Green Darkness (35 page)

“The three kings’ll mend her agen,” said Janet. “She’s descended fra them a’. An’ lang time ago she was King Oswin’s dotter!”

Celia’s interest in this narrative had been growing, even though she was fighting sleep and was conscious that Simkin had settled himself on the floor beside her. She glanced at Lady Bess, who was now seated in the other chair, her chin in her hand gazing idly at the fire.

“What three kings, Dame Janet?” Celia asked. “And when lived my Lady Dacre, King Oswin’s daughter?”

“Och—” said Janet, turning her pleasant rosy face towards Celia’s voice. “’Twas hunnerds o’ years past—whilst the Norsemen were harrying us.”

This was no clarification for Celia nor any of the listeners. But the girl whispered with a glance at the motionless figure in gray, “They’re d—, not alive then . . .?”

Janet hunched her shoulders. “
She
sees them, and I feel their chill when they coom.”

So, the three kings were ghosts, Celia thought! She was quite tipsy and this struck her as funny. She gave a sudden little laugh.

Bess Dacre turned her long white neck and looked at the girl. “There’ll be blood on
your
pap, too, my pretty lass,” she said. “And ’twill do you no good to lie wi’ my lord, let ye lust as ye will, and no matter his promises. You’ll come to grief like a’ his lemans.”

Celia did not understand. Wat and Simkin, both half drunk, paid no attention to this remark, but Ursula was roused by the sinister tone directed towards her niece. She remembered the offhand remark of the Cowdray steward. That the Neville wife was known to be jealous. Ursula raised her head and spoke to Lady Bess.

“My niece is a child, Lady—she comes north for no reason but to visit your mother-in-law with me. She has barely met Sir Thomas. There is naught between them.”

Bess listened and seemed to consider. She gazed at the pallet where Ursula lay, her large black eyes grew vague. Suddenly she rose in one lithe catlike motion. Ursula shrank and cried, “
Jesu
,” under her breath. She thought the woman was darting at her.

But Lady Bess glided past to the wall where a small harp hung on a wooden peg. Bess took the harp and returned to her seat.

“We must sing . . .” she said, nodding graciously towards the dim-lit other room. “The Kings wish music.”

She strummed the little harp and smiled the fixed half-smile again. Bess’s voice was low, it held no expression, and it sent new shivers through Ursula.

O! cauld and bare his bed will be

When winter storms sing in the tree;

At his head a turf, at his feet a stone,

He will sleep, nor hear the maiden’s moan

O’er his white bones the birds s’all fly

The wild deer bound, and foxes cry . . . 

“Nay, nay, m’lady—” cried Janet, suddenly jumping up and groping towards her mistress. “Not
that
one, luik ye, we’ve guests this neet, they’re a-weary, we mun rest. Coom, hinny, coom . . .” She took the harp and put it back on the wall. “Here’s ye’re neetcap,” she said in crisp firm tones. They were all dazed, only Ursula, aware of pity and some fear, held her breath while Janet poured red venison blood from a dripping pan into a silver noggin and put it in Bess’s hand. The woman drank slowly, savoring each sip. Then she allowed Janet to propel her to a small adjacent bedchamber, curtained off by a tattered mildewed length of tapestry. In a moment Janet stuck her head around the tapestry. “Guid neet,” she said. “Keep the fire oop—there be turves i’ the basket, iffen the wood fails.”

Wat was snoring, his head resting on a sack of oats which he had brought back after feeding the horses and watering them at the courtyard trough.

Ursula too slipped back into an uneasy slumber. The young people lay under their cloaks on the other side of the hearth.

“’Tis not cold now,” Celia murmured. “I hope those three kings don’t come.”

Simkin was not interested in the three kings. He rolled closer to Celia, then suddenly heaved himself on top of her and covered her mouth with his.

The girl jumped and opened her eyes. She gave the bony young chest a push. “Oh, leave me be,” she said without rancor, “I’m too weary for games.”

The kiss meant no more to her than her aunt’s would have. It did not even awaken any memory of that other kiss on Tan’s Hill.

