Wild Wood (13 page)

Standing on the curb outside St. Barts, Jesse looks at her watch. The place is busy as buses disgorge passengers and taxis pull up.

She’s beginning to hope. Is that good, or is it bad? The guidebook helped; Frommer’s is quite informative about Jedburgh. Apparently it’s an ancient town on one of the main routes between London and Edinburgh, and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, stayed there for a while (at the end of the love affair with Bothwell; not good). There’s an abbey and a castle, and it’s about six hours from London in a fast car. She’s found Priorsgate on the foldout map of the town. She hadn’t expected that. Can it really be this easy?

The honk of a horn and she swings around. Rory Brandon’s waving from a
NO STANDING
zone. Jesse hefts her shoulder bag, careful to carry it on the left.

“All set?” He leans over to unlock the door. “Sorry to be late.”

She says impulsively, “I’m glad your supervisors agreed, Dr.
Brandon. And I just wanted to say thank you.” Her mood has lifted. She means it.

Mock severe, he says, “Rory. Go on. Repeat after me . . .”

A duck of the head. “Rory. There.” But she doesn’t quite look at him.

“Seat belt.” He points.

But it’s not easy pulling the belt across her body with the left hand and negotiating around the sling.

Rory reaches over. “Let me.”

Jesse leans back against the seat, trying not to get in the way.

“There you go. Done.”

But it feels unexpectedly intimate. Jesse says hastily, “Should you be parking here?” A parking cop is working his way along the curb. “I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

Rory waves at the cop—who, surprisingly, waves back. “They know me here. Off we go.” The Saab slips away from the hospital like a fish joining a greater shoal as he turns the car to the north. “I prefer the indirect route, by the way. The drive’s longer but it’s worth it—you see the countryside a bit more. We’ll head for Durham first—that’ll be about half the day with traffic—then on to Newton Prior. It’s about an hour inland from the coast, just where the country rolls up toward the border with Scotland.”

“Newton Prior?”

“It’s a pretty little market town on the English side.” He flicks her a glance. “D’you mind if I speed up a bit? It’s quite a distance.”

She holds up the guidebook. “Frommer’s says it’s around six hours in here—to Jedburgh, at least. Speed away.”

“Only if there’s no roadworks. My advice is, try to sleep.”

“No thank you. Banked enough zeds to last for a bit.” Jesse smiles at sunny London flowing past. Hypnosis. Who’d have thought it? No more odd dreams, or drawings either, and even the pain of knitting bones is less with each passing day. Weeks of weirdness and now this: a moment that feels as if she’s breathing champagne, and the beginning, the true beginning, of the search.

How could she have turned him down?

Everything has a reason, Jesse.
The girl hears her mum’s voice as clearly as if Janet Marley’s sitting in the backseat.

Jesse finds she’s smiling. She’s actually feeling quite lighthearted. She can’t remember the last time.

In the morning light, London glitters and flirts as it rushes past, and whenever he can, Rory pushes the revs as he weaves across town toward the ring road and the motorway north.

Jesse shouts over Roxy Music on the tape deck, “You’re a leadfoot!”

“No one’s ever called me that before.” But Rory’s grinning as they slip onto the motorway and dodge into the fast lane. Sixty, seventy, seventy-five . . .

Jesse eyes the needle. It’s nudging red. “Not concerned about the cops, then.”

“Never had a ticket.”

“What, true?”

“I’m invisible when I want to be.” The grin is wider.

“Me too. But I was six last time it worked.”

“O ye of little faith.” He shifts down until the engine whines, then drops back into top gear as the car divides the air like an arrow. Settled in front of the flow again, he flips a glance at his passenger. “Relax. Really. I know this road.”

“
Relax
. Now there’s a word.” Jesse wriggles deeper into the seat. Her eyes drift closed as she wills her breathing to slow. She’s better at that than she used to be. With each mile that passes, she gets closer to her past, her true past.

And her real mother.

If there’s any certainty in this world, Jesse knows she’ll find her. She absolutely will.

11

DECEMBER 1321

T
HAT COLD
summer bled into a wet autumn and, with the sun hidden behind clouds, the harvest failed again in the border country. By October, a murrain appeared among the cows and the sheep began to founder, their feet rotting in mire that never dried. As the year turned dark just before the blood month, nights became cold too early and famine stalked the people, for they had no stores of food.

The year saw other kinds of pestilence also—winds that brought down forests, hail that beat through roofs, and a constant rain that reduced the folk to misery and the trackways to bogs. And then came death. Children died first of a sweating sickness, followed soon enough by their starving parents. When wind blew from the north, the land reeked of rotting flesh, and the crows had never been fatter.

Perhaps we were luckier than most. With so much of the countryside famine-struck, the reivers in the border country had been less active. Though our troop was expected to live off the land—a task that could not be pursued with compassion—we carried some provisions, meager though they were.

