Ravenwood (2 page)

The cart rumbled by and in the bed a pair of axes and a bow saw explained why he headed away from town with an empty cart so early in the day. No doubt, he’d return at dusk, his cart loaded with firewood. Tanyth realized that she must be closer to a village than she thought. She focused on the immediate tasks ahead and stepped back onto the smooth surface, turning northward once more.

After another mile or so, the smoky scent of village came on the breeze and she quickened her pace a bit, hoping some fresh water and perhaps a bit of cheese might be had for the price of a little casual labor, perhaps an hour on the butter churn should the village have a milch cow. As she turned a final bend, the small gathering of huts filling a clearing carved out of the forest beside the road gave her some pause. Each hut sported a small vegetable patch behind and a grassy verge provided rough grazing for a couple of goats. A gravel track led from the Pike up into the cluster of huts. She could hear children playing somewhere behind the village and a small flock of chickens scratched and clucked in the gravel of the path.

Her eyes tracked back and forth across the area looking for the reason this particular location had grown up. Usually hamlets grew on crossroads or river banks, traffic providing a rationale and travelers’ coins pollinating prosperity until the hamlet grew to village and became more self-sufficient. The unprepossessing collection in front of her looked like little more than hovels, but she sniffed none of the sewery smell of mismanagement even while the rich aroma of ripening animal dung came to her clearly along with clean wood smoke and the laughing shrieks of children.

A lone yellow dog guarded the road’s edge where the main path out of the hamlet joined the Kleesport Pike. The path was wide enough for a cart–indeed she noted an ox-pie and some fresh stripes in the hard-pan to tell her where the woodcutter had come from. A woman’s voice shouted something unintelligible and strident from the direction of the laughing children and a pack of five came belting out from behind one of the huts, the oldest looking to be about ten winters and the rest ranging down in increments that were barely discernible. Their general looks were sufficiently different to suggest they weren’t all siblings which meant more than one family with children.

Not a bandit camp, then. Tanyth relaxed marginally. There was still a lot that could go wrong but where there were children, there was less likelihood of violence. It wasn’t a fool-proof test as her own life served to illustrate, but the probabilities of a peaceful encounter were greatly improved by the presence of young ones.

The small tribe skidded to a stop at the apparition of this stranger almost in their midst and the eldest of the group shouted, “Ma! Traveler’s here!” He didn’t sound alarmed but the low door of the hut they’d just run out from behind swung open almost immediately and a youngish woman bent head and shoulders to get out through the opening. She straightened with one hand to her brow and the other at the small of her back.

She regarded Tanyth for a moment before speaking. “Can we help you, traveler?” Tanyth recognized her bright soprano from the earlier shout.

Tanyth took off her hat and brushed a hand through her short gray hair. “Fresh water?” she asked preferring to take things one step at a time until she got a better lay of the land.

The eldest of the children perked up as she spoke and they all gaped a bit as their notions realigned with a new reality. “Ma, that’s a woman!” The eldest said it with some surprise.

The woman blinked slowly and turned her attention to the boy for a moment regarding him with an arched eyebrow and a small grin. “Thank you for that report, Riley. Would you fetch a bucket of water from the well, please?”

Tanyth smiled a bit herself and spoke up. “I can get a bucket of water if you’ll just show me where...?”

The younger woman shook her head slightly. “That’s alright, traveler. This rapscallion and his vagabond band have been under foot all morning. Maybe if I give him a few more chores he’ll decide bein’ elsewhere is better.” She graced the boy with another pointed look, and he hied himself off around the hut, looking back over his shoulder and gathering his cohort around him as he scampered.

“Would you sit a spell? We don’t get many travelers who stop...” The woman smiled tentatively but there was still a hint of reserve, a mutual weighing that passed on the morning’s wind.

“I don’t want to be any trouble, mum.” Tanyth hesitated. “I thought maybe I could get a freshening of my water-skin and maybe do a chore or two in return for some bread?”

“Naught but woman’s work here, I’m afraid.” The younger woman twisted her mouth in a wry smile. “You know the kind of work I mean?”

