Mine.
The word beats in time with his heart.
Mine mine mine …
Why can’t I remember?
The children’s mother has stayed at the cave. She sits
with her son, watching Sian test his injured leg by pacing circles around the
fire. Joel’s head swivels as the manhorse passes behind him, but his mother
waits for him to reappear in her line of sight. Her eyes follow him, moving
from right to left, her face motionless, until he disappears to become a series
of footsteps at her back. After a few rounds, Joel motions for Sian to change
direction. The far hind bears up well enough; better than it has since the
arrow first struck. He also feels more comfortable with all four legs though he
still expects to see boots when he looks down at his feet.
Boots? Yes, boots. If
he closes his eyes and tips his head forward, he can see them: soft doeskin
boots, worn and supple in the style of a favourite pair. And leathers, equally
worn and supple, snug inside the boots at the knee. My knee. My legs.
A man’s legs. A man, not a horse. Not a horse!
A strangled moan rouses him. His eyes open and the
boots vanish. The leathers and legs vanish. He stares down at smooth pale
hooves and listens to the heavy thudding of his heart.
Mine mine mine …
Joel’s mother watches. She is solemn and silent …
knowing. Sian can’t name why he believes it of her, but he does believe it. She
knows him as the boy Kev knows him, but while Kev has run from the knowledge,
the Lirosi woman is thinking. Pondering. Assessing.
Sian steps toward her. His intent is more apparent to
Joel than to him, for the boy promptly jumps up and roars in his face. The
tactic works; Sian rears back on his haunches and retreats to the far side of
the fire, where he wheels in small circles while attempting to gather his thoughts.
He didn’t mean to threaten her—did he?
“My son has no faith in manor dwellers.”
Sian stops his restless pacing and lifts his head.
Joel is gone and his mother has risen to her feet. Hers is the voice that came
like a velvet caress from across the cave. She smiles at his bewilderment. It
is not a particularly pleasant smile. He makes himself stand firm against it,
against the distaste in her tone when she explains that the oppressed must
learn to communicate with their oppressors. She speaks with an accent that
makes poetry of harsh words. He is as much lulled by the music as distressed by
the lyric.
“Have I oppressed you?” he asks, genuinely dismayed.
She studies him with her dark, omniscient eyes. That
she mistrusts him is obvious, yet she is capable of compassion else she would
not have tended his hurt. “No,” she says, slowly. “You have not.”
He steps forward, eagerly. “Then you know me? You know
who I am?”
“I do not know you myself. I can only guess.”
“Then guess.”
She smiles again. Though this one is less unpleasant,
he is yet chilled by it. “There is one who can say for sure.”
“Who?”
“The one who magicked the arrow that wounded you. The
one who shot the arrow … the one who made you.”
Sian takes another step. “Do you know him?”
“Your answer dwells at the manor, not with me or my
children. If you go tonight, I will not betray you. Be here in the morning, and
you may live to regret it.” She retrieves her bag and walks to the cave
entrance. Sian lunges after her, reaching with his hands. She whirls, her eyes
flashing, before he can grab her. “Your wish, my lord?”
Lord? He lowers his
hands, baffled and hurt that she has misperceived his intention. “I only wish
to thank you for your kindness. Your children, too. Without them, I would be in
far worse despair.”
She runs a meaningful gaze over his legs, back and
quarters. “My people have an innate love of horses. The children will do all
they can when they find one in despair.”
Yet Roanne held his hand while he was being stitched,
and he had felt Joel stroking his hair during the fever sleep. They have each
responded to the man as much as the horse. They have befriended him, fed him,
sheltered and cared for him … Roanne has even named him prince in her native
tongue. “They see me as I am,” he declares, defiantly enough to coax a cynical
smile from their mother.
“Did they speak to you?”
“They did.” With gestures and a few indistinct sounds
that he had deciphered with repetition.
Their mother knows better. “Do you wonder why the
children of parents who have learned your language do not speak to you in your
own tongue? They have refused to learn it for themselves. My son will not bow
to it, and my daughter will not be seduced by it. If they show you kindness, it
is because they are kindness itself. I will not have them tainted like the
arrowhead that struck you.”
