Silvermay (4 page)

B
efore I quite knew it, Tamlyn and Nerigold had been with us for a week. Nerigold was still frail, which made Birdie walk around with a constant scowl.

‘I think your mother's getting tired of me,' Nerigold confided.

‘Not of you,' I assured her. ‘Of your illness. She doesn't like it when her potions don't cure the patient. That's what's upsetting her.'

‘But we've been here too long. We should move on so that your house can get back to normal.'

‘No, you can't go yet. Every man in the village wants him to fix his roof,' I said. ‘Except Mr Nettlefield, of course, and his roof leaks more than anyone's, so it serves him right.'

Nerigold laughed at this and didn't speak about leaving any more. She was happy among us, I could sense it. As for me, there were reasons why I wanted all three of them to stay. I just didn't want to think about which of them I wanted to stay the most.

It was no surprise that I had trouble sleeping. Worse still, when I escaped into the moonlight again a few nights later, my eye immediately caught sight of Tamlyn sitting with his knees up and his back wedged against a stall.

‘Why are you watching our house like this?' I asked him bluntly when he rose and came to me. ‘It's not so Nerigold will come out to join you, I know that. I'll bet you're here every night,' I added, guessing wildly.

He didn't correct me or take offence at my tone. ‘There are things I can't tell you,' he said wearily, then he did something that made the stars explode in the night sky above my head. He reached across casually and squeezed my forearm; just the briefest touch, but it was warmly meant and came with these words. ‘You've been very kind to Nerigold. She talks about you when we have our minutes together. And the way you are with Lucien, or should I say Smiler …'

I gasped. ‘How did you know?'

His face was mostly hidden in the darkness but I saw his lips curl upwards at the edges.

‘We should call you that name instead,' I teased him. ‘Just now is the first time you've smiled since you got here.'

‘Did I smile?' he asked, as though it was a genuine question. And if that wasn't enough, he raised his right hand and touched the corner of his mouth.

‘The other girls think your serious expression is more handsome.'

‘Then I'll have to smile more often so they won't look at me.'

Oh, that won't stop them
, I thought, but I didn't tell him.

‘People smile because they're happy, don't they?' he said, and again it was as though he was working this out for the first time. ‘I'm happy when I visit your house. Perhaps it will happen again.' This time he was making fun of himself.

‘You're very welcome, you know,' I assured him. ‘My sisters have heard about you and Nerigold. They'll come for a visit themselves next market day.'

‘You have two sisters,' he said cautiously, waiting for me to confirm it.

‘Both older than me, of course, and both of them married. I was supposed to be a boy, especially when I turned out to be the last. Father would have liked a son to pass all his skills onto.'

‘With the hunting birds.'

‘Yes, but he's good with horses, too, and he's the best archer in Haywode.'

‘He should have taught you instead,' said Tamlyn, teasing me in return. Another tentative smile tried to break through.

I had just the reply to shock him. ‘He did! I'm not afraid to hold a hawk on my arm, and I can handle a bow. Not as well as he can, that's true, but I can hit the bullseye three times out of five.' It was more like two from five, actually, and only on a good day. I was getting carried away, but I would never have to prove it, so what did it matter. ‘I'm better than any boy my age, and I'm the only girl in the village who can ride a horse at full gallop.' The memory had me laughing. ‘What a scandal that was! The elders went about shaking their heads and muttering because I rode like a man, which made my skirts creep up, exposing my legs up to the knee.'

I was twelve then and hadn't cared.

‘What did your mother think?' he asked.

‘She told the old ferrets to close their eyes if they couldn't bear the sight of my legs. It was her idea that I learned to hunt. She's not from around here, so the elders and all their rules don't worry her. She grew up in Nan Tocha.'

‘One of the mining tribes,' Tamlyn commented. ‘It's dangerous work, they tell me.'

I knew that more than he realised. ‘My grandfather was killed in a cave-in. Birdie took me there after he died so I'd get to know her family. I have a dozen cousins who showed me all over the mountains and even down one of the mines.'

