At the Edge of the World (3 page)

5

G
RADUALLY, DIMLY
, I perceived a figure hidden by the leaves. Even so, it was only eyes that held me with an unblinking gaze. Was what I saw of
this
world or another?

Greatly shocked, I turned toward the sleeping Bear, then shifted hastily back. Slowly, I realized it was a small person looking out at us. The next moment I grasped that it was a
child
—but whether a
human
or not, I was uncertain.

The face was obscured by grime and long, snarled brown hair. Impossible, too, to distinguish clothing, muted and rent as it was, as if part of the foliage.

I returned the stare, but the child did no more than remain still, eyes steady as stone upon us. The longer the gaze held, the greater grew my fright. I tried desperately to think what Bear would do.

“Be off with you!” I cried, raising an arm and taking a step forward.

When the child made no response, I asked, “Who are you?”

No answer.

Seeing a stout branch upon the ground, I snatched it up and held it like a club that I might defend myself and Bear—if it came to that.

The child remained in place.

Brandishing the stick as if to strike, I took another step. This time the child retreated, noiselessly, as if floating above the earth.

“Are you of this world?” I shouted. “In God’s name tell me who and what you are!”

Abruptly, the child turned and scampered off among the trees, and, for all that I could see, vanished.

My fears grew. If what I saw was human, and he went to tell others about us, matters could turn worse. But if what I saw was a spirit, what devilish harm might he bring down upon us?

I knelt by Bear’s side.

“Bear,” I said. “We’ve been found. There may be danger coming. We need to move!”

He opened his eyes. It was, at best, a foggy gape and conveyed no understanding. I was not even sure he knew I had spoken.

I put my hand to his face: hot and sticky with sweat. I had no doubt he was being consumed by the rankest of humors. The wound had taken full hold, poisoning his whole body.

“Bear!” I cried. “We must move!”

His reply was a moan of such despair it struck terror to the deepest regions of my soul. Distraught, I stood up and looked into the forest in hopes I’d see a sign of the strange child. The child was gone. Belatedly, I knew I should have begged for help.

I tried to pull at Bear, to make him stand, but his weight and bulk proved too great.

In panic, I searched round for a heavier stick with which, if came the need, I could make some defense. Finding one, I stood on guard before Bear, my heart pounding.

The forest was mute. No one came.

Still wondering what I’d see—someone real or unreal, friend or foe—I stirred the flame but kept looking round. Just how much time passed I don’t know, but as unexpectedly as before, the child—if child it was—returned.

Again, what first I saw were eyes gazing at me from deep among the bushes.

I jumped up. When the child did not shift, I called out, “In God’s name will you help us?” and moved forward. Even as I did, I heard another sound. I spun about.

A second person had appeared.

6

T
HE NEWCOMER
was a woman, or so I took her to be, for she was aged to the point of being unsexed. Cronelike, bent almost double as if loaded down with the weight of years, her head was twisted to one side in the manner of a listening bird. Frail and small—smaller than I—her garments were foul rags, tattered and torn. Her skin was begrimed, her long hair gray, greasy, and unkempt, akin to the shredded moss that dangled from the trees. Her nose was beakish, while her mouth, etched round with multiple lines like so many needled stitches, fell in on toothless gums. Fingers were rough and misshapen, with long, clawlike and thick, yellow nails.

Though her wrinkled face had stiff, white hairs upon her chin, most striking of all was her left eye: glazed over with a lifeless, milky white, a sure sign of blindness. Her right eye seemed the larger, brighter too, with the deepest, most penetrating gaze I ever saw. Is this hag, I wondered, the bearer of the evil eye?

“Who … who are you?” I cried, backing toward Bear, determined to protect him. “What do you want of us?”

The old woman slowly lifted an arm and pointed her gnarled fingers at Bear. “Troth says—the man is ill.” She spoke with a clogged and broken voice, her toothless mouth continually munching.

“Who is Troth?” I asked, bewildered.

