Blood Ties (11 page)

“No,” she said to them. “I’m no city girl. I’m heading north.”

She stayed another day, pretending everything was fine, chatting and currying the roan — while her sister looked on, astonished — and sitting in the big front room where Maryrose had her loom and Merrick his carpenter’s bench.

They didn’t mention Acton again, or Travelers, or warlords. Instead, Bramble told funny stories about the lambs she had hand-reared, the squirrels who scolded her in the forest as she watched at their nut store, about her first fumbling efforts to ride the roan, and the pain she’d been in afterward.

“I swear,” she said, “I was walking like a woman who’s just given birth, with my legs as far apart as they could go so the chafing didn’t kill me. And Widow Farli comes out of the potter’s and takes one look at me — reeling from side to side — and shouts ‘the falling sickness, the falling sickness!’ and runs to get the village voice. So I straightened up — and believe me, it hurt, every step — and when she dragged the voice out to see me, there I was, walking quietly along like a little lady, smiling kindly at the poor, deluded thing. So he turns to look at her as though
she’s
got the sickness and she gets all in a snit and says, ‘Don’t you look at
me
in that tone of voice!’”

Maryrose giggled helplessly, her shuttle faltering halfway across the warp, and Ric shook his head, smiling as he planed a piece of sweet-smelling cedar. Bramble was happy, simply happy, but it was the happiness you feel when you remember a good memory, or as a ghost might smile, recalling the life that was over.

As she was packing to leave, Merrick brought her a present, a pair of horse bags that didn’t need a saddle to hang off.

She was touched, and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, Ric.”

She packed them evenly — one side for her gear, the other for the roan’s feed and hobbles and curry combs that she had bought at Carlion market — then slung them across his withers. He was eager to be off, too; she could feel it.

She kissed them both goodbye, hugged Maryrose a couple of times, then used the mounting block in the yard to climb onto the roan. She grinned determinedly, nudged the roan through the gates, and took the Road. It was a beautiful morning, with gulls wheeling in the sky and a fresh salt breeze blowing. Bramble moved through it without truly feeling anything, as though only her body were present, not her soul.

Three-quarters of the way up the hill on which Carlion was built, she passed a house with a red leather pouch hung outside the door to show it was a stonecaster’s. She rode past, but then stopped the roan and turned back. It was better to know than to wonder, she thought.

She put a loose strap around the roan’s neck so that any passersby would think he was tethered to the bootscraper by the door, and knocked.

“Come, come,” a brusque voice told her.

She found herself in a square green room with a white ceiling and furnished only with a dark blue rug. A middle-aged man sat slouched on the rug, running his fingers through a leather pouch the exact red of the one hung outside. She couldn’t tell if he was a Traveler or one of Acton’s people, because he was completely bald and kept his eyes on the pouch.

“Sit, sit, girl,” he said.

She sat down cross-legged and spat in her left palm. The stonecaster did the same and they clasped hands.

“Do you want to say your question out loud?” he asked, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. Bramble knew that the more specific the question, the better the results, so she thought carefully.

“What happened to me during the jump over the chasm?”

The stonecaster looked up at that, but his eyes told her nothing. They were nothing eyes — not blue, not brown, not green — that seemed to change color depending on what he was looking at. He brought out the stones, cast them across the rug and looked down.

“Death,” he said. “Destiny. Rescue. All facing up. Spirit, facing down. And Confusion.”

“What do they mean?”

He cocked his head, as though listening, as she had known other stonecasters to do. They said the stones talked to them, but she had never felt the presence of the gods at a casting.

The stonecaster sat upright, startled, and let go of her hand. “They say you died,” he said. “That it was your time to die and you died. Your spirit should have moved on to rebirth. But your body — was saved?”

“Yes,” Bramble said. “My horse saved me.”

This time the stonecaster looked at her with compassion. “I have never heard of something like this, where someone’s destiny has been broken.”

“Love breaks all fates,” Bramble said.

“Love from a horse?” the stonecaster said. “Well, maybe, it may be . . . However it happened, body and mind are alive, spirit is — not yet gone, but not really here. Ready to be reborn but unable to because it’s still tied loosely to the body.”

“Like a ghost who has quickened but not been laid to rest?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps, yes. It may be so.”

“I have another question.”

“Of course,” he said. “What should you do, yes?”

She nodded.

They clasped hands again and with his right hand he gathered the stones from the rug and cast again. Bramble found herself concentrating on the stones as they fell, as though she could change their message. Casting stones were all natural, not shaped, and they came in every color of rock imaginable. These five were a pattern of ocher, gray, brown and black on the dark rug.

