Tale of Gwyn

by Cynthia Voigt

  “He’s always there,” Tad reported. “Watching. I don’t like being watched.”

  “I don’t think the Lords are much concerned with what you like,” she answered. “Defend yourself.”

  Instead of doing as he was told, he raised his staff and moved toward her, with short, thrusting strokes. Gwyn was surprised and unready. She had to retreat a few steps, while he smiled at her discomfort, before she could make her own attack.

  While the thaw held, Granda’s health held. He was too weak to leave his room, but he swallowed broth and cups of warmed wine. However, when the cold flooded down over them from the north, as if the mountains blew their icy breath down over the hills, he declined again. Always, then, behind the daily work, they listened for sounds from the rooms above the barroom. Gwyn sat her turns with him, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Granda was old, fifty-eight, and had long outlived his friends. Until the autumn he had been alert and spry, saying over and over that he planned to live to sixty, and maybe even beyond. They had thought he might, but he’d taken a cold before the first snow and had been sickening ever since. The family cared for him, as he had cared for them.

  They left him alone only at the end of each evening, when they gathered in the kitchen to eat. On the third night, as they sat over bowls of stew, they heard distant sounds, as if furniture were being tumbled about upstairs. They rushed into the barroom.

  Granda stood on the stairs, out of his room for the first time since the snows began. He wore a white nightshirt. In the dim light of candles, his face could not be seen, but his long white hair shone wildly around his head, and his beard shone white. His voice rolled around the empty room, like the cry of a caged animal.

  “Where is my son?” he cried. He held himself erect with one hand on the railing. “I want my son, where is he?”

  Da stepped to the foot of the stairs, holding up a candle. “Here I am, Father.” The light showed the old head shaking from side to side, the shadowed eyes searching out the dark corners of the room.

  “I want my son. Where is my son? Where is Win?” Granda roared. Then, as slowly as the last flames burning out on a bed of ashes, his legs folded beneath him. Da ran up to catch him. Gwyn stood by Rose. Burl held a candle in one hand and Tad’s shoulder with the other, to keep him from leaving the room. Their mother went up the stairs and murmured to Da, who nodded his head.

  “He’s dead,” Mother announced. “Burl? You’ll help carry him back to his bed. Rose, put on water for the washing.”

  Burl passed his candle to Gwyn, and Tad followed Rose into the kitchen. Gwyn watched the three living figures take the fourth back up the stairs. Then she sighed and turned around, not knowing what to do.

  The door into the parlor was closing gently. She had only a glimpse of a man’s figure standing against the light, and a long clean-shaven face, before the door closed.

  The next evening they carried Granda’s body out to the flat stone at the west of the village, where a pyre had been built up. Da and Burl laid the body on top. Da took up a torch to light the sticks. In the fall, the priest would come and say prayers there, for all who had died during the year.

  Heavy dark clouds crept across the sky from the east and the sun flamed over the distant mountaintops, turning them black. The smoke curled up from the pyre. Nobody spoke among the circle of those who had come to bid Granda farewell. The villagers had come, and Wes stood beside Rose, their solemn faces lit by growing flames. Cam stood apart, his eyes fixed on the fire.

  Gwyn waited with her parents, Blithe and Guy, and Burl behind them. Tad had stayed at the Inn, not wanting to come. He would lay out drink and cups, and the bread and meats Mother had prepared that day. He would serve the guests if they needed anything while the family was gone. Flames licked upward as the sky overhead darkened and lowered. Heat burned on Gwyn’s face. She heard Blithe make little choking sounds; and she turned her head to see her oldest sister move to stand away, her back to the pyre, tears running down her cheeks. Guy tried to comfort her within the circle of his arms.

  It was not Granda Blithe wept for, Gwyn knew. The pyre to which Blithe turned her back burned in memory only. Blithe pushed Guy away, wrapping her arms around herself as if she wrapped them around the grief she clutched so close. She should have stayed with Tad then, Gwyn thought, if she couldn’t look straight at the end of things.

  Afterward, when the people had drunk and eaten and bid farewell, the family sat alone in the kitchen. Blithe and Guy had gone upstairs, where they would share Tad’s room. Burl rinsed plates and cups at the basin, while Rose dried them on a cloth and put them away. Gwyn fed up the fire, leaving Da to sit with Mother. She heated a final pitcher of cider.

