Chance (5 page)

“Have you any tidings—I mean—know you anything of the Lady Halimeda?”

The Denizen grinned more broadly but answered him directly enough. “We have seen her walking in Gallowstree Lea.”

“Lately?”

“Yestereen.”

“Alone?” Chance exclaimed. With her time so near, Halimeda ought to have been sequestered in her chambers. It was not right or usual that she should have been wandering so far into Wirral.

“Lone, alone, all alone, under the bloated moon.”

Chance frowned uneasily. “No tidings more?”

“We stay in Wirral, we. Nothing more.”

Chance slept restlessly that night, half waking. The wind was high and whined even through the stone walls of his lodge. Moonlight shone in through his single window, and tossing trees seen against that white luminous mushroom made him moan, dreaming first of flailing rods, then of the revels of the Denizens. Clouds torn into dark tatters by the wind passed across the face of the bloated moon, casting shadows that crawled eerily on his floor. A skein of wild geese flew somewhere in the dark, their cries like the yelping of the hounds of hell.

Other cries, singsong cries, on the wind with the piping of the geese.

“Lady, Lady Halimeda,

Lone, alone, under the moon,

Lady, Lady Halimeda,

Lone, alone, under the moon,

Left the fortress, left her home,

Lady Dreaming-Of-The-Sea,

Bound for Gallowstree Lea—”

Chance sat bolt upright. The voices were real.

“Bound for Gallowstree Lea!”

Chance sprang up, pulling on trousers and boots in a panic, not pausing for further clothing. At a dead run he sped through the windy, shadowy Wirral.

Gallowstree Lea was swept with stormwind, cloud gloom and shifting moonglades. In the trickster light Chance could not at first comprehend the dark, billowing shape by the lone tree that groaned aloud in the night. Then he saw. It was Halimeda, round with child, all robed in black, with the black cloth whipping about her, Halimeda standing on a waist-high boulder under the boughs of the gallows tree—

For a heart-sickening moment Chance thought that already the loop clung around her neck, that she had only to jump and she would be swinging, strangling. Then he saw that she was still tying the rope. She was having difficulty in securing it. The storm had delayed her.

He was heartsick still, that she stood there so desperate.

Possessed by her own desperation, she did not see him until he stood panting before her. Then she screamed with fury.

“Chance, no! Let me be! I—”

He lifted her down and led her away, an arm around her shoulders. She went with him unresisting, though she was still crying aloud.

“I cannot stand it any longer! He hates me! He glares at me with a curse in his eyes.”

Her shoulders sagged, and she started to weep.

Blinded by her own tears she walked, and Chance led her to his lodge, as it was the closest dwelling. He sat her by his hearth, put fragrant apple wood on the fire, drew water and set it to boil for hot herb tea to soothe her. She looked up at him. Her face was white, drawn down by grief, ravaged by tears, her hair hanging down her forehead in strings.

“There is nothing for me any more,” she told him with deathly calm, “for my babe, nothing. No hope.”

“Hali, please.” He had not called her by the pet name since she was a tiny girl, but that night it burst from him. “Do not say that!”

“How am I not to say what is but simple truth? What is there for me but to be a whore, and my baby a whore's brat? Unless I die—”

“Hail, no!” He knelt before her, his shoulders broad and bare in the firelight, reached up to touch her face, as if his touch could somehow heal her of tears. It did not.

“Far better that I should die. I am a blot, all goodly folk scorn me. My own brother hates me—”

“I love you,” Chance whispered, his face upraised and his eyes meeting her eyes.

Her face grew very still, and she looked back at him as if she were seeing him for the first time.

“That was not spoken as my brother's warden,” she said slowly after a moment, in a hushed voice.

“No.” Chance swallowed, and shame tugged at his face, but still he met her eyes. “And it should not have been spoken, for it is unseemly, except that—it is truth, Lady, and something you needed to hear, tonight.”

“You—love—me?”

The tremor in her voice smote him to the heart.

“How not?” he said. “Hali, you are of all maidens most beautiful, most brave, most—most dreaming. What man can see you and not love you? And you are wrong, Lady.” His voice grew stronger and yet warmer. “There will be a worthy lover for you someday, after these dark days are behind you. A noble lover, I feel sure of it.”

