A Journey of the Heart (20 page)

Three days passed before the Lady appeared in the great hall, and when she did, she was pale and listless, as if she had been ill. Mindful of my mother's wish, I had inquired of the healer if the Lady was in good health, and the healer had assured me that she was. Now I wished I had insisted on seeing her myself.

To my surprise, the Lady gave no indication that she intended to speak with me. At mealtimes I sometimes caught her watching me from the high table, but when I met her eyes, she looked away. Perhaps she was waiting for me to approach her.

Maara said nothing more to me about my decision. I thought I would wait before speaking to Namet about it. I wanted to come to a clearer understanding of my own feelings before anyone told me how I ought to feel. Maara hadn't done that, and I had trusted that she wouldn't, but I was unsure about Namet. If I was in danger from Vintel, Maara was in danger too, and if my becoming Merin's heir would protect me, it would protect her as well. That was almost enough to make my decision for me.

It was another week before Vintel brought her warriors home. They arrived unheralded at suppertime. Vintel barged through the front door of Merin's house with such force that several of the warriors sitting near the door leapt to their feet and drew their swords. She had, of course, meant to call attention to herself, but something caught her eye, and she stopped abruptly to stare at the wall above my head. The man behind her walked into her, knocking her off balance. The warriors she had startled laughed, enjoying her embarrassment all the more because she had given them a scare. It was an inauspicious homecoming.

The warriors of Vintel's band sat down to eat. Their unwashed faces, tangled hair, and filthy clothing showed me what I must have looked like when I walked through the great hall to offer the Lady the spoils of war. When I remembered the shield, I knew what Vintel had been looking at.

Taia and Sparrow came in together. I was delighted to see them both. They joined me at the companions' table, and I listened eagerly to their account of what had happened after we left them. Vintel had followed the northerners' retreat, to drive them out of Merin's land for good. She had pursued them so relentlessly that they left behind unburied the bodies of their wounded who had died.

Sparrow told me that the apprentices now spoke of the battle as Taia's day. Taia blushed with embarrassment and pride.

"I wish your warrior had let you stay with us," Taia said. "I made sure everyone knew the part that Tamras of the Bow played in our victory. They would have made much of you too, but now it's old news."

Although I didn't say so, I was glad I had avoided being made much of. Maara had been wise to bring me home.

Winter came early that year. Almost before the trees had changed their colors, the first snowfall dusted them with white. A few weeks later a heavy snow fell, and as we had done the year before, Maara and I went out into the countryside to set our snares. Sparrow and a few of the other girls had asked me if I would make fur leggings for them.

The first animal we caught was a hare, its fur pure white and very thick.

"This winter will be long and bitter," Maara said.

For those who'd had a meager harvest, it would be a time of hunger. Again I was reminded how fortunate we were.

Only a few weeks remained until midwinter's day, and the Lady still hadn't spoken to me about my adoption. I began to wonder if I should speak with her about it. Although I had given the matter a great deal of thought, I had come to no conclusion. It still felt wrong to abandon the mother I loved, but it felt just as wrong to refuse the place the Lady offered me. When I tried to think of someone else she might choose to be her heir, it seemed that not only was I the obvious choice, but that there was no one else.

At last I spoke to Namet about it. She had no advice to give me.

"You must follow your own heart," she said.

A few days before midwinter's night, in the early morning before anyone was up, the healer came to the companions' loft. She woke me and gestured to me to come with her. She didn't speak until we were in the kitchen.

"I'm sorry to wake you so early," she said. "The Lady wants you."

The day I dreaded had come, I thought, but when I turned to go up to the Lady's chamber, the healer said, "Wait a minute. I want to brew something for her fever."

"Is she unwell?" I asked.

The healer's brow furrowed with worry.

"Out of her head all night," she told me. "Full of wild talk. She finally slept an hour or two this morning. She's a bit better now, but she refused the medicine I gave her. She may be willing to take something from your hand."

"Does she have winter sickness?"

"It's a fever of some kind, but worse than any winter sickness I've seen."

I waited while the healer brewed an evil-smelling tea of goldenroot.

"How long has she been ill?" I asked.

"Her servant called me at midnight," she said. "Merin complained all day yesterday of headache, but last night she was feeling better. Then in the middle of the night the fever came on her. She called out for someone in her sleep." The healer gave me a strange look. "Your name, her servant thought."

"My name?"

"Yours or your mother's, but this morning it was you she asked for."

I took the tea upstairs and knocked on the Lady's door. No one answered. I went in and found her sleeping. Before I could decide which would do her the most good, medicine or sleep, she opened her eyes. When she saw me, a light came into them for a moment. Then it died, and she turned her face away.

"You sent for me, Lady," I said.

She moved her hand a little, as if to wave me away.

"I've brought something for your fever."

She gave no indication that she'd heard me. I sat down beside her on the bed and felt her forehead. It was dry and hot. I think she would have pushed my hand away if she'd had the strength. In her eyes I saw a weariness that frightened me.

"Drink this," I said.

I slipped my hand behind her head, to raise it enough for her to drink from the bowl. She was too weak to resist me, and she drank a few sips of the tea. After a while she began to doze. I went downstairs and brought a basin of cold water and a cloth back to her room. I bathed her face and hands and left the cool cloth on her forehead. I believe it made her feel a little better.

Most of that day I stayed beside her. I brewed her a remedy I had learned from my mother. She seemed to like it better than what the healer had given her. I also got her to take some bread soaked in broth, though it was difficult for her to swallow.

All day her servant kept up a good fire. The room was stuffy, but it was much too cold outside to take the shutter down, and even the dim lamplight in the room seemed to hurt the Lady's eyes. While she slept, I dozed in the chair by the hearth. In the evening the healer sent me downstairs to eat my supper.

