Jimmy the Hand (16 page)

‘No,’
Melda said, not looking at her. She measured coarse flour out of a
box into a wooden mixing bowl. ‘I don’t want you
traipsing around those woods by yourself any more.’

Lorrie sat on
her heels in astonishment. ‘Why not?’

‘You’re
getting too old to be running around like a hoyden,’ her mother
said calmly. ‘Besides, we need to get that flax ready. If we
can make enough linen and thread to take to the market fair we’ll
be able to pay our taxes.’ She looked at Lorrie with a frown.
‘We don’t want to lose the farm like the Morrisons did.’

Lorrie looked
away, her frown matching her mother’s. The Morrisons losing
their farm because they couldn’t pay the taxes had sent a shock
through the whole community. There had been a lot of people losing
their farms lately, but none here until the Morrisons. Everyone had
assumed it was because of all the sons going to the war, or perhaps
those farmers were lazy, but you couldn’t say that of the
Morrisons; why, even the baby had chores. Taxes had gone up and up
over the last few years, even before the war, and the smaller one’s
farm was the harder it had become to pay them. Now even a
medium-sized holding like their own had to struggle to pay the debt.

Still, it wasn’t
exactly an emergency.

‘But we
have hardly any fresh meat in the larder,’ Lorrie objected.

That wasn’t
an emergency either—they weren’t nobles, or rich
merchants, to eat fresh meat every day—but game helped stretch
what they got out of the fields. The more they could sell rather than
eat themselves, the better off they would be. The extra few coppers
from grain sold rather than turned to bread could mean the difference
between paying taxes and starving through the winter, or paying taxes
and having enough put by to pay for fish from the town, and cheese
from the dairy farmers.

Her mother bit
her lip and raised her eyes to heaven. ‘It’s dangerous
for a girl your age to go running around alone in the woods. Who
knows who you might meet there with no one to help you.’

‘So when
Bram comes back from Land’s End I can go with him?’

‘No!
Absolutely not!’ Melda said firmly. ‘If anything, that
would be worse.’

Lorrie stood to
confront her mother, hands on her hips. ‘So I can’t go
alone because it’s dangerous and I can’t go with a friend
I’ve known my whole life because that would be worse than
dangerous?’ she said, her voice ripe with sarcasm. ‘This
makes no sense at all, Mother.’

‘Lorrie,’
her mother said wearily, ‘you’re growing up. And there
are certain things, unfortunately, a girl can do that a woman can’t.
One of which is keeping up with the boys she grew up with. You can do
that as a child. But when you get older, sometimes . . . those same
boys, when
they
get older—’ Melda sighed and
looked her daughter in the eye, ‘—want things.’

Lorrie rolled
her eyes. She was a farm girl and had seen animals mating since she
could crawl. ‘Mother, I know about those . . . things.’

‘That’s
why it’s dangerous! You think you know about the ways of men
and women, but you don’t, and it’s not about watching a
bull and cow or a cock and hen. It’s about going all crazy
inside when a lad smiles at you and forgetting what you think you
know. You’re a good girl from a good home, and some day when
the right lad asks for your hand, you’ll be glad for this. I’m
your mother, and it’s my duty and your father’s duty to
tell you what’s right and what isn’t. And until you’re
married and moved out, we’ll keep that duty.’ She took a
deep breath, anticipating an explosion.

But Lorrie was
icy in her response. ‘So what you’re saying is that from
now on I can’t go hunting, which I’m very good at and
which I love, and which I’ve been doing since I was younger
than Rip; but I can stay at home and do all the messy, smelly, dreary
chores you can think of just because I’m a woman? Is that
right?’

‘You’ll
do the chores I tell you to do because you’re my daughter and
that’s your place in this house. Your hands are needed here
today and I don’t want to hear another word about it. So finish
that up and get going down to the pond.’ Melda glared at Lorrie
with her arms folded across her ample chest and hoped that she
wouldn’t hear any more argument. She probably should have dealt
with this before; but Lorrie loved the woods so. As she had herself
when she was a girl. Melda had never forgotten what a wrench it was
to give that up.
All that freedom,
she thought wistfully. With
an effort she suppressed a sigh. Well, she was dealing with it now.