  “He had a long life, and a good one,” Mother said. “He made a quiet end.”

  A murmur of assent went around the kitchen, and Gwyn asked the question that had been in her mind all day. Bending over the fire to ladle cider into mugs, she asked her parents, “Did he forget Uncle Win was dead then?”

  They exchanged a look as she set the drinks down before them.

  “Aye, he must have,” her mother said.

  Gwyn served the mugs of cider. Rose and Burl sat down with them.

  “Win was ever the favorite,” Da explained to Gwyn. “I think that loss was always fresh in him. And his mind wandered, at the end.”

  “Don’t you mind?” Gwyn asked her father.

  “Osh and why should I mind? He was a favorite with all of us, wasn’t he, wife?”

  She nodded, but her face did not, as Da’s had, soften at the memory.

  “I wish I’d known him,” Gwyn said.

  “He was good with people,” Da told her, “and with animals too; he had the right touch. But he had a temper—he wasn’t a good man to cross. Even when he was young—”

  “Especially when he was young,” Mother agreed.

  “He must have been handsome,” Rose said.

  “That he was, wasn’t he, wife?”

  “Aye, he was that. He was a lovely lad. You,” she said to Gwyn, “have a tongue like his. It often got him into trouble. Or out of it. But he was vain, always washed and combed, and dressed proud. He loved the fairs—”

  “Because he wore his finest clothes?” Gwyn guessed.

  “Oh, he would strut around.” Da smiled. “One eye on the girls.”

  “Both eyes on the girls,” Mother corrected.

  Gwyn tried to picture him. “What color was his hair?”

  “Brown, light brown. When he was a boy it was yellow,” Da said.

  “His eyes?”

  “Brown, dark brown,” her mother said. “Velvety.”

  “How old was he, when—” Gwyn started.

  “Oh well,” Da said. “We’ll have a full day tomorrow, or the next, if as Tad tells us the Messenger is due. It’ll mean the stabling of three horses, Burl.”

  “The goats can stay in the barn with the cows.”

  “And we’ll have baking to do,” Mother said to Gwyn. “When we’ll get Granda’s room cleared out, I don’t know.”

  “Tad said it’s only for the one night,” Gwyn reminded her.

  “Aye, but with guests already in the house.”

  “Besides, Tad sometimes gets messages wrong,” Rose reminded them.

  “Not anymore, he’s learned how. Not for a long time now,” Mother said quickly. “And blankets for the soldiers, and the bed to be carried down to the parlor, places made for the soldiers in the barn. We’ll earn our gold pieces. You, Burl, have you a clean shirt for serving?”

  “Aye,” he said. When there were soldiers staying at the Inn, the women remained in the kitchen as much as possible. No matter how a man might have been raised, after a year of soldiering he wasn’t fit company for women, not women of the sort in the Innkeeper’s house. The soldiers’ women lived in camps and moved from camp to camp, setting up cloth tents in good weather, living like cattle in the city barracks during the winter months.

  “I wonder why the Mes
senger is going to the Earl at this time of year,” Gwyn asked.

  “It has nothing to do with you,” her mother said.

  “I know that,” Gwyn answered. “It would be bad luck for me if it did, wouldn’t it.”

  “We’re tired,” Da announced, sending everybody to bed. “I’ll bank the fire. Tomorrow will be long.”

  Overnight the weather turned bitter. When Gwyn left the kitchen the next morning, her mother warned her to watch her footing. Outside, the air seared her lungs with cold and the surface of the garden was sheeted with ice. Gwyn’s boots broke through the crust of ice, so she had no trouble with falling, but it was times like these, she thought, she envied the Lords their indoor privies. Overhead, the sky hung black and heavy, with no stars showing. Only the kitchen showed any light, where her mother worked by lanterns. Narrow bars of yellow showed through the closed shutters and at the foot of the door. Gwyn was glad to return inside to the warmth of the fire.

