Weaving Man: Book One of The Prophecy Series

by Tove Foss Ford

  Stunned, Menders turned around in the saddle and looked down the road. So he was. Blast it, he’d been daydreaming again and Demon had chosen to follow the path that had become second nature to him now, toward the Spaltz farm and school.

  “Seems I missed the turn off,” he said meekly.

  “Papa says you’re wearing a rut in the road between your place and ours,” Eiren laughed.

  Menders slid to the ground and let Demon follow him, giving the animal a look that let him know if he did any biting, there would be a reckoning.

  “And where are you off to?” he asked her.

  “I’m going fishing.”

  “Fishing?” Gods, he sounded like an echo – or a parrot.

  “Yes. It’s a wonderful way to rest. When you announce that you’re going fishing it sounds like you’re planning something productive. In reality you’re sitting around doing nothing. If you go home with no fish, you have the perfect excuse. They aren’t biting today.” She chuckled a little and he had to laugh. He could understand the reasoning. Life on her father’s farm was busy and difficult and even though she was now teaching she still did a great deal of work at home. What a perfect way to steal a day to herself!

  “In fact, I don’t like it when I do get a bite, because I have to bother to pull it in,” she went on.

  “I don’t see any fishing poles,” he observed.

  “No, I just use a line. Tie it to a branch, throw it in the water and then sit and read or sleep or dream.” She rummaged in the basket and held out a coil of string, with a hook flashing at one end.

  “Ah – brilliant.”

  “Would you care to come fishing with me?” she asked, her eyes merry and teasing. “I have lunch here and a blanket so we don’t have to sit in the dirt. I even have an extra fishing line. I won’t make you put the worms on the hooks if you don’t want to.”

  He could think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t go off alone with her, including his iron determination to keep a distance from all women on the estate. Considering his attraction to her, he should not get himself into such a situation.

  She was still waiting, looking a little hurt.

  “Yes,” he said, to his own amazement. “I could do with an afternoon of doing nothing, for a change.”

  “Good. We go to the river down this way,” she said, setting out along a worn path through the woods. Menders followed with Demon trailing along behind, bemused enough at this new activity not to bite his master’s backside. Eiren moved along the path with the ease of familiarity and eventually brought them to a large oak tree on the riverbank. She set down the basket, flung out the blanket and handed him one of the coiled lines.

  She baited her hook expertly, flung it into the water and tied the line to a convenient branch. She handed him a worm and laughed as he struggled with it.

  “I thought you were an assassin!” she gasped after shrieking with laughter at his attempts to impale the squirming creature. “Do you think it’s going to bite you?”

  “The problem is that I’m not thinking in the right way,” he said with mock seriousness, hardly able to keep from laughing himself. “I must consider this an assassination.” With that, he steeled himself and properly baited the hook with the unfortunate worm while Eiren applauded. Once his line was in the water beside hers he settled down on the blanket, where Eiren already had the lunch basket open and was placing various farmhouse delicacies between them. She also took out two books. He picked one up with interest, wanting to see what she would find entertaining.

  “Ah, a taste for poetry,” he said, mimicking a doddering professor. “And very good taste at that,” he continued in his own voice. She’d brought along Sutremov’s Verses, an old favorite which he hadn’t thought of in some years. He opened the book with nostalgia. The poems were deceptively simple but dropped sensual, evocative images into the subconscious.

  “I can see you love them too,” Eiren said as she bit into a ruddy peach.

  “Yes. I haven’t read them since I was a boy,” he replied, perusing a page at random, letting the word pictures unfold in his mind like night-blooming lanar flowers. Setting the book aside, he examined the other.

  He smiled, opening Essays by Tatrevich. Philosophy – another passion of his. He and Eiren had discussed the subject at length in their correspondence.

  “I took philosophy courses and loved them,” Eiren said.

  “Your letters reminded me that I loved philosophy when I was at the Academy,” Menders replied. “They reawakened my appetite for it.”

  Eiren smiled and spread soft farmer’s cheese on a hearty slice of bread, then handed it to him. “If I know your physical appetite, you’re starved.”

  “Always.” He bit into the fragrant slice.

  “What else did you read in Erdhan?” he asked.

  “Everything,” Eiren answered. “Everything I could find. I brought home piles of books. I spent all my rest days at the library. History, philosophy, poetry, novels, astronomy, geography, geology, newssheets, tracts – everything. I couldn’t read enough. I don’t miss Erdahn, but I miss the library.”

  He felt delight surge through him. “The library at The Shadows is always open to you,” he invited, finishing the bread and cheese. He reached for one of the perfect peaches. “We have a lot of new volumes, between Franz and myself. Menders’ Men have contributed too.”

  He found he was looking at her far too intently. He distracted himself by glancing at their fishing lines while biting into the ripe fruit.

  “Do we need to check those?” he asked.

  “No. If there’s anything on them, the cork floats will go under,” she answered, taking a small bottle from the basket, followed by two glasses. “Would you open this, please?” She handed the bottle to him.

  “Gods! A bottle of your father’s springberry wine! Do you know how hard it is to get one from him?”

