Tale of Gwyn (15 page)

“What about the girls?” Gwyn wondered.

“Oh—the girls, they stay with the women. They embroider. Or something. I don't know what they do.”

“It sounds like a large family,” Gwyn said. She had climbed up the ladder and was hacking off some of the meat. He watched her.

“I could do that. Could I do that tomorrow? Can I cut it up? It's large, but we all lived in Grandfather's house.”

Castle, Gwyn amended in her mind.

“Except he died.”

He cut up the meat and stirred up the stew in the pot. Gwyn took a turnip from Old Megg's meager store and scraped off the tough skin, working beside him. “My Granda just died,” she said. “He had the Inn before Da. We had the burning while you were there. He was almost sixty.” She waited to hear about his grandfather.

“What burning?” he asked.

“Of Granda's body, on the pyre. Didn't your grandfather have one?”

“No, he was buried with our family.”

“Buried?” Gwyn asked. “Is that what Lords do?” The carcasses of animals were buried, never people. If people were buried, wolves or foxes or even dogs would dig them up. “How do you keep—” she started to ask, then stopped herself. His face looked pale and carefully expressionless again. He cut the meat slowly, pulling off fat with careful fingers. His hands were pale and soft. He wore no signet.

They worked in silence. Finally, she asked him, “Is something the matter?”

“No.”

“You don't have to tell me anything,” she said. She guessed he must have loved his grandfather. “I only ask because—you're like a summer rain, you were talking away as if you'd talk for hours, and then suddenly you stop. That's what summer rain does, you know? But, in my experience, it's not what boys do.”

He worked beside her with his slight shoulders held stiff, his whole body held stiff, looking like a grown man. Gwyn felt sorry for him, which was ridiculous because there was nothing for the people to pity the Lords.

“It's just—” She hesitated before speaking. But after all, what could happen besides him going silent on her again, as he had been all the time except this morning. “I'm sorry about whatever—is making you unhappy.”

He remained silent. Gwyn sighed and got back to work on the turnip, cutting it into little chunks, then adding it and the meat to the pot, then pouring on a little water. He was sitting on the bed, watching her, when she turned around. “Do you want to go outside and work with the staffs?” she offered.

He shook his head, his face down and his hair falling around it.

Gwyn took her cloak off the hook. “I'm going to start breaking a path up around the hill. If we can get a path started, then that'll be that much less to work at when we leave. Da's vineyard is on the other side,” she said, just to be saying something. “I could use your help.”

“All right.” He put on his own cloak and followed her outside.

Before they started up the hillside, however, they cleared the way to the privy, which leaned up against the goat pen. That job taken care of, Gwyn led him around behind the hut.

She shouldered her way through chest-high snow, clambering more than walking. The crust broke beneath the weight of her body and she crawled up until she felt her feet touch firm ground, then she stood. The path gave way unevenly under her feet and she tried to jump on the snow, to give it some packing. The Lordling struggled along behind her, stamping with his feet.

It was hard work and hot work, under the bright sun. It was cold, wet work too, and her cheeks felt numb. It was slow work, pushing uphill through the mass of snow. They spent the morning at it and had not even reached the crest of the hill when Gwyn halted. She turned around to look at their progress.

Down the hill the little hut crouched against a white background, smoke rising up in a thin line from its chimney. Only the dark roofline of the goat pen showed, and white hills undulated upward to the far mountains. The mountains spiked up into the sky.

“From here the mountains look like a wall, don't they?” Gwyn said. She was breathing heavily and had her cloak curled backward over her shoulders, to let her body cool.

The Lordling looked better for the exercise. His cheeks had a faint pink color in them. He had shoved the damp strands of hair behind his ears.

“They
are
a wall,” he told her. “Don't you remember the map? But my father says you don't know whether a wall walls in or walls out.”

Like the walls around the cities, Gwyn thought, or even the courtyard at the Inn, which was walled on three sides by buildings. “Nobody knows what lies beyond the mountains,” she said, her eyes on their peaks.

