Rhiannon (31 page)

“Thaddeus has gone looking for you!” he called to her.

Again, like the midnight before in the chapel, when she'd raised her candle and perceived him newly become himself, she was seized with the impulse to drop to her knees. She held Sally's arm tighter and tapped Mam's cross upon her chin, seeking her own balance.

“He'll find me at home in a moment!” she answered Sir Jonah.

A quick glance told her that Granna was paying no mind to this exchange. She and Daisy were fully occupied retrieving the thrashing tortoise from the overturned bucket.

“He'd speak to you in private, and there's some urgency to it,” Jonah called. “You may find him in the chapel, as he expressed a need to catch upon his prayers. Go straightaway, if you can.”

Rhia started walking Sally again. Something inside her was too stubborn to quiz Sir Jonah about this
urgent
matter. “I've no wish to disturb anyone's prayers!” she called back, feeling a little thrill at having the last word.

Though once past his line of sight, had she not had Sally with her she would certainly have hitched her skirt to her knees and run full speed to the chapel.

Rhiannon and Sally soon enough reached the cottage. Mam looked up and smiled at them from where she stirred their second largest kettle over the firepit, making a quantity of barley soup that smelled rich and delicious.

Rhia sat Sally upon the bench and tossed the seed sack onto its peg, then she hustled to her mother and spoke near her ear. “Mam? Sally used a different saying today. She has said it twice now that I've heard. ‘No, stop, stop!' I wonder, did she utter it first yesterday, when Sir Jonah grabbed her clammy shell?”

Mam stopped stirring and looked at her. After a moment, she shook her head. “No, I didn't hear her say that. Her only words were her usual ones, and those not uttered often, miserable as she was. She cried until she was all hiccoughs, poor Sally.”

Mam and Rhiannon both looked at Sally then. Seeing that she rocked calmly there upon the bench, they turned back to speak more, their heads together over the kettle.

“Well, I am afraid the shock yesterday made her remember her horrible brother cuffing her when he'd got no fish,” Rhia whispered. “The first time Sally said her new words today, Daisy's pet was trapped within her fancy clothes and fighting to get free. I fear Sal saw in that struggle her
own
hapless struggle to stop her brother hurting her, and that she may now remember anew
whenever
she sees such things.”

Rhia's throat had grown too filled with anger to let further words through.

But though Rhia fumed, Mam fumed hotter. She stirred the soup as though she'd like to beat the turnips into runny liquid and whip the rabbit meat until it hopped away. When she finally spewed out words, they were as blistering as the fire itself.

“Violence is like a poison arrow shot from a tight bow, so why will you not provide some hard target to take that arrow's hit and stop its travel? The heart and memory are wispy things, never fashioned to fend against the brutal force that flies unchecked throughout this world! Why, why, why have you designed things so uneven? The hurt to Sal now travels well past the skull-crack that tore her mind asunder. It presently sails right through the heart of her, taking away her innocent peace, damaging over and over again with no stop to it! How . . . how
dare
you construct things so lopsided, the brutal things so endless in their flight and the gentle things in brutality's path so
breakable
!”

By the end of this tirade, Rhiannon realized to whom Mam spoke and was truly shocked, as who would blaspheme so, calling God to account as Mam just had? The large vein in Mam's thin neck pulsed as though it would burst. Rhia was afraid
of
Mam and
for
Mam, both. God Himself may well have shuddered, had He been here.

Knowing not what else to do, Rhia fetched a bowl and reached far around Mam to quick ladle soup into it, then escaped to sit beside Sal upon the bench and feed her. Sally opened her mouth wide for each mouthful. She looked into Rhia's eyes with her usual candor, innocent as a babe, though near as grown as Rhia herself.

Rhia tucked Sal's light hair behind her left ear and gently ran her fingers across the filigree of shattered bone beneath her clear skin. She closed her eyes and prayed with all her might that God might right quick heal Sally and redeem Himself in the eyes of Mam, His faithful handmaiden in all things.

