Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  Jonah slowly wound Aleron’s scarf around the hilt of the sword, then took a firm two-handed grip upon that hilt. His eyes were glazed so that Rhia wondered if he even knew what he was doing as he raised the weapon above his head.

  Thaddeus jumped to his feet, but could find no way to intervene. Rhiannon looked down at her lap, weeping and praying a single word—: No, no, no!

  “I would give my very soul for a second chance,” Jonah whispered. “Yet you already kill again since my friend’s recent death, just from blind selfishness! How many chances have you been granted to show repentance, and how many have you squandered thus?”

  Panting and shaking, he stood poised to bring down the sword upon Leonard’s head. It seemed to Rhia an eternity crawled by as he prepared that fatal strike. Most others in the room now wept, and had turned their faces from the bloodbath to come. Leonard could do naught but close his eyes and wait for his deathblow to fall.

  Then Thaddeus spoke in a clear, bell-like voice. “Second chances come in many forms, good friend. A chance to show mercy is surely one of them, else why did Christ advise to turn the other cheek?”

  Jonah glanced toward Thaddeus, and Rhia held her breath and changed her prayer to please, please, please as she frantically tapped Mam’s cross against her chin.

  Though Jonah instantly focused again on his revenge, raising the sword a bit higher and gritting his teeth, Rhia saw the white fury gradually retreating from his face as a tide leaves the beach. Finally his sharp features were shed of that completely, and assumed instead an expression of sad wonderment, as though now in Leonard he inspected a monstrous fish with a murderous nature, hardly man at all.

  Jonah finally stepped backward and brought the sword down with all his strength upon the floor, grunting with the effort. It made a bright sound when the tip sparked upon the stone, but Aleron’s soft scarf stopped its further clatter when he let it drop completely from his hands.

  “I pity you, Leonard,” he muttered as he turned his back and strode to the door. He jerked it open and stepped outside. The wailing storm then took the occasion to elbow its way inside, like a nervy guest.

  All was instantly chaos. The squires found their feet and Leonard and Frederick rushed for their swords. The others in the room bundled against the gale and moved closer together, wondering what would happen next. Thaddeus pulled Rhia behind him, as it was unclear if there would be more swordplay. It seemed likely the three would simply take to their heels, but then again, they might first seek to silence all who had heard them confess to causing Aleron’s death, and to its subsequent concealment.

  Indeed, when he’d retrieved his sword, Leonard turned to run wild eyes across the group of fearful witnesses huddled in the shadows. He gripped the hilt of his weapon, set his teeth, and half turned toward them, but Roderick caught his arm.

  “Leo, we must get out of this wretched place!” he urged.

  Leonard snarled, “Let go of me and leave me to my work, you spineless snitch! You bragged that you have never killed, yet you did not bother to add that it’s because you faint at the sight of blood and I must do the dirty work on your behalf and lazy Fred’s! Unhand me, or you’ll regret it, Rod, I swear!”

  “Leo, let’s just go!” Roderick screamed, pulling him along against the wind and toward the door. “My father will stitch this up when we may reach him, but don’t make it more a mess for him than it presently lies! He grows much weary of this sort of trouble!”

  “Frederique?” Rhia heard Maddy whimper.

  But Frederique was well gone, the first of the three to scramble.

  “Crrrrrrrrawwwwk!”

  “Gramp!” Rhia cried, for indeed that perturbed groshawke had flown in on the wind at this first chance, squeezing just beneath the stone top sill of the oaken door and above the heads of the two quarreling squires. He was flapping his wings with much ado and upset, insulted at his perch being shifted by the eery light and further insulted that all these had taken advantage of his absence to sneak inside the place.

  Leo flinched and looked upward, unnerved at Gramp’s theatrical behavior. In fact, Gramp may well have been the factor that tilted Leo toward leaving the witnesses unkilled and yielding to Roderick’s hysterical urgings. He was still peering uneasily at the rafters when he finally gave up his plan and fled with Roderick from the place.

  The four inside hastened to watch from the windows.

  “Jonah left to bring the reeve,” Thaddeus said in a rush. “I hope Almund’s arrived.”

