hands from the frigid waters, and Rhia caught her breath and winced at what she saw.
“Sir Jonah, you’ve right maimed yourself, squeezing onto that jabbing pin all through the night!” she scolded. “Your fingers are swollen as can be, and I’ll be much surprised if that wound in your palm does not fester and make you ill. I needs must bind it with something right now, while it’s cleaned from the water.”
She looked about for some ready stuff that would make him a bandage, and then remembered the blue scarf tucked handily enough in her waist pouch yesterday. She right quick withdrew it as a wrinkled mass and turned to stretch it taut across a rock.
And then, things happened fast, all in a matter of moments, and behind her back. She heard a sort of growl from Jonah, then she heard the splash and scrape of some scuffle in the water. Then Thaddeus called out, quite sharply, “Desist, right now!”
She’d turned by then to see what was happening, and was astounded. For Jonah was straining toward her with his teeth bared and his eyes abulge! Thaddeus had his arms restrained behind his back, elsewise it looked like he would have lunged right at her as a serpent may lunge and strike the life from a hapless toad!
“Where did you get his scarf?” the pilgrim demanded, writhing in Thaddeus’s grip.
Rhia regained her wits enough to realize that Jonah was not straining toward her, but rather toward the blue cloth.
“This?” She hastened to him with the scarf held out so’s he might have it. Thaddeus carefully let go his arms, and instantly Jonah snatched the cloth with trembling hands, then fell to his knees in the rocky waters and buried his face in it.
The other two stood watching, not for the first time stymied by his actions.
“I . . . I was told that scarf belongs to Leonard, a friend of the earl’s son,” Rhiannon ventured. “Several young men came with the earl’s son to squire this spring with our Lord Claredemont. My friend Maddy knows them, and she brought the scarf to me from Leonard, in token of, well, some . . . some interest he seems to have in me.”
Thaddeus looked surprised and frowned.
The pilgrim shook his head. “As I have breath, ’tis Aleron’s,” he pushed out.
He got to his feet, struggling for balance upon the slick rocks. He fumed—you could see it in the bright color of his face. “Where do I find this . . . this Leonard?” he demanded. He wrapped the scarf around both hands and held it taut in front of him as if it were a garrote. “I’ll see him painfully throttled ere I sleep another night!”
Thaddeus, slip-sliding, hastened around to meet him face-to-face. “Listen to me,” the monk said firmly, taking his shoulders. “You must learn to practice restraint. This Leonard may simply have found the scarf, or he may have borrowed it from someone who had found it. You must remain far calmer than you are right now if you’re to do justice to the memory of your friend. Otherwise, you’ll only wreak havoc.”
At first, Jonah just looked at him with glazed eyes, not comprehending anything beyond his own raw pain. But Thaddeus met the pilgrim’s eyes with a steadfast gaze of his own, and finally Jonah took a deep breath and put his own hands upon Thaddeus’s shoulders.
“Brother, you remind me of Aleron,” he said. “I swear to God, you do. He was squire to me, though we were much the same age. He’d turned eighteen not long ago, and I will be that age in some few months. We’d been together since my father bade him serve me our thirteenth year, and his was ever the cool head, while I blundered on, liable to pick any fight, quick to draw my sword against any perceived insult. Aleron stayed my arm time and again, you see. And then last winter he saved my life, though oft it has seemed to me that this was a blow, not a boon.”
He closed his eyes and dropped his head to his hands.
Rhia dared put her hand upon his shoulder. “I beg you listen. This dark wish you carry does Aleron no honor. Your loyal friend would surely tell you that each day you live in the sunny world is a great boon. Each breath you take is a gift from God.”
He looked up, but his eyes, meeting hers, were hot and troubled.
“I hear what you say, Rhiannon, but now hear me. I dare not reveal myself to my family or friends. My rumored death was at least honorable, whereas my survival is not. And so I travel incognito, hoping, yearning for forgiveness from God that I cannot expect and do not deserve. I’ve been responsible for the deaths of many others, you see. First upon the battlefield, and then . . . well, then in a much, much worse circumstance.”
