The Green Children of Woolpit
Page 17
The king laughs aloud and waves a hand. There’s a surge of horse-noise, hooves and whinnying and the creak of leather, but it’s jammed up and anxious, like horses and riders penned in. The king lifts raging eyes to me, and I fight down the urge to grin.
“What have you done?” he asks in a low, dangerous voice, but the menace is broken when he coughs, hard and hacking.
“Some things may have been misplaced nearby.” I gesture around, intentionally vague, giving him nothing he can use against me. “You may feel . . . unwell.”
“Sacrifice cannot compel me forever.” The king scrubs a hand over his damp forehead. “I can wait far longer than you.”
“True enough. You can wait till I die, and ride over my bones. But once you do, you won’t ride home again. You’ll be stuck in this dismal, mortal world, dying slowly from the salt and iron.”
The king buzzes something low and threatening.
“And mayhap you’ve noticed one of your own missing. The useless fool who couldn’t even turn me into a privy seat. Oh yes,” I go on as the king stiffens with fury, “if you were waiting for the walls to whisper to you, I made them quiet. They’ll stay quiet forever, and the useless fool will die trapped above the mountain with anyone who rides tonight. He’s called Martin here and he’s a boy, just like he appeared that first time. Even now he’s ironsick and getting worse. Likely because of the things that got misplaced nearby. Would you like to reconsider striking a new bargain?”
The king buzzes again, viciously. The green light casts long, dancing shadows in the pit, and the piled earth from Senna’s grave laps at his boots. However he feels about Em, it will make him look weak if she dies at the hands of mortal girl-things. At length he says, “I’m listening.”
Those Good People will honor a bargain, but they hate to lose. Even now the king is scheming a way to snatch us back regardless. Senna said as much. Every last part of this must be just right.
“Senna and I will be free from whatever bargain you made with her all those years ago.” My words are coming clear and strong, no hint of a tangle. “She and I will be allowed to live here, with our ma and da, and neither you nor any of your kind will trouble us or anyone in Woolpit in any way. In return, we’ll find all the misplaced things so the crossing place won’t make you sick, and you may use it freely. You can take back the one I know as Martin so he can get well.”
The king under the mountain shifts and paces, but he never leaves the square of earth where Senna is buried. I hope she cannot feel it, down there in the dark.
“Blood must serve,” the king says at last. “I cannot agree to those terms.”
There’s a rumble of horse-noise, dim, as if Those Good People hidden by shadows tried one more time to push past the iron holding them back.
“That is the bargain.” I dig my fingers into the pit edge. “Take it and ride, or leave it and rot.”
The king starts buzzing, harsh and angry, and he stomps around on Senna’s grave like he’s being stung. “Fine. Fine! You and the girl-thing shall have your liberty of us.”
“Senna,” I prod, because he must have no way to slither around his word. “The girl you turned green to punish.”
“You and Senna, then. All other blood must serve.” The king hides another cough in a growl. “And you will undo whatever mischief was done to this place that keeps us from our rightful ride.”
Acatica is still in the Otherworld. My da, all alone. But there’s no other way. I swallow hard and nod.
“Say it aloud if you agree!” the king roars, and in the shadows a thudding of hooves makes me jump. “A bargain isn’t a bargain till it’s made and sealed!”
“I agree to those terms.” I say it quick before he can take back the offer. Before I lose my nerve.
In a blink, the king’s whole manner changes. He’s still ashen-sick but he grins big, like a wolf, and makes a come-here gesture to me. There’s no way I’m moving from the pit edge, but there’s a rustling behind me and Mother steps out from the greenwood.
All other blood must serve. Mother is one of the Trinovantes, same as Senna. Same as me.
“No,” I whisper, but it’s too late. Mother is moving toward the king like she’s being guided unresisting on a leash.
Her every step is familiar. The bob of her shoulders. The swing of her rump. The bounce of her ears. But as Mother nears the pit edge, she glows faintly green and ripples and shifts and changes. Her middle grows thinner and her legs thicker and her head pulls into a round human shape, and a curtain of hair that’s fair like mine swishes down her back.
