White Mare's Daughter (25 page)

He was beginning, perhaps, to understand some of it:
come, go, stop, look, go away
. In time
it would be clearer.

He would never, for the pride of his people, show the temper
she tried so hard to rouse. It infuriated her if he smiled blandly after she
had tried to drown him in words, or if he walked away calmly from some tantrum,
some foot-stamping refusal to do somewhat that would have been helpful to his
readying of house and horse-pen. He knew better than to ask her, ever, to lend
a hand. But a glance, the tilt of his head toward whatever it was she might
have done, would send her flouncing off in a snit.

She was indeed very like Tilia in the spirit, though nothing
like her in face or body. Danu had grown up contending with Tilia. He could
continue with this stranger, he supposed, since the Mother of Larchwood had
laid it on him.

The Mare at least was no trouble, and the colt, though
occasionally impertinent, seemed glad of another of his kind, and delighted
with his new pen and his big stone house. The pen was handsome, the work of the
people of Larchwood, who were greatly skilled with stakes of wood and woven
withies. They offered of themselves to bring in fodder from the river-meadow,
to cut it and cure it and store it in a little byre that they made, while the
sun shone and the Lady held off the rain.

Danu thanked the Lady as he thanked the people who worked so
hard for him in her name. She was a warmth in his belly. They were shyly
pleased.

“We’ll help as you need us,” they said. “It’s for the Lady,
after all, and the Mother.”

“And maybe a little for you,” Catin said to him as they lay
together the night that the hay-byre was done.

It was his last night in the Mother’s house, though he had
not spoken of that, yet, to Catin. The house above the horses’ house was ready,
cleaned and repaired, with ample wood to burn on the hearth through winter’s
cold, and foodstuffs laid away, and comforts brought as gifts by people who
just happened by: thick soft coverlets for the bed, rugs for the floor, a chest
to keep his clothing in, and a table and a pair of stools and even, from the
Mother herself, a little image of the goddess to preside from her niche above the
hearth.

Catin had seen it all today, admired it and seemed delighted
by it. “They do it for you,” she said in the warm aftermath of loving, running
fingers through the curly hairs of his chest. “They like you, man of Three
Birds.”

He shrugged past the weight of her head on his shoulder. “I
like them. Your people are good people. They don’t laugh as much or as often as
mine do—is that the shadow of the wood on them?—but they have a bright spirit.”

“You aren’t given to meaningless laughter, I’ve noticed,”
Catin said a little dryly.

“Well,” he said. “No.”

“Then do you hunger for your own people? Do you hate it
here?”

“No,” he said again, but with rather more feeling in it.
“No, I don’t hate this place. My people . . . I’ll go back to
them when the Lady calls me. I’m happy enough. I’ve more to do than I could
have thought, and some of it very . . . interesting, too.”

Catin looked up into his face. A smile quirked her lips. It
made her look much younger than she was, and delightfully wicked. “Isn’t she,
now? Has she learned a word of sensible speech yet?”

Not likely
, he had
been going to say, but something made him say instead, “She’s learning.”

Catin’s face fell slightly. He did not know why that should
annoy him; he could well understand how she felt.

“Ah,” she said. “Well. The other stranger, the man, learned
rather quickly. He never spoke well, but he could make himself understood.”

“Was he very like this one?” Danu asked, in part to distract
her from his prevarication, but also because he truly wanted to know.

Cadn thought about it for a while. He watched the play of
thoughts in her eyes, like fishes in a deep pool.

At length she said, “He looked like her, a little. Narrow
and tall—very tall, much taller than this woman. Hair the color of straw, but
his beard was red: yes, like tarnished copper. His eyes were brown. Not like
hers—green; what color is that for a woman’s eyes? He had terrible manners,
almost as bad as hers. He was always trying to coax a woman into his bed. He
seemed to think that a man can demand it and be proper, instead of waiting for
a woman to ask.”

For some reason Danu remembered just then how Sarama had
been on that first waking, the way she had recoiled from him. Was that why? Did
she think that he had come to be importunate?

