Fire Along the Sky (14 page)

“This won't be pleasant,” Hannah said. “There's a leather strap in my bag if you need something to bite into.”

The man's head fell back against the mattress and he burped and farted at once. Perhaps not Milton, after all, but more of Robert Burns, thought Jennet dryly.

“Just go away,” he said. “I ain't got a red penny to pay you.”

“Hardwork,” said Hannah, ignoring this direct order. “I am going to need a lot of water. Bring me a basinful and then set more to heating.” She pulled a length of clean cloth from her basket and spread it out on the only unoccupied corner of a table piled high with dirty dishes and cutlery. In quick movements she began to lay out her instruments on the cloth.

“A full bucket's worth, do you understand? Make sure the kettle is clean before you put the water to boil, scour it with sand if you have to,” Hannah said, looking up to make sure the boy was listening. Her tone was short and a little sharp but not unkind. “And make sure you stoke the fire well, I need it very hot.”

Hardwork was studying his bare feet, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Ma took the kettle with her.” He almost whispered it, but it was enough to rouse Horace, who had fallen back into a stupor.

He looked right at Jennet with such a strange mixture of pain and fury that she must lean forward when he beckoned with one finger.

“I'll die, and then she'll be sorry she took that kettle.” He hiccupped softly. His breath was so heavy with alcohol that Jennet felt momentarily dizzy.

Hannah made a dismissive sound. “You won't die today, Horace Greber, though you may want to before I'm done. Hardwork, listen now. I need that basin of water to start with, and then you can go borrow a kettle and some soap and some clean linen too. And hurry or you'll miss the start of Jennet's story.”

“What story is that?” said Hardwork, looking more interested now and not quite so desperate.

“Hurry back or you'll never know,” said Jennet. “And won't you be the poorer for it?”

In the short time Jennet had spent in Paradise her stories had already become legend, for she was filled with them and they must spill out, often at the oddest times. Stories of her clansmen and battles fought for freedom from tyranny; villains and heroes and those who were a little of each; the well-loved stories of the Pirate Stoker and how she and Hannah had outfoxed him as girls, or tried to; stories of treasure lost and never found; stories about her home and her childhood and her family; stories about her journey and a little dog named Pip who could do the most amazing tricks and understood three languages.

She read the tarot cards for anyone who showed an interest in them. Each time was the same: she would lay them down in a pattern, study each with a great seriousness, consult her notes, and then launch into a reading that was a combination of anecdotes, observations, suggestions, and gentle admonitions. Curiosity was especially interested in the cards and she and Jennet sat down with them whenever Hannah came to see Richard or work in the laboratory.

Now Horace Greber peered up at her from the depths of his drunkenness, his face wet with perspiration, and asked for something he would have never allowed himself under other circumstances.

“Will you read the cards for me?”

What Horace was looking for, Hannah knew without a doubt, was a promise that he would not die today or tomorrow or next week. This was clear to Jennet too. She would refuse his request, Hannah knew, but first she was deciding what story she would tell to appease him. Just as she herself must think long and hard about what medicines would serve the problem at hand most effectively, Jennet chose her tales carefully. Many-Doves called Jennet Moon-Spinner, and it fit her well: she could cast stars up into the sky with her words alone.

“Not the cards,” said Jennet. “Not today. Today I think you'll want to hear about old MacQuiddy, and why it was he never took a wife.”

At that Hannah could not hold back a smile. Jennet's supply of stories about MacQuiddy were each of them more outrageous than the last, and stories about him were a favorite among the villagers.

Under a layer of grime and sweat Horace had gone very pale as Hannah began her work, but he was determined to ignore her. He grunted his approval at Jennet.

“A clever man, MacQuiddy.”

“Was he, do you think?” asked Jennet. “You'll have to listen and decide for yourself.”

“First,” Jennet began when Hardwork had taken a stool on his father's far side, “you must recall that MacQuiddy was steward to my father the earl and his father before him. For fifty years MacQuiddy was the best of servants, and the sourest of men.

“Now you might ask, what was it that filled Colin MacQuiddy with such gall? He could not open his gob to shovel in a spoonful of porridge but that sour words must fall out first, no matter how fast he ate. Perhaps it was the heavy responsibility on his shoulders. Perhaps his teeth were a misery to him, or a bunion on his big toe, or worry for a brither who went to sea as a boy. But the truth is far stranger, and it starts with a simple fact. MacQuiddy had no wife and no bairns of his own to order about, you see, and so he must make do with the servants and other innocent wee lasses as chanced to come across him unawares.”

Horace grunted in pain and then cleared his throat in embarrassment. Without interrupting her story Jennet fed him a spoonful of the medicine Hannah had prepared, strong smelling and dark.

“The truth of it was, MacQuiddy should have found a wife without doing so much as flicking a finger. He was aye bonnie as a young man, from a good Carryckton family, and he served the earl himself in a position of trust. He should have had a wife, and he could have had a wife, except—”

At the other end of the bed Hannah had opened a vial and a smell filled the room, slightly bitter and still sweet. Horace tensed and tried to sit up, but Jennet put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down again.

Beneath the grime his skin was milky white. “Except?” he croaked.

“There's always an except,” Hannah volunteered in the calmest of voices.

“Aye, that's true.” Jennet spread her hands out on her lap. “You see, in the days when he was young, before he came to serve at Carryckcastle and long before he began his life's work of making wee lasses miserable, it fell to MacQuiddy to drive the cows in from the field to the milkmaids. Now one summer as he was coming along with the cows at gloaming, he chanced to spy a wee creature all clad in green, and with long yellow hair like gold, coming toward him.”

Hardwork's expression was blank with wonder. “A fairy?”

“Aye, a fairy, a bonnie fairy no bigger than a lass of three years—but still a woman grown, in her body and face. Fair beautiful she was, but with something wild in her eye, something fierce that was hard to look at. MacQuiddy couldna describe it with words, try as he might.

“I havena told you yet that in his youth MacQuiddy was far and wide the tallest of all the lads and men alike, long and thin as a stick bug, so very tall that the wee fairy reached only to his knee. She had to put her head back to look him in the face. And she raised up her voice, high and unearthly it was, and she looked MacQuiddy right in the eye and she called up to him as from the bottom of a well. ‘Colin MacQuiddy! I'm looking for Colin MacQuiddy!'

“Now, everybody knows that the polite thing to do when a body calls your name is to stop and greet them, fairy or no. But MacQuiddy lost his nerve and he ran away, right into the milking barn and shut the door behind himself with a crash.

“He could hardly speak for trembling, but when he finally found the words to tell the tale, the milkmaids laughed at him. It was young Gelleys Ballentyne who told him. ‘Why, Colin MacQuiddy,' said she with a wink and a smile, ‘that's a wife come for you this night. You must go and take her hand.'

“‘A wife!' cried MacQuiddy. ‘May the good Lord keep me from such a wee wife as that!' And he told everyone later that he was in such a fear that the hairs stood up on the back of his neck like the bristles on a hog. All the time he stood there trembling the fairy was outside calling him by name, you understand, for she had set her eyes on MacQuiddy for a husband. He waited and waited for her to go, and when he could wait no longer the fairy followed him back home and then—believe it or not—Colin MacQuiddy closed the door in her face.”

Jennet looked sternly first at Horace and then at Hardwork. Horace was sweating openly, his face tight with pain, so it fell to Hardwork to ask the question.

“Is it wrong to close the door on a fairy?”

At that Jennet straightened her back and put a hand to her breast. “I can see you've no had the pleasure,” she said. “Listen then and I'll tell you what happened. The wee folk are proud creatures and sly too, and spiteful when they've been slighted.”

The boy leaned forward, but Horace had closed his eyes, and the muscles in his neck and jaw convulsed alarmingly.

Jennet said, “MacQuiddy never found a wife who would have him. Can you imagine it? No lass would have the MacQuiddy.”

“For fear of the fairy?” asked Hardwork.

“Do you think? Perhaps, for fairies are aye jealous creatures. But if that was the revenge she took on him, it wasna enough to satisfy her hurt pride. It was a year or more before anybody took note, but starting on the day MacQuiddy turned away his fairy bride, he began to get smaller. Just a wee bit every year,” she added quickly, holding up her fingers to show them. “But nothing he did would stop it. Nothing he ate or drank, no prayers he might say, no teas or cures or charms, year in and year out he grew a wee bit shorter.