Rhia kept her eyes tightly closed for so long that lights danced behind her lids and her ears roared as with the ocean's voice. She would give God plenty of time, as healing bone must be especially hard work.

But Sally's head was
not
healed when Rhiannon finally opened her eyes. Sally indeed thought Rhia was playing some game with her, and laughed with delight.

Mam was now crouched upon her haunches nearby the bubbling kettle. She stared into the fire with her elbows upon her knees and her cloud of shining hair held back from her face by the slim fingers of both hands. Rhia thought she looked much like a young girl, crouched like that. She'd given God a tongue-lashing, and now she was for certain waiting for Him to make an answer to it, just as Rhia had waited for her own answer, and received it not. Did Mam indeed expect Him to speak from the flames, as to Moses?

Rhia stood. “Mam? Shall I take Sally along to her own cot, now she's eaten? She appears over her fear of Jonah. Just now she was calm when we passed him, and she was not afeared when he came in with you this morn, or to eat the midday meal.”

After a moment, still staring at the fire, Mam said listlessly, “Yes, Rhia, if you please. And daughter, you'd best go find Thaddeus when you've taken Sally home. I'd forgotten. He would speak with you.”

And then, Mam turned to give the barest glance to Rhia and Sal, where the two stood hand-in-hand near the doorway. But strangely, her eyes arrested on them, and then bore into them, as though they were a wonder and not the daily thing they certainly were.

Mam then covered her mouth with her hands and stood, yet still she stared at them.

Finally, she wiped her eyes right quick with the heel of one hand, then took to stirring the soup again.

“We go, then, Mam,” Rhia said, a bit uneasily. “If indeed you are ... all right?”

“Yes, daughter.” Mam gave her a small smile. “I'm fine.”

“Did God make you an answer to your complaints?” Rhia asked in a rush. She feared Mam would think she pried, but she needed to know! “Did He show you in the flames how the brutal of the world will burn eternal when they die?”

Mam still smiled, but wrinkled her nose. “That is cold comfort here on earth, Rhiannon, don't you think? And such eternal punishments are best left to God, His business, never ours. Come close here, daughter. Bring Sally.”

They went close. Mam leaned to kiss Sal upon the cheek, then Rhia. She grasped their linked hands within the two of her own. “God reminded me that one thing
can
fend. The care we take of each other comes from His own loving heart and will
not
be broken.” She squeezed their hands, then released them and waggled her fingers at them as one will to shoo chickens. “Now off with you two, as it soon grows dark!”

 
Rhia was a bit surprised to see the sky already painted with glowing streaks of orange and pink and yellow as she and Sal left the stoop to walk to Sal's cottage. The day had been overfilled with events, and had gone racing by so that already it was twilight.

“Sally?” Rhiannon confessed in a whisper. “I did not expect your shattered skull to be knit back when I opened my eyes. I saw what I expected, a beautiful girl with a dent aside her head. My lack of faith may well have stayed God's hand from healing you. If that is the case, I give you heartfelt apology.” Rhiannon sighed.

They'd got to Sally's stoop, and clearly Sal was glad to be home. When Rhia opened her door, the young girl rushed to her pallet and lay upon it, curling into her sleep shape with a smile upon her face. Rhia pulled the flaxen blanket over her and said good night.

“I shall bring a candle when it gets full dark,” she whispered, pushing Sally's tangled hair back from her eyes. “But first, I should find Thaddeus.”

And then Rhia could finally run full-tilt to the chapel. As it was not yet time for Gramp to assume his nightly sentinel duties upon the roof, she threw her weight against the chapel door without seeking his go-ahead, then suddenly felt uneasy entering without it. It was an eery time of day. The moon floated above the trees, and yet the sun had not handed over the world to that silvery dame quite as yet. It was that brief time when things hang suspended—not day, not night. Caught in that hairline crack between past and future, the present is not well formed and can be dreamy and unreal.

In fact, Rhia'd heard rumors of sudden disappearances of both animals and humans, all gone missing in those uneasy moments when the sun keeps his mighty hold, yet haughty Mistress Moon spreads her dark cloak anyhow.

