Angel in the Woods

by Rachel Starr Thomson

  “I’m sure she loves them,” I answered.

  All this time there had been in the distance an unusual clamour of chickens, but only now did it strike me that there was something odd about it. In the next moment, a scream tore through the spring stillness. In an instant we were running down the path. We could not move quickly enough. We burst out of the foliage into the clearing where the cottage was. The Poet was to it and through the door in seconds. Another scream halted me in my tracks. I recognized the voice as Sarah’s. I looked to see her standing twenty feet from the cottage door, eyes wildly searching for something. They lighted on me.

  “Hawk!” she called. “Come quick!”

  I saw a flash of movement in the woods beyond her and ran forward. I snatched Sarah up and bore her back to the cottage, all but shoving her through the door. The others were all there. The Pixie and Isabelle grabbed Sarah the instant she passed the threshold. “What were you doing?” the Pixie scolded, and Sarah looked back at her with smouldering eyes.

  “Calling Hawk back,” she said. “It worked. He’s here!”

  “What’s going on?” I demanded. In answer Illyrica took my arm and pointed out the unshuttered window.

  Once again I saw movement in the woods, and then in another spot. I squinted, trying to focus beyond the trees. I could see them now—there were men in the woods, several of them, circling the cottage like wolves on the hunt. They wore no livery. From what I could see they were unkempt, but well-armed.

  Thieves.

  The Poet appeared at my elbow, having taken down a large sword that usually hung over the fireplace. In a low whisper, I told him what was happening and pointed out the men I could see. There were at least four of them. I had come to the cottage unarmed. I turned and scanned the room, passing over the girls who were huddled together with the Pixie and Illyrica hovering above them, and caught sight of the iron poker for the fireplace. I stood, took up the poker, and turned back toward the door. The Poet started toward it as though he would go out and face them. I stopped him with a word.

  “No,” I said. “Let them come out where we can see them first.”

  The Poet was sweating. “Do you think they’ll take the chance? They know we’re in here.”

  “And they know there’s only two of us,” I said. “They won’t be patient.”

  I was right. Twenty minutes had not passed before their leader emerged from the woods, riding a black pony. He wore a mask over his face. His long dark hair and tall form gave an impression of youth and strength. Behind him, six others moved out from the green cover of the trees, all of them on foot; unmasked, uncouth, unhappy men. I did not know any of them from my days working for the Widow, and it occurred to me suddenly that they were new to the area—or at least new to thievery. They lacked the careless indolence of those who habitually live off of the work of others. There was too much anger in their faces, too much desperation. My heart sank. We might be in for a harder battle than I had at first anticipated.

  “Seven against two,” the Poet whispered near my ear.

  “Three,” I told him. “The Angel will not be long.”

  My answer, I hoped, was more comfort to him than it was to me. Admire the Poet though I did, I had no great faith in his ability to fight. For now, I might as well have been on my own.

  The man on horseback reached up and drew his sword from a sheath strapped to his back. He rode forward a few feet and shouted, “Surrender!”

  I heard a whimper behind me and turned to see the girls huddled together, all of them pale and frightened—even the Pixie. “The loft,” I said.

  The Pixie heard me. “What?” she asked, loosening her hold on the girls just a little.

  I had remembered that above our heads was a bit of a loft—little more than a crawl space. But the girls might be safe there if the thieves were to force their way in. I motioned to the ceiling with my head. “Up to the loft, all of you!” I said.

  Illyrica nodded and led the way. The Poet watched them go, and I trained my eyes back on the thieves. I was crouched near the window; I knew they could hear me as I shouted back.

  “Keep away,” I said. “There’s nothing for you here.”

  The eyes behind the mask narrowed. “I don’t believe you,” the man called back. Without warning he spurred his horse, sword in hand, and charged at the door.

