“Four Legs and a Tale (Part XI)”

 

 

He still has four legs and a tail, but his memory is better. He recalls confronting Alarice while the children scurried to foil her. It appears that Joel was successful, for the woman is dead, and Alarice was not, for the manhorse is still alive. Groggy, but alive.

With the help of eager hands, he gets his legs beneath him and heaves himself upright. Roanne is the first to embrace him, throwing her arms about him and pushing her face against his chest. She’s been crying; her face is hot and wet, and she explodes into sobs when he puts his arms around her. Joel is misty, too, beaming defiantly and sprinkling agitated pats over Sian’s shoulder to draw attention from his uncharacteristically moist eyes. Sian lays his cheek on Roanne’s hair. Holding her is a greater relief than a pleasure, though a greater pleasure than relief is blooming where the dark orb had struck. He must learn to speak Lirosi, he thinks—and is startled by the laughter that erupts as he thinks it.

“You speak Lirosi very well,” Joel commends him, patting even more frantically at his shoulder.

“Too well,” the man growls. Sian knows him from the stable, where in the past he has been encountered tending Derrick’s horses. Norra’s father, he remembers with a pang. He lost her before he was able to pledge himself to her family.

“Why did you wait until now?” Roanne asks him.

“I didn’t know I knew.”

Joel scoffs. “Now you’re talking like Kev.”

Sian smiles as Roanne aims a backhanded slap at her brother, who jumps nimbly beyond her range. The gesture disrupts their embrace, further broken by her father’s deliberate removal of her from the manhorse’s arms.

“I’ll take you to Lord Derrick.”

Sian disagrees. “I’ll go on my own—and I’ll take Alarice with me.”

“You can’t go alone,” Roanne protests. “Da, he can’t. Joel and I have to tell the lord what happened. Mam, tell Da.”

The woman has been a watchful ghost since Sian’s recovery—and perhaps even earlier than that. She seems disinclined to tell her husband anything, since he seems the sort who can’t be told very much, but she does make a small motion with her head that indicates mild support for her daughter’s argument.

They load Alarice across Sian’s back and leave the cave for good. The manhorse is flanked by Kev on one side and the children’s father on the other, each engaged in steadying the body as he gingerly picks his way downhill. The far hind leg continues to aggravate him and his gait is stilted, slowing their progress. It makes the pace easier for Joel to match. Though his mother offers to carry him, he adamantly refuses on the basis of being too old for such mollycoddling. This inspires the one genuine smile Sian has seen her allow herself.

She walks in silence at his near shoulder. Joel has also refused to hold her hand, choosing to run a few steps ahead rather than suffer a third maternal indignity. Roanne is on Sian’s right. He has quickly grown accustomed to her hand on his wither and misses it now. With Da so close behind, she seems reluctant to display too much affection.

He wants to ask after Norra. He remembers nothing beyond the revelation of Alarice’s jealousy. In the next instant, he realizes something else. The shock halts him in mid-step.

The children’s father clicks his tongue as if Sian is all horse. Roanne chides him. “Da, he’s a man as well.”

Her mother speaks for the first time. “A man has pride, child. You don’t speak of him as if he’s dumb.”

Joel retraces his few steps and searches Sian’s face to explain the delay. “What is it?” he asks.

Sian pretends not to hear. He resumes walking, but with every step the load on his back weighs heavier and heavier, until his very heart labours to beat. He finds it curious that he has no impulse to weep, for he has good cause to do so. The puzzle occupies his mind for the rest of the journey, a welcome distraction from fearing reunion with his brother.

 

* * *

 

The odd little group sends the manor house into a fluster as soon as they are sighted. An entire Lirosi family is unusual enough; that family accompanied by a creature known only in legend, and who carries their lady’s body on his back, incites all sorts of hysteria. Da immediately calls for the reeve, but someone has gone straight to Lord Derrick himself. Roanne hovers close to Kev in the chaos, trusting him to interpret for her. He takes her by the hand. She senses him finding a similar comfort in her presence as she finds in his, and is glad for the boldness in his gesture. “It’ll be all right,” he whispers. His voice is reassuringly steady.

Sian asks Da to relieve his back of Lady Alarice’s weight. Da obliges in terse silence. Sian speaks again and beckons with both hands. Softening a little, Da surrenders the lady just as Lord Derrick arrives like a brusque north wind.

