Tale of Gwyn (6 page)

“I'm to bed,” she announced. She put on her cloak and went out into the garden. Behind her, her mother's voice reminded her to look in on Granda, to say goodnight to the old man, but not to wake him. Gwyn nodded but did not answer as she slipped out into the night.

Before she entered the privy she stood to drink in the darkness and the air fallen still after a snowfall. The clouds had all blown away. Faint moonlight silvered the fresh snow. Stars shone in a black sky, like jewels on a Lady's cloak. The garden lay shrouded in silver white silence, all its roughness made smooth. Such snow, Gwyn thought, had a way of turning the world into what it was not and making it seem safe. Such snow masked the true face of the world.

E
ARLY MORNING SUNLIGHT WASHED OVER
the snowy hillside with light the color of new peaches. The air tasted as freshly blue as the sky. Gwyn's head was bare in the weak sunlight. She wore a sheepskin jacket. It was enough trouble moving through deep snow in her long skirt, without adding to that the weight of a cloak.

It had been days since anybody walked the path leading from the Inn to the village. Burl stayed behind her, so she had the sense of being the first and only as she moved steadily uphill and downhill through the woods, the basket for Old Megg on one arm, her staff in the other hand—as if in the whole white world, nobody had preceded her.

Thin spires of smoke rose up from the village, which was hidden in a tiny valley. Old Megg's hut lay a mile to the north of the village, near to Da's vineyard. Da was lucky to have bought the vineyard. It was rare that a vineyard came up for purchase, because Lords and Innkeepers would always purchase a man's wine so that he always had coins to pay his tithes, spring and fall. But this vineyard had been mismanaged—between poor crops and careless wine-making. Then the vineyarder had taken a chill that moved into his chest, and he died. He left no one to manage the holding, so it had come into Da's hands, the widow acting for her young children. Da had built the goat pens near to the little house. Old Megg cared for the goats and watched over the vineyard. Thus the Inn could make its own cheeses as well as have the smoked meat of those animals they could not feed over a winter.

Their path that morning lay above the village, along the crest of a hill. Gwyn waited for Burl at the top of the rise overlooking the cluster of houses. The well, with the big iron bell hanging above it, was at the center of the village. Around the well was a flat, open space, the snow crisscrossed with many paths. Of the several houses, the Blacksmith's was by far the grandest, made of stone, and the workshop built off one end. Those who lived in the villages were those who worked for others, as field hands, weavers, smiths, cobblers. Their holdings were small, enough land for a kitchen garden and a few fruit trees, no more. The money earned by their labor bought necessities and paid the tithes.

Gwyn's eyes went to the north, beyond the village, beyond the hills rising steep and steeper, to the mountains. On this clear morning the mountains rose up deceptively close, tall ragged peaks gilded with snow. They bit into the sky.

From the north the Kingdom was like a walled city, with the mountains preventing entrance. Travelers into the kingdom came through the broad forests to the south, along the river. Nobody knew anything of the lands beyond the mountains. They knew little of the lands to the south, and that news came only from the rare travelers, mostly merchants, who made the long journey for the Spring Fair or the Harvest Fair. The Kingdom was protected by mountains to the north and forest to the south. Gwyn had never seen the endless forests, but she had lived all of her life beneath the mountains, and she let her eyes linger over them while Burl caught up with her.

When he stood beside her, they waited a time, looking down at the village. The dark shapes of the houses stood out sharply against the snow. The bare branches of the trees showed black. Smoke curled upward. The only person visible, on this cold day in this hungry winter, stood leaning against the stones of the Blacksmith's shop, a long, slim body wearing no protection against the weather. Gwyn stared down at him, wondering if he was, as it seemed to her, staring up at the two figures on the hill. Burl took his pipe out of his belt and started to play. The ribbon of melody slid down the hillside, then floated up into the sky. The figure raised its hand and then, looking tiny from the hilltop, went inside. Another figure came out from the shop, bigger than the first, pulling on a cloak and hurrying, with a wave of the hand over the head, to meet their path above the village. The original figure returned, to watch them, Gwyn was almost sure, just as she was almost sure she could see sunlight glinting off of the silky hair that turned gold during the summer but changed to the color of dried grass during the long winter months.