  I was out the door at the same moment that I heard a sound like glass breaking above me. An arrow streaked through the air, over my head, and hit the rider’s shoulder. Whether it wounded him or not I cannot say, but it caught him off guard, and knocked him off balance. He was no great horseman, as I could now see. His attention thus diverted, I ran straight for him and swung the poker into his side. The next moment he was rolling in the dirt. The pony had bolted in another direction.

  He scrambled to close his fingers around the hilt of his sword. I was not fast enough to stop him. He was on his feet, and swinging the sword at me, before I could think what to do next. I blocked his every blow with the poker: hard blows. He was strong and fast, but my old training was still good, and he was not better with a sword than the Giant had been with a staff in the woods. From the corner of my eye I could see the Poet, wildly swinging his sword, surrounded. Desperately, I dropped low and swung the poker at my opponent’s knees. He landed heavily on his back. I had no time to defeat him finally: I was already running to the Poet’s aid. I bashed the sword from another thief’s hand, picked it up, and slashed at another. The Poet and I stood back to back, barely able to hold our enemies at bay.

  The man whose sword I had taken ran for the woods, perhaps in search of another weapon. But in a moment he returned: flailing unceremoniously through the air and landing on his nose in the dirt with a terrified screech. The Angel roared out of the forest, his eyes like flames in his anger. His staff caught another of our foes in the stomach and sent him flying.

  The fight was over within minutes. The thieves scattered, running for their lives.

  Except one. The man I had felled lay still in the dirt.

  The door of the cottage burst open and the girls came running. I stood looking down at the masked thief who lay at my feet. The corner of an old foundation stone jutted out of the ground where he had fallen. The ground around his head was growing dark with blood.

  The Pixie appeared at my side. Her face was flushed. She had wrapped her skirt around her hand like a bandage. She looked at me silently. The Poet came up beside her, Illyrica clinging to him.

  I knelt down slowly and took the man’s head and shoulders up in my arms.

  “He is dead,” I said.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder: the Angel. He looked solemnly down at me.

  Carefully, I took the edge of the mask and peeled it away. The face was young, handsome, still holding the vestiges of boyhood. It was not a face made for thievery and violence. The Pixie gasped.

  “Do you know him?” the Angel asked.

  She nodded. “He is the son of the town wainwright,” she said. “Most of his family was lost to the plague.”

  “Does his father still live?” the Angel asked.

  The Pixie nodded.

  “Then we must return the boy’s body to him,” I said.

  “Yes. But not before we have seen the girls safely back to the Castle,” the Angel said. “The others may return… though I think it unlikely.”

  I nodded and laid the young man’s body back down on the ground. I was shaking as I stood. I turned, noticing the Pixie’s bandaged hand again. There were traces of blood on her arm above the skirt ends she’d wrapped around it.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “I cut my hand a little… putting it through the window in the loft.”

  “The arrow,” I said, remembering. “You won the battle for us.”

  “Not me,” the Pixie said. “I only opened up the way.”

  “Then who…?” I asked.

  The Pixie smiled and nodded at the child who stood a
part from the little huddle of girls behind us. Sarah. She stood very straight and still, and swallowed as she looked at me. There were tears in her brown eyes.

  “You did well, Sarah,” I said. “You saved us all. You did well.”

  I reached out, and she came forward and took my hand. She tucked her head against my waist as I pulled her close.

  “Come,” I said, and raised my eyes to the others also. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 28

  portent

  When we had settled the girls at home, the Angel and I returned to the Poet’s cottage. Its master and mistress we left behind to watch over the little ones while Nora washed and bandaged the Pixie’s hand. At the Angel’s direction, I hitched up the pony to a long two-wheeled cart, usually used for hauling wood. He laid a blanket of grey and green wool over it and slapped the pony gently. We made our way back in grim silence. The outer calm of the woods, of the pony’s clopping hooves, of our very manner belied the strange turmoil inside me. I could still feel the fading rush of fear and determination that had come over me when I first heard Sarah’s scream. Sadness mingled with the knowledge, almost the pride, that I had done what had to be done. Yet within these emotions was another, alienated from everything else in me, like a high, thin banner waving somewhere in the thin air of my heart. A man was dead. And though my weapon—poor, ridiculous poker!—had not killed him, I knew myself responsible for his death.

