Fires of Winter (30 page)

“If you think so,” I replied, “the fields of Ulle must be very small indeed.”

“Compared with these, yes,” she agreed at once. “I cannot remember ever seeing eight oxen on a plow. Two are what we use most often, sometimes four to break new land.”

“The soil is light then?”

“I do not know,” she replied, looking at me with lifted brows. “I never looked to the farms, except to mark down the yield and lord's share and suchlike. I had my own garden, of course, for herbs and spices, but—”

“But a manor garden does not grow grain for bread or peas and beans sufficient to last the winter,” I interrupted. “Did you buy corn? And with what?”

“There are fewer people so we often do have enough,” Melusine said absently, her mind clearly elsewhere. Then she added, seemingly reluctantly, “And we have the wherewithal to trade—or did have before the king came and drove all the people away.”

I needed a moment before I could answer. “You have tripped into your own snare,” I remarked coldly. “I was with the king's force when we came down through Cumbria and there was strict order against looting or misusing the people where there was no resistance. In the north, there was some trouble, and those who made it were punished. But I know no one was driven away from Ulle. There was no one there to drive away.”

“The people fled in fear,” she answered insolently, looking right into my eyes.

“By your order?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said with a slow smile of calm defiance. “I had to stay. I knew I could not hold Ulle, but I was not going to
give
it away. Anything taken by force—and more so from a helpless woman—is an outrage than can be appealed to a just lord.”

“A just lord? King David?” My voice rose, but she still met my eyes.

“If he had the power to give me Ulle—yes!” Then she shrugged. “Since he has not, I will take it back from Stephen's hands as gladly.”

To hear that last sentence was a distinct relief, and I remembered now that when we came into Ulle it was empty. The common folk had not fled in a last minute panic with what they could carry. Everything of value had been taken from the manor as well as from the very small village outside the walls. So her admission that she had given the order for the people to go was probably true, but that tale did not sit well with what she had said to me some days ago about ordering the folk to submit and obey the king's warden.

“You cannot have it both ways,” I snarled. “Either you bade your people go or you bade them be quiet and obey the king's warden. Which is the lie, Melusine?”

She smiled at me, which did
not
ease my heart. “Do not be foolish. Why should both not be true? My people fled the army, but when that was gone, why should they not return? It was the dead of winter, and that hardship would be worse to bear than the harsh treatment of the warden. They could always go back to the hills in the spring if they were used too cruelly.”

I have never hit a woman—except a few gentle slaps on Audris's hands or bottom when she was a babe—but I came near it in that moment. What Melusine said might be the literal truth, but something in the way she said it made it into a lie. I was too angry to say more, and rode ahead for a time, but no matter how I turned the matter in my mind, I could see no present political purpose for either lying or defiance. There was no war in Cumbria now, no Scottish troops that could be victualled or supported by Melusine's people nor any of Stephen's men, except the guards living in Ulle itself, to be harmed.

Then it occurred to me that Melusine might still fear what she had done in the past could bring punishment on her. I thought of those men Stephen had disseised and exiled with their wives and families. If any had appealed to her, arms, comforts, and supplies might have been carried to them by those she had ordered to “run away.” But that was near a year past now and did not matter to me. All I cared about was what Melusine would do in the future.

However much the matter worried me, it did not weigh at all on Melusine's conscience. She was in high spirits, and I must confess teased me back into good humor by her unaffected appreciation of a landscape that most Southrons find too wild and barren. Only when we came near Carlisle she grew silent, sad too, I think, but she said nothing. To spare her, I did not seek lodging at the castle but sent Merwyn ahead to find a decent place that would take us in for the night. I would not have troubled her that night, but she clung to me, so I loved her until she was weary—I too—so she would sleep.