  “If you’re his child, live in his house and are of age, you’re free to walk right down into the cellar and get a bottle as often as you like,” she laughed. “Otherwise you’ll see it once a year, if he likes you and if it’s a year in which a comet passes.”

  Menders laughed and wrenched the cork free. Mister Spaltz’s springberry wine was something the gods would weep over. The scent alone was enough to make him want to roll around and sigh. Eiren poured two glasses full and handed him one.

  They enjoyed the food heartily, devouring it down to the last crumb.

  Menders picked up Eiren’s book of poetry again, leafing through the familiar pages, letting stanzas leap out at him with a will of their own, the vivid word pictures piercing his heart.

  He read his favorite poem, Dark of the Year, to her. She nodded when he was done.

  “That’s real winter. I read that during what they call winter in Erdahn and had to go hide in the bookshelves at the library until I stopped crying,” she said softly. “I wanted to be home so much.”

  “Did you? I’m sorry you were so homesick,” Menders said gently.

  “Oh, I enjoyed being there – but on that day, reading that poem, yes, I was homesick. I thought of how The Shadows looked in snow, dark against the white. But I survived and now I’m here, doing what I intended to do.”

  “And are you happy with your choice?” he asked.

  “Very happy.” She looked out across the sparkling river and smiled so contentedly that he knew she was being absolutely truthful.

  After a moment she turned back to pour out two more measures of wine. They were companionably silent for a time, looking out over the water.

  “This is the most peaceful I’ve been in a very long while,” Menders heard himself saying. “I always seem to be going somewhere, doing something. It’s the first time I’ve stopped moving with purpose in months.”

  “I’m glad,” Eiren answered. She finished her wine and put her glass away in the basket. Then she smiled.

  “I guess I’m just going to have to throw myself at you,” she said, burying her h
ands in his hair, kissing him gently and passionately on the lips.

  He couldn’t not respond. Within seconds they were alternately embracing, kissing and undressing each other.

  The sun was low when Demon whooshed a big breath in Menders’ ear, waking him abruptly. He rolled over and patted the farlin’s nose. Satisfied that his master still lived, Demon moved on to munch some grass nearby. Menders turned to see Eiren waking, flushed and beautiful.

  “I love you,” he whispered, just as she said the same words. They laughed quietly at that, kissed, touched each other’s faces, kissed again, then snuggled into each other’s arms.

  “Did you plan this?” he asked with some amusement.

  “Well, I did gamble that you would come down the road,” she replied with a wicked smile.

  “What if I didn’t come along any time soon?”

  “I was prepared to wait for hours, if need be. And since your observational skills seemed to have disappeared, I will point out that I had two wineglasses with me, not one. So yes, it was premeditated.”

  “So you did. I’m a blind fool.”

  “No – just afraid.”

  “Afraid?” he asked, making a pillow of his arm so she could rest more comfortably, wrapping the blanket he had folded over them more securely so she would be warm.

  “Thinking that I’d believe you were expecting me to make love to you because you sent me to school. Being so very correct and proper, so distant. I’ll admit something. I’ve been in love with you for years. Ever since I first saw you.”

  “Eiren, you were just a little girl then,” he protested.

  “Little girls can love and be in love. I have always loved you. I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t know how to get it, at least not then.”

  “I believe you. But I couldn’t love you then, not like this, because you were just a little girl.”

  “Of course,” she smiled. “I had to grow up.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t have lovers in Erdahn,” he grinned, nudging the blanket down so he could look at her body again. As Franz would say, it was magnificent.

  “Oh, there was some interest, but not on my part. I told them I already had someone,” she replied, doing a bit of innocent preening that delighted his eye and touched his heart. “You were worth waiting for.”

  “I am honored,” he said sincerely as she rose on one elbow, leaned over and kissed him, her hair spilling around them both. Delirium.

  The light had gone the deep gold of the long northern summer evenings by the time they dressed reluctantly and folded the blanket. Eiren went to untie the fishing lines.

  “Menders, you caught a fish!” she cried, laughing aloud.

  “Yes, I know, a beautiful, velvety, red haired one,” he grinned, picking her up and spinning around with her.

  “No, you really did,” she protested, pulling the line from the water when he put her down. A long, silvery fish was on his line, gasping and thrashing. Menders removed the hook and returned it to the river.

  “We’ll leave him for another day,” he said, kissing her again.

  (25)

  “The Closest Thing To Marriage I Can Offer You”

  The summer whirled around Menders and Eiren in a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds and scents.

  He would always remember haying time because of the picture Eiren made in an old dress of blue cotton, her skirts held up, her hair caught back simply, helping the other young women trample the hay as the men pitched it into the wagons. He’d deliberately chucked a large forkful of hay right over her and ended up being deluged by armfuls of hay flung down on him by Eiren and all her friends, while the farmers laughed and pretended to scold them for emptying the wagon faster than they could fill it. The annual Haying Dance, held in The Shadows’ Great Hall, was full of Eiren for him too. He partnered her in almost every dance and strolled with her in the garden between dance sets.