She decided not to enter the part-opened door until she'd peeked around it first. And indeed, she saw that the shadows were grown long upon the walls, and the light was chilly and dim. The large floorstones had grown dampish, as soon the mists would rise from them to float where once those monks had surely walked, chanting their songs, hiding from fierce Northern slayers in their dragonboats. Hiding for a while, that is, but not for long, as their own days were numbered had they but known it.

Rhia wet her dried lips and took a step inside, though still she kept the heavy door cracked open with her heel. “Thaddeus?” she whispered, her voice echoing the single word. “Are you about? It's . . . Rhiannon.”

Indeed, she now made out Thaddeus near the altar up front, but he was not alone in that gloomed place. A small, bright figure had been nearby him, and it came hurtling toward the door, bent upon escape now that Rhia had spoke and startled it.

Rhiannon dodged aside, her heart in her throat, intent on giving the spook freedom to take its hasty leave, as who would contain a ghostly haunt against its wishes? But as the one who sought to flee came close, Rhia recognized her and jumped back to bar the door, her hands out imploringly. “Child, please don't go! I'd give you sincere apology first, as I hope to be your friend!”

Ingrid had no choice but to stop, though she right out trembled.

“If it please you,” Rhiannon pleaded in a rush, “forgive my earlier ... well, bad manners.”
Stupidity,
she might have said. “I
will
be a good friend to you, if allowed.”

Still Ingrid stood atremble, saying nary a word, frozen as a hare gone helpless in a net. Thaddeus had come gently up behind her, and when he put his hand upon her shoulder, Ingrid did not flinch but looked up at him, awaiting his direction.

“Thaddeus, tell her!” Rhia begged. “Say that I would
never
do her harm.”

Thaddeus smiled at the girl. “It's true, Ingrid. Rhiannon will be a friend always.”

Hard to say what the child thought then, as who may know the thoughts of the hare upon seeing the net opened? Whether to
trust
is the question, for an open pathway may lead to freedom, but may instead lead only to the hunter's well-sharpened knife.

And so Rhiannon could only move aside, and the child dove through the open door and into the murky dusk. Thaddeus and Rhia watched her dart to the woods as though she were a wisp of cloud tatter blown along by a raging gale.

“What was she
doing
here?” Rhia breathed. “Did
you
bring her hence?”

Thaddeus shook his head. “She was here when I came in. Rhia, I believe she hides in here when the sun is brightest, as her skin and eyes are harmed by its rays. At night, then, she goes about in the woods. We saw her on Charlemagne last night, remember? And on the foggy evening I first came up here, she was at Sally's window.”

Rhia nodded, though still puzzled. “But she was at bluff's edge when I gathered seeds with Daisy and Sally. Though she stayed within the deep shade, now I think of it. Was she lured from here by the sight of Daisy as we progressed along the trail, do you think?”

“I'd imagine so,” Thaddeus allowed. “I'm sure she longs for the lighthearted company of girls her own age, as any child will.”

Rhiannon frowned and put her hand upon her hip. “Wait. How do
you
know so much about her, even her name? She's mute and could not tell it.” She tapped her chin and murmured, “For that matter, how does
Daisy
know the child's name?”

Thaddeus wearily shook his head. “She's not mute, though she will not often talk. We might not either if our words had brought us the misery hers have brought her.” He looked at Rhia with great sadness in his eyes. “I've met her before, you see—in Glastonbury. I'd not seen her close enough to know it until I saw her upon the altar bench when I entered this place earlier this evening.”

He sat heavily upon the wall bench by the baptismal font and leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees. “She was born to peasants in Coventry just as you see her now, without a speck of color anywhere about her, even her eyes the faintest pinkish blue. The local gentry there bought her from her mother, believing she could tell the future, which is a common superstition with children such as she. They installed her in their manor house, taught her to ride when she could sit the saddle, kept her like a prized pet and asked her the meaning of their dreams. She answered well enough to please them in her childish way, I imagine. It's not hard to tell folk what they want to hear. But there came a time that . . .”