  The yard was a haunted picture of itself as we approached, wagon wheels bumping over the earth. The cottage, with its shattered window; chickens scratching at the earth. A scene only slightly altered, eerie in its quiet normalcy. And the dead man, younger even than I remembered him, lying where he had fallen. My heart wrenched as we drew near.

  The Angel lifted the young man’s body. Together we wrapped it in the blanket. The Angel raised his hand to strike the pony again, but I saw his hand shake, and grief flashed across his face. Without a word he unhitched the pony and took up the cart himself. We started toward the town.

  The earth around the yard was scuffed with footprints. The Angel looked down at them and frowned. “They came back,” he said.

  “Why did they not take the body?” I asked.

  The Angel closed his eyes. Again I saw grief written in the lines of his face. “I cannot speak for other men,” he said. Of course. I wondered how much the Angel and other men could even understand each other. I remembered what Nora had told me of the Angel’s past on the night we followed Illyrica’s captors. He had lost something in his life, and out of his loss he had poured himself out to care for others. The young one we now carried home, along with his friends, had lost much—and out of their grief had turned to thievery. No, there could be little understanding between them.

  One thing they did have in common: loss. I could see the grief of it now in the Angel’s face as he mourned over one he had never known.

  The sun was sinking low and a pallor falling over the world as we neared the town. We heard a clatter of wheels as we saw them: a coach, drawn by black horses, coming toward us. We slowed down as it came closer, unwilling to leave the road, but it neither slowed nor swerved. At last we stopped by the side of the road and waited. The coach bore down on us and pulled to a sudden, sharp stop next to us.

  Men rode within and without. A young fellow sat hunched next to the driver, sullen and sallow. I thought I recognized him from the attack on the house. But another man commanded all of our attention as he descended from within the coach. The wainwright. His face was thin, haggard, drawn with hardship. But it was his eyes that were most striking. They seemed hollowed out and filled again with something wild. He fixed them on us and then looked slowly, deliberately, at our cargo.

  “Give me my son,” he said. His voice was choked.

  “My friend,” the Angel began.

  The wainwright held up his hand. “Monster,” he spat. “Give me my son.”

  The Angel looked at me. I stepped over and took the handles of the cart. I bent my head as the weight of it fell on me. I did not want to look into the father’s face.

  The Angel stooped down and lifted the body gently, handing it to the wainwright. The man turned without a word, staggering slightly under the weight. Several men jumped down from the wagon to help him. They pulled away without another word to us. We stood in the road and watched them make their unhappy way back. The Angel shook his head, but did not give voice to his thoughts. As I watched the convoy go, a faint glimmer of recognition came to me. I had seen the coach before—and the horses. They belonged to the Widow Brawnlyn.

  The hostile exchange did not leave my mind that day, or for days afterward. For once I knew that my thoughts ranged the same ground as the Angel’s. But it was not until two weeks had passed that I realized there would be trouble.

  I had cut my forearm several days earlier while working on the boat, and the wound had become infected. It did not seem to me dangerous, but Nora was not happy with it. She knew of an herb she was convinced would set it to rights, but she had neglected to plant any. One day she wrapped herself in her shawl, took a basket, and walked to the town to visit a woman who dealt in herbs and medicines.

  The woman received her hesitantly, her eyes darting about as if she feared being watched. She gave Nora what she wanted in a rush. Nora left, puzzled, and was passing down the main street when something stung her. She clasped her arm and whirled around, dropping her basket in time to sidestep a second rock as it flew past her shoulder. The townspeople had moved back from her, almost surrounding her. She could not pick out her assailant from the sea of hostile faces.

  A bigger rock hit her in the shoulder blade and nearly knocked her off balance. A voice shrieked out from the crowd. “Murderess!”

  “No,” Nora said, as more rocks and dirt began to fly.

  “Get out!” a man shouted. “Get out!”

