A Sterkarm Kiss (19 page)

There was anger in his tone, and Andrea hesitated to say more. She might lose his love, and her influence over him. And she was just a little scared of that anger.

But—if the killing went ahead, and she hadn't done all she could to stop it …

“I understand,” she said on a sigh. “If tha said, ‘No revenge,' thy mammy would be angry, thy father's brother would be angry—it be too much to ask. No one could be so brave.”

Per leaned back on his elbow. “I'd no care for them, if—”

“If what?”

“If I thought it was right.”

“How can it be wrong? If it comes to blood feud, there'll be more murders, and more and more, and more sorrow, and more and more. It'll never end.”

“They killed my daddy.”

“And how many Grannams have Sterkarms killed? And robbed, and hurt?”

His face was set, angry. That, she knew he was thinking, was different. The Sterkarms were in the right. The Grannams were in the wrong. The Grannams, of course, thought the opposite.

“Per,” she said, and put her arms around him and kissed him. “If tha stopped feud, I'd think thee so braw, so braw a man.”

Angry, he moved away from her, to sit on the bed's edge. “Whisht now. I mun go and watch by my daddy.” He rose from the bed and gathered his clothes. She lay in the bed and watched him dress, watched him unlock the door and lift the ladder, ready to drop it down into the alley.

“Per.” He turned to look at her. “So braw a man,” she said. “So braw a man.” And after he'd left, she curled herself up, hugged her pillow, and glowed with the sense of her own power.

15

16th Side: The Funeral

Toorkild's bier was carried on the shoulders of men chosen for the honor. Per was at the front, with Sweet Milk beside him. Behind the bier came a piper and a fiddler, playing the slowest, saddest tunes they knew; and behind them a long, straggling procession of people, Isobel at their head. Close beside her walked Joan, keeping her hands clasped before her and her eyes cast down. It was the safest place to be because, although Isobel didn't like her, she hadn't, yet, offered to do her any harm. To raise her eyes, to look in any direction, to look at anyone else, was to know how much the Sterkarms hated her.

The Elves, as honored guests, were close behind Isobel—­Andrea, in her clothes borrowed from the Sterkarms, and Windsor in his smart suit; and then his bodyguard in their fatigues. After them the more important of the visiting Sterkarms, and then the long tail of farmers, shepherds, and servants. Only a few remained at the tower, to watch the surrounding countryside and sound an alarm if necessary.

The funeral procession followed a path that wound from the tower out onto the moors. Above them was a wide blue sky; around them miles of heather and bracken and scrub, over which blew a thin, cool, damp wind. The space hushed the fiddle music, and through it sounded the call of the peewit. Behind it was a great silence.

A low stone wall surrounded the graveyard. Outside the boundary was the wild moor; within was a grassy lawn, close mown by the sheep that jumped the wall. The ground was rucked, mounded over new graves and sunken over old ones, but there were no headstones. The Sterkarms remembered where their dead lay, without stones to mark the place.

“They have a nice day for it, anyway,” Windsor said to Andrea, and smiled when she frowned.

A roofless, half-ruined building at the graveyard's center had once been a chapel, but no one among the Sterkarms could remember when it had last been used.

In front of the ruin waited the open grave. Joan remembered her father saying, “There be always room in Sterkarm graveyards. Why? Because only women and children be buried there!” Why was that? He'd laughed. “Because men are all buried in Carloel city, where they're hanged as thieves!”

Here's one who won't be buried in Carloel, she thought. She kept her face lowered and expressionless while the thought cackled in her mind. She'd felt much safer in the topmost room of the tower, with the Elf-May for company, than out here, surrounded by Sterkarms. Her fervent wish was to get back to the tower room as soon as possible. Better still, to get away from here altogether and back to her own country.

The procession turned in at the gate in the graveyard wall, the slow music still playing, and walked between the grassy mounds toward the open grave. Andrea saw, with a shock, that beside the loose earth dug from the grave was a neat pile of old bones and skulls. The small graveyard was full, and every digging of a new grave meant disturbing others—but the old bones were simply left there, beside the new grave, for everyone to see. Interesting, she thought: the contrast between 16th and 21st attitudes to death. Then she reminded herself that she was attending the funeral of a man who had been her friend, even if in another dimension. Was the Toorkild in that other dimension experiencing a sudden shiver as, in this one, his body was set down beside his grave?

Sweet Milk and the other men waited, looking to Per, who stared around at the sky and the moor. This, Per thought, was the last of his father. Once the bundled body was lowered into the hole and the earth thrown in, there was no pretending or hoping. He shook himself slightly. What hope had there ever been, since his father's brains had spilled into his hand? Get the job done. Gritting his teeth, he stooped and uncoiled one of the linen bands looped under the corpse. The other men immediately took up the other bands, and between them they lifted the body up and, stepping awkwardly, carefully about the edge of the grave, brought it over the hole. Hand over hand, the muscles of their arms working, they lowered it in.

