Blood Ties (17 page)

Bramble

B
RAMBLE LET THE ROAN
travel along for the whole autumn evening, hearing over and over again the . . . the what? Curse? Prediction? That demon voice could not be contradicted.
Born wild and died wild. Thou wilt love no man never. No one will ever tame thee.

The words had hit her like wood because they rang true, because they chimed not only with her feeling of having escaped death, her fate, by a mistake, but with an empty place that she had always known was inside her. She thought that place had finally been filled, by the love of riding and by loving the roan, but she’d been wrong. It was still there, just better hidden, buried deeper. She felt it ache.

She was more disturbed than she wanted to admit to herself by the prophecy that she would never love. Of course, she had wondered, time and again, when the other girls her age had giggled during the Springtree dance as the boys twirled them and smiled at them, when they had gossiped about this one’s eyes or that one’s hands, why she had felt nothing beyond desire for any of them, and only liking for Wilf, the sweet but ugly boy the other girls ignored.

She had wondered and then let it go, until Maryrose brought Merrick home to meet the family. She could see why Maryrose loved him, but couldn’t imagine doing so herself, although she tried and tried hard.

Did she have so hard a heart? She could be kind — her ability to raise orphaned lambs and kids, to gentle them and give them the will to live was well known. She was known, too, as a good nurse for children and old people. “A wild heart but soft hands” was how one granfer had described her. She could be compassionate to young things and old, to the sick and the dying, the unhappy and the mad.

But love . . . Love for a man was something she’d never been able to come to. Perhaps she never would, now that she was a being of flesh and blood but without feeling. Perhaps she would never love, never marry.

“Is that so terrible a thing, horse?” she asked, and the roan whickered back at her and rubbed his soft nose against her bare leg. She was a little comforted, and hoped to be comforted more by the quiet of the Great Forest.

The road was longer than she had expected and she only came toward Pless as the autumn began to bite down and her money was almost exhausted.

In the late afternoon on a cloudy day, with the threat of a storm in the air, she rode down the main road to Pless, through a valley of pastureland flanked on both sides by deep forest. Halfway down the valley the roan stopped dead in the road.

Bramble sat, surprised, not knowing why he had paused. She clicked her tongue encouragingly, but instead of continuing, he executed a smart quarter turn and trotted through an open gate beside the road. He had never acted like this before, but it was as though he knew exactly where he was going. So Bramble let him go and just tried not to fall off — trotting was the one pace she had not yet mastered. Sensing this, the roan slowed to a walk, and headed toward a fenced yard where a man was gentling a chestnut filly.

The man had dark brown hair and a tall, loose-limbed body that would have been gangly as a youth. He wasn’t exactly comely, not like Merrick, although he had a charm about him in the way he talked to the horse, as though it were a person. But he was at least twice her age, no matter how charming he might be.

She watched for a while, smiling as he tricked the filly by walking away from her so that she followed out of curiosity. He moved quietly and gently, never intruding on her until she felt safe and secure in his hands. When he’d finally managed to slip the bridle on her head, he noticed Bramble at the fence, sitting, as she usually did, with one leg drawn up across the roan’s shoulders, no saddle, no reins in her hands, no bit in the horse’s mouth, but clearly comfortable.

He smiled at her, with a charm that shone through his gray eyes, with none of the automatic suspicion she’d encountered from most settled people since she had taken the Road. “Bring him in,” he invited her. “It’ll do the filly good to see another horse so friendly with a human.”

She smiled back at him, a little surprised. The easy exchange made her feel more alive. So she touched the roan on the shoulder, clicked her tongue, and sat back as he made his own way to the gate which the man held open.

By the time she’d brought the roan in and turned him around, the man was grinning fit to burst.

“I’m Gorham.”

“Bramble.”

Gorham looked the roan up and down with a horseman’s eye. “Nice conformation.”

“Thanks.” Bramble nodded at the filly. “Is she yours?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m training her up for a farmer over Sandalwood way.”

Bramble was surprised. “That’s a long way to bring a horse for training.”

Gorham shrugged, as though it were usual. “He wants to run her in the chases.”

