“It is always this with you,” Rowena cried, standing up from her seat at the worktable. “It is always rebellion and never trying tothinkyour way through a thing. You charge headlong into your rage, Robbie. It will get you killed too!” And it was saying this that caused her tears to finally spill forth.
My father visited the following day. He informed me that Magda had, winters prior, gone to the magistrate and put the farm in my name, to be given to me when I reached my majority.
“No one wants this property anyway,” he had said, looking around her little house and farm as if there were demons from Rodwin’s hell dancing everywhere. “You’re the last woman to own property in Sheridan,” he went on. “Father Starling was very muchagainst the farm going to you, but Torm said this is land stained by Tintar, and I agree. Don’t push your luck, daughter.”
Just a little meeker, I heard my mother’s voice.
I spent the remaining half a moon before my sister’s marriage weeping alone in Nyossa, foraging only what took little effort, berries and ferns. I did not dig for roots. I did not climb trees for wild fruit. I spent one sad day harvesting mother’s moss and grinding it into paste. That night I walked through the town, both relieved and terrified to see the windflower wreaths, many of them fresh. These women, who had stood by and watched Magda burn, expected me to wear that same mantle and deliver them a pagan magic.
“Very well,” I whispered into the dark, standing in the town square under a night sky with stars that seemed to hang so low. I turned around and saw a handful of doors with windflowers. I saw, looking down one street, a garland swaying on the night breeze, the round, waxy petal of an anemone falling from the string and spiraling to the street. “I will let you condemn me, but I will—as she did—bring to you what you need.”
I wished I could have taken her bones to Nyossa. But my mother said the fire burned so hot, there was nothing but piles of ash after the flames had eaten everything.
“The wind blew it all away,” my mother explained. Did you have such strong winds the next day? Down by the farm?”
Brother Air, I thought and almost laughed to myself. Was I going mad? Perhaps I was. I found I did not care. I would do my duty as entrusted to me by Magda. I would become the steward of Sheridan’s women as she once had. My heart did not have to be in one piece for me to do that.
On the day of Thane and Rowena’s wedding, it was a tenth day. Starling married them after his sermon in the church. Had it been Bertram marrying my sister, the ceremony would have perhaps taken place inside the keep’s private chapel, but Thane was not Torm’s legitimate son. Still, the day was celebrated with no expense spared, the wine and ale flowing in The Pale Horse from noon tomidnight, Torm doting on his handsome younger son that had the town’s like and approval.
This legitimized Rowena’s status as the practicing midwife of Sheridan and provided a distraction from her having been trained by the heathen forest woman burned at the stake for her crimes.
I spent the day with a thick throat, pretending any tears that shone from my eyes were of happiness for a most beloved sister. At that time, I was without companions, feeling that I had lost my first love and my sister to each other.
My parents were overjoyed, my father bursting with pride at having a daughter married to a lord’s son.
The entire town gathered in and around The Pale Horse, spilling out into the town square. Father Starling was not pleased with the drinking and the subsequent fiddling and dancing that broke out, but he must have allowed for this indulgence as the groom was of noble blood.
I reluctantly danced with Wynne, who looked at me knowingly.
“I know it is a hard day for you,” he said without his regular sarcasm.
His sympathies took me aback. It was the first and last time I ever heard him speak with anything other than humor or derision.
I busied myself with helping Gertie and her husband behind the bar at one point, claiming with false cheer that I could not let the ale stop flowing on my twin’s wedding day. Then I aided the keep staff who provided food for the merrymakers. When the sun began to set, the revelry was still at a fever pitch, the town of Sheridan rarely seeing such abandon. I felt it was then alright to make my excuses and leave.
I had endured enough.
“Daughter,” my father cried to me as I set out for the street that led to the mill. “Hold on, Roberta. I would speak with you.”
I halted and cringed, not turning around.
“Are you tired?” he asked, coming to stand next to me.
“Yes,” I replied, employing the demure manner I now used with everyone, my careful gratitude at not having been burned evident. “Did you have need of me? Should I return to help with the wedding?”
“No,” he answered, shaking his head, and there was an uncharacteristic softness in him. “No, I will walk you back to the mill. Your mother said you would not return to your little farm tonight. She made up a bed for you.”
I nodded, unsure of this version of my father that was much like how he had been with me as a little girl, before I got ungodly ideas in my head.
We walked back, him carrying on a commentary about the day, satisfaction in his speech, openly delighted with his daughter’s match.
Though he had put his god and his church before me so many times before, he was still my father, and I felt an uncertain contentedness in this easy exchange, something I so rarely had with him.
“Before you are to bed,” he said as we drew near our house, his hand on my elbow, “I would have you visit the stable with me.”
I was too tired to question this and went along with him.
A small stables was attached to our mill house, and it kept his two horses and extra stalls for his workers’ mounts. Standing, not in a stall but in the aisle, was a young, large, nearly all-white dam with richly made tack and a flat saddle on her.