“You call yourself unworthy?” Halimeda's voice also grew stronger, and with her own hands she reached up and brushed away her tears.

“I, a commoner and a bastard?” He laughed briefly, harshly. “Yes, manifestly unworthy. I am a fool to speak.”

“No fool. I know better.” Halimeda was looking at him thoughtfully, desperation turning into a bold thought, and Chance saw. In a few moments, he knew, his heart would break—for still he must speak truth.

“Hali, I have—nothing to give you.”

“No name, you mean, for the babe? No family? But already I am bereft of those. I came here with nothing, and you have offered me a commoner's love. It is that much more.” She spoke not warmly, but in a settled, collected way. “Perhaps, in time, I could learn to return it.”

Looking up at her, hope dawning in her gaze, he faced at last the agony that for years he had held at arm's length. He sobbed, bent as if by a blow, hiding his face behind his hands.

“Chance, what is it?” Halimeda drew him toward her, letting his head and shoulders lie in her lap, against the warm curve of her pregnant belly, as he choked on pain. “My life's friend, what is wrong?”

He stopped struggling and found the calm in the vortex of the pain, looked up at her.

“I have—nothing to give you, Hali.”

Scarcely comprehending, unwilling to comprehend, yet she began to understand, and her face grew very still. She did not speak. He got up, found a shirt and put it on, made the tea, gave her some and himself some as well. Sitting near her by the hearth, he told her the tale.

“It happened the day of our victory in the long war. Roddarc and I fought side by side always, and he in the fore, as befits a lord's son. And he is a splendid warrior, I was proud and joyous to stand by him. And many a time had he taken a spear on his shield. But this one time of those many times, he erred somehow, and instead of deflecting the spear harmlessly he let it slip down and to the side, and it struck me featly in the groin.”

He had never spoken of that day, not to anyone, and it was as though he felt again the blow; he shuddered and winced. But the lady's steady eyes were on him, and he went on.

“We fought on, both of us. We had to, or be killed. Luckily the battle was nearly over before I weakened.… Roddarc carried me to safety, and laid me down and tore open the clothing to bandage the wound. And when he saw what had been done to me, he wept. When I awoke, the next day, he was still weeping.”

“How—how horrible,” Halimeda whispered.

“He never told you?”

“No!”

“I think—he does not speak of it, any more than I do. I think—my lady, he has never said this to me, but it may be why he has never wed. So that he would not enjoy what I could not. He is—he is all bound up in honor and loyalty; he would think in that way. And he was a merry enough wencher before it happened. We both were.”

Halimeda grimaced at him. “Did you make yourselves babes in the wenches?”

“We may have. I know Roddarc did.”
And his punishment, as usual, was visited on me.
The thought, new to him, took his breath away, until he saw the look the lady was giving him. “No, it is not right,” he told her.

“Or fair,” she said hotly. “Men share the pleasure and escape the blame.”

“It was a long time ago. We were young fools. And—Halimeda, do you think it may be part of Roddarc's spleen now, that you have enjoyed lovemaking.…”

She flushed and glanced down at her hands. Impulsively Chance reached over and touched her hair, straightening the straggling locks.

“I don't know when I began dreaming of you,” he said softly. “Years ago. It happened stealthily.… And, you see, it did not matter to me that you were unattainable.”

“I must think,” she muttered, still staring at her hands.

“Take note, my lady, you are not so willing to hurl yourself away after all.”

She looked up at him with a small, shamed smile, and he nodded.

“Truly, there will be someone better for you. Your case is not so desperate that you must settle for a bastard commoner with no manhead. Life's course is full of strange quirks and turns. You are so lovely, there must yet be a worthy lover for you. I cannot believe otherwise.”

“Chance,” she said slowly, “I am all in confusion. You have made me see outside myself, and it is a comfort, but strange.”

“Then go home, bear your child, wait. It will come clear. Only, Hali …” One last time he permitted himself that love-name, and he looked at her in plea. “Think no longer of Gallowstree Lea.”