Tanyth snorted in reply. “Cookin’, cleanin’, and unpaid.”

The younger woman nodded with a small laugh. “You know very well, then.” She regarded Tanyth once more, her head cocked to one side. She shook herself suddenly. “Where are my manners?” She stepped forward and held out one smoothly tanned and callused hand. “Amber Mapleton.”

Tanyth took the offered hand in her own. “Tanyth. Tanyth Fairport. Pleased to meet you.” She answered the younger woman’s smile with one of her own.

“Come inside, Mother Fairport. If you’ve the time to help, then you’ve time to tell me what’s a foot in the world while I mend.”

“Just Tanyth, Amber. I’m not that old yet.”

The younger woman’s glance took in the crow’s feet and gray hair but she offered no comment except to quirk her mouth a little sideways and nod at the house.

Tanyth felt welcomed by that half smile and the two women ducked low, Tanyth slipping out of her pack before trying to pass under the lintel. Inside the hut sank down into the soil about two feet, and woven grass mats covered the floor. Tanyth admired the handiwork.

“We weave these mats and sell them in Kleesport.” Amber made the announcement quietly but proudly as she saw the older woman admiring the flooring. “There’s a slough filled with long grasses just up the hollow a piece.” Amber nodded westerly, toward the forest side of the hamlet. “We gather it in the fall, weave it all winter, and sell it in the spring. It brings in a few extra silvers for the village.”

“Have you been here long?” Tanyth perched on a vacant stool beside the hearth.

“This will be our fourth winter.” Amber set about warming a teapot with some hot water, before throwing in a handful of tea. She topped it off with boiling water and set it aside to steep. She straightened from her task and cast an appraising eye across the walls and beams. “That first year was bad, but this year we’re a lot readier for winter.”

Their settling in was interrupted by the boy’s return with the bucket of water as he carefully took the three steps down and placed the wooden pail on the corner of the hearth. He ducked his head politely in a half bow and offered a shy smile.

“Thank you, Riley. Go out and play with the others now and let us have a little peace.”

“Won’t last much longer,” he said with a puckish grin. “Sandy’s spreadin’ the news.” With that as his parting word, he scampered back out the way he came, just in time to pass another slender woman in homespun at the threshold.

“Amber? I heard we have guests?” The newcomer took advantage of the opened door to thrust her head into the hut and peer about.

“You may as well come in, Sadie.” Amber hid a small smile by peering at the teapot.

The slightly-built blonde woman, not much more than a girl by Tanyth’s reckoning, took the invitation at face value and hurried in, long familiarity evident in her sure movements around the small hut even as she eyed the newcomer curiously.

“Tanyth, this is Sadie Hawthorne. She lives next door. Sadie, Tanyth Fairport. She’s just passing through.”

The three women managed to pour a couple of mugs of tea before the next neighbor knocked on the door.

Chapter 2
Willow Bark Tea

Tanyth got back on the Pike as the sun passed zenith. Her delay over tea and talk lost her some time on the road but gained her a small loaf of fresh bread and a block of hard cheese along with the knowledge of why the village sat where it did. A path led into the woods to the west of the Pike. It ended at a deposit of fine clay back in the hillside beyond and provided the community’s life blood. Most of the men worked to excavate the heavy mineral laced mud. One served as hunter, another as wood cutter, and a third drove the heavy lorry wagon back and forth to Kleesport. The women talked excitedly of plans to build their own kiln in the coming winter when the clay was frozen and the menfolk would otherwise be underfoot.

She smiled to herself as she tucked her hair up under her hat and made ready to go. She left some packets of dried basil with the women and measured out a few of her precious seeds to press upon them for planting in the spring. Rosemary and sage grew readily in the local soil and Sadie, who seemed to be the expert on growing things in the village, accepted them happily.

