Dark Mist Rising (14 page)

There was a little silence.

Tom broke it, enthusiasm back in his voice. ‘No, by damn, he cannot! Peter has savage soldiers chasing him!'

Fia did not ask why these soldiers chased me. She merely bowed her head and hunched her shoulders. On another woman such sagging might have marred her beauty, but on Fia it merely aroused my protectiveness. She seemed both tense and profoundly sad, a cord stretched taut which somehow knew it must soon break. But then, who would not be so, if all memory had gone? If you did not know who you were, were you anyone at all?

I said, ‘It's true, my lady. I have savage soldiers chasing me.' Actually, I did not know if it were true or not. Nor did I know why that ‘my lady' had slipped from my mouth. Whoever this girl was, she was not Lady Cecilia.

Fia did not react to my slip, and I doubt that Tom even heard it. All his attention was on her. He said, ‘Well then, that settles it. Roger must stay here, and I will take you back to The Queendom.' Conveniently for him, all the savage soldiers who had seen Tom's face were now dead.

Fia said again, ‘No.'

Tom said again, ‘No? No what?'

‘No, we cannot leave Roger alone.'

Tom glared at me but spoke to Fia. ‘Why not? He's a grown man!'

‘I need you both,' she said simply. ‘I'm ... I'm afraid.'

I said gently, ‘What are you afraid of, Fia?'

She shook her head from side to side.

Tom said, ‘Well, of course you're afraid, sweetheart! No memory, no weapons, a woman up here in the Unclaimed Lands – but you may rely on Tom Jenkins! Roger must stay here but I'll take you back home right enough. We'll find this flock of sheep of yours and mayhap that will jolt your memory. See, I knew this farmer, Will Larkin, and at a summer faire he ...'

Tom prattled on, his big hand on Fia's arm, offering reassurance and protection and travel plans and everything but his life-long fealty, although I had no doubt that would be offered too, if he thought it necessary to bed her. Fia listened gravely, saying nothing. But her green eyes slid sideways to meet mine, and I read their message, somewhere between a command and a plea:
Don't leave me alone with him
.

And I knew I would not. I did not think Tom would ever force a woman, but I could easily believe that he would wear one down. After all, there had been Betsy and Joan and Agnes and Nell and all the others he had bragged of as we lay on opposite sides of many campfires, stranding me between envy and disdain. The only woman I had ever bedded was Maggie. And if Tom
did
try to force Fia, I must be here—

No. It was not that. I wanted to be here, with her. It was true that I was safer high in the Unclaimed Lands than I could ever be in The Queendom. But it was also true that I had planned to cross over again into Soulvine Moor and search for my mother in the Country of the Dead. That was why I had come here in the first place.

And the largest truth of all: I was afraid to cross over again.

Those dark patches of fog moving towards me in the mist, with figures moving inside them
. Nothing
moved in the Country of the Dead, save I. Those immobile, humming fogs in the middle of the circles of the Dead, which I knew to be watchers from Soulvine. The eerie silence of the pervasive mist. And most of all, the woman's voice from the fog, saying my name. Saying the words from my dream: ‘
Eleven years dead
.' And then the laughter that shivered along my bones.

I was afraid to cross over again. All my plans to find my mother – I would still carry out those plans,
must
carry them out. But not yet. For now I would stay with Fia, would ‘protect' her against Tom and so put off again facing those terrifying figures in the fog, that voice that shivered along my bones. Put them off for at least a little while.

I was not conscious of having changed expression. But Fia interrupted Tom to say, ‘Good. Then that is decided. Roger will stay with us, and tomorrow we will discuss travelling to The Queendom. Tom, do you think ... do you think you could get me some more water? I find I am so thirsty.'

She smiled at him in the gathering dusk.

Fia, looking so fragile, without any memory of who she was, drooping so sadly last night by the campfire, was already awake by the time I stirred the next morning. She sat picking over berries gathered in her apron. The fire had been built up from last night's embers and Tom's cookpot sat over it on a lattice of green twigs.

‘Good morrow, Roger,' Fia said. ‘Would you like some tea?'

I sat up. ‘Tea?'

‘Yes. It's good.' Carefully she poured brown liquid from the cookpot into one of our two tankards, Tom's of tin and the pewter one stolen from the Almsbury cottage. I sniffed the tea. Some sort of wild herb, not sweet but strong and flavourful. Its warmth spread through my night-chilled body. Tom snored loudly on the other side of the fire.

‘Thank you,' I said. ‘How did you know how to brew this?'

‘I don't know. Perhaps I worked in the kitchen of some manor house?'

‘I don't think the Unclaimed Lands have manor houses.' And yet the night before, she had curtseyed.

‘I don't know.'

‘You said yesterday that you thought you were a shepherdess.'

‘I just don't know. Oh, Shep – good dog!'

He bounded up with a rabbit in his jaws and laid it at Fia's feet. Hers, not mine, although until now all Shep's kills had been presented to me. Fia put the berries onto a wide leaf, picked up Tom's knife from the ground beside her, and began to skin and clean the rabbit with expert speed and no squeamishness whatsoever.

‘Would you like some berries? They're very sweet.'

‘Fia, how long have you been awake?'

‘I don't know exactly.'

‘Did you sleep badly?'

‘No, I slept fine. No, Shep, this is for Roger. Go get your own breakfast.'

I was feeling dizzy. The tea? No, it was Fia. She sat at her bloody task looking so beautiful in the morning sunshine that every sinew in my body ached to reach for her. I wanted her with the intensity that I had once wanted Cecilia, more than I had ever wanted Maggie. But at the same time Fia's brisk competence reminded me of Maggie. This confused me completely, and filled me with shame. I did not expect to ever see Maggie again. I was too dangerous to her and Jee. We had broken with each other, there on the sunny hillside where I had left her asleep. So why did my yearning to touch Fia fill me with such a sense of disloyalty to Maggie?

So I sat bewildered into silence, vainly trying to hold my cup of tea in such a way that Fia did not see my erection. Fia leaned forward to put the skinned rabbit onto the fire, and her breasts strained against the bodice of her gown. I closed my eyes.

‘Well now, roast rabbit!'

For the first time ever, I was glad of Tom's hearty obliviousness.

‘This is great, sweetheart, by damn! What a nice thing for a man to wake up to!'

‘Let me pour you some tea,' Fia said. ‘Roger, are you done with the tankard?'

*

We moved north, back towards The Queendom, but I did not intend to go further than the deserted hut of Jee's family. That kept me within a day's walk of Soulvine Moor. It also kept me far enough south that – I hoped – the Young Chieftain's soldiers would not find me. I would do all I could to keep Fia at the hut as long as possible. I had no idea how long that would be. She seemed determined to travel to The Queendom. How could someone with no memory have a destination?

I watched the play of sunlight on the smooth black waves of her unbound hair.

‘Don't trip on the big stone there,' Tom said. ‘Are you tired?'

‘Not at all.' And over her shoulder, ‘Roger? Are you tired?'

I was tired, yes. I was sore. My feet hurt, and the stump of my wrist, and my heart. Fia's dress caught on a berry bramble and Tom freed it for her. He had a strong whole body and a handsome face and yellow hair.

In the late afternoon we reached the hut beside the mountain waterfall. Fia looked at it carefully and said, ‘Hmmmm.'

Tom and I looked at each other. What did ‘Hmmmm' mean?

‘Hmmmm,' Fia repeated. ‘Not fit for so much as goats.'

Tom, trying to be witty, said, ‘Luckily we have no goats.'

‘No people could live here.'

I did not tell her that people had.

‘There are still hours of daylight,' Fia said. ‘We could travel further. If we— What was that?'

Tom said, ‘I didn't hear anything.'