He fell to his knees again so the icy river waters flowed around him. He raised the blue scarf over his head, held taut between his fists whilst the rain diverted down his arms and dripped from his elbows. Water, water—all was rushing water.
Rhia knew that he wished to become a part of all that water, to dissolve and cease to be. Yet the longer she was around him, the more she somehow sensed he wouldn’t easily yield to that impulse. He was too alive, too stubbornly impatient and strong.
Suddenly, he threw back his head and shouted to the skies, “Aleron, help me! Adela, my dear sister, forgive me!”
Just then, Thaddeus grabbed Rhia’s arm and pointed into the woods. “Look!”
Rhia gasped, for the mysterious white horse was walking slowly from the trees, entering the clearing that edged the river. It pawed the ground and whinnied, then fixed Sir Jonah with its luminous dark eyes.
“Charlemagne?” Sir Jonah rose cautiously. The steed reared and pawed the air with its front hooves, then walked directly to him, shaking its silver mane so it shattered the rain in all directions. Sir Jonah lay hands upon its noble forehead for a moment, then the horse dipped its head and turned to canter gracefully back into the dense woods.
Jonah stood frozen there astride the rushing water. “Charlemagne, it was you,” he breathed.
Chapter 20
There could be only one conclusion, and Thaddeus was the one to voice it. “The steed belonged to your missing friend,” he said quietly.
The pilgrim nodded, his eyes still upon the opening in the trees where the stallion had disappeared. “Charlemagne was ever loyal to his master, and so I know for certain now that Aleron is . . .”
He stopped and lowered his head, swallowing, unable to say the final word.
Rhiannon felt tears press behind her eyes as Thaddeus splashed through the water to grip Jonah’s shoulder. “God’s will be done,” he said.
And though none in Lord Claredemont’s manner of Woethersly had properly mourned the man found murdered there, they three mourned him well that afternoon as they took the trail homeward with slow step and private thoughts of friendship and loss.
When they’d set foot upon the blufftop again, they looked at each other and by unspoken agreement tarried some ways from the settlement, making a circle of three under the bent and scraggly little stand of orchard trees. In truth, they were reluctant to be questioned by their elders until they’d made some private plans for proceeding on what they’d learned at the river ford.
“So, this Leonard fellow held the scarf belonging to Aleron,” Thaddeus said. “He would certainly not have killed for such a thing, being wealthy himself. But . . .”
He paused, never willing to speak rashly when so much was at stake.
Rhiannon was meanwhile picturing those racing horsemen with their flying cloaks and vestments, their glinting weapons and spurs. One had certainly been Leonard, but which in that pack of heedless riders?
“But what?” Jonah shifted from foot to foot. “If you’ve thought of some other reason for Aleron’s scarf to be in his wretched hands, spill it, good monk!”
Thaddeus tapped his lip with one paint-stained finger and proceeded carefully. “My line of thought was merely this. Jonah, you brought up the fact that there were many in the woods
that night, and none reported hearing the screams that might portend a bloody crime. Well, what if the death were too sudden for the victim to call out, and the stab wounds done later, to mask that fact? What if, in fact, Aleron was not stabbed to death at all, but instead died some other, quicker way, maybe even by accident.”
“By accident?” Jonah said hotly. “Sir Monk, you misjudge my friend’s skill and horsemanship if you think he might have fallen from his own steed! And why, pray tell, would someone stab him afterward in that case? What purpose would it serve?”
“What if he was . . . was run down, knocked from his horse?” Rhiannon whispered.
Jonah’s face went white. At first he seemed to be considering that, but then he threw up his arms. “We waste time on pointless speculation whilst the bloody murderers flee beyond our grip!” He strode to a nearby tree and began pummeling it with his fists.
Thaddeus started toward him, but Rhia put her hand on the monk’s arm. “Mayhaps he wrestles just now with his own demons,” she whispered. “I say we let him, though his knuckles fester from it later. He may eventually learn restraint from such ordeals.”
