Dark Mist Rising (15 page)

‘
But you're dead,' I say.

‘
Eleven years dead,' she says, and gives a laugh that shivers
my bones. My mother cries No no no no ... .'

‘Roger! By damn, wake up!'

Tom, shaking my shoulder. Fia lay asleep, wrapped in Tom's cloak. The fire had died to glowing embers that cast dim ruddy light on Tom's angry face.

‘By damn, how can a man sleep with you yowling like that? And you might have woken
Fia
, and with her unwell!'

‘I'm sorry.' I said, inadequately. The dream swirled in my mind like bile.

‘Well, stop
doing
that,' Tom grumbled. ‘It startles a man!' All at once his face became more alert. He was always more wakeful at night than I, who preferred mornings. ‘Look here, Roger, I think it's time you explained about George. And that rebellion that don't exist.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said again. However, I had had hours of walking to prepare my lies. ‘But only think, Tom, I was just trying to do right by you. We knew the savages were after me. Every one of them that saw your face, on the other hand, is already dead. But if they find us together, they will kill you as well as me. They might even torture you, as they once did me. So—'

‘So you made up that piss pot story about George and a rebellion in order to send me away to safety?'

‘Yes.'

Tom considered. I saw, even in the gloom of the hut, the moment he accepted my story as truth. His was a generous and unsuspicious nature, and moreover his brain moved so slowly that nearly all lies could outrun it. All at once he, rather than Fia, reminded me of Cecilia. He was, despite that muscular bulk, a kitten.

‘I see,' Tom said. His face broke into a grin. ‘I'm so glad, Peter. Although I always knew you wouldn't really betray me. You
couldn't
. We're adventurers together. Still, you musn't try to protect me – that ain't your part. It's my part to protect you!'

‘All right,' I agreed. Tom had no idea what I actually needed protection from, nor how little he would have been able to supply it.

‘You're shivering,' Tom said. ‘Are you cold? Fia has my cloak but if you want my tunic to put atop your blanket—'

‘No, no, I'm fine.'

‘Are you certain?'

‘Yes. Let us go back to sleep, Tom.'

‘All right.'

But neither of us did. I feigned snoring, but my mind would not leave my monstrous dream. Tom tossed and turned, and twice he said softly, ‘Peter?' He wanted company. I did not. Eventually he grew quiet and his breathing deepened.

I did not sleep until nearly dawn, afraid of what dreams might come. But none did. When Tom and I woke, within moments of each other, the morning was far advanced, and Fia was gone. So was Shep.

‘I am not game,' Fia said crossly. ‘Nor was I lost.

I was merely gathering things we need.' Her apron was tied in front of her in a sort of bag; I had often seen countrywomen carry things in such a way. She sank gracefully to the ground and untied the apron. The pungent scent of wild onions tickled my nostrils. With them were several handfuls of nuts, various other plants I did not recognize, a packet of leaves tied with vine, a large bunch of greens and twelve black stones worn smooth by some stream. Fia untied the leaf packet. It held four quail eggs.

‘By damn!' Tom said enthusiastically. ‘I love quail eggs!'

‘Then both of you clear out and let me make a meal,' Fia said.

I said, ‘What are the stones for?'

She smiled at me and my heart turned over. She had washed her hair and clothing, perhaps in the same stream where she found the stones, and damp tendrils clung to her lovely neck. I pictured her bathing, naked in cold rushing water, and all at once my body responded like a soldier on parade. Had she noticed? I hoped not.

‘Call me when the food is ready. I need to ... to go and find Shep.' Hurriedly I moved away from the cabin, calling, ‘Shep! Shep!'

Behind me, Fia chuckled softly.

*

‘But, sweetheart,' Tom said, setting a large flat rock on an upended log and eyeing the resulting wobble with the sure knowledge that Fia would make him fix it, ‘we don't need Peter's snares. Shep can catch game.'

Fia raised her face from the nuts she was pounding into some sort of flour. Her look of sadness was back, so profound that even Tom noticed.

‘What's wrong, sweetheart? Shep still ain't back?' She didn't answer, and he turned to me. ‘Peter, is Shep back?'

I said to Fia, ‘He's not coming back, is he?'

She had once more bent her head over her work. ‘How should I know? I am here with you.'

But she knew.

Tom said, ‘Of course Shep'll come back! Good ol' dog!

Peter, I wish to talk to you outside.'

We left Fia to her pounding –
whap whap whap
of stone on nut meat – and went outside. Tom dragged me away from the cabin.

‘Listen to me, Peter. This girl likes me, and I like her.

That's obvious. So will you please leave us right after dinner for – oh – several hours? Until full dark?'

I didn't know what to say. All at once Tom's face darkened. He said bluntly, ‘You don't want her for yourself, do you? Because she don't want you.'

Did she? Lately she had smiled more at me than at Tom, and once or twice in the sway of her full-breasted body I thought I had seen an invitation ... but I must be wrong. Here was Tom, so confident, so handsome, so much more experienced with women than I was. For me there had been only Cecilia, whom I had loved but not bedded, and Maggie, whom I had bedded but did not love. I knew nothing of women, and knew that I knew nothing. And Tom had saved my life.

‘No,' I said miserably. ‘I don't want her for myself. But, Tom, you wouldn't ... you wouldn't ever insist, would you? Try to ... to force her?'

I thought he might become angry, might even strike me, and I braced myself for the blow. Instead he burst into hearty laughter.

