The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (23 page)

But when it had finally been tested, Niav knew that that had been a tragedy. Father and Mother she had been told, were out in the boat with Artin, and everyone was watching from the river’s edge (with only young Aunty Grizzel minding new baby Niav back at home) and the boat had gone down at the river-mouth; only Artin’s decorated knee protector that her dad, Diarma, had made had been washed in on the sands.

What happened after that? Niav was unsure. She now felt she might have been told a pack of lies. Little details started to add up. Memories of hearing people mention that it was when Artin came back about three years later, with a new boat, a new band of brothers, a new knee-guard and a welter of new magical ideas, that many people had started to feel that maybe Artin really must be some sort of miracle-worker or even a god.

Niav couldn’t help feeling, from spending so much time with
dear
cousin Estra, that this was how the myths began. At the moment, what she wanted was the truth.

So what had it been? Time and time again, through all the years that Niav could remember, he had come whirling in, always on the brink of a storm; Artin the Smith – smoke and magic, golden metal and golden honey. They said he gave so much and had taken so very little in return, but now she wasn’t sure.

Suddenly the skies opened and Niav dashed headlong down the ridge to tell the world.

***

“And how many did he have with him this time?” Aunty Grizzel was trying her best not to sound interested, as the rain pelted down on the turf of the roof and filled the drip-gully to overflowing.

“I think there were at least four of them, maybe five. One may have been a woman. I’m not sure. The light wasn’t good.”

“Five, that’s handy, five eggs. You could give those eggs as a guest-greeting.”

“I am sure those eggs are not bad,” said Niav firmly.

“Then that’s all right, isn’t it? Anyway, they are beautifully packed.”

***

Artin the Smith and his companions anchored their boat at the deep part by the eastern shore where the boys used to jump in from the rocks at sunset if no strangers were visiting. Next day the new arrivals were rowed over to the settlement on the opposing shore in a shoal of coracles reverently manned by a respectful escort of eastbankers – so that Artin could set up his furnace for the duration among the smells and grime of his fellow artisans on the western bank as he always did.

Artin smiled when Niav, standing at the gate of their compound, handed him the basket of eggs. It was the closest she had ever been to him. He passed it back on to one of his brothers directly behind him, who was collecting up all the gifts from the people of the west bank as they made their progress, and putting them into a hamper.

Uncle Lurgan was there in the crowded background, but trying to look in charge – as if you could with such a stupid beard and sandals, not to mention the hat (surely he didn’t imagine that it made him look intelligent and wise). Aunty Helygen stood, drooping on his arm like some scrawny willow. They had even brought cousins Estra, Kyle and the youngest, Canya. They all looked very clean. Niav supposed there hadn’t been room in the family coracle for the hound as well – a pity, since apart from Canya it was quite the nicest member of the family.

Canya was exactly what a cousin ought to be. Niav felt really cheered by the sight of her and they grinned at each other. People often told Niav that if she wanted to know what her mother, Befind, had looked like, she only needed to take a glance at Canya – and that was a strangely comforting thing to know.

Suddenly Niav’s spirits lifted. The tension of all the frantic preparation that Aunty Grizzel had pretended wasn’t happening was over. Things would be fine. Surely Artin would somehow know if the eggs were bad or not? He’d just know?

Aunty Grizzel was beside her, simply radiating beauty, and with a smug smile on her face. She had on her jet necklace and a woollen shawl so subtly woven and dyed that it looked like something that had burgeoned in the forest – not made by human hands at all. Needless to say, there was a woman in Artin’s party and Grizzel had heard as much, instantly, from her contacts on the east bank.

“Did you tell my bees that I was here too, Grizzel?” Artin laughed into her eyes.

“Of course,” she smiled sweetly. “I tell the bees everything.”

“Well now you will be able to tell them that this time I have brought Orchil, my wife, to meet them too.”

The new woman wore a long blue cloak and her hair was shining, jet black, but her skin was very pale, like new-chipped quartz. She stood behind him, between the two other men. She had great dark eyes, but she scarcely looked up at Grizzel at all, only down at her child, a raven-haired toddler, who slept quietly in a side-sling at her hip, his thin white legs dangling against her.

