To Niav’s surprise, it was Kyle who dashed fiercely after him, followed by Fearn, and they attempted a tackle half way down the steep road. Lurgan broke free from them with unexpected speed and skill and Fearn fell heavily on his back. Kyle made a grab at Lurgan’s kilt and almost had him down, but only got smacked severely in the lip for his pains. Lurgan was away in the coracle as fast as lightning.
The three girls came tearing down the hill to find the two bewildered boys stranded on the bank.
Kyle was not allowed to cross the river the next day and Estra and Canya ruefully told Niav and Fearn that their parents had had the bronze blade securely hidden away by the time they reached home.
The five children – who so nearly bordered on not being children – were completely bereft. Aunty Grizzel was quietly furious. For once, Niav and Canya agreed with Estra in hoping that Aunty Grizzel would have decided to pour a few appropriate libations to deities who might take an active interest.
***
It was a pivotal moment, the point at which childhood dreams came to an end. In respect of Estra and Canya, in particular, Helygen decided it was time for them to concentrate on adult occupations – they must knuckle down and think of the future. Kyle and Fearn were kept apart for almost a week.
Estra, like Niav, was perfectly content, in fact most enthusiastic, to take up an adult role in helping with the family’s responsibilities for care and healing, but they both had trouble with trying to pretend that any of the local male talent raised the faintest flutter in their breasts. One would not have known what Canya felt about any of her young admirers; she was incapable of being unkind to anyone, so never voiced her feelings to anyone on the subject.
Kyle and Fearn were a different matter. Niav felt that Fearn was quietly seething – she did not know when he would break out, but she knew it would be well-planned when he did. In due course, Fearn built his own, small hut, further up the ridge, but still had a way of turning up at meal times, or bringing his washing along to be dealt with alongside theirs. However, his bed – on the right-hand side of the fire – that had been Diarma’s before him, remained empty.
Kyle was a mystery. He stayed at home, but he seemed bewildered that he had attacked his father. He didn’t come over to the west bank so often. Maybe he had never expected Lurgan to take the action he did. Maybe he feared that Fearn might feel betrayed by him and take appropriate vengeance – in other words, maybe he remained the suspicious, if slightly larger, stoat that he always had been.
***
No one could have suggested that, down by the river, there was any lack of opportunity within the seasons of the year for young persons to show their interest in members of the opposite sex.
Winter and summer, there was a whole succession of ceremonies to celebrate life, death, and, with special reference to the young, fertility. Even in the heart of winter, two hazelnuts, representing a would-be pairing, could be placed side by side in the embers. If they burned together slowly, it was said to bode well, but if one was seen to pop away across the ashes from the other – things were not held to be so good, and much laughter would result. Niav never had a nut which would stand still, while a Canya nut would smoulder away next to any suggested candidate. Niav never heard of anyone placing an Estra nut in the embers at all – maybe they would have been too nervous.
As spring arrived and the catkins on Fearn’s alder tree sprang into life, the boys and girls put strips of bark with their own signs on into adjoining bags. All the girls dreamed of drawing Fearn, all the boys dreamed of drawing Canya. No one ever gained any sign that they were likely to get satisfaction.
Eventually, even Niav had to acknowledge the fact that she had followers. She found it difficult to separate the image of these young suitors from the little boys that she used to watch silhouetted against the sunset as they dived off the flat rock by the traders’ landing point. She agreed to be courted by the least offensive of her suitors, but was very unsure about it. She had sincerely never realized that she was so sought-after. Aunt Grizzel started piling things up as bride-gifts.
***
So, one fragrant bee-hummingly radiant afternoon while Aunt Grizzel was busy, dealing with a difficult birth along in the settlement, Fearn came to find Niav in the weaving-hut.
“Are you going to get betrothed?” he asked.
“I expect so; don’t you like him?” said Niav.
“No, he’s fine. It’s just that I think I should be going to find my father. But I would like to know that you are settled before I do.”
“How could you find him? He could be anywhere.”
