A Sterkarm Kiss (22 page)

Andrea stood outside. She didn't want to go in. Isobel—poor lady indeed—had lost her husband, and her only son was away on a ride in which he, too, might be killed. Isobel, she was sure, wouldn't want to see her.

But who else could help her? She tapped on the door. No response came from within.

She tapped again and waited, screwing up her face and biting her lip. Even if she was invited in, she couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't be awkward in the extreme. Perhaps she should just go away?

No. She seized the iron ring handle, twisted it, and pushed the heavy door inward.

There was a large table in the center of the room and two armed chairs. Chests stood against the wall. She couldn't see Isobel anywhere.

“Mistress Sterkarm? Be you here?”

No answer. Nervously Andrea took a step or two into the room. The far side was taken up with a large curtained bed, and the curtains were partly drawn. Feeling guilty, Andrea crept over to the bed and peered through the gap in the curtains. Isobel lay on the bed, on her side, hugging a pillow.

“Mistress? May I speak with you?”

Isobel was silent as she struggled with herself. For twenty years she had risen at first light every day and set about the management of the tower. She had made it her business to see that everything was ordered in the kitchen, that the eggs were collected, the chickens and the pigs fed. She had overseen the milking of the cows, and the making of butter, cream, and cheese. She had seen to the storing and rationing of all food, ensuring, as best she could, that it neither went bad and was wasted nor ran out. She had brewed beer, had baked bread. She had seen that clothes and bed linen were laundered, made, repaired, and stored so that the moths did not eat them. She had seen that herbs were gathered and dried, for medicines, and for strewing the floors and scenting stored clothes. She had kilted up her skirts and helped with the driving of cattle to the summer sheilings, and with the harvesting—and had made sure that there were plenty of groats simmering in the kitchens for the harvesters to eat when they returned home tired and hungry. She had kept the tower and outbuildings clean and had kept an eye on the thatch and the walls, so she could nag Toorkild into repairing them.

All this work she had kept up while pregnant, calling her maids to her bed to report to her when she could not rise to do it herself. She had travailed and given Toorkild a son—only one—and she had nursed that son through childhood illnesses while ill herself with the most bitter anxiety. She had bitten her tongue when Toorkild had set the tiny, fragile child on the back of a horse, because she knew that the boy must learn to ride. She had choked back her fears when Sweet Milk had given him a little axe, and a little sword, and had taught him to use them, because she had known he must learn to fight. And after all this, all this, she had thought she might, today, with Toorkild dead and that still dear, still fragile child gone away to avenge him, she had thought that, this once, she might hide in her bed and, by stillness and quietness, attempt to smother all that she felt. She had thought that, this one day, for a little while, the household might go on its own way—the way that she had long established—and leave her in peace. But no. Here was someone come right into her private room, calling, “Mistress Sterkarm?” If it had been one of her maids, she would have made her ear sore, but she had not even so much luck. It was the Elf-May. So Isobel fetched up a deep, groaning sigh and said, in a tight, small voice, “What be it, Mistress Elf?”

Andrea's words stuck in her throat. What could she say? I want to talk about your husband's murder? I want to talk about the bullet wound in his head? And what could Isobel do, anyway? But she had to tell someone, she had to feel that she was doing something, however insignificant, to halt the killing. And Isobel was a resourceful woman. Perhaps she would instantly see something that could be done, while Andrea was bewildered. “I be so sad for your husband, Mistress Sterkarm.”

Isobel said nothing. Andrea's eyes, growing used to the darkness within the curtains, saw that the pillow Isobel hugged had been dressed in a man's shirt. Unable to look any more, Andrea withdrew and sat on the edge of the bed, facing the rest of the room. “Mistress Sterkarm. Elven—have pistols that shoot things they—we—call bullets. Not balls. Bullets.”

These words meant hardly anything to Isobel—they were mere ramblings. Why should she care?

“Bullets be no round,” Andrea lectured on, wondering if Isobel was even listening. “They be long and narrow. End be pointed and quite small, like end of my finger. They be very hard, and they shoot from pistol very, very fast, with great force. So when they hit something hard—well, they do flatten, but not nearly so much as a pistol ball made of soft lead. They make quite a small hole. Quite small.”