  The wind and rain swirled everywhere, yet they could see the three squires met up in front of the church, arguing with many wide and angry gestures about where the path might start that would take them down to safety. And then three others approached along the very path the squires sought—Jonah between Almund and Holt. They carried no swords, but held the large fighting sticks known along the frontier to pack quite a wallop.

  Those three halted and stood glowering in the rain. Almund called, “In the name of King Henry, you three stand accused by your own confession of manslaughter and complicity, and are placed under arrest by my authority as reeve.”

  Rhia could see from the haughty way they stood that the squires had no intention of submitting.

  “No frontier reeve can arrest the earl’s own son and his retinue!” Leonard called. “Better luck next time, dunderheads! I compliment the middle yokel on his acting as he is a ringer for Prince William and nearly took me in. In fact, only his cowardice in sparing my life showed him to be an actor, not our hotheaded dead prince. Now, you must part for us immediately!” He drew his sword and Frederick drew his.

  Within the church, Thaddeus sadly murmured, “What Leonard’s said may be true and the reeve lacks the authority we’d thought he’d have in this. Who can say for sure, given the unsettled nature of the law these days.”

  Almund raised his stick to a defensive position and the others did likewise. They would not yield the path but would fight it out, though Rhia thought sticks could surely not prevail against blades. She put her head in her hands.

  But Beornia grabbed her shoulder. “Look! There, at the edge of the woods!”

  Rhia squinted and saw a line of folk coming from the trees! They were hooded and masked, and clacked upon their clacking bowls so that the closer they walked, the louder became the bone-rattle of their freakish advance.

  The squires by then had also taken notice of this army of the ragged dead. Leonard stood speechless, his brash talk dried up at the sight and his sword dropped to his side.

  “The gang of three at their left blocking the pathway down, the lepers at their front blocking escape through the wood,” Thaddeus observed quietly. “We are at their backs. Yet methinks they have most to fear, if they knew it, from trying an escape to the right!”

  Rhia looked that way and saw Mam, Granna, and Daisy approaching their fastest. Granna brandished the large oaken paddle she used for the bread, and Daisy had her pet in its sling and seemed ready to sacrifice her for catapult against the enemy if need be.

  Without knowing what she was doing, Rhia ran through the door. She would join her kin! They offered flimsy resistance, and if the squires were smart they’d charge that way. She would be with them! Her kin—hers!

  Thaddeus grabbed round her waist and hoisted her back, and they might have had a battle about it if just then Maddy hadn’t let out a squeal.

  “May all God’s angels preserve and keep us!” she yelped. “It’s most certainly the Queen of the May, come from the faery realm!”

  Beornia Gatt for once stood openmouthed and gaping. “It is,” she breathed.

  The lepers had parted their line in the middle so that Ingrid, seated upon Charlemagne, could slowly advance from concealment in the woods. The glowing horse and rider seemed an enchant that might dissolve at any moment, made up of the moonlight and wispy curls of mist.

  Rhia’s breath came fast as she watched Ingrid walk Charlemagne nearer to the flabbergasted squires. The girl dismounted li
ghtly as a snowflake, but not until she and Aleron’s steed were the mere length of their shadows from the three.

  Ingrid’s eyes stayed fast on Leonard, though she uttered no word and made no further movement. Charlemagne nuzzled her shoulder and she bent her head to his muzzle.

  Then Leonard suddenly lunged forward to grab the reins that hung lightly in Ingrid’s hand. He swung himself up to sit upon Charlemagne’s back, and the steed whinnied and circled in a tight little dance but offered no challenge nor resistance to Leonard’s sit.

  “This place, this land of phantoms and freakish weathers, I leave it to you!” he cried down to all of them. “Fred, Roderick—you two may better slip this pack alone. As you’ve so graciously pointed out to them, ’twas I who did the dirty deed, and as usual, you barely helped. When I reach the manor house, I’ll send help your way, if I decide I’ve the energy and nerves for it, that is!”

