The Moorchild (19 page)

“Shoulda known better than to follow ’er off,” Saaski retorted.

His eyes opened wide and defensively. “Told me she’d come out’n the Mound and live with me here!” He added, with a kind of mumbling apology in his rusty voice, “I’d’a looked after you, I would, true, hadn’t she tricked me.”

What a noddikins, Saaski thought. Believe anything, he would. “Eh, well, it’s over and done now. Past mendin’.” She hesitated, then came out with it. “You could get a bit of your own back, though, should you want to. Pay ’er out proper.”

He backed off instantly, all the old suspicion back in his face, his hands flying up to ward her off. “Nay! I want no truck with ’er now. You, either. Too late. Past mendin’. You said it yourself.”

“Y’ needn’t have any truck with ’er. Needn’t leave this room.” She waited till his hands came down, twisted each other anxiously, finally dropped to his sides.

“How, then?” he asked her.

“Just tell me some things I can’t recollect. About the Mound.” She hesitated, swallowed hard, but held his gaze with her own. “I mean to go down there. Soon’s I can.”

“They’ll never let y’ stay,” he whispered.

“Don’t mean to stay. Mean to get a bit of
my
own back. They tricked me, too. Anywise, they tricked my mumma—my . . . ” She didn’t know what to call them, now. “Anwara. And Yanno. Stole their real baby away, that’s what the Folk did.”

“Aye,” he said slowly. “I allus reckoned that’s what happened. But what can y’do about it now, little ’un?”

“Steal ’er back.”

Another silence, accompanied by one of his wild-eyed, suspicious stares. “How?” he said at last.

“Dunno yet! First thing is to find the way in. I used to know well enough where ’twas,” she added crossly. “Do you? You found it once.”

“Nay! Found
her.
I was just walkin’ overmoor—Midsummer’s Eve, ’twas. And I come across ’em sudden-like—a whole passel of
Them Ones
a’dancin’ to a piper, and
her
amongst ’em. She come over and took me hand, and I danced with ’em, too. Wasn’t so gawky and stiff then—only twenty year old, young and strong . . . ”

His voice had turned mournful and dreamy, his eyes vacant. Saaski lost no time in rousing him from his maunderings. “So after the dancin’—where’d she take you?”

“Don’t rightly know,” Fergil said—as she’d half expected. Blinking, shaking his shaggy head as if he had long puzzled over this himself, he went on wonderingly. “One minute we was there, on t’moor, next minute, in a glitterin’ big place, with a feast like you never saw laid out—all pheasants and peacocks and oranges and sugarplums on great gold trenchers, and goblets foamin’ with fairy mead. . . . They
told me I dassn’t eat or sup—eh, I paid ’em no mind . . . ”

Impatient, Saaski quit listening. The only foods she remembered were wild herbs and birds’ eggs—along with lentils nobbled from Torskaal storerooms, occasional rabbits from Torskaal traps. Certainly she had not dined on peacocks, much less oranges, which the gypsies talked about but nobody else had ever seen. That was all
glamourie
conjured up to hoax the likes of Fergil—first cousin to the gold-piece trick, that was.

“Never mind the feastin’,” she interrupted. “What else did y’ see? Where’s the Nursery? Spinning House? The byres for the red-horns? Likely they’ll be schoolin’ that child in some such place.”

Fergil merely turned wide eyes to her, and shook his head.

“Eh, botheration! You’re no use to me a-tall!” she exclaimed. “What
do
you recollect? You stayed a right good while.”

“I didn’t! Leastwise . . . seemed only a little time. Though I were no lad when I come out,” he added bitterly. “All ’cause I ate Folk food, and supped Folk mead.” He swung around to her. “Don’t you take a bite nor a sup, long as you’re there, or it’ll go hard with ye.”

“Folk food won’t hurt me—ate it in me cradle.” She brooded a moment, watching the stub of candle flickering, giving out more smell than light, a drop of tallow rolling over its lip. “So y’ came out. Where?” she asked him.

The spark of animation in his face died. “T’moor. Woke up—cold and stiff in me joints. All by meself. And old.” He turned away, shrugging, bitterness in every line of his sagging shoulders. “Dunno just where. I mind there was thorn
trees—tore me cloak tryin’ to find me way in the dark.”

Thorn trees. I might’ve guessed, Saaski thought.

Now it was she who let the silence stretch out, while she made a wrenching peace with what she had known all along must happen. She was roused by Fergil’s dog, whining questioningly at the door and adding a loud scrabble of toenails for emphasis.

“Quiet, now!” Fergil growled at it, and the noise subsided.