  “Don’t loiter,” her mother said, looking up from the chickens she gutted at the table. “You’re needed in the stables. Da wants to speak to you.” Her voice was bitter, angry. Gwyn knew better than to ask questions when Mother spoke in that voice.

  In the stables, Burl mucked out the stalls while Da brushed down the big gray stallion. The light turned gray, with a dawn when the sun hid itself behind the clouds. “They’re going out today,” Da said. “He wants one to care for his son and one to serve him. You’ll go with the Lordling,” he told Gwyn.

  “On a day like this?” Gwyn asked, currying the mare.

  Da grunted. “He wants to map the land to the North.”

  “But who will serve the Messenger and the soldiers if they arrive today?

  “I’m sending Burl with you. Your mother will pack food. I’ll give you silver to pay for your lodgings.”

  “Lodgings?”

  “You’ll be gone a few days, he says.”

  At last Gwyn identified the odd note in her father’s voice: He was puzzled as well as uneasy. “Does he fear to meet the Messenger then, think you?” she asked.

  “What and why the Lords do is nothing for us to think on,” he answered sharply.

  Gwyn took the warning without protest. She helped put bits and saddles on the horses and attached a long lead line to the mare. Leaving Burl holding both animals in the yard, she went inside to eat the bread and cheese her mother gave her and pack up food and blankets while she chewed. Her father gave her a purse of small coins to tie at the waist of her skirt, beneath her overshirt. “You’ll pay whatever it seems worth to turn a man out of his house for the night,” Da instructed her. “More if he gives you food.”

  They set off without a word among themselves. Both the Lord and his son were wrapped around with fur-lined cloaks, the hoods pulled up close against the bitter air. The Lord placed deep saddlebags behind his saddle. Burl helped the Lordling to mount and then gave the lead line into the Lord’s hand. Shouldering their packs, Gwyn and Burl followed the two horses out of the Inn yard.

  Their progress was slow, because the Lord stopped frequently to take a long book out of his saddlebag and mark on it with sticks of charcoal. He marked the village down, while the four stood together on the hillside overlooking the little gathering of houses around the stone well, with its bell hung high over the water. Gwyn and Burl stood silent as he worked. The Lordling sat silent on the mare. When the Lord closed his book and put it away, they moved on, without a word exchanged.

  So the long day went. They would walk along the white landscape, among hills growing ever steeper, heading toward the mountains, which were invisible in the pale air, the sky above them low with flat white-gray clouds. As they walked, the horses would gradually pull ahead of Gwyn and Burl, so that they followed only tracks in the snow. Then they would come upon the two Lords, sitting silent and still while the father made marks. At about midday, the Lord asked for food and Gwyn put down her pack to cut off chunks of bread and cheese and serve them up to the two on horseback. She and Burl ate standing up.

  Nobody spoke, neither she and Burl, nor the father to his son. When they angled off to follow a spire of smoke rising into the low sky, Gwyn had heard only those four words, “We will eat now,” uttered in an oddly cold, metallic voice, as measured as the steady pace of the horses’ hoofs through the snow. She had looked up only glancingly into the two faces she served, the Lordling’s pale, with pale brown hair tied back at his neck, his pale blue eyes unseeing, the man’s pale and hollow looking, as if he had just gotten out of bed after a wasting disease, or as if, like the land he mapped, he had long gone hungry. The man’s hair was brown too, what she could see of it at his forehead, and his eyes seemed to see her—if at all—as from a great distance. He led them toward the line of smoke without a word.

  The house and barns huddled close together at the foot of a hill, facing south, protected by the rise behind from northerly winds. Two chimneys rose up from the stone house. Only one chimney smoked so that, Gwyn thought with relief, there would be room for them, without putting the farmer out. As they rode into the farmyard, the wooden door was pulled open and a man stepped out.

  The Lord waited for Gwyn to explain their needs. The farmer listened carefully to her, then nodded his head and stepped aside to allow them to enter. The family had gathered for a meal in the kitchen, two sons and a daughter, all three standing stiff beside the farmer’s wife, who wiped her hands on her apron and fussed nervously at her hair to see that the braids lay neat. The farmer took the Lords into the next room, telling one of his sons to build up a fire. The other son was sent to show Burl where he could stable the horses.

