When Women Were Warriors Book I: The Warrior's Path

by Catherine M. Wilson

  “I want to go home.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I told her. “People are bound to notice us, and there are a few in Merin’s house who would be eager to believe the worst and give everyone else the benefit of their opinion.”

  Still she looked doubtful.

  “Are you afraid of the oak grove?”

  It was a clumsy attempt to get her to do what I wanted her to do, but I was too tired just then to argue with her.

  “No,” she said.

  She entered the grove and settled herself beside the same tree where I had found her the night before.

  § § §

  As usual no one paid much attention to me. I slipped into Merin’s house through the back door and went to Maara’s room without anyone asking me where I’d been. I rolled a clean shirt and a pair of trousers into a bundle. Then I went down to the pantry, where I found some bread and meat and a jar of fresh milk.

  On my way out the back door I stopped. Maara needed food, but there was something else she needed more. I set everything down in an inconspicuous place and went upstairs to Namet’s room.

  “I need your help, Mother,” I said.

  “Come in,” she said. “Sit down.”

  “I can’t. Maara is waiting for me in the oak grove.”

  I didn’t know how to tell Namet what I needed, but she seemed to understand.

  “Then I’ll come with you,” she said, and followed me downstairs.

  As we walked down the hill, I told her what had happened the night before. I told her about finding Maara in the oak grove, about our journey north along the river, and as much as I could remember of the things she’d said to me. I also told her the little that Maara had told me about her childhood.

  “Why did she go down to the oak grove?” Namet asked me.

  “She says she doesn’t remember going there. I think she was ghostwalking.”

  “Ghostwalking?”

  I nodded.

  “Does she do that often?”

  “I’ve seen her do it only twice before,” I said. “I spoke to Gnith about it, and she gave me a binding spell to hold her.”

  “A binding spell to hold Maara?” Namet gave me an odd look. “What did this spell consist of?”

  I told her about the braided thong that had bound Maara and me together.

  “That’s not a binding spell,” said Namet.

  “It’s not?”

  “No,” she said. “A binding spell is meant to bind the spirits of the dead. I’ve never heard of binding a living person, although I suppose it could be done. Even so, you would bind someone only to keep her away, not to keep her by you.” She chuckled. “Gnith is a wise woman when she has her wits about her, but her binding spell sounds more like a love spell to me.”

  “Oh,” I said. I blushed with embarrassment.

  “Well,” said Namet. “You do love her, don’t you?”

  She smiled at me and nudged my arm to let me know that she was teasing, but the truth in her words touched my heart, and tears came into my eyes.

  “I care for her very much,” I said, “and I’m very much afraid for her.”

  Namet put her arm around my shoulders.

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry. There’s a healing for everything.”

  § § §

  Maara was asleep. I hesitated to wake her, even to give her the food she needed, but when I approached her, she opened her eyes. Her gaze rested on me for a moment. Then she saw Namet. When she started to get up, Namet made a gesture to her to stay where she was and sat down beside her.

  “Let her eat first,” said Namet, and I gave Maara the food I’d brought.

  While she was eating, Namet sat at Maara’s side, gazing about her and smiling her contentment at being in this sacred place. Her arm rested against Maara’s arm and Maara didn’t move away from her.

  After Maara finished eating, I helped her change into her clean clothes and gathered her dirty ones into a bundle. When we were ready, I turned to Namet, expecting that she would come with us, but she remained where she was beneath the oak tree. She didn’t seem to realize that we were waiting for her.

  “Shall we go home now, Mother?” I asked her.

  “Wait a while,” she said.

  So Maara and I sat down to wait.

  The morning light filtered through the leaves and dappled the ground around us. Birds sang in the branches overhead. We heard in the distance the voices of children playing in the river. For the first time since I left the grove the night before, I felt that all was well.

  “How does this place feel to you?” Namet asked Maara.

  Maara gave a start at the sudden, unexpected question.

  “It feels as it used to feel,” she said. “This place was always a good place.”

  “Until night before last,” said Namet.

  “Yes.”

  “Why was this place a good place for you?”

  Maara smiled. “In this place someone told me I’d come home.”

  “What changed?”

  Maara’s face darkened. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” said Namet, “that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are home now, and we must convince your spirit of it.”

  Maara looked surprised. I think she would have liked to ask a question if she could have thought of one.

  Namet sat quietly under her tree for a little longer. Then she got to her feet.

  “Now we can go,” she said.

  Maara and I stood up, and Namet looked us over with a critical eye.

  “Not too bad,” she said, “but let’s not call attention to ourselves.” She touched each of us on the brow. “Don’t speak. Don’t catch anyone’s eye. Don’t look at anything but what’s in front of your feet.”

  All the way up the hill, we passed warriors and country people, servants and companions. No one noticed us or spoke to us. As if we were invisible, we passed through the maze of earthworks, crossed the yard, and entered Merin’s house by the front door without attracting anyone’s attention. Through the great hall we went, and up the stairs, and no one so much as nodded a greeting to us. When we were safe in Maara’s room, Namet took a deep breath and sat down heavily on the bed.

