Tale of Gwyn (11 page)

She nodded, looking down at him. It would be beyond her place to apologize to a Lord. They did not need the apologies of the people. “Give the mare her head. We'll try to keep together,” he said. She did not think she needed to tell him that it was unlikely they would succeed in that. Gwyn sat with the Lordling's body up close to hers, her arms around him to hold the reins, her legs hanging down. The Lord mounted the stallion, who was almost invisible in the thick snow. He pulled Burl up behind him. Then the Lord turned around. “Son, you would be wise to sleep this night through, as much as you can.” The slight figure in front of Gwyn did not stir. They set off.

The wind, at least, was behind them. The mare moved with her head low, her four feet steady. Gwyn bent her head too and held the reins in one hand, while with the other she held the Lordling about his waist. The long cloak, her long skirt beneath it, the heavy socks she wore and her thick boots all gave some protection to her legs. But not enough—for the cold still bit most sharply there.

She had no sense for how long they traveled thus. All she could hear was the wind at her back and the mare's breathing. She did not know when she realized that they were alone. She dozed off and woke herself—afraid she had been asleep for hours but knowing it had been only the briefest of times. The Lordling did sleep, she thought, his body relaxed against hers, held up by her stiffening arm. Time passed, and she had no idea how much. Nothing around her altered, the dark wind roared, the thick snow blinded. The mare would make her way back to the Inn, if she could. If she couldn't, well, then, they said that freezing was an easy death. Gwyn emptied her mind and huddled closer to the Lordling, for the little warmth his body could give her. He was shivering now.

In the darkness, she almost missed the square shape. Something opened her eyes and cleared her mind, and she saw it briefly outlined there. The mare plodded on, but Gwyn pulled her up. A shelter on the hillside. It was no more than four steps away.

“Wake up, my Lord.” She shook the Lordling's shoulders. His head lifted. “There's shelter. We must untie you.”

Her stiff fingers worked on the ropes, hampered by heavy mittens. When he was free, she slipped down into snow that reached up to her knees. Her legs collapsed under her and she fell. Struggling up, she pulled the Lordling down into the snow beside her. He didn't resist.

The hut was abandoned, that was clear. No smoke rose, no light showed. Gwyn uncinched the saddle, holding the Lord's saddlebag high to keep it from being buried in snow. She slipped the bridle over the mare's head and struck her once on the rump. Even if they had found shelter, that was no use to the mare. The mare was heading back to the Inn, Gwyn hoped. She would move more safely without bridle and reins, more lightly without the saddle and riders. The mare's only chance was her horse's instinct for the stable.

Gwyn took the Lordling by the arm and pulled him behind her toward the hut. They had to go around to the front, where Gwyn pushed up the latch and entered, without any care for what might wait within. It was enough just to be out of the wind and snow.

The Lordling stumbled in the darkness. She pushed the door closed behind them and waited to hear if a voice would greet them from the darkness. No voice spoke. The air inside was cold, but not as cold as the air outside, which howled overhead. This hut had been sturdily built.

The Lordling lay down on the floor and Gwyn, wondering if she could find any light or build any fire in this darkness, lay down beside him. Immediately, she slept.

G
WYN OPENED HER EYES TO
darkness, and cold. Beside her the Lordling twitched and kicked, mumbling incoherently under his fur-lined cloak. Gwyn's arms and legs felt stiffened, swollen. She was shivering along her whole body. The realization of what she had done shocked her entirely awake.

To just fall asleep like that . . . She was lucky she hadn't woken up dead. . . . How stupid, you couldn't wake up dead. Gwyn got onto her hands and knees in the darkness. The cloak dragged at her shoulders and caught at her knees. There had to be a place for a fire, either in the center of the room or along a wall.

Her hands and feet felt like wooden blocks. Close around her, beyond the narrow walls, the wind howled and howled.

But no air blew over them. So, she thought, there was no smoke hole in the roof. So, she thought, it would be a fireplace against a wall and, with luck, a tinderbox nearby and, with luck, something to burn.