  Gwyn recognized the girl. They had met at fairs. Her name was Liss, and Gwyn remembered her thick black hair, which refused to be neatly contained by braids and forever came loose into little curls around her face. When they were alone, Gwyn greeted her. “I’m very glad to see you.”

  “You’re the Innkeeper’s daughter,” Liss answered. “Gwyn. The second daughter.”

  “We’ve a stew hot”—Liss’s mother got right to business—“and we’ve ale. It’ll mean porridge for our dinner.” She didn’t sound upset at the prospect.

  “Why are they here?” Liss asked. “And what are you doing traveling with them? What’s the news from your village? From the Doling Rooms? From the King’s Ways?” Words tumbled out, running like brooks in spring spate. At the same time, she moved around the room, getting out the best spoons and bowls, setting out a plate for bread. She turned her face to ask her questions, her eyes curious.

  Gwyn hung her cloak on a hook and took the apron Liss handed to her. She was glad to find a friend here; it made her task easier. “The Innkeeper has given me coins to pay for our lodgings,” she said.

  “Aye, that’ll be welcome,” the farmer’s wife answered. “Should I stew some apples for them? It’ll take only a minute.” Without waiting for an answer, she bustled into the storeroom.

  “What an adventure, Gwyn,” Liss said, admiration in her voice.

  “Adventure? Walking all day in this weather?”

  “My Da says there’s real snow coming soon.” Liss was easily distracted. She was Rose’s age, two years younger than Gwyn. There had been girls born in the village the same year as Gwyn, but they hadn’t survived childhood, so Gwyn was out of the habit of friendship.

  Besides, she had no time to talk. They were busy finding a table and putting food down before the man and boy, bringing in firewood, seeing that the horses were stabled, and finally eating themselves, thick porridge with honey melted over its top and rich goat’s milk poured over it.

  Then, after all the chores were done, she was almost too tired to take pleasure from just sitting down in a warm room, with Burl’s music in the background. Liss was openly disappointed in the lack of news. “The only think that’s happened in the world is that Rose will marry Wes?” she teased. “Osh aye, Gwyn, I’ve been locked up away here since the autumn fair. Any littlest thing would be exciting to me. Have y
ou had many visitors at the Inn?”

  “Not since the snows. Just these two.”

  Even Liss wouldn’t ask questions about the doings of the Lords. “No other news at all?”

  “Just bad news. There’s hunger—”

  “Aye, that we know,” the farmer said. “We can keep ourselves out here, but we’ve been luckier than many this year.”

  “And these coins will help pay the tithes,” his wife added. “It was good luck you came here.”

  “And hunger brings thieves, I’d wager,” one of the young men asked Gwyn.

  She nodded, yawning.

  “Osh aye,” Liss said. “I’ll just have to marry a man from the villages, if I can find one to ask me.”

  “There’ll be plenty to ask you, never fear,” her father told her.

  “Think you?” she wondered, pleased.

  “As long as they don’t ask us what you’d be like to live with,” her oldest brother answered her.

  “Oh, you, you great lout, all you think about is the weather. What do you know about it?”

  “I know what a man likes, little sister.”

  “And what is that, may I ask?”

  “A quiet temper and a peaceful tongue,” he began the list. They all burst out laughing. Gwyn watched, smiling, and yawned again, unable to stop herself. At this, the family withdrew to their own quarters, leaving the two guests to roll up in blankets on the floor by the fire. “It’s a good house, this,” Gwyn thought to herself, falling asleep. She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until she heard Burl’s voice answering from the darkness, “It is that.” His voice was as sure and soothing as her mother’s hand on her forehead when she was a child. Gwyn fell asleep.

  Chapter 8

  EXCEPT THAT THE GROUND GREW rougher underfoot, the second day was a duplicate of the first, as they made their way up and down steep hillsides. The forest grew thicker here, far from fields and pastures, and they saw few dwellings that day. They were coming up to the mountains, whose massive bulk rose up ahead of them like a wall. Gwyn could make out the variations on the mountains’ faces now, long, high, smooth slopes, ravines cutting their way down, and the land jutting out around them. She could see the distant peaks, too high for any trees to grow; some of them rising up until they buried themselves in the clouds.