Destiny again, she recognized. And she knew the Rebirth stone. The others were strange to her.

“Love,” the stonecaster said, touching the ocher one lightly. “Endurance through trials. And the blank stone, which means anything is possible.”

“What do they mean?

He cocked his head again, then shrugged. “What you see is all I can tell you. Destiny, Rebirth, Endurance . . . There is a way through for you, but it’s not one the stones can easily describe.”

“And in the meantime I’m dead?”

“Not dead, exactly. Detached from your spirit, which is your connection to the living world.”

Detached,
Bramble thought. Yes, that was how she felt. Detached and unfeeling. Even this casting, horrific though it was, left her with only a mild sensation of shock and despair, like an echo.

“Endurance,” she said.

“Yes,” said the stonecaster. “You must endure.” He would accept no payment. “Not for news such as that,” he said, his changeable eyes reflecting the green walls and reminding her of the forest she was heading toward. “Remember, there was love in the reading.”

Riding out of Carlion east along the coast, Bramble almost felt calm. She knew the worst. She merely had to endure. At some point her body would die, as every body did in time, and her spirit would be free to be reborn. She might have to endure a very long time. If that were so, the forest was even more the place she should be. It would be easier to endure death surrounded by the myriad life of the woods. She turned the roan’s nose and urged him to a canter.

Maryrose’s Story

B
EFORE YOU
were born and after the sun first shone, there was a girl. She was a young girl, a wild girl: there has been a girl like her in every village and town since the world was born. The girl whose first word is “No!,” the girl who runs away from parents and sisters and rolls in the dust with dogs, who throws stones at boys and breaks the pots she is set to wash. The girl who can soothe a colicky baby or a frightened doe rabbit, the girl whose grandfather shakes his head over her but slips her honey cake under the table, the girl wreathed in flowers with bare feet and big eyes, the girl called Bramble, the interesting one.

Well, this is a story about me, her sister Maryrose, who had to stay home and milk the goats while Bramble roamed over the hillsides. Who held the timber still for our father, the carpenter, to saw, while Bramble hunted wild honey. Who threaded the loom for our mother, the weaver, while Bramble waded in the cool green creek. Who learned both to weave and carpenter, because there were only the two of us, and our parents had to teach someone — and Bramble was never there. Except at mealtimes.

Oh, believe me, I didn’t dislike Bramble, not at all. Because, truth be told, I liked having my parents all to myself. And I liked weaving and carpentering and the cool green of the creek didn’t tempt me at all, with the good wood whispering under my plane, with the bright wool whispering between my fingers and the sharp
clack, clack
of the shuttle flicking across the warp like a dragonfly.

But I worried about Bramble. For how was she to care for herself when she grew up, who knew nothing and could do nothing useful except gather wild food from the forest? I could see a time, after our parents’ deaths, when Bramble would be forced into the cold, cold world unless I myself wove enough cloth and shaped enough wood to support both of us. And that, for I was only human after all, I was determined not to do.

So I looked at Bramble and I considered her, and I came to a conclusion that the one thing that she had in abundance, and which I lacked, was looks. She was a true briar flower: curly black hair, black sloe eyes and smooth skin, a pink flush in her cheeks, and the grace of a fawn. It occurred to me that some good man might not mind that Bramble could not even bake bread, if he was bewitched enough by her beauty and her charm (for Bramble, when she cared to, could charm the birds down out of the trees and onto her fingers). Then the man could take care of Bramble, and I wouldn’t need to worry about her, ever again.

So I decided to look for a man for Bramble. A man who was hardworking, where Bramble was shiftless. A man who was prosperous, where Bramble had nothing. A man who was young and good-looking, or else Bramble would never look twice, let alone marry. A man who was merry and good-tempered, who wouldn’t be irritated by the many things Bramble didn’t know, but would value the wild spirit in her. A man who was strong — for somewhere, sometime, Bramble must be tamed. Maybe love could do it where everything else had failed.

I started looking in our own village. But there was no man there to fit the bill. For Wilf was sweet but ugly. Carl was hard-working, but timid as a mouse, and quailed whenever Bramble cast him a scornful look. Neither Aelred nor Eric, Ralf nor Martin were even-tempered enough, for Bramble could try the patience of a stone, when she came home singing late in the long summer evenings, when the dinner was cold and dried out, when the chores had all been done.

The other boys had parents who glared hard-eyed at Bramble when she danced (the lightest, the merriest of all) round the Springtree, and held back their sons from her light feet and shining hair. And none of the boys had strength enough to gainsay them.