The next day I would have followed the path the army took, west to the coast road, then inland and north again, knowing no other. But when I set off toward the west, Melusine called me back, asking in surprise whether I did not wish to go to Ulle and then telling me there was a shorter way. It would take three days to go the long way round, she said—I knew that was true because it had taken the army more than a week—but we could be in Ulle before dusk if we followed her. There had been something strange in her look and manner from the time we woke this morning. Until she spoke of a quicker way to Ulle, I had believed she was tormented by sad memories. Now I had doubts. Still, I could not believe she would be so foolish as to try either to escape me or to lead us into some ambush, so I agreed to go her way; however, I was prepared for trouble, and I warned my men that we would be going into wild and dangerous country.

At first there was little difference between the old road to Penrith and the one we had followed from Jernaeve. Some distance past the town, though, as we topped a rise of ground, Cormi called out to me in a voice that held a note of fear. My hand was on my sword hilt before my eyes followed his pointing hand, but I knew he would not fear men, and then Merwyn, who was closer muttered, “Faery!”

“Faery?”

Certainly it was a ring, clear of brush and smoothly grassed as if scythed with care, but the faery were little folk, and this ring was some twenty yards across, with a ditch and fosse. However, I doubted that ditch and fosse were for defense. For one thing, though far too deep and high to be the work of the little folk, they were surely not sufficient to protect defenders; for another, I could see the top of the raised mound of earth, and that had never held post holes for a palisade. Moreover, I could see that there was an inviting path of smooth green turf leading into the ring.

“I do not know.” It was Melusine who answered my doubting question. “But I have passed it many times and have come to no harm.”

Her voice was flat, as if she had no interest in the strange place, but I thought she knew more of it than she wished to say.

“This is Lady Melusine's country,” I said to the men, “and she says this place is not dangerous—”

“No, I did not say that,” she interrupted. “I know one can pass it in daylight in safety,” she went on. “But that is all I know. I would not want any to come to harm from thinking I give more assurance than I do.”

That made me wonder if Melusine was deliberately warning us away because this was a meeting place for the rebels. I looked at it again as we came down the hill and almost laughed aloud at my silliness. What right-minded man would come to so strange a place, even to plot mischief when he could meet his friends by his own fireside or in some wholesome wood or field with less chance of being seen. Melusine must be speaking the truth about the ring, even if she was not telling all she knew.

As we came down, the ring was hidden by the trees that bordered the road. We passed it warily, kicking the horses into a canter, but we did not hold the pace long. Melusine, who seemed somewhat amused by our caution—the first lightening in her somber mood that day—soon called to us to turn back. She had stopped Vinaigre by the opening to a narrow track that I had thought a game trail. It led southwest into what seemed a stark wilderness. Before we had ridden half a mile, the track met and followed a small river. By then it was clear this was no game trail. Low branches had been lopped back to make a wide enough passage for pack animals and brush had been cleared, but I saw that the track had not been used often this year; there was new growth that had not been cut. Melusine saw it too, but what she thought of it I could not tell. Her face was closed—dark and sad again.

Though narrow, the track was clear and easy to follow, and we rode along for near an hour with no surprises until on a low rise it opened out into a small meadow. My breath caught at the beauty of the scene below us. Melusine had stopped beside me, and I heard a faint sound—a sob? I put out a hand blindly to pat hers, but I could not tear my eyes from the landscape. A long lake gleaming silver under the lightly cloudy sky stretched away into the distance, bordered by steep hills that folded into each other, green with forest close at hand and shading into blue and purple in the distance. Aside from a few sheep grazing the meadow, four very small houses, and what looked like a stable and fenced yard for horses down near the water, there was no sign of man's hand in this wilderness. To the east of the lake, however, I was not sure the mountain came directly down to the water. Though the bank rose steeply, there might be a fold of land behind that could hold an arable valley. But if the track we rode on began again to the east, behind the few dwellings, there was no sign of it.