  “Maara should sleep for a while,” said Namet. “Will you brew her some chamomile?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t think the tea would be necessary. Maara’s eyes were already closing. When I returned with the tea, she was lying in her bed asleep.

  Namet took the bowl from me.

  “You must leave her to me now,” she said.

  § § §

  Although I wasn’t hungry, I tried to eat a little breakfast. Sparrow found me sitting in a corner of the kitchen, a half-finished bowl of porridge in my lap.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked me. “Where were you all night?”

  She sounded a bit put out. Then she looked at me more closely and sat down beside me. “What in the world happened to you?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “It’s Maara who is unwell.”

  “Maara is unwell?”

  I nodded.

  “Where is she?”

  “Upstairs in her room. Namet is with her.”

  “Namet?” Sparrow said. “Namet’s no healer.”

  “Maara needs more than a healing of the body. Otherwise I would have tended her myself.”

  I heard something in my voice that made me suspect I was a little jealous of Namet, and I was ashamed of myself. Maara’s healing might well depend on Namet’s kindness.

  Sparrow was about to speak when we heard Vintel’s voice in the great hall. Sparrow leaped to her feet.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  I nodded that I understood, and Sparrow ran to bring Vintel her breakfast.

  I remembered Maara’s warning. Had Vintel been angry that Sparrow spent the night of the spring festival with me? I almost wished I had followed my warrior’s advice, both for Sparrow’s sake and for Maara’s. The
n I remembered the gifts I had been given that night, and I was ashamed of myself again. Gnith had told me, Only love can’t wait. Now I understood what she meant. I had felt both the Mother’s love and Sparrow’s in a way that might never come to me again, and to wish it undone was to turn that love away.

  § § §

  I must have fallen asleep where I sat there in the kitchen corner. Then someone tripped over me. I didn’t want to go out to the bower in case Namet sent for me, so I went to the companions’ loft, where I fell into the nearest bed and slept.

  I woke just in time for the midday meal. Alpin sat next to me at the companions’ table. She managed to distract me from my troubles by keeping up a constant stream of conversation about everything under the sun. I noticed that she kept a close eye on her warrior, and when Cael rose to leave the hall, Alpin left half her dinner on her plate and followed her.

  I enjoyed Alpin’s company. I didn’t mind her chatter, and I found her attention to her warrior amusing until I recognized myself. I seldom left food on my plate only because I spent mealtimes eating instead of talking, but I always had one eye on Maara, and when she left the hall, I left with her.

  Suddenly I was lonely for her. Although she was only just upstairs, I felt as if Namet had taken her away from me. As the healing of the body takes time, the healing of Maara’s spirit would take time. How long would it be before Namet gave her back to me?

  I never allowed myself to think that Namet might fail. Maara had survived wounds of the body that should have killed her. Surely this wounding of her heart could not be past mending.

  One of the servants put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Namet wants you,” she said. “She’s in the kitchen.”

  § § §

  I found Namet sitting at a table with the healer. When she saw me, she pointed to a stool opposite her, and I sat down.

  “I don’t know,” the healer was saying. “She may need to understand and she may not.”

  “Understand what?” I said, before I could stop myself.

  I had spoken out of turn, and I half expected them to ignore me, but Namet turned to me and said, “A healing may succeed whether or not a person understands it. Willow bark cools a fever, though the person who is ill may not understand its virtue. That isn’t always true for this kind of healing. Maara may need to understand, and I don’t know her well enough to know what certain gestures mean to her.”

  “It can’t hurt to try,” the healer said.

  Namet looked doubtful. “Sometimes it can hurt to try, but I think we have no choice this time.” She gave me a look of sympathy. “This child wants her warrior back.”

  Namet stood up and motioned to me to follow her. Together we went out the back door and down the well-worn path between the sheds that led to the place of ritual. This time we didn’t remove our clothing. I followed Namet down the ladder into the underground chamber.

  I remembered the silence. The cold was something new. When I had come into this sacred space the first time, the air was warm, despite the cold air of winter that hovered just above our heads. This time it was the warmth of springtime we left behind, and the cool air in the chamber made me shiver.

  Namet sat down by the wall farthest from the altar and patted the floor beside her. I sat down on the cold stone.

  Namet’s doubts worried me. I wanted to tell her things that would prove to her my warrior’s value and her strength of spirit, but Namet sat still, her gaze turned inward, and I was afraid to speak. Then little by little my worries left me, and I sat silent beside a woman whose wisdom I trusted, just as I trusted her good intentions.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” said Namet.

  I gave a start. “What?”

  “You’re too young to remember the war,” she said, “but many were left motherless by it. Even so, there is something in your warrior I find disturbing.” Namet turned to face me. “Go back in your mind to the night you spent with her here. How did you feel about her then?”