“Oh no! I know where we came from. I don’t forget things.”
“But you came in a boat. You don’t have a boat. Are you going to build one?”
“No, I don’t need to. Mother came from a headland in the west. It’s called ‘The Place of the Great Worm’ – all the smiths get their copper there. I will just wait for him to arrive. Anyone could go there on foot if they wanted to, but ore and suchlike are heavy stuff, so metalworkers go by boat – you must have realized that. I only need to follow the setting sun; it’s perfectly simple.”
“You are going – just like that?” Niav stared at him wide-eyed.
“Well, I came to say goodbye. It’s more than he did.”
“But we always expected him to come back.”
“Did you now?” said Fearn. “How little you knew him.”
“You were only a toddler – how could you have appreciated subtle nuances like that?”
“But I was not stupid. Small children are not always stupid. Besides I get much more information out of my uncles than they think I do. Or maybe they are just testing me to sort out how much I can work out for myself. Anyway, I aim to leave tomorrow.”
“What about your blade?”
“Oh, I plan to be getting my blade.”
Niav could just imagine the scene – oh to be an insect on the Lurgan family wall! “And what about Canya?”
“What about Canya? She could have anyone she wants, why would she want me? Besides, Estra would take it very badly. You know as well as I do that that’s who Lurgan proposes to pair me off with. I do not propose to come in the way of anything that Estra feels she is entitled to – it could ruin your life. Best to be elsewhere, I feel.”
“How perceptive of you. Well if you are so sure, what can I say?” Then she paused for a moment – if she didn’t ask him now she never would.” I need to know something about Artin that you might be able to help me with.”
Fearn raised a perfect eyebrow.
“It’s about the death of my parents. You seem to be able to remember a whole lot more than a toddler might be expected to, so it’s worth a try. I am told it was a good three years after my parents were drowned that your father reappeared like magic and people started to suspect he could be a demi-god. He never seems to have told anyone how he got away, or, if he did, there is some reason why no one one will tell me. Did you ever hear him talk of an escape, or maybe he said someone tried to kill him …?”
Fearn pondered for a minute. “Maybe – but I don’t remember details. Someone did try to kill him – but he went back and faced them out. In other words, yes, but I don’t know if it was here. He can make himself unpopular all over the place I am told.”
“Surely he wouldn’t have brought both of you back here if it was dangerous?”
“My mother is dead, my father is gone – end of story!”
Niav was stunned – all these years and he could have been harbouring doubts and terrors just the same as hers. “We are probably both being as daft as Estra,” she said, almost crying. “So that is that then. Is there anything I can give you to remember me by? I take it you won’t be back either.” Niav felt blank inside.
Fearn smiled, a smile like dark sunlight, and for her alone. “Now just imagine me,” he said. “With my hair the colour of honey, and, if you wish it, a crippled leg – though, as Aunty Grizzel pointed out, that wouldn’
t notice if we were lying down. Or maybe think of me as him, reflected deep in jet – just to say goodbye to him, you understand – because, quite honestly, I don’t think he is going to come back this way, and I would like you to be happy for once, if only at second best.”
***
When Aunty Grizzel found them hard at work in her bed, she laughed till she wept. “Children, children, I do hope I am interrupting you before a truly delicate moment. Oh, but if you could see yourselves!” she cried. “A beast with two backs – and four wings! Really Niav, didn’t you think – couldn’t you guess? I hope nothing irretrievable has happened yet?”
“When would I get to see my back? Why did you never tell me?” screamed Niav in unbelieving shock.
“I’m going tomorrow,” laughed Fearn, who undoubtedly had been aware of the hidden interest of Niav’s back. “I don’t suppose there is anything that I can do for you, too, before I go?” He paused as he did up his belt.
“Arrogant bastard, like father like son!” yelled Grizzel. “We didn’t want my poor brother to know. So many years of marriage and no child – what else was your poor mother expected to do, Niav? Taunts of infertility get anyone down – men and women alike – and particularly when you are meant to be a healer.”
