Daughters Of The Storm (9 page)

Ash turned slowly. On the other side of the thoroughfare, under a dirty moleskin awning, sat a snow-haired woman with veiny hands clutched around a staff. Two men were queued up to buy journey charms from her, but her gaze was fixed on Ash. The sea wind gusted, rattling her awning and allowing shards of sun into the shadows. Gulls called to each other. Ash glanced away, moved further up the docks looking for Alchfrid's ship.

She found it a few moments later. The vessel was long and sleek, with a bright, taut canopy and a belly full of chests and baskets. Even the crew looked well-kept, in clean clothes and with neat beards. Now she only had to convince them to take her to Blicstowe.

A tall, thin man with hair greying at the temples stood at the front of the vessel with a foot resting on the hawk's head carving as he oversaw the loading of the cargo. Ash presumed this was Alchfrid and approached the edge of the dock.

‘Hello,' she called to him. ‘I need a passage to Blicstowe.'

He turned and an expression of irritation crossed his brow and then was gone. ‘You're travelling alone?'

‘Yes.' For some reason, her heartbeat quickened in her throat.

‘Certainly. We push off in one hour. You can sleep under the canopy with the goods.'

Relief washed through her. ‘Really? Thank you. Thank you. I'll pay you when we get there. I have a —'

‘No need,' he said, with a wave of his hand. He smiled, and his lips pulled back over his teeth. ‘A lady travelling alone is always welcome on my ship.'

She was shoved out of the way roughly by a man backing into her with a large barrel. She sidestepped and moved back onto the thoroughfare to see if the old woman was still watching her. She was.

Ash moved closer, curious. The old woman was in the middle of a working, muttering her charms onto coloured stones and handing them to the sailor who kneeled in front of her. And yet, through half-closed eyes, her focus was fixed on Ash.

The sailor took his charms and moved off. The old woman beckoned Ash with her eyes.

‘You're watching me,' Ash said, approaching.

‘Because you're not watching yourself, counsellor,' the old woman said.

Ash realised she was still in her green counsellor's cloak. Perhaps that was why Alchfrid was happy to have her on his ship. Some sailors thought it was good luck to have a representative of the common faith aboard.

‘No,' said the old woman, picking up the thread of her thought, ‘Alchfrid wants something quite different from luck. Make no mistake, little counsellor, you will pay many times over for a journey with him.'

Ash thought about that thud at her throat and knew the woman was telling the truth. She was too remote from her own prescience, had spent too much energy holding back the tide that threatened to drown her. ‘I have to get to Blicstowe,' she said.

‘Four hundred yards in, there is a vessel taking donkeys upriver. They will take you.' The old woman spread her knotted hands. ‘Though it won't be as nice as Alchfrid's ship.'

Ash nodded. ‘Thank you,' she said.

But before she could turn to leave, the old woman took a knotted hand off her staff and reached slowly for Ash's fingers. Ash offered her hand warily.

The old woman's touch was cold. ‘What are you trying not to see?' she said.

Ash's vision tunnelled. A tap to her heart. The question felt like falling, and the sharp tip of the dream needled her. Colours of fire and blood. ‘I don't know,' Ash whispered, though she suspected she did know. She suspected the dream told her something of her own life to come, something that would change her until she no longer knew herself.

The old woman narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, a crow sizing up a worm. ‘The greatest dishonesty is that which we serve to ourselves,' she said. ‘Your Becoming belongs to no other woman, little counsellor. What use is it not to look upon it?'

Despite the bright sun and blue sky, a dread like winter-death fell upon Ash. Her skin prickled into gooseflesh.

‘Come on, you've had long enough,' a gruff voice said.

Ash turned to see a sea-bitten sailor waiting for a journey charm. She stepped aside and finally the old woman's gaze released her. Ash was free to go.

She made her way down the dock, carefully avoiding Alchfrid's ship, though she still longed for the cover of the sturdy canopy. The ships grew less and less impressive the further she walked down the dock, until she found a low, wide vessel being loaded with donkeys. She guessed, with a sinking heart, this was the boat the old woman spoke of. No canopy, no carved hawk, no bright sail. Just a tattered oilskin, crudely hewn wood, a dun-coloured sailcloth. It smelled of pitch and donkey shit. She paused on the dock, contemplating two days on the vessel.

A grey-faced man herding donkeys saw her and stopped beside her. ‘You need passage?'

She nodded. ‘To Blicstowe.'

‘You can pay me?'

‘At the other end. I can pay you well.'

He looked her up and down, rubbed his beard with cracked fingers. ‘I trust you. Climb on board. There's a seat under the oilskin and blankets behind if it gets cold.' His eyes went to the sky to scrutinise it. ‘At least it doesn't look like rain.'

The storm blew in after dark. Murky raindrops fell on the oilskin, rolling underneath until Ash felt damp spreading across the broad boards beneath her feet and seeping into her shoes. The donkeys brayed in protest. Ash would have, too, had she not been concentrating so hard on trying to keep her hands warm. Misery upon misery. The idea of her father's impending death burrowed into
her mind like a dank worm.
Mortal, we are all mortal.
If Æthlric could die, then anyone could die.

