Dragonswood (12 page)

Chapter Eighteen

T
HE LAST NIGHT
before reaching Harrowton, we camped again in Dragonswood. Garth fried three trout for dinner and when the meal was done, he whittled a woodblock he’d loosed from the edge of the fire. Scraping all the charred black wood from the surface till it was clean and white, he’d cut grooves in the sides, trimming the wood into a roughly human shape.

“What do you make?”

“A doll for the child.” His cinnamon eyes were fixed on the poppet. I studied his face, so stern with concentration as he worked the blade. Such fine articulated attention almost made me jealous of the woodblock. I dismissed my absurd feelings as I watched him shape the doll’s head and peel curling layers thin as parchment to form her small chin. Hands blackened with char, he paused to rub the bridge of his nose and left a black smudge behind. Not once did he look up.

I stood.

“Don’t go in too far,” Garth said. “I spied bear scat earlier.”

“I won’t go far.”
Give me a man who does not mind that she slips into Dragonswood.
Stepping a little way into the forest, I tramped under the night sky. The stars appeared like snowflakes caught and never falling, held by God’s hand, I supposed, or suspended by his breath. It was easy to gather moss hanging from the oak branches. The doll’s hair would be thick and curly as my own.

Night wind blew against my face as I tugged away the moss. A hissing sound came to my left ear,
Tessss

I spun round, peering into the dark.
Tess, you are going the wrong way.

I drew my knife. “Show yourselves. Who are you?”

Come north
.

“Leave me be. I am going south with Garth.”

Wind swirled a maelstrom of leaves torn from the trees. Bright specks of light twirled in the distance—will-o’-the-wisps flitting through the forest? It couldn’t be anything else. I’d seen the tiny fairies only once before. Each was the size of my little finger with translucent wings, and all were lit up golden white from the inside. Dipping in and out of the branches ahead, they split apart, swirled in dizzying patterns, then came together in one bright orb as if the moon were bobbing through the forest.

I was filled with longing. I ran toward the dancing light, my arms stretched out wide. I raced through the bracken until my lungs were winded, and nearly reached the fairies.

They vanished.

In the gloom, I hunched over, panting, the knife loose in my sweating hand, the moss I’d gathered for the doll, gone. I’d wanted to catch up to them so much, wanted desperately to go with them. I sobbed, suddenly overcome with feeling as if I’d lost something precious. I wiped my nose and tried to steady my breath. The ache in my heart would not leave. What had come over me? Why so desperate? At last I stood up in the chill forest.

Don’t be such a clodpole! It could be some kind of trick.
I turned full circle. The woods were coal black. Trees grew so thick here, I could not see the sky. Worse, I couldn’t see Garth’s campfire. Had I run only for a few minutes, or was it hours, years? Fairies liked to toy with a person’s sense of time. My heart thumped. Spying a single moonbeam ahead, I raced for it, then leaped back, gasping at the illumined man-shaped tree. The Treegrim’s arms were stretched out, twiggy fingers splayed. Hulking like an oversized scarecrow, a bird’s nest crammed in its hollow belly: The look of horror in its black eye pits and craggy face was caught forever in wood.

I screamed into my hands, swirled round, and shouted, “Garth!”

“Tess? I’m over here.”

I scrambled toward the distant call. It seemed to take forever in the dark, but at last I caught the scent of smoke. Garth ran toward me with his sword drawn. “Did you see a bear?”

“No bear.” I tried to laugh, nearly choked.
Had he missed me? Was I gone very long?

“I… was a little lost.”

He sheathed his sword. Standing close he was shadow dark, yet with all in shadow there was firmness in his stance, protection.

The moss I’d picked was gone. I pulled more from the branches as we went back to the fire. Seated again, I handed him the moss, then tugged a little sticky sap off the nearest pine.

He stared at it, wondering.

“Hair,” I said, giving him the pitch to glue it on.

“Green hair?” He cracked a smile and picked up the carven doll. “She will be a woodland girl, like yourself,” he noted.

He did not catch my expression. I loved the trees. I never wanted to become one.

I added another log to the fire and watched the sparks fly up.
Why will-o’-the-wisps tonight? Were they the ones who’d called to me all along?
Why would tiny fairies bother to say “You are going the wrong way”? Did they want to keep me out of Harrowton? Had they led me to the Treegrim to show what the fey could do to me if I disobeyed their summons?

