13
For a few weeks, I mostly forget about Berhta’s Forge, except the two occasions when I’m sent for: a birthing and dying, to make both events easier. I forget about Ari and her parents, about Faolan and his dark eyes. I do my best, with varying degrees of success, to forget about things that may or may not be in the forest around me, although I’m careful with my amulets, I walk the boundaries regularly to check the wards are intact against things that might come pad-pad-padding up to my door.
I put all such thoughts and things aside because summer must needs be about preparations for winter. It’s a cycle, inevitable, unavoidable. The work done now will see me – us – through wintertide and all her vicissitudes. Crops must be husbanded towards harvest, anything that can be preserved and bottled, dried and stored, turned into long-lived foodstuffs, must be done now. Fish must be caught and salted, cheeses made and set in the cellar, wines and fortified spirits set to ferment so long dark nights do not pass without some comforting beverage or other. The snares are full of quail and rabbit again, and I bring down a buck one day with an arrow.
The fertilising and ploughing of my fields of hay and wheat (the third lies fallow) were done in the months while the summer husband was soaking in his bath, tasks shared between myself and Rhea. Hard enough when shared, and in past years (before I created summer husbands, before the first of the fosterlings, while Yrse began her downward slide) I’ve sometimes done it all on my own, the plough dragged along behind ox horse, me twitching weeds from the newly turned soil, stretching my aching back. Dressing the scarecrows, resisting the urge to bewitch them to move every few minutes and discourage the birdlife from pecking up whatever seed I’d scattered in the furrows; too much of a risk that someone would drop in, see these manikins dancing and know my powers were for something other than healing and helping. Instead, I’d string bells on twine between the fences and over the fields as an extra deterrent to those birds too stubborn or stupid to be afraid of the badly dressed effigies.
Summer’s sweet months bring pruning, more weeding to make sure the scrappy plants don’t steal moisture and richness from the soil, attending to the vegetable garden, and the little orchard with its apple, pear, cherry and plum trees, some being pruned, some prepared for harvest. I explain to the summer husband how to do these tasks; he lifts heavy objects with ease and no complaint, does what he’s told after one instruction, but there’s always a hesitation when it’s me and not Rhea telling him what to do, and I must tamp down the fury that catches inside me at every pause. I think, sometimes, of that first day when she helped me carry him to the bath, when her finger was pricked by a splinter, and he tasted her blood before mine – Iwonder if that was the beginning, so small a drop, yet the very first taste.
I set him to collecting branches and logs that have already fallen – it seems cruel to ask him to cut down trees, although I do make him chop whatever’s already dead and stack it into the woodpile against winter’s breath. He carries water to the garden, feeds the pigs and goats, sheep and cows; the two oxen do not like him, but the old heavy horse seems to find him acceptable – although if not watched carefully it will try to nibble at the green growth of his hair. If you don’t look too closely he’s not that much different to a muscular young man, tall and broad; it’s only when you focus that you notice the blunt features, the grassy tint to his skin and the entirety of his eyes. I send him onto the roof of the cottage and the barn, too, to check for leaks and any thatch that needs repair, have him dredge the pond and clear the reeds (and lay them out to dry), dig a channel to allow fresh water to flow in from the stream, and another for it all to flow out again so the supply is continually renewed.
I have Rhea pruning the orchard, but when I’m distracted with the summer husband, she trims the smallest apple tree too enthusiastically and I fear whatever it puts forth will be very poor indeed – or entirely non-existent. With a deep breath, I begin to teach her as I should have in the first place with a practical demonstration. Her next effort is better. I whisper an apology to the poor scalped first one, though, and promise it a wassail cup when the time comes, just as the oldest tree is given. I carve a small rune at the base of its trunk, and feed it a few drops of my blood while I sing a spell to help it grow backmightily. In winter, Rhea can have her head in the pruning of the older trees; they’ll be dormant, and it won’t matter then. But she must be tender around the young ones; it’s not lost on me that I might also take that advice too.
Some days we pick so many berries – blackberries, raspberries, elderberries, gooseberries and rowanberries – that we have to make three trips to carry all the baskets home. The bottles line up like legions and I can’t help but think that if we run out of everything else, at least there’ll be a surfeit of jam. The summer husband takes to shearing the sheep surprisingly quickly; there’s an efficiency to him that’s commendable. The animals are quiet in his hands as he clips the wool away; I gather it up and in the evening Rhea spins it into thread, and the whole cottage smells like lanolin. She’s surprisingly skilled but shares that her mother was a wool merchant’s daughter, so that makes sense. I’ll take it, eventually, to Misses Audelay in the village to weave it into cloth on their looms.
The hay and wheat will be harvested some weeks apart; the former will be baled and stacked in the barn for the animals, the latter bundled into sheaves to dry, then winnowed and threshed, and I’ll take the sacks of grain to Sanne at the mill for grinding into flour. It’s the only thing I can’t do by myself if I absolutely must.
I do my best to lose myself in the work, and for the most part, I succeed. Days go by, feeding into night and back again. IwishI could say I think only about what needs to be done around the holding in the cup of summer’s palm, in order to prepare us for winter. This time should be one of deep satisfaction at organising my life, providing for myself, my fosterling.
But.
But.
But I hear them in the darkness each night though I told her he was to stay in the barn. She speaks, he does not (cannot); his noises are barely more than grunts, branches knocking against each other in the wind. All I can think is that I wish she had a little more consideration. Well, not all. I think how I wish her ill, how I wish her gone, how I wish himkindling. I wish them no joy of each other, though they take it and give it. I wish that she’d let loose a spark and set him alight.
Every day is a challenge to keep my temper when one of them does something wrong. Or not even wrong, just something I would not have done. Or differently, because one always experiments to find a better way or a way that suits one best. It’s exhausting, reminding myself of this daily, sayingBe patient. Be kind. Be reasonable.
I wish.
I wish.
I wish.
And if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
I wish I were a better person, that I could shrug this off, be generous about it. Gods know I’m trying.
And I know there’s no point in screaming at her, no point weeping and wailing. She didn’t do it on purpose, there was no intent on her part, only my own carelessness when I made him. No point in anything when he’d loved her from first sight (though I can’t help but wonder would he still have done so, even had he seen me first? Would she have managed to circumvent eventhatmagic?). No point in putting her out,sending her away, being petty andsmall. He’d only follow and that would complicate matters further, the pair of them wandering lost in the woods.
Yet I cannot help the whispers in my mind that don’t drown out the murmurs from her room but rather amplify them. He was meant to bemine. That’s why he was made. That’s why all summer husbands are made for we women on our own. We provide for ourselves; the things we cannot easily get are created by eldritch means, even husbands. And even if there’d been no spark between us, he’d have been my company, my reliable worker for his season. I cannot help but think this is another thing, this adoration, that’s come easily to her.
I wish I were a better person.
Worse still: Rhea insisted on naming him despite my warnings that it’s something I’d learned long ago not to do (a named thing is harder to let go of). She sings it in the dark hours, and it finds my ears with the same harsh clarity as a beacon light blinds the eye. I cannot avoid it, even in my sleep, and upon waking I feel my head is full of the sound of her voice, the sough of his name.
I think of another appellation, flung into the darkness many years gone by, with the same urgency but by my voice. I think of the strangeness of my own name being sounded out by underdeveloped lips and tongue, not quite as it should be, but close enough, strange enough, to imprint forever on my heart, my mind, my conscience… the places where all my sins hide.
And I grit my teeth, for it’s all I can do, and wait for the time to come.
***
One morning, I return from downriver where I’ve been fishing – seven fat trout lie in the bottom of my basket, occasionally twitching still. One will go in the pot for tonight’s dinner, the rest will be salted and dried to be stored. I find Rhea standing in front of the cottage, staring up above the lintel over the front door. Arlo is out in the wheat field, weeding.
‘What are you doing?’ I grumble at the girl.
She points at the carved head. ‘What’s that? I’ve never seen them anywhere else before.’
I can’t help but think she hasn’t travelled much; then again, the main places I’ve seen them are rural. Not a feature of the cities, which are no great devotees of pastoral lore and ways.