By way of answering, the old woman turned and gestured with a hand. The child I’d first seen stepped into the clearing. I saw now that she was a girl. Though shorter than me and much younger than the crone, she was garbed in similar motley rags. Whereas the woman was old, bent, and ugly, the girl was not misshapen. But her mouth!
Dear God!
It was cleft—grotesquely disfigured and twisted, shaped like a hare’s mouth.

The girl’s appearance was so dreadful I must have gawked. In haste, she pulled her tangled hair across the lower half of her face, veil-like, to hide her gross disfigurement.

I made a quick decision: no matter that these folk were outlandish—there was no one else to whom I could turn. “He’s hurt,” I said, indicating Bear. “Can you aid him?”

“Aude coaxes man to life,” said the woman, her good eye appraising Bear. “Aude keeps them in life. Bring him.” She turned as if to go.

“Who is Aude?” I called.

“Me,” muttered the hag, making finger movements at the girl. The girl edged forward, moving with great skittish-ness, eyes avoiding mine, like a fearful dog.

I went to one side of Bear. “I can’t move him,” I said. “He’s too big. Heavy.” I spoke loudly, simply, as if the hag were deaf.

The old woman lifted both hands and clasped them. The girl, with some kind of understanding, went to Bear’s other side.

Troth—for so I gathered the girl’s name to be—made some guttural sound. It was not human talk—not in any proper sense. It sounded as if it came from her throat, animal-like. While unsettling, I took it to mean we were to lift.

The girl’s strength surprised me. Between the two of us, we managed to get Bear up. Perhaps Bear also worked, for when upright he opened his eyes a slit. I snatched up our sack, and we began to follow the old woman.

As we went along, it occurred to me that the woman’s way and manner—slow, shuffling, hunched over—had something witchlike to it. And the girl, with her odd, split mouth and her wariness, was just as odd. But at that moment—may God forgive me!—in order to help Bear, I would have embraced the Devil.

7

T
HE GIRL AND
I, supporting Bear from either side, clumsily followed the old woman as she picked her way slowly through the woods. Though I would have never found where they took us on my own, we did not go far. It was not a true dwelling in any sense I knew—rather, it was the crudest of shelters, a space between two boulders over which some boughs had been set to form a roof. A wall of wattle obscured the entryway with bushes, arranged so a passerby would not likely notice what was there. It was well hidden.

Yet once I came round that screening wall, I saw that the living space was not so different from the poor dwellings I knew in my own village of Stromford. Matted leaves and crumbling rushes covered a dirt floor while two heaps of straw appeared to serve as sleeping places. A smoldering fire burned within a ring of soot-blackened stones. From the crude roof hung drying plants and herbs. Among them I spied mistletoe, which alarmed me for I knew it was used in magic spells.

On the ground were two rusty iron pots that looked to be old soldiers’helmets. Three chipped wooden cups lay nearby. There were mazers, too, plus a few closed linen sacks. If I had seen skulls, I would not have been surprised.

The old woman made a motion with her hand, which I took to be telling us she wanted Bear placed on one of the straw pallets. The girl and I did what she asked, though Bear mostly tumbled into a heap.

Making a rolling motion of her hand, the woman said, “Over.”

On my knees, grunting with effort, I turned Bear so he lay upon his back.

The woman, hovering near, made another gesture, turning her hand so the palm faced down, then lowering it slightly.

Were these gestures a casting of spells?

But the girl seemed to make sense of them. She took Bear’s good arm and straightened it. Moving his wounded arm caused him to moan. She did the same with his legs. Then she covered Bear to his neck with his robe as well as a tattered blanket they had, leaving his wounded arm exposed. In all of this, the girl worked with a slow, practiced touch.

The hag stood over Bear, staring down. Then she reached out and fingered his cap. Abruptly, she turned her good eye to me. “Who wounded him with an arrow?” she asked in a
voice
so broken it was all but indistinct.

“How … how did you know?”

“Though Aude has only one good eye she can see,” she said. “What befell him?” Her gaze was hard on me. “He was also beaten, many times.” She pulled Bear’s blanket back and pointed to red marks across his chest. “Burn marks. Who did these things?”

“I’m … not certain,” I said, uneasy about how much of our history I should reveal.

