A Journey of the Heart (24 page)

"Nevertheless," said Merin, "together I'm sure we can overcome Vintel's objections." She gave me an ironic smile. "I don't suppose it will do any good to point out that if you had heeded my advice, Vintel would have nothing to complain of."

I smiled back at her. "If it gives you some satisfaction, you may point out anything you like. I don't regret my choice. If someday your power comes to me, I will wield it well because of what Maara taught me."

"Well," said Merin, "what do you suggest we do?"

"About Vintel?"

"About your adoption."

"I think we should wait. By the time you're well and strong again, things may be different."

"I think you will make a wise leader, Tamras," she said.

Her praise made me blush. "Why do you say that?"

"When there's trouble, people are always impatient to be doing something, but sometimes the wisest course is to do nothing. Many problems will solve themselves."

Six weeks after midwinter's night, a child was born in Merin's house. Reni, one of the kitchen servants, had conceived on the night of the spring festival, and all through the long, tedious winter, everyone in Merin's house had been looking forward to the baby's birth.

Reni's labor began just after supper. Almost the entire household sat up all night in the great hall, waiting to greet the new arrival. The few who went to bed couldn't have slept much. Warriors who had heard the screams of the dying on the battlefield grew pale when they heard the noise that Reni made.

In a household of warriors, a midwife is seldom needed, and the healer protested that she was out of practice delivering babies. I had helped my mother deliver lots of babies, so I took charge of Reni's labor. Fortunately Reni needed little help. Although it was her first child, all went well. At dawn she gave birth to a little girl.

When they heard the baby's cry, the people waiting in the great hall gathered in the kitchen doorway. The healer let them come in for a few minutes, to see the child and say a few words of praise to the mother. Then she chased them all out again.

The servants slept in a tiny room at the back of the house. It was too cold there for the baby, so we made a bed for mother and child in a corner of the kitchen. For days the kitchen work was constantly disrupted by people coming to visit them. No child ever had so many aunts and uncles. In the spring Reni would take her baby home to her mother's household. A fortress is no place to raise a child. In the meantime we were all delighted to have a new life among us.

A few days after the birth of Reni's child, something woke me in the middle of the night. I heard a man's voice call my name. It came from below me, from the great hall. I peered over the edge of the companions' loft to see Kenit looking up at me.

"Tamras," he called again. "Come quickly."

"Wait there," I said.

"Dress warmly. Bring your cloak."

When I joined him in the great hall, he clutched at my arm. His eyes were wide with fear. "You must come with me."

"Where?"

"It isn't far. She needs your help." He began to pull me toward the door.

I tried to free my arm from his grasp. "Wait. What is it? What's the matter?"

"Please come quickly," he said. "She's giving birth."

"Who?"

"It isn't far, but we must hurry."

"I need to bring some things with me," I told him. "Medicines."

At last he understood and let me go. I left him pacing back and forth while I went into the kitchen. Because of Reni's pregnancy, the healer had collected herbs not usually kept in Merin's house, and I found everything I needed -- herbs to ease a woman's pains, to strengthen her labor, to give a gentle sleep, to help her grow strong again after her delivery. I had no idea what to expect, so I took some of everything. Then I went with Kenit out into the night.

I was glad for my warm cloak. The light of the crescent moon, reflecting off the snow, was enough to light our way. We walked for half an hour before we came to a farmstead. The house was small. When I stepped through the doorway, the lintel brushed the top of my head, and Kenit had to stoop to enter. Inside there was only firelight. I wished I had thought to bring a lamp with me. On a pallet by the hearth a young woman lay unmoving. Beside her sat an older woman who I took to be her mother.

When Kenit saw the girl lying so still, he gave a soft cry.

The woman put her finger to her lips. "Asleep," she whispered.

"How long has she been in labor?" I asked her.

"Since early yesterday," she replied.

I knelt down by the girl. Her black hair lay in a tangle on the pillow. There were dark circles around her eyes, and her lips were pale, but she was still a beauty. She was the girl Kenit had danced for.