He shook himself slightly, almost a shudder. No. Of course
not. That was a preposterous thing to be thinking. It did her no honor, nor him,
either.

She was rude, that was all. She did not know how to be
polite.

Catin could not have followed his maunderings. He was glad
of that. She said, “You must make this woman learn our language. The Mother has
great need to talk to her.”

Danu nodded. He did not want to compound a lie, but neither
could he bring himself to confess it.

Catin fell asleep soon after, to his relief. He had not yet
told her that on the morrow he would be moving his belongings to the house by
the river. He was a coward in every respect.

As Danu prepared to depart the Mother’s house for the
house by the river, the Mother herself came to him and stood watching him knot
the last of his bundles. He would have risen and done reverence, but her hand
stopped him. After a slight hesitation, he went back to his packing.

She actually, with her own hands, helped him knot the bundle
and fashion a carrying strap from the loose corners of it. He murmured thanks.

“Don’t be too submissive, boy,” she said. “It looks false.”

His head snapped up. He stared in flat astonishment.

She laughed at his expression. He had never seen a Mother
like this. Not even this one, who had always observed a proper and Motherly
gravity.

Here where there was no one else to see, she was as brisk
and acerbic as her daughter could be, and as little tolerant of what she
considered nonsense. “You are a beautiful creature,” she said, “and well you
know it. You should strut a little more, and creep about a little less.”

He did not know at all what to say to that.

Nor, it seemed, did she expect him to. She shook her head
and sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if we do well to teach our boys soft manners.
They’d run rampant else, the wise women say, like stags in rut, or bulls in the
spring. And yet a little cockiness is not at all an ill thing.”

“I’m told I have rather too much,” Danu said—softly, he
could not help it; he was trained to it.

“You should have more,” the Mother said. She prodded him
with a hard finger, and laughed when he jumped. “There, there. I horrify you, I
can see it. And I only came to see you off, and to ask somewhat of you.”

“No,” he said quickly. “She has not learned any useful
speech.”

The Mother’s brow lifted. “Did I ask you that?” In the face
of his abashed silence she said, “I would like to ask that you take her with
you.”

“Take—” He bit off the rest. “Take her where I’m going? Keep
her there?”

“Keep her there,” the Mother agreed. “Teach her what she
will learn. Learn from her as much as you may about horses, and about these
people who ride horses.”

Danu nodded, swallowing protests. Of course that was the
wise thing to do, and simpler than requiring him to come back every day to the
Mother’s house, fetch the stranger, and coax her to follow him about as he
performed the rest of his duties.

Nevertheless he did not look forward to keeping house for
that of all women. He had seen how she was in this house, how she must be
taught every smallest thing. Whatever she knew, it did not encompass the ways
of a Mother’s house in the Lady’s country.

Still, this was laid on him. He too was a stranger here, and
he seemed to understand the language of horses. Maybe time would teach him to
understand the language of the horse people, too, whether or not Sarama would
deign to teach him.

One of the youngest daughters and one or two of the sons
brought Sarama’s belongings, such as they were, to the house that Danu found
himself thinking of as his own. Strange thought, to have a house and not to
keep it for a Mother, or for a woman who had chosen him.

He could hardly count Sarama in such company. She was his
duty, as the Mother’s house had been in Three Birds.

oOo

She was at the house already, as he had expected, doing
somewhat with the Mare. The colt, who had been watching, threw up his head and
called to Danu, and came on at the canter.

Danu stopped and waited. He heard a muted squawk behind him,
and a scramble as the children fought to make him a wall between themselves and
the charging beast.

They were in no danger at all, no more than Danu. The colt
danced to a halt in front of him, half-reared, met his glare, came down and
stood and set his nose in Danu’s palm. Danu let him draw in the scent, then
stroked his neck where the coat was thickening with winter’s coming.

When they had exchanged a full and proper greeting, the colt
returned to his scrutiny of the Mare and her puzzling servant. Danu led his
little company of retainers past them, up to the house.

