The Moorchild (20 page)

Tam’s thoughts must have been something like hers. “Where
is
that door?” he asked her suddenly. “Can you get us in? And once we’re in there, how . . . ” His voice trailed off.

Saaski mustered a confident tone. “Never you mind. Got a plan, I have.” She set her jaw, loss and misery suddenly wailing like drones inside her, and all but snapped at Tam when he asked more questions. “I’m gonna call one o’ Them. You’re to hide somewhere and stay outa sight! You mind me? No matter what you hear.”

Tam halted and faced her, belligerent with worry. “What will I hear, then?”

“Nothin’ but me, drivin’ a bargain,” she said with a sigh.

So when they reached the hollow with the thorn trees, Tam hid while Saaski took the chanter out of her bundle and began to play. The sound had never failed yet to bring Tinkwa around pestering.

Today he was tardy. She’d all but given him up when he was suddenly there beside her, laughing, snatching at the
chanter. She wrested it away from him, caught his wrist. “Here! Hold on a minute—we need to talk!”

“Not now! Not today! I’m busy!”

Busy! she thought. Busy plaguin’ somebody else. But he was tugging at his imprisoned wrist, plainly with half of his mind on getting free and the other half skittering away toward something up on the next rise. “Stand still! What ails you?” she demanded.

“
Ails
me?” He seemed astonished. “It’s the Day! Ever’body’s out and playin’! Be music and dancin’ all night long! Don’t you remember?”

Midsummer’s Eve, he meant. Not the menacing Torskaal goings-on, but the Moorfolks’ revels. She remembered the silvery
ting
of bells, the surging excitement—no work, all pranks and laughter, even younglings rollicking between Mound and moor, free of masters till dawn. Suddenly she remembered something else, and Tinkwa’s words became a tool in her hand.

“
Ever’body’s
out of the Mound,” she echoed.

“In and out. Goin’ and comin’.”

“The Prince—him, too!”

She’d caught Tinkwa’s full attention; he eyed her but did not speak.

She said softly, “Comes out Midsummer’s Eve at sundown, the Prince does—doesn’t he? Stays till near sunup. Same on May Day. Other times bides in the Mound.”

“What’s it to you where he’s bidin’?” Tinkwa asked cautiously.

It might mean much to her before first light tomorrow, that was certain. Whenever the Prince left the Mound, the
door stayed open. When he returned, it shut fast, never mind who was caught inside. If she could wait through a nerve-racking day till sunset when the Prince fared forth, she and Tam would have all night to steal away the child.

“No matter,” she told Tinkwa. He was already twisting in her grasp and peering over his shoulder. Like a grasshopper, his brain was. She took a bold risk and let him go. “If y’don’t want me pipes, then be off with you!” she snapped at him.

He halted abruptly, halfway across the little hollow. “Your pipes? Eh, the chanter, belikes!”

“Nay, all of it! Drones, and bag and all! Real and true, I vow it!”

This time his attention focused sharply, his tilted eyes sparkled, speculated, then greened with suspicion as he peered at her bundle, at the ground beside her. “Where are they, then?”

She told him, adding, “Now, hark a minute!” as he exclaimed and started to turn away. “You’ll have it all! Soon’s you do what I want, I’ll give you the chanter. Show that to Fergil and he’ll give you the rest. He’ll do it,” she said to the doubt in Tinkwa’s glance. “Pipes are nothin’ to Fergil.” She watched a new scheme sharpen the clever face and added, “Be nothin’ to
you,
either, without the chanter.” Deliberately, with his eyes following every move, she slipped the chanter into her shawl, tied the bundle around her waist, and clamped her elbow over it.

Tinkwa struggled visibly in her trap. But finally he shot her a sulky look and said, “So what must I do, then?”

Letting out the breath she’d been holding, she told him: lead her to the door, be her guide Inside, give warning before the Prince returned, get her back up the stair with a child.

He was full of objections. It might take too long; he’d miss the revels. He dassn’t help sneak any child out—Pittittiskin’d have his hide.

“Guess I remembered you all wrong,” Saaski taunted. “Used to be the boldest. ’Feared of nothin’! Dare anything, you would—or
said
you would.”

He was silent. Then his wide, curled grin began to dawn; the lavender mischief gleamed in his eyes. “Eh, well . . . ,” he said, and she’d won.

The rest was easy to agree on, its outcome hard to predict. The worst of it, to Saaski’s mind, was the all-day wait. But wait they must; it was safer. Then in they’d go, the three of them—

“
Three
of us?” Tinkwa broke in.

