Sunder (8 page)

“Your boys will soon be men, and a good man knows to keep fighting out of doors and away from woman’s eyes, My Lord,” Hilde said hotly.

Annis suppressed a giggle. Hilde was an old woman with a cruel husband, and she wasn’t one to apologize for anything. In a house full of men and boys, the aging servant was Annis’ only confidante.

Cædda wasn’t quite as amused with the sharp-tongued nurse, but at Annis’ insistence, he tolerated her. “Has Deorca been settled?” he asked her.

“That she has, My Lord.” Hilde picked up Esmund and sat him down on Annis’ lap, their matching red hair shining in the firelight. “I have her bedded with Saoirse and I’ve got her some clothes. She’ll have to hem the skirts proper tonight, but no matter. She did ask after that,” she said, pointing to the silver crucifix around Cædda’s neck. “Didn’t catch all of it. Just that there was a crucifix what belonged to her.”

Annis looked at the beautiful pendant. The woman must be very rich to have a crucifix like that. A thought came to her and she smiled. “It’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully, playing with Esmund’s hair. “I’ve never had anything so fine.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Cædda took off the crucifix and placed it around Annis’ neck, smiling down at his wife.

“Look what your father gave me.” She showed it to Esmund, beaming at her gift. “Hilde, have Deorca help Saoirse with her chores tomorrow. If she gives you any trouble, tell me at once.” She put Esmund down and stood up next to the nurse. “Your husband might get his apprentice,” she whispered with a smirk.

Hilde smiled back and steered both the children out of the Great Hall, leaving husband and wife together, but not alone. They were never alone in the Great Hall.

“I’m returning to my men now. Are you happy with your gift?”

Annis leaned into her husband and stroked his face. “I’ll thank you properly when you get back.”

He gave her a smile, one tinged with regret, and then he walked out the door. That was the smile he gave her so often, as if to apologize in advance that he would be thinking of Saoirse during their lovemaking. Annis was now left with the sounds of drinking and carousing men, the women who were milling about serving and cleaning, and of course, the ever-present dogs, some of which wandered into her chamber occasionally. With rain spraying in through the doorway, Annis sat back down at her spindle. Cædda wouldn’t come to bed for hours, and the wool wouldn’t very well spin itself.

***

The sun had not shown itself all day, so when night fell upon the small room Hilde had directed her to, an entirely new breed of anxiety flooded Isabella. The room itself was silent, but Isabella could very clearly hear the racket of the carousing men in the adjoining Great Hall. There was no door leading directly from the room into the Hall, but it would take very little effort for some drunken Saxon to stumble his way to where she slept.

After Hilde had departed, Isabella had stayed standing in the center of the filthy room. Her first instinct had been to collapse into sleep, but a quick survey of the room had dissuaded her immediately. The floor was dirt, and her “bed” was nothing more than straw lumped on the floor with a mangy fur over it. The place stank of wet dog and more than a hint of human waste. The bucket in the corner, complete with flies, explained that. The sharp pain of the blisters on her feet had intensified, and she was newly aware of a dull ache in her ankles. She was exhausted, but she could not bring herself to lie down on the filthy bed, or even to sit on the earthen floor.
I’ll probably catch hepatitis.

The door banged open, causing Isabella to jump.

“Have you been standing there since last I left you?” Hilde asked crossly. The old woman stood in the door with a girl who couldn’t be more than 15, just a child really. Blonde and freckled, she looked like a waifish angel.  And yet she was carrying a sleeping baby, maybe a year old, that was undoubtedly hers.

“This is Saoirse. She’ll bed with you henceforth, and she has agreed to help you hem those.” The old woman pointed to a small pile of dresses in the corner, which apparently was now to comprise Isabella’s entire wardrobe. Hilde then turned her hurried glance full onto Saoirse, and spoke to her quietly in their native language before walking gingerly out of the room without any further instruction. Despite the nurse’s overtly stern manner, Isabella felt it a shame such an old woman still had to work.