Crawling clumsily, groping with her hands, she came first to a pile of wood and then to the stones of a hearth. She clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering and stood up, keeping one hand flat on the icy stones that formed the fireplace. Groping upward onto unsteady legs, her hand found the mantelboard. Methodically, she sent her hand off to the right, until it reached the edge of the board, then to the left. When her fingers closed around the familiar shape of a tinderbox she was relieved, but not surprised. This house had been well made and well kept. With only her fingers to see for her, she tried to find kindling. In the fire-bed there were a few ends of logs, in the pile of wood some sticks more narrow than the rest. She set the tinderbox down close to her right knee and awkwardly, blind in the lightless air, tried to assemble a pile of kindling in the cold ashes. She made her hands move slowly, but her mind raced.

If, if . . . There might even be food stored, and certainly blankets in such a well-kept house. A cold draft came down the chimney and wound around her neck, as if the wind outside were reaching in with long fingers. She opened the tinderbox with shaking fingers and struck it. A small spark jumped out and flashed away before she could even see what her pile of kindling looked like.

Striking again, she worked her mind to keep fear at bay. If this wood did not catch, there would be a broom with straw, all she had to do was find it. Or the Lord's book, somewhere behind her in the darkness. Paper would burn. Surely he wouldn't begrudge her one sheet of paper to start the fire that would save their lives.

In the end, she did have to use the broom, which hung on a peg beside the fireplace. She used it like a torch, lighting first the stiff straw and then, with that light to see by, shoving it beneath the pile of sticks. Light leaped up from the fireplace, but Gwyn didn't dare turn around until she had fed larger sticks into the blaze and the final big logs had caught and begun to smoke, as the flames curled up from underneath them. The heat licked tentatively along her face, and she shivered uncontrollably. That was odd, she thought, clenching her teeth, trying to clench her shoulders to stop them from shaking. She ought to stop shivering, now there was a fire to warm her.

She turned her back to the fire at last, unwilling to remove her cloak even though it was wet with snow. She saw the one small room of the house, the wooden table in the middle of the floor and the bed behind it covered with blankets. Quickly, Gwyn shed her cloak and moved across the room, to take a dry blanket and wrap it around herself.

She had to strain her eyes in the weak light from the fire: shelves along one wall and the restless Lordling on the dirt floor near the door. She would have to move him closer to the warmth. There were dark, round shapes on the shelves. A side of meat hung over the loft. The fire burst into hot flames and crackled with joy at reaching its strength.

Gwyn knew where they were, as surely as if the old woman herself had opened the door to them: Old Megg's house, not an hour from home in good weather. Her shivering ceased.

The Lordling did not want to wake up, so she had to drag him over to the bed and lift him onto it. She took off his cloak, rolling him out of it, grateful that he was so light. He was not sleeping easily and his skin was cold to touch, but he did not wake as she pushed him under the blankets of the bed and then spread his cloak out over him.

Clutching her own blanket around her shoulders, Gwyn returned to the fire. She put on two more big logs. She bent to pick up the saddlebag from the floor and set it on the table. She wished the fire had been burning long enough to warm the stones surrounding it, so that she could sit with the warm stones at her back. She sat in front of the fire to unlace her stiff boots.

Light danced inside Old Megg's house. Wind swirled around it, crying out in a hollow black voice. The boy whimpered. Gwyn wrapped herself around with the blanket and lay down. She fell asleep immediately.

When next she woke it was to the chill of a dying fire and the wailing of wind. A faint light illuminated the room. Gwyn looked up at the shuttered window and saw pale lines around it. She turned to the fire, stirring it up, adding wood to it.

Then she noticed the Lordling sitting up in the bed, staring at her. She wondered how long he had been awake.

