Daughter Of The Forest (50 page)

My fingers worked on steadily, as the barbs of the plant turned them red and blistered and hard. The women were right. They were very ugly hands. As I worked, I told myself a story about such a pair of hands. In my tale, the girl had to toil in the kitchens of a great house for seven years, to win back her sweetheart. Seven years of scrubbing floors, and scouring pots and pans, made her fingers swollen and her palms callused and rough. At the end of this tale, the faithful girl was at last reunited with her dear one. When he held her close, and lifted her hands to his lips, and his tears fell on them, behold, her fingers were at once slender and small again, and when she reached up to touch his face, it was with palms as white and fine as those of a queen. But her lover looked at her in amazement when she told him her story, how she had toiled at witches’ work, and made her hands ugly and horrible. For when he had found her again at last, had gathered her close and pressed his lips to her roughened palms, these had been to him the most beautiful hands in the world.

One afternoon, Margery took me up to her quarters and presented me with a gift. From her and John, she said, for they wished to tell me yet again how grateful they were for the gift of life I had given to her and their child. She had made me a new gown; more fit for the wedding than my shapeless homespun. It was a lovely piece of work, plain enough but fashioned to fit most perfectly, in a soft light wool of a shade somewhere between blue and lavender, like the first dusk on a summer evening. Around the neckline and hem was a fine tracery of vines and leaves and little winged creatures embroidered in a deeper blue. It was a gift of love, and I put my arms around my friend and hugged her. I did not tell her I had no wish to wear such a dress, which would show off my figure and draw the eyes of men. I was more comfortable, safer, in the old homespun, which might as well have been a sack, so ill did it fit. But this was still a precious gift, which must be worn with a smile. So I tried it on for her, and she fussed and took a tuck here, and a stitch there, until she pronounced herself satisfied. Johnny watched us from the rug, round-eyed. He was working hard to roll himself over from his stomach to his back. He had not quite mastered this skill, but judging by his purposeful grunts, it would not be long.

Margery plaited my hair down my back, weaving lavender ribbons into it. This was good practice for the wedding, she explained.

“There,” she said. “Look in the mirror, Jenny. You do justice to my handiwork, girl. You’ll have to stop hiding yourself.”

I had no particular wish to see myself, having been quite put off mirrors by the lady Oonagh. But I looked, thinking to see the pale little runt of the women’s talk. Instead, there was a small, slender stranger—or perhaps not quite that, for the person that looked gravely back at me had something of the fey, faraway look of my brother Finbar, and a quirky arch of the brows that I had seen on Diarmid’s face, and—well, I was Lord Colum’s daughter all right. But changed. They were right, I had grown, and I was a woman now. The soft gown touched the body and clung here and there, and fell in graceful folds to my ankles. Small and slight I would always be, but this gown showed the round swell of my breasts, white above its low neckline. I was no longer the wild little creature that had run free with her brothers in the forest. My face was still too thin, but the wide green eyes and small straight nose and curving lips were not those of a child. I had the pale skin of my people, and already wisps of dark hair escaped the neat plait to curl around brow and temple.

“It suits you,” said Margery, pleased with her handiwork. I smiled again and kissed her on the cheek, and made a convincing pretense of showing how pleased I was. And I was, truly; I valued her gift for its beauty and the love that was in it. I just didn’t want to wear it. Not yet. Not for Red’s wedding, anyway.

It made matters worse that, before I had time to change back into the homespun, all three men arrived home and came straight upstairs, full of plans for the first day of spring shearing. John came in ahead of the others, and looked at us both; and he greeted his wife with a kiss and scooped his son up into his arms.

“That looks well, Jenny,” he said in his sober way. “Very well indeed.”

And Ben, who came in next, gave the sort of whistle men give when they fancy a girl they see walking by. I was used to Ben; I knew he meant no harm; and so I was able to smile at him before I looked away. Looked straight into Red’s eyes as he stood in the doorway, staring at me. He had been talking, and he had stopped in midsentence. Slowly the others, too, fell silent, and there was a tension in the room. Suddenly, I found I did not want to meet Red’s gaze any longer, for fear of what I might read in his eyes, and I grabbed my homespun grown and, brushing past him, fled to my own quarters and bolted the door. There I took off the blue dress and put on the old one, and I tore the ribbons from my hair, while the little dog watched me, her round, rheumy eyes full of simple affection. I folded Margery’s gift and laid it away in the wooden chest, and the silken ribbons with it, and I closed the lid. Soon I would place the fifth shirt there, and only one would be lacking. This chest held the lives of my family within its simple oaken frame.
Liam, Diarmid, Cormack. Conor. Finbar. Padriac. Sorcha. For you are that woman in the mirror
, I told
myself. You are a child no longer, whatever you might wish. You are a woman with a woman’s body, and you do not think or feel as you did back there at Sevenwaters, when you ran wild in the forest and the trees spread their canopy to shelter you. Men will look at you. Come to terms with it, Sorcha. You cannot hide forever. They will look at you with desire in their eyes. You were taken against your will, and it damaged you. But life goes on
. It sounded logical. But I thought, still, that I would never be able to feel a man’s touch without fear. The women’s talk made me shudder. Showing my body made me ashamed. I could no longer look into my friend’s eyes, for fear of what I might see there.