Sian nods once, respectfully. There seems no point in
saying anything more.
* * *
It’s getting late but Roanne insists on walking Kev as
far as the orchard. The boy is so badly shaken that his teeth chatter in the
silence and she fears he might get lost beyond familiar landmarks. She would
take him to the house proper except that she’ll be expected at home for supper
and she must stop at the cave before then.
Lord Derrick’s younger brother. She
knows that the lord has a brother, but she spends so little time at the manor
that she’s never seen him. Kev says his name is Blais and he’s years younger
than Lord Derrick—the last child of older parents and thus more indulged than
his brother. “The resentful firstborn and the spoiled baby—you can imagine how
well they got along,” Kev says. He sighs, frowns, and stops talking.
Roanne prods him. “ ‘Got’?”
“Blais left the manor after a huge big row with his
brother that almost came to blows. Apparently,” Kev hastily adds. “I wasn’t
there. I heard it from someone who knows the maid who was sweeping the hearth
in the next room. Lord Derrick was in a rage so cold that the ashes in the
grate turned to ice crystals, she says.”
“What was the row about?”
“Lady Alarice, of course.”
Roanne is quiet, reflecting on her last sighting of
the lord’s lady. It was during the spring progress, when the noble couple rode
through the land, stopping at villages to grant favours and pardon
indiscretions. The children in the Lirosi encampment had strung along the
roadside to watch them go by. The bannered escort had come first, garbed in
livery of green and gray, mounted on dark horses. The lord and his lady had
followed, riding side by side on their matched blacks. Their heads had been
high, their shoulders straight and their eyes fixed front despite the ragged
applause from the onlookers they passed. Joel had narrowed his eyes and
clenched his fists, muttering, “They could at least look,” under his
breath. Roanne had laughed—too loudly, as it happened. Lady Alarice had turned
in her saddle and seen the scruffy little girl standing barefoot in the dirt.
Her eyes, a soft, liquid brown, had hardened along with her face, and she had
begun to turn her horse toward the child. Lord Derrick had grabbed her mount’s
bridle and hauled the animal back into line, but not before Roanne had been
seized by a queer woozy sense of dread. Lady Alarice hated her; she knew
it though Joel had dismissed her by saying that Lady Alarice hated all Lirosi.
“Lord Derrick likes us better,” he’d scoffed, “and he sets leg traps to
stop us hunting in our own woods.”
“She doesn’t hate the Lirosi,” Kev says now, offended
on his lady’s behalf. “I told you, she’s miserable with her husband.”
“So she hates everybody?” Roanne is skeptical,
remembering the lovely face growing taut atop its bones and an errant lock of
pale hair slipping from the lady’s hood. The memory alone makes her woozy
again.
“I guess she didn’t hate Lord Derrick’s brother,” Kev
remarks, sloughing through leaves of red, yellow and brown. His foot finds an
apple and sends it flying into the dusk. An indignant yelp follows a wet splunk
and Joel emerges from the trees, pawing irritably at a fresh stain on his
tunic.
“Good shot,” Roanne commends Kev, who beams.
Joel scowls. “Mam sent me to fetch you home, Roanne.”
“You go,” Kev tells her. “I can make it from here.” He
waits with her, though, while Joel moves soundlessly toward them. Kev is
reluctantly impressed. “How do you walk so quietly?”
“I’m Lirosi,” Joel replies in a tone that adds, stupid.
Roanne rebukes her brother. “He’s not that stupid if
he can learn Lirosi just by listening.”
Joel makes a face but has no argument. His sister is
right. Kev has learned the natives’ tongue and respects them enough to use it
in conversation with them; that’s why he’s been made welcome when others of his
kind are shunned.
He stands sullenly silent as Kev takes his leave. Then
he says to Roanne, “I think he loves you.”
She laughs as if it’s a joke, but Joel can tell that
she’s hopeful. She turns shy and girlish on the way home, her eyes misty with
dreaming as she idly kicks at the leaves.
To be continued …
copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig
