I go back to Rosie, hold the toy out for her inspection. She sniffs at it with suspicion. Snorts, tosses her head again; disdainful rather than distressed, but she won’t go forward, not on that path, so I find another, parallel and narrow and about ten feet away, and she’s content to take it. Whatever she can sense on the other, I’m not fool enough to try and ride her over it. The path of least resistance has its appeal. I must be getting old.
***
The first thing I notice on arriving at Berhta’s Forge is that there’s no line of salt been laid around the village. I look carefully and can discern absolutely no evidence of one. There’s been no rain, no snow, no sleet, nothing that might have washed it away in the days since I told Thaddeus Peppergill what to do. I can only conclude that he decided the expense was too great, that the loss of other lives was a risk he was willing to take. I wonder if I’ll find such a boundary, however, around his mansion alone?
The second thing I notice is that Faolan’s with the mares, currycombing the white who’s still pregnant. Sorrel and Blister are accompanied by long-legged foals who come straight over to me as I dismount and lean on the fence. They snuffle and nibble at my hands; they smell very new.
‘Good morning, old man.’
‘And to you, old woman.’ He keeps working, but grins at me over his shoulder. ‘What brings you here this fine day? I warn you I’ve no more horses to spare.’
‘Hush. Visiting Widow Wilky.’
‘What’s she done to draw your ire?’
‘Oh, how brief was the sweetness of your tongue…’
‘My tongue’s plenty sweet and I’m happy to demonstrate—’
‘I had a visit from Thad Peppergill yesterday.’
‘You do know how to kill a mood.’
I shrug. ‘He said some of Widow Wilky’s orphans have gone missing.’
He stops mid-brush and the mare snorts her annoyance. ‘I’ve not heard that.’
‘I don’t imagine he’s been spreading it around. I don’t imagine he’s told too many folk and he’s probably asked the widow to keep it quiet, lest he have to deal with complaints. Have you heard anything else? Has Anselm mentioned Ari? Have there been any occurrences out of the ordinary? A strangeness in the woods, signs of… incursions in the village?’
He shakes his head. ‘Incursions, Mehrab? What sort?’
And I can’t bring myself to tell him, though I’m unsure why. The words won’t come, cannot find purchase on my tongue, will not push past my teeth. I shrug. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why did you come to me?’
I smile.
We drift into the house and as soon as the door closes behind us, clothes are peeled away in that mysterious and effortless fashion, flesh meets and melds, mouths and lips and tongues and teeth go everywhere, tease everything. Hands and fingers transmit desire and heat and he kisses my bruises, the old and the new. Somehow, we find the bed and when he’s in me, the pleasure is so intense it feels like I could reach up and touch both sun and moon, reach through time and hold past and present and future in the palm of my hand and freeze them in this moment of pure intensity. There’s a second, though, when as my head turns from side to side in ecstasy, I think I see a shape at the door. Gone too quickly, I can’t be sure. A shadow, just a shadow from the movement of sun and trees outside the window. And my attention’s dragged back to what’s being done to me, what I’m doing, and I feel like I might never separate myself from him and I bite at his shoulder to stop myself from screaming like a fox in heat.
In the quiet afterwards, I half-doze, running my fingers along the lines of his scars while he strokes my hair. My mind, never still, picks at the idea that if I’d made a different choice years ago, this bed would have been mine, that I’d not be a visitor here in a house decorated by another woman. That if I’d wanted a child, there might be a lad or lass who looked like me wandering these rooms. That if I’d wanted a constant companion… But perhaps we’d be bored of each other. It happens. No one’s proof against it. The irony is not lost on me that though he got no child on me, the summer husbands did, some of them. And that I, each and every time, instead of ensuring those pregnancies did not come to fruition… let nature run her course. That for a time, I had hope and a wish, though I cannot say why. I’d have been a terrible mother.
Abruptly, I sit up, swing out of his arms, out of bed, and gather my clothing despite his protests. I don’t snap, I’m gentle, and kiss him tenderly and deeply, tell him I’d laze with him all day if I could, but there are things that must be done, and I’ll let myself out.
The truth is that I cannot stay in that bed when it’s so crowded by my past, and his.
23
When I knock at the Peppergill house it takes a longish while for someone to answer, and it’s only as I’m about to start shouting up at windows that the front door slowly slugs open as if terribly fatigued. The serving maid stands in the doorframe and I can’t help but think it’s almost as if she hangs there. I shudder and it loosens the illusion so I can concentrate on her face. Dark shadows beneath her eyes, she looks utterly exhausted.
‘Oh. Cylla. Are you quite well?’
She nods, then shakes her head. ‘I’m so tired. No one’s sleeping well.’
‘Why? Bothersome noise of neighbours? Creatures in the roof? Nightmares? Is someone ill?’
Her fingers are white at the knuckles where they clutch the edge of the door. ‘I can’t say. Everyone’s restless – or rather, I should say, we all sleep and deeply, butnot well. I keep waking to find Matthias standing by my bed in the night. He’s in such an ill humour, keeps breaking his toys. Does that make any sense at all?’
‘It does.’ I think about Thaddeus and his day drinking, the shadows beneath his eyes – did he seem overly tired? ‘Have you tried camomile tea before bed? Or valerian root, which is stronger?’
