Silvermay (3 page)

Birdie was expecting this because she turned immediately to me. ‘Take this one,' she said, settling the nameless baby into my arms. ‘I'll bring the mother.'

‘I don't know where you think you're taking them. I'll have every house in the village against you by nightfall,' said Mr Nettlefield.

‘Not my own,' she answered breezily.

I was proud to hear it. My father wasn't afraid of the elders any more than my mother. Besides, like the rest of us, he
was
a little afraid of Birdie.

With the mysterious Tamlyn supporting her on one side and my mother on the other, Nerigold made the slow journey to our house on the edge of the village. I followed with the baby, and Hespa led the horse, which was all the young couple seemed to have in the world.

My eyes stared at the three figures ahead, though, to be honest, they lingered on one more than the other two. Even that bulky cloak couldn't hide the man's broad shoulders and the way he carried himself.

My daydreams might have become more extravagant if we hadn't reached our door soon after. Once inside, Nerigold held out her arms for her baby again; and there, under the sanctuary of my parents' roof, Tamlyn finally threw back the hood.

It was just as well that I had surrendered the baby. Just as well that I wasn't carrying anything precious or fragile at all, for I would have dropped it onto the stone floor. Did I give myself away with a gasp?

His hair hung past his ears in a swaying curtain. Darker than mine, almost black, it shone even in the dull interior of our house. His jaw drew a strong line beneath unblemished cheeks. He wore no beard. Like Nerigold, he was only a year or two older than me. And his eyes! They were the blue of a summer sky, shining out from beneath the brooding overhang of his brow.

I tore my gaze away long enough to see Hespa's face, which could have been a mirror for the way I felt. This was the most handsome man either of us had ever seen. And at the very moment such an exquisite surprise washed over us both, he turned and looked straight at me.

O
n that first night, my mother made a bed of straw for Tamlyn and Nerigold, who fell immediately into the sleep of utter exhaustion. At midnight and again in the hour before dawn, the little one woke up the whole house demanding to be fed. My sisters' babies never made that much noise!

The next day, two of the elders appeared at our door; not mean-eyed Darry Nettlefield from the inn but a pair my parents respected more. Their complaint was the same, though. ‘The young couple are not married,' they said solemnly.

I'd seen my mother argue with the elders for a week over the silliest of things. I think she enjoyed it. This time, she simply sighed and made a face.

‘Mother and child must stay here with me. I'll ask the Grentrees to take in the young man.'

The elders exchanged a glance and nodded, relieved to dodge one of Birdie's tirades.

Nerigold was moved to my bed, where she swallowed more of the potions Birdie kept in her bag and slept as much as she could.

‘She needs rest more than anything,' my mother whispered as we stared down at the peaceful figure. ‘The baby will rob her of that if he spends the whole day beside her. Here, take him into the open air until he needs to be fed,' and she dumped him into my arms.

‘How will I know when he's hungry?' I asked.

‘Oh, don't be such a fool, girl. He'll let you know.'

I stepped out through the door and went looking for Hespa, who was always going on about how wonderful little babies were. I wasn't so sure, although I would probably change my mind when I had one of my own. But Hespa had been sent to gather raspberries and wouldn't be back for an hour.

‘Looks like you're stuck with me,' I told the baby.

He looked up at me with his solemn eyes and didn't seem to object. Birdie had already washed him and swaddled him tightly in sheets she kept for my niece and nephews when they came visiting.

‘I hope you don't mind being used for motherhood practice,' I said, nuzzling him a little. Babies have the most delicious smell … well, most of the time, anyway.

His expression didn't change.

‘If your parents have no name for you, then I'll give you one,' I whispered. ‘Smiler, how's that? And do you know why? Because it looks to me like you're determined
never
to smile in your whole life. I'll tell you something else, too. I'm going to make you.'

I fashioned a makeshift crib for him in the shade of the willows and watched him sleep. When he woke again, we played. I even sang to him, which was a laugh because my voice usually brought shouts of, ‘Stop, stop!' It was that pledge of mine, to make him smile, that had me doing these things. All went well until, as Birdie had said he would, Smiler let me know he was hungry.