Now alone with her new roommate, Isabella hazarded a smile at the young girl, who promptly and warmly returned it. Chattering in her soft little voice, she placed her baby in a crude basinet, then started sorting through the pile of dresses. The girl made two piles, one for the faded grey cotton shifts and the other for the heavy wool dresses. At least they might be warmer than her current attire.

Confident the pretty blonde girl had the sewing well under control, Isabella hobbled slowly over to the pathetic straw bed and eased herself down, feeling her whole lower half creak with protest. She did not imagine the straw would offer much comfort, but the day had been so long, and she could not recall a time when she had ever been so tired. But now it was time to sleep.

She let out a contented sigh and leaned back, closing her eyes and hoping tomorrow would bring new hope of leaving this wretched place. Her thoughts drifted to her father when suddenly, a thick and smelly garment landed forcefully on her face.

“What the hell?” She spat out, ripping the dress away from her head.

Saoirse was standing at the wooden table on the far side of the room with her hands on her hips. The little girl spoke rapidly in her weird English, pointing to the dresses and then at Isabella.

From what she could gather, the child wanted Isabella to get up and assist with hemming the dresses. Given Saoirse’s lack of Latin, it was impossible to explain to the simple girl that Isabella had never in her life done any sewing more complicated than replacing a button, and even that paltry repair had been done under duress in primary school.
Unbelievable.

With a heavy sigh, and a great deal of effort, Isabella stood once more and hobbled over to the small table, where Saoirse had already laid out needles, possibly made of bone, and other sewing supplies. But no scissors. Had they been invented yet? She tapped Saoirse on the shoulder.

“Scissors?”  Isabella also made a scissoring gesture with her index and middle finger.

The blonde teenager watched her pantomime, looking at her with confusion before breaking into a giggle and shaking her head. Frustration seized her for a moment, but the little girl seemed nice enough (her refusal do the dresses herself notwithstanding); so Isabella took a deep breath and held up a spool of thread and continued her scissoring motion across the strand she held out. That, Saoirse understood, and she smiled with an audible
ah
and promptly handed over a small knife.

So she was to let out the hem of dark-ages wool dresses with bone needles and no scissors with only a few candles for light.
This should be an adventure.

They worked on the dresses silently for at least three hours. Apparently, the previous owner of the plain wool dresses had a similar frame to Isabella, but of course had been shorter, hence the need for alteration. And, by the smell of the clothing, this prior owner was also dead now. Isabella’s eyes darted between watching Saoirse’s work and focusing on her own stitching, causing her to prick her fingers more than once. The chaos of inebriated men in the adjacent Great Hall was doing nothing to aid her concentration. Whatever these men did for employment, it seemed they had no pressing matters early in the morning; they celebrated (for what, she did not know) late into the night. It was a miracle the baby did not wake up. Perhaps the child was accustomed to the racket.

It was about half past the second hour of their sewing when the noise in the hall lessened and the night began to go still. Saoirse finished the needlework on the last of the four dresses. She worked more quickly than Isabella, who had finished one dress in the time it took the teenager to do three. But she had worked hard, and she smiled as she thought of Father Sigbert’s happiness about her willingness to help.

Saoirse moved away from the table, blowing out the candles as she went, and Isabella took a moment to take in the state of her feet.  Her heels had bloody scabs from rubbing against the oxfords all day, and her ankles were swollen to the point they could now be described as cankles. She had been ignoring the dull ache all day, and focusing on them now for some reason caused a fresh pulse of white-hot fury at the thought of Etienne.

The sound of digging caught her attention, and Isabella swallowed the adrenaline and calmed her shaking fist as she looked over at Saoirse, whose long blonde tresses obscured her face as she kneeled next to one of the straw beds, digging with her hands.

“What are you doing?” she whispered futilely.