  With a bitter laugh, he dug his heels into Charlemagne’s sides, then spotted the pathway down and turned him toward it, veering wide around the three who stood blocking that route. They gave, chase, but he quickly far outdistanced them. Then, seeing they’d given up, he pulled the reins to correct his veer. Those watching saw the steed ignore this direction. Instead, with a rear of his hooves and a brave toss of his fine head, Charlemagne proceeded to run at a full gallop straight through the orchard, ignoring Leo’s pull and proceeding in a perfect line toward the bluff’s rim.

  Rhia knew they galloped too fast to stop at the edge or to make the turn.

  Indeed, Rhiannon and the others all heard the triumphant whinny Aleron’s steed gave to the wind when he took his leap over the edge.

  The Pilgrim Resumes His Journey

  May Day was but ten days gone, and already the trees were so thickly leafed that one might not catch so much as a glimpse of the forest’s ancient contents. Beautiful Clodaghcombe would now hide her face behind green hands until the breathy wind of September notched her deep canopy and let snoopers have another peep at her wonders—her rood marks, her standing rocks and faery circles, her enchanted caves. But what good was that peep, really? Even when winter had completely bared the trees, you might look at it all, take in every sacred stone, but no matter how you tried, you could not see the layers of mystery and meaning that dwelt deep inside those ancient things. So truly, you saw nothing, and you knew nothing!

  And the worst thing was, Clodaghcombe Forest was but one of a long list of things Rhia feared she’d never so much as begin to understand!

  Well, but she was gloomed this afternoon, heartsick to say it true.

  “I don’t see why he could not wait to go for but a few days more,” she murmured, tapping her chin with Mam’s small cross. “He should at least have let us walk him down the trail. And Thaddeus, don’t you dare tell me not to cry!”

  Thaddeus stood with his arms in his sleeves, watching Jonah and Beornia walk hand in hand past the hives. “He wanted privacy to tell Beornia good-bye,” he explained.

  Rhia rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think I know that?” She sat upon the cool grass and bounced her knees, squinting at the pair. Beornia herself would only get to go with Jonah to the edge of the orchard. He wanted to descend the bluff alone. “Will . . . we see him again, ever?”

  Thaddeus thought that over. “Yes, I believe we will,” he answered, then he settled himself on the grass nearby Rhia. “Don’t cry,” he pled softly.

  She sniffed. “I can’t help it,” she moaned, and wiped her eyes upon her apron just as Jonah took Beornia’s face in his hands and leaned to kiss her lips.

  Rhia sighed large. “I shall never be kissed!” she cried, then she feigned swatting at a hornet with her apron, as she’d not meant to utter that at all.

  Now Jonah and Beornia had let go each other’s hands, and Beornia wiped her own more justified tears as Jonah shifted his pilgrim pack and walked on.

  “In a moment, he’ll pass through the first apricot trees, then we won’t have another glimpse of him!” Rhia’s heart was breaking. “Everyone leaves us! You, too!”

  Thaddeus shook back his hair. “I’ve told you, Rhia, I must take this sea ride that the pirates have graciously offered so’s I may quickly reach the road leading to Glastonbury. It’s a chance to bring back the workers that can help the lepers.”

  “I know, I know,” she cut him off. “But I mean, you’ll leave. Not upon this trip to bring back the workers your prior has promised, but ... soon you’ll surely leave leave. Return to your brothers, to your work in the church, or in a monastery somewhere.”

  She pulled up her knees, hugged them to her, and tried to ease the tightness in her chest by looking round the settlement. Whilst Sal watched smiling, the three little girls played at their patting games, though Mary played with but one hand. Still, it looked like someday she’d use her arm again, and now ’twas certain she would not die. Mam was proud of that. Though she rarely showed pride, this time she had.

  Beornia was running toward her father and son, who waited with Granna upon a cloth spread by the brook. She reached them and hefted Jamesy toward the sky. Rhia could hear his chortles, that sweetest of all baby sounds, which meant it was likely the sweetest of all sounds. Beornia’s tears would be eased by it, for certain.

  Some few of the folk from the woods were hoeing at the garden. When Thaddeus got back from Glastonbury with his brother monks from the infirmary there, all the lepers could settle into the spacious nether cottage and be cared for properly by hands that knew well how to perform the tasks required.

