Consorts of Heaven (3 page)

The rush-light over the bed burned out as full daylight seeped in under the door. When she opened it, she found the night’s storm had left them a fine day. She should take her loom outside to finish the final panel of her new skirt. And she was due to take her turn grinding oats this afternoon. Neither of these mattered as much as tending her patient.

She turned back inside. The man’s fever was rising; she needed to get as much fluid as possible into him. She made a weaker infusion and set it to warm, then tidied away her herbs and put the last of the peat on the fire. When the drink was ready, she managed to get him to take a little more.

Once he had settled into an uneasy sleep she scraped the mud from her boots, then picked up her distaff and spun for a while, using the soft wool taken from the cattle’s long belly-hair. Then she gave the stranger some more of the infusion, and drank the last of it herself. Damaru was snoring peacefully, but he would wake soon, and be thirsty. She needed more water, and fuel, and a trip to the earth-closets was in order too.

She might as well go out and get everything she needed for the rest of the day. If she could bring herself to make her apologies to Gwellys for not helping at the quern now she might just save herself a tongue-lashing later.

 

Free of the suffocating darkness, drawn by the memory of the music, he drifted slowly back towards consciousness.

He remembered: he had a mission, a purpose. Or he had, once. It had been taken from him. Taken, and replaced by—

He recalled a violation so deep it had no name.

Silently, in the confines of his head, he screamed.

 

On such a fine day many of the women were washing clothes down at the stream. Kerin, having answered her most urgent need, nodded a greeting to the women at work downstream as she filled her water-jug. Arlin called back, ‘Is it true I saw you carrying a naked man, and that he now sleeps in your bed?’ Her remark had the others tittering.

Kerin weighed her answer carefully. Arlin was always friendly to Kerin’s face, but she was also one of Gwellys’s cronies. She would prefer to let her family suffer rather than seek out Kerin’s skill as a healer.

More than once Kerin had responded thoughtlessly to Arlin’s apparently easygoing comments, only to have her words turned against her by others. ‘Your eyes did not deceive you,’ replied Kerin carefully, ‘though I pray he will soon be well enough to seek a more suitable place to lay his head.’

She decided to drop off the full water-jug and check on her patient before going to fetch fuel and see Gwellys. She had closed her door when she left, to discourage curious eyes; it was open now, and from inside she heard a low moan. She hurried in and saw the reason for the open door at once: Damaru had gone out. For a moment she felt that guilty anger she knew so well. Why could the Mothers not have given her a normal child, one who gave as well as took, who would understand what needed to be done, and perhaps even help do it - one who would just remember to close the wretched door behind him sometimes, for Heaven’s sake? But the anger blew out, as usual: with a normal boy she would never have known the wonder of loving one touched by the sky.

The stranger was shuddering, and thrashing about. His head lolled from side to side as he cried out: broken pleas for mercy or help, and once what sounded like a name, though not one she knew.

Damaru had implied that something had damaged the man’s mind, which could be why he was now raving. If the damage was not physical, Arthen might send for a priest. Perhaps she should pray again, and maybe burn some incense, though she had thought to use what little she had to see Damaru safely on his way.

She leaned over the bed and started murmuring calming nonsense, as she did to Damaru when the nightmares took him. The stranger continued to toss and moan, as though pleading with unseen enemies. Damaru had said music helped, and she began to sing, though her voice was weak, another cause of shame in the village. Even so, she thought he strained to hear her. Still singing, she crossed the hut and filled a bowl from the water-jug, but when she tried to get him to drink, he turned his head. One hand flailed up to push the bowl away. Without thinking, Kerin caught the hand in hers. His fingers grasped hard. Her song faltered, but she did not pull away. When his hand fell back she kept hold of it. His touch was soft and hot, and reminded her of a child’s: innocent, desperate, totally dependent on a parent. She drank the water herself and put the bowl down, keeping hold of his hand. Then she started to sing again, her eyes fixed on his face as though she could save him by will alone.

She went through every tune she knew - lullabies, hymns, story-songs, even the cheeky ditties the boys sang at star-season - and her voice grew hoarse, but if she stopped singing, she risked losing him.