"Tell them it's winter sickness," she told me. "Let's not frighten anyone."

I nodded, but when I spoke with Maara after supper, I told her the truth.

"Will she recover?" Maara asked me.

I knew what she was thinking. "I can't believe it's the Lady's time to die. So many people need her."

And none more than Maara and I, I thought to myself.

Maara frowned. "The gods never stop to think that someone may be needed," she said.

That evening the healer told me she would sit up with the Lady, so I went to bed, but only a few hours later, she sent for me again. When I entered the Lady's chamber, the healer was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hands on the Lady's shoulders, to keep her still.

I heard the Lady say, "Where is she?"

"She's coming," the healer told her. Then she saw me come in. "Here she is now."

The healer beckoned to me. When I approached the bed, she got up and had me sit down beside the Lady. She took the Lady's hand and placed it in mine.

"Is it you?" the Lady asked me.

The healer bobbed her head at me.

"Yes," I said. "It's me."

The Lady sighed and closed her eyes. "Don't leave me."

"I won't," I said. "I'm here."

After a few minutes she fell asleep.

"She insisted on getting up to go after your mother," the healer whispered, when she was sure the Lady was sleeping soundly. "I didn't know what else to do. It was all I could do to keep her in bed."

The healer looked worn out.

"I'll sit with her now," I told her.

"Don't let her get out of bed."

"I won't."

"She's very strong, as ill as she is."

"I've nursed people with fevers before," I said. "I'll keep her quiet."

"All right," she said. "Send for me if you need me."

Although there was a good fire burning, I was cold. I made sure the Lady was well covered. Then I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat down again beside her.

She slept peacefully for half an hour. I had begun to doze. Her restlessness woke me. She struggled against the bedclothes, trying to push them aside, as if she would get out of bed. I covered her again and took her hand.

"Hush," I said.

She quieted a little. "You're here."

"Yes, I'm here."

Her grip on my hand tightened. She drew it to her lips and kissed it. Then she held the back of my hand against her cheek and closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's all right."

She turned onto her side, facing me, and settled herself to sleep, her cheek pillowed on my hand clasped in hers.

"Beloved," she said.

"I hoped time had healed that wound," said Namet.

"They were more than friends," I said.

Namet nodded. "Much more."

"I didn't know."

"It was over and done with before you first drew breath."

"Evidently not," I told her.

"No," she conceded. "Evidently not."

It was still early morning. As soon as the healer had released me from my charge, I went to Namet's room. The Lady had slept peacefully through the night, although she still burned with fever.

"Why did my mother never tell me?" I asked Namet.

"You must ask her that," she said.

"Did my mother love her too?"

"Very much."

"But she went home."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That is something you shouldn't hear from me."

"Who else can tell me?"

"Only Merin and Tamnet know the truth of it."

"No one else?"

Namet took my hand. "Let it be. What good can come of awakening the dead past?"

"The past is awake in Merin," I said.

And in my mother too? I wondered.

"That may be," said Namet, "but the sooner it sleeps again, the better off she'll be."

"And if it doesn't sleep?"

Namet sighed and shook her head.

"You awakened the past for Maara," I reminded her.

"Yes," she said. "Because I had a remedy for it. I awakened a longing in her for something she once knew long ago, and had forgotten, because wanting it hurt too much. And the remembering did hurt her, but when the hurt had passed, she was no longer motherless."

Namet's eyes grew fierce. "There is no remedy for Merin's pain."

As I tried to make some sense of what I'd heard, my mind discovered all the questions I had never asked because I didn't know enough to ask them. As a child I had been surrounded by mysteries of which I was ignorant. Now my heart was telling me that ignorance would shelter me no longer.

"It isn't fair," I said. "So many things happened in the world before I came into it. I can't know any of them unless someone will tell me. It's like walking into a room where everyone is keeping a secret. I hear the whispers and see the sidelong glances, and I know the secret must have something to do with me, but no one will tell me anything."

"This secret has nothing to do with you," said Namet.

"Of course it does," I said.

Namet sighed. "I believe they had a falling-out. Their hearts didn't change, but something came between them."

"My father?"

"No."

"What was it then?"

"Let me begin at the beginning," she said. "When I came here to find my husband, I saw the love between them. It hurt me very much, because it reminded me of what I had lost. It hurt so much that I avoided them.

"But I couldn't avoid Merin's mother, and one day she insisted on telling me how delighted she was that her daughter and Tamnet had found each other. She told me that Merin had been a difficult child, and I could well believe it. She was disobedient and disrespectful, impossible to discipline, and her mother had little confidence that she would ever be able to bear the responsibility that would one day be hers. But when she loved Tamnet, she began to care about herself, and she also began to care about other people."

Namet gave me a wry smile. "While my love for my husband made me think only of myself, Merin's love for Tamnet made her think about other people when she had never cared anything about them before. Love sometimes does that.

"After the war, Tamnet went home, but there was something wrong about her leaving. She would have gone home in any case. There was never any question about that. Her mother had lost every child she had but one. How could Tamnet have deprived her mother of her only living child? And of course she had to take her place as her mother's heir.

"But she left suddenly one morning, and for days afterward, Merin was in a rage. She was every bit the spoiled child in a tantrum that she had been before. No one had any sympathy for her. After all, her beloved still lived, while all around her people grieved loved ones lost forever.

"Merin cared nothing for what anyone thought of her, but in time the storm blew over. What saved her, I think, was that there was so much to do. She was so young, with responsibilities that a much older woman would have found daunting. Her mother's health was failing, and this place was a shambles. To Merin fell the task of setting everything to rights. She put the breach with Tamnet behind her and went on."

"But they remained friends," I said, remembering the times Merin had come to help us when I was a child. "How did they heal their hearts?"