The girl stood suddenly, her hand enclosed around whatever she had just dug up. With Isabella squinting at her through the dark, Saoirse walked quietly to the door, opening it slowly.

Oh dear.
Isabella was certainly
not
going to be left alone with only a thin layer of dirt and thatch between her and Garrick. What if those men woke up?  And what if that baby started squalling?

Turning on her swollen and painful ankles, Isabella followed Saoirse. She didn’t bother putting on her shoes, given what they had already done to her feet. Saoirse was barefoot as well, so the terrain couldn’t be too harsh.

Isabella reached Saoirse’s side as she pulled the door fully open. The cold English breeze pelted her face and flung her hair back, but it was not raining.
Thank Christ for small favors
.  She looked down at Saoirse, visible now in the scant moonlight shining through the clouds, and saw that she was smiling, excited even.  With her left hand, Saoirse gently took hold of Isabella’s wrist and led her into the mud, which felt very good on her inflamed feet.

The two made their way down the hill, but not by the main road. Isabella had not noticed this path on her initial journey through Shaftesbury.  The trees were not so effectively cleared on this back half of the hill and the houses were much more spread out. Whatever Saoirse was up to, she did not want to be discovered. No sound came from anywhere in the city.  After an entire day of fear and noise and drunk, smelly men, the cool silence of the night wrapped around Isabella like a blanket.

A foul stench interrupted her serenity, progressively worsening the closer she got to the outer wall.  Before long, it got to be too much for her and she gagged.  Saoirse stopped walking and looked back at her with an amused expression.

“Redwald.” She pointed to a small shack in the distance as she said it.  Isabella did not need to wonder why the building stood alone at the edge of town.  Luckily, the smelly house did not appear to be Saoirse’s destination. Rather, she stopped at a large tree, an oak. As Isabella looked up, she saw the thick sturdy branches sprawled over the wall and tangled in the equally strong branches of the trees on the other side.

For a moment, Isabella wondered if Saoirse was helping her to escape. The upper branches of the tree could surely support her weight. Was the little girl going to lead Isabella to the Abbey in the dark?  But this question was rendered moot when Saoirse knelt down in front of the tree.

She opened her little hand to reveal a small cake of some kind. Swallowing her disappointment, Isabella knelt next to her and pointed at the cake.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, not knowing if the city had guards on the walls.

“SShh. Maith Doine.”

Now Isabella saw there was a hole at the base of the tree, a rabbit borough or some such rodent infestation.  Defying all logic, the girl dropped the cake into the hole with a smile on her face. She looked so proud of herself. She then patted Isabella’s hand and pointed to their left.

“Maith Doine,” she said again.

Isabella wasn’t sure, but the child seemed to be pointing at a circle of mushrooms near the base of the tree.
How utterly bizarre
. Saoirse turned to go, not bothering to lead Isabella by the hand on the way back. 

Under normal circumstances, Isabella would have been very irritated at having lost sleep over such nonsense. But Saoirse’s strange fascination with vermin and spores had shown her a wonderful escape route. She could easily scale that tree, and in the light, she would be able to judge which branches could hold her.  She could be up and over that wall within a few minutes and get on her way.

But she needed time. Her feet would need healing, and her eye would have to open back up. Assuming she could be patient, Isabella would be able to learn some of this bizarre English from Sigbert and have Thorstein inform her of the terrain. Cædda was another problem. She needed her beacon back, and she would need time to persuade him that he should give it to her. There was no reason she couldn’t find a way out of there
and
keep her promise to Sigbert.

She could get out, and get to a major city where they would never find her. From there, it would be a matter of finding a traveler. There was bound to be at least one. With the beacon, she would show the world what Etienne had done to her.  She could be back to her father in a matter of months if luck was with her.  At that thought, she gave her first real smile since landing in England.  As she made her way back to the Great Hall, she breathed in the cold air and relished the darkness, thinking of her father and how happy he would be to see her again.