Jonathan was a bit disappointed when Fionn didn’t come back that night, but he’d said he might not, so Johnathan didn’t worry. In the morning, however, he realized that he needed to go into town himself. He could put it off a bit, but…why not go meet Fionn half way? So he hitched his solitary horse to the cart and set off. “Morning” was very early indeed on a farm, and the sky was only just lightening when he set out.
The sun had risen by the time he was half way to the village, with no sign of Fionn. He shrugged and continued on. He reached the small hamlet and was just pulling his cart into the village square when he saw the slender avian. He was coming out of the inn with a slightly older man. Tall and dark-haired, the stranger was obviously a fellow adventurer. He wore no armor, but his clothing was not the clothing of a farmer, and he had a jewel-hilted dagger belted at his waist. He and Fionn were talking, and Fionn smiled at him, and then hugged him. Jonathan felt like his heart had shattered, to see it. The man hugged Fionn back, warmly. Then they parted, the tall man going north, to the road out of town, Fionn heading south, towards the road where Jonathan had just emerged.
He almost tried to turn the cart around, and just go home. He had known that Fionn couldn’t possibly love him, and here now he saw proof of it. This man would be his lover, no doubt, and Fionn had only been toying with Johnathan while he stayed at the farm for some inexplicable reason of his own. But he couldn’t turn the cart fast enough, and Fionn had seen him already.
“Hello!” he called out with a cheery wave, trotting over toward the cart.
Johnathan just looked at him.
Fionn slowed, looking puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
And then Johnathan’s heartbreak suddenly flashed over into anger, to see Fionn so careless of him that he would not even know what was wrong. “What’s wrong? You come stay at my farm, you give me smiles and kisses, and you make me think that maybe you might love me, when you obviously don’t, and won’t stay! I wish you’d never come!”
“I…” Fionn looked like he’d been hit in the face. “What?”
“I saw you with your ‘fellow’ there, your adventurer. He’s more your type than I, I know, but it was cruel of you to make me think, to hope…” He had to hold back tears. He would not cry!
“He…you…What?!” Fionn’s wings were trembling with sudden anger. “My ‘fellow’? Sir Alan might as well be my brother! I haven’t been leading you on here, I’ve been as sincere in my feelings as you!”
“Ha!” Jonathan couldn’t believe that. “There’s no way one of the Queen’s Own would care for a farm lout like me. I knew that from the beginning, and I should have remembered it.”
“You, you…!” Fionn’s green eyes snapped with fire then. “You haven’t been a farm lout to me, but you’re acting like one now! What do I have to do to make you believe that I’m sincere here?”
“Get the lost jewels of Irdua,” Johnathan snapped, naming something long known as an impossible quest. “But no, that’s what people like you do, is go on quests. You’d have to give up your sword and live as a farmer for real, before I’d believe you, but there’s no way you’re going to do that!” And with unnecessary force he snapped the reins, startling the old horse into a trot, and drove away.
Fionn stared after him, feeling stunned. He could have run after Johnathan and caught up easily, but what was he going to say? Johnathan was convinced, had been convinced all along, that Fionn was somehow above him. He muttered a curse at stubborn, stupid farm louts in his direction.
“I couldn’t help but hear that, my friend,” said Sir Alan, coming up beside him. “He only snapped at you because he was hurting. He’ll calm down eventually.”
Fionn sighed. “Sure. But he’s not going to stop thinking of himself as a farm lout and me as some kind of high and mighty I don’t even know what, even when he has calmed down.”
“And that matters, does it?” said Alan with a smile.
“You know it matters. I was picturing staying here, maybe building a life with him. Maybe even giving up the sword, or at least being in the reserve rather than active, if Her Majesty can spare me. I knew it might not happen. He’d been holding back, and I guess now I know why. But I still want to give it a chance, and I don’t think it has a chance if he’s completely convinced we’re not equals.”
“You love him then?”