When Mother gets to the edge of the pit, she leaps. I cry out — it’s deeper than it looks, more than enough to turn an ankle or worse — and only at the last moment do I remember that I can’t slide in and chase her. I can’t leave neither-nor.
“Mother.” I mean to yell it. To scream after her, to beg her to come back just long enough to hold her hands up so I can brush her fingers in something like a hug. Even a moment would be a gift. But the word comes out strangled. Like all my guts are twisted up and keeping Mother trapped in the choke in my throat.
She lands lightly, gracefully, and then she’s at the elbow of the king under the mountain and he’s grinning as he drapes a thick green cloak over her bare shoulders.
I’m too stunned to move. Too angry to cry. I’ve been tricked again and now I’ve lost Mother forever.
“Mother!” My voice grinds to life. I don’t care how the words sound. I’m going to shout them. “Mother, it’s me! I — I know what happened. Thank you. For everything. I love you!”
Mother’s eyes go big. Both hands fly to her mouth. She’s younger than my Woolpit ma, no silver in her hair. She starts toward me, but the king’s green cloak over her shoulders holds her where she is. She can’t even free a hand enough to wave.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because I’ve already left so many people behind and now one more, the one I love most, is slipping through my fingers.
Her mouth is moving, but no words are coming out. She paws at her throat while at her elbow the king lifts one taunting brow.
“Da’s waiting for you.” My voice is raspy and my eyes sting. “He misses you. Please, just go be with him.”
Mother looks up. A faint ripple of hope softens the helpless lines in her face, and she nods once, firmly.
They will have each other, at least. Mother will sit by my da in that crystal room so he won’t always be alone.
“Farewell, girl-thing. Till next time.” The king under the mountain makes a mocking half-bow and takes Mother by the elbow. Together they walk out of the green light and disappear into the darkness of the pit. The horse-noise and leather-squeal fade as well, clattering into the shadows till there’s nothing left but stillness.
Night sounds take over the greenwood once more. All is dark and silent.
Till next time. But there won’t be a next time. A bargain made is a bargain sealed, and I bought us freedom, Senna and me.
All it cost was Mother.
I swipe away tears and glare at the patch of raised dirt, trampled over and through with boot prints. Mother is gone, and it’s Senna’s fault. None of this would be happening if Senna hadn’t lured me in the first place. I’d still have my ma and da, and even if Woolpit didn’t think much of me, they’d know me. Senna took my parents. She stepped square into Agnes as if there was no first Agnes who had to suffer in her place. Senna took Mother as sure as if she’d called her from the pit edge herself.
I could leave Senna in the ground. No one would ever know.
Only without Senna, I would never have been the girl in the story. I’d have gone on with the harvest, my hands covered with cuts atop cuts, and there’d have been milking and spinning and Glory looking down her nose at me. All very safe things. All very ordinary. Because of Senna there’s a whole new story, one I never thought could even exist, much less with me in it.
I grab the shovel and slide on my belly into the pit.
“Let’s be gone from here,” I say, and Agnes nods but doesn’t move. She’s sickbed-pale and picking at her collar. “You all right?”
She shakes her head. “Mother. He took Mother.”
“The pig?”
“He tricked me.” Agnes is babbling now, her hands ghosting around her ears like she’s hearing voices. “I thought the bargain was good. But it wasn’t. Mother had the blood, and he said all blood but ours must serve.”
My mouth falls open more and more as Agnes tells me who and what Mother the pig was and is. There’s hope for the others, then. There are ways out from under the mountain if you have luck and courage and wit.
But something she said catches up with me, and I ask, “You made the bargain we agreed on. Word for word. Didn’t you?”
“He must leave us be. Him and the others. We have to fix this place so they can cross. But all other blood must serve, and he took Mother.”
