A Journey of the Heart

by Catherine M. Wilson

  "It's a fever of some kind, but worse than any winter sickness I've seen."

  I waited while the healer brewed an evil-smelling tea of goldenroot.

  "How long has she been ill?" I asked.

  "Her servant called me at midnight," she said. "Merin complained all day yesterday of headache, but last night she was feeling better. Then in the middle of the night the fever came on her. She called out for someone in her sleep." The healer gave me a strange look. "Your name, her servant thought."

  "My name?"

  "Yours or your mother's, but this morning it was you she asked for."

  I took the tea upstairs and knocked on the Lady's door. No one answered. I went in and found her sleeping. Before I could decide which would do her the most good, medicine or sleep, she opened her eyes. When she saw me, a light came into them for a moment. Then it died, and she turned her face away.

  "You sent for me, Lady," I said.

  She moved her hand a little, as if to wave me away.

  "I've brought something for your fever."

  She gave no indication that she'd heard me. I sat down beside her on the bed and felt her forehead. It was dry and hot. I think she would have pushed my hand away if she'd had the strength. In her eyes I saw a weariness that frightened me.

  "Drink this," I said.

  I slipped my hand behind her head, to raise it enough for her to drink from the bowl. She was too weak to resist me, and she drank a few sips of the tea. After a while she began to doze. I went downstairs and brought a basin of cold water and a cloth back to her room. I bathed her face and hands and left the cool cloth on her forehead. I believe it made her feel a little better.

  Most of that day I stayed beside her. I brewed her a remedy I had learned from my mother. She seemed to like it better than what the healer had given her. I also got her to take some bread soaked in broth, though it was difficult for her to swallow.

  All day her servant kept up a good fire. The room was stuffy, but it was much too cold outside to take the shutter down, and even the dim lamplight in the room seemed to hurt the Lady's eyes. While she slept, I dozed in the chair by the hearth. In the evening the healer sent me downstairs to eat my supper.

  "Tell them it's winter sickness," she told me. "Let's not frighten anyone."

  I nodded, but when I spoke with Maara after supper, I told her the truth.

  "Will she recover?" Maara asked me.

  I knew what she was thinking. "I can't believe it's the Lady's time to die. So many people need her."

  And none more than Maara and I, I thought to myself.

  Maara frowned. "The gods never stop to think that someone may be needed," she said.

  That evening the healer told me she would sit up with the Lady, so I went to bed, but only a few hours later, she sent for me again. When I entered the Lady's chamber, the healer was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands on the Lady's shoulders, to keep her still.

  I heard the Lady say, "Where is she?"

  "She's coming," the healer told her. Then she saw me come in. "Here she is now."

  The healer beckoned to me. When I approached the bed, she got up and had me sit down beside the Lady. She took the Lady's hand and placed it in mine.

  "Is it you?" the Lady asked me.

  The healer bobbed her head at me.

  "Yes," I said. "It's me."

  The Lady sighed and closed her eyes. "Don't leave me."

  "I won't," I said. "I'm here."

  After a few minutes she fell asleep.

  "She insisted on getting up to go after your mother," the healer whispered, when she was sure the Lady was sleeping soundly. "I didn't know what else to do. It was all I could do to keep her in bed."

  The healer looked worn out.

  "I'll sit with her now," I told her.

  "Don't let her get out of bed."

  "I won't."

  "She's very strong, as ill as she is."

  "I've nursed people with fevers before," I said. "I'll keep her quiet."

  "All right," she said. "Send for me if you need me."

  Although there was a good fire burning, I was cold. I made sure the Lady was well covered. Then I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat down again beside her.

  She slept peacefully for half an hour. I had begun to doze. Her restlessness woke me. She struggled against the bedclothes, trying to push them aside, as if she would get out of bed. I covered her again and took her hand.

  "Hush," I said.

  She quieted a little. "You're here."

  "Yes, I'm here."

  Her grip on my hand tightened. She drew it to her lips and kissed it. Then she held the back of my hand against her cheek and closed her eyes.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "It's all right."

  She turned onto her side, facing me, and settled herself to sleep, her cheek pillowed on my hand clasped in hers.

  "Beloved," she said.

  "I hoped time had healed that wound," said Namet.

  "They were more than friends," I said.

  Namet nodded. "Much more."

  "I didn't know."

  "It was over and done with before you first drew breath."

  "Evidently not," I told her.

  "No," she conceded. "Evidently not."

  It was still early morning. As soon as the healer had released me from my charge, I went to Namet's room. The Lady had slept peacefully through the night, although she still burned with fever.

  "Why did my mother never tell me?" I asked Namet.

  "You must ask her that," she said.

  "Did my mother love her too?"

  "Very much."

  "But she went home."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "That is something you shouldn't hear from me."

  "Who else can tell me?"

  "Only Merin and Tamnet know the truth of it."

  "No one else?"

  Namet took my hand. "Let it be. What good can come of awakening the dead past?"

  "The past is awake in Merin," I said.

  And in my mother too? I wondered.

  "That may be," said Namet, "but the sooner it sleeps again, the better off she'll be."