Later, I went out into the orchard, after first making sure nobody was around. I sat on the grass under an old spreading apple tree, on whose gnarled limbs even now blossom gave way to the first small setting of green fruit. Red and I had shared an apple once. That seemed a long, long time ago, in another world. In another tale. I spoke to the Fair Folk, in my mind. I spoke to the Lady of the Forest. If any of their kind were here at all in this foreign place, if any of them could hear me, it would be in such a place as this, under trees. I wished I could have been in the heart of the oak forest, but I had been forbidden to go there alone. I concentrated my mind on this message, and bent it toward her with all my strength.
Let him go, I said. Release him from your spell. You’re not playing fair. He never did know the rules
. All was quiet. There was no way of knowing if anyone heard me. No faery laughter, no voices in the rustling of the leaves.
He is a good man. I believe, the best of his kind. He is to be wed soon, and has a duty to his people. What you’re doing is wrong, and I won’t have it. Let him free. Release him from his obligation to me, and give him back his sleep, and his will
. I waited for a while, and there was no sound but a tiny stirring of wind in the branches, and Alys breathing.
It hurts him, the fire in the head. You hurt him. You have done him an injustice, by making him my protector. Besides, I can look after myself. He risks neglecting his own; they need him more than I do. Set him free from your spell
.

After I had finished, I sat there quiet as the day’s light faded, hoping beyond hope to hear some answer, some acknowledgment that the other world did still exist, here in this land of skeptics and unbelievers, of practical, down-to-earth folk and—what was it Richard had called his nephew—buttoned-up idealists? That had not been fair. Red was a difficult man to know; but I had heard him speak from the heart, speak from his uncertainty and confusion. I knew him capable of anger and ferocity, and of great courage. He could be hurt, just as I could. His uncle judged him poorly, and would one day discover this at great cost.

There were no answers here in the orchard. If the Fair Folk had heard me, they weren’t letting on. Not today. Not that that meant much, for they were ever fickle and mischievous in their dealings with our kind. Well, I had said what I had to, and it would have to do. For now.

Whether it was a clumsy servant, or a freak of the wind, or something more sinister, nobody ever found out. I shut my mind to the thought that the lady Oonagh might have been behind it, for that was an idea too terrifying to contemplate. The force of evil is strong and cannot easily be contained. It was as we sat at supper that night, I picking at shreds of carrot and turnip, Margery watching me closely from across the table, John and Ben arguing amicably about the wool clip. I can’t remember which came first, the smell of smoke or Megan’s raised voice as she ran in from the hallway.

“Fire! There’s a fire up in the long room!”

This was a household as well disciplined as its master. Men left their places quickly and without fuss. Buckets appeared and a chain formed, while Lady Anne shepherded the rest of us outside. John had shot out and up the stairs on the first word, face white as parchment; he reappeared with his squalling son in his arms, much to Margery’s relief, for their rooms were close enough to be in danger. Johnny was unimpressed at his abrupt awakening; his father soothed him with small words spoken under the breath, and when he was quiet again, gave him to his mother and ran back in. We waited in the courtyard, watching the dark smoke billowing from the upper widows. Figures passed before the flickering light, and the smoke turned white, and finally nothing was left but an acrid smell in the night air. It had been an efficient exercise. No injuries. Quick and effective. No real damage done.

“You’d better come upstairs,” said Red, appearing beside me, his mouth set grimly. “You need to see this for yourself. I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

“My lord?” One of the servants hovered. “You want the debris cleared away now?”

“Not yet,” said Red. “Finish your supper, take a cup of ale. I’ll call you.”

I followed him up to the long room, not allowing myself to think yet. For a short time we were alone there. The fire was out. Downstairs, folk were clearing away buckets, returning to the table, their voices animated.

It had been a strange fire. Passing strange. One end of the room was quite untouched. There was Lady Anne’s upright chair of fine oak, with the carved back, there her embroidery frame with the intricate work of unicorn and vine stretched on it unharmed. There were the baskets of wool and the spinning tools and the small hand looms. But the air was heavy with smoke and at the end of the room where Margery and I would sit to work, everything was black. The fire had scorched the boards of the floor and the roughhewn benches along the walls and the rafters above. Spiders hung lifeless in the shreds of their webs. My spindle and distaff were charred sticks, my stool a heap of charcoal. The basket which had contained the last of my gathered starwort was ashes. And there on the ground, just recognizable, was the fragile burned remnant of Finbar’s partly made shirt, which I had left hanging over the basket, ready to start work again in the morning. I walked over as if in a dream, crouched down and put out a hand to touch it. It crumbled away in my fingers. I pictured Finbar as I had last seen him, slumped between his two brothers as if the life had been drained from him. A brittle shell of a man. I saw his eyes, once a deep, clear gray like the winter sky, saw them wild and confused and terrified as he tried to bridge the gap between beast and man. Held the ashes of his shirt in my palm; felt them trickle away through my fingers and disperse to nothingness.

“Jenny, my dear.” I looked up with a start. Lady Anne was as soft-footed as her son, when she wanted to be. Now she stood by him, frowning. “I regret this. But it must be an accident. A careless tending of the fire; a freak wind. I shall, of course, replace these things for you. We have spindle and distaff enough.” Red said nothing; looked at the hearth, which was at some distance, in the middle of the inner wall; looked at the path of the fire. Looked at me. I would not weep. My teeth were clenched tight together, so that I could not weep.

“Hugh,” said Lady Anne. She sounded as she might have done when he and his brother were little boys, and she was calling them to account for staying up too late, or stealing pies from the kitchens. “After this you must consider sending her away. This sort of thing is intolerable. You have the safety of your household to consider. Why can’t you send the girl to Northwoods? Surely even you must realize now that she cannot stay here.”

Red’s eyes were chilly. “I see no such thing,” he said levelly. “Or cannot you recognize Richard’s hand in this?”

“What are you saying?” His mother was shocked. “My own brother? Why should he seek to burn down the house of his closest kin, why stoop to childish trickery? I know he did not approve of the girl’s presence here, but to suggest this is—is preposterous. Besides, he is over the water, and has been long since. Unless you believe he, too, resorts to sorcery to achieve his ends? Really, Hugh, sometimes you astonish me.”