He is so appalled that he does not notice the hooves where Blais’s boots should be. All he sees is his wife draped, limp and pallid, in her lover’s arms. “What …” he swallows, barely able to choke out two words, “… happened?”

“Her magic turned on her,” Blais replies. His voice is flat, devoid of inflection or emotion. His face reflects his voice. He has not seen his brother in … he does not recall how long, but it seems a lifetime since their last heated exchange.

Derrick continues to stare at Alarice, either ignoring or oblivious to the others. “I am free,” he murmurs. His eyes close, and he sways as if his legs are about to buckle. Da steps forward to offer a hand, but the lord regains his composure before contact can be made. Eyes open once more, he meets his younger brother’s steady blue gaze and attempts to defend himself. “She bewitched me, Blais.”

“She bewitched us all,” Blais retorts, bitterly. He deliberately drops the lady. Lord Derrick’s gaze falls with her and his eyes grow impossibly round when she lands at his brother’s blond hooves. He stammers in disbelief, unable to grasp what cannot be true.

“How … what … she didn’t … she couldn’t …”

Blais is uncommonly cool in the face of Derrick’s uncharacteristic babbling. “She is, as she has always been, yours, big brother. Do with her as you see fit.”

“Wait!” Lord Derrick lunges to stop Blais from turning. His hand closes on the manhorse’s arm; Blais jerks free with a hiss, lifting his forefeet from the ground. Derrick quickly retreats from striking range of the hooves. His mind cannot grasp what his eyes insist on showing him. He fixes on his brother’s face, but even then, he barely recognizes the man behind it. Blais was fiery and impetuous, always quicker to argue than see sense. This creature is cold by comparison; cold and remote as his little brother never was. “What’s happened to you? You must tell me; I must know!”

“Isn’t it obvious what’s happened to me? I was never her lover, Derrick. I never looked twice at her, and she could not bear it.”

“So she did this?”

“I was in love with another girl—”

“The horse girl,” Derrick sneers, remembering.

“The daughter of these good people,” Blais says sharply, nodding respectfully to the man and woman standing with Kev and their children to one side. “Alarice tracked us to the stable—”

“ ‘Tracked’ you?”

Some of the familiar fire sparks in Blais’s eyes. “How else could she have discovered us? She didn’t like horses. She didn’t hang about the stable for the pleasure of their company. I’m telling you, she tracked us—tracked me—and when she found me with Norra, she vowed to part us as vengeance to her jealousy. She didn’t love you, Derrick. She didn’t love me, either. Alarice loved no one but herself.”

Derrick’s jaw is set like stone. “She made a fool of me.”

“You made a fool of you. I worshipped my big brother. I didn’t always agree with you, but I worshipped you nonetheless. I would never have done what she let you believe I had done, the things you accused me of doing. If you had given me credit for half the wits I gave you, nothing Alarice said would have mattered.”

“Does it matter now?” Derrick asks. “She’s dead. The truth is out.”

Blais wearily shakes his head. “The truth was the truth while she lived. You chose to accept the lie, so yes, what she said does matter.” He studies his brother’s solemn face. “What happened to Norra?”

Derrick is immediately offended. “I sent her back to her parents. ‘These good people’,” he amends, with an edge to his tone as he jerks his head toward her family. “By the way, they believed far worse of you than I did.”

“That may be, but they have helped me today.”

“So you’ll go with them?”

“If they will have me. I don’t fit in your world anymore—if I ever did. Any hope I had of being restored has died with the one who made me; and are you not the least bit curious about how she died?”

“You said her magic turned on her.”

Blais turns to display the wound on his hip. “She bespelled an arrowhead and aimed to kill.”

“Then why are you not dead?” Derrick inquires, coldly.

It’s a fair question; one that Blais cannot readily answer. Then he smiles. “The children saved me.”

Derrick snorts disdainfully. “The horse people.”

“The bravest, kindest people I have ever known,” Blais declares. He motions with his head to the children. Joel dashes forward and gleefully springs aboard the manhorse’s back, throwing his arms around Blais and burying his face in his blond hair. Roanne is more cautious but no less loving when she comes abreast of him and slips her hand into his.

 

To be continued …

 

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig