Something Red

by Douglas Nicholas

  “Yes. He let me see inside it once, Mistress,” Hob said.

  Jack wore a thong about his neck, from which depended a little leather bag, and he took it off only when they went swimming in the hot part of summer. Hob had asked Jack about it one day, and the silent man had opened it to show him. Within were several small bunches of dried herbs, each tied with a lock of Molly’s silver hair, and a little wooden figurine of a seated man, legs folded, with antlers growing from his head; in his hands he held out two serpents, whose heads were those of curl-horned rams.

  “By the herbs in that bag, by potions I brew him up, by the power of the Horn-Man, Lord of the Beasts and a powerful god he is, Jack’s relieved of the fevers he had from the bite of that Beast. Sure and had he not found me that feast day, there’d be no more Jack.” She gave a little laugh deep in that soft white throat. “He’s man enough now, though, and a bit to spare.”

  But Hob had seized on something she’d said. “Another God? Besides Jesus and the Father and the Spirit, Mistress?” Hob had a sudden vision of the old priest who had raised him, hands thrown up in horror.

  “There are gods older nor the Christ,” Molly said. “And before the first god was the first woman.” She patted herself complacently between her legs.

  Seeing him staring in amazement, she grinned and added, “Well, someone had to give birth to the world.” She drank again and belched softly, the sweat standing out on her upper lip.

  “And no, he never came into Jerusalem, the poor man, and him as decent a kern as ever shouldered a pikestaff.”

  After a while the breeze picked up a bit, making the flames flap, making sparks spit from the tops of the yellow tongues, and setting the leaves rustling, a drowsy sound. Soon thereafter Molly sent Hob off to his bed in the wagon.

  He watched her from his window for a while as she sat against the tree, now and again sipping from the jug. The fire crumbled into ruddy embers; the moon’s rays filtered through the trees, reasserting themselves with the waning of the firelight, and picking out the streaks of silver in Molly’s gray mane. He lay back down. He thought of Jack, and the Holy Land, and the Beast.

  Hob had heard tales of other monsters around other campfires, but he had never seen the very wound made by one. It was hard to imagine something beside which Jack would be as a child; so far Hob had never encountered anyone who was even Jack’s equal in strength. It was unsettling. The sweet summer scents of green life, tinged with woodsmoke, drifted in at the window, to mingle with the fragrance from Nemain’s packet; the wind murmured in the trees; but he lay wide-eyed, and it was long before he could sleep.

  He did sleep at last, but he dreamed, and in his dream were two green eyes, a forest glade, an enigmatic challenge.

  CHAPTER 7

  MOLLY SHADED HER EYES WITH her hand and looked west over the stable roof. She and Osbert stood together in the inn yard.

  “You have the right of it, it is a fair day, and myself the more impatient to be away; for all things are inconstant, and of all inconstant things, it’s only the weather that’s more faithless nor a man with a maid,” she said. Osbert had been urging her to stay, at least for a fortnight or two. Hob loitered nearby; he was silently praying that Osbert might succeed. He had no wish to part from the enchanting Margery, though he had done nothing but worship her from across the room.

  “Snow is coming: the smell of it is on the wind. A few days to let that terrible thing pass off, that’s surely well done, but another sennight and we’ll be caught by the snows, and ourselves deep in the woods, and then it’s wolves and who knows what else that we’ll be surrounded by.”

  Osbert shook his head sadly and scuffed at the unyielding frozen dirt and ice of the yard. “Ye can stay the year, Molly, and longer if ye’ve a mind to, ye know that. There’s Jack, sithee, but still—”

  Molly put a hand on his chest and he fell silent. She looked in his face, and she left her hand on his heart and said, “It’s a good-hearted man you are, Osbert a rún, and a strong-backed man as well; it’s rare that a woman finds both, and here’s a welcome offer that you’re making me. But my business is drawing me on, and someday it will be drawing me back across the sea; and you are Osbert of Osbert’s Inn. Would you be leaving it?”

  After a moment he shook his head slowly.

  “Nor can I see you happy away from it.” She took her hand away. “And you yourself have said it: there is Jack.”

  IT TOOK THEM ANOTHER DAY to get everyone ready to take the road again; Osbert’s Inn was a place that folk were reluctant to leave. At last Molly’s beasts, well fed and rested, were hitched to the wagons. It was already past noon. Farewells had been said, and now Aylwin strode here and there with a sort of cheerful officiousness, chivying the pilgrims into a semblance of marching order. Hob noticed the black-haired woman, Haunild, with her sons, standing easily with a staff in her hand: under Molly’s ministrations her condition seemed to have improved markedly. Three of the lean rough-coated hounds were threading their way back and forth through the group, caught up in the general excitement. One began to bark, and a moment later was answered by a horrifying eruption from the mastiffs’ kennel, a deep bellowing chorus that froze all the travelers in place for a moment. Almost immediately there came the raised voices of the grooms, a crack or two of a dog whip, and gradual subsidence into quiet.

  Aylwin straightened slowly: he had dropped into an instinctive crouch when the roar of the night-watch dogs had burst upon the air. He signaled to Molly that they were ready to go.

  She began to climb to her place on the first wagon, then quickly backed down again and went to the center wagon where Nemain sat, reins in hand. Molly went straight to the rear door and clambered inside.

  In a moment she reemerged from the little wagon with a small clay pot, bound in straw and sealed with beeswax. Hob was at his post by Milo’s head, lead rope in hand. Molly took the rope from him and gave him the little pot. “Quick now, child, run in and give this to Tilred in the pantry. Tell him this is for his daughter; ’tis that of which we spoke the other night.”

  “Yes, Mistress.”

  She turned away. She slipped the lead rope into a notch on the wagon’s footboard and prepared again to mount to the wagon seat, and Hob set off across the courtyard. One of the hounds decided to escort him and then, with canine perversity, sat down abruptly to scratch, right in Hob’s path, almost tripping him. Hob gave an awkward hop over the oblivious dog, holding grimly to his fragile burden, and tottered a few steps till he regained his balance.

  He found Tilred in the fragrant pantry—smoked hams, the sweetish scent of spilled beer, spices!—and gave him the clay pot. He then had to listen to Tilred’s insistence, at great length, that Hob remember to convey thanks, effusive thanks, to Molly. Hob fidgeted, feeling a mounting impatience, knowing that she awaited his return. Finally he was free, another double handful of almonds in his pouch. He hurried through the enclosed walkway—the brooms were gone, but not the rope coils nor the tattered cloak, which looked as if it would hang there till Gabriel called all to rise again.

  As he reached the door to the courtyard Margery was bustling in. He stepped aside, his back to the wall, to allow her past, but she strode right up to him, put her palms flat on either side of his face, and kissed him full on the lips. He stared, astonished, into her eyes, warm and merry, the rich deep brown of fine-grained wood.

  “Haste tha back to me, ma bonny wanderer,” she said with a laugh, perhaps teasing, perhaps not. She whirled away and was off into the common room before he could think what to do or say. He stood there: his mind was blank, but a great chime of happiness rang through his body.

  From without came the sound of farewells, the rumbling of wagon wheels. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked out into the pale winter sunlight, the bite of the crisp winter air. His heart was singing within him. He caught up with Molly’s wagon and she handed him down the end of Milo’s lead rope. The gates had been flung wide and the pilgrims were streami
ng out, and he marched after them toward the opening.

  Just before they sallied out, Hob turned around, walking backward a few steps, and scanned the courtyard. There stood Osbert and his sons, and some of the housecarls, waving, but neither of Osbert’s daughters. He thought, as he had not for a long while, of Father Athelstan, standing in the middle of the village street and signing a blessing after Molly’s retreating wagons, looking small and old, and somehow a little forlorn. Osbert atte Well, great strapping Osbert, master of the inn, yet had something of that lost look, as he bade Molly farewell. Hob swung about; he struck a brisk pace; in a moment he passed through the gates and so led Milo forth from the double walls of Osbert’s Inn.