“Is that Cam, do you think?” she asked Burl, just to say the name. He finished out the line of melody and put his pipe away. Gwyn moved on now, as the figure from the village clambered up the slope ahead. “Wes'll think it's Rose.”

“No, he won't,” Burl said. Gwyn looked questioningly at him, but he said no more.

“Why not? From the distance how could he tell?”

“You don't walk in the same way,” Burl answered. “Besides, Rose would be wearing a cloak, with the hood up.”

“What do you mean we don't walk in the same way? There's only one way to walk, you put one foot ahead of the other.” But she didn't expect an answer because she did know what he meant. Whatever Rose did, whatever gesture she used, there was something dainty to it. Gwyn had never seen herself, but she felt inside herself a strength that flowed down her arms and legs, she could feel it especially in her shoulders. Gwyn was more like their oldest sister, Blithe, married two years this spring, and her first child died last winter.

Cam had spoken for Blithe, even though he had no holding of his own. It was his mother who had sold Da the vineyard and used the purchase money to buy a weaver's holding in the village, from Lord Hildebrand's Steward, when the Weaver and his only remaining daughter had died of a fever and the holding was empty. Cam's mother wove cloths, all the year round, on the loom set up in their main room; his two sisters wove also and their hands would be their dowries; but Cam didn't like sitting down to work. He said he had no need of roots chaining him to any single place. When Cam asked for Blithe, Da had answered with scorn in his voice. “I wouldn't give a field into your hands, much less my daughter.” Cam turned it into a joke: “I take it then your answer is no,” he had mocked, but Gwyn had heard the humiliation beneath his laughter and wished him better luck in life.

Wes moved heavily through the snow. Gwyn put down her basket while they waited for him to regain his breath. She planted the thick staff in the snow and leaned on it, hearing Wes's heavy breathing and the echo of Burl's melody against the silence of the snowy hills and the overlooking mountains. The sun shone warm on her head.

Wes she liked and thought Rose had done well to say yes to him. He was big and slow, and work at the forge put thick muscles onto his shoulders and legs. Like Da, he trimmed his beard short. His head was large, his hair brown and curly, his broad face frank and open—a face that concealed nothing.

“You didn't have to rush, we'd have waited for you,” Gwyn told him. He had taken time to put on a wrap, and a scarf to keep his neck from cold.

“Good day to you,” he said, greeting them both. His voice was as deep and rich as Mother's stew, and his words came out as slowly as thick gravy boiling upward over the fire. “Gwyn. Burl.”

Gwyn grinned at him. Wes's way of doing things was slow and deliberate. He had been so slow and deliberate in his courting of Rose that sometimes—she told Gwyn later—she had felt like taking him by his shoulders and shaking him. She would have had to climb up onto a stool to do that, and even so Gwyn doubted the tiny Rose could budge Wes in the slightest. “Good day,” she greeted him. He had come up to say something. He would say what he intended to say in his own time.

“It's a pleasant morning,” he said.

“But cold,” she reminded him. She waited. “Especially standing still,” she hinted.

“Aye, it's that,” he agreed. “I was thinking of coming to the Inn to see Rose, some afternoon. Do you think she would welcome a call?”

Gwyn shook her head solemnly at him. “I don't know.” His face fell. “Rose was saying just the other night that she thought there was something—or someone—she ought to be remembering. Isn't that so, Burl?” She turned to draw him into the joke but he didn't follow her lead. “There was someone, and Rose knew she ought to know who it was, but she couldn't for the life of her remember who. Something to do,” Gwyn improvised, “with horseshoes, but she wasn't sure if it was good luck or bad luck—”

Wes finally caught on. He clapped her on the shoulder. “Get away with you,” he said.

“I could take a message,” Gwyn offered.

“What I have to say I'll say myself, not trust to your quick tongue. Just tell her that I asked after her.”

“Not that you'll be calling?”

Wes refused to be drawn in. “That too. But no more.”

“Not a word more,” Gwyn promised. “I won't tell her how you looked, or that the forge was working, or whether or not you seemed eager to hear news of her.”

“Aye, and if I know you you'll tell her whatever you've a mind to,” Wes answered. “Does the girl keep you good company, Burl?”

