by Vicki Grove
Rhia nodded, though still puzzled. “But she was at bluff’s edge when I gathered seeds with Daisy and Sally. Though she stayed within the deep shade, now I think of it. Was she lured from here by the sight of Daisy as we progressed along the trail, do you think?”
“I’d imagine so,” Thaddeus allowed. “I’m sure she longs for the lighthearted company of girls her own age, as any child will.”
Rhiannon frowned and put her hand upon her hip. “Wait. How do you know so much about her, even her name? She’s mute and could not tell it.” She tapped her chin and murmured, “For that matter, how does Daisy know the child’s name?”
Thaddeus wearily shook his head. “She’s not mute, though she will not often talk. We might not either if our words had brought us the misery hers have brought her.” He looked at Rhia with great sadness in his eyes. “I’ve met her before, you see—in Glastonbury. I’d not seen her close enough to know it until I saw her upon the altar bench when I entered this place earlier this evening.”
He sat heavily upon the wall bench by the baptismal font and leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees. “She was born to peasants in Coventry just as you see her now, without a speck of color anywhere about her, even her eyes the faintest pinkish blue. The local gentry there bought her from her mother, believing she could tell the future, which is a common superstition with children such as she. They installed her in their manor house, taught her to ride when she could sit the saddle, kept her like a prized pet and asked her the meaning of their dreams. She answered well enough to please them in her childish way, I imagine. It’s not hard to tell folk what they want to hear. But there came a time that . . .”
Rhia went to sit next to him, as Thaddeus had spoken more and more quietly as he’d proceeded. Indeed, he’d mumbled the last sentence so she’d barely heard, and now it seemed he might stop his account altogether.
“Thaddeus?” she nudged, elbowing him lightly in the ribs. “A time that what?”
He covered his face with his long fingers.
“There came a time that hardship arrived at the manor, as there will be hard years at any house,” he murmured. “A fire ravaged the lord’s barns, and then his ships were sunk that might have filled his coffers. Both mishaps coming so close together were thought to be witchcraft and blamed upon the child. She was put out of the place, left on her own to fend in the streets of Coventry at the age of six. She was starved and kicked, and lay dying in the mud of the common pigsty when one of my brothers at Glastonbury came upon her. Brother Gyles secreted her to our infirmary, where we kept her for a year.”
Thaddeus abruptly stood and began pacing in great agitation, his hands tucked within his sleeves. He paused beneath the window with the Devil Dogs of Clodagh painted above it, and Rhia saw opportunity to ask what she could no longer wait to know.
“But Thaddeus, how came she to be in our woods?”
Thaddeus looked upward and appeared to address the gruesome hounds. “At Glastonbury we nursed her as well as we were able,” he said, in a hollow way. “But one night as we slept, she disappeared, walked away from her bed without a word, as oft happens with those in our care. We were able to strengthen her limbs a little, but I fear her spirit was too damaged for our skills. I can only think that she lived wild then, helped by the lepers who dwelt in the countryside. When they were gathered by the earl’s men for removal to this bluff, she must have been taken in the same net. She is now about eight years old, or nine. Though she’s the size of Daisy at six, from rough treatment.”
Thaddeus could not have known how sick Rhiannon felt upon hearing all this, seeing as how at the bluff today, with her actions and demeanor, she’d echoed the witchy accusations those vile folk in Coventry had made.
She had indeed shunned a child who’d nearly died from just such shuns. . . . that is not your sister . . . let us go home. . . .
She stood. “Thaddeus, I feel unwell and must bid you a good evening.”
“Please, Rhia, wait.” Thaddeus hurried over to her. “Jonah will not rest until I speak to you of his plan for Beltane Eve. That is, our plan. I confess I went along when he proposed it. Though now I’ve had time to ponder, I’m not so sure. You know how Jonah is. Blinding in his enthusiasm. Anyhow, I will tell you and judge by your reaction if his ideas be lamebrained, or not. For there will be dangers and pitfalls that—”
Rhia grasped his arm. “Thaddeus, I don’t want to hear of this just now!”