But she couldn't sit here under a blanket of fear and sorrow all night, so she tried to cheer herself with memories of him. He had been away at war or council for much of her childhood, and when home he was more concerned with Bluebell than his other daughters. An image came to her mind: Bluebell had been fitted for her first set of armour at twelve. Ash had been six, and jealous of her sister. She had found her father's sword and dragged it behind her to the hall where he was briefing his hearthband before heading out. He'd looked up, momentary anger crossing his brow at the interruption. But then he'd laughed and swung her up in his lap, let her sit there while he talked. She'd listened to his voice rumbling in his chest and had played with his long fair hair until she started to doze. He'd lifted her up and taken her to the bower she shared with Bluebell and Rose, and let her sleep with his sword under her mattress, just as Bluebell slept with a sword under hers.

The memory made her smile, chasing away the mouldering shadow of death a little while. She wondered again how her father fared now, what kind of illness troubled him. Quietly, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind ... But before she could find him, something dark and hooked intervened. An image from the dream. Immediately, she backed away, opened her eyes. Rejoined the sodden boat and the stinking donkeys.

Ash pulled her feet up onto the seat, wrapped her arms around her knees and kept her head down. Sleep wouldn't come, but it was probably better that way. If she didn't sleep, she couldn't dream.

Rowan wouldn't stop fidgeting. Rose grew more and more exasperated as the little girl wriggled and twisted in the saddle, slippery as a fish.

‘Will you
please
sit still?' Rose asked her for the eleventh time, tightening her elbows to stop Rowan from slipping off the saddle altogether. They were on a long, straight stretch of muddy road that cut between large flat fields. The sun was high in heaven's hollow, sparkling off the previous night's rain and lifting green brightness out of the mossy rocks lining the road.

‘I'm
tired
,' Rowan declared, bouncing angrily against her embrace, getting her hair caught in the row of beads pinned to Rose's dress.

‘But if you keep wriggling, you'll fall off and hurt yourself.' As it was, they had slowed to a walk. The effort of trying to keep hold of the reins and Rowan at the same time was taxing her. Heath, in good grace, slowed his pace.

‘Can't we stop?' Rowan whined.

Rose grimaced. She too wanted to rest. She had divided the night between mourning that she and Heath could never be together, and imagining in detail they were. The world had cooled past midnight before she slept.

Heath reined his horse in and stilled Rose's with a gesture. She looked at him curiously. He turned his attention to Rowan, who shrank a little under his gaze.

‘Rowan,' he said, ‘would you like to come and sit on my saddle with me?'

She shook her head, but slowly.

‘Go on, Rowan,' Rose said. ‘I'm exhausted.'

Rowan looked up at her with big eyes. ‘I don't know that man.'

‘It's Papa's nephew.'

A blank look.

‘Papa had a sister. Heath is her son.' Wengest's sister was famed for her affairs in her youth. Heath was her only child and his red-gold hair told a tale: his father was an Ærfolc, one of the original peoples of Thyrsland who had now been pushed to the margins of the land and thought. This was why Heath remained clean-shaven:
his beard, when it grew, was fiery red. And there were still many people who would heap contempt on him simply because of his Ærfolc colouring.

Rowan was considering Heath now in the warm sunshine. The long grassy fields waved on either side of them, tiny insects caught sunlight on their wings and dandelion seeds lifted and swirled on the wind.

‘Come on,' Heath said, ‘I will keep you very safe.'

Rowan nodded once and Rose lifted her into Heath's arms with a sense of relief. Unencumbered, the ride would be infinitely easier.

Heath settled Rowan on the saddle in front of him. Rowan leaned back against him, seeming to enjoy the breadth and safety of his chest. They rode again, this time a little faster. Within twenty minutes, Rowan was asleep, her head lolling against Heath's heart.

‘She's asleep,' Rose said to him.

‘I thought so,' he replied, smiling. ‘She's very warm.'

Rose chose her words carefully, aware at any moment Rowan might wake and hear what they said. ‘I envy her. She looks very comfortable.' Which meant,
I would like to be pressed up against you like that.

Heath was playing his own game of doublespeak. ‘She is very like you, Rose. Her dark hair and eyes.'
Lucky she didn't inherit my colouring.

‘Wengest likes to think she looks like him.'
He has no idea.

They lapsed into silence a while, the road disappearing underneath them. Then Heath said, ‘Wengest told me ... he hopes for a son soon.'

‘When did he tell you that?'

‘I spoke with him at length in his bower, the night I arrived. He was very keen to talk about your sister.' Heath glanced down at Rowan.

‘Still asleep,' Rose said, ‘but always listening. What about my sister? I presume you mean Bluebell. What did Wengest say of her? Nothing good, I suppose.'

‘Oh, he is afraid of her, don't doubt it. With good reason. But he has seen ahead further than I suspect you, or even Bluebell, have seen.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘When King Æthlric is gone, Bluebell will be queen.'

‘Yes.'

‘But Bluebell rules by force of arms.'

‘Yes.'

‘She cannot both fight wars and bear children.'

‘The idea of Bluebell bearing children is ridiculous.' And as she said it, she knew what Heath was going to say next.

‘Then who will be her heir? Who will rule Ælmesse when she is gone?'

‘I'm the next daughter,' Rose said.

‘And you're married to Netelchester. Wengest will have a claim,' Heath said.

‘Rowan could rule Ælmesse.'

‘Rowan can't rule. Wengest won't allow it.'

‘Ælmesse will allow it. Wengest can't have Ælmesse.'

‘Then Rowan would have to defy her father and the alliance would be broken. No, Rose, Wengest needs you to have a son. He wants that more than anything. It solves every problem he has.'