Thaddeus looked surprised, but stayed. As they watched, grimacing, Rhiannon felt a great helplessness flood through her.
“Truly, Aleron is dead and nothing will change that,” she murmured sadly. “What matters now is Jim, and there’s nothing to be done on his behalf. Nothing! Even if we were to find that Leonard came to possess Aleron’s scarf through the worst possible mischief, he will doubtless manage to stay beyond the law. No one in the realm can stand against the earl’s own household. We will never see Jim’s name cleared.”
“The king’s household can stand against the earl,” Thaddeus mentioned.
Rhia’s breath caught in her throat and she jerked her attention from Jonah to him. Would he speak his true thoughts now and put words to this unbelievable thing that nevertheless was? But Thaddeus said nothing more and his calm expression gave nothing away.
Jonah meanwhile skulked back to them with his bruised and bloodied fists hugged in his armpits. “I’m my own worst enemy,” he mumbled. “You might as well say it.”
“You’re your own worst enemy.” Rhia wagged a finger in his face. “And oft enough a waste of good nursing, to boot!”
Thaddeus sternly eyed first one and then the other. “All right, children, may we leave your important squabbles and get back to the small fact of this bloody murder? It’s occurred to me that if the young nobles squiring here came by Aleron’s scarf in a criminal way, they may well speak of such an exploit among themselves, or even boast about it. If we could somehow hear what they say when they think themselves alone, we might get to the truth of the matter.”
Jonah nodded eagerly. “Good thinking, monk! Is there somewhere we may go concealed and hear their private brags? The lord’s stables, perhaps? They will be speaking freely while they ready their mounts, as that’s the way of all young men.”
“The horses are stabled within the castle walls, and a guard posted,” Thaddeus replied in a thoughtful murmur. “I did not mean to make it sound a cinch, my friend. I can think of no place or occasion where we might get sufficiently close to them to not risk quick discovery as spies.”
They talked more of this, but Rhiannon’s ears rang so that she could not tell what indeed they said. The fact was, she could certainly think of a place and occasion with plenty sufficient closeness, and in fact could think of naught else. Why, two nights from now she was to meet that bunch for the Beltane Eve revels at Wythicopse Ring!
When they were eating their meal that afternoon, Rhia glanced toward the boys, then asked in a whisper, “Granna? Would you tell right quick what you know of Wythicopse Ring?” By right quick she meant before Mam came back from fetching more bread.
Predictably, Jonah and Thaddeus frowned, unfamiliar with the local reference.
“Ah, Wythicopse. That walled grove is ancient and then some,” Granna began, nodding with satisfaction. “It’s come through the mists of time, just as our bluff has. To start with, it was a fine gathering place for all in the faery realm, see? This was when our first dames were as yet circling birds. There was a right grand castle built upon that site, large by faery standards, though mostly invisible, as faery things usually be. It had spiral passageways within its walls that spun together the world we walk and the deep underworld beneath, the spirit realm. Bridged the two up and down, did those spiral stairs, but they was made from the flimsy stuff of spiderwebs. Not made to take the weight of us humans is what I’m saying, since humans be big and coarse. So that was the problem and the ruination of the thing, see?”
Granna had spoken freely to that point, but now Mam slid back onto the bench and Granna went to slurping her soup as though she’d never set in upon this telling.
Jonah pressed her. “Would you leave us there, madame, without our knowing the outcome of this Wythicopse faery castle?”
“Wythicopse Ring?” Mam asked. “That overgrown walled garden back beyond the manor house?” She pursed her lips and shook her head, tearing the bread, then handing the basket to Thaddeus to pass along. “I believe Lord Claredemont’s gardeners pronounce it haunted so’s not to have to care for it. The thing should be plowed over.”