“Exactly – I’m sure that my father was merely trying to repay the hospitality that he had received – I’m told that it’s his way,” countered Fearn, still laughing as he laced up his right moccasin.
“Viper!” retorted Aunty Grizzel, flinging the nearest thing to hand – a wooden milk dipper, which Fearn avoided with a backward leap that took him smacking into the dresser and nearly dislodging Aunty Grizzel’s heavy scrying bowl. The drum and rattle bounced noisily across the earthen floor.
“Well, Niav,” Grizzel sighed, suddenly looking her age, “When I delivered you and saw that birthmark, your mother and I thanked our stars for you being a girl. For the normal reasons of decency, it would probably remain well hid, if we could only steer you past the baby stage. I know your mother had reassured Artin as much. I don’t know which one of them had had the bright idea in the first place – mutual lust is my suspicion, but then I’m over-suspicious by nature.
“Anyway, between us we were coping very well till one morning my brother Diarma popped his head into the hut just as we were bathing you. We didn’t think that he had noticed anything.
“That was the same day they had planned to go out testing that wretched boat. The whole village was there to see them off. At the last minute your mother decided to go too, and handed you to me to take home. But I went up to the west cliff so that we could watch. Even with them that far out, I noticed a tussle of some sort. Then the whole boat capsized and I thought them all gone forever. Who could have blamed my poor brother if he had seized a chance to push Artin in – but some people lead a charmed life. Abusing hospitality seems a family failing round here.”
“But it doesn’t make me the bastard!” hissed Fearn, now silhouetted in the doorway. “My mother loved him, you know, and she loved me, and once upon a time my father loved her! She was his wife! But you wouldn’t give up the beads he had made for her when he still pined for her and his distant home. Even after you had to thrust his love-child in her face! Eggs – she threw them at him, all of them – and they were rotten too! I forget nothing!” said Fearn with a terrible matter-of-factness.
Grizzel had seized the broom. Niav had finished scrabbling around for her scattered clothes. “Get out, you bastard’s bastard. You leave now, not tomorrow!”
“Yes, perfect timing, into the setting sun!”
They harried him down the cluttered compound, tripping up on hay-rakes and buckets and panicked livestock, past the weaving-hut and the herb garden and stumbling through the clutch of hives. The last they saw of him, he was running, screaming, towards the river, followed by a cloud of bees.
Grizzel dusted off her palms and walked sedately back towards the well. She undid her jet necklace, held it for a moment catching the sunlight and then, pushing the well cover aside, she dropped it clattering down the shaft.
***
Aunty Grizzel sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Niav suddenly remembered how tired she must be – she had been called out at crack of dawn on a blisteringly hot day.
“Was the birth all right in the end?”
“Yes, she should be fine – but she has lost a lot of blood.”
“And the baby?”
“Two boys!”
“Well, you thought it might be twins. Now you lie down. I will get you a nice camomile tea and then start the meal – at least I will know how many to cook for this time!”
At this, astonishingly, Aunty Grizzel burst into tears. Niav had never known her to cry real gulping tears, not in her whole life – she was more used to Grizzel comforting hers.
“I should not have done that,” said Aunty Grizzel shakily. “That was a beautiful thing and I should have given it to you long since – my stupid temper, why must I do these things!”
“Your necklace? Why on earth to me? Maybe it should have been buried with Fearn’s mum, and anyway, didn’t you help to make it?”
“I only helped Artin to string it and, we were making it for Orchil, Artin’s much-loved wife – he planned to take it to her when he sailed away, but of course that never happened. I have never had any right to it. It should have been yours because poor Orchil wanted you to have it. Don’t you have any memories of my going out the night she was dying? Artin came back to fetch me.
“When Artin came down to see us at the weaving-hut, it was to get medicine for her as much as the necklace, but most importantly she had wanted him to bring the pair of us back with him to the bothy.