“Da sent Burl to protect me,” Gwyn said quickly.

“That's a good thought,” Wes said, serious again. “So the Innkeeper thinks there's danger.”

Gwyn shrugged.

“It's a bad winter,” Burl said then. He stated this quietly, as was his way, but his very quietness gave his words more meaning.

“It's been five days since we had need to light the forge,” Wes agreed. “There was scant to be had at Lord Hildebrand's Doling Room yesterday. My mother went with the Weaver's daughter, and they say the Steward questioned them closely before he gave anything. They were gone all day. You'll be safe enough between here and Old Megg's though, I should think.”

Gwyn agreed with him. In this village, with the Inn to give the Weaver work, and the Blacksmith's shop, and Da's holdings to employ the people, hunger didn't gnaw so hard.

“I must go back,” Wes said. “You'll tell Rose?”

“Rose would welcome a visit.” Gwyn answered him at last what he wanted to hear.

“Would she then? It'll be good to set eyes on her.” At this embarrassing declaration, he turned away quickly and hurried down the hill. Gwyn and Burl walked on, their heavy leather boots making deep footprints into the snow.

Burl had never before spoken of the hardness of times; he never seemed uneasy. “Are times worse than ever before, think you?” Gwyn asked him. She wanted him to deny it.

“The worst I've seen. The men who come to the barroom are troubled,” he told her. “Afraid. When men are afraid, they're dangerous, that's what I've found.”

“Are you afraid?”

“The Inn's safer than most, lass,” he comforted her. “The Innkeeper has stores, and the Lords need to keep the Inns safe for the Messengers and the soldiers.”

“Do you think there's trouble coming?”

“Trouble's here, Innkeeper's daughter.”

That wasn't what she wanted to hear, but oddly enough he had comforted her. “Do you never wonder? Burl, why should we have so much when others have so little.”

He laughed then. “And if I could answer that question, I'd be a wise man.”

“Just because you can't answer a question doesn't mean you shouldn't ask it,” she snapped. She didn't like being laughed at.

“No, it doesn't. I won't quarrel with that,” he told her in his calm voice.

Gwyn moved ahead, to walk alone again.

In the land around the village there were few trees. This land had been cleared for fields of turnips, potatoes, onions. As they went higher, the hillsides grew steeper, difficult to plow and plant, better for grazing. Old Megg's hut was beyond the vineyard, over the crest of the hill, invisible until you came upon it. The snow had blown up against the low fences over which they trained the vines in the growing season, so that the hillside was crossed along with dark lines, like charcoal marks across the snow paper. Once again, Burl piped their arrival.

There were only a dozen goats in the herd at this time of year. The goats had a long open shed and fenced pen to keep them safe and give them some shelter. The one-room house sat close beside this. But the pen held only three goats and one kid. The gate to the pen hung open. Gwyn didn't hesitate—she ran through the trampled snow as fast as her long skirts would permit.

Burl was there before her, and she saw immediately the figure of Old Megg, sitting with her back to the stones of the fireplace, where a small fire burned steadily. Old Megg sat stiff, her legs covered over with blankets. Her white hair, the coiled braids slicked into place with grease, looked tidy, but her face was gray and exhausted. When she spoke, her voice had none of its usual energy. Gwyn had heard that voice all of her life, telling stories, telling her briskly to build a fire, instructing her how to mix pastry dough or gut a chicken while Old Megg's hands acted out the instructions. Now that voice spoke in broken phrases, as if each phrase had to be squeezed out of her throat.

“Thought someone'd come. Sometime soon. Goats are out.” Her eyelids closed.

“I'll shut the gate to keep in whatever's left,” Burl told Gwyn.

“I'll put on porridge. Can you bring wood?”

Old Megg seemed to be breathing all right, so Gwyn assumed she was asleep and set about stirring up the fire and putting on a spot of watery meal, made from the grain kept on the shelf by the fire. She looked around at the tidy room, where nothing seemed out of place. Half a dozen cheeses, each covered with thick wax, waited on the shelf. Opening the cupboards built into the walls of the house, Gwyn saw shawls and blankets in folded piles. The bedclothes hadn't been straightened.