So I looked elsewhere. When I was nineteen and Bramble a year younger, I took the cloth to market for the first time on my own, to the Winterfair in the city. It was good cloth — my mother and I wove so alike that no one could tell where one left off and the other began. We had dyed it a serviceable dark brown, a good yeoman color for jerkin or capuchin or cloak. As well I took a piece I’d woven all myself, on the lap loom, from scraps and scourings of wool, with a pattern of autumn leaves, bright as fire and gold as sun against the color of evergreens.

I set out my wares in the great trade hall, on a trestle table I had rented from the organizer of the fair, the town clerk. I spread out the good solid brown lengths and then, across the front of the table, I laid the bright piece. I watched the craftsmen and the craftswomen set up their tables around me; but mostly I watched the craftsmen, thinking, “No, he’s too old for Bramble, that one’s too young, that one’s too short, he’s too skinny, too mean a mouth, too flighty . . .” I turned them over in my mind as my customers turned over the lengths of wool on my table. I would have bought none of them for Bramble.

Many people approached, drawn by the swathe of autumn fabric, but I liked that piece and had no real wish to sell it, so I put a high price on it, and many who came to finger the red and gold and green I sent away with sensible brown. Then the town clerk came, with her husband the silversmith, her daughter the jeweler, and her son the woodcarver. The town clerk wanted the bright piece as a Winterfest present for her husband, to make a fine waistcoat and scarf. What could I do? For all traders know that the town clerk can make or mar your Winterfair, this one or next, by where she put your table and how much rent she charges for it.

So I named my price and gave the town clerk a good discount. I reluctantly handed the piece to the husband, and the family moved away. But the son, the woodcarver, lingered behind.

“It’s hard,” he said, “giving up something you’ve made, something you love, to a stranger.”

I looked at him properly for the first time, and I liked what I saw. For he was comely, with autumn hair the color of turning oak leaves, and warm brown eyes, and good hands with calluses from chisel and saw. They were the same calluses as I had on my hands, the same as my father’s. So I knew that he was hardworking at his trade, and I knew by his smile that he was merry. I set myself to find out more about him, for here at last was someone who might do for Bramble.

“It is hard,” I acknowledged.

“My name is Merrick,” he said. “What’s yours?”

The more I knew him, the more I was sure. He was hard-working and prosperous, young and good-looking, merry and even-tempered, and strong — all the things I had wanted for Bramble. For the length of that Winterfair we were together, even after I’d sold all my cloth, for there was a heavy snowfall and the roads were blocked. So we walked together and talked together, and mostly what we talked about was Bramble. I told him about my sister: her beauty, her wildness, how she had never cared for a man, nor deigned to even smile at a suitor. For my grandmother had once told me that men love to hunt what they cannot have, so I made Bramble seem aloof and uncatchable — like a pure white hind in the forest — and that was the truth, after all.

Perhaps Grandam was right, for when the snow stopped and the roads were cleared, Merrick asked my permission to journey back to the village with me, to meet my family. The town clerk beamed and Merrick’s sister kissed me on the cheek, and filled my knapsack with freshly baked bread and russet apples.

It was a happy journey. Merrick kept me laughing all the way, and when we were not laughing, we talked, comfortably, about timber: oak and ash and beech, pale, smooth lime, and rare, fragrant cedar. Then we laughed again.

But oddly, the closer I came to the village, the heavier my heart became. When finally we stood outside our front gate, and the door opened and Bramble came flying down the path to meet us with bare feet and black eyes and red cheeks, I couldn’t bear to look at Merrick in case my plan had worked after all, and he was bewitched by her beauty and charm.

And maybe he would have been if he’d met Bramble first, black hair bright against the snow and red lips smiling. For Bramble, there was no doubt, was intrigued by him. She sat at his feet in front of the fire and made him laugh, and pelted him with questions about the city, and being the town clerk’s son, and traveling as a journeyman, and seeing the wide world, and about life and death and even, once, about love. It seemed to me that we all stopped, breathless, to hear his answer.

He shook his head, laughing. “My mother always said I had a heart of oak,” he said. “No softness in it for any maid.” He reached out and brushed a flake of ash, casually, from my shoulder.

That was the moment when I realized that, Bramble or no Bramble, I was going to marry Merrick, and if I had to support her for the rest of my life to pay for it, then I would.

So we married and I moved to town, but underneath my joy was always the nagging worry — what would happen to Bramble? And then she went on the Road and my worry grew, for who knew what might happen to her out there? But there was no use trying to stop her, for nothing and no one ever has, nor ever will.