She ran from the chapel, sure she would be sick from the sourness that churned within her. But it didn’t happen, and when she reached the nether side of the beehives, she fell upon her knees and fisted her hands in her laps.
“I am bitterly ashamed of the way I acted toward a young girl today!” she wailed to the bees, who stood silent jury as Mistress Moon above sat judge. “Could I do it over, I would never let vile superstition cloud my sight and turn my heart all stony cold.”
Whether Rhia’d known it or not, her regret had been a prayer, and the sort God is wont to answer much quicker than a prayer for flashy tricks, a healed skull or somesuch. The bees held their silence when she’d finished, and so she was able to hear the soft clop-clop of slow-stepping hooves coming up behind her.
Hardly daring to breathe, she stood and turned toward the sound.
It was Sir Jonah who trod in her direction, leading Charlemagne by a cord thrown loose about his neck! And upon that tall steed’s bare back and holding his reins sat young Ingrid! The horse and child glowed with the moonlight as though they’d drifted down from heaven, whilst Jonah seemed a hardier, earthbound thing, made of dense shadows and smelling strong of sawdust and sweat.
He grinned, proud of himself. “Rhia! See what I’ve caught in the woods tonight?”
But Rhiannon’s eyes were only for the child. She walked as close as she dared.
“Earlier I asked your forgiveness for my bad manners, but indeed I need forgiveness for a much weightier thing,” she whispered up to her. “My own nervous fears kept me from feeling what you were feeling. I believe fear of what we do not know may be the devil’s best tool, meant to keep us back from those we long to approach.”
At this, Ingrid gave her the slightest of smiles.
Then, with the air of a child engaged in a grand game, she pulled the reins taut so that the steed pranced upon his back legs and pawed the air, then the two of them turned with a flourish and were off for the sheltering woods from whence they’d come.
Sir Jonah let the lead rope be pulled from his hands and roared with laughter as they galloped away. “They will come close to you when they wish, but indeed won’t be caught,” he said admiringly. He then turned to Rhia with his knuckles upon his hips. “Well, did you speak with Thaddeus? What say you to our brilliant plan?”
Rhia lifted her chin. “Indeed, I have not heard it, though I confess I think it no plan at all unless I have had a large hand in it. After all, Beltane Eve is my affair, never yours.”
Jonah played at being confused. “You say you’ve not heard our plan,” he said teasingly, “and yet you know it to be a plan for Beltane, and so I think you have.”
Rhia felt her neck burn and was glad of the darkness. “I need to candle Sally’s window,” she said, and hurried to leave him. “As for your plan,” she threw back over her shoulder, “I only know you made one, but I’ve little desire to know more.”
A brazen mistruth, of course, and so transparent Sir Jonah right out laughed.
“When you hear the great bird squawk tonight, you’ll know Thaddeus and I wait in the chapel for your attendance so we may talk more!” he shouted after her, still laughing.
Chapter 23
Rhiannon lay sleepless that night, listening for Gramp’s midnight signal.
Daisy breathed beside her, the child’s rosebud mouth moving as though she would speak to the shades that lived in her dreams. Lucy the cat snored at Daisy’s feet, and the tortoise Queen Matilda clicked about upon the floor. Mayhaps she believed she traveled far
, though she only went in a small circle, round and round and round.
Rhia lifted one hand and placed it between her face and the sparrow’s gaping hole in the roof weave. She noted how her fingers cut the starry sky into wedges, as though the sky was a half round of cheese and her fingers the lines the cheesemonger’s knife had made. She might close her hand into a fist and crush a handful of stars, if she liked.
She yawned. “Hurry up, boys,” she whispered. And then, she was suddenly asleep.
Gramp’s alarm brought her round a little later, but she was then so fuzzy-headed she slid down the ladder, thumping her rear with every rung, and staggered nearly into the firepit before she made it out the door. She stopped still upon the threshold, waiting for Granna or Mam to call and ask her business leaving the house at this unheard of hour. If Mam had, she’d have pled that she’d been sleepwalking, and it would have been so nearly true that God would forgive the lie, she reckoned.
But neither one awoke and called out. Her luck was holding, then. She ran straightaway to the brook and slapped water on her face, gasping at its icy chill, then turned on her heel and sped to the chapel.