More and more people were coming up and gathering around. One fiddler still played. The tune was frail in the wind and hard to pick out, but each note was sharp and sad. Those who had walked at the back of the procession were now coming up and, unable to find a place in the graveyard, climbed on the wall. A gang of boys herded three sheep out through the gate.

Under his breath, Windsor said, “I would have thought they could afford a coffin.”

Andrea ignored him. Coffins weren't the custom here, 16th side, but she wouldn't waste an explanation on him. His bodyguard were all taking off their caps and respectfully lowering their heads.

The corpse was in its grave and the fiddler stopped playing—but a lapwing squealed, and a sheep baaed. Andrea had to sniff and wipe her eyes. Many of the Sterkarms were weeping openly, the men as well as the women.

Per jumped down into the grave, at his father's feet. Reaching up, he took from his mother's hands a round loaf of bread and placed it at the corpse's side. Isobel was already reaching down, to hand him a leather bottle. Andrea saw the tears shining on Per's face as he looked up. She wished that she could stand beside him and offer some comfort, but with both his mother and wife beside him at the graveside, it was a little awkward.

Isobel leaned over the grave again, bringing something from beneath her cloak and passing it down to Per, who took it from her and, bending, placed it on the corpse's chest. It was a sheathed sword. Then Per held up his hands to Sweet Milk, who hoisted him out of the grave.

Isobel stooped, took up a handful of loose earth, and scattered it over the bundled corpse of her husband. The soil rattled as it fell on the shroud. “To earth tha've come,” she said, and choked. “Fare well, Toorkild.”

Fare well,
Andrea thought, as fresh tears rose to her eyes and throat. That meant not simply “good-bye” but “go well” or “travel safely.” Toorkild had a long, lonely journey ahead of him, and they had provided bread and drink to help him on his way, and a sword to defend himself. I must, she thought, at some time get them to tell me exactly what they do believe about the afterlife.

Per stooped and took up earth. He held his hand above the grave and was about to scatter the earth when a cry went up from outside the graveyard. “Sterkarm! Sterkarm!”

The men about the grave jerked to attention and reached for their weapons. Everyone looked around, eyes and mouths open. The people on the wall turned, and waved and jumped down. A new cry went up. “Little Toorkild! Wat!” People were leaving the graveyard.

Per, his heart thumping, shoved his way through to the graveyard wall, Sweet Milk close behind him. Andrea, leaving Windsor at the graveside, struggled after Per, to be near him. She managed to push her way between two men and get next to the lichen-grown stones of the wall but could still see very little, as there were so many people running excitedly up and down on the path that led to the graveyard. But she could hear the plodding of a pony's hooves on the turf and she saw, between the dodging of the people, a pony—no, two ponies—being led toward the graveyard gate.

The ponies entered the graveyard, and everyone turned and surged toward them. Andrea had to struggle again, to push through the people. She heard Sweet Milk bellow for quiet. Good old Sweet Milk! He'd sort things out.

Joan had been standing pressed against Isobel's side, her head lowered until her chin touched her chest, her hands clasped before her. She was painfully aware of every sound—voices, feet on the ground, birds calling, sheep—the closeness of so many Sterkarms and, especially, the touch of their stares. Now they all moved away from the grave—Isobel too—and she was left alone. She waited, wondering what to do. She was no longer closely surrounded by enemies, but she felt even less safe. Daring to lift her eyes from the ground, she looked about for Isobel but couldn't see her. Slowly, looking about her with quick glances, she moved after the crowd, hoping to find Isobel again.

The people were forming into quieter, more orderly lines, and Andrea was able to reach through to the front. There were two pack ponies, and they'd been led to a spot not far from the grave. Over the back of each pony was slung a man, bare legged, dressed in nothing but a shirt. Andrea recognized the men leading the ponies: Little Toorkild and Wat, Per's older cousins. They were dirty and unshaven, dressed in breeches and boots with torn, bloodstained shirts flapping loose about their knees.

Per, going to meet his cousins, had never seen them look so haggard and grim. Little Toorkild grabbed at him and hugged him hard, saying, “It be true, it be true.”

Per didn't need to ask what was true. His father lay behind him, shrouded, in his grave. He couldn't speak: He could only hug Toorkild, and nod against his shoulder. Toorkild released him and went to hug Isobel, while Wat embraced Per. Leaning back from the embrace, Wat said, “I be sad for it, but—we bring more bad news.”