“And this is our son, Fearn.”

***

So Artin and his brothers (for it turned out the second man was another brother) set up their bothy where Artin’s people always did, and soon Niav could hear the bellows of his furnace working like the breathing of a giant beast, and smell the woodsmoke curling from his fire of alder-logs, drifting down towards them.

People from the local countryside sped to and fro across the river to visit Artin on their western bank. They brought him their broken tools and broken lives and went home smiling.

On the third day Artin himself came limping down to the weaving-hut. His wooden knee greave was decorated with swirling pokerwork patterns like the rising sun. He made a polite visit to the beehive, smiled sweetly at Niav and then turned his attention to Aunt Grizzel.

“Orchil, my wife, is unhappy. I would like to give a gift to her.”

“A nice rug might remind her of home,” said Grizzel sourly.

“No, not one of those. That was never her home. What I had in mind were those beads I fashioned.”

Grizzel’s hand leapt to her necklace. “No!” she said.

“They were not made for you.”

“I strung them.”

“But they were not made for you.”

“Because of you we lost my brother and my brother’s wife. If we gave the beads to anyone, it should be to my niece here, Niav.”

Artin and Niav exchanged a glance and he raised one perfect eyebrow.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like a rug after all? They come from your design, you know,” said Niav shyly “This blue one is lovely,” she added, pulling one out from the pile laid ready for trading.

But he settled instead for a saffron-coloured belt with an arrow-shaped jet fastening like the one on Grizzel’s necklace. Niav had woven it and she dimpled in pleasure.

She watched Aunty Grizzel holding Artin in animated conversation as they walked past the friendly, long-nosed pig that snuffled at the water-trough, and wove their way through the browsing flock of small-horned, dark-coated sheep till they reached the thorny compound hedge; then she slammed the gate after him. What on earth had all that been about?

***

Niav was troubled in her sleep; she kept waking to hear murmurings as Aunty Grizzel moved about the hut and finally went out on some night emergency – though she was back in her bed in the morning.

The next day the news spread that Artin’s wife had died in the night. She must have been a bit more than unhappy. Had she even seen her new belt?

“Three rough men can’t care for an infant!” declared Grizzel to everyone’s astonishment except Niav’s. The two of them walked up to Artin’s bothy through the dry grass.

The little boy Fearn was not exactly an infant – a grave child, with his thumb in his mouth. He had his mother’s hair and his father’s eyes. He knew what was going on all right – not the first death he had seen, Niav felt sure.

She and Grizzel stood by him while the three men dug the grave beneath the alder tree, brothers in looks, brothers in action. All three of them, shirts laid aside as they navvied, had a white mark on their brown backs, in between the shoulder-blades, where the sun had refused to tan them. Artin’s mark was the clearest and most symmetrically defined, like the wings of a great bee, or a double-headed axe.

No wonder people thought of him as one of the chosen.

“Under the alder,” remarked Grizzel to no one in particular. “It was alderwood he used for his confounded boat that stole my family away.” Niav winced at the pain in her voice. Weren’t things bad enough?

“Of course he would, alder doesn’t rot. It’s just a tree. You use it yourself for your dyeing: most of the greens, and the gold – and the red too. Is that somehow an insult to my dad and mum as well? I never heard anything so daft.” Symbols were all very well, but Niav felt her aunt could get a bit carried away sometimes.

“But never blue,” Grizzel went on as though Niav hadn’t said a word. She was watching the three of them bundle poor Orchil, wrapped in her cloak, into the readied grave. “I wonder what caused such unfairness? Bastard!”

Surely Aunty Grizzel must have meant that last word for fate – never for someone like Artin?

***

The people of the river-mouth were amazed, and deeply honoured, that when Artin The Smith and his brothers sailed away to the south, Fearn came to stay with Grizzel and Niav.

Uncle Lurgan took great exception to this and came storming up to their compound. He stood there, seething in his sandals, his wisp of a beard jutting in thwarted dignity while poor Aunt Helygen stood wringing her hands tearfully behind him.