  Dozens of secluded and beautiful spots on the estate would be forever wrapped up in images of her making love to him. He’d never see the river again without remembering the days they spent on its banks or splashing in the deep quiet “swimming place” that Eiren and her siblings called their own.

  The Shadows took on new glamour for him as well because she was there so often. His office reminded him of her after she spent a rainy afternoon helping him catalogue and sort a new crate of books that had arrived from Erdahn.

  He was very amused when he overheard a conversation between Franz and several of Menders’ Men, who had stated their good-natured intention of niggling at Menders about “his little schoolteacher”. Franz waxed furious.

  “Let me tell you, that man has been through hell the last five years between getting himself mixed up with a ridiculous fool of a woman who didn’t know when she had a good thing, and with struggling and working like a peasant to keep this place going almost singlehandedly. Any man who wants to twit him about being in love with a good, bright, loving and wholesome girl can just talk to me first! If anyone deserves some peace and respect, it’s Menders!”

  “Easy, old man,” Kaymar said soothingly. “We won’t disturb the courting couple since you put it that way.”

  Menders smiled. Any of Menders’ Men could best Franz in a fistfight within seconds, but they’d heard the genuine concern in his voice and responded. He was grateful to them. He’d made no public proclamation of his love for Eiren but he’d made no secret of it either. He knew the farmers assumed that they were simply another courting couple and that in time they would settle down, marry and have babies. Apparently Menders’ Men assumed the same thing.

  He and Eiren had discussed their future at some length, at his insistence and to her amusement, while they lay together in their favorite spot under the oak tree by the river.

  “My darling, I know you’ll never marry,” she said when he’d finished a long, sincere speech about his situation. “I was here for years. I’ve corresponded with you. I heard a lot of the ugly arguments with Ermina as well. You can’t marry because the Princess comes first. I’ve always known and I understand. I agree with it.”

  He had his mouth open to explain some more, and then comprehended what she’d said.

  “You agree?”

  “I do. I know how important she is to you and I know how much you love her. I understand why a man with your moral courage can’t stand up in front of a priest and swear to love someone exclusively just for a show. I wouldn’t want you to do it. I don’t have to marry you to love you. I know you aren’t one for tomcatting, you never have been. I don’t need you swearing to things that you could never do or be.”

  “You can bear being second with me?” he asked.

  “Why worry about who’s first and who’s second?” she responded. “That’s what children do, try to figure out how to stack things in some kind of order of importance.”

  Menders realized he must be looking like a stunned fish, because Eiren sat up, snuggling the blanket up around her.

  “Are you jealous because Katrin loves me and I love her?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” he said instantly.

  “So then why is it so hard for you to understand that I’m happy with what you have to give me?”

  He still felt befuddled.

  “Try thinking of it as having two loves who are first in your life, but in different ways,” Eiren said after a moment.

  The light flashed, and he laughed aloud.

  “Then, my darling girl, you are my other first love,” he said, cuddling her closer under their blanket.

  “Of course I am. And if Katrin and I should ever both be drowning, you save her and shove a bit of wood in my direction and I’ll be perfectly capable of saving myself,” Eiren grinned.

  “Gods, you overheard that argument?” he groaned, remembering Ermina shrieking the “what if we were both drowning” question at him.

  “They heard that argument in Erdahn. Ermina made me so mad with that nonsense, I just wanted to bite her!”

&
nbsp; “Here’s a little secret for you – so did I,” he laughed, envisioning Eiren jumping out and biting Ermina during one of Ermina’s tantrums.

  ***

  A warm autumn let them meet outdoors for many weeks, but one day Menders realized the absurdity of the situation when he felt Eiren shivering. He looked up into the glory of red-gold leaves around them, felt the chilly wind and knew that this couldn’t go on.

  The woman he loved was enduring discomfort to be with him. The winter would be long. Was he going to expect her to wait for months until they could be intimate outside again? Where could they possibly go? There was no inn within miles. Eiren shared a bedroom with three sisters and her baby brother.

  Suddenly Menders could have shaken himself, because the answer was so very obvious and also very much what he wanted.

  He pulled her closer to comfort her with his own body warmth, stroking her cheek.

  “Eiren, would you come live with me at The Shadows? Be with me – and Katrin? She needs you and it goes without saying that I do. I miss you when we’re apart and with winter coming… It’s the closest thing to marriage I can offer you. You would be able to continue with the school, I’ll get you a horse and governess cart to make it easy to get back and forth. You wouldn’t be in that crush at your father’s house…”

  “Yes,” Eiren said.

  “We could say that you’re Katrin’s governess as well and you would be, though you’re more like a mother to her – oh.”

  “I already said yes,” Eiren smiled, coiling a strand of his hair around her fingers.

  “Should I talk to your father?”

  “He’s always glad to have a chat,” Eiren teased. “It’s up to you. I’m of age, he knows I love you, he knows the situation. You don’t have to ask his permission.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Menders said.

  “You worry too much but I love you for it,” Eiren replied, wrapping her leg over his so she could press her cold foot against his calf.

  “What do you mean, madam?” he asked, pretending to be insulted.