She gave him her hand for a moment. That was her pledge.

On a day when bone-chilling drizzle fell from a gray sky, Chance paused along a deer trail in Wirral to relieve himself against an oak—a thing he had done often enough before, forsooth. But this time he had no more than undone the lacing of his trousers and parted the fabric when a trilling laugh sounded, to be echoed from several directions.

“No nuts, and only half a stem!” a fey voice sang. “Chance, don't you miss them?”

Chance scowled and started to cover himself, then considered that it would be worse to be pursued elsewhere. He emptied his bladder, and as he did so the Denizen who had accosted him strutted into view. It was one of the tough-breasted females, to his chagrin, and he flushed deeply. The woodswoman laughed again.

“Chance, it is a wonder they call you man!”

He closed his trousers, fumbling with the laces in his haste, and burbling laughter sounded from all around. Then a small brown form shot through the air and landed like a squirrel beside the other. It was the Denizen Chance had first bespoken, the handsome russet-colored young prince of them all.

“Pay no mind, Chance,” he said. “Fate is unkind.”

“And you, I suppose, are kinder,” Chance retorted sourly.

“Indeed so! Listen, and you shall know.” The young Denizen paused for effect, and crouched down on his bough in a manner as of a conspirator. “In the midst of Wirral,” he said in a lowered voice, “in the very fundament of it, stands a tree which bears nuts such as those you lack.”

Chance snorted aloud. “You must take me for an ass,” he said.

“You doubt it? When Wirral grows thick as grass?”

Chance scowled; they were rhyming with him, now. “What of it,” he said curtly, “if there is such a tree?” For he did not know all that lay in the penetralia of Wirral; no one did. Stranger things than what the Denizen named might be there.

“What of it? Chance!” The Denizen prince seemed aghast. Still standing beside him, the female took up the tale.

“Just do as we say—”

Other voices joined in.

“Pluck the nuts from that bole,”

“And you will be whole,”

“And join the dance within the day!”

“Bah!” Chance exploded, but he did not turn away. If the small folk were bejaping him, they had judged nicely as to their bait. He could not turn away, not while there was even the fool's chance that they were speaking truth. In no mindly sense did he believe them, but he had heard tales of these folk, their many powers. He had to risk.…

“Danger?” he demanded.

The Denizen prince stood up, stiffly erect, cock jutting. “Some small peril,” he admitted. “Do you care for that?” Glint of his amber eyes gave the dare to Chance.

“Bah!” Chance sputtered again. “Which way?”

Instead of replying, the copper-colored Denizen turned to the surrounding forest. “What say ye?” he cried. “Shall we guide him thither?”

Blast the cock-proud rascal,
Chance fumed,
he'll have me begging next for my chance to be gulled.

The cry went up from all around.

“Away, say we!”

“To the cullion-nut tree!”

“Whither, thence! Hither, hence!” the Denizen prince shouted crazily, and he vanished as handily as a squirrel, within an eyeblink. A birdlike laugh sounded somewhere, and then there was silence. Chance lurched forward.

“Where are you?” he shouted, trying to keep the fury out of his voice. Be cursed the lot of them, truly they would have him begging! For what folly? A ball tree!

“Here!” came a teasing voice from somewhere far ahead.

“This way!” another cried gaily from a somewhat different direction. “With a dildo hey! Away, we say!”

Panting with anger even before he began, Chance ran toward the voices.

“Full merrily away say we!”

And indeed they led him a merry chase through the drizzling rain. Tearing through bracken and stumbling through stones, up scarp and down dingle, into thorn thickets that pierced him even through his leathern clothing, that would have liked to have taken his eyes. The Denizens, he decided, must have some plan for him after all, for they slowed their pace to wait for him. But as soon as he stumbled out of his difficulties they were off again as wildly as ever, and he must needs trail after, with no breath left even to curse.

“Chance Lord's man, he ran and ran …”

Already they were making a song of it. They would be amusing themselves with the tale, Chance deemed, for the winter's span, perhaps longer. No matter, for he had to know the end of the story. He ran through the waning day until the gray sky darkened into dusk. No matter, again. There was no loved one waiting by his cold hearth.