Saaski sighed. “I’ll have to find the place on me own. You’re not much good to me.” She looked him over once more, thinking of Yanno. “Not much of a da’, either, I’m bound to say.”

He took the judgment humbly, twisting his knobby hands together and nodding. “Help you if’n I could, little ’un,” he muttered.

“Well, y’can. You will, too, hear me?”

He eyed her uneasily, but bobbed his head. She hesitated a last moment, then set her jaw and eased the bagpipes off of her shoulder. As she detached the chanter, she scanned the little room for a safe spot, a clean spot. There was none. Untying her shawl-covered bundle, she took out her spare petticoat, wrapped it around the bag and drones, and set them carefully in a corner. The chanter she tucked into her bundle. “Now, hark to what I tell you,” she commanded. Her voice shook a little, but she fixed her father with a steady gaze. “Here’s what’s gonna happen.”

A few minutes later she left the hut, watched but not hindered by the dog, who stood, like Fergil, shivering in the predawn chill until she was past the byre and out of their sight. She climbed over the dunes and around the edge of
the woods, crossed the oak-dotted pasture above that, and found the remote clearing in the hazel thickets where the spring bubbled into the pond. No village children here now, to push her in. The place was lonely and safe, ringed in shadow; a few stars glinted in the water.

She dropped her bundle, and herself on a mossy patch of bank beside it, took out the chanter, and very softly began to play. She played every wild tune she knew, and every eerie, secret one, and a few quavering, questioning, keening ones she had never known until now. She played until the dawn brightened almost into daylight. Then with a last, lingering note, she let the first birdsong take over the music making.

Curling upon the moss, she slept an hour, the chanter clasped tight and safe against her. When she woke, the dew was vanishing in the morning sun. Slowly she tucked the chanter back into her bundle, left the clearing, and started for the moor, to find Tam, tell him the story of the night, and say good-bye.

She was climbing the shoulder of the hill that sheltered the tinker’s reed hut and hooded cart when the goats appeared against the sky as on the day when she first saw them. Behind them was Tam, who stopped dead at sight of her, then rushed down the slope in reckless leaps.

“You’re here! Eh, thank the good Lord! I was on me way to the smithy, goats and all—”

She broke in, with a wary glance toward the brow of the hill behind him. “Where’s Bruman?”

“Dead to the world, yonder in the hut.” Tam gave a jerk of his head in that direction. “Sleepin’ off the muxta he dragged back from Torskaal yestereve—spent half the night swillin’ and tellin’ me tales . . . ” Tam eyed her sidewise, his offhand tone at odds with his worried frown. “No truth in ’em, I dessay.”

“Truth enough.” She had not noticed Bruman’s face last night among those staring up as she clung to the roof-thatch pinnacle. But he might have heard talk of it at Sorcha the alewife’s—talk doubtless blown out of all likeness to fact by then, with witches and boggarts swarming thick as bees. “I’d best tell you the straight of it,” she said. “That noddy idea of yours—’twas near on the mark after all. I . . . I been rememberin’.”

Tam’s face tightened, but not with surprise. He dropped down on the grass, prepared to listen. Sitting beside him, with the goats idling and nibbling below, Saaski told the tale of yesterday. Tam’s gaze never left her face, the tension in his own gradually hardening into a sort of stubborn calm.

As she fell silent he took a deep breath, muttered, “Eh, I knew it, I knew!” Abruptly, he said, “You did right. To run away. Good riddance to the lot of ’em,
I
say.”

“Good riddance to me, you mean.”

“Here, you needn’t fret, I’ll look after you. Nay, I will! We’ll go clean away, you’n me, to the King’s Town, like we planned it once, play our music and juggle at the fairs—”

She let him go on for a minute, to cheer himself—it was a brave effort to cheer
her,
that she knew. But when he paused for breath she said gently, “Won’t work, Tam. Who’d look after the goats, and the pony, and old Warrior? And Bruman?”

“Eh,
he
can look after hisself,” Tam muttered, but he was scowling at the thready mosses between his feet, plainly facing facts along with her. The cart was Bruman’s, like all the rest. Without it, the two of them would be heading for the King’s Town on foot, and penniless, leaving the animals
to Bruman’s uncertain care. If they turned thief, they left Bruman to the northern winter and his pain.

“Anyway . . . ” added Saaski. She took a long breath and told Tam the rest of her night’s doings.

Only once did he break in, to exclaim, “Fergil! Now who’d ever’ve thought it!” but when he heard her plan to steal back the child, his mouth dropped open. “Don’t be daft! Y’need to get clean away! Them villagers find out ye’re still on the moor, they’ll be after ye!”