It had been the most frightening hour of my life; firstly climbing down into darkness, and then, of course, they'd played tricks, leaving me stranded in the pitch-black and hooting ghostly noises until I begged them to rescue me.

I was suddenly aware of how much I'd been talking while he stayed mostly silent.

‘What about your family and Nerigold's?' I asked. ‘She hasn't told me much at all.'

‘And she won't, Silvermay.'

‘Well, maybe you can't tell me who they are, but you can still tell me what they're like. Your parents, for starters.'

Tamlyn thought about this for a long time; so long, in fact, I had to prod an answer out of him.

‘They can't be very nice if they've banished you like this. Were they always so harsh? I mean, they must have loved you as a boy.'

‘Harsh,' Tamlyn repeated in a murmur. ‘Yes, that's a good word for them. As for love, I don't know.'

That sounded ridiculous to me. ‘How can you not
know if you were loved or not? When parents yell at you they're angry and when they hold you close, that's love.'

The moonlight lit up a face that had once more become deeply serious. ‘Not everyone has a family like yours,' he said with such sadness it was painful to hear him. ‘And not every heart can feel love as easily as you say. All the world should have a heart like yours, Silvermay.'

And he went back to his lonely vigil with his back against the wall.

If sleep had been out of reach before I ventured into the night air, afterwards it fled to another kingdom. We had stood beneath the moon and spoken of love. Not a love between him and me; of course not. I wasn't pretending for a moment that we had. But even to say the word out loud to any man was a first for me, and, no matter how I told myself otherwise, there had been an intimacy in the things we'd said that seemed stronger than any of the girlish dreams I'd painted inside my head since he arrived in the village.

 

Nerigold was feeling better in the morning. ‘Your mother says I should walk in the sun for a bit. Will you show me around the village? All I've seen so far is the inside of this cottage.'

‘Not much to see,' I answered, but that wasn't the point.

She blinked and shaded her eyes when we first emerged into the light, then forged ahead to make the most of it. I could see her responding more to the sun's warmth with every minute and, by the time we'd reached the high road near the inn, she felt strong enough to take Lucien from my arms.

‘Oomph! He gets heavier every time I hold him,' she said.

Somehow we'd arrived at the Hollyoaks', where Tamlyn was fixing yet another roof. Fancy that!

‘Good to see you out in the sun,' he called to Nerigold.

‘A few more days and I'll climb up to help you finish the job.'

That wasn't very likely but it was good to hear her so cheerful.

‘I could do with the help. And the view is worth the climb. Silvermay,' he called, catching me by surprise, ‘you should come up and see it.'

‘No, don't be ridiculous.'

‘Oh, come on. Who was telling me she's the boy in her family?'

I glanced sideways to see what Nerigold made of this. She seemed to be enjoying my discomfort and didn't ask what Tamlyn was talking about.

‘Where's all that confidence?' Tamlyn goaded me from his perch so high on the roof. ‘This is a chance to see the world like one of your father's hawks.'

‘Go on, Silvermay. I would, if I was a little stronger,' said Nerigold.

Outnumbered! Even Lucien was eyeing me with a look that said
coward
!

I raised one foot onto the first rung and started to climb. ‘This is crazy,' I said, but was stifling giggles all the same. Those giggles quickly died away when I reached the top of the ladder and dared to look down. Then it was more a scream I had to kill in my throat.

‘Here, take my hand,' said Tamlyn, who was waiting for me.

I was glad of his steadying grip for that last step onto the roof, and then he was guiding me to a second ladder laid directly onto the thatch, which would take us all the way to the top. He sent me up ahead of him, saying, ‘Don't worry. If you slip, I'll catch you. This is high enough. Now, turn slowly and sit down between the rungs.'

Turn
,
sit
. Easy words to say.

He offered his hands again for me to brace against and finally I found myself perched near the ridge of the roof, looking over his head at the view.