“They will not take so many beasts this year. Unless they wish
to kill their own with the pest.” After eating, Maugris had emptied his bladder beyond the light of our fire. My brother was fastidious. He said it kept him sane when all we did was ride and fight and sleep on freezing ground.

“Have you seen cows worth taking around here? I have not.” I made room for him beside the hearth of the ruined house.

“Anything on four feet is worth eating these days. I expect that will be their downfall.” Maugris wiped his eyes as the wind changed, blowing smoke over us both. “Mary’s milk, I’m getting too old for this life. We should have taken them by now.”

I sucked marrow from the shank bone I’d cracked. There was nothing to say. We had followed a band of raiders for days through the glens and forests—Scots or English, we could not tell—but this morning they had outrun us back over the border toward Jedburgh, so confirming who they were. Our men and our horses were exhausted, and there were not enough of us to challenge the raiders on their own ground, as we had earlier in the year. Tomorrow, we would turn back toward Alnwick to report on the engagements we had fought. I brooded on what that would mean; pursuing men who turned to mist would be no excuse when we spoke with Henry Percy.

“Brother.” Maugris pointed at the grease running down my chin. He thought we should set an example, but this was the first fresh meat we’d had in a week and I did not care.

I threw the shank into the coals. There was nothing to burn but the bone. “Do not reproach yourself. They had the advantage today, that is all.”

Maugris found a place on the log we’d dragged to the fire. “Is there any more meat?”

I pointed with my knife. The ewe’s carcass had been dismembered on the hearthstones when it was cooked. The men had been patient as the food was distributed, but all they had left was a puddle of fat and the feet. At least tonight we were more warm than cold.

Maugris sighed. “Ah, well. At least we found this place. That was luck.” He waved toward the stars above our head. “It’s even got a roof, if you don’t count the holes.”

I rolled on my back. Maugris was right: enough of the roof remained to make it worthy of the name, though the slates were not well held to the rafters. The hearth and the fire had cheered us, though, along with the poor old ewe. We had heard her bleating, her voice still strong for one so close to death, and that had drawn us to this place as dark fell. A chestnut tree had fallen in a storm and broken one of her legs, but the ending of that pain-filled life was worthy, for she saved ours. Maybe she understood our gratitude as I slit her throat.

I waved toward the roof timbers. “This would have been a good house once. Defensible.” Unruined, the building must have stood two or three stories tall, though all the floors were missing.

“Do you really care?” Maugris yawned.

“Someone has to. Too many abandoned homesteads in the marches.”

Maugris said testily, “If you are still angry at Godefroi after all these months, then you are a fool.”

“Lower your voice.” I tipped my head toward the men on the other side of the blaze. Some were asleep, but others were not.

“He will not change, Bayard. He does what he thinks is best for Hundredfield. For us all.”

“So it is
best
he nearly killed the reeve who served our family for longer than our own lives? It was not Swinson’s fault Alois did what he did.”

My brother’s face was hard. “Tell me this, Bayard. If it had been you, what would you have done? A man died, one of our own.”

There was no resolving this argument. He thought me soft, I thought him blind. I gestured toward our men. “Why do they fight for us?”

Each year greater levies of men were commanded by the wardens of the march to counter the Scots who hurled over the border
into English lands, and to contain the English raiding families who pillaged the other side from vengeance. Sometimes the English and the Scots worked together against us. We were surprised by nothing in those days.

Maugris did not look at me. “We feed them, and our work protects their families. And we take them home when their service is done.”

“Feed them? Take them home?” I shook my head. “Do you know why none deserted for the harvest this year?” My brother was silent. “Because there was no harvest.”

“This bitter weather is everywhere, Bayard.”

I spoke over him. “No. Sheep graze on Hundredfield’s common and on the flats beside the river. And some of our men have no homes to return to because Godefroi wills it so. It is no wonder the raiders fight as they do and take what they can. There is no justice in the border marches.”

Maugris murmured, “We are justice, Bayard.”

The old wound on my chest began to throb. I shook my head.

He said quietly, “Godefroi has a wife now, and soon a child. He wants to give them a better life than we had. Times change. A man has to fight if he is to hold what he has.” Maugris wrapped his cloak tight and lay down by the fire with a sigh. “I will be glad to sleep in some kind of bed soon. Even straw would make me happy.” When I did not answer, he nudged me with his boot. “Are you awake?”

“No.”

His bark of laughter rolled out into the night.

“I hear nothing good from Hundredfield. Godefroi is too much in his bedroom, and the reivers encroach. They have a new captain. A renegade monk, I’m told.”

I started, but Maugris said smoothly, “The Lady Flore, our brother’s wife, is with child. If he is in her chamber, it is to offer
comfort as a good husband should.” Out of Henry Percy’s sight, Maugris nudged me.

I said hastily, “Yes. Gossip spun from malice.”