Per could only stare at him, and Wat led him, by the arm, to the pack ponies. Flies buzzed around the bodies tied to their backs, and they smelled bad. Per looked at them, at the white, naked, hairy legs, the feet turning purplish-blue where the blood had pooled. He felt like a sleepwalker.

Sweet Milk called men from the watching crowd and helped them to loose the knots and lower the bodies to the ground. They flopped, heavy and limp, the death rigor having left them. Flies rose buzzing around them as they worked. Ignoring the flies and the smell, Sweet Milk crouched over the bodies and looked closely at the round holes in their foreheads.

The flies whirled and settled again as Sweet Milk rose and drew back. The faces of the corpses were blackening, swollen with blood from having hung upside down over the ponies. They were not, at first glance, recognizable.

“Our father,” said Little Toorkild.

Wat gestured toward the smaller corpse. “Ingram.”

Per's uncle, Gobby Per, and his youngest cousin, Ingram.

Per tried to speak, and the sound caught in his throat. “How?” he said eventually.

The brothers were slow to answer. They seemed dazed. Little Toorkild, the elder, said, “Shot. In head.”

“Daddy too,” Per said. Their voices were clear in the open air, and everyone around them was as silent as if holding their breaths. It was strange to be so calm. “Daddy has been waked. Lies in his grave.” He thought that, if they held another wake for Gobby Per and Ingram, that would be more delay, and the Grannams could come at any time. And then he was angry with himself for being unwilling to give his uncle and cousin a good funeral.

Little Toorkild said, “We held our wake while we brought them here.” He looked at his brother, and Wat nodded, agreeing. “Be grave wide and deep enough?” Little Toorkild asked. “Be so kind, put our father in with thine.”

“They shared a bed when they were boys,” Wat said, “and often enough since.”

“Put Ingram in with them,” Little Toorkild said. “They will no mind. Nor will he.”

Tears ran down Per's face. He took one of Little Toorkild's hands and one of Wat's. “If you will no be sad for it after.”

“We'll bring Grannam heads and pile them on their grave,” Little Toorkild said. “Daddy will be happy with that.”

Per saw Sweet Milk looking a question at him, and nodded. “Up with them,” Sweet Milk said, and jerked a thumb toward the grave. Men lifted the bodies, and the crowd parted hurriedly to let them through. Little Toorkild and Wat followed, and jumped down into the grave, to take the weight of the bodies as they were lowered, so they shouldn't be thrown in. They laid Gobby Per on the right side of his brother's shrouded body, and Ingram on the left.

Isobel, looking down from the edge of the grave, said, “I've no bread for them. No drink.” Though she had so often squabbled with her brother-in-law, she sounded grieved.

“Never mind, Daddy's Sister,” Little Toorkild said. “Big Toorkild will share his.” There was some quiet laughter, and the joke was repeated for those who hadn't heard. “They'll be company for each other on road,” Little Toorkild added, and held up his hands. Many hands reached down to haul him and Wat up from the grave.

Per had come to the graveside, standing beside his mother. He looked down and saw the shrouded bundle that was his father and the darkening corpses that were his uncle and young cousin. He didn't move or speak, his arms straight down at his sides, his fists clenched. The last of the laughter died in the farthest corner of the graveyard, but from the moors beyond, the curlews cried. The deaths were of no concern to them. Per raised his eyes to the sky above the moor.

Joan, knowing that Isobel would once more be at the graveside, had edged and sidled her way through the crowd to reach her. People refused to move from her way, jostled her, glared at her, and muttered, but Joan kept her eyes averted and pushed on, her teeth set and her heart thumping. At last she came to Isobel's side and felt safer. From beneath her brows she peeped at the corpses in the grave and tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell that rose from them. Best to show no reaction at all, to anything. She wished that she had enough courage to shout that she was glad they were dead and on their way to Hell, to suffer for eternity. But hemmed in by Sterkarms, she was too much of a coward.

Per brought his gaze down from the dazzle of the blue sky and was blind for a blink. His sight cleared, and he saw his wife standing, head lowered, beside his mother. How sweet and meek she looked, the lying bitch. She'd known, when she bedded with him, what her kin were planning. No doubt they'd thought to manage better and kill all the Sterkarms in their beds. And then they'd have taken the Elvish gold and the Sterkarm lands and married their whore of a daughter to another fool.

Filling his lungs, Per bellowed, in a carrying yell that traveled across the hills and disturbed distant sheep, “Sterkarm!”

Andrea, startled, jerked up her head. She saw many others, all around the grave, coming abruptly to attention, their faces—especially those of the men—lighting with fierce interest.