  She took his advice. Narrowly avoiding a stone aimed for her head, she picked up her basket and ran. A voice called after her, dogging her footsteps all the way back to the Castle: “Go home, girl! But don’t think you’re safe!”

  It was those words that she related to us later that evening as she sat, a little bruised and more than a little shaken, in the soft room. The Pixie sat beside her, one hand clutching Nora’s tightly, the other hand using a soft, damp cloth to wash away the dirt that smeared Nora’s face and neck where a rock had grazed her. The Angel and I sat side by side, listening to her. The Angel’s eyes were half-closed. His whole bearing spoke of sadness. I sat with my arms crossed, fists clenched at my sides. I was calm; so calm, but inwardly I was raging. How could they? How could anyone? Every time I closed my eyes I saw Nora, she who was, as the Pixie had long ago said, “All of our mother, and sister, and best friend in the world,” stoned out of town and hideously accused. When I opened them again she was there in the firelight, still shaken, bruises and welts a reminder that it had really happened.

  I stood suddenly. I could not stand to sit still. She looked up at me, her blue eyes pleading, and to the Angel as she spoke. “Something’s going to happen,” she said. “They’re going to come after us, I can feel it.”

  “We will be ready for them,” I said. Murderess, they had called her. At that moment I felt I could have happily murdered any one of them.

  “That we will.” The Angel reached out and his laid his big hand over Nora and the Pixie’s interlocked fingers. He smiled sadly. I saw the fear and tension melt away from Nora’s eyes. She was a child again, trusting the one who had always taken care of her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We will be ready.”

  Chapter 29

  we withdraw

  We held no council of war, but we who counted ourselves protectors of the Castle knew that conflict could not be long avoided. We set about preparing in our own ways. Nora led the girls—all of them—into the half-wild orchards around the lawns, where they spent the day perched in the tree tops, calling to each other and laughing as they pruned, trimmed, and readied the trees to do w
ithout us for a while. The Pixie oversaw the transplanting of tomato plants and flowering vines from the outlying gardens to vegetable beds beneath the eaves of the Castle. She gave orders with Katie tied up in a bundle on her back, tangling her little fists in the Pixie’s long hair. Isabelle and Sarah carried the smaller plants all the way into the Castle, where they crowded every windowsill and raised more than one eyebrow. Nora had other gardens in the woods, where nuts and wild roots were already edible. She saw to it that everything was harvested that could be. The Giant disappeared early, patrolling the woods, but I knew he was near the little band of harvesters as they worked.

  I spent a good deal of time patrolling, pitched in with the apple trees, and brought every weapon the Castle could claim into places where they could be easily reached. There were several swords. I sharpened them, bent over the whetstone in the yard behind the Castle, with sweat running into my eyes. Summer was coming. I could feel it in the air. Never before had the growing heat of the sun felt so ominous. Nora saw me at work as she passed through the yard on her way to the kitchen. Emotion swept across her face before she could stop it. I looked up from the blade to her, willing her to understand that I had never wanted any of this to happen—that I was as eager to preserve peace as she.

  She looked away and touched the bruise on her neck absently. My stomach tightened at the sight. But she looked back at me, and nodded a little. She did understand. When she emerged from the kitchen again it was with bandages and herbs to tend the cut on my arm, which was still infected and growing more painful every day.

  “It should have healed before this,” Nora said, her voice strained as she changed the bandage.

  “Nora,” I said. She looked up at me. Her blue eyes were full of pain.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said.

  She nodded and tried to smile. “I know.”

  The little girls did not understand what was happening, but they knew it was important. They pitched in as best they could, short legs running the distance between woods and Castle, little skirts and aprons full of wild roots and carefully cradled vegetable plants. In the late afternoon most of them threw themselves down on the green grass of the lawn, rested their faces in the crooks of their elbows, and giggled and whined and whispered by turns until they fell asleep. Still the Pixie passed by them with her carts and moving gardens, and voices called from the trees, and out in dark shadows of the woods the Giant watched.