The rain began in earnest, rattling off the wagon rooftops, spattering on Milo’s broad haunches. The ox snorted with annoyance; he shook his head every few paces as the raindrops tickled his ears; he turned to look reproachfully at Hob, a look that plainly said: Can you not get us in somewhere, away from this? Hob who fed him, Hob who stabled him—surely he knew what to do.
Hob indeed began to pick up the pace. He and Molly looked from side to side, hoping to find a dense enough copse of trees, a cave, even a rock overhang, where they could shelter the animals and retreat within the wagons till the storm blew over. The rain was becoming a kind of slate-colored curtain, and it was hard to see very far. But up ahead, a structure loomed through the downpour: white walls and a darker thatched roof, a yellow gleam in a window.
Hob pulled on Milo’s rope, leading the great beast in a shallow curve, off the road and toward the riverbank. Milo could be guided by reins, but was prone to a perhaps disingenuous misunderstanding of what was required. The clop of hooves, the rumble of wheels, brought a man from the cottage, hooded and cloaked, holding high a horn-paned lantern.
“God save you, master,” cried Hob. “Have you room for us to stable our beasts for the night?”
“Coom wi’ me, young man: theer’s a bye in t’ cottage.”
He led them to a kind of water-meadow between cottage and riverbank, where the wagons might be unhitched. Beyond, through the veils of rain, could be seen the little river; across it a fish-weir revealed itself as a smooth stream-wide curl of silver water. Molly set the brakes and Hob began unhitching Milo from the draw bars.
The cottager was hearty and confident at first, when dealing with Hob, but he became somewhat bashful when Molly, a capacious shawl over her silver mane, dismounted from the wagon seat—he was perhaps discomfited by her queenly air; and then he seemed distracted when Nemain came up, so beautiful a young woman had she become. But it was when Jack came limping up from the line of chocked wagons, the lead ropes from the little donkey and the mare trailing from his hands and Sweetlove trotting at his heels, that Hob saw a wariness creep into the cottager’s manner. It was easy, seeing Jack’s size, the facial and manual scars of a lifetime’s soldiering, his thick neck and broad sloping shoulders, to overlook the perfectly amiable set of his features, his calm, even soothing, manner.
But then: “This is Jack,” said Molly, in her wonderful voice, with her fear-melting smile, and Hob saw the man’s drawn-together brows smooth themselves, the tense muscles at the corners of his mouth relax; his shoulders, hunched in unthinking anticipation of a blow, lowered to a more usual position. “Here is Hob, and Nemain, and I am Molly.”
“Ah, well,” said the cottager, and then, under the sunny radiance of Molly’s smile, he could no longer resist smiling back, and Hob saw that once again, somehow, Molly had opened locks that may not be seen by the eye.
“I am called Elias, Elias Weir-tender, and it’s welcome you are to stop the night with us, but Jesus save us, let us go in from under this rain.”
Molly left the wagons unlocked: in this deserted spot, in this storm, there was no need, and in any event, she intended for them to sleep in the wagons tonight. The women went ahead with Elias; Hob, leading Milo, and Jack, with the other two animals, trudged behind.
Elias led them past a modest structure that stood some little distance behind the cottage. A door on a peg latch, two small windows—it was too cramped for anyone to live there, and Hob wondered what its purpose was, until they came downwind of it and he caught a strong, not entirely unpleasant, smell of fish. A workshop of some kind, then, to clean and store the catch.
The rain now was sheeting down, so that the cottage had all but disappeared; gusts of wind blew the rain almost sideways, so that Hob had to squint his eyes to little more than slits to protect them. And now the cottage reappeared in front of him, and Elias was beckoning them in, holding open a broad door set midway in the rear wall.
The cottage was in two parts, set to take advantage of the slight natural slope of the ground: the larger part, set lower and with a slope to the earthen floor, was a stable. Hob led Milo in several paces and then turned rightward, into the stable’s central aisle. This was flanked by a row of stalls on one side, where drowsed a milk cow and two goats; on the other side were bins for hay, pegs where hung tools and fishnets, a milking stool and pails.