Evening was approaching. The fire was down to embers. If it went out, she would have to go and ask for flame from the moot-hall.

It was dark by the time Damaru returned. She wondered whether she might persuade him to fetch some peat, knowing the thought futile even as it formed. But he could help in another way. She broke off from singing and said, ‘Damaru, play. Play the harp for him again, please.’

He did not obey at once but came over and stared at the man, his expression hard to read. Kerin might have called it sympathy, had she thought her son capable of such an emotion. Then he got his harp down, sat on the floor and launched straight into a twirling, urgent air.

In the dim light she saw the stranger’s face change as it had when he first caught her hand. His movements became less frantic, his cries quieter. Kerin wished she could see him better, and, when the pressure on her hand eased for a moment, she pulled free. She stretched as she stood, then got an old basket down from the shelves and flung it onto the smouldering hearth.

She bent down to blow into the fire. For a moment she thought she had sacrificed the basket in vain. Then a flame caught. She sat back and looked over at her patient. He had raised his hand, reaching out to her.

She returned to his side and grasped his hand again. When she spared a glance for Damaru the flaring light from the fire revealed fresh stains on the harp strings. She almost told him to stop playing, then changed her mind. Fingers would heal; the stranger’s mind might not.

She stroked the man’s face. Lack of food and sleep was making her light-headed, and for a moment she thought it was her husband who was lying ill in their bed.

After a while Damaru’s playing slowed, then stopped. He put the harp down and staggered over to the water-jug, cupping his hands to drink straight from it.

Her patient frowned in his delirium, then whimpered. Kerin shushed him and put a hand on his cheek. Her touch appeared to soothe him. She had planned to sleep on the floor, but after a moment’s hesitation, she climbed onto the bed with him. Damaru crawled into his own bed.

Kerin lay down beside the man, stroking his head. He shifted against her until they touched, he inside the covers, she on top. She felt a strange mixture of emotions: guilt at such intimacy in her marriage bed, relief that the worst was past, and a less-than-healthy excitement.

But mainly, she felt exhausted.

Bad smell: acrid and harsh. Constriction. He was under a heavy, stiff covering. Weight pressed against his side. He was trapped.
Have to get free!
But—

He could hear something: a regular rasping sound.
Breathing?
Someone was breathing, very close by.

He forced his eyes open, gummy lids tearing apart. The momentary pain snapped him into full consciousness. But even with eyes open, he couldn’t see. Was he blind too?

Not blind. Just in darkness. He lay somewhere dark and smelly and he couldn’t move.
Oh, shit. This is bad.

The thing pressing against him moved. He froze, his pulse thundering in his ears. The way it changed position - it was alive.

He was lying next to somebody.
This is really bad.

He heard a ‘mmmppfhh’ noise beside his ear. His body felt too heavy to move but he managed to turn his head, and got a waft of foul breath. A vague shape resolved into a head. Right next to his.

He struggled harder and the rough cover slid off. His head pounded with the effort and his throat felt so dry that even breathing hurt.

The shape -
person
- twitched, gasped, then rolled away. The gasp sounded feminine. He edged backwards, flinching when his bare back came up against a cold, damp wall. The woman sat up, becoming a silhouette. She looked down at him.

‘Hhhssh, sssshhh. Everything is all right.’ Her voice was hoarse and oddly accented. He had no idea who she was.

‘Wh—’ he started breathlessly, disconcerted at the sound of his own voice. He tried again. ‘Wh—What are you doing?’

‘Tis all right,’ she repeated, getting off the bed. ‘Lie still.’

‘Who—Who are you? Do I know you?’

‘No, you do not—’

‘
Then what the fuck am I doing in bed with you
? Where am I?’

‘Please, you have been ill, you need to stay calm.’

‘Ill? What do you mean?’ He heard someone else moving. A shadowy shape loomed behind the woman. ‘Who’s that?’ he squeaked.

‘My son. You woke him.’ She turned and spoke to the unidentifiable figure. ‘Tis all right, Damaru. Go back to bed.’

