"Was it all a matter of chance, then?"
"No," Charlinder said deliberately. "It wasn't chance, either." He waited for Bill to ask for more information, but he didn't ask. He nodded, instead, and waved goodbye as Charlinder departed.
He gritted his teeth against colder, wetter and increasingly unpredictable weather as he marched northward. The climate was especially vexing to Smoky, who abhorred wetness and insisted on staying concealed under Charlinder's jacket as much as possible. This meant Charlinder was able to stop using the halter now that the rabbit was in no mood to run away, so his wool didn't tangle as much anymore, but the rain also made it impossible to spin the fiber.
The approach of winter made settlement visits even more essential than he'd come to expect since he had to do without Lacey. The frequent fluctuations between rain, wind, occasional sleet or snow and chilly sunshine were especially shocking after leaving the unreal comfort of Gentiola's house, but that much he gladly would have endured if not for Smoky. Now the locals' houses not only meant that Charlinder was kept fed and warm, but a room full of dry ground meant he could make sure his rabbit got enough to eat and a chance to hop around. A night of shelter and home-cooked meals also now meant that Charlinder got to talk with people in real words and full sentences. It was a heady combination, and Charlinder approached each new village with a mounting sense of anticipation.
Between the conversations and the houses, he also wondered why his hosts in Calais and Dover hadn't asked him more about his discoveries about the Plague. He was fairly certain that, had he heard what they had just heard, he would have asked for a lot more information. Of course, Charlinder mused, he might not be the best example for this issue, so perhaps that comparison was unhelpful. Then again, he could also consider that, living much closer to northern Italy than where he had grown up, people like Bernard and David might want to find out just enough from Charlinder that they could learn the rest on their own. Supposing he told them what he’d learned from Gentiola, why should they believe him? If he had met anyone before he left home who told him the story he was bringing back, he would probably have thought that person was either a pathological liar or just as delusional as Gentiola. As much as their restraint of curiosity confused him, Charlinder didn't hope for a second that anyone else would ask him to tell them more. It was a topic that made his stays with English hosts both exciting and nervous. He longed for a halfway arrangement; a way to share the truth without disclosing the details. He didn't like making up alternate versions like "Zamira in Torino," but...he supposed maybe he should start talking about Switzerland next.
The worst thing that could have happened, really, would be if he told them the whole story and they believed it. Even if they pressed for details, how could he ever tell them what he knew? How could he tell these people whom he’d just met and would never see again that he had met the person who’d created the Plague, he’d stayed at her house, enjoyed her company, let her tell him about how she brought about the end of the world, and then just left her there to get on with her indefinitely prolonged life? Assuming he told the whole truth, and they believed it, what would happen after he moved on? While he was sure Gentiola could protect and defend herself with or without his silence on her behalf, the fact remained that his hosts could travel to Bologna in only a few months rather than years. He didn’t like to think of what would happen if a bloodthirsty mob converged on the home of a woman who could manipulate magical energy but wasn’t in control of it, and who could be made to suffer, but not die.
Through all these truncated conversations, the minor fibs, the major lies of omission, the perpetual procession of What If, the excitement for human contact and then the worry at comprehension, the last thing Bernard had told Charlinder before his departure kept returning to his mind: "Good fortune is what you make for yourself." Some things would always happen on the outside, he'd told him, but he could not blame anyone else for his successes.
After weeks of marching north, he came to a river which, if his geographical observations were correct, was actually the fissure in the land that separated the northernmost segment of the island from the rest. He had recently stayed in a settlement that his hosts said was previously known as Fort William. Charlinder was in no position to test their assurance that the nearest segment to the north was the best place to cross, but they also pointed him towards a reliable footbridge. As he'd gone farther north and England had turned to Scotland, several of his hosts had advised him to go as far north on the island as he could go. He didn't want to risk guessing, they said, about when to take off or how long it would take to reach the settlement in the first place. This time of year brought him to another stage in which village visits became something he dreaded more than he enjoyed. He spent weeks of late November and December looking for a settlement that could eventually take him to Iceland.
He was told repeatedly that he was looking in the wrong place. The community he needed would be a much larger one than theirs, with more resources and big enough boats to sail that far. They were hospitable to him to the extent that they could be, but he also spent a lot of time wandering around and feeling consistently cold, damp, sunlight-deprived and vaguely self-destructive, while his rabbit grew increasingly lethargic and unresponsive.
The march through Great Britain also put him in a new phase of homesickness. Perhaps it was the decreasing distance, or the fact that he was speaking with other people again, if sporadically. He kept thinking of his home at Paleola. It would probably be at least as cold as Scotland at this time of year, maybe not quite as wet, though with far longer daylight hours. He would have his straw mattress in the cabin with his uncle. He wanted to see Roy again; to have his uncle remind him of how young and inexperienced he was. He wanted to catch Meredith's and Sunny's eyes and join them in trying not to laugh too hard. He wanted to joke around with Kenny and see him fall into a random sparring match with Yolande. He wanted Miriam to nag him and be overprotective. He wanted to catch up on the day’s events with Nadine and Phoebe. Sometimes Charlinder pictured himself sharing his discoveries with them, but it was just as easy to picture nothing more than business as usual. More than anything, though, he missed his uncle, his sole remaining family, who had always kept him grounded but never limited, who was abundantly aware of his nephew’s idiosyncrasies and never expected him to apologize for being so unlike the other boys.
There came the occasional day when he didn't even try to look for a village; he'd simply walk around trying to find enough greenery to feed Smoky, and if Charlinder ran out of food for himself, the hunger only bothered him slightly. It was on one of these days that he heard a bizarre noise from the distance. There was a rumbling punctuated by an occasional crash-like sound, and while his self-preservation instinct was fading, his eternal sense of curiosity remained strong. He followed the rumbling into the forest, and kept on until he heard voices and a tree nearly fell on top of him.