  THEIR PATH AT FIRST took them eastward, toward Bywood Old End, but before they reached that little village they turned onto a broad track that led southward. Along this early stretch they passed some small stands of uncleared timber, and then the three great fields cultivated by the villagers of Bywood Old End: one left fallow; one planted to winter wheat and other fall plantings; one awaiting the spring planting of oats and barley, peas and beans.

  The fields were divided among the villagers, so that they looked like the blankets sewed from scraps by the grandmams in Hob’s old village: square furlongs and long narrow selions, all set this way and that to follow the runoff of rainwater, with triangular gores where the land was too irregular to fit into the larger pattern. Different villagers owned each piece, and those who owned more than one had their bits of property scattered here and there among their neighbors’ patches. The borders of each patch, narrow strips of unplowed land, formed a pattern like the stitching of a quilt.

  Hob swung along after the pilgrims, amusing himself by counting the furrows in each selion or furlong. He thought that the fields made a brave sight, and that the cold wind was refreshing, and that everyone he met was his friend. Margery’s kiss still tingled on his lips, and the world was beautiful to him.

  The fields were on each side of the road, and wooden fences ran along on either hand. They came upon a party of villagers engaged in winter work: refashioning a stretch of the fence that had fallen into disrepair. Most of them had been at the inn the night before, and some of the pilgrims lingered to say farewells. As Hob drew abreast there was a burst of laughter; the pilgrims, becoming aware of the oncoming wagons, moved off; the villagers, leaning on the rail with their mallets grounded, glad to stop work for a bit, touched their foreheads to Molly. They hailed Jack with a torrent of good-natured teasing about his feats of strength. There was much wordplay on his prowess with a weighty stick or shaft. Jack just waved and grinned: his throat would allow no more.

  Gradually even Milo’s pace, plodding but exceedingly steady, was enough to leave behind the last strip of farmland, the last stretch of fencing, and the trees closed in again. The day was bright but cold; the wind alternately strengthened and faltered. The trees on both sides of the track would stand straight as the wind died away. Then the treetops would again begin to bow and sway, and a moment later Hob would hear the skritching of the topmost branches and their tiny twigs, uncountable as stars, rubbing against one another. Finally the moving air would reach the boy, stinging his cheeks and whipping his fine black hair about, till he drew up his hood and held it close around his face.

  Off a little way into the woods to the east, a movement caught his eye: two tiny roe deer in their winter coats of pale gray-brown. The pair had been foraging along the forest floor, picking through the sparse winter fare. Now they looked back at him as though fearless, or else fear-dazed. An instant later they turned and fled, barking their alarm. For a moment he could see their rumps flashing white here and there through the brush; then they were deep in the forest, hidden by the intervening trees.

  AFTER A BIT the road widened and the trees fell back, giving way to a border of brush along the roadside. A few paces later they came to a clearing, an irregular oval from which three paths led generally southward. Molly had instructed Aylwin to take the leftmost path, which ran southeast down to Dickon’s Ford; the last pilgrims to turn onto this path were just leaving the clearing as Hob came into it. The right-hand path led southwest, terminating at one of the little deep-woods villages; the middle path also went to Dickon’s Ford, but by a somewhat more toilsome route.

  Hob led the way into the leftmost path and the forest closed in again. The cold was piercing, but the boy’s spirits remained high, and he strode along briskly, although with a wary eye on the treacherous surface of the road, a mixture of frozen dirt, frozen snow, and gray ice, rutted and trampled by previous passersby. His breath was smoking in the crystal air. His free hand in its wool glove held his hood close about his face. The moisture from his breath began to soak into the glove, and soon the world smelled like wet wool, and he was forced to switch hands.

  The pilgrims could be heard ahead, but they remained out of sight. Hob looped the lead rope around his elbow and banged his gloved hands together to knock off the ice crystals forming from his breath. A little hedge betty or dunnock, pecking about the ground for stray seeds now that the summer’s insects were nowhere to be found, darted up to a low-drooping branch, startled by the dull report of Hob’s clap. It gave a series of staccato peeps, an alarm. After a moment it calmed to the point where it could venture its usual sweet warble, although Hob fancied he could still hear a note of reproach.