The cottager set about opening stalls and moving shovels and stool and pails, pushing things to the corners, to provide more space. There was just enough room to settle in Milo, the little ass Mavourneen, and the mare Tapaigh. The house and this stable shared a common roof, and the heat from the animal bodies helped to warm the cottagers’ living quarters; the slope helped in sluicing animal waste away downhill.
Elias led Molly and Nemain into the other half of the cottage. Hob began rubbing Milo’s broad back dry with Elias’s stable cloths. Jack was doing the same for Mavourneen and Tapaigh, and soon they had the animals watered and fed from the weir-tender’s stores. Over the rattle of heavy rain on the roof close above his head, Hob could just hear Elias’s introductions, and the murmur of conversation.
The inner door of the stable, with a high threshold to prevent seepage from the stables into the living quarters, led into the cottage’s main room. Hob stepped over and through after Jack. A central hearth in the old Saxon style dominated the room: a raised stone platform with a central depression. Here a peat fire smoldered, the smoke rising to exit through a hole in the ceiling; above that a short chimney carried it up to be swept away by the river winds. The arrangement was by no means as efficient as the newer Norman fireplaces; a thin haze hung in the air, and there was a strong smell of woodsmoke that mixed with the undertone of fish—an inevitable consequence of Elias’s work.
To one side of the hearth was a crude table; the only other furniture in the room was a large cupboard, with compartments and shelves. Elias had seated Molly and Nemain on a bench by the table. Across from them sat a woman, and behind her were her three children, peering shyly at their guests.
Elias turned to the men. “Here be my goodwife, Cecilia, and there be Wymon and Adam, and this is little Estrild.”
Hob, orphaned when he was three or four, looked at them and thought to himself what a pleasing family they made, and felt a pang of sorrow that he could not explain to himself. Then he thought that one day he and Nemain would have such a family, and his heart leaped up again.
Cecilia was a woman who looked to be in her early thirties. Like all cottagers’ wives she worked in her vegetable gardens, and the spring sun had browned her somewhat. Hob thought it a fine sight, her light eyes gleaming in her dark face, an observation that—innocent as it was, and as young a husband as he was—he knew not to mention to Nemain. It was indeed a rather pretty face, its appeal marred somewhat by the lines wrought by long experience of pain, a kind of squint of suffering. Her left arm had been broken at some point in the past, and set badly. The misjoin was clearly visible at the midpoint of her forearm. Hob noticed that she moved that arm as little as possible, and winced whenever she had to move it.
Wymon and Adam were older children, perhaps thirteen; shy little Estrild took shelter behind her big brothers, peeping out from behind Wymon’s leg, holding on to his shirttail: a blue eye, a wisp of dark-blond curl, was most of what could be seen of her.
Cecilia began to direct the children, sending the lads on errands and drawing Estrild to her side. Two cauldrons were swung out over the fire, filled with oats and with fresh-caught trout, pounded to fragments, as well as bits of onion and apple, boiled to a slurry. The boys helped with the heavy iron pots, and soon large wooden bowls of the porridge, with a few bits of hard cheese thrown in to melt, were set in the middle of the table. Everyone crowded about on benches, and Cecilia and her daughter put out rounds of hard bread. Elias plied wooden ladles, and saw that everyone had a heap of porridge on his trencher. Hob kept a keen if surreptitious eye on the proceedings, and noted that the crocks that held the oat
meal were being upended, the apple bins emptied: they were finishing the little family’s stores.
Outside, the downpour, seen through the partially open shutters, was turning from pearl gray to lead gray as the evening drew on, and the light in the little room began to fail.
Cecilia rose and retrieved two beef-tallow candles from a shelf. One was half the size of the other. She lit them from the fire and set one on the table, the other in a holder fastened to the cupboard. Hob thought that these were probably the only candles in the house.
Molly evidently had the same thought, because she signed Hob to come to her, and when he bent down, she murmured instructions to bring in a handful of beeswax candles from the wagons. He let himself out and trudged through the downpour, squelching a bit in the mud behind the house, to the wagons. Returning across the backyard, he nearly stumbled over a small pile of very large bones. In the dim light, he bent to look more closely: the bones, from some large animals, oxen perhaps, were cracked, broken open; in some cases the ends were crushed, sprays of splintered bone still adhering to the ends.