If Gorham trained chasers from all over this Domain, he must be good at his job, Bramble thought. But then, she had seen that already in the way he handled the filly.

“I’m about to take a break,” Gorham said. “Have a cup of cha?”

Bramble was tempted. It was a nice change to talk with someone pleasant. But she needed to keep moving. If she rode hard, they might get to the forest before winter set in. She knew how to survive in a forest, even in the cold months.

“Thanks, but no. I’d better be going,” she said. “I want to make Pless by nightfall.”

“You have a natural way with that roan,” Gorham said. “I’ll take you on if you’re looking for work.”

She shook her head. “No, thanks all the same.” Gorham seemed so trusting, like another Traveler, that she felt she owed him an explanation. “I’m heading for the Great Forest. I want to get there before winter.”

He nodded understanding. “Wind at your back,” he said, the Traveler’s farewell, confirming her suspicion that he was, or had been, on the Road.

“Gods be with you,” Bramble said.

She touched the roan on the shoulder again and clicked her tongue, but he didn’t move, except to shake his mane and stamp his foot in denial. The signs were clear, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Bramble jumped off and walked around to look him in the eye. “What is it, lad?” she asked. “You like it here?”

His wise eyes regarded her but gave away no secrets. When she tried to lead him out of the yard he wouldn’t budge. Well, she thought, they were partners in this journey and he had as much right as she did to decide where they should go and where they should stay — perhaps more. It was he the gods had kept alive.

She turned to Gorham and shrugged. “Looks like I want a job after all.”

He looked surprised but he didn’t comment. “I’ll show you the lodgings.”

The wattle-and-daub cottage, behind the yard and screened by a stand of maple, was more than adequate, with a bedroom and kitchen with a scullery attached. It needed cleaning badly, though, and there was no bed.

Gorham pulled at his lip. “Best you come home with me tonight,” he said.

Bramble raised an eyebrow and he smiled, amused by her tacit suspicion. “My wife’ll give you a bed for the night,” he qualified.

Bramble nodded. “Fair enough.”

Gorham mounted his rangy chestnut, which had been tied up on the other side of the yards. “I’m training him up for someone else,” he said disparagingly, then looked the roan over. “Nice form, but he’s got a bit of temperament, hasn’t he?”

Bramble shook her head and smiled. “Not really.” Then she went to talk to the roan. “We have to go to town tonight, but we’ll come back in the morning.”

Gorham hauled her up on the chestnut and they led off. The roan followed amiably, as though he’d never refused to move. Gorham glanced at Bramble with curiosity. “You’ve got to be boss of your animal,” he said.

“Not this one.”

As they rode back to town, they tried not to ask each other too many questions, out of respect, but some had to be asked.

“You were a Traveler?” Bramble asked.

Gorham was startled. “How’d you know?”

“The way you looked at me — I mean, the way you
didn’t
look at me.” She fumbled for what she meant. “No contempt . . . no suspicion.”

Gorham nodded. “Aye, I know what you mean there, lass.” He pulled at his lip again. “We
were
Travelers, my Osyth and I, but we came to Pless as crafters and there’s no one here who knows what we were. You understand why?”

Bramble nodded. She understood perfectly.

“Osyth has a yen for me to be a town councillor.” He chuckled. “I can’t see any town voting in a Traveler as councillor, can you? So if you don’t mind . . .”

“I won’t mention it.” She chuckled in turn. “I’m the opposite — raised crafter, just lately took to the Road.”

“Well, it’s a funny world,” Gorham said comfortably. “We might not tell Osyth you’re on the Road, then. What were your parents?”

“A carpenter and a weaver.”

“Good, solid, respectable trades.” He laughed as she made a face. “Aye, I know, you’ve had enough of respectability.”

“I’d had enough of it in my cradle!”

He laughed again. “Well, then, we won’t try to be too respectable out at the farm. We’ll keep that for town.”

They arrived at the townhouse — a fine, respectable house, she thought wryly — and went through the yard gate to the stables to settle the horses and wash their hands before entering the back door into the kitchen. Bramble hung back a little, suddenly unsure whether she wanted to spend the night inside bricks and mortar, but unable to think of an excuse.