“Yes, they do.”

They slid back down the long hill. This made the pathway more firm. Gwyn had thought that his mood was eased by the hard work, but when they reentered the hut to eat she saw again the sad, firm set of his mouth. He didn't even grieve like a boy.

Without any thought, she kneeled down in front of him and wrapped her arms around him. “Osh, lad,” she said. He didn't push her away. He just bent his head to bury his face on her shoulder.

When he did pull away, it was to accuse her, “You said you wouldn't tell. Not ever.”

“Then I won't,” Gwyn answered, worried and confused. “You'd better hang up these cloaks while I serve the stew.”

“I'm not hungry.” He didn't move.

“Yes, you are,” she snapped.

He ignored her. “When they bury someone in winter, they have to burn fires on the ground if it's been cold,” he told her. “So they can dig. If the ground is frozen. Because my mother died in winter,” he told her.

Gwyn went on with her hands' tasks, getting down bowls and spoons, cutting chunks of bread and cheese. She didn't turn to look at him.

“So when you dropped your handful of dirt on her, it was cold and hard. It was like pebbles and I had to because everybody has to.” His voice got cold and hard at her back. “Then the servants shoveled the dirt over, just shoveling, and it thunked—and the shovels scraped. Because it was cold. I didn't want them to put all that dirt, because it's too heavy—but I didn't do anything. I'm not big enough, I wasn't; as fast as I could throw it out they'd put it in all over me too.”

He stopped talking. He sat down at the table. Gwyn served him his bowl and sat down with him, but she had no more appetite than he had. This would give anyone nightmares.

“How long ago did she die, my Lord,” she asked, without making it much of a question.

“Last winter. She was supposed to have a baby but she died instead.”

Gwyn put her spoon into the hot stew, but did not lift it out. “You dream about her.”

He didn't answer.

“When somebody dies, they can't feel anything, or see, or think. Or anything,” she said.

“Do you really know that?”

“How could I really know that?” she demanded. “But I've killed chickens. After you chop their heads off it's just—meat.” She wished immediately that she had not said that. “I mean, everything alive is gone.”

But he didn't seem bothered by the comparison. “I never killed anything.”

“Not even hunting?”

“I'm not old enough.”

“How old do you have to be?”

“Twelve.”

“How old are you?”

“Almost eleven.”

“That's about Tad's age, my brother. You've seen him. Tad wouldn't come with us when we burned Granda, he didn't want to watch.”

“Has he killed chickens?” The Lordling at last picked up his spoon and took a bite.

“He's watched. I guess he thinks people are different.”

“Don't you think they are?”

“Not that way, no. Because animals and people both have blood keeping them alive. Turnips are different, I think, and apples, things like that.” The relief that she hadn't put terrible ideas into the Lordling's head lifted Gwyn's spirits and loosened her tongue. “People are different from chickens in other ways, and cows and horses. But not that way.”

“I agree,” he decided. “Do you think people are better? Than chickens? Or horses; I know more about horses.”

“Oh, well then, my Lord,” she answered with a quick tongue, “I'm not often pleased with people.”

The look he gave her was not a boy's look. “Nor Lords either?”

Gwyn felt her face grow hot. That question she did not answer. She bent her face to her bowl and ate. When she dared to look at him again, he was grinning at her.

“I know nothing of the Lords,” she told him, cross.

He just grinned away.

“Nor am I curious to know.”

“That's not true,” he crowed. “You're as curious as can be, that's why you ask all those questions.”

“I didn't ask that many questions,” Gwyn protested, but then she had to admit it. “Not all that many. And why shouldn't I be curious.”

He ate on, well pleased with himself.

“You aren't dull yourself, are you my Lord,” she finally gave in to him.

“It's all right, I won't tell,” he promised her. “If I did, you know, I'd get in as much trouble as you.”

