When the sun had climbed directly overhead, we paused for a meal. I had packed a basket with bread and cheese, apples plucked ripe from the tree. We paused to sup at a clearing in the woods, with the bluebells rampant around us and the thrum of magic in my veins.
“The wilderness does become you,” Thomas observed. “You seem to glow.”
I raised my hand in front of me, radiant like the rays of the sun.Stop that,I told it, and it did, but I could not still the harvest readiness around and within me, its fruitfulness surging like nectar through my veins. I barely stopped myself from taking the shepherd right there and then, giving our fertility back to the land as we made love like Venus and her Adonis, Endymion and his lunar queen.
I bit into my apple and said not a word.
In the midafternoon, the woods parted around us, and we finally reached the town of Peebles, where the baron’s manor stood. The sweet elixir of autumn retreated, to be replaced by a foul, metallic taste in my mouth. I could not immediately determine its source. I had scarce been out of my own village, except to purchase goods at the market cross, but this village looked little different than our own. The buildings came to the same height, and were made of the same materials, though a greater number of them had stone footings. The people who crossed our path appeared ordinary folk as well, though more of them had weapons than I was used to, like the knife on that one’s belt. The greater the population of a town, the greater the need for protection, I supposed. Protection meant cold iron. I stifled a hiss, like a sizzling pan over the hearth.
Come away from the iron, the cross, and the salt,sang the voice of Faery, and I clutched at my head.
“Bess?” Thomas asked, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Is something wrong?”
I shook my head and swallowed roughly. “I feel so far from home.”
Thomas squeezed my shoulders. “God willing, we will be back there ere long.”
As we approached the Baron de Lyne’s manor, the buildings became sturdier, a greater number of the houses built of actual stone. Imagine, living in a house that did not need repair or rebuilding every four or five years! Luxury I could hardly comprehend.
Thomas bit his lips thoughtfully as we passed these by, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Here do live some of the baron’s family,” he said. “His sister and her husband; his cousin, the reeve.” He swallowed. “Here but for the nature of my birth I might have dwelt as well.”
The cuckoo now saw the nest which should have been his, as surely as I had stared through the hollow tree and into Faery. My heart bled for him, and everything he had lost. I took hold of his hand, and he brought mine to his lips and kissed it.
Soon we passed by the lands of the baron’s demesne, wherein villeins and crofters of all sorts, from the youngest children to the hoariest elders, worked to harvest the baron’s wheat. Some cut the wheat with sickles, while others followed behind to bind it in sheaves and set them to dry.
Around the manor proper were clustered farm buildings of many sorts, almost like a smaller village within the town. Here stood a brewhouse and several stables, henhouses and cookhouses and cottages for those who worked the baron’s demesne. And finally, we came to the manor itself.
Which was cut off from the rest of the town by an enormous iron portcullis.
My gorge rose, my blood seemed to retreat from the surface of my skin. Every fiber of my being cried out to get away, get away, this is no place for you, Bess-who-is-not. I should have listened to the Fool, should have stayed close to Carterhaugh, should not have allowed this mortal shepherd to drag me so far away.
I should have stayed in the woods and waited for twilight, for the Veil to open and let me go home.
The choice was all mine.I steadied myself with these words, breathing deeply as we followed a cart bearing timbers across the drawbridge, though I could think of nothing but the portcullis slamming down, spikes of iron piercing into my flesh. Would the iron cauterize my wounds even while it pierced my skin? Would I die, or remain forever skewered by those rods of the poisoned metal?
I swallowed hard not to become sick.
But the portcullis did not fall, and soon we found ourselves standing in a square courtyard, surrounded by high stone walls. Before us stood the manor house itself, several stories high, with rounded corners and roofed battlements. The walls were rubble, the windows were few, some of them covered with iron bars. I could not imagine being cut off from the outside world so. Sequestered from all nature, from the living plants which fed and nourished us, the creatures of the wild who were our kin. At the front of the building was a small chapel, raising in me discomfort of another sort. Ever would I grow ill from the symbols of the Christ. Even the acceptance I had now gained among the Christians could not change that.
And the door was bound with iron bands. I could not have felt less welcomed to the baron’s home if he had filled it with traps!
But I was committed now, and let Thomas lead me inside.
We found ourselves in an enormous hall, with servants in blue-and-gold livery scurrying about like Thomas’s sheep freshly let from their fold. Iron stank all around me; keys hung at the throat and waist; buckles and brooches. It filled my lungs like smoke from a poorly vented hearth.
There could surely be no place more toxic for me, no place less welcoming save the kirk itself. And speaking of kirks, had not the chapel been one of the first structures we encountered when we entered the courtyard? The sight of the cross had burned into my eyes and sickened me to the bone.
The shepherd does not know how I suffer for his sake. But he will learn, and he will pay.
No.
Thomas was my own true love, and ignorant of my suffering. It had been my choice to come.
I kept my breath steady and my face placid, calming myself against the unwholesome miasma around me. I put a hand to my forehead and stared at Thomas with beseeching eyes.
But he gazed around himself with a studied lack of curiosity. His eyebrows twitched, as if they wanted to raise but he would not allow it. “This house,” he said, in a distracted tone. “It seems smaller somehow.”
I found that hard to believe.