“When I was a girl he was a small man, and when I was a young woman I could look him in the eye. On the day I married I could look down on his bald head and count the freckles there.”

She looked Hardwork directly in the eye. “One hundred and three there were, exactly. And the smaller MacQuiddy grew, the worse his temper. Gelleys the washerwoman was the only one wha would speak the truth to him. She would raise her finger—to MacQuiddy!—and tell him what he didna want to hear.

“‘You called it doon on your own sorry heid,' she told him. ‘The night you shut the door on your bride.' And what a temper would be on him then, enough to make the moon hide in the sky.

“Weel. In his later years MacQuiddy took to dragging a stool wherever he went, and he'd climb up on it so as to look a person in the eye when he had a word to say. And sometimes he'd hop from foot to foot so that the stool rocked and wiggled. And woe to him—or her—who laughed. As wee a man as he was, MacQuiddy had a fist on him like a giant and a tongue as sharp as a new-stropped razor.”

“How big was he when he died?” asked Hardwork.

“And have I ever said a word about MacQuiddy dying?” asked Jennet, wiping Horace's face with the freshly dampened linen.

“He's still living?” Horace's voice was hoarse with strain, and he didn't open his eyes.

“That I canna say.” Jennet tilted her head as if to consider whether or not to tell the rest of the story.

“But this much I can tell for certain. One day at sunrise when MacQuiddy didna come into the kitchens, the cook went to look for him. She must start her day with a good battle of wills, you see, so if MacQuiddy didna come to her she must go to him. But his bed was empty, and neither was he anywhere in the castle nor on the grounds. The men went out to look for him and the children too, and they looked under every bush and peeked in every hidey-hole and picked up every rock. There was no help for it, MacQuiddy was gone.”

Hardwork let out a sigh. “He was never seen again.”

Jennet gave him a reproachful look. “I wouldna go so far as that. You see, were you to go to Carryckton and pay the milkmaids a visit in the gloaming you might see what they see, most summer evenings just as the last of the light goes from the sky. A couple walking across the fields arm in arm, neither of them any bigger than a child of three years. One of them with long hair the color of gold, and the other as bald as a peeled egg.”

Hardwork turned to his father to see whether or not he dared believe something so strange and wonderful. Then his face fell.

“Look,” he said, disappointed. “Pa's fallen asleep right at the best part of the story.”

“Hmmm.” Jennet knew a faint when she saw one, but she saw no reason to further upset the boy. She said, “You'll have to tell him how it ends when he's had his rest.”

At the far end of the bed Hannah was looking very flushed. Her hairline was damp with perspiration but she managed a small smile. “Well, it wasn't pretty, but it isn't as bad as it looked either.”

Hardwork looked at Jennet with relief and a new respect. “You're done, and we didn't even have to tie him down. Miss Jennet,” he said solemnly, “your stories are better than ropes.”

“Och, I canna take all the credit,” she said easily. She began to help Hannah gather her things. “A man's pride will tie him doon as sure as any rope ever made. Or story told.”

Hannah allowed herself to smile. “I think the stump will heal now as long as he keeps it clean and drained. And he must drink a weak tea made of this—” She handed Hardwork a brown paper packet tied with string. “Every four hours. A full cup, mind.”

When they left the cabin Jennet was surprised to find that night had fallen. Less of a surprise was Nathaniel, who was waiting for them with the horses so that they wouldn't have to walk back to Lake in the Clouds in the full dark. He saw them mounted and then he trotted off to scout the path ahead of them, his rifle resting easy in his hands.

Because, Jennet reminded herself, there were wild beasts about, and for all its appearance of peace this village had seen a great deal of treachery over the years. Indian raids, schoolhouses burnt to the ground, murder. The Bonners did not share these stories with many, but Jennet was a cousin and would be more once Luke came back for her.

The day after the matter was finally settled Gabriel and Annie had shown her the secrets of the mountain: the caves under the falls, the cavern on the north side of the mountain where the Tory gold had been hidden away for so long, the silver mine that had given up the last of that precious metal some ten years ago. Paradise could be a dangerous place for so many reasons. The miracle of it all was that the idea should excite her more than it frightened her. She liked to think of herself as brave, though she knew her mother would call her foolish; her father would have had stronger words still.