Granna solemnly clucked her tongue. “Ye dasn’t do a thing like that, Aigneis dear. No, no, ye dasn’t so much as touch with a plowhead that which lies hidden beneath the place.” She leaned closer to Jonah. “The truth of it is this. A young maid who’d lost her love to a pestilence was right desperate to see him again, and for that she braved the faeries’ anger and snuck right into that place so’s she could travel those gossamer stairs down to the spirit realm. Well, she was a slender girl and shimmied right dandy along the spiral turns. But one small strand of that fine thread snapped apart behind her. And when she’d kissed her dead lover and was bound up the return way, she found she could not go it, nor could she go back, as that single broken filament tripped her feet then wrapped her tight as a fly in a spider’s web. This happened way back long centuries ago, but far under that walled grove she dangles to this day, guarded by a dragon set by the ancient faery king to block any who would venture down to save her.”
Rhiannon gulped. That would have been the dragon she’d heard, sure enough.
“Oh, Mother.” Aigneis shook her head. “It’s a good thing Daisy is already napping, as she’d believe your nonsense and have bad dreams.”
Granna ignored that, still wrapped in her tale. “She’d chose All Hallow’s Eve to see her dead love, thinking that on that night things would stand wide open between the realms of life and death. But she neglected to think how on that night all is dark mischief in the faery world, as it brings in winter, which faeries dread. Now on Beltane she mighta had better luck, as the faeries love the spring and let most stupidities of mortal folk be. As I always tell Rhiannon, timing’s the thing with much in life. Remember that, children, as it may come in handy.”
“Timing’s the thing,” Jonah repeated, nodding. He stood abruptly, as he did most things, and bowed to Granna. “You have told an instructive story, and I thank you, wise woman, for the telling of it.” He then bowed to Mam. “And again I thank you for your hospitality, and beg you say what I may do this afternoon to earn my keep.”
Mam gave him chores to do, the gathering of firewood and the plowing of a new space to expand the vegetable garden. He left to begin, joined by Thaddeus.
Granna moved to the pallet for her nap. “I say the fire was wrong about that young man,” she murmured to Rhiannon as she closed her eyes. “I believe he’s better than most his age, faceless in the flames or no, and indeed I’ll stick with that opinion.”
“You yield to his flattery, Granna,” Rhia teased, “as he called you wise.”
“So be it,” Granna allowed, then set to snoring.
Rhia’s mind raced as she quickly cleaned up from the meal, and the moment she could she ran to join Thaddeus and Jonah where they worked behind the nethe
r cottage. Jonah was sharpening the ax blade at their grindstone, whilst Thaddeus was harnessing the cow to their garden plow. Rhia leaned against a tree, tapping her chin with Mam’s cross, wondering how to approach them with what preyed so heavily on her mind.
“So, now you both have heard of Wythicopse Ring,” she finally called out to them. “And many believe a fiercesome dragon does indeed guard the spot, as Granna told. Though certainly, I believe dragons do not exist, as to believe elsewise would be ignorant and never Christian, would you say? Still, there’s that rumor of a dragon ever afoot among plenty of people. Good people, too, and many of them Christians.”
Why could she not come to the point and speak of the chance she’d soon have to be spy within that place? Instead she talked of dragons, a simpler thing in many ways.
Thaddeus looked over at her and smiled, stroking the neck of the harnessed cow to ease its nerves. “You’ve lost me, Rhia.”
Jonah wiped his streaming forehead with his arm and slid his thumb along the ax blade. “Sharp enough,” he pronounced as though he’d not so much as heard her. He shouldered the ax and headed toward the woods.
Thaddeus took the handle of the plow and eased the cow to a pull with a cluck and a small touch of the withy limb he’d cut for the job.
“Stop!” Rhia called out, pulling her hair, frustrated with the both of them beyond endurance. “Would you two have me toasted to a crust by the fiercesome Dragon of Brynourth whilst I spy upon those unpredictable squires and never so much as protest it whilst you still have the chance?”
The cow had decided to put on some speed, and Thaddeus had no recourse but to come along fast behind it. He struggled to guide the plow as it bit into the ground with its single sharp tooth, but he looked at her with wide and startled eyes as he stumbled past.
Jonah, meanwhile, turned on his heel to face her.
“Rhiannon, stop your riddles and say exactly what you mean, else Brother Thaddeus and I may well decide to toast you to a crisp ourselves!”