  There was Mam, humming as she spread her new washed bandage rags upon the willow tree to dry. Gramp watched her from the yew tree, or he slept—hard to tell.

  Rhia’s eyes had now reached round the circle to return to Thaddeus, who shredded a dandelion stem, his brows knit as he concentrated on the job.

  “Rhiannon, do you ever think about what would have happened if Jonah had indeed killed Leonard that night? He might be hanged for it by now, as I’m certain he would not have revealed his true identity even to save his life. And the other squires would certainly have been outraged by Jonah killing Leonard, so they would probably have publicly denied the confessions we heard, which means Jim, too, would now be hanged. As Leonard lived on exactly long enough to leave them in the lurch, they were shaken and angry enough to blather the whole thing to Almund and Holt, so now Jim’s saved.”

  Rhia nodded. “I do think about it. I just wish Roderick and Frederique had been punished a little. But the earl’s boat snatches them up and carries them to another castle. A new start, just like that—poof! Though, of course, Leonard . . .” She shivered, then smiled. “You saved things that night, Thaddeus. You always have just the right words.”

  He frowned at her, puzzled. “Me? Rhia, you did that thing you do.”

  “What thing?” She tapped the cross upon her chin, waiting for him to explain.

  “That thing! Since your mother gave that neckpiece to you, when things get tense, you tap the cross upon your chin! You were doing it when Jonah looked over at us, and it was that got through to him. My words may have done a little, I’ll grant. But no, Rhia. It was definitely that little thing you do with your mother’s cross that broke the lock his anger had upon his mind. Maybe it was the cross. Maybe it was, well, the Rhia-ness of it, reminding him of friendship and its power to heal. Probably both.”

  She sat there blinking. She had never been more stunned.

  Thaddeus jumped to his feet. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s follow him a little! C’mon, from the edge of the bluff we may be able to spot him as he makes that jagged turn on the trail where the trees are bent back!”

  “Yes!” Rhia’s heart leapt at the prospect of another glimpse of Jonah.

  They raced along the path, and arrived at the rim winded and panting. They dropped upon their stomachs side by side and eased over the edge as far as they dared, holding with their fingertips so as not to slide too far.

  “Do you see him?”

  “No
t yet, but . . . yes! Yes, yes!” Thaddeus raised one arm to wave it. “Jonah! Pilgrim, we spy you, we spy you! Hey, up here! Look, look! Up here! It’s us!”

  “Jonah! Jonah, Jonah, Jonah! We can seeeeee you! We can seeeeee you!”

  The pilgrim turned and looked, then grinned so wide that Rhiannon knew for a fact the previous leave-taking had been as unsatisfactory for him as it had been for them. He pushed back his penitent’s hood and let his wild hair salute them as he waved his staff in the air. “Godspeed, you both!” he called.

  “And you as well! Godspeed, and we will hope to meet again!” Thaddeus yelled.

  And then the pilgrim raised his hood and turned his back and was gone.

  “We must never talk of him in town, or even with your family,” Thaddeus said. “To us, he’s Sir Jonah ever, a pilgrim that’s merely detoured through our lives as he took the road to Saint Winifred’s shrine. He wants and needs to be incognito.”

  “Still,” Rhia breathed, “to think the Prince of England helped my granna soothe her bunions with a barley water soak.”

  They sat up, laughing, the wind from the sea blowing their hair.

  “I will not leave you, Rhia. When I return from Glastonbury, I must decorate your church, and this time I promise not use my recipe for glow paint!” He grinned. “It may take some time to do that work, and to help my brothers settle into their nursing.”

  She nodded. “And then you’ll work at painting the church in Woethersly, yes? It’s near enough to see you sometimes.”

  He frowned a little and looked to the sea. “I’m still oblate, but as I said when I came up here, I’m not certain at all about the church, less so all the time. The world seems so large, and God’s work may be done is so many different ways.”

  She took a breath, so filled with hope and relief that she felt she’d burst with it. She’d longed all her life to believe the pagan enchants that Granna told of, and yet look at how the cross she had from Mam had been the mysterious agent of so much! And they would see Jonah again. Of course they would! And also, Mary’s arm was almost healed!