‘Force her? Lad, Tom Jenkins need force no woman! If a man can't make a girl lie down and open her legs willingly, he don't deserve her! And I can! Now, go find an errand in the woods, right after dinner.'

Not waiting for my acquiescence, he turned and strode back towards the cabin, and not even Lord Robert Hopewell, lord protector for the Princess Stephanie, could have exuded more confident, masculine power. As I watched him go, I fingered Shadow's leather collar, still in my pocket. I wondered where Shep had gone. I wondered why Fia wished to go to The Queendom and why she tarried here. I wondered how long after dinner it would take Tom to get Fia's dress off. I wondered why I was destined to lose everything, always, that I desperately wanted.

But Fia had other ideas.

We had no sooner finished our meal than Tom began giving me significant looks. That evening we ate outside, sitting on the bare ground before the hut, and long slanting sunlight touched the tops of the forest trees and turned them green-gold. Fia produced the twelve smooth stones from her apron and cast them before us. ‘We will play at baz! It's great fun! I will teach you both.'

That sweet, beseeching smile, so at odds with her commanding tone. She was Cecilia, she was Maggie, she was herself.

Tom scowled. ‘What is
baz
?'

‘A game of chance.'

His face cleared. ‘Oh, a good thought, that! I have dice! Tell you what, sweetheart, you and I will wager while Peter gathers the wood for the night fire – it's his turn.'

Fia said, ‘I have already gathered tonight's wood.'

‘Oh! Then Peter will ... will—'

‘I must check the snares,' I said miserably. ‘It's good you made rush lights, Fia. I can take one to light my way, since I expect to be gone quite a while. In fact, I am looking forward to a good long walk.'

‘Then you shall have it tomorrow,' she said pertly. ‘For tonight, we play baz. Tom shall go first. You take six of the twelve stones in hand, Tom, and cast them into this triangle I draw in the dirt.'

There were many triangles drawn in the dirt, and many casts of stones, and despite myself I became interested. Baz turned out to be only in part a game of chance. It also involved strategy, as in battle, where one must out-think one's opponent. Fia did this well, but I did it better.

Tom was wretched at the game, and soon bored. His mood grew disgruntled and sulky and he shot meaningful glances at me:
Leave us!
But I found no pretext to do so, and Fia insisted that we play on.

‘That was a very good move, Roger,' she said to me, and my heart glowed for just as long as it took to glimpse Tom's face. ‘I can scarcely believe you have never played before.'

But she knew we had never played before; she hadn't even asked if we knew the rules before explaining them. This was a foreign game, brought from wherever Fia came from, and already she knew that it would be foreign to the folk of The Queendom. How?

Tom lost the last of his stones. ‘Goodnight,' he said abruptly, not troubling to hide either his humiliation or his displeasure. His glance at me was ugly. ‘Will you two play very late?'

I understood him. ‘No, I am too sleepy. Goodnight.' Ostentatiously I went to my pallet of pine boughs, my face turned to the hut wall. A spider spun a web inches from my eyes.

‘Goodnight, then,' Fia said, and went to bed, wrapped in Tom's cloak as in an impenetrable castle.

Tom swore softly in the darkness. I watched the spider. It had trapped a fly and was slowly, surely enveloping it in silken snares too strong to break.

The morning gained me two rabbits and a sore heart.

But Tom gained nothing. When I returned to the hut at midday, he was sweaty and hot from building a dam across the stream just below the waterfall, deepening the shallow pool. ‘No luck,' he growled. ‘She's slippery as a greased pole, that girl! And she's been gone the whole morning again, “gathering food”, leaving me to this stupid work – a “bathing pool”! Why does she want a bathing pool? People needn't bathe more than a few times a year. It ain't healthy.'

Fia bathed every day, but neither of us saw her do it. The bathing pool, it turned out, was for us. Fia expected daily washing. Moreover, she expected it when she was gone on her morning food gathering, from which she returned this time with more eggs, more greens for salad, bulbs of dog-tooth violet to roast in coals, more nuts and berries and strange herbs, and even some of the first wild honey.

‘How did you get it away from the bees?' I asked, my mouth watering. ‘Didn't they sting you?'

‘No,' she said with her sad lovely smile but no explanation. Tom was not interested in explanations, nor in honey; his mood was turning dangerous. He was not used to girls evading him. Scowling, he watched Fia through eyes narrowed to blue slits.

But she was encouraging to him at the midday meal, which we ate outdoors beside the new bathing pool. She smiled at Tom, even flirted a little. ‘Tom, the pool looks wonderful. How did you ever get that log in place? It must be so heavy!'

‘It was.'

‘Yet you managed it.'

‘Oh piss pots, I've lifted things heavier than that.' He straightened and expanded his chest like a pigeon during courtship.

‘You must show me.'

‘I will, sweetheart.' As Fia went inside to fetch him another tankard of honey-sweetened tea from the hearth, Tom whispered to me, ‘I've got her! Go away again this afternoon, Peter!'

I did. I sat on a fallen log well away from the cabin and, having nothing to do, did nothing. But I could not tolerate that for very long. And an idea, monstrous and horrible, had been growing in my mind. I must know the answer.

But there was only one course of action to discover it, or to have even a faint hope of discovering it. And I was afraid of that course. Three times I pulled out my little shaving knife to poke myself and cross over, and three times I stopped myself. I was afraid to go again to the Country of the Dead.

Those figures in the fog, that woman saying my name in tones that froze my blood ... It was not really Fia that kept me from crossing over. It was myself.