“You and me—and me friend. Tam, the tinker’s boy.” She half turned, raised her voice. “Tam? Come on out.”

Slowly Tam rose up from behind a thicket, plainly bursting with protest at her bargain, but minding his role to keep quiet. Tinkwa at once winked out. Transparent and wavery as smoke, he backed away, scowling and eyeing Tam sidewise. Saaski, tired of his caviling, demanded, “Now what? You’ve seen a boy afore, I reckon.”

“Never reckoned havin’ one go along of us. Into the Mound.”

“Nor did I, but he’s goin’, ’less I can think how to stop ’im,
which I haven’t done yet. And
you’re
makin’ sure he gets out afore the Prince comes back, you hear me? Safe, and not a day older’n when he went in.”

Tinkwa heard her in silence, his expression enigmatic, his glance slightly malicious.

“D’y’hear?” she insisted, sharp with anxiety. “Safe out before sunup! Swear it!”

But he would promise nothing, say nothing except, “Let nary a bite nor a sup pass his lips, then.”

Tam waited with clamped jaw, eyes fixed on a place he apparently believed the voice to be coming from—though Tinkwa was a tether’s length off to the left. “Leave off plaguin’ and let ’im see you!” snapped Saaski, yanking at his arm.

“Why should I?” Tinkwa protested, but the shaking had ruined his wink-out, and he was there in plain sight, sulking.

“ ’Cause he best know you again.” Once Tam had got a good look she loosed Tinkwa and stood away. “Go along with you now. We’ll be here afore sundown—behind yonder thicket. Mind you’re here, too.”

He dived at once around the moorberry bushes and an instant later she saw him scampering—gray green and lizard swift—up a lichen-streaked rock face to join a dozen other half-glimpsed figures on the hillside, amid a burst of twittering in the old tongue.

Saaski watched with deep misgiving. “Might forget all about us.”

“Hope he does!” Tam said resentfully. She turned
quickly, to find him scowling. “Eh, how could y’do it, Saaski? Let that little rogue have your pipes!”

“Only thing I’ve got to barter. Only thing he wants.”

“But—how’ll you get on without ’em? We might’ve found that door on our own—
you
might’ve . . . ”

She shook her head. “Nay, Prince can hide it. He’s full o’ tricks. It’ll be worth Da’s pipes to trick
him
for a change.”

“Wager he won’t like it,” Tam warned.

“
I’m
wagerin’ he’ll never know who did it. C’mon, stop your fretting,” she added, with a glance toward the village. “Let’s take the goats farther up.”

Tam sighed but said no more, and they left the hollow, moving higher up the moor’s shoulder, then higher yet, at Saaski’s restless urging, till they were well out of sight of Torskaal land. Yet she kept glancing back, unable to feel safe from the pile of rowan wood at the boundary, which loomed in her mind like a pair of giant eyes fixed on her unblinkingly. She told herself that no villager would venture onto the moor Midsummer’s Eve. But she continued to glance back.

Pulling up their hoods against a gust of wet wind, they took shelter under a gorse clump to let the rain pass. Tam broke a brooding silence. “One day, somehow or t’other, I’ll get me hands on a set of bagpipes for you. See if I don’t!” He gave a kick that sent some pebbles rattling downhill and added suddenly, “Here—I’ll find a reed this day and whittle you a little pipe like mine! Then we can still play together, whenever we like!”

“Eh, that’ll be fine,” murmured Saaski, but she could not
imagine when or where they would do that, or picture anything at all, beyond sunup tomorrow. There seemed a lifetime of hours still to get through before it was even sundown tonight.

*   *   *

Then—it seemed almost too soon after all—it was late afternoon, and time to leave the safety of the high moor. They descended first to the tinker’s hut, to tend and secure the animals for the night, since Tam had no faith that Bruman would do it. In fact, there was no sign of him.

“Gone a’ready!” Tam growled as he fetched water for the goats. “Couldn’t wait to get down t’the Hillfire and all that free ale—sick ’n’ sore as he is!”

They both glanced in the direction of the village, hidden below the slope of the moor. No sign of Bruman hobbling down toward it, either. Uneasily Saaski scanned the empty hillside, then, shivering at the thought of the rowan-wood tower waiting for the torch, she turned away hurriedly. Tam lingered for a last silent look at the worn hooded cart, the patient beasts—maybe, thought Saaski, wondering if he’d ever see them again.