“More, I hope.”

As they ate, with good appetites, Gwyn hoped the Lordling had not noticed that they were more than halfway through the hanging meat; he could not know, she knew, that at the rate they could move through this snow, they would be caught by night long before they could reach the village. And she wondered about the burial of his mother; she wondered why the Lords would put their dead into the earth, like the animals. She thought she knew why he had dreams—she had never seen such a thing, but she could picture it; a Lady—his mother—lying in a hole in the ground; and she could imagine how it would feel to look down as the face was covered with dirt. She could imagine also, she discovered, how it would feel to lie there, still and dead: The dirt would fall soft, at first, soft as rain and as light, and then it would lie heavy, pressing down—Gwyn shuddered. She was no longer hungry.

“What's the matter?” he asked her.

Gwyn tried to smile easily. “My mother tells me I have too much imagination.”

“I think you're right, though, about the chickens.”

This was what boys did. They thought their own thoughts and when you thought they had forgotten something they would surprise you. “What did she look like?”

“She was beautiful, she was tall and quiet. Her hair was brown, like mine, but darker. It hung down her back like silk. I can't remember much. It's been so long since I was in her care.”

“What do you mean?”

“When boys turn five they go to live with the men, in the men's quarters. Only girls stay with the women.” He sopped gravy with his bread. “Or sickly boys; if you're really sick then you go to the women's quarters, but I never was. But I could see her at dinners, when she was at the high table next to my father, so I know she was beautiful. You should wear your hair long that way. I don't know why you all want to look ugly.”

“Long hair would get in the way. It would fall into the stew. It would be in a terrible mess every night and I'd have to spend hours combing it out when I only wanted to go to sleep. Look at your hair now from not being cared for—it's like a bird's nest. Hair like that would be nothing but trouble to me.”

“The servants take care of it.”

“I have no servants.”

“What about Burl?”

“That's different.”

“How is it different?”

She tried to tell him about Burl, whose parents had died of sickness in Hildebrand's City, when he was a boy, how the priest had brought him to one of the fairs and Da had bought him, to train him. The Lordling pelted her with questions about that, asking what would have happened if the Innkeeper hadn't wanted him, where else he might have gone, asking what would have happened if Burl had been a girl, asking why the priests hadn't brought him to the Lords to be a servant, asking if he would serve Tad when Tad inherited. His spirits certainly seemed eased, Gwyn observed to herself, patiently answering his questions.

They talked through the afternoon, sometimes with the Lordling answering Gwyn's questions about life in his grandfather's house, sometimes with Gwyn answering his about how Da's holdings increased. They went outside, where he insisted that she let him hide and then come to find him. She had no trouble seeing where he was, until he demanded how she knew, and she showed him the way his tracks through the snow gave him away.

Inside again, he helped her shake out the bedclothes to freshen them and they turned his mattress over. They ate cheese and bread, drank melted snow, built up the fire. He took out the long book again, and the bits of charcoal, and continued talking as she sat at the table with him.

“When do you think we'll be able to leave here?” he asked her. He had taken one of the last pages for his own and was making marks on it. She watched him, envying the work of his fingers. She wished her hands had some work, even knitting, to occupy them.

“Maybe soon. Not tomorrow yet.”

“We've started the last of the cheeses. Should we eat less?”

“Not yet, my Lord,” she decided.

“It would be all right. I expect I can stand to be hungry.” She thought that was true, and she thought he wouldn't complain about it either.

“I know that, my Lord.” Firelight gave his face warmer colors, but even so, she thought, he looked less pale than before. His voice, too, when he spoke, seemed livelier.

“What about you?” His eyes caught hers.

“Me?”

“Will you marry?”

“Me?”

“You're almost too old, aren't you? What happens if you don't marry by the time, what will you do? Do you want to?”

Such questions he had no right to ask. “I don't know, my Lord.”

“But you must have thought about it, Gwyn.”