“What that child is entitled to is a solid family life with us. He needs the proper preparation for his future. I am sure it would never have occurred to Artin that we would arrange for anything else!”

Aunty Grizzel stood there as majestic as a cedar, and as impervious. “He didn’t mention it.”

“Poor soul, he would be so grief-stricken. It must have slipped his mind,” ventured Helygen. “There needs to be a responsible man in his life, like an uncle, for support.”

“He isn’t short of real uncles,” Grizzel replied. “I can’t remember that sort of offer ever being made by you for your real niece, Niav here.”

Niav’s heart almost stopped beating at the horror of the suggestion.

But it was eventually settled that Uncle Lurgan would take on the role and duties of Fearn’s foster father. The only consequence as far as Niav was concerned was that Estra, Kyle and Canya ended up with more frequent crossings of the river in order to allow all the children “plenty of time together”, and Fearn and Niav would often go over to the big family hut on the east side of the river.

“You have a perfect right to go there,” Aunty Grizzel said cheerfully. “Rather more right than they have, if you want to be old-fashioned about your inheritance.”

It wasn’t too bad. What Uncle Lurgan felt he would gain by all this was unclear to Niav, though Aunty Grizzel seemed to have a pretty shrewd idea.

“He and Helygen probably hope that Fearn will end up with one of their girls,” she said. “It’s probably Estra, she is the eldest. Besides, Lurgan has developed the notion that Estra has inherited huge magical ability from both him and her mother, that wretched Seyth. I can’t say I’ve noticed.” Then she ruffled Niav’s bright hair. “If we have an extra mouth to feed, I can do with any help I am offered. Besides,” she laughed, “Fearn can always refuse. He is not daft”.

That didn’t help explain Aunt Grizzel’s sudden sense of friendship – even duty – to Artin, when only a few days earlier she had seemed to be suggesting that he might have had something to do with the deaths of both of Niav’s parents, not to mention that of his own poor wife, Orchil.

Kyle and Estra had to be endured, but Fearn seemed a tolerant child, if self-contained. However, spending more time with her younger cousin Canya was a real joy. Canya was pretty and clever and kind, and her voice was clear as a blackbird and smack on the note and you could suddenly find yourself singing in harmony with her without having planned it at all.

But cousin Estra was a problem. She could be so obsessive about things. All the river-mouth children liked to go beachcombing together in search of bits of jet, and the tiny snake stones that were small enough to turn into saleable jewellery, but Estra was always contriving ways of isolating Niav from the rest of the group because she wanted to be “special friends” with her. Niav found this most annoying, but frantic complaints to Aunty Grizzel fell on deaf ears.

“Nothing very special about poor Estra,” was all she would say.

This seemed a bit harsh on Estra, who was the best of the three girls when it came to learning things from the two aunties. Helygen was not only a superb herbalist, she was incredibly house-proud and a consumate cook. Niav found she had a lot of catching up to do to be level with her cousins. Her aunt was also very conscientious, strict about care and safety with her herbs and potions with five children around, and a very good teacher too; extremely patient – not as erratic as Aunty Grizzel.

Uncle Lurgan would be out with the boys and the great dog, caring for the flocks, but was also responsible for their instruction in the skills of hunting and tracking. Niav and Canya would have loved to do this too, until Fearn told them how Lurgan managed to surround even that with endless ritual.

With Aunty Grizzel all three girls now learned the skills of spinning and weaving. Lurgan would probably have disapproved had he known that Grizzel also tried to hand on everything that she had learned from Niav’s parents, even letting them take a try at scrying in the smooth stone water-bowl that was kept in pride of place on the dresser beside her little drum and the ritual rattle.

But Estra continued to be a real trial for Niav. She was convinced that there must be some sinister magical connection in the way that both their mothers, Seyth and Befind, had died in the clutches of the river and so, equally, this should make an important bond between the two of them. Niav found all this very upsetting. She wondered if her own nagging worries about her parents’ deaths would seem equally crazy if she were to talk about it in public. She certainly didn’t feel ready to haul everything out in the open for a loud-mouthed idiot like Estra to pull to bits and put together again, almost certainly all wrong.