Fionn sighed again. “I think I do, yes. More than I’ve loved anyone else. I’m half in love with his farm as well, I suppose, but…yes.”
“Then don’t let him get away. There must be some way to convince him that he’s in the wrong. It’s true the lost jewels of Irdua won’t do it, but maybe there’s something that will,” said Sir Alan.
Fionn looked after the distant cart and nodded. “I hope there is,” he said.
* * * *
Jonathan didn’t see the road as he drove home. His horse knew the way, after all the years it had walked it, and brought him to his own gate, where he sat for a long time, blinking back tears. Life goes on, he told himself, and drove the cart into the yard. Life goes on.
And life did. The work was harder, having just the two sets of hands again. His mother was in good enough health, but wasn’t as strong as Fionn had been. But he’d managed before Fionn came, and he somehow managed after he had gone. He never came back to the farm at all. Johnathan had gone up to his attic room just once, to see his sword and mail shirt still sitting there. He’d left them, and hadn’t looked into the room again since.
Summer turned towards autumn, and then the winter’s snows fell. He didn’t go, this year, to any of the parties or socials. He would remember Fionn too strongly, and somebody else might ask after him. So Johnathan didn’t know that during the deepest weeks of winter somebody had bought the Owlson farm.
The Owlsons had been his neighbors, when he’d been a child. But they had both died, taken sick of a fever in the winter. They’d had heirs, of course, but all their children had left farming and taken to city trades. None wanted to come back and work the farm. It was a very small farm, it had never really produced cash crops, and none of the neighbors had been able to raise the funds to buy it and add to their own lands. Johnathan and his mother had talked about it more than once, but things had never worked out, quite. So it remained fallow as the years passed.
Johnathan did see the new owner arrive, however. He was out in front one late winter afternoon, when the snow was already more than half melted, taking a moment of rest in the yard between tasks, when he saw the cart pass along the muddy road. It wasn’t a particularly large or nice cart, the word best applied to it would probably be “rickety.” It was pulled, however, by a truly magnificent chestnut draft horse, with brilliant white feathering on its feet and a long flowing mane and tail. Behind the cart trailed a string of goats, and driving it was a figure too muffled in winter clothes to be clearly made out at a distance, but as the cart drew nearer, he could see that it was a young man. Brown hair and brown eyes, and little else visible under his coat and hat. Johnathan gave the stranger a nod as he passed his farm. He nodded back genially. The cart continued on down the road a half mile or so, and then to his surprise it turned in at the next gate.
He kept an eye on the farm next door after that, curious. He saw the young man, going about the process of getting the farm ready for spring planting. He had a heroic task ahead of him, because it had been left to run wild for years. But his horse was more than equal to plowing under the hard soil, it seemed, and he was obviously no stranger to hard work. Every day Johnathan saw something new. The farm house was cleaned out, the smaller of the two barns made habitable for the goats, the larger left for now. The garden plot was dug up, and though the newcomer didn’t get all the fields plowed and ready for planting, he got a fair amount of them done. Spring was well underway now, and Johnathan was soon too busy with his own planting to pay that much attention to his neighbor, but he noticed, whenever he was in the fields near the fence that separated them, that the little farm was looki
ng less and less like a derelict, and the fields were greening with growing things.
On one warm spring afternoon he happened to be working near the fence when he heard a cheerful voice call out “Hello there!” He turned and saw the stranger, standing by the somewhat weathered stone wall that separated their farms. “I thought I’d come say hi,” he said, “Since we’re neighbors now.”
Johnathan paused his work for a bit. It wasn’t so urgent he couldn’t spare a moment. “Hello. It looks like you’re doing a good job of getting your place fixed up.”
He laughed. “You only say that because you can’t see the unholy mess that’s still left from a distance. I’m Herb, by the way. Don’t ask, my parents had some peculiar notions” he said. Without the heavy winter gear on he was revealed as a short man, with a build that would have bordered on slender if not for wiry, work-hardened muscles over it. He was dressed in plain, practical brown, though a bright spot of color just at the collar of his shirt was an embroidered luck bag, a little charm that some people wore to ward off ill luck and evil spirits.
