The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) (7 page)

Her initial silence smacked of cautious prevarication and he wondered if she was stronger than he had thought, perhaps not quite the easy game he hoped. Finally she replied. ‘To meet my friends. I had thought to shortcut through the Weald. I was almost there.’

‘Where do you plan to go?’ His questions nibbled away.

‘Wherever my friends wish to go. Their choices are mine. The Raj or Veniche. I don’t mind.’

Liam listened to her quiet voice, enjoying the pressure of her body
behind him. ‘What about your family?’

Her body tensed, a withdrawing, a curling of the fingers at his waist, a straightening of the spine. ‘They won’t miss me,’ was all she said.

He knew better than to prevail any further and felt her body subside. But as they reached the side of the highway, she called out in a voice filled with light. ‘There!’

His fingers clenched on his reins, face tightening. He glanced down the grey ribbon of road and saw a vehicle pulled by a large horse and alongside, the shambolic shape of a camel. In his own tongue he cursed the approaching caravan as the nuisance he felt it was. Interference, conversation. His lip curled. He wanted her to react to his voice like that.
Bain as! Bain as!

***

Another book has been finished and you must shrink it and replace it. Ah, but it’s as well this robe is so commodious or I would never be able to conceal the whole story.
Move to the depiction of the fruit, the two branches arching with the fruits of the hedgerow. Embroidering fruit is immeasurably colourful and tactile and such pleasant stitches are used; Venichese knots, satin stitch, trellis stitch and many more. As one applies the individually wrought elements to the silk of the robe, it is like attending a market and picking the best and in my current situation that becomes a small measure of comfort.
Y
ou will see a terracotta butterfly of with aqua Venichese knots on the wings fluttering amongst the fruit. Very, very carefully, peel the wing back and there you will see another book. Read on!

Chapter Nine

‘So, Ana!’ Adelina’s face cooled like a weather change. Meeting up, heeding the Liam's presence, transferring Ana and her luggage, crook included, to the van was all done in a matter of fact, slightly gritty way by Adelina who cast combative looks at Liam. He meanwhile, smooth as can be, kept up a pleasant patter with Kholi Khatoun, the latter fully aware he was in the presence of an Other and not unimpressed by the fact.

‘Don’t be angry,’ Ana smiled tentatively at the Traveller.

‘Angry!’ Adelina slapped her hand against her thigh. ‘Ana, you have no idea how worried we have all been. Aghast. When we left Orford, the whole town was about to begin a search for you. Everyone was mad with fear because... because...’ she looked sideways at that dark stranger who chattered away to Kholi. Some black notion filled her whole being and she turned quickly back to the younger woman. ‘Because it was the middle of the night and everyone thought you may be dead. I really must turn round and take you home.’

‘No!’ Ana grabbed Adelina’s arm. ‘No, I am never going back. Never. I just want a lift away from Trevallyn. If it’s not with you, then I’ll get it with someone else.’ She glanced at Liam, a glance Adelina could hardly miss and her need to chaperone the woman and keep her safe from harm’s way became greater than the need to overly chastise.

‘Ana, there are people at home who ache with loss for you. How can you do this?’

Ana sat for a moment watching Ajax’s huge shaggy mane blowing in the cool morning breeze. His ears flicked back and forth at the voiced inflections from behind and his tail swayed from side to side in an equine version of a Raji dance of the seven veils. ‘I can do it because I ache more than they do.’ Ana spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I can do it because they abrogated any familial right to my respect and affection with their actions.’ She sighed and looked directly at Adelina, eyes glistening. ‘And I can do it because my father is dead and I have been assaulted. Adelina, I ask you as my friend; accept my decision to leave and be my highway kin.’ She touched Adelina’s hand. ‘Please, I can’t go back.’

The Traveller put her own hand over Ana’s, keeping her sighs to herself. ‘For now then, but we’ll talk again later.' She jerked her shoulder in Liam’s direction, hands bunched into the horn sign. ‘What about him?’

‘What about him? He’s Liam. He saved my life. I suppose he’s a friend too.’

‘Ana,’ Adelina looked scornfully at her friend. ‘Liam is Faeran. Yes, I realise you know this. But do you understand what that means in our language? In your language when it comes to that.’ Sarcasm fell from her lips like droplets of water onto a tranquil pool, the purpose being to set up uneasy ripples in Ana. Adelina stared at
Liam with dislike, certainly disdain. ‘It means danger, peril, ambush, harm,
distress, deceive, terrify, frighten. All those words translate to ‘Faeran’ in the Travellers’ tongue. I am
horrified
you journeyed with him.’