I watched Garth carve the doll’s legs. I knew it was foolhardy to enter Harrowton, where I was known for a witch, even if we did plan to sneak in at night, even if I was disguised as a cloth merchant’s wife.

“You’re very quiet.” He’d stopped his work to look across the fire.

“I was just thinking about tomorrow.”

“We’ll be in and out of town fast, Tess. I’ll protect you,” he added.

“I know.” And I did know it. My body warmed. Garth would do all in his power to protect me when we went after Alice.

“If you’d rather wait outside of town while I go in—”

“No. We’ve talked of this already. Old Weaver and his wife won’t give up their grandchild to just anyone. They know me. More importantly, Alice knows me.” The child would likely scream loud enough to raise the dead if Garth tried to take her away all by himself, and I wouldn’t blame her. “The only chance we have is if I assure Old Weaver and his wife that their son is safe, that he and Meg asked me to bring their daughter to them.”

“All right, but if you change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

The doll was ugly and might frighten the child, but Garth wasn’t finished with it yet. “Tell me more about Princess Augusta.”

He slid the blade down the doll’s side, the “woodland girl” growing thinner by this. “Think, Tess,” he said. “Who are the monsters? Dragons do not think men are comely. To them we appear thin-skinned, wingless, hairless—”

“We have hair,” I argued.

“Not fur like the animals have,” he said. “Besides that, we are tailless, clawless, flat-toothed, flat-footed—”

“Enough,” I said, laughing. “Are we so plain?”

“To them we are.” He adjusted his seat on the thick branch and scratched his arm. “The dragons think our royal Pendragon family handsome, at least the part of them that’s scaled.”

“Did you ever see Prince Arden’s or Bion’s scales?” I asked.

“I have.”

“What are they like?”

“Like dragon scales, only much smaller. About the size of your fingertips.”

I wiggled my fingers, studying them in the soft firelight. “I would like to see that.”

“Would you? The dream you had frightened you more than a little.” He tugged a pine needle out of his hair. “You said Princess Augusta was hideous. But I tell you this: The dragons think she is the most beautiful human in the world.”

A
T NIGHTFALL WE
reached the outskirts of Har-rowton. Hail pelted the rooftops and danced along the cobbles. We’d left the horses tied up just outside of town and crept in quietly on foot. I hunched on the porch as Garth pounded the weaver’s door. Old Timothy Weaver opened the door a crack, and started when he saw me.

“Tess,” he hissed. “Because of you the witch hunter took our Tom away!”

“I know, Master Weaver, but your son is safe now. He and Meg are safe.”

“Who’s there?” came his wife’s voice. “Who’s come at this hour?”

“Let us in, good man,” pleaded Garth. “We come to help you in your need.”

“How do I know it’s not a trap?”

Muffled steps inside. “I asked you, Timothy, who comes to our door?’

“Blacksmith’s daughter, Tess, and some other man.”

“Lock it!” she cried.

I jammed my foot in the doorsill. “Mistress Dulcy!” I spoke in a low tone. The street was abandoned so long after curfew; still, there were other shops and houses down the lane. I had no wish to alert anyone to our presence. “We have good news about your Tom, if only you would let us in.”

At this the old woman flung the door open. We entered the cold room, the fire having long since been doused, for Old Weaver and his wife had gone to bed. Weaver held a guttering candle; in its inconstant glow we four huddled in the entryway, barking words, our breath white with the cold, till Dulcy led us into her kitchen and lit the fire.

I spied Alice sleeping in the corner on the kitchen settle. She looked cozy under her thick blankets and did not waken when the fire was lit nor when we argued at the table. Garth said Tom and Meg were safe, though he did not say where they hid. This was for the old couple’s safety as much as our own. The weaver looked relieved, but his wife went fitful when we said what we’d come for.

“You mun not take the child,” Dulcy cried, standing between us and the settle and spreading out her arms.

I stepped closer, my feet stirring the rushes on the floor. “Alice belongs with Meg, Mistress Dulcy. You know she needs her mother.”

“And what do we say when folk ask where Alice has gone?” asked Old Weaver. The man had a brain.