“But the fool failed to handle it right. For all his magic, Artin can be bad at asking for favours that he really cares about – he ended up picking a quarrel with me. That is why the poor woman threw the eggs at him in desperation (and they were fine, by the way – Fearn remembered that wrong). She knew that she was dying. She was afraid Fearn would be put to work in the copper mines and she wanted him taken somewhere where that wouldn’t happen to a child, and he could be safe till he was old enough to travel round with Artin.”
“Couldn’t they take him to all those relatives up in the mountains Artin carved?”
“That is a very long journey – she didn’t think there was time, and she was right. Believe me Niav, Orchil was every bit as wonderful as Artin had always told me that she was, and she could not have been kinder. She said Artin trusted me, and neither of them mentioned my brother Diarma at all. Being asked by her to care for Fearn was an honour. She didn’t begrudge your existence in the least. She felt you could be the daughter she would never be able to have, and she wanted the necklace to go down to you.”
“Then why all the wretched secrecy?” said Niav in a tired voice.
Grizzel studied her for a moment. “Didn’t I explain clear enough just now? Your parents were respected as healers. My brother Diarma was a great man – your mother and I would not have had him shamed, even after death. I could not bear the thought of Lurgan’s gloating if he had known of my brother’s betrayal. What angered me most was your mother’s stupidity choosing a partner to make her baby with who came from a family that carried such distinctive features. It isn’t as though she didn’t know. Artin’s brothers had been very busy for years round here – why do you think they doled out so many presents? But that green bead is special – and Artin’s intentions were clear. I should have told you then.”
Niav was wide-eyed, remembering some of the other children who had received gifts.
“Quite,” Grizzel said drily, seeing her face. “But I think cousins would have been all right. Let’s face it, everyone is a cousin of someone else round here. We didn’t know you might meet any actual brothers then. But I was very angry with your mother Befind – not to her face, but angry.” She recounted her finding of Befind on the beach. “I couldn’t tell anyone what I thought I ha
d seen my brother do – could I? I could only get nonsense out of Befind. I told everyone she had been dead, but she wasn’t.”
“But she did say goodbye to me?” Niav was crying too. “What was the nonsense?”
“Yes, she said goodbye, and she was still beautiful. She said something inconsequential about Seyth’s death. You see, her corpse had washed in by your snake stone too, and it was she and I that found her. Your Mother was blaming the bung of her stupid dug-out boat again, still living in the past – ridiculous last words for a woman like her to go out on – better to say nothing.”
By the time Niav made the tea Aunty Grizzel had fallen asleep.
It seemed a bit pointless to do any cooking. Niav went out into the sun-kissed evening and walked on past the well to see if the bees had settled down.
Niav hadn’t heard the necklace hit the water and she knew how long it should have taken; they regularly registered the depth of water with her dad’s – no, Diarma’s – knotted string which still hung by the door. She knew the level was way down and that the roots could snag things.
“Well, should I?” she asked them.
The bees didn’t say “No.”
She shifted the lid right over as far as possible and gave the bucket rope a couple of extra twists round the hitching post for strength. With a last look at the darkening sky, she let the bucket drop right down to the water level and swung herself over the edge.
Once she got past the stone lipping, encroaching roots glimmered through the wattle that lined the earthen walls, and the air smelled cool and moist like leaf-mould. Down she swung and down, and still no luck. She was just giving up hope in the semi-darkness when she spotted something that spun and glittered just near the waterline. It was terrifying reaching down that far but with a frantic grab that almost made her lose her hold on the rope, she got it. The jet necklace.
As she tried to regain her breath for the long haul up, the unearthly stillness of the well was shattered by a furious Aunt Grizzel, who, having guessed what she was doing, was yelling at her down the shaft. Niav almost let the precious necklace slip, but just in time she grabbed it back and knotted it firmly in her belt. The climb up was going to be hard and she started to feel the first drops of much needed rain. Up above, Aunty Grizzel continued shouting at her in a most unhelpful way.
The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction Page 20