He had not made space for Sarama. On the way to this place
he had decided that she would have the bed, and he would spread a pallet on the
floor. She was not a proper or civilized person, but he, after all, was; and
that was as proper as anyone could ask for.

For the rest of it, she could share the chest, and he would
see that she was fed and looked after, as he had done for his Mother and
sisters in Three Birds. Certainly it was nothing new to him, and nothing that
he could not do.

He refused, even briefly, to regret the loss of his
solitude. Solitude was not a natural state. He should be glad to be relieved of
it.

Once the children had set down their burdens where Danu
directed, the eldest, the daughter, said, “We’re supposed to stay and do what
you need us to do.”

“For now I need nothing,” Danu said, “but I thank you.”

She frowned slightly, very like her sister Catin. “We’re to
come back every day. This is our duty, Mother said.”

“That’s well,” Danu said, and meant it, too. “Come back
tomorrow, then.”

She hesitated, as if she might protest; but she was no fool.
She gathered her brothers and ran off whooping.

Danu laughed. With a lighter spirit and the remains of a
smile, he finished setting the house in order.

oOo

As the day grew old, clouds crept over the sun’s face. A
chill wind began to blow. Danu, stepping out to test the air, caught the scent
of rain.

Sarama was still outside, still together with the Mare. She
must have ridden: the Mare’s back showed the marks of a rider, though Danu had
seen her saddle-fleece and her bridle hung neatly in their places inside the
house. It should not have surprised him that Sarama could dispense with such
things.

It did surprise him that she was still there; that she had
not simply ridden away. He had brought with him a bit of bread new from the
baking and dripping with honey. He offered it to Sarama where she sat on the
sere grass, watching the Mare graze.

She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. He
held up the bread. “Bread,” he said. “Honey.” And mimed the word as he said it:
“Eat.”

She never had refused to eat what was set in front of her.
She devoured the bread without a word. Her eyes had returned to the Marc. She
seemed determined to ignore his existence.

He sighed. But for the rain and the threat of early dark, he
would have left her there. But it would not be kind to let her find her way
back to the Mother’s house, only to find her belongings gone and her place
filled.

He touched her shoulder. She started. He drew back quickly
lest she strike; but she only turned again to stare, and in no friendly
fashion, either.

“Come,” he said.

She did not move.

“Come,” he said again. “More food. Eat.”

That roused her, though she took her time about it. When at
last she deigned to rise, the first drops of rain began to fall.

oOo

The house was warm, a fire burning on the hearth, the air
rich with the scents of bread, sweet cakes, roasting meat, honey and spices.
Danu had blessed house and hearth before he lit the fire, walked the four
corners and cleansed them with the smoke of sacred herbs. Their scent lingered
beneath the rest, a memory of benediction. The Lady was here, watching over the
house, blessing it with her presence.

Sarama seemed oblivious. She ignored the Lady’s image in its
niche, even after Danu had done reverence to it; looked about in some surprise,
as if she had not expected that bare and empty space to be made so inviting.

Danu left her standing beside the opening to the room below
and busied himself about the hearth and the oven and the table. There was a
surprising pleasure in it, in doing things that he had done so often in Three
Birds, but not at all in Larchwood. He had been happy as keeper of his Mother’s
house. He had not known how much he missed it here.

Down below he heard the thudding of hooves on packed earth,
and a squeal as the Mare let the colt know which heap of cut fodder was hers.
The horses had found their way in as he had hoped, safe out of the rain.

Danu spread the table as he had been used to do in Three
Birds, with grace that met with a flat stare from Sarama. “In your country, I
suppose,” he said with a touch of acidity, “one simply heaves the whole ox off
the fire and hurls it in front of the guest.”

She did not understand him, of course. He found he could not
care. “Come,” he said. “Eat. Ignore me if you like. I’ll teach you in spite of
yourself. I’ll talk you dizzy. You’ll speak our language for the pure pleasure
of hearing it from someone else besides me.”