As she reached her stride and the ground began to roll away under her boots once more, she thought about how exciting it must be to be young, and to be working toward something that might be bigger than themselves. The hamlet was–as yet–unnamed but the women around the hearth planned for a larger community with a real name and even a school to teach letters and numbers to the anticipated horde of children. While Amber had used the excuse of “learning the news from outside,” the women did little listening to happenings outside of their small circle and instead took pleasure in sharing their plans for the future with her. Tanyth smiled a gentle smile at their youthful enthusiasms and said a silent prayer to the All-Mother for their success.

The afternoon passed uneventfully except for the passage of one of the King’s Own, a messenger on one of the rangy, long-legged horses they used for the service. Tanyth heard the horse and rider coming even over the sighing of the wind through the tree tops and stepped off the road to allow the rider to pass. She knew better than to expect a miracle but even so, she was faintly disappointed when the youth in the saddle was not her Robert. A young woman looking very serious and businesslike in her uniform wore the diagonal orange slash of the messenger corps. Tanyth waved a hand in greeting but the dispatch rider only nodded in acknowledgment without speaking as the horse trotted past leaving a musical jingling of tack and a swirl of light dust that rapidly dispersed in the afternoon breeze.

“Old fool! Your Robert is a grown man with wife and children of his own by now.” She frowned and grumbled to herself but the thought of having grandchildren she didn’t even know gave her a pang of melancholy. She huffed and stabbed the hard scrabble surface of the road with the iron heel of her staff for several steps in vexation.

The sun slid on its inevitable path while Tanyth paced her way northward. When it approached the tops of the trees on the west side of the road, she started watching for breaks in the trees on the east, keeping an eye open for game trails or paths. If there wasn’t one, she’d have to find a safe camp off the road by herself, but she rarely had to resort to that level of bush whacking in order to find a safe hole. The Pike wasn’t heavily traveled but it was traveled regularly and travelers had few choices along the way but to find camping spots off the road to spend the night. The nameless hamlet she’d left behind might well do better to open an inn, she thought, rather than a brick kiln.

A pounding rumble reached her ears as the sun fell closer to the treetops. She quickly chose the best of the options available to her and stepped easily onto the weeded verge, slipping into the underbrush at the edge of the encroaching forest. The trees were not so closely spaced that she couldn’t slip between them and she took shelter beside a large blackberry thicket, hunkering down to lower her profile and peeking through the undergrowth to see what would pass.

In a matter of moments a large six-in-hand coach rattled into view and swooped past her traveling from Kleesport and heading for Varton, ninety miles to the south. She passed the carriage stations periodically along the road, but never stopped. The men who staffed the stations were not terribly well-mannered and were often bored with nothing better to do than tend the animals and await the arrival and subsequent departure of the coaches. Stopping there carried more risk than she thought prudent.

She waited until the sound of the carriage faded out in the distance to the south and kept to her place of concealment even after it had gone. Before long a pair of the King’s Own guards came riding by as well. The Guardsmen cantered easily in the wake of the coach. They didn’t seem to pay close attention to the road or the woods that surrounded it, but Tanyth lowered her head, hiding her face behind the wide brim of her hat. The King’s Own were unlikely to assault her but that wouldn’t stop them asking a lot of difficult questions about why she might be hiding in the woods watching the coach and guard.

They passed without incident and Tanyth let out the breath she’d been holding. She spared a look around and noticed a game trail running behind the blackberry bramble and into the forest. A short way down the path she found a small clearing bounded by a thicket of juniper on one side and a huge boulder on the other. A soft splashing sound led her to a spring-fed creek on the far side of the boulder. A blackened smear on the rock showed where travelers had camped in the past. The site was a trifle exposed to the sky, but the bulk of the stone stood between the clearing and the road. Little would be visible through the trees in that direction. She smiled, dropped her pack and staff beside the rock, and went in search of tinder and wood for a fire.

Appropriately sized sticks littered the forest floor. She didn’t have to stray far from her campsite in order to collect enough to heat water for tea and a bit of oatmeal for breakfast. She found herself looking forward to the bread and cheese from the village for her dinner. She even found a patch of wild onion to add a bit of flavor. In celebrating her good fortune, she dropped her normal guard and almost walked into one of the two men before she even knew they were there.