There was little I could do for her. She was small and delicate, with narrow hips. By the time she delivered late the next morning, she was exhausted. As soon as she was satisfied that her baby lived, she fell into a deep sleep. Kenit wrapped his son in blankets and cradled him in his arms. Even when I would have laid him down beside his mother, Kenit wouldn't let him go.

"When she wakes, she must feed him," I said.

Kenit nodded. He too looked exhausted.

In the meantime I wet a cloth in warm water and gave it to the baby to suck. Then I handed a packet of herbs to the girl's mother.

"This will help to make her strong again," I told her.

I returned to Merin's house alone and slept the afternoon away. At bedtime I wasn't sleepy, so I sat up a while by the hearth. Around midnight I began to yawn. As I was getting up to go to bed, Kenit came in. He had the baby with him. I didn't ask him why. His eyes told me that the dark-haired girl had died.

We took the child into the kitchen. Reni was kind enough to nurse him. In a few days Kenit would have looked for a nurse among the country people, but Reni, who had plenty of both milk and mother love, took the boy to her heart.

The next morning, when the Lady heard the cries of two infants downstairs, she left her room for the first time since her illness. I had heard them too, and I got up to see if Reni needed anything. I met the Lady on the stairs, and together we went down to the kitchen.

Kenit had slept that night in the great hall. We found him in the kitchen with Reni, holding her baby while she nursed his. Before the Lady could scold him for trespassing where only women were allowed, he explained that the child at Reni's breast was his son.

"Has his mother not enough milk?" asked the Lady cautiously.

"His mother died," said Kenit.

The Lady slipped her arm around his shoulders. "I'm sorry," she said.

Kenit looked surprised at her show of sympathy, but he was bold enough to ask her, "Will we give her a warrior's burial?"

"Of course," said the Lady. "I'll see to it."

I was puzzled. I didn't like to ask Kenit for an explanation, so when I dropped by the Lady's room later that afternoon, I asked her how we could give a country girl a warrior's burial.

"Few households keep such ancient customs anymore," she said. "We still keep it here, and I hope we always will. When a woman gives her life for others, whether in battle or in childbirth, she should be honored for her sacrifice."

"But it's not the same thing," I said. "Is it?"

Merin smiled. "I fought in battle and your mother bore two children. Of the two of us, I think she was the courageous one."

At first we heard only rumors of trouble. Though people seldom traveled any distance in wintertime, a few souls came to us cold and starving. They were herding people who lived in the mountains to the east of us. They weren't our allies, but we had always been on good terms with them. They told disturbing tales of raiders so desperate that they traveled in the most dreadful weather, willing to exchange the lives of many to feed the rest. Those who couldn't stand against them took what food they could carry and fled.

We took the travelers in, as the laws of hospitality demanded. Some went to farms where help was needed. Those who stayed in Merin's house slept on the floor of the great hall and did their best to be both grateful and inconspicuous. Many of the older warriors remembered other times of hunger when Merin's house had become a place of refuge. They told tales around the hearth that hadn't been told for years, cautionary tales of the misfortunes of others that reminded us how fortunate we were.

But it seemed that our good fortune might not last. Spring came late that year. The elders counted and recounted the days, but the time for planting came and went before the last of the snow melted. Although the elders felt the spring sowing shouldn't wait, the earth was still cold and heavy with damp, and the first sowing rotted in the ground. A second sowing sprouted. We watched with cautious hope as it grew and prayed to the goddess of the grain that there would be time and warmth enough to ripen it.

Even before the snow had melted, the cattle raids began. Vintel took a band of warriors north to the frontier. Maara and I stayed at home. While they had succeeded in postponing my adoption, Vintel's malicious rumors had found nothing substantial to settle on, and as Namet said they would, people soon lost interest in repeating them. I think Namet used them as an excuse to keep Vintel from taking Maara with her to the frontier. In any case, we assumed that Laris would ask us to join her band, as she had done the year before.