But I had. The sound came again, distant and faint. Fia looked puzzled, and I had another piece of information about her. She had not, after all, come from The Queendom, at least not recently.

She said, ‘What is that strange noise?'

‘
Guns
,' I said.

‘I will go no further,' I told Fia. ‘I can't.' Soldiers to the north, Soulvine Moor to the south, and I in the middle, fearing both. I didn't know what I was going to do eventually, but I knew I was going to do nothing right now. Nothing seemed my safest choice. In the mountains sound carries a very long way, echoing off cliff faces and amplified by canyons. The soldiers – if there were soldiers – could be very far away. Or not.

Fia did not look at me when I spoke; at first I thought she hadn't even heard me. She went on gazing at the ramshackle roof of the hut. Then she went inside and looked up at the sky through the hole in the roof. Tom and I trailed after her.

‘Hmmmm,' she said.

‘Sweetheart,' Tom said, ‘why don't I build a fire in that pine grove over there and—'

‘This hut can be made very snug for us,' Fia said.

I blinked. Tom looked confused, as well he might. Hadn't she just said it wasn't fit for so much as goats? She turned to both of us and gave us her enchanting smile. ‘You are right, Tom,' she said. ‘I'm more tired than I thought. As soon as we stopped walking, weariness caught me. I think ... I think I may not be well. Do you mind if we stop here for a few days?'

‘Of course not, sweetheart!' Tom looked as if he would stop there with her for a few days, a few months, for ever. Fia sank gracefully to the ground.

‘If I could have a little water ...'

He ran outside for the water bag. Fia looked up at me and her smile was gone, replaced by a look of such sadness that I was struck dumb. Dumber. In such moments she reminded me so strongly of Cecilia that it was like a blow.

And yet Cecilia had never shown such sadness. Nor, I suspected, such duplicity. Cecilia had been an artless kitten, adorable and helpless. Fia was something different, but I did not know what.

‘Fia,' I said softly, ‘who are you?'

‘I don't know,' she said and shook her head, and my heart split down its seam with sorrow for her. Or desire.

‘Why do you want to go to The Queendom?'

She only shook her head again. Then Tom returned with the water bag and her sadness vanished, replaced by a flurry of nesting that would have done a robin proud. ‘Thank you, Tom. We have several hours of daylight yet. Have you an axe? No? A pity. Well, if you can break off branches as thick as your wrist, I will gather grasses from that clearing over there for thatch, and we can have the roof patched by dark. Roger, if you will clean out the hearth and make a fire, that would be a great help. Send Shep out to hunt. I saw some wild onions growing by the waterfall ...'

I said, more harshly than I intended, ‘I thought you were weary.'

‘I am,' she said calmly, ‘but this work must be done despite all our weariness.'

The words, and the tone, might have been Maggie's.

‘Of course the work must be done!' Tom said. ‘We should start now.' He dashed out to find branches as thick as his wrist. Fia followed, not looking at me.

I gazed at the hearth, full of old ashes and mouse droppings, and then began to clean it out with my one hand.

By nightfall the hut was, if not snug, at least habitable. We slept inside, by a real hearth fire. Fia had kept us working past dark, and we had walked much of the day before that, so all three of us fell asleep quickly and hard. But towards morning the dreams came. Never before had I dreamed my two terrible dreams brought together into one.

My mother sits in her lavender gown with a child on her lap.
I am both the watcher and the child, safe and warm in my
mother's arms. She sings to me softly, a tune that I hear at first
without words. Then the words become clear, and Roger the
watcher's blood goes cold: ‘Die, my baby, die die, my little one,
die die ...' Then the scene enlarges and I see that mother and
child sit outside, on a flat upland moor, at night. There comes to
my mouth the taste of roasted meat, succulent and greasy. Moving
among the shadows are inhuman things and one woman, her
voice coming to me from the darkness under the glint of a jewelled
crown: ‘Roger
. Hisaf
.'