Simkin rolled off her at once, reddening. He had longed for that kiss. After the food and whisky, while the elders were talking nonsense, he had been growing frantic with anticipation, his loins ached, his head pounded, his manhood throbbed. Yet, when he touched her lips, and even before she shoved him, he had felt disappointment. Almost revulsion. He had never kissed a girl before, though the other stableboys at Cowdray were forever boasting of their bussings and tumblings under hedgerows. He wondered a little about his lack of interest in the dairymaids or the castle chamber wenches the other lads found so exciting. Celia’s delicate beauty, her mischief, and high station had penetrated his indifference on the first day’s journey. He was pleased to find himself in love. Yet he hadn’t liked the feel of her soft breasts beneath his chest, nor her moist warm mouth. It had been different with Roland. Simkin gave an unhappy grunt, turned far away from Celia and began to snore as loud as his father.

The Dacre keep settled at last into somber quiet.

On the next morning they set out north again. Janet directed them carefully, through the town of Penrith, on up to Brampton, and reminded them to stop at Kirkoswald Castle on the way. Old Sir William Dacre might be there; he seemed to favor it above all his seats. There’d be a steward anyway who would give them news and shelter if they were benighted.

“We couldn’t be,” said Wat laughing, “if ’tis only thirty mile to Na’orth.”

Janet snorted. “Ye speak lak a fule Southron, a mile her-re’s not like the saft easy ones doon ther-re, an’ our debatable land’s ne’er free fra danger.”

“What sort of danger?” asked Ursula, who still felt very weak, though her ague fit had not recurred.

Janet looked towards her kindly. “The ways’ll be clarty,” she said, “your horses mought fall, the brigs out o’er the becks, an’ evil men abroad. ’Ware the mosstroopers! The Maxwells’re riding I hear-r—ye’d be ripe plums for ’em. Your horses, your gold, and yon young lass to be ravished, you too, Lady, iffen they be fu’ o’ whiskybaugh, as they’ll be for sure.”

“Wat and Simkin will protect us—the Blessed Saints’ll protect us,” cried Ursula, crossing herself.

“Havers!” said Janet. “Luik ye, Lady. Stop by to see Lang Meg an’ her dotters ar’ter ye pass Penrith. Gi’e her a posy o’ the rowan-berries, it’ll please her. She’ll guard ye better’n a bushel o’ crosses an’ Paters—she was her-re afore they a’ coom to Cummerland. Iffen ye can count Lang Meg’s dotters a-reet ye’ll get ye’re heart’s secret weesh.”

“She’s as mad as Lady Bess,” whispered Wat behind his hand to Ursula. “Hasten, Lady, we’ve no time for this drivel.”

Ursula nodded. They had breakfasted on oatcakes and the remainder of the venison. Though it rained again, they were all fed, including the beasts, and she longed to be quit of the gloomy Dacre keep.

“Give our thanks to Lady Bess,” said Ursula, while mounting her horse. “I trust she’ll soon be better.”

Janet nodded in Ursula’s direction. “Ar’ter the fu’ moon,” she said calmly, “I gi’e her the bluid to drink—we’ve a pig for today, ’tis more like the bluid she hankers for. Time was when she tasted the other-r.”

“The other . . .?” asked Celia who had been listening with fascinated incomprehension, though aware chiefly of a headache, and that Simkin had not spoken to her or even looked at her this morning.

“Aye,” said Janet, “once ’twas her babby’s—puir wee bairnie—she loved it well, it died natural mind ye, and she got a taste o’ the bluid whilst she was trying to save it.”

“Blessed
Jesu
—” whispered Ursula. Her weakness vanished. She slapped her horse with the reins. “Come on, Celia—all of you—out of here!”

They hurried from Dacre, and cantered through the hamlet past the vicarage, where the old priest stood in the doorway of his house and stared at them impassively.

Wat scowled and shouted, “No thanks to
you,
old turdy-gut, ye’ve not got a churchful o’ corpses this morn, may the devil fry ye fur dinner!”

The priest hastily backed into his house, and slammed the door.

“They be’ent human up here . . .” Wat muttered, itching for revenge, but he urged his charges along the muddy lane towards Penrith, which it took them an hour to reach. In the small gray market town they paused only long enough to buy food at a cook-shop—a blood pudding the natives called “haggis,” more oat-cakes—and to confirm, mostly by signs, Janet’s directions towards the bridge over the Eden at Langwathby.

They continued in silence. The rain turned to drizzle. Ursula staunchly ignored a new fit of shivering and gave thanks that the mountains had receded, the going was nearly level. They crossed the Eden by noon and continued north until they came suddenly upon a huge cluster of standing stones, many stones grouped near a huge pointed one eighteen feet tall.

“What’s that?” asked Celia, her voice uncertain. For an instant she had thought that the stones were people as they loomed through the mist.