One evening after supper, Laris approached Maara and drew her aside, into the shadows at the back of the great hall, far away from any who might overhear. When I would have followed them, Laris gave me a fierce look, and I stayed where I was.

Maara and Laris talked quietly together for a long time. Then Laris went upstairs, and Maara beckoned to me to join her. I expected her to tell me to get our things ready. Instead she said, "In the morning Laris is going home."

"She is? Why?"

"Her mother sent for her. There's trouble there."

"There's trouble here too," I protested. "What does the Lady say?"

"Laris hasn't spoken to the Lady. She doesn't intend to ask permission. Her first duty is to her family."

Maara was right, of course.

"Laris asked me to go with her."

A strange fear gripped my heart. "Why?" I whispered.

"She believes I'll be safer there."

That was certainly true. I couldn't speak.

"I'm not going," she said.

Whatever had gripped my heart let go.

Maara knit her brows. "Would you -- ," she said.

"Would I what?"

"Would you consider going with me?"

Once I had begged Maara to take me with her if she ever left Merin's house. Now everything had changed. Now I was to be the daughter of the house, the Lady's heir. Even if I were in danger, my duty to the Lady would keep me in Merin's house for as long as she needed me.

"I can't," I told her.

"No," said Maara softly. "Of course not."

That springtime Merin needed me. She had made a good recovery, though her fever had left her with a little weakness, a shortness of breath when she climbed the stairs, and she tired easily, but she would have all summer to grow strong again.

Rumors notwithstanding, I made myself her healer. I looked in on her every morning and insisted she lie down for a few hours every afternoon. She would seldom sleep during the day, so I sat with her while she rested, and we talked together like old friends.

One morning I found her standing at the window. The sun was just rising, its golden light burning the mist off the river.

"There's a warm breeze this morning," she said.

"Perhaps spring has come at last."

"Perhaps." She turned away from the window and sat down heavily on her bed. Lines of worry creased her brow. "Isn't it past time she should have been here?" She was speaking of my mother.

"There may still be snow on the ground in the hill country," I said, although I too had begun to wonder what could be keeping her.

"Ah," said Merin. "I had forgotten."

Another week passed. I was beginning to be anxious.

Early one morning, before the sun was up, Merin's servant came to the companions' loft and roughly shook me awake.

"The Lady wants you," she said. She waited while I dressed and went with me to Merin's room. She stopped outside the door and whispered, "Don't upset her." Then she left me there and went downstairs.

Merin was sitting up in bed. She looked as if she hadn't slept all night.

"She isn't coming," she said.

I thought she must have had a message from my mother. "Why not? Is there some kind of trouble?"

"How should I know?"

"You haven't heard from her?"

"Of course not. Why would I have heard from her? When has she ever told me anything?"

I sat down beside her on the bed and tried to think of something I could say to comfort her.

"I should have known better than to get my hopes up," she said.

I didn't like to worry her unnecessarily, but a little worry, I thought, would be better for Merin than self-pity.

"There may be trouble in the hill country too. It seems there's trouble everywhere these days."

Merin looked more hopeful. "Do you think so? Do you think something's keeping her?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"She would send for help, wouldn't she?" Merin's brows furrowed with worry. "Wouldn't she send to me for help if she needed it?"

"Of course she would," I said. "Of course she would."

Although I did my best not to let the Lady see my anxiety for my mother, I couldn't keep Maara from seeing it.

"We could go see what's keeping her," Maara suggested.

I had already thought of that. I doubted the Lady would object to my going, but before I could ask her for permission, a messenger arrived. He and a companion had brought my sister Tamar to Merin's house. He had run on ahead to let us know that she would arrive that evening. My mother wasn't with them. As I suspected, there was trouble, even in the peaceful place where I grew up, and my mother had to stay at home.

Merin took the news more calmly than I expected. I think she had resigned herself to being disappointed.