Gramp sat upon the roof, growling, so Rhiannon hushed him with a finger to her lips as she approached. “All’s well, Gramp. We three meet here tonight to make a plan.”
Gramp raised one eyebrow, but hunkered his head into his neck feathers, relaxing his guard. He’d been halfhearted in his warning this time anyhow, mayhaps from his own overwork, or mayhaps because he now recognized the two who’d sneaked into the place. He’d kept up a grrrrrrr in his throat that sounded more like annoyance than a true squawk of alarm, but it’d been enough to penetrate Rhia’s deep dreams, that’s the main thing. “Thanks, Gramp, for your vigilant protection,” she whispered, for courtesy’s sake, as she threw her weight against the heavy door.
She’d forgot a tallow. “Piddle!” she whispered, stubbing her toe as she went up the stoop and into the ancient church. The door creaked closed behind her as she jumped around the ancient flagstones upon one foot, calling out, “Thaddeus and Jonah! You’ve got me here from a deep sleep and I’ve nearly torn my toe off, so show yourselves without delay!”
In the far shadows, stone squealed against stone as the ancient hermit’s tomb was slowly opened from the inside. Rhiannon rolled her eyes and went in that direction, feeling slowly along lest she stub her hurt toe again upon a lip of floorstone.
“I’ve seen this before, remember, Jonah? This time, I shall not take you for . . .”
But there was eery light coming from deep within the vault, so that the figure now looming in the entrance to it was framed with back-glow. Each bone in his face was sharp and skeletal, each finger threw a long and dancing shadow, and his head was capped with mossy things that squirmed and slithered. He groaned as he advanced.
In spite of herself, Rhia took quick steps backward, her hands at her throat.
Thaddeus then appeared behind the phantom, lunging from within the vault to slap the spirit upon the back so that cobwebs puffed from its filthed jacket. “We got her, Jonah!” he raved, then turned eagerly to Rhiannon. “Admit to being frightened, Rhia! We got you with the worms and the lamplight, even though you had every reason to think it was Jonah, having seen him similarly emerge last night. We got you!”
Jonah pulled off the hideous headdress and the two of them stood there slapping hands and laughing. They reminded Rhiannon of nothing so much as the little girls at their game that afternoon. More to the point, her feelings were hurt at their laughter.
“I thought we were to speak of saving Jim tonight,” she scolded, “but instead you would . . . you would do horseplay!” She turned to leave them to their boyish antics.
But ere she reached the door, they rushed to her, took an elbow apiece, and turned her back around with nothing she could do about it, even had she truly wanted to.
“You misunderstood our little play, Rhia,” said Sir Jonah, his eyes glistening. “You took it for performance, when it was but practice. Forgive us.”
“Practice?” Rhia asked, though her question was ignored in their excitement.
“And the glee I showed was surprise, never ridicule,” Thaddeus added happily. “I ask your pardon for our coarseness, but in my contemplations this afternoon I truly had decided Jonah’s plan was hairbrain, whereas now I can see that it just might work!”
Rhia could not get in a word to ask the questions that now swirled within her head, as Sir Jonah had objected to the word hairbrain and he and Thaddeus bickered rapidly back and forth as they walked with her between them, still held by the elbows. And then quick enough she realized they were not headed for the main part of the room at all, but were headed right back to the dampish and nearly airless crypt!
She dug in her heels. “Wait! Wherefore go we, to the hermit’s vault? We can talk up here in the wide part of the church much better.”
She’d never visited the hermit’s bones after dark, so why start now?
The boys stopped walking and let go her arms. Thaddeus tucked his hands into his sleeves. Though before he’d been mirthful, now he looked as solemn as she’d seen him.
“Rhia, again I beg you pardon us,” he implored. “Sir Jonah and I have had the same thought, which is that we should seek the hermit’s blessing before embarking on this course. We will need help from all sides if this is to work.”
Jonah nodded. “I’ve told you, Rhia, how these past months my friend Aleron and I have sought the tombs of saints upon our journeys. And so your ancient hermit’s resting place seems the natural spot, and a goodly one, to pray that we be pure of heart and worthy of this quest. Things may go without a hitch, but again, there is always the chance of . . . disaster.”