“Long Meg, no doubt,” said Wat briskly. “I’ve seen them things other places, there’s a mort o’ ’em on Salisbury Plain. Hurry on, miss, they’re evil, left o’er from heathen times!”

Celia shook her head. “Wait, wait a moment!” she said. “Janet told us what to do—if we’d be safe!”

“Tcha!” cried Wat. “Rantings an’ ravings, beside there’s no rowan.”

Celia looked around, sure enough there was no sign of the witching-tree and its red berries, though they had passed many such trees in the mountains. The girl thought rapidly. She rummaged in her pouch and found a bit of scarlet yarn she used at night to tie back her long hair to keep it from tangling. She had already slid off her horse, and now darted up to the great standing stone. She stuck the red yarn as high as she could up the stone where the roughened surface held it.

“Long Meg, Long Meg—” she whispered, “keep us safe.” She turned quickly for the part of the rite which had really caught her attention. She must count Long Meg’s daughters, because even as Janet spoke the secret wish in her heart had welled up and exploded into one word—”Stephen.” She did not feel surprise, or any emotion. The word was there, an entity, sharp, solitary. She ran amongst the stones counting. Fifty-nine, sixty—no, she had counted that one. Try again, slower. Sixty-three. No, start to the right, going widdershins, the four big ones near “Long Meg,” then carefully, zigzag, touching each one . . . sixty-five, but had she counted those two half-covered ones near the hummock? They’d make sixty-seven. She was panting, and her round white forehead glistened with sweat when Simkin came up to her.

“Have done, maiden,” he said in a muffled tone. “Me Dad’s vexed at the wait, Lady Ursula’s dithering.” He did not look at her. He glanced at the red yarn stuck high on the stone menhir, then stared at the rough grass.

“I can’t
count
them!” Celia cried on a note of hysteria. “Oh, Simkin, will you try?”

“Nay,” he said. “Come along—do.”

Celia obeyed. As they left the circle of stones her disappointment was replaced by astonishment. During all the journey Simkin had been so eager to please her. “Sim . . .” she said with hesitation, putting her hand on his leather-clad arm, “I wasn’t angry last night . . . you know, in the keep—when you k-kissed me. I was only so sleepy.”

She felt his arm flinch away from her hand, and saw dark color flood up his neck to his coarse pitted face. “Best forgot . . .” he said, “it’ll not happen again.”

Celia was puzzled and piqued. She did not want it to happen again, but surely
he
should wish for it.

“I don’t mind . . .” she said, looking at him through her lashes and showing her dimple in the way which had always caused him to respond—other men, too—she had seen the kindling in many male eyes.

Simkin did not kindle, he glanced at her sideways, saw the moist pink mouth, the half-exposed globes of her breasts under her neckerchief. He was upset that she no longer attracted him, upset and confused.

“Best forgot . . .” he repeated stolidly.

When they reached the others he gave her a leg up to mount her horse, but he did not touch her elbow as he usually did, nor arrange her cloak over the cantle. They proceeded on a trail by the river bank until they reached Kirkoswald. The large castle with its turrets and high tower had been in sight almost since they left Long Meg behind. Wat was heartily glad to see it.

He realized that hopes of reaching Naworth this night were unreasonable. His stallion had gone lame in the off hind hoof, and Wat was now on foot, cursing the blacksmith in Kendal, as well as the extraordinary lengths of space they called miles up here. He saw by the flagless staff on top the turret that Lord Dacre was not there, else his pennant would be flying. But, as Janet had said, at least there must be servants and the steward. Yet Wat’s hail at the porter’s lodge, and then his tugging of the courtyard bellrope produced no answer for some time. At last a grill slid back in the ironbolted door and a young frightened voice cried, “Gan awa . . . Leave us be . . . or I’ll rouse t’ guards!”

“Pray
do,
youngster,” Wat cried. “Rouse the whole shitten castle, we be Dacre guests an’ we demand shelter!”

There was a pause, then they heard the bolts drawn back, and the portal swung open cautiously. A round-eyed youth in a filthy plaid cape peered through the crack, he brandished a dirk with a trembling hand.

“Laird Dacre sent ye?” the boy quavered doubtfully.

“By the Mass—yes,” shouted Wat. He pushed wide the door, shooed the women past the protesting boy.

“Naow then—” Wat rounded on the boy, “where’s everybody? Do they hide another madwoman here? Bigod, I begin to think all the Dacres’re mad.”