I laid a hand on his table. “You know the abbey south of us in Brigidshire? Say she’s gone to live with the nuns there at Saint Brigid’s Abbey.”

Weaver’s wife grabbed the poker. “Out!” she screamed. “Now!”

The noise woke Alice. Sitting up, she pulled the coverlet to her chin and peeked out like a frightened little mouse. “Gamma?” she moaned to the old woman, fat tears sliding down her cheeks.

“Hush, now, Alice,” “Gamma” warned, waving her poker at us.

“Hear us,” I insisted. “We have a good plan that will be safe for all. You are caring grandparents, I don’t doubt it, but Alice must miss her mother. I know Meg and Tom miss her desperately. Let us take her to her parents. For your part, you can’t say she simply went away, or Lady Adela could send the law to track her down and find Tom. Think on it,” I urged. Then in a whisper so as not to fright the child, I said, “Say you took her to Saint Brigid’s. You know the law could not touch her there.” The abbey was famous for having schooled Queen Rosalind’s mother; still, for all its fame, it was a safe place set aside for God’s work and cloistered from the world.

At the table Old Weaver tugged his wool hat down over his ears. “Put the poker down, woman,” he ordered. She did, though with a grunt. Later, whilst the two men planned it all out, we sat with Alice between us. The child stuck to her grandmother like a limpet.

“Mistress Dulcy,” I said, “have you seen my mother?”

She nodded. “On washing day down at river.”

I used to bring our washing to the riverside. Mother had to do it now.
So soon after childbirth and she’s not strong.
I felt a pang. “Does she… look well?” I had to know if Father used her as his punching bag now I was gone.

Mistress Dulcy put her hand on my arm, smearing char from the poker on my sleeve. But she understood my question. “As well as ever,” she whispered over Alice’s head. “You might go see her.”

Could I risk it? I sorely missed her, wanted desperately to see her, but I’d thought it too dangerous to stay any longer here than we had to, to fetch Alice. Now she’d said it, my heart ached. My father would be at the Boar’s Head this time of night. I might just sneak in, hold her in my arms, tell her not to worry, that I was all right. Across the kitchen Garth was awash in dim firelight. He put his foot up on a stool and rested his forearm on his knee as he spoke earnestly with the weaver. How strange it was to feel safe with a man yet not be confined by him, a feeling I was only beginning to grasp, one I was sure my mother had never known.

“I will try, mistress.”

She nodded.

I gently clothed Alice. Dulcy sniffed as she packed her a small bag; the child did not own much. By the time I tied her cloak and put up the little hood, Alice was half asleep again, her little body slumping against me.

When I picked her up to go, Dulcy gripped my arm. “When you see Tom, tell him he’s a good boy,” she said. “And tell him to come home as soon as ever he can.”

“I will.” Tom would never come home. How could he? But I wouldn’t hurt her mother’s heart now she’d opened it to me.

A
LICE WAS ASLEEP
again when we left Weaver’s. The hailstorm had ended, rain fell, but softly. Outside, I told Garth what I wanted to do.

“Are you sure, Tess?”

“It won’t take long, I promise.”

We made a quick plan and stole through town with the sleeping child. Down the alley by our house, I pointed to the woodshed below my upstairs window. “You can hide here out of the rain and look out for my father. If you see him coming, toss a rock up to my window to warn me.”

“How will you get out, Tess?”

I nodded at the oak tree. “I have a way down. I’ve used it lots of times before.” All rested on Father’s nightly excursion to the Boar’s Head. I knew his habits, how long he stayed. I didn’t think he’d turn me in, but I wouldn’t visit long enough to risk his beery wrath. I’d never let him hurt me again.

Through the kitchen window I caught Mother mending torn breeches by candlelight. My eyes welled seeing her at her sewing. I knocked. She opened the door and fainted straightaway. I caught her before she struck her head against the doorframe and quickly drew her back inside. When she woke, she whispered, “Tess. Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

We were both crying for joy, but I knew we hadn’t much time. Leading her up the stairs to my room, I opened the window a crack, peered down at the shadowy figure holding a sleeping child. Quick as I could I told Mother of my journey north with Meg and Poppy. For her own protection I did not say where we were hiding, only that we were all safe for now.

I looked closely at her in the spare candlelight, and was relieved to see no welts or bruises on her face.