Rhiannon’s eyes widened. “Disaster?” she whispered.
Jonah shrugged quite cheerfully. “I might better have merely said danger.”
Still, dangers are only a smidgeon less worrisome than disasters.
Rhiannon threw up her hands. “I confess I think you enjoy danger, Sir Jonah! Though I cannot see what dangers you may encounter during my meeting at Beltane Eve!”
With that and a vexed shake of her head, she led the way through the stone door and into the ancient Irish hermit’s crypt.
There were four stone steps down from the crypt’s entrance to the vault itself, and one had to crouch, as the ceiling was low. There was not much space within the stone vault, either. Only a child of Daisy’s years might have stood upright there, and with three of them gathered round the scooped-out slab where the hermit lay, elbows met and knees thumped. The scant air smelled of chilly stone and the lamp’s dwindling supply of oil.
The saintly Irish hermit lay staring up at heaven as they three stared down at him. His bony jaws gaped and his finger bones had come some undone, as Granna reckoned he’d been there three hundred years or more. His woolen robe had stayed mostly intact, with his iron cross upon its leather thong over his heart, or what remained of it within his robed chest. The last flowers Rhia and Granna had brought on his name day and placed nearby his head were shriveled to crispy weeds. Rhiannon took them between her hands and crushed them to pleasant-smelling shreds, which she sprinkled gently down upon the hermit, as Granna had taught her to do.
Thaddeus made the sign of the cross, and the other two followed him in it. The monk knelt, Rhiannon sat upon her heels with bowed head, and Jonah crouched.
“We pray you, sir, intercede so that our actions may be well planned and bravely done as we set out to save our innocent friend, James Gatt,” Thaddeus whispered to the hermit.
The other two said amen to it, then all but the hermit opened their eyes.
Rhiannon turned to Jonah, tapping her chin with Mam’s cross. “Let’s hear your plan then,” she said flatly. “The good hermit may give his blessing, though I warn you, I know of your rash nature and may be harder to please.”
Jonah squinted his eyes, taking that in. “Yes, my nature is indeed rash,” he mused. “In the pas
t that often served me well, though in more recent times it’s been my undoing. You’re good to remind me, friend Rhiannon. I’ll let you hear and judge, then.”
“Tell her first of the stone pictures at Wythicopse,” Thaddeus urged in a whisper.
“Yes!” Rhia nodded eagerly. “How did you know of those ceiling pictures?”
Jonah took a breath. “Those small stones are not a ceiling as you suppose, Rhia. They rather make up the floor of an ancient palace, fallen to ruin, or burned, many centuries ago. Conquerors from near the time of Christ built such palaces throughout the world, including in this land. Romans, they were, and though they were chief among pagans, their capital is now capital of all Christendom. I’ve seen floors like the one you described when I’ve been traveling with Aleron in Italia, and indeed have glimpsed bits of two or three of them even here in England. Beneath those elegant picture floors are open spaces run through with large pipes. Once, slaves stoked fires that breathed hot air into those pipes, thus heating the floors in winter. The building skills of the ancient Romans were formidable, though their grand kingdom is long since fallen and their opulent buildings now lie ruined even in the city from which they took their name.”
Thaddeus cleared his throat and added, “In truth, once Jonah had spoken of those stone pictures, I, too, recognized what your ceiling must be, Rhia. I saw Rome with my father, as a child, and marveled at the fine mosaic floors left in ruins from those ancient times. The artistry is incredible, though the subject matter is pagan, gods and goddesses and the like. Of course, there are natural things too, such as the hare you saw, and—”
Jonah grew impatient. “Yes, yes, they’re pretty enough. But for our purposes, the interesting thing is the space left for those pipes to run beneath that stone floor. The moans and huffings Rhia has heard must mean that air still goes through those ancient pipes. And since the pipes are still intact, one should be able to crawl beneath that floor from some ancient fireplace that surely lies hidden somewhere in the overgrowth. Thaddeus and I will search for an opening in the morning.”