It wasn't a terribly large tree, but heavy enough. It was not a helpful situation for a person who was already feeling weary of life, and it was mainly Smoky's obvious fright that shook him enough to watch out for more falling timber.
"You there!" called a deep voice from around the tree's base. "What do you think you're doing?"
Charlinder stumbled up to the new stump and found the source of the rumbling noise. In a patch of sparse growth, there were several very large, strong men cutting the branches off felled trees and lashing the timber to a contraption fitted to a team of immensely large-boned and powerful-looking horses. All the men paused to gawk at him.
"Sorry about that," he called hoarsely. "I didn't know this," he gestured weakly at their endeavor, "was going on."
"Good gracious, lad, where in the bloody Hell did you come from?"
"I'm not from around here," he confirmed, "and I've been away from home for...a very long time."
"Well, don't go walkin' under any more trees either way," another man admonished. "Christ, you look like you could use a square meal and a stiff drink."
"Oh, that does sound good," he muttered, more thinking aloud than angling for charity.
"Wait around by the horses," advised someone else, "before you go wanderin' under any more trees. And try not to collapse on us, would you?"
"Yeah, I'll do that," he agreed. He added gratuitously, "the bunny here just peed on me."
He followed them back to their village when they had all the lumber they could haul. Charlinder was grateful just to have a place to go. He didn't catch all their names, but he identified a Michael, a Craig and a Duncan. They led him back to an area of their settlement where they unloaded the lumber into a boatyard that included two formidable ships held up on props. He couldn't help but stop and stare.
"How ever did you get here, if not in boats?" asked Michael.
"What, exactly, do you do with those vessels?" Charlinder demanded. It occurred to him distantly that he wouldn't like the way he was coming across, but that was a formality for later.
"They've got to be great bloomin' ships," said Michael, "as we sail the ladies to Iceland and back."
Charlinder stood there for an undetermined period of time, with images playing in his head of all the people he wanted to see and the wild unknown lands he would meet in the meantime, the wetness in his shirt forgotten, while anything up to and including the parting of the North Sea could have been happening beyond his notice.
"...and we need to take a lot of supplies, and of course we've got to take a huge cargo load to make it worth the time," Michael continued. "Oy, there, are you with us?"
"I'm sorry, did you say something?" Charlinder responded. "Listen, does this community have a village leader, or something?"
"We're led more by a council," Michael answered, as though watching a dog try to eat its own tail. "Why do you ask?"
"A council? That sounds really good. Would it be possible to let me meet with them, some time today or maybe tomorrow?"
Chapter Thirty-Four
Teach
The room was small, bare, dimly lit by a crooked window, and just as cold and neglected as Charlinder had been feeling for the last several days, yet it was as agreeable a place to wait as he could have asked at the time. The compact size created the impression that he was neither abandoned nor put on display. The floor was dry, the chair soundly constructed, and the walls blocked out the wind.
The door opened and a slightly stooped but dignified woman came in, carrying a small glass of amber liquid. She sat in the chair opposite Charlinder and pushed away the white woven scarf wrapped around her head, revealing a crown of thick, salt-and-pepper hair and a lined, keenly intelligent olive-skinned face. She gave him the impression that Miriam was about to burst in after her and demand to know what he’d gotten himself into.
"There are usually more of us in here, but I'm afraid the other council members can't be pulled from their hearths today," she said, "so if any of them disagree with my decision, I can just tell the geniuses they should have come. Why don't you have a drink." She pushed the glass in front of him.
Charlinder picked up the glass, got a nose-full of alcoholic fumes, and sipped cautiously. "You're trying to get me drunk already?" he remarked. "I like how you do things here."
"Michael told me," she began after a chuckle, "you looked like you could use some warming up, and so you do. I'm Belinda, by the way. And your name is Charlinder, is it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Right, then. I've never heard anyone talk like you before, so do tell me where you've come from."
"I'm from the east coast of America."
"My God, lad, how ever did you get here?"
"I've spent the last..." he took a few seconds to count, "thirty-five months walking over three continents, so, yeah. That's where I get my accent."
"That sounds like quite an adventure. What are you looking for here, then?"
"Regarding the walking over three continents, I'm ready to go home now," he replied, the liquor making him more at ease. "And I hear those boats you have dry-docked can make it to Iceland. That's on my way home, so I'm looking for a trip up there in the spring, and a place to stay in the meantime."
"A bed and three meals a day, the next five months and change, for you and the bunny rabbit?" she added it up.
"That's right."
"And then a boat ride."
"Of course."
"You won't take up much space on a boat, but in the meantime, what can you do for us?"
"Of course I'll earn my keep," he declared, gesticulating with the half-empty glass in hand. "That's why I asked to meet with you here, right? Shit, I'm not about to lay around and let someone feed me for five straight months. Even I don't have
that
much chutzpah."
"How's your woodworking?"
"It's okay. If you need someone to fix a loom or spinning wheel, you could do a lot worse than ask me."
"I won't trust you to work on our boats if you're just 'okay'."
"Oh, Hell no, don't bring my skinny butt anywhere near those suckers. No, Belinda, I am not the man to fix your seafaring vessels, but a settled community needs a lot more than just big honking ships, so I am happy to be another pair of hands for many smaller things."
"What kinds of smaller things?"
"Just let me know what I can do to help, you know? Actually, I'm a lot worse at hunting than carpentry, so don't ask me to shoot any deer, but if your fish are still swimming, I can catch them. I can shear sheep, although that's more of a summertime thing, and I'll be gone by then, but I can trim hooves, help with the lambing, that kind of stuff. I can always split firewood, and that’s good for this time of year. I can repair a four-heddle loom as well as weave on it--"