Within the cottage, the meal was in full progress. Hob moved about the room, setting up about a third of the candles, lit from the fire. Molly kept up a running flow of conversation in her role of itinerant entertainer and healer: places they had seen, what York and Durham and even London were like, odd incidents in the traveling life. She told an accurate but truncated version of the truth: that she and her granddaughter had fled Ireland ahead of clan warfare, and now lived in England, making their way from fair to market, occasionally staying at inns and even castles, as guest entertainers.
Then nothing would do but she must describe what life inside a castle was like, for the children were intensely curious about it—though Elias and Cecilia seemed just as enthralled. In turn, Molly began to ask questions about Elias, and to encourage him to tell what he did at the weir.
“ ’Tis most of the day settin’ the nets, sithee, Mistress, and then haulin’ them in, cleanin’ t’ fish in yon wee cabin out back, and then into the sack wi’ ’em. Tom Carter come by near every evenin’, and take ’em up to castle in his wain, sithee. Earl William’s man gies me salt to cure t’ fish, and string for nets, an’ my boys there have learned to repair them nets as is rent. Next year I’ll start ’em on makin’ the nets fra t’ beginnin’.”
Hob, happily consuming a large portion of trout porridge, paused long enough to ask, “And what is it, Master Elias, that you use those large bones for—that pile of large bones behind the house? You have broken them with hammers; do you use them to lure the fish in some way?”
Elias actually looked over his shoulder, as though there were a listener in the shadows of the tiny room, and lowered his voice a bit.
“Nay, I’ve not taken a hammer to ’em; that’s how I found ’em. ’Twas like this: there’s trouble everywhere, young master, and clashes between the king’s men and the barons’ men, and there was one skirmish not far fra here. Our pastor, he called us oot to help bury the dead—someone had looted their armor, their weapons—even the saddles and suchlike—already. ’Twere an unco grim task, sithee.” Here he glanced at the children, and lowered his voice still more, as though they might not hear, seated at the same table though they were. “Most on ’em had been . . . got at, sithee, and none on ’em was whole, and what we done in the end was, we had but one grave dug for the lot. Them huge horses, them destriers they use, they was mostly eaten, right down to the bone, and the bones—have you ever seen the thigh-bone of a destrier? Great thick bones they were, cracked and crushed as though they was no more than lambs’ bones that the wolves have been at. Father Benedict tells us take what you want, after we’d done the buryin’, but these bones was all there was, except that Maggie’s Wat found a wee dagger. I took the bones for the miller to grind into meal, to spread on our vegetable garden.”
Elias looked about once more, a comic sight were his tale not so macabre, and then, his voice hushed so that it was rendered nigh inaudible: “ ’Tweren’t wolves, neither. I seen their sign in the dirt, paw-marks all about in that damp soil. They’m like to a bear, but wi’ one less toe-mark, sithee; prints like a wolf, maybe, but bigger, bigger—about the size of a large man’s hand.”
Hob poked at his porridge a bit, and the subject changed, but, as he told Molly later, he was hearing again Monsignor da Panzano’s voice: “They are very strong in the jaws, and can crush the biggest bones.”
After the meal, Cecilia told the children to prepare for bed, but there was a storm of hushed pleading; they were wildly excited at this wonderful intrusion into their lives, and did not want to miss a moment. Estrild by this time had grown so bold that she was leaning against Molly’s knee—children tended to collect about Molly—and Molly was stroking her hair.
“Shall I tell a wee tale or two, and give them something to dream on?” asked Molly, casually. Cecilia put up a hand, a gesture of surrender, but she was smiling.