After staring at Bear for a long moment, she suddenly rasped, “Nerthus wants life to live. Aude will try to help.” A nod and the girl covered Bear again.

Who this
Nerthus
was, I had no idea.

Again the old woman faced the girl, opened her hand—palm up—and lifted it slightly. Then she moved that same right hand as if she were squeezing something, only to put the hand to her own cheek. Finally, she pointed to the branches hanging from the roof.

“Sorrel,” she muttered. “Marigold. Bark. Barley.” At the last she pointed to a sack and rubbed her hands together as if washing.

Troth plucked some leaves from the branches that hung above. She crumpled brittle bits into one of the iron helmets, then added pieces of bark. From one of the bags she took up a handful of barley and threw it in, too. That done, she carried the helmet outside.

“Where’s she going?” I asked. Everything they did made me fearful.

“Water.”

“Why doesn’t she speak?”

The old woman shifted round to look at me with her one good eye. “Troth was born with a broken mouth,” she muttered. “People fear her. So Troth speaks little. Besides,” she added, peering up at me in her twisted way, “Aude’s gods say: The less that’s said, the more that’s understood.”

“Can she hear?” I asked, staring after the girl.

“Troth listens to Aude’s hands,” was the crone’s grudging reply.

The woman stuck her bony fingers into a small clay pot, which was filled with what appeared to be some kind of grease along with the smell of honey.

Clutching me for support, Aude went on her knees, and began to apply the ointment to Bear’s wound, his limbs, neck, and face. Hearing her mumble under her breath, I wondered if she were conjuring magic.

Alarmed, I gazed about in search of a cross, something, anything Christian.

I saw none.

“Good dame,” I blurted out, “are you … a Christian?”

My question made the hag pause in her work. She drew back on her haunches. Her frowning silence made me regret my question. After a while she said, “Why do you ask?”

“I … I fear for his soul.”

She fixed me fiercely with her eye. “Nay, it’s Aude … you fear.”

My face grew hot. “A … little,” I allowed.

“Oh, yes,” she said, gnawing on her toothless gums, “Aude is old. Aude is ugly. Aude … and Troth … live apart. Do you fear such things, boy?”

“Y … yes.

“Know then,” she said, “that Aude is of the old religion.”

“Old
religion?” I cried, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“The old gods—it’s they Aude worships.”

Shocked, for I had never ever heard anyone speak of “old gods,” I hardly knew what to say.

Her single eye remained sharp on me. “Do you still want Aude’s help?”

“In Jesus’s name,” I whispered, “I want him well.”

“Nerthus—my god—gives life,” she said. “What can you give?”

“What … do you … want?” I stammered, fearful that she might request my soul.

“It’s for you to offer.”

“I have … very little,” I said. “A few pennies.”

The crone held out a clawlike hand.

I went to Bear’s sack, scraped up our few remaining coins, and dropped them in her withered palm. She curled crumpled fingers over them and put them in a little bag tied round her waist with a leather thong.

“Old Aude shall try for life,” she muttered, and resumed daubing her grease mix on Bear’s limbs.

Afraid to press her further, my mouth dry with apprehension, I watched in silence. The dimness of the bower; the ruby-colored fire-glow; her ancient, tangled look; her multi-hued rags; her broken posture—all made the crone appear like some deep-wood demon, and the girl, with her disfigured face, an ill-begotten familiar.

Silently, I made urgent prayers, begging my all-powerful Lord that though this woman was not Christian, she might help my Bear.

8

T
ROTH CAME
and set the heated helmet down next to the old woman. Spiraling vapors—like drifting spirits—curled up. “Lift his head,” Aude whispered.

I did as she bid. The old woman squeezed Bear’s cheeks so hard his mouth gaped opened. Troth, using the mazer, poured in some liquid. Bear gagged, coughed, but swallowed. This was repeated a few times.

“He must rest,” said Aude.

In the dim light we sat in silence watching Bear. Then the crone abruptly shifted round, leaned toward me and said, “You must tell Aude who you are.”

Alarmed, I managed to say, “What do you mean?”