‘Oh,' I gasped. For a few moments, that was all
I could say. Then, ‘It's amazing. Everything looks so different. Look, there's my house and the inn. And I can just make out the roofs of Cricklethorn,' I cried, pointing. ‘It's like being on top of the world.'

The fields stretching out to the edge of the wood were what delighted me the most. Side by side, the crops nearing harvest formed a patchwork of green and gold as though a great blanket had been thrown over the ground.

‘You know why birds like to fly now,' Tamlyn said. ‘Would you like to be one, Silvermay?'

‘If I could be a hawk or a falcon, yes; but I've seen what they do to pigeons. Don't think I want to be one of those.'

‘Very sensible,' he replied, mocking me, and I didn't need to see his face to know he was grinning.

The fear had left me, replaced by an exhilaration I'd rarely known. The first time a hawk returned to my arm had brought the same feeling. And once, when I was six or seven, I'd watched all afternoon for my father to appear on the road after one of his trips to Vonne. He'd been so pleased to find me waiting and had swept me up into his arms. I was his special one. That's how I felt on the roof with Tamlyn that day: singled out and special. It was me alone that he'd enticed up the ladders to share these sights with him.

I'd felt close to him before, when we'd spoken of families outside my house, but this was in broad daylight and he seemed even closer. I only had to reach out my hand to touch his shoulder. I didn't, of course. It would have been very wrong and I knew it. Besides, Nerigold was watching happily from below, with little Lucien in her arms and no idea what treachery lay in my heart. And if that wasn't enough, Mrs Nettlefield had joined her to stare up at me. In fact, many eyes were watching me from all over the village by now, and, even halfway to the clouds as I was, I could pick out the elders with their arms folded and backbones stiff as broom handles. It would be all over Haywode by suppertime that Silvermay Hawker had climbed the Hollyoaks' roof like a man, showing off her legs again to anyone who cared to look.

I wanted to poke my tongue out at them all. I'd defy the elders every day if it made me feel like this, but it was time to climb down into a life that would seem rather dull after today.

Hespa was waiting at the bottom of the ladder. ‘Birdie's calling for you and, if I were you, I'd wipe that look off my face before she asks what put it there.'

 

‘You're in love with him,' said Hespa when I met her after supper on that same wonderful day.

We used to stroll around the village most evenings,
sharing our dreams of husbands and households and, if we dared, of love. But lately I had been too busy to join her; or was I just happy to stay home while Tamlyn was visiting Nerigold? That thought made me answer a little too sharply.

‘Me! You should look in the mirror when you say that, Hespa.'

‘I'm not the one who struts around the village with that baby in her arms, acting like the little thing's her own.'

I denied it hotly, of course, but that didn't save me from a second barb.

‘Then you sat with him on the roof today for the whole village to see. I don't know how you can spend half the day being a friend to Nerigold and the other half trying to take her place.'

Hespa flounced off. I knew that she would come to me in the morning full of sorrow and leaking enough tears to flood the millstream. I'd forgive her and we'd hug each other like we'd done after every spat since we were five years old. But, as I watched her go, I felt a terrible dread that she might be right.

I dragged myself out of bed the next morning with that question snapping at me like an angry dog. How could I be so miserable yet elated at the same time?

I spent the morning waiting for Hespa, who didn't come. But Tamlyn did, on an errand for Mr Grentree.
He spoke briefly to Nerigold, then sent me a smile that was every bit as intimate as his touch to my arm a few nights before. I swear, five whole minutes passed before my heartbeat returned to normal. Such a sensation had never swept over me before. Thank the gods no one could see my heart beating inside my chest.

Hespa's accusing words rang in my ears.
You're in love with him
.

How could I have let this happen?

Tamlyn lingered in the house, seeming in no hurry to get started on the jobs our neighbours had lined up for him. Then Lucien began to cry, and oh, how that boy could cry. It was the wrong sound, at the wrong moment.

‘Silvermay!' my mother called from across the room.

I turned to her, vaguely aware that she'd been calling my name for some moments already.