“Jonathan,” offered the farmer with a smile and a nod.
Herb held out his hand over the fence and Johnathan took it and shook it. The newcomer’s hand was a little smaller than his, with long, almost delicate fingers, but the tanned skin was as work-roughened as his own. He had a flash of memory then, of the sword-calloused hand of Fionn, and felt lonely all over again. But maybe it was time to stop moping about that. Maybe it was time to be a little bit social again. “You’re welcome to come over for dinner some time. It has to be a little lonely there, all by yourself.”
Herb smiled. “I’d like that. My horse is good company, but he isn’t good conversation.”
“He’s quite the animal,” said Jonathan.
“And you’re almost certainly wondering why somebody who’s here, scraping along on a little farm, has a horse like that, aren’t you?”
“Well, he’s a sight better than my own, we’ll put it that way,” Johnathan said, admittedly quite curious.
“He’s my inheritance,” he said, “So to speak. I had him, and enough money to buy a little place. I could have sold him, and had the money for a larger farm, or to start a city shop or something, but…I don’t really like cities. And there’s just me to work the place, and I wouldn’t have had a horse! So small is better. Fortunately his dignity isn’t offended by pulling a plow. But I should get back to work, and I’m sure you have lots to do.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer this evening,” he said, and smiled. His face was very unlike Fionn’s, being squarer in the chin and not nearly so fair-skinned, but his smile was warm, and Johnathan found himself smiling warmly back.
Herb did come over for dinner that evening, and for several evenings after. “I have enough to do without having to cook, and then having to eat my own cooking,” he had said. “I’m not really all that good at it.”
“Well, cooking for three isn’t any more work than cooking for two,” Jonathan’s mother had replied, and after that Herb came over nearly every day.
Jonathan found himself smiling at Herb a lot. Although sometimes the smiles were a little sad. He thought of Fionn often still, though he tried to put him out of his mind, and he could almost believe sometimes that Fionn had been telling the truth, that he had truly cared for Johnathan. But it didn’t matter now, he was gone and wasn’t going to come back.
“You’re looking rather sad,” said Herb one evening as they sat talking after dinner. “Something on your mind?”
Johnathan shrugged. “Regrets. We all have them. Enough said, really.”
Herb nodded. “Yes. Well, let’s talk about something else then. What about your family? This house is big enough for an army, where did everybody else go?”
That got a chuckle from Johnathan. “It felt like an army when everyone was still here. I had three brothers and two sisters! Plenty of family. My sisters both married and moved out. One of them lives not far from here. My brothers…” He shrugged. “None of them loved the land. You have to love it, to stay and work it. But they wanted money, or excitement, or whatever else it is you get in towns and cities, and they all went, one by one. So there’s just me. It’s a small enough farm, and I manage by myself. I…had help for a while, that was nice, but…I manage by myself.”
Herb sighed. “So do I, though I don’t envy you the work you have here. And I know what you mean about loving the land. Though with me it’s more loving life, and growing things. I never get tired of watching things grow. And I’m fond of animals,” he added with a chuckle. “I seem to be better at managing them than I would have thought. I had at least some idea of what to do about the garden and the fields when I got here, but the goats worried me for a while. But they’re fine. It’s amazing how much personality goats can have. I wouldn’t have thought! And how much trouble they can get into.”
Johnathan laughed at that. “That’s part of why I don’t keep them.”
Herb smiled and nodded. “You make enough to buy milk and cheese. But I don’t think I can. I’m not sure I could live without milk! I may end up living without cheese, I’ve never made it before, and I get the feeling that my first attempt may be kind of…interesting.”
“We’ve never done dairy here, or I’d offer to help,” he said.
“Heavens no! I know how much work you have to run this place. You don’t need to take time off to help me. I do all right. Just getting out of the cooking once a day is plenty help enough! I should probably get going, though,” he added. “It’s getting late, and morning comes early.”