He didn't confine the news to me, either. By the time I'd returned to our house, the entire village knew. What a sound! There was nothing I could do to calm him down, and even in Nerigold's arms he raised the roof. Only his mother's milk stopped the bawling.

‘Healthy lungs,' said Birdie, rolling her eyes.

‘Little tyrant,' I teased as I jiggled him afterwards.

He took his revenge by burping a stream of sour milk all over my shoulder. Yuck!

‘Why does Hespa think babies are so delightful?' I asked Smiler as I wiped the mess away from his mouth. ‘You'll have to stop puking on my shoulder if you expect
to win me over. Yes, you will,' I added, then cringed at the babyish tone in my voice.

The second day passed much like the first, except that when Smiler started up his wailing in the afternoon, Birdie was tending a neighbour's boy who'd fallen out of an apple tree. It was left to me to place a pillow behind Nerigold's back and keep her company.

‘Where are you from?' I asked.

She continued to watch the baby as he suckled but I could see a frown on her face. After a long pause she said, ‘A village like this one, but last year I lived in Vonne for a few months.'

‘Father says Vonne is very grand. Do all the women there wear dresses like yours?'

She switched her eyes to the folds of fabric around her legs. ‘There are many better than this. I don't remember a lot about the place, to be honest.' She shrugged as though she needed to apologise for this, then added, ‘When the baby came we were in a smaller town, further up the Great River.'

Mention of ‘we' brought Tamlyn silently into our conversation. I think she knew it and glanced up into my eyes, wondering what I would say.

‘He's very good-looking, isn't he?' I said rather boldly.

This brought more silence, and I began to regret my daring words until her face softened and she let me
see a smile as teasing as the response that followed. ‘You noticed, then.'

‘Every girl in the village has noticed. You're very lucky.'

‘Lucky!' she said in surprise. ‘To have my baby, yes, very lucky. And luckier still with Tam … um, Piet to care for me,' she said, embarrassed by the way she'd almost forgotten his false name. Just as well it was me she was talking to. She fixed me with a more serious expression. ‘But I don't think about his looks, not as part of my luck. There are so many more important things. It hasn't been easy for us in the last few days.'

Our conversation had been leading to this question, like rainwater working its way down a hillside to join the stream. She knew it as well as I did.

‘I cannot tell you any more, Silvermay,' she said, and to be sure that I didn't ask she turned her attention back to the baby. He had finished feeding now and lay staring up at his mother with the same solemn expression I knew well by then.

‘Are you full up, my little Lucien?' she said.

‘His name is Lucien?' I blurted out in surprise.

‘Yes. I was hoping for a girl, you see. I was going to call her Lucia.'

So my little Smiler had a name, after all. First, I'd been given a false name for Tamlyn and then a lie
about the baby's. Any fool could guess they didn't want to be found. That was why Tamlyn had looked for me especially when he finally threw back his hood on the first night. Afterwards, when attention turned to Nerigold and the baby, he had come to me. ‘Thanks for keeping my clumsy secret,' he'd whispered and then slipped away before I could ask why he had lied. It was an act of trust and I'd accepted that trust without question. There was a pay-off for me, I had to admit — something I quite liked the idea of. I was the only one who knew his real name, so didn't that make me closer to him than anyone else in the village?

Lucien
, I repeated inside my head as I settled to sleep that night. It was as good a name as any, but whenever that little boy was with me I'd go on calling him Smiler.

 

Through those first days, Tamlyn worked in the fields and afterwards bedded down in the Grentree house. I saw him only when he came to eat the evening meal with us. That didn't stop me talking about him. What I'd said to Nerigold was true: the girls in the village, including me, gossiped about nothing else.

My beloved Hespa was especially smitten. If a scribe wrote down every detail of Tamlyn's appearance, as listed by Hespa, he'd run out of ink.

‘I wish
he'd
offer six gold coins to my father,' she said.

‘He's married,' said Rose, a sometime friend of ours who was in the village for market day. Into those two words she managed to cram not just a hint of disapproval but also a sigh of longing that we all recognised in ourselves.

‘No, he's not,' said Hespa a little too deliberately, and she made a show of swinging her long dark hair over one shoulder as I'd seen her do sometimes to catch a boy's eye.