  "And if it doesn't sleep?"

  Namet sighed and shook her head.

  "You awakened the past for Maara," I reminded her.

  "Yes," she said. "Because I had a remedy for it. I awakened a longing in her for something she once knew long ago, and had forgotten, because wanting it hurt too much. And the remembering did hurt her, but when the hurt had passed, she was no longer motherless."

  Namet's eyes grew fierce. "There is no remedy for Merin's pain."

  As I tried to make some sense of what I'd heard, my mind discovered all the questions I had never asked because I didn't know enough to ask them. As a child I had been surrounded by mysteries of which I was ignorant. Now my heart was telling me that ignorance would shelter me no longer.

  "It isn't fair," I said. "So many things happened in the world before I came into it. I can't know any of them unless someone will tell me. It's like walking into a room where everyone is keeping a secret. I hear the whispers and see the sidelong glances, and I know the secret must have something to do with me, but no one will tell me anything."

  "This secret has nothing to do with you," said Namet.

  "Of course it does," I said.

  Namet sighed. "I believe they had a falling-out. Their hearts didn't change, but something came between them."

  "My father?"

  "No."

  "What was it then?"

  "Let me begin at the beginning," she said. "When I came here to find my husband, I saw the love between them. It hurt me very much, because it reminded me of what I had lost. It hurt so much that I avoided them.

  "But I couldn't avoid Merin's mother, and one day she insisted on telling me how delighted she was that her daughter and Tamnet had found each other. She told me that Merin had been a difficult child, and I could well believe it. S
he was disobedient and disrespectful, impossible to discipline, and her mother had little confidence that she would ever be able to bear the responsibility that would one day be hers. But when she loved Tamnet, she began to care about herself, and she also began to care about other people."

  Namet gave me a wry smile. "While my love for my husband made me think only of myself, Merin's love for Tamnet made her think about other people when she had never cared anything about them before. Love sometimes does that.

  "After the war, Tamnet went home, but there was something wrong about her leaving. She would have gone home in any case. There was never any question about that. Her mother had lost every child she had but one. How could Tamnet have deprived her mother of her only living child? And of course she had to take her place as her mother's heir.

  "But she left suddenly one morning, and for days afterward, Merin was in a rage. She was every bit the spoiled child in a tantrum that she had been before. No one had any sympathy for her. After all, her beloved still lived, while all around her people grieved loved ones lost forever.

  "Merin cared nothing for what anyone thought of her, but in time the storm blew over. What saved her, I think, was that there was so much to do. She was so young, with responsibilities that a much older woman would have found daunting. Her mother's health was failing, and this place was a shambles. To Merin fell the task of setting everything to rights. She put the breach with Tamnet behind her and went on."

  "But they remained friends," I said, remembering the times Merin had come to help us when I was a child. "How did they heal their hearts?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I know nothing about their relationship since Tamnet left. Merin has never spoken to me about it. After the war our positions were reversed. I had my beloved with me, and she had lost hers. I knew what that felt like. And I bore such a responsibility for what had happened that to speak to her about it could only have caused more pain."

  "Did my mother go home alone?"

  Namet nodded. "As far as I know, she did."

  "Where was my father?"

  "He was here. A few months after she went home, he followed her."

  "Did she love him?"

  "I don't know," she said. "He certainly loved her. In time she could have come to care for him too."

  Not as she had cared for Merin, I thought. While I had no way of knowing, I was sure that it was true.

  All day Merin's fever burned. She was too weak now to try to get out of bed, too weak to do anything but sleep, and when she woke, she was not herself. Sometimes she babbled nonsense. Sometimes she gazed past me at something in the distance. Sometimes she wept quietly into her pillow.

  "I don't know where her fever has taken her," the healer said, "but I think it's a place she never visits unless she can't help herself."

  I wondered if the healer knew as much as I did about the Lady's sorrows.

  "Have you seen her like this before?" I asked her.

  "Only once," she said. "Not long after I joined this household. It must be almost ten years now. She called for your mother then too." The healer gave me a sidelong glance. "Why do you think she did that?"

  I didn't distrust the healer, but the Lady's secrets weren't mine to tell.

  "My mother is her closest friend," I said. "Who else would she call for when she has no family of her own?"

  The healer made a sound like "humph" that told me she knew that I knew more than I was telling.

  "When she's better perhaps she will confide in you," I said.

  "Confide in me? I don't think so." The healer shook her head. "But I wouldn't be surprised if she were to confide in you, and if she does, you must listen to her carefully. This illness of the body both masks and reveals a disorder of the spirit. When her fever cools, another healing must begin, if she'll allow it."

  The healer regarded me appraisingly. "Have you any experience with that kind of healing?"

  I shook my head.

  "I think that in any case there is no one else," the healer said.

  "There is Namet."

  "Not for Merin. There's no love lost between those two."

  "Perhaps Namet can advise me then."

  "Perhaps." The healer gazed at me for so long that I began to feel uncomfortable. Then she said, "Do you understand how serious this is?"