‘What’s he doing in your bedroom? What am
I
doing in your bedroom?’

‘You are confused. You should lie still, try to rest.’

‘Rest? In your bed? Can we at least turn the lights on?’ Maybe if he could see he could make some sense of all this.

‘I—I will open the door. Tis nearly dawn, so that should give us some light,’ the woman said. She moved off.

A scraping noise; greyish light oozed in from a rectangle beyond his feet. He started to make out his surroundings: a small circular room with a high roof and cluttered shelves around the whitewashed walls. It was completely unfamiliar. Should he know this place?

‘I will get you some water,’ she said, and crossed the room to a table; other than the shelves and beds it was the only furniture he could see. ‘You must be thirsty.’ Her voice had an emphatic lilt, pleasant, and oddly reassuring. She sounded efficient, concerned for his welfare. And she was right about him being thirsty.

She returned with a bowl and he realised that one of the nasty smells was her. Others included stale smoke, and the covers on the bed, which were a mixture of rough-woven blankets and what smelled like badly cured animal skins.

‘Can you sit up?’ asked the woman.

He was pressed against the wall, where he’d tried to get away from her. Now he tried to uncurl, though even small motions made his head spin. ‘I’m not sure. My head hurts.’

She nodded. ‘I think you may have banged it.’

‘I thought you said I was ill?’ She acted so caring, but he knew nothing about her, about how he came to be here—‘Are you lying to me? Is this some kind of trick?’ His voice rose.

She put a hand out. ‘No, no. There is no trick, master. I am trying to help you.’

Master? Why did she call him that? When he opened his mouth to ask, a cough caught him.

She held up the bowl, and said carefully, ‘You need to drink. I will dip a cloth in this bowl, then squeeze it over your mouth.’

Given how grubby everything here looked he wasn’t sure about that, but he was desperate for water. He eased himself back across the bed. She bundled the covers under his head to prop him up, then squeezed water into his mouth. Dirty it might be, but it tasted good. He finished the bowl and lay back, feeling better.

The light was brighter now; he could make out a steeply sloping ceiling above him . . . no, not a ceiling: a roughly thatched roof, smoke-blackened. It was conical: he was in a round, windowless hut. Where the hut was, and how he came to be in it, he had no idea.

A male voice said peremptorily, ‘Hungry!’

He started, then looked across to see a boy of about fifteen standing behind the woman, who was back at her table. He didn’t recognise him either.

‘I know, Damaru,’ said the woman patiently, ‘but I need to fetch fire to cook. You will have to wait.’

The boy gave a half-shrug, half-twitch and walked out without a word.

The woman called over, ‘I am sorry, master. I cannot make food or medicine without fire. I will have to go and get some.’

Fire was something she needed to
go and get
? He understood her words, despite the odd accent, but they didn’t make sense. He realised she was about to leave and said urgently, ‘Wait, don’t go - where am I?’

‘To answer your first question,’ she said, drawing herself up straighter, ‘you are in the village of Dangwern.’ She gave a short, barked laugh at his look of incomprehension. ‘No, master, you would not know where that is. No one more than a day’s walk from here does, and I know everyone who lives within a day’s walk.’

‘So this isn’t my home.’ That was good. Though he wasn’t sure where he belonged, he hoped it wasn’t in a filthy, stinking hovel like this one. ‘How did I get here?’

‘I do not know. We found you, up at the mere. Well, Damaru found you, and I found him.’

‘The mere?’

‘The boglands, up on the high moor. Some say it is an unholy place.’

He didn’t like the sound of that. ‘What did I have with me? Was I alone?’

‘You were naked as a newborn.’ She sounded embarrassed. Under the pungent bedclothes, he was still naked. She paused, then added, ‘There was something with you, though.’

‘What was with me? Where is it?’ He needed clues, links to his life, anything that might explain this to him.

‘I have it here.’ She reached up to one of the packed shelves that covered the far wall, got down a clay pot and pulled out two pieces of silvery-white fabric, easily the brightest, cleanest items in the hut. She brought the larger one over to him.