My guts turn to stone. Agnes is standing there all but crying, mourning a loss she can barely whisper and cursing herself for being dim enough to get tricked, so I choose my words carefully. “The bargain was that you and I would be able to live here free and untroubled. We forgot to say for how long, didn’t we?”
Agnes’s eyes widen. “Oh saints. We did.”
I swear aloud. We are back on borrowed time, she and I, and once more bound by a bargain we cannot escape. The king will let us live untroubled, all right — until we’ve fulfilled our part of the bargain. All we’ve done is push back the inevitable.
Yet Agnes lifts her chin. I have never seen her angry, but now she looks like she could tear apart a fairy hill with her bare hands.
“Trick me, will he?” Agnes runs her fingers over the pit wall. “Well, I promised we’d fix the crossing place so Those Good People could ride. I never said how fast we’d do it.”
She grins at me, huge and open. More than a little fierce. She’s still saying we.
We drove handfuls of iron needles into the pit walls. Not a single one will be found easily. Our whole lives we’ll be at it—a day here, an afternoon there—and yet we’ll stay well within the terms of our bargain.
If they cannot ride, we will be safe.
I breathe out long and shaky. For a moment I was ready to give up. It’s what you do, deep underground. Fairy trickery and cruelty will always win, so there’s no point in fighting. But Agnes had no patience for such things. When the plan fell apart, she didn’t follow it into pieces. Instead she changed the plan.
Mayhap there is something to this we.
Agnes tosses the shovel up onto the bank, then starts to climb. The scrap of fairy cloth is still in my hand, but the pattern is gone. There are no more greens woven into greens, ten thousand shades with the smallest bit of shimmer. It’s simply green. A plain weave. Like any scrap of tattery cloth.
The boy-thing is dead.
I say as much to Agnes, but she shakes her head. “Those Good People cannot die.”
I didn’t think so either, but there’s no other reason the fairy cloth would go dark like it has. It belonged to him, and he couldn’t go home.
Agnes gets dressed and rebraids her hair, then we cross the heath toward the village. The air smells of green growing things, grass and wheat and countless kinds of flowers. There’s not even the faintest whiff of glamour. Trampled garlands lie everywhere, and strips of ground have been torn up by dancing feet. What’s left of last night’s revel. Sometimes I cannot help but wonder at the things that are the same. We danced and lit fires and made merry on this night, Acatica and me and our friends. Our parents, too, even though we teased them something awful, that old people should kiss behind the bushes so we would not have to watch. Our revel had a different name, but it’s comforting to know something of it — something of us — survived the might of Rome.
Ma steps onto the threshold of the house, blinking in bewilderment. Then she sees us and throws her arms wide. All that glamour, and somehow Ma still knows she missed a year of Agnes. Agnes plows toward her, but I’m frozen. The fairy cloth is just cloth now, and there’s no way I can know Ma will love me.
Agnes stops. Turns enough to see me standing alone. Then my friend backtracks, grabs my wrist, and tows me toward our ma, who is now rushing at us, pulling us both into a mighty two-arm hug.
I sink into her. Into my ma. I crack foreheads with Agnes, and we laugh.
“My girls,” Ma is whispering, hoarse and throaty. “My girls.”
One day I will tell her my real name. The one my first parents gave me and the one I would have my new parents embrace. I thought to take Agnes’s place and become her so they would love me, but it’s enough to be Senna. There is love enough here for that.
Agnes starts to pull away and Ma starts to let her, but I hold on. I have waited a thousand-thousand years for this. I am not letting go so easily.
* * *
Near the door, there’s a small shrouded body wrapped up tidy and tight. There’s no question about it. It’s the boy-thing and he’s dead. Ma and Da step around him as if he’s a sack of barley. There is no mourning in this house. It’s like the corpse is an empty bucket waiting to be stored in the shed.