With a long last
glare and a pout Lorrie knelt down and went back to work, but with
her stiff back, brusque movements and unnecessary clatter she let her
mother know exactly how she felt. At last, with a last clunk of the
wooden shovel, she stood up and silently bore the ash bucket from the
kitchen.

No more
hunting, hmm?
she fumed to herself.
We’ll see about
that.

The flax would
be safe in the pond until tomorrow. Her mother would be angry with
her she knew; very, very angry. But fresh meat, especially if she
brought home some pheasant, would go a long way toward soothing her.

Lorrie dumped
the ashes in the barrel where they waited to be leached and the
potash used for soap, and brought the bucket back to the house. Then
she marched to the barn and gathered the peg-toothed rake for mucking
out the bundles of flax and the tarp for carrying them to the drying
field. She also tucked her sling and bag of stones into her waistband
under her apron, then headed for the retting pond.

The packed earth
of the farmyard was littered with things—a broken
plough-handle, an old wheel, foraging chickens that scattered
clucking from around her feet, bundles of kindling—but she
walked among them without needing to consciously use her eyes. They
were as familiar to her as all the smells—smoke-house, the
outhouse, the manure-heap. Too familiar; right now it all seemed like
a prison.

Lorrie could
sense her mother watching from the house through the warped boards of
the closed shutter and knew her mood. Annoyed; that was how Mother
felt. These days she and her mother struck sparks as often as not.

But how can I
help it?
Lorrie asked herself.
It’s always, ‘you’re
almost a woman’ or, ‘you’re almost grown up’.
Then they treat me more like a child than ever! Who wouldn’t
lose their temper? And now, suddenly, no more hunting! Not even, no,
especially not with Bram! That just isn’t right.

As she walked
along the hedge-bordered path, brooding, Lorrie slowly became aware
of her younger brother’s presence and sighed. This strong
awareness of family was a gift inherited from her great-grandmother,
who was secretly a witch, or so her mother said. She could always
tell when her mother was thinking about her, or was nearby. But she
was especially aware of her little brother, Rip. Right now Lorrie
sensed he was as focused on her as an arrow speeding toward its
target.

Wonderful,
she thought, a wry twist to her mouth.

Her brother
would be seven on the next Midsummer’s Day but he’d
already discovered the benefits of blackmail and he was disturbingly
adept at it. She supposed she could work on the flax until he got
bored or disgusted by the smell and went away.

But if I
start then I might as well finish,
she thought. Once you got that
smell on you only soap would take it off. And the stink could drive
off rougher creatures than the birds and hares she was after.

Maybe even the
robbers and murderers her mother was so frightened of. So it wouldn’t
be worthwhile to go into the woods.

Rip was off to
the right and a little ahead of her, uselessly creeping from bush to
bush in the bit of scrubby pasture-cum-orchard to the right of the
path. He knew she was aware of him.

He could sense
her just as clearly as she could sense him. Sometimes she thought he
was better at it. Lorrie didn’t call out to him because she
needed time to think of some way of getting rid of him.

At last the
stand of currant bushes ended and he leapt out with a cry of, ‘HAH!’
His hands raised over his head and curved into claws.

Lorrie raised an
eyebrow in his direction and marched on without comment.

After a short
pause he skipped up beside her.

‘Can I
come?’ he asked, bouncing up and down in excitement.

‘You want
to help me clean flax?’ she asked dubiously.

Rip laughed and
Lorrie frowned. He knew, he always knew when she was up to something.

‘It’s
messy and smelly,’ she warned.

‘You’re
going hunting!’ he accused, then covered his mouth to hide his
grin.

‘What
makes you think that?’

Rip rolled his
eyes at her elaborately casual attitude, put his hands on his hips
and gave her a look of such adult condescension that she had to
smile. ‘You promised you’d teach me to hunt and track,’
he said. ‘You said you would.’

She nodded,
feeling rather sad. ‘I know. And if I can talk Daddy around I
still mean to.’ She stopped walking and looked at him. ‘I
really do mean to, Rip. Honest.’