“Don’t go with me, Tam,” she begged. “Best stay Outside, where you belong.”

He merely said, “Nary a bite nor a sup. I’ll mind that,” and led the way uphill for their last climb of the day.

There was still a handsbreadth of golden sky between earth and sun when they reached the thorn-tree hollow and wriggled into the concealing thicket. A few wind-raveled clouds turned slowly scarlet; the light over the moor dimmed. To Saaski it seemed that time and sun both
stopped; even the bird calls quieted. Then the sun’s rim touched the edge of the earth.

First came a faint sound of bells, next of excited voices, growing rapidly louder and nearer—then a burst of chattering and music played helter-skelter on pipes and reeds and fiddles, the tunes all crisscrossing and near drowned out with laughter and thin shouting, and from behind a big boulder thrusting up through the grasses Moorfolk streamed until the hollow was filled with jostling, green-clad figures. In the midst of them came the Prince, jouncing on a straw-woven litter carried shoulder high by a dozen of his capering subjects. Saaski knew him at once—the beaky profile, the beard that waggled as he sang, the red jewel hanging around his neck and glowing like a drop of blood in the sun’s low rays. His white hair thrust out like a thistle top from under his scarlet cap, and his long fingers beat the measure of whatever tune he was chanting. He glanced neither right nor left, and was swiftly borne past her hiding place toward the moor’s crest, where he became one bobbing silhouette among many against the round gold sun.

“Now!” she gasped, and struggled free of twigs and thorns, peered about for Tinkwa, saw him running out from behind the big boulder and across the hollow after the others. She caught him before he got there, shook him to make him remember, turned to beckon to Tam and found him beside her. Clinging to Tinkwa she started back toward the boulder and saw the open door. By the instant of sundown, when below at the moor’s edge the Hillfire leaped into a tower of flame from the villagers’ torches, the three of them were halfway down the twisting stair.

Ten heartbeats after they disappeared from sight, Bruman, breathless, too, struggled up the opposite lip of the hollow, hobbled across it and around the boulder, blinked a dismayed instant from the narrow opening to his crutch, then flung away the crutch and squeezed in his turn through the door.

It was warm in the shadowy gloom of the stairwell, and smelled of earth and roots. Reckless of footing on the twisting, crooked steps, Saaski hurried after Tinkwa, one hand clutching his shoulder, the other Tam’s coarse-woven sleeve. Half-glimpsed figures jostled past them, some crowding upward, a few rushing down, trailing snatches of chatter. Suddenly there came a cool draft wafting up, like a breath across snow, and a dim greenish glow flickered over the rough walls of the shaft ahead. The earthy odor gave way to a chill smell of stone, and the nearby gigglings and twitterings faded into an echoing confusion of many voices floating up from below. A few more turns of the stair and they were at the bottom, ducking out of a lopsided opening into a vast, green-lit space, and the confusion was all around them.

It was the Gathering—so much Saaski knew at once. And she had known it would be alive with Folk and their voices, no matter how many were Outside dancing on the moor or swarming up and down the stairs. What she had not expected was to be half stunned by the chaos of laughter and music and dashing about. She stopped where she was, engulfed by such an upsurge of old memory, old habit, that she could barely think, much less figure what to do next. Her hand went slack on Tinkwa’s shoulder; he was gone at once. Her whole impulse was to dart away, too, join the nearest circle capering about a fiddler, snatch a handful of berries from the long tables, find old Flugenlul and steal his pipes . . .

“Lor’! Will you look at yon di’monds!” came Tam’s hoarse whisper in her ear. “All over the ceilin’, a million-million of ’em! An’ rubies and suchlike on the walls, and all these grand lords and ladies, wearin’ silks and furs and plumes in their hats—y’never told me it was like this here! It’s finer than ever I saw in the King’s Town, I vow ’tis!”

“What’re y’ sayin’?” gasped Saaski. She stared from Tam’s marveling face to the rough rock walls of the Gathering, the faint crystalline glitter high on the dome overhead, the Folk in their shabby greenish tunics and scarlet caps. “It’s the
glamourie!
” she exclaimed, giving his sleeve a sharp tug. “Don’t heed it! Nothin’s fine here, it’s a trick—come along—”

“An’ the feast laid out there!” Tam was saying, deaf to her warnings, already starting for the tables and pulling her along. “Never saw the like anywheres! Swans roasted with their feathers on, and whole great fishes—lookit the
cakes!—Lor’, I’ll wager it’s that fairy mead in the flagons yonder . . . ”