‘Well, not officially,' Rose agreed, ‘but you shouldn't get any ideas, Hespa. He belongs to Nerigold. I mean, he's father to her little boy, after all.'

Hespa ignored her and said to me instead, ‘You're so lucky to have him coming round each night to see the baby. Does he smile when he plays with his son? He always seems so serious when I see him around the village.'

Rose jumped in before I could answer. ‘I know, and it just makes him more handsome, don't you think? Like he's above all the stupid little things that go on around him.'

Hespa's question made me think. I'd set myself a silly goal with Lucien, but it hadn't occurred to me that his father never smiled either. She was right, though, and Rose had noticed it as well.

‘They've had a hard time of it,' I said, repeating what Nerigold had told me. ‘Their families must have chased
them off, and there are lots of miserable fools around like Mr Nettlefield who care more about marriage vows than love. No wonder Nerigold is sick when no one would take them in. If T … er … if Piet doesn't smile much it's because he doesn't have a lot to smile about.'

Both girls stared at me in surprise.

‘You know a lot about him, then,' said Hespa.

‘Only what Nerigold has told me. I don't think she cares much that he's so good-looking. When we spoke yesterday, she almost cried about the way he cares for her.'

‘Cares for her!' sniffed Hespa. ‘Can't she call it love, the lucky …' Whatever word she'd been going to spit out died on her lips when she saw my face. ‘You like her, don't you?'

‘Yes, I do,' I said, though I didn't try to explain why. Perhaps I couldn't until I knew her better.

 

The following day, Tamlyn didn't march off to the fields with the other men. Father had heard of his boast about fixing roofs and had borrowed a ladder from the Grentrees. Tamlyn spent the morning up on our roof and I'd never seen so many females of all ages stroll in and out of our house or simply wander by. Still, I should be the last to poke fun at them. When we sat down at the table for lunch, I almost knocked my mother over in my rush to grab the seat beside Tamlyn.
There was no harm in
it
, I told myself; just the fun of having someone new and different around for a change.

I watched him with Nerigold afterwards, before he returned to the roof, and felt the guilty touch of envy that Hespa had given way to so petulantly.

The roof needed more than a single day's work, and by the end of the second day, something was troubling me; something I couldn't see and so couldn't name. It wasn't until I was trying to sleep in the bed I now shared with Nerigold that the mystery gave up its clues. They never touched each other. That was what I'd missed. In all my childish spying, I had never seen them steal a kiss, never seen one brush up against the other
accidentally
in the deliberate acts of affection I saw between my sisters and their husbands. Oh, there was tenderness, but it didn't bring the tension to their bodies that I thought of as love.

I looked for it even more as the days passed, until they began to catch me out and I'd turn away blushing. But all I observed was their devotion to the baby that bound them together.

During those first days, I spent more time with the little thing than Nerigold did and, despite his greedy ways, my heart warmed to him more and more. Whenever it was left to me to wrap him in fresh cloths, I left his arms free and he repaid me by waving them about stiffly, with wrists cocked in that cute way babies have when they're
so new to their bodies. And all the while, I kept up my quest to make him smile.

Birdie found me at it one time when I was too engrossed to hear her coming.

‘You're wasting your time, Silvermay,' she cautioned. ‘Babies don't smile until they're six weeks or more.'

Six weeks! Tamlyn and Nerigold would be long gone by then. But, like a fool, I didn't give up.

That night, a late summer warmth made our house stuffy and, as I sometimes did when I couldn't sleep, I went out to look at the stars and the moon. I wasn't the only one, it seemed, and I almost laughed out loud when I saw the tall frame and long hair. So that was it. All the affection they denied themselves during the day was saved for secret meetings at night.

‘Nerigold is fast asleep,' I told Tamlyn. ‘Will I go and get her?'

‘No, don't wake her up!' he said quickly, as though it was the last thing he'd want. ‘She needs all the rest she can get.'

His response was so adamant I almost apologised for suggesting it. And if I'd taken a moment to think about it, I already knew Nerigold didn't sneak out to meet Tamlyn at night. Didn't I share a bed with her these days.
So why is he lingering near our house?
a taunting voice asked in my head.