Osyth was cutting carrots at the table. She rose briskly as Gorham came in, and gave him a brief kiss on the cheek. He looked at her for a moment, after she’d turned away, as though he was waiting for something more, then he sighed just a little and turned to Bramble.

“We have a guest,” he said.

Bramble came forward. Gorham waited with some trepidation to see how Osyth took to her. The girl had a wilder version of Osyth’s own beauty, he thought, that lithe, black-haired beauty, and she looked anything but ordinary. As they confronted each other, Gorham realized that he was also a little nervous about what Bramble thought of Osyth. It made him see his wife afresh, as Bramble might see her.

Osyth was still beautiful: a slight woman with black hair drawn back into a simple roll and small, graceful hands. Only her mouth, with the corners drawn in and the lips a little too firm, hinted at a lack of generosity. It was that and the way she stared at Bramble.

Gorham could see his wife assessing each item and read her reactions as easily as those of a horse to a new companion: narrowed eyes (her coloring, bad — a Traveler), a small nod (dressed like a man, but good quality), a disapproving sniff (no shoes), and arched eyebrows (her saddlebags — a guest for how long?). He remembered when his wife was more carefree, wilder herself. But that was before they’d had the children, before they’d settled. Something had changed long before.

There had been a time when Osyth, whenever they were together, would take his face between her hands and gaze lovingly at him. Over time, the gaze had become more searching, and eventually disappointed. It had leached away his love, that disappointment, as he felt diminished in her sight. But he still missed her looking at him, missed her paying attention to him, even if it brought disappointment. All she was interested in now was silver and becoming powerful in the town. But he wouldn’t let her be dismissive of Bramble.

Osyth opened her mouth, but Gorham got in first. “Bramble’s coming to work for us. Out at the farm. She’ll go back there tomorrow and get the old cottage sorted out for herself. But tonight she needs a meal and a bed.”

“I’m happy to sleep in the stable,” Bramble said mildly. Gorham raised his hand to protest, but she shook her head at him.
“Really.”

Osyth nodded, satisfied although not happy. “There’s not much for supper,” she said. “But I suppose I can find you something.”

Gorham left it at that. He and Bramble sat by the hearth and talked about the horses out on the farm while Osyth served up supper, a stew with more lentils than meat, but sustaining and tasty.

As they ate, Gorham asked Bramble questions about her family. Osyth listened to the answers, gradually relaxing as all the respectable details came out: carpenter, weaver, long established in their village, grandfather on her mother’s side the village voice for twenty years before he died, sister married to the Carlion town clerk’s son. She nodded in approval at the news of Bramble’s parents moving to town to be with Maryrose.

Finally it seemed that there were no more details to share and Gorham sat brooding while Osyth picked at her food.

“Do you have any children?” Bramble asked.

His face lightened. “Two, then, we have — a girl and a boy, Zel and Flax. They’re on the Road.”

Osyth got up, her plate still half full, and walked to the hearth, shouting disapproval with her stiff back.

“It’s like I told you,” Gorham said quietly, “no one here knows we were Travelers. They don’t know about the childer, either. They took the Road on their own before we settled here.”

“Well, I won’t tell anyone,” Bramble said reassuringly, pitching her voice to reach Osyth.

“You won’t have to tell anyone,” Osyth said, turning around, “if Gorham keeps going around saying ‘childer’ instead of ‘children’! That’s a give away any crafter could pick.”

Gorham flashed her a smile. “Go on, you know I never do it around town folk.”

“
We’re
town folk now — and don’t you forget it.” But she was smiling back at him for the first time, and Gorham saw her as lovely as when she was a girl, when she’d been less critical and more loving.

“I’ll say goodnight then,” Bramble said, picking up her saddlebags and heading for the door.

Osyth nodded at her; Gorham smiled and raised a hand. “Goodnight then, lass.”

As Bramble shut the door behind her, Osyth looked at her husband. “Why take on someone who looks like a Traveler, for goodness sake, when we’re trying so hard to start over?”

“But she’s not a Traveler, love,” Gorham said. “You can tell everyone that — drop in a few hints about her being the town clerk’s niece-in-law and there’ll be no trouble at all.”