From within the bed came Isobel's voice, soft and gruff. “Mistress Elf, what can I do for you?”

“I be sad,” Andrea said, “I be so sad to speak this to you, but Mistress Sterkarm, hole in Master Sterkarm's head … it was very small.”

There was a stirring within the bed: a creaking of the wooden frame, a straining of heather ropes. A whiff of old hay and old sweat gusted out from the between the curtains. Isobel had raised herself on one elbow. “Hole in my man's head was big enough, Mistress Elf, big enough.”

Andrea made herself go on. “But small. It was no made by a pistol ball. It was made by an Elf-Bullet.”

The curtains parted with another gust of old hay. Isobel's face looked out. Her large blue eyes were red and sore, and she looked paler and older than usual. “What?”

“Mistress Sterkarm—what I be trying to say is that your husband was no shot by Grannams. He was shot by—I am sad for it!—he was shot by Elven. And so were his brother and his brother's son.”

Isobel stared at her. Andrea's words had no meaning for her at all. The Elves had shot Toorkild? There was no sense in it. She had always expected and feared that Toorkild would be killed by his great enemies, the Grannams. Now he had been. That made sense. She had no peace, no strength, no time, to consider anything else. “They were shot by Grannams,” she said.

“But wounds were no made by pistol balls,” Andrea repeated. “They were too small. They were shot by Elf-Pistols, loaded with Elf-Bullets. They were shot by Elven.”

“Then Grannams have Elf-Pistols,” Isobel said wearily. “They be thieves. Traitors and liars and thieves. I told Toorkild. I told him.”

“But Mistress Sterk—”

“No, no—all he could see was gold! So much gold. But not enough. Not enough.”

“
Elf
-Gold,” Andrea said.

“He kenned Grannams are never to be trusted. But all he could see was gold!” She punched and pounded the pillow beside her. “Thou fool! Fool! Thou wouldst no listen and now art killed! Fool!”

“Be so kind, listen,” Andrea said.

“Such a fool! And now Per's away, and if he's killed too, I shall lie down and die. What is there for me? They should have buried me an' all—och, but I shall no lie easy until I have a hundred Grannam heads and hearts for my Toorkild!”

Andrea felt sick. Weren't women meant to ban the bomb and march for peace? Even in her own 21st, when they were free to choose whom they married, and to have sex with whomever they chose; when they were educated, and politically informed, and could vote; when they could drink, and smoke, and swear, they were still supposed to teach men how to be gentle, caring, and nurturing. Their fierceness was supposed to be directed toward peace. Isobel's hatred of the Grannams, and her thirst for blood and vengeance, made Andrea profoundly uneasy.

“Mistress Sterkarm, how could Grannams use Elf-­Weapons?” She was thinking of night sights and silencers. “I be certain that your husband was shot by an Elf, on orders of—of an Elf.” Windsor, she thought, but was somehow shy of saying it aloud.

Isobel frowned. Two fine lines appeared between her large, silvery blue eyes. She was silent and seemed to be thinking long and hard. “Elven want peace,” she said. “They always have. They want no feuding, no riding. That be why they piled up gold, piled it high, until Richie Grannam and my Toorkild agreed to what they never should have done!”

“I ken,” Andrea said, “but—”

“So why would Elven shoot my Toorkild? How would that bring them peace? How? They ken fine we would kill every last Elf—”

“That,” Andrea interrupted, “that is why they wanted you to think Grannams had done it.”

“The Grannams did do it! They've always wanted Toorkild dead! And my Per—and all of us! Why would Elven bring down all their own plans—why?”

It was a good question, and Andrea felt her heart sinking. “But hole—”

“Hole! Some pistols be big and some be small. Some balls be big and some be small. Does that mean Elven shot my Toorkild? No! Why would they? But a Grannam—och, a Grannam would have shot him in the back, in dark.”

Andrea found herself doubting, and felt foolish. Since when had she been a forensics expert, specializing in ballistics? But she remembered the sound she'd heard on the hillside in the dark … and Toorkild, Gobby, and Ingram, all with the same neat hole in the front of their heads. Sniper fire, picking off marked men with night-vision rifle sights. It was too neat, too accurate to be the work of Grannams, even if they had somehow got hold of Elf-Weapons. “It was Elven,” she said.