Gwyn put her boots on and cloak, now dry. She opened the door to a wall of whirling white flakes and pulled it quickly closed behind her. The snow had piled up over her knees. She shoved through it around to the left, toward the pens and the privy; but out of the shelter of the little hut the wind tore at her and she had to turn back to the wooden wall before she should lose her way. In a blizzard, men had died between house and barn, wandering off lost, unable to see their way back to safety. They would have to use the side of the house as a privy, until the snow ceased. But the Lordling would require his privacy, she thought with a sigh, so when she made her way back to the door of the house she trudged on through the snow to the right, making a path that turned the corner to the side opposite that which she had used.

Inside again, her cloak spread to dry by the fire, her damp skirts hanging cold at her legs, she considered the problem of food. The Lordling sat motionless on the bed. He looked pale and lifeless. His hair hung tangled and his eyes looked as if they did not register what they saw. He did not move. He did not speak.

Gwyn took a large bowl outside and filled it with snow. Some of that she transferred to a cooking pot. When this had melted, she added oats and swung the heavy pot over the fire, hanging it on the iron bar fixed into the stones at the side of the fireplace. The Lordling slid out of bed and came to sit at the table. He looked younger than Tad, despite seeming to have no more strength than an aged man. Gwyn sighed again, leaving the porridge to bubble over the fire.

“Your privy area will be out the door to the right. I've made as much of a path as I can.”

He left the table fast enough at that. Tad would have been squirming and complaining, she thought, wondering how it was that this Lord's son was so different from her brother. She'd like to see Tad sitting so quiet, saying nothing; that would be a pleasant change from his usual behavior.

She trickled honey over the top of the Lordling's serving of porridge and stood behind him while he ate it hungrily. Then she removed his bowl and spoon. “I know this house,” she said, as she served her own food. “It's not far from the Inn. When the snow stops we can easily go there. Until then we'll be safe enough.”

He said nothing. She turned to see if he had a question before putting her spoon into the porridge. It wouldn't do to eat when a Lord had an answer he required, whether he was a child or man.

“What happened to the mare?” he asked her.

“I turned her loose last night.”

He drew himself up, stiff with displeasure.

“There was nothing else to do,” she told him. “She'll have made it safely to the stable, I'm thinking.” His expression did not change. Why was he looking at her like that, Gwyn wondered, and he was only a boy after all.

“My Lord,” he reminded her.

“My Lord,” Gwyn repeated, trying not to smile. If that was all, just the proper form of address, it was nothing. “I apologize for forgetting.”

The little head nodded at her, all dignity despite the sleep-tangled hair and rumpled clothing.

The day dragged by. Gwyn sat by the fire, dozing occasionally. The Lordling sat at the table. He did not speak except to announce his hunger.

At last, Gwyn roused herself to tidy the bedclothes, to feed the fire, to climb up the ladder to the loft and cut off some meat and stew it for a meal.

All day the wind curled around the little house. Every time they opened the door the snow crowded in. Most blizzards lasted a day or so, but Gwyn knew that some storms could take longer, three or even four days, until the snow piled up as high as the eaves of the houses. They had wood enough for the winter, piled up against the side of the house. She chopped a good supply and brought it inside, to set it near the fire so that it would be dry when she had burned through the present supply. After she had served the Lordling his stew, with a chunk of cheese and a cup of melted snow, he climbed back into the bed. He pulled the covers up and turned his back to her. Then she could start bread for the next day, mixing flour with starter from the jar on the shelf and kneading the dough on the table that was at last empty for her to use. When she rolled herself up in a blanket beside the fire, the wind still blew with undiminished strength. She hoped the boy would sleep late and not expect his morning's meal early.

Gwyn was awakened in the darkness of deep night. When she opened her eyes she did not at first know what had roused her. The fire burned low, but was well banked. The wind howled around the house. There was a queer whimpering sound to the wind now, she thought, drifting back toward sleep before waking up again. . . .

That wasn't the wind. It wasn't outside either.

Gwyn got up and went over to the bed. It was the Lordling whimpering, his body stiff under the blankets. In the shadowy light she saw his cheeks shining and tears coursing out of his closed eyes running down toward his ears.

He must be asleep, she thought, or else he would have turned to bury his face in the pillows. He must be dreaming, she thought, but what dreams could a Lord's son have that would cause such weeping?