  The road bent sharply around an upjut of rock; here the left side of the road rose somewhat while the right sank, and from behind Hob came a screek as the wagon slid sideways a bit on the icy surface. But the path’s ruts, made when the dirt was wet in the autumn rains and now frozen into permanence, prevented any skid from progressing too far. In a moment the irregular bangs and thuds of the wheels grinding over the ice ridges resumed, but the squealing stopped. One of Hob’s tasks in the morning was to work lard into the axles of all the wagons. The axles might protest a bit when first they set off, but soon the heat of friction softened the lard and worked it in, and for the most part Molly’s wagons ran smoothly.

  Hob settled into a kind of half-awake march, whereby he ignored his discomfort, and watched the walls of forest slowly move past. For a while he observed his surroundings—red squirrels chasing one another down and around the trunk of a pine; the little dragbelly tracks or half-collapsed tunnels left by voles in the snow; the flutter of two tree sparrows about a recessed pocket in the stone, halfway up a crumbling outcrop of rock. Soon, though, he slid gently into dreamy reveries, in one way or another revolving around Margery.

  The road began to rise gently, and the wagon wheels slipped and caught, slipped and caught, on an unusually smooth length of purchaseless ice. “Hob, a bit of ash,” said Molly, and he shook himself loose from the memory of Margery’s mouth on his, a change of attention that jarred like cold water on the skin. He dropped back to lift the tight-woven bag of cold fireplace ashes from its peg on the side of the wagon. He moved up forward again and began to strew ashes here and there on the ice, providing a bit of grit for the wheels to bite.

  A flock of chaffinches sported in the skeletal winter branches of the roadside bushes, chasing one another, their white wing bars flashing as they dove in and out of the labyrinth of twigs, a great deal of loud descending song, and often the cry: spink! spink! A handful of sparrows were in amid the flock, and a lone brambling with its white rump. Hob threw another handful of ashes and the birds exploded upward from the bushes to the lower branches of the trees; as the wagons moved past, they began to drift back down, the bolder first, then the more timid. By the time Jack passed them they were as raucous as before.

  The air had become calm again, although very cold. Hob heard the wind beginning to murmur in the treetops, and reached a hand to pull his hood tighter about him, but after a moment realized that the trees were motionless above him, and that the murmur was unvarying. The southeast-trending path now curved to the left, running due east for a short stretch, which ended where the pilgrims awaited them, clustered by the bank of
the Dawlish, whose mumble Hob had mistaken for the wind.

  DICKON’S FORD was the only convenient crossing of the chilly little Dawlish, which, although more a large stream than a river, ran too deep elsewhere to cross safely.

  The stream ran fast and shallow here over a bed of slate. The water sped in silver sheets over the wide plates of gray-blue stone, bunching up into low ripples where it traversed irregularities in the rock. When it ran through the little chutes between the edges of the slabs or dropped a few inches from one level to the next, the water foamed into white, but generally the rock bed lent it a dark, almost black color.

  The Dawlish, as folk hereabout called it, was one of many brooks and rivers so named throughout England. Molly said it meant “black stream” in the old British tongue that was cousin to her own. She was drawn to such bright bits of knowledge as a crow is drawn to bright bits of metal or mica, and like a crow she hoarded them up.

  Once Hob had remarked to Jack Brown, “At whiles it seems that Herself knows some morsel about everything,” and after a moment Jack had just nodded.

  Now most of the pilgrims dashed across on the rocks; the men carrying the few women followed more slowly. The Dawlish here ran only six inches deep; still, shoes and hose were wet to the ankle.

  Hob trudged out into the icy water, and found himself checked after a few paces. Milo had stopped at the water’s edge, snorting in alarm; the ox looked at Hob as though the boy had surely made an error. Hob clucked and yanked on the lead rope, and Molly snapped the reins on Milo’s back. The ox began to move onto the slate streambed, managing to convey, by the tossing of its head and something of the set of its shoulders, a palpable sense of grievance. Jack tied the mare off to a tree and helped Nemain across with the little wagon, then crossed back to bring the third wagon over.