She nods. ‘He was drinking at the inn. I think he’s been there a lot lately.’
Small wonder with a changeling child in a home where sleep’s become something that drains energy and feeds nightmares. I think about a befuddled Anselm staggering home in the darkness, taking the shortcut across the broad expanse of the green. I think about the huntsman, frustrated at his lack of success at my cottage. I think of all those tales of folk taken by the wild hunt, pursued like game. I think of Anselm, not a terrible man, not the best, but not the worst, and his past months in a house with a daughter that’s not his and a wife who’s lost herself in guilt.
‘He was nice to me, like I remember my father being.’
‘Poor man,’ I say.
‘Poor man,’ the other two echo.
‘And then as I was leaving,’ says Tieve, ‘I saw Mr Peppergill return with the priests, dragging that poor woman with them by a rope.’
Rhea and I exchanged a glance. ‘What woman, Tieve? What god-hounds?’
‘Your friend. The woman with the white streak in her hair.’She mimes the white stripe that starts at Fenna’s widow’s peak and runs to the ends of her fading red mane.
‘How do you know she’s my friend?’
She colours. ‘I was in the woods and saw her and her,’ she nods at Rhea, ‘one day, bypassing the village. I know she’s brought girls to you before.’
‘This is very important, Tieve: did you hear them say anything?’
‘Only when his wife ran out to meet him. He said he had the answer to all their problems. But Mrs Peppergill looked pretty shocked to see the priests.’ As well she might; as should any woman in Berhta’s Forge who knows that life is better lived without church oversight.
‘Where did they take the woman?’
‘To the bridewell. I think her leg was hurt, she limped very badly.’
The bridewell is a small building with cells built beneath, supervised by Mawgan Carlyon, who calls himself a bailiff but is really just a petty tithing-man, who collects village taxes to pay for communal repairs and work that benefits everyone. There’s little enough crime in the village for him to attend to except for breaking up drunken fights, and he spends most of his time as a supervisor at the sawmill. Several of the men who work as sawyers there are frequently conscripted to shifts in the bridewell. None of them complain as it’s far easier and there’s a free meal from the inn. That and investigating the occasional theft of chickens and the “borrowing” of horses (not from Faolan,neverfrom Faolan), which are generally returned after use. Mawgan’s no better or worse than most folk.
‘Did you hear anything they said? The god-hounds?’
The child shakes her head, curls her knees up to her chin and wraps her arms around them as if by making herself smaller she’ll be safe. But no one’s safe anymore.
‘Were they riding horses? Or did they have a carriage or cart?’
‘Walking, all of them.’
‘Did they look clean or as if they cared for their appearance? Had bathed recently?’
She shakes her head. ‘Dirty and scruffy.’
‘Mehrab, what are we going to—’
I hold up a finger to Rhea, begging for quiet while I think.
With every bit of energy left in me, I ponder these god-hounds, dragging Fenna behind them, a rope around her neck like an old donkey or a dog. Scruffy, walking shit-priests, not even a cart between them, not even a broken-down nag for the first among them to ride. So: low-end god-brothers. A better sort would have made time and effort to clean themselves up each day because they know the value of appearing better than they are – what is a church without itsShow? Its grand performance?
And Thaddeus Peppergill, headman-mayor-what-have-you of this little speck of a place in the middle of a deep dark forest, a place that doesn’t have its own clergy, never has had, and Thad thinkingthesemen who drag a witch behind them are the answer to his problems? Thinking their presence will save him the cost of a circle of salt around the place he’s meant to protect? Will get him back his sleep? Keep the children of Berhta’s Forge safe?
What might Fenna have told them? If she’d given me up,they’d already be here, trying to find the cottage. The veil is a short-term protection – they’ll not be able to get through, but they might set a fire to burn as much of the forest as they think will incinerate me, yet set astray by the wards how much, how far might they destroy? Fenna might yet break. She’s still alive and suffering for it. They’ll have tortured her, that’s the only way she’d have brought them back here. I think about her fondness for her apprentices, those Visiting Sisters who’ve given their lives in order to keep their silence. I won’t judge Fenna for not dying.
And I won’t leave her behind.
We’re going to have to leave. Through a forest that’s become home to something very strange and unwelcome. Something that’s intent on pursuing me. With winter coming and a woman with a baby, and a ten-year-old child and a fifty-year-old woman whose bones ache, who burns up and freezes without reason or warning. And a woman in her sixties who I’m betting has been beaten so badly she can barely walk.
‘Mistress Mehrab?’ Tieve interrupts my thoughts and I frown as I look at her. She’s holding up a key, large, a little on the rusty side.
‘My brother? The one who let Ari in? He works sometimes for Mawgan Carlyon, cleaning out the bridewell cells. He keeps spare keys coz he loses them sometimes. I thought you might need this?’