Looking down, he
scuffed the earth with his bare foot. ‘I know,’ he
muttered. ‘But if this is the last time you can go . . .’
He looked up at her from under his eyelashes. For an instant she
realized what a beautiful boy he was, and he knew it. He had used
those long lashes more than once to wheedle his way with his father
and mother.

She gave him a
small smile. ‘It’s up to Daddy.’ She shrugged. ‘If
I took you today then we’d both get punished.’

He considered
that, still scuffing his foot back and forth.

Lorrie watched
him sympathetically. ‘When Bram gets back from his uncle’s
in Land’s End I’ll ask him to take you. Hey,’ she
gently punched his shoulder, ‘maybe that way I’ll be able
to go, too.’

He rubbed his
shoulder and smiled ruefully. ‘That’s all right,’
he said.

‘Then
that’s what we’ll try to do,’ Lorrie said
positively. ‘But it would be a bad idea today.’

Rip nodded
wisely. ‘Yeah. You’re gonna get it.’ He thought
about this, then added, ‘You’re
really
gonna get
it.’ He looked at her, his expression somewhere between awe and
doubt.

Lorrie saw the
moment his mind turned to making the situation work for him by the
slight change in his expression and headed him off. ‘If you
tell on me I’ll tell Bram not to take you, ever. And you know
he’ll listen to me.’

Rip’s brow
furrowed and he gave her a considering look. Lorrie folded her arms
and looked back, one eyebrow raised. He tried, unsuccessfully, to
imitate that and gave up after a moment with a frustrated hiss.

‘All
right,’ he muttered resentfully. ‘But if Mummy asks me
where you are I won’t lie.’

‘Of course
not,’ Lorrie said, picking up the rake and the tarp. ‘Tell
her the truth, tell her that you don’t know where I am. Which
you won’t.’ She grinned and ruffled her brother’s
hair to his considerable annoyance. ‘You won’t be sorry,
Rip. I promise.’

He snorted and
after a moment turned and walked away. Lorrie smiled at his back and
headed off toward the pond and, just coincidentally, the beckoning
woods beyond, humming a dancing tune.

Rip was confused
and a little angry. Why couldn’t Lorrie go hunting any more?
And if she really couldn’t, then why couldn’t she wait to
stop hunting until after she’d taught him everything she knew?
And what was it that boys would want and make Lorrie give them? Her
hunting knife? Rip craved Lorrie’s hunting knife. It had a
deerhorn haft and a seven-inch steel blade that took an edge so sharp
there was nothing in the world it couldn’t cut.

Some day it
would probably be his, but not yet. If Lorrie was too old to do
certain things then he was still ‘too young’. He glanced
over his shoulder in the direction his sister had been walking. He
hoped she’d be all right. Mummy had sounded like she really was
worried about her. Even about Bram.

Why would she
worry about Bram? Rip wondered. Bram was the best person ever. And he
liked Lorrie, you could tell. Rip shook his head. Grown-ups worried
about all manner of things that he didn’t understand. And
asking questions just made things worse mostly.

With a sigh, Rip
looked around. He’d done his morning chores so he was free to
play until lunch time.
I’m a warrior!
he decided and
galloped off on an imaginary horse to slay the invaders from the
other world. He swept up a likely stick and waved it with a flourish.

‘Ah ha!
Villains! Attack my castle will you?’

And the battle
to save the Kingdom began.

Come to
Lorrie,
the girl thought.

The coney was
young, plump, and even by rabbit standards not too bright. Right now
it was hopping slowly through the undergrowth along the forest edge,
which was emerald and colourful with the first spring growth,
stopping to nibble at berries or shoots now and then. And it was
about to find Rabbit Paradise—a stretch of wild blackberry
canes.

Now!

The coney’s
head was down and its ears forward, its full attention on what it was
eating. The next generation would be more alert.

Lorrie had the
sling ready, a rounded pebble in the cup, the inner thong gripped
securely between thumb and forefinger, the outer pinned against her
palm by the middle fingers. She came out of her crouch with a smooth
steady motion, the sling beginning to move as she came erect. Then it
blurred as she whipped arms and shoulders and torso into the
movement, one full circle around her head. The coney rose on its hind
legs, eyes and ears swivelling to find the sound, herbs dropping from
its still-working jaws.

Whupp!