And so by firelight and by candlelight, in her deep beautiful voice, Molly told stories of old Erin: stories about the Sidh, the tall cruel beautiful folk who lived under the hill, in fairy mounds invisible to mortals; stories of the parti-colored horses, caparisoned in jeweled saddles and gold-embroidered saddlecloths, that the Fairy Folk rode; of mortals who spent a night of love with one of the Fair Ones, and woke to find that a score of years had passed; of a ferocious boy who killed a blacksmith’s huge guard dog, and in compensation guarded the smithy till a replacement pup could grow to maturity; of a tree that was one-half in leaf and one-half aflame; of a house that was one-half red-gold and one-half silver. The children, and even the parents, sat with mouths slightly open and eyes wide, afraid to make a sound lest Molly’s recitation be interrupted.
At last the children were sent to bed—the boys were blinking slowly and Estrild, who had drifted off into sleep in Molly’s lap, had to be awakened so that she could climb the ladder into the sleeping loft.
CHAPTER 12
MOLLY HAD HAD A SMALL cask of her uisce beatha brought in, and the adults sat drinking for a while. A comfortable silence grew, and the fire collapsed into embers. Hob could tell that Molly had been observing Cecilia, although the scrutiny would not have been obvious to one who did not know Molly, a subtle person despite her open nature. It became evident that Cecilia’s arm bothered her: a wince, a drawing down of the corners of her mouth, indicated a constant drone of pain, obviously interrupted by the occasional sharp and unexpected twinge, which caused her to start slightly, and once to give a stifled yelp.
At last Molly said, “Is it that your arm troubles you, sweeting?”
“ ’Tis not a great thing,” said Cecilia, but in a subdued tone.
“ ’Tis a great thing,” said Elias, “and ’twas set by a scoundrel barber, and he half in his cups at the time.” He moved his wooden mug upon the table in an aimless pattern. “She fell from the hayloft ladder, and this lackwit undertook to set it, and she’s not had a day of comfort since.”
“Well, he’s gone now,” said Cecilia, “and in the churchyard, and there’s nowt to do about it, nor should you do aught but pray for his soul.”
Elias gave a small snort, but would not go so far as to speak further ill of the departed barber.
“Is it that you’d trust me to fix it, and I a stranger to you?” asked Molly gravely. “I have some experience in this.”
Hob had seen Molly, with Jack’s help, re-break and reset broken bones on two earlier occasions. Molly had trained Jack how to re-break a limb, practicing on legs of lamb, legs of veal, and Hob knew that Molly could greatly improve the woman’s lot. Still, it was much to ask of the couple, and Hob did not think anything would come of it.
But to his surprise, Molly’s manner, her presence, her way with the children, convinced the couple, at a level below speech, that she would do right by them.
But Elias said, “Mistress, I canna pay aught, poor man that I am.”
Molly said pleasantly, “I’m not hearing any
one ask for payment tonight, and myself least of all, sitting here eating your fine trout porridge, and my beasts safe out of the rain at that.”
Elias looked at his wife. “Well . . .” he began.
“Yes,” Cecilia said. Just that, but very firmly.
“Nemain, Hob, go bring what is needful,” said Molly.
Hob followed his wife out the door and around the back to the wagons. She climbed into the large wagon and handed out linen, pots of salve, and splints that Jack had whittled around the campfire in idle moments. She went to the little wagon and reemerged with two small crocks of Molly’s elixirs: remedies to induce stupor and dull pain.
Inside the cottage again, Hob saw that, while Cecilia remained determined, a certain tension had crept into her manner, and Elias was unconsciously, slowly, wringing his hands below the level of the table.
Making the least fuss possible, but wasting no time and moving with a swift economy, Molly gave Cecilia a draft of thick milky liquor from one of the crocks while Nemain cleared the table and spread clean cloth. Nemain refilled Elias’s cup with the fiery uisce beatha, and encouraged him to drink it off, the better to keep him calm. Hob casually took station near Elias, to prevent any interference with Molly and Jack at a crucial moment.
Cecilia’s head began to loll upon her neck; her eyelids drooped; she breathed heavily. The two women urged her to stretch her upper body across the table. Molly positioned the younger woman’s deformed arm so that the badly healed break was just at the table’s edge. Molly’s strong clever fingers probed for the misaligned bone; she moved Cecilia’s arm forward a trace, then back. Finally she clamped both her hands on the goodwife’s arm, one hand above and one below the elbow, holding the joint against the table, and nodded to Jack.
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