“Goodnight then,” Johnathan said.
“Goodnight.”
* * * *
The seasons turned, and the farm next door greened further and further. Jonathan attempted to help Herb with the harvest when autumn came, but he refused. “Good gods, you have ten times the work at harvest that I do! Go, take care of yourself. I’m just fine.”
He did, however, find time to help with a few repairs when the snow started falling. The roof of the farmhouse was creaking dangerously under a relatively light load of snow, and they spent nearly a week reinforcing it. Walls needed patching, cracks needed chinking, but eventually the house and barns were ready for winter.
They went to a few of the various winter social events, at Herb’s insistence. Jonathan still hadn’t really wanted to go, but with Herb right there insisting he go out, he didn’t know how to say no. He mostly had fun, but he kept seeing Fionn, remembering the winter he’d returned to the farm, how glad Johnathan had been to see him, how much fun they’d had at the parties that year.
“Jonathan, I can tell your mind is a mile away, at least,” said Herb as they drove home from one such event. They were using Johnathan’s sturdy cart, but Herb’s magnificent horse pulled it.
“I guess.”
“Care to tell me where?” Herb said.
Johnathan shrugged. “Just…remembering somebody I once…I don’t know. Thought I might love, maybe.”
“Ah. I thought it might be something like that.”
“I thought maybe he loved me. And then I was sure he didn’t. And now I don’t know at all. But it doesn’t matter. I drove him away and he won’t be coming back.”
Herb’s hands were on the reins, but he held them in just one, and put his other hand over Johnathan’s. “You never know, he might.”
“No, I don’t think he will,” Johnathan said. “He didn’t belong here anyhow.”
“Is that why you drove him away, because he didn’t belong?”
“I guess,” he said sadly.
Herb shook his head. “Why do you get to decide where somebody else belongs? What if he thought he did belong here?”
“I don’t think he could have.”
Herb pulled the cart to a stop and turned to face Johnathan. “I don’t think you get to make up somebody else’s mind for them, nor tell them how they have to think. Nobody gets to do that for anot
her.”
“I…”
“Sorry,” he said, and shook the reins again. The cart started forward. “It’s none of my business, and I’ll keep it that way. I just think it sounds like you were doing all the deciding, and that never works well. When you’re talking about love, you have to let the other person decide too. I’d wager he left more because of that than because of any nonsense about where he ‘belonged.’”
“You belong here though,” said Jonathan.
Herb threw back his head and laughed. “And how do you know that?”
“You just do. You love the land, like I do.”
“And is that what it takes to belong, loving the land?”
“I guess so.”
“It hasn’t got anything to do with where you came from or what you used to do? You don’t know anything about my past. I could be anybody.”
Johnathan blinked. “I guess I don’t. But it’s clear enough to me that you’re from farming stock.”
Herb laughed again. “Believe that if you want to. I won’t tell you otherwise.”
“Well then, where do you come from?”
“I just said I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m not.”
He gaped at Herb. “But why?”
“Because I’m contrary. If you want to believe that the only way I could love the land is to be raised a farm boy, you believe that. It’s your head. I don’t tell people what they should think, remember? But if you’ll actually use that brain, which I know is in your head somewhere, and start doing some thinking, you’d know where I come from.”
Johnathan sat there blinking in silence for the rest of the drive home.
As he lay in bed that night he kept turning that over in his mind. If Herb wouldn’t tell him where he came from, how was he supposed to know? And then suddenly he remembered that first day, seeing Herb driving up, and how Johnathan had been surprised to see him pull into the farm next door, and not just because it was empty, because…Because a person with a horse like that wasn’t a farmer. He’d said it was an inheritance. That means he got it from his family. And no farming family has a horse like that! So he’s not a farm boy. He comes from…from people like Fionn. Important people. City people. Soldiers and adventurers and people like that.
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme Page 3