Even now the fair folk will be keeping well away from the crossing place, their horses squealing and their swords sharp and reckless, and they are cursing us. They are free to curse. They’re free to rail and tantrum and rage. Our blood doesn’t matter. Not if they can’t get to us. They are bound by a bargain, and those fairy wretches cannot go back on a bargain.
The boy-thing took my brother’s face for his own ends, but there’s something comforting about looking on it now. If I look past the green of this boy-thing, I will be able to finally say a proper farewell to my brother who died far from me and unburied.
Agnes appears at my side. “Do you think we did this?”
It’s the only thing that makes sense. The Otherworld could not shield him from what we did to the crossing place. Or mayhap the walls stopped his heart by mistake as they lashed out in their ironsick delirium.
“I wanted him to go home and get better,” she goes on quietly. “I didn’t mean for him to die.”
“Are you sorry?”
She pauses to consider, and I realize I like that about her. She doesn’t just say the first thing that pops into her head. “Yes. It’s always sad when something dies. Even something that means you harm. But the pit is there for a reason. We cannot have wolves in the village.”
* * *
Ma is in the garden when Glory turns up at the door. Her eyes are still that fairy green, deep and swimming with tears.
“People are saying Martin is dead,” she whispers. “But that cannot be true.”
“He’s gone,” I tell her, and then I remember whose child she is and add, “The lord of this place thought to make Martin live at the manor house, but he didn’t want to. So he went to the green land beyond the river. Where he came from.”
Agnes starts to correct me, but I nudge her elbow and she snaps her mouth shut.
Glory’s eyes widen. “You’re not going too, are you?”
I shake my head. “I’m home, remember? The lord of this place said I should live here. No better people to be my new ma and da. He said that. Remember?”
Glory nods slowly, even though she doesn’t remember. She was nowhere near the manor house all those months ago when the reeve said as much.
“You’ll tell your da, right?” I go on. “Sir Richard cannot take a girl away from her parents. I’ll visit the manor house and talk to whoever he wants. I’ll tell them about the river and the green land. Only I want to live here. All right?”
“I’ll tell my da. I don’t want you to go, too.” Glory pets my sleeve like it�
�s a kitten, then says faintly, “Martin’s land. Only how will I look after him if he’s there and I’m in Glory’s land?”
“You can look after yourself instead,” I reply gently. “Believe me, he never needed watching. You can sew with Kate and Tabby. You and Agnes and me can make flower crowns.”
“Can’t. Can’t.” Glory drifts off, worrying the tattery end of a cloak that should be retired to the rag bin. “Must find him.”
Agnes looks anxious. “What’s wrong with her? Ma and Da are back to normal. You said things would be as they were.”
“What do you care?” I ask. “Do you have any idea the kinds of things she says about you?”
That makes Agnes pause, and bitter ghosts chase themselves across her face one by one. At length she says, “I care for me. Because it feels better to care than to be hard inside. Even if I’m not her friend, she’s still my friend.”
“If you really want to help her, you’ll let her believe he’s gone,” I reply.
Agnes is quiet for a long moment. “I can do that. There should be more stories where girls help one another.”
Woolpit buries Martin in the churchyard on a bright May morning. A boy who arrived a stranger and became a son. A boy mourned by his foster parents, his sisters, his neighbors. So say the Woolpit mas, one to the other, until the village nods and knows it to be true.
“He was always sickly,” Father says as we’re leaving the funeral mass. “Some children are not long for this world.”
The Woolpit das push back hoods and bow their heads. The mas murmur kindnesses to my parents, and they all speak fondly of the curiosity of a green boy in their midst. How he came from a verdant land beyond a broad, rushing river. How he was following his father’s cattle and heard the bells of Saint Edmund’s, then found himself with his sister in the wolf pit.
Senna takes me on her rounds. We help this ma with her milking and that ma with her garden. We bring dinners to the men and boys as they move down rows of greening wheat, pulling weeds and breaking clods. Chore by chore, errand by errand. The Woolpit mas smile and call me Agnes. They call her Agnes, too, but that’s all right. We are both Agnes now.