There was not much sign that the road continued south along the west side of the lake either, but Melusine confidently trotted Vinaigre across the north edge of the valley and then down toward the lake. I almost called out, thinking she was about to plunge into the water, when she turned right sharply and disappeared. Since there was no splash, I followed calmly enough, only to find myself perched on a trail not much wider than Barbe's barrel and hanging over the lake. The drop was not much at this point, perhaps four or five feet, but ahead I could see a few brown and grey splotches where the track was not edged with trees and they were a hundred feet or more high.

Fechin, seeing where my eyes were directed, uttered a snort. “We be needin' spiders, not horses, to get up there.”

Melusine was already well ahead, so I could only shrug and touch Barbe gently with my heels. He started willingly, by which I guessed the track must feel solid and steady to him. “Do not look down,” I called back over my shoulder. “Watch the horse ahead and the trail itself for holes or loose stones.”

I began to follow Melusine's rapidly disappearing back, and then had to shout to her to stop. That devil of a mare instead started a fast trot, which Melusine did not check, but I could not follow. Cormi had just called to me that Edna was in trouble. I cursed Melusine fluently as I backed Barbe a few steps to a spot wide enough to turn him. She could not get far nor elude me for long, but I was sick inside with fear that she had taken the first chance she had to escape.

I cursed Edna too, although she, poor creature, did not deserve it. Truthfully, I had been much surprised by how cheerfully she had accepted the discomforts of the long trip, how attached she seemed to Melusine, and her stoic endurance on this ride. She had only had a few hours of practice to accustom her to being perched on a horse, and we had ridden nearly forty miles from Jernaeve to Carlisle. When she dismounted at our lodging the night before, Melusine noticed how stiff Edna was and asked me to send a man to buy a liniment to rub on her sore muscles. She was better although still uncomfortable when she came to help Melusine dress in the morning, but she made no complaint when Fechin lifted her to Merwyn's saddle pad nor later when she was shifted to Cormi's to rest Merwyn's horse. I thought she might have grown faint from pain and weariness, but it was the sight of the road winding up on the cliffs that had frightened her so much she nearly fell off.

“Let me walk,” Edna sobbed, when I asked if she could go forward after a short rest. “I will follow faithfully. I will run to keep up, but I cannot bear to sit up so high and look into nothing.”

“My lord—” Fechin began, and then stopped suddenly, his eyes going past my shoulder.

I turned sharply to see Melusine coming back toward us at a sharp trot, and I had to grit my teeth to keep from shouting aloud with joy. My wife—the word was sweet in my mouth, although I did not utter it—my wife had not used the length of rope I had given her to hang herself.

Fechin shook his head and looked back at me. “Your lady makes us look fools,” he went on, “but we'uld all be easier on our feet goin' up there.”

Apparently Melusine had heard him, because she cried, “Oh! Do forgive me.”

She sounded truly contrite and, oddly, somewhat embarrassed, and put out her hand to me, which I took and pressed warmly. If it had not been for the men, I would have kissed her; in fact, so great was my relief that my passion stirred, and if I could, I would have dismounted both of us and played mare and stallion without the help of Vinaigre and Barbe. Melusine must have seen that in my face—I hope no one else did—because she found a small smile for me.

“I…my mind has been on…on other things,” she said. “I forgot your men were not accustomed to our roads. This road is perfectly safe, all sound, but the men can walk if they like. Ulle is less than three leagues and they cannot get lost.” She looked at Fechin and smiled. “You need only keep to the road that follows the lake. There are only four tracks that turn off and they go directly away from the water.”

The men dismounted with sighs of relief, and I turned Barbe and followed Melusine. This time she did not allow Vinaigre to go faster than a walk and I was close behind. Farther on, the road curved a little inward where the land was flatter and widened so I could ride abreast.

“You did not include me in the invitation to walk,” I remarked. “But I wish you to know, I am quaking in my stirrups and hope you will keep a sober pace.”

Cleverly, she looked at Barbe, not at me. The horse showed no nervousness—and he was a nervous horse—so she could assume I felt none. “I did not think you would let me go alone,” she said, “and I certainly do not wish to walk all that way.”