“But you be an Elf.” Isobel had sat up, and her stare was hard. “Why would you, an Elf, betray your own to me?”

Andrea had no answer she could easily put into words. Because what Windsor had done was wicked and sneaky and wrong—simply wrong. Because she hated Windsor. Because she was afraid of what would happen next. She said nothing.

Isobel spoke slowly, as if voicing something she had just realized. “You be an Elf, but you be in pay of Grannams.”

Andrea, in that other dimension, had liked Isobel—probably because Isobel had liked her—but she had always known that Isobel hated her enemies with intensity, and that she had been capable of spite and malice. Now that hatred was directed at her, and it was frightening.

“If they be waiting for us,” Sweet Milk said as Per stood beside him, “they be up there.” He pointed ahead and upward, toward the cleft that was just becoming apparent between two peaks. Gray and purple cloud gathered around the peaks. “And they ken we come.”

Per, stroking the nose of his horse, nodded agreement.

Gareth, weary to his bones, sighed, heaved up his voice from somewhere deep inside him, and translated these words for Patterson and his Elves, though he suspected that they pretty much understood what Sweet Milk had said.

“I'll lead,” Per said, and Sweet Milk glanced at him. “Up there.” Per nodded toward the pass. “It'll gladden them to see me.” There were grunts of amusement from those Sterkarms close enough to hear, though none from Sweet Milk. The Grannams might well recognize Per May, and they would indeed be glad of a chance to kill him.

“No need,” Patterson said when Gareth translated. “We'll go in. They won't give us any trouble.”

“I'll lead,” Per said. It was one thing to give leadership to Sweet Milk where clarity of thought was needed. Here all that was needed was courage: the kind of blind, stupid courage that springs from anger and a need for revenge. “They'll be the more surprised.”

“Ask 'em what weapons the Grannams'll have,” Patterson said.

Gareth did. Per stared at the heather and scrub, making no attempt to answer. When he saw that answering was left to him, Sweet Milk said, “Axes. Swords. Bows. Clubs. Lances—but it's no a place to use lances. Pikes. Maybe a pistol or two.”

Patterson squatted down, his hands clasped in front of him, to think. The pistols could be more or less dismissed. There was no guarantee—there were never any guarantees—that some Grannam with a pistol wouldn't succeed in shooting Per dead, but the 16th-side pistols were accurate only over a short range, often misfired, and were slow to reload. The axes, swords, and clubs would have to be used hand-to-hand, so the Grannams would have to come out of hiding and run down to meet Per and whoever was with him—and in doing that, they would expose themselves to Elf-Fire. The longbows were another matter. They were really dangerous—or would be, for a short time.

“It's not worth the risk,” Patterson said. “Tell him. He could be killed by an arrow before we could come in.”

Gareth passed the words on, and Per said something. Patterson raised his brows questioningly. “He says there is no risk. That—er— the road of his death—er, that is—how can I say it?—the
way
he dies—but it's the same, the ‘way,' the ‘road' … they were—ah, fore-told—no, fated—long ago. Let's say, ‘
The road he'll travel to death was fated long ago
.'”

“Bloody hell,” Patterson said, impressed by this impromptu poetry, not realizing that Per was quoting from a ballad. “Well, it's his funeral. But tell him to leave his horse here. It'll only get in the way. And tell him to fall flat when I yell, or he'll get caught in our fire.”

Gareth translated, and Per nodded. He turned and gave his lance and the reins of his horse to Ecky and then walked forward, climbing the horse trail toward the hilltops. Sweet Milk watched him go, feeling that familiar ache under the heart—but it made no sense for both leaders of the Sterkarms to be killed. Sim and Allie left their horses and followed Per, so that he shouldn't be alone. Patterson gestured his Elves to follow close behind them.

Davy Grannam watched the little straggle of men approach on foot. He felt the man nearest to him tense, like a cat watching a creeping mouse. He felt the same tension himself, and relief and excitement, too. At last, after all the boredom and discomfort of waiting, after all the uncertainty and worry, here were the Sterkarms—and approaching so confidently, so innocently. No need to be scared. It was going to be so easy.