  I didn’t know what she meant. “I felt about her as I always have.”

  “Did you trust her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she ever frighten you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You were never frightened?”

  “I was,” I said, “but she eased my fears.”

  “Did you ever feel that she might do you harm?”

  “No.” Then I remembered the bruises on my wrist.

  “Not on purpose,” I said.

  A shrewd look came into Namet’s eyes. “What has she done?”

  I couldn’t lie to Namet. Reluctantly I pulled my sleeve up a few inches.

  “It looks worse than it is,” I said.

  “She did that?”

  I nodded.

  “When?”

  “Last night,” I said, “but she wasn’t herself. She would never have hurt me if she’d been herself.”

  “If she wasn’t herself, who was she?”

  Namet didn’t expect an answer.

  I looked away, and all at once tears filled my heart, although my eyes remained dry.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If she pulled my hand from my arm, she would be welcome to it if that would make her whole again.”

  Namet took my hand and touched my bruises tenderly with her fingertips. “Such words should not be spoken lightly. The world may hear them and remember them, and someday you may be held to a promise you never knew you made.”

  Her words didn’t frighten me, although they should have. I remembered the warriors standing with drawn swords at the foot of the stairs while Eramet barred the way. I remembered Maara’s face when the Lady made my life the price of treachery. I remembered her challenge to Vintel.

  “Maara has put her life at risk more than once for me,” I said.

  Namet’s gentle hold tightened until my wrist began to hurt. A knife appeared in her hand.

  “I wouldn’t ask an entire hand,” she said.

  She held the blade against the second joint of my little finger.

  I stared at her in disbelief. A wildness had come into her eyes. Did she need this from me for Maara’s healing? If she did, I would find a way to bear it.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The knife vanished. Namet took my hand in both of hers and raised it to her lips. She blew on it three times, then kissed the back of it and let it go.

  “The world will be happy enough with that, I think,” she said, and smiled at me.

  I clasped my hands together to stop their shaking.

  “I admire your courage,” Namet said, “but you should temper it with prudence. A warrior needs her hands.”

  Namet thought for a few minutes before she spoke again.

  “At first I was inclined to let her heal herself,” she said. “A person may step into the past for a short time, to find something of herself she left behind or to understand the persistent ache of an old wound. Many times such a journey brings its own healing. At worst, she may simply put it behind her and go on.”

  “Will Maara’s spirit heal itself, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I think that in any case, a day or two from now her memories of the last few days will have faded, and she will appear to be as she was before.”

  “Appear to be?”

  “No,” said Namet. “I misspoke. I think she will be as she was before.”

  I was relieved to hear it, but something was worrying Namet.

  “If she is unchanged, then what happened once may happen again.”

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  Once more I feared that Namet had doubts about undertaking Maara’s healing. If Maara could be as she had been before the night of the spring festival, I would be grateful for even that much, but if Namet could help her change, so much the better.

  “Can’t you do something for her?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But I must think carefully how best to do it.”
r />   Namet’s uncertainty puzzled me until she said, “Have you ever lanced a boil?”

  Then I understood. Sometimes a lancing lets the poison out and speeds a person’s healing, but if it is not done skillfully, it may only spread the poison, and then the person might die.

  Namet took my hand in hers. She leaned back against the stone wall of the chamber and closed her eyes.

  “Open your heart,” she said, “and let someone wiser tell us what to do.”

  We sat there hand in hand for a long time. I tried to do as Namet told me, but my mind was full of doubts and questions. I tried to open my heart, only to find it full of fear. I knew I wasn’t being very helpful.

  Namet’s hold on my hand tightened. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were open, and tears trickled down her cheeks.

  “So simple,” she said.

  She must be listening to something that could be heard only by the wisest heart.

  “Will you entrust her to me?” Namet said.

  “Of course,” I told her.

  “The healer thinks it doesn’t matter whether or not she understands her healing. I think it does matter. I think it matters a great deal, and there is one gesture I know she’ll understand.”

  Namet turned to look at me, and her face was full of hope.

  “She’s a child who has lost her mother,” she said, “and I’m a mother who has lost her child.”

  § § §

  The news went through the house like wildfire. No one spoke openly about it. It went from person to person in whispers. Before the day was out there was no one who hadn’t heard it. That Namet intended to take Maara as her daughter so soon after the loss of Eramet was surprising enough, but that she would take a stranger into her family was even more astonishing.

  “Why would she do such a thing?” Sparrow asked me. “She has no need for a daughter. Arnet is the head of her house, and Arnet has an heir.”

  I wondered if Sparrow’s heart might hurt a bit for Eramet’s sake.

  “She didn’t take Maara to replace Eramet,” I said.

  “I suppose not.”

  But Sparrow looked doubtful.

  “You may love someone else too someday. You still have love to give, even if Eramet no longer needs it.”