“You are fleeing.”

“What … what makes you think so?”

“You are alone in the forest with nothing save your fear. He wears a juggler’s cap, but here you cannot sing and dance for coins. An arrow has wounded him. He has been abused. You were hiding. You must tell of these things to Aude and Troth.”

I was afraid to say I didn’t trust her.

“It will help,” Aude said.

“How?”

“To know how a man suffers, is to know how he lives … or dies.”

I glanced at Troth. The girl was staring at me, her dark brown eyes unfathomable. As for her covered mouth—why should it so trouble me?

Then I remembered: in my village of Stromford it was said that if, before a babe was born, the Devil came and touched the mother’s swollen belly, the babe’s limb or hand or face—like Troth’s—would bear the Devil’s evil mark. Even as I stared at her, that knowledge chilled my heart.

A tap on my leg startled me. It was the woman. “You must speak.”

I felt trapped. Not knowing what else to do, I took a deep breath and told my tale.

I revealed how, not long ago, I, a new-made orphan, fled my little village because I’d been proclaimed a wolf’s head—meaning anyone was free to kill me.

How a kind God led me to Bear, a juggler, who became in turn, master, teacher, protector, and then, as I would have it, the father I never knew.

How we traveled together until we came to the city of Great Wexly, where I discovered I was the illegitimate son of one Lord Furnival, a knight of the realm. There, I also discovered Bear was a spy for John Ball’s brotherhood.

How my enemies captured Bear, and tortured him in hopes of making him to reveal where I was.

How I, to ransom Bear’s liberty, renounced any claim to my noble name, and by doing so, Bear and I were able to pass out of Great Wexly to our freedom.

How, finally, Bear was wounded by a man who believed he had betrayed Ball’s brotherhood.

At first I told all this haltingly. But as I went on, it ran from me like water from a broken bowl. When done I was in tears. For I, in a manner of speaking, was a listener too. How extraordinary that I, who but a short time ago never knew a life beyond the passing of repetitious days, could tell a tale of being, doing, and becoming.

Though Aude and Troth had listened to me closely, neither spoke, nor asked questions, nor made so much as one remark, hearing my words in solemn silence.

By the time I finished the day was gone. Shadow filled the bower. The air was cool and hushed. I was weary in heart and bone. With Bear sleeping easier than before, I could not help myself—and nodded off.

I woke with a start. A dim, ruddy light suffused the bower. My first sensation was fear, thinking I’d fallen into the place of damnation that all true Christians fear. Then I realized the redness was naught but the shimmering embers of the bower fire.

I swung round and bent over Bear. He was asleep, barely breathing. I put a hand to his face. Still hot. I touched his arm. He pulled it away as though stung.

Looking round, I searched for the old woman and the girl. I did not see them, but saw that the front of the bower was bathed in soft, white light. I gazed at it, puzzled, until I realized it was moonlight.

As I listened I caught a faint sound from beyond. On hands and knees I crept to the walled-in entrance of the bower and peeked out.

Aude stood before the bower in an open space that was dappled by moonlight. Kneeling by her side was Troth. A teasing breeze tossed their tangled garments. Tree leaves stirred as though sifting secrets.

Aude had one raised hand and was dangling a branch of mistletoe. The other hand gripped the girl’s shoulder, as if for support.

In a slow, broken voice, the hag was chanting:

There flowed a spring
Beneath a hawthorn tree
That once had a cure for sorrow.
Beside the spring and the tree
Now stands a young girl
Who’s full of love, this girl,
Held fast by love, this girl.
So whoever seeks true love
Will not find it in the spring,
But in this girl,
This girl,
Who stands by the hawthorn tree.

As I watched and listened, I had no doubt it was some kind of enchantment. Were they trying to steal Bear’s soul? My own? If these people were indeed spirit folk, if the crone was a true witch, we should not, must not stay. Yet how could we go if Bear was so ill? Once again came the questions: What should I do if he died? How would I be able to stay free?

I asked this of myself so often it all but became a plain-song chant, to which I provided the only answer I could summon: I must think and act as a man.

But how?