“Mebbe not today. They’re afeard of the moor on Midsummer’s Eve.” She set her jaw. “Anywise, I mean to get Mumma’s child.”

He was silent, elbows on knees, staring out over the moor. Then he said abruptly, “Well, if ye’re set on it, I’m goin’ along o’ you. Into that Mound.”

“Nay, you can’t!” She turned to him in alarm. “Weren’t you listenin’? What happens to me won’t matter—likely nothin’. But
you
—y’might never get out! Or it might be . . . five-and-fifty years’d gone by and you’d wake up cold and stiff—and old.” She could hear Fergil’s bitter voice in her ears, and shivered to think of such happening to Tam.

“I’ll take me chances,” he said, unmoved.

“Well, you won’t,” she retorted. “I don’t need a great gowk of a boy to look after, as well as meself! Be plenty to think of just findin’ that child, I dessay—dunno where they’ll’ve put her, that’s what’s plaguin’ me. Or how to sneak ’er out without the Prince seein’.”

“Or whether she’ll come quiet,” said Tam.

Saaski looked at him in dismay. Trouble from the child itself had never occurred to her.

“Will she be as big as you? Or a baby still?” Tam asked. “Or somers in between, like?”

“I dunno,” Saaski admitted, beginning to feel a hollow sensation inside her.

“Ye’ll need me to carry ’er, I reckon,” Tam said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Or drag ’er. Or give that Prince a thump or two on the noggin if he tries to stop us.”

“Eh, stop it! You’re talkin’ flapdiddle!” Saaski scarcely knew whether to laugh or cry. “Touch the Prince and he’d likely turn you to a hoptoad! Or somethin’ worse. You’ll not go in the Mound. I dassn’t let you!”

“Mound, is it?” A new voice, hoarse and ragged, spoke behind them. They whirled to see Bruman swaying unsteadily on the lip of the rise, red eyed. “You goin’ in the Mound, bantling? Say, I’ll come along—get me a taste o’ that fairy mead!”

“Here! Be off with ye!” Tam exclaimed, leaping up and starting for him, with a glance at Saaski of mingled embarrassment and dismay.

Bruman gave a laugh that turned to a gasp of pain as he staggered backward onto his bad leg. He would have gone sprawling if Tam hadn’t caught him. “Have a care! Where’s your crutch?” the boy muttered, easing him down on a hummock and after a brief search recovering the crutch a few yards away. “Gone witless, have ye? Let
you
in there and you’d never get out!”

“Eh, what’d I be missin’?” Bruman mumbled absently. His laughter had vanished, and he sat with drawn face, gingerly straightening the bad leg.

Tam stood frowning down at him, put the crutch where
he could reach it. “You’re not to go blabbin’ down to Torskaal about seein’ us,” he said sharply. “Seein’
her.
” He jerked his head toward Saaski. “Not to
nobody.
You hear?”

“You mind your tongue,” Bruman rasped, without glancing at him. His gaze was on Saaski, his expression now faraway and weary. “I mean y’ no ill, bantling. Go your way,” he said. Bracing his crutch, he heaved himself around to prop his shoulders against an outcrop, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

Saaski looked at Tam, who beckoned her with a jerk of his head. They moved quietly away, driving the goats on before them. Tam glanced back once, frowning, but said only, “He’ll bide there till his leg’s eased over the worst of it, then he’ll go on to the hut.”

Saaski wished she could be sure of that—and sure he would stay there. Wished he hadn’t turned up at all. But it was no good fretting. “Likely catch his death if it rains much,” she commented with an eye on one of the cloud banks gathering as usual in the west.

“No more’n those goats would.” Tam’s tone was absent, but his snub-nosed profile had a bleak expression, and after a moment he said, “Leg’s gettin’ worse, I think. Dunno how he’s gonna fare when we have to head south.”

South to the King’s Town, Saaski thought, trying in vain to envision such a place—or any place different from this one she knew.

Tam spoke again, briskly. “Leastways he won’t be goin’ down any Mound. But
I’m
goin’. You’d best make peace with it.”

It was no use arguing. Saaski merely said to herself,
we’ll
see!
In truth she did not know what it was they would see, or how she could stop Tam doing as he chose. But she dreaded what might happen to him. Her memories of the Mound were dim and muddled, strain as she would to call them up sharp and clear. She knew the Gathering would be full of goings and comings; it always was. A couple of strangers would cause no stir. Easy enough, especially on Midsummer’s, for a human or two to stray in, beguiled by Folk or their own mischance. Getting out safe was a different matter. That took help—Folk help. She did not think being half Folk would be enough.