  I nodded. I thought she meant to impress upon me how ill Merin was, both in body and in spirit. That wasn't what she meant at all. She was thinking of what would become of us, of what would become of all of Merin's people, if Merin could no longer care for us.

  The healer lifted my chin and gazed into my eyes.

  "Old eyes," she said. Her thumb lightly stroked my cheek. "Such old eyes in such a young face." She let go of me. "Are you willing?"

  "Yes."

  "Then go get some rest while you can. I expect she'll have a bad night."

  It was the third night of the Lady's fever, and the third night of a fever is usually the worst. If I could get her safely through this night, there was a good chance she would recover.

  The Lady slept fitfully for several hours. Then around midnight she woke and asked for water. Her lips were chapped and painful, so I dampened a cloth and squeezed the water into her mouth. She mumbled a few words I didn't understand.

  "Sleep now," I said.

  "Soon you'll be gone," she whispered.

  "I'll be here when you wake."

  "You might wait for midsummer's day."

  "Hush."

  "One more night," she said.

  She closed her eyes and was quiet for a while, but her breathing told me she wasn't sleeping. Suddenly her eyes flew open. They glittered in the lamplight, dark and angry.

  "I should have hated you," she said.

  Although the Lady was so weak that she could barely raise her head, the force of her anger struck me like a blow. Her eyes demanded an answer. I couldn't give her one. I didn't know if she was talking to my mother or to me.

  "You were a two-edged sword," she said, and at last she closed her eyes.

  Sparrow had once said almost the same thing to me, that love is a sword with two edges.

  The Lady struggled to draw breath. It didn't seem as if her illness was the cause. She sounded more like a child trying not to cry. I laid my hand over her heart, and then I felt what she was feeling, as I had felt her grief when I stood beside her at her window searching the night for ghosts. The ache of her longing seized my heart and brought tears into my eyes.

  She fought to pull air into her body, but there was no room in her breast for anything but grief. She must have seen her own pain mirrored in my eyes. She freed one hand from the blankets and caressed my cheek.

  "Lie with me," she whispered. "For the last time."

  She slipped her hand around my neck and drew me down beside her. I didn't resist her. It seemed to me that in her arms I too would find relief from pain. I laid my forehead against her cheek, while her fingers stroked my neck and found the place that I thought only Sparrow knew. My body responded, and I blushed to know my mother's secret.

  I understood what Merin was asking of me. When I became for Maara the child she sought along the misty riverbank, I wasn't aware until afterwards that I had gone with her on her journey back through time, and that I had not only stood in the place of the child that she had been, but that I had become that child, so that in me she could find a lost part of herself.

  Now Merin was asking much the same thing of me. I didn't know if I could go with her as I had gone with Maara, not only because I didn't love her as I loved Maara, but because I would be standing in my mother's place, and this was a journey the two of them should make together.

  Even so, I felt nothing strange as I lay in Merin's arms, nothing alien in her touch, nothing disturbing in her caress. Maara's arms had made me the child she needed me to be, and when that happened, I lost myself for a little while. In Merin's arms I remained myself, but though I couldn't become my mother for her sake, I thought I might serve as a mirror
, reflecting back to her the woman she had loved before I existed. My heart was certain then that I had found the answer. Wearing Tamnet's face, I would have gone with Merin wherever she needed me to go, even into the most intimate embrace of love, but although she asked it of me, she didn't take me there. Perhaps she found my willingness enough. Or perhaps her journey swept her past the act of love into the abyss.

  For a long time I lay in Merin's arms while her spirit traveled the paths of memory. She had wandered into some dark corner of her heart where she had hidden her agony even from herself. Sometimes she wept silently. From time to time she spoke to me. I never answered her. She seemed not to need an answer. All the while she held me to her heart. I listened to her heartbeat, and to words only my mother should have heard. I heard the story of her rage and her regret. I heard her curse love for changing her, so that she couldn't leave the ones who needed her, not even to follow love. I heard her beg my mother not to leave her. I heard words of love and longing that broke my heart.

  At last sleep took us both. Dreams touched me in passing, leaving me weightless with joy, then heavy with grief. These dreams brought no images, only the rainbow of the heart that people said love was. The colors of love wound themselves around me, bright and dark.

  I woke to the familiar sounds of activity in the kitchen below. The servants were up, lighting the fires, drawing water, kneading the day's bread. I shivered. The fire had gone out.

  I got up and bundled Merin's blankets around her. She didn't wake. Her sleep was deep and peaceful, and when I touched her cheek, I felt only the slightest trace of fever. The worst was over.

  I made a new fire. Then I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat down on the bed beside her. My breath made little white clouds in the chilly air. For a long time I watched her sleep. She was beautiful.

  Suddenly she opened her eyes. She looked up at me and smiled. Her eyes drew mine and held them. I wanted to blink or look away, but her eyes wouldn't let me go. A look came into them as if a light had kindled within her. I had never seen a look like that. Love had never looked at me like that. Not even my mother's love had looked at me like that, because a mother's love would someday have to let me go, but the love in Merin's eyes would have held me until time ended, if I had been the object of it. When she closed her eyes again, it took me some time to grow accustomed to the dark.