‘Oh stop it. Look at him.’ Ana glanced toward Liam and
Kholi who were laughing together at some shared joke, so deplorably
normal that Adelina’s attempt at unhinging Ana’s view looked doomed. ‘He saved my life. I was by a pool and had been mesmered by a waterwight. I was a hair’s breadth,’ Ana measured with her fingers, ‘from being drowned. He saved me, just the way Kholi saved me from...' She stopped and her face darkened and Adelina knew immediately she was thinking of Bellingham's assault.

Nevertheless, she had to make the girl realise this new danger. ‘And did he tell you that if he saves you three times, he can call in the debt. That you must live in Faeran for all eternity?’

Ana rubbed her bruises. ‘Well, so what? It must surely be better than my life has been of late.’

‘Oh Ana, I
am
sorry to bully you so. You’ve been through the worst of times and it is unforgivable of me to harass you, I apologise. But it is just that Kholi and I are worried. To have an Other in such close quarters is extremely disturbing. Anyway, you must sit and rest, there will be time later to talk.’ As Ana took her place on the van stoop, none of Adelina’s reservations eased. Ana was behaving like a hurt animal - fleeing to survive and without rational thought, for surely to have run so far from her hearth and in the presence of an Other smacked of irrationality. Adelina shook the reins over Ajax’s broad back - the back broad enough to be that of the unseelie Cabyll Ushtey.
And that is something else I must tell her
. She did not relish the task of explaining Bellingham’s gruesome demise.

As they continued on their slow journey, Ajax’s weighty hooves matching the ponderous stride of the camel’s, Liam’s fine stallion danced alongside the sapphire and emerald coloured van. ‘Adelina, your van is the only beautiful thing here on this grey morning, present company excluded of course. If only the heavens could match the colour, the day would improve immeasurably.’

‘Aye,’ called Kholi Khatoun from high up on the swaying back of Mogu. He was swathed in his grubby cloak, the travel caplet pulled down hard on his head. ‘I swear I shall freeze before I get to the Celestine Stairway.’

Liam laughed.
‘My friend, you are so much a creature of the North, aren’t you?’ He turned back to Adelina. ‘Madame, you must make him a warming posset when you stop. Unfortunately I’ll not be able to share it with him for I must leave you now.’’

‘Really.’ Adelina’s allowed her voice to fill with a caustic note. ‘Then let’s not keep you. Thank you for delivering our friend safely and adieu.’

The teeth of any lesser being would have been set right on edge but Liam ignored the barb. ‘Adieu to you also.’ He turned his eyes to Ana, black pools drawing the pawn away from the side of the white shah’s board. ‘Safe journey. I’ll see you anon.’ He clicked his tongue and his horse sprang into a canter as he turned off the highway and headed through the valley of North Tamerton.

Adelina was aware of the rigid person beside her who followed the shape of horse and man until they were dots presently swallowed by the dark shadows of forested hills. She sighed and shook the reins again over Ajax’s back. ‘Kholi, shall we stop at Buckland? There’s a lovely tavern and they do an excellent roast.’

‘No!’ Ana piped up loudly before Kholi could reply. ‘No, please could we go further? I don’t want to be seen. Not yet. I must get away. Please.’

***

I could see this day was going to be overly long so I resolved to teach Ana the rudiments of stumpwork as we journeyed, something to take her mind away from her tragedies and from thoughts of the unsettling Other she was patently attracted to. Kholi tied Mogu to the van and took to my bed to sleep and we swayed up the highway seeing nothing bar the exceptional beauty of the green valleys of Trevallyn. No man, nor wight, no beast nor bird bothered us. We were quite, quite peaceful. How I wish it had stayed that way forever.

Ah well, if wishes were horses and such.

Chapter Ten

The Barrow Hills reminded Kholi of a woman’s breasts: soft mounds which in the light of the dusking afternoon displayed a subtle skin colour. He began to think of Adelina and resolved to invite her to his tent when they encamped. He was a man after all... with needs... and she was a nubile woman who had indicated she found him attractive. He smiled to himself as he gazed at the hills.

But what about Ana? She is a gooseberry. But no, she could sleep in the van. A perfect solution.
He mused on their absconding waif. She reminded him of how much he missed his sister, Lalita Khatoun. She was like Lalita in a myriad of ways; beautiful, impetuous, every mood flashing across her face for all to see and he could hardly miss the way she looked at Liam.
By djinns but there is an attraction there
. He smiled to himself again, comparing the powerful infatuation that rippled through his own mind. But back to Ana... there was still an underlying melancholia. Even now as she sat behind him on the camel to see what it was like, he could sense a part of her withdrawn and defensive.

And Liam, he thought. A Faeran, no less. Adelina seemed fearful of him; she who had the courage of a war-queen. He moved his fingers in the sign of the horn, an automatic action because one should be cautious of an Other, whether in the Amritsands or not. His horn hand unfolded. But
this
Other, he seemed such an engaging fellow.

Bare moors climbed steadily higher until they opened out into the marsh-ridden territory of the Great Lakes. The occasional red-leafed tree lit up the slopes of the hills like a ruby in the cleavage of some magnificent chest. In autumn, the bright fire of that blood-red hue would have made an afrit proud; they were after all sprites of flame in the Raj.
Scattered across the hills in curious little dun-coloured heaps were tumbled towers of some ancient defensive
sort. Weathered and broken, they were decrepit remnants of a different time when
aggression and incursion reigned.

‘They remind me of my Pa’s
shatranj
set,' Ana said and he felt her turn to look at the ruins. 'He had little
ruhks
, battlements wrought of ivory and ebony. He bought the set from a Pymm trader who had been in the Raj and he and Mother used to play at night. Every time Pa took one of her pieces, he would hum a little tune.’ She hummed against Kholi’s back and he could feel the grief bleeding through to his spine.
So, it is her father who has caused this deep sadness, it is the sadness of loss.
Having lost his own parents when he was younger and with a sister who barely knew her mother and father, he understood the awful emptiness, the fear that one might be alone and out of one’s depth.

‘Kholi, where shall we camp?’ Adelina’s rich voice called from her seat behind Ajax, causing shivers of desire to ripple through Kholi. They had come to an unusual fold in one of the hills and which displayed a full circle of the ruby-leafed trees. Amongst them a small stream rippled down toward the van.

‘Here I think,’ he looked around, surveying the glade as Mogu entered, moaning in her pitiful way. ‘We’ll be kindly sheltered by these trees. And the stream has no unseelie air. Do you agree?’

‘No unseelie presence?’ Adelina sighed with tiredness. ‘Then let’s stop! My rear is melded to this seat and I can’t sit a minute longer. Whoa, Ajax, wh
oa.’ The horse hardly needed to be bid twice, the sheen of sweat glistening under the harness. Mogu, with much groaning and spitting, folded herself to the ground enabling Ana and Kholi to ease their stiff bodies from the high horned Raji saddle.

Later, filled with Adelina’s appetising stew and bread, chewing at a dried fig, Ana caught herself marveling at her good fortune.
To escape, to be a Traveller, even if by default!
She turned over the tiny pincushion she had embroidered that afternoon. As the needle had pushed in and out with its flaring tail of threads, she felt a small wave of happiness spreading to the dead, dry places of her soul.
Kholi had erected his pavilion and Ana could hear the little bells that skirted
its roof as they tinkled in the evening breeze. Melon coloured tassels swung energetically on the corners of the tent and the striped fabric ruckled and puffed as the draught teased it. Kholi wandered over and sat next to her by the fire. ‘Well, my princess, there’s weather coming. I can smell rain on the breeze. In the night hours if I am not mistaken, so we must to bed soon and be off at dawn.’

Ana didn’t reply immediately, just turned the pincushion around in her hands. Then she spoke, so quietly Kholi sat closer to hear. ‘You know, this is the only thing I’ve done since Pa died, of which I feel remotely proud.’

‘What do you mean, princess?’

‘My father took twelve months to die. In that time I help to wash him, feed him, I talked to him for hours, read to him, played
shatranj;
things which were important and practical and of which I was proud. Then he died and with him went my purpose and my identity. When he was alive, he made me feel special. Do you know,’ she looked at Kholi with eyes diamond bright in the light of the fire. ‘He used to call me princess too. And blossom, pet and a whole lot of other silly names that made me feel unique. But with Mother as the head of the house, I ceased to exist as a person, special or otherwise. I suffered such pain, Kholi. I liken it to being drowned in a murky swamp. Darkness everywhere. You see, Pa was my friend and wherever he was on the farm I would help him. Even when I was tiny. Mother and Peter had no patience with me after his death because I seemed paralysed with loss. But the truth of it was that I had a cloud around my head as if I walked in a fog. I was so tired; miserable and tired and no one seemed to understand, least of all me. I just wanted someone to say I was normal, that what I was feeling was normal, but no one did. And then I just wanted to think of nothing because if I thought, it would be of Pa and this pain would crush me,’ she hit her chest with a bunched fist, ‘and sometimes my thoughts seemed like a donkey harnessed to a grinding wheel, going round and round.’
She returned her eyes to the pincushion.
‘When I was embroidering, nothing else pierced my brain. And it was the same when I left home. I had a purpose; to get away. And I thought of nothing else. So you see, leaving was the best thing I could do. For me.’

Kholi took her hand and rubbed it.
‘Indeed, my princess. But demons have a habit of riding unseen on your back. It’s best you acknowledge your grief and love your father. Don’t run from it. I think that’s what your mother is doing. Run, run, run.’
Kholi made pumping motions with his arms as if the Wild Hunt were
behind him. ‘She won’t acknowledge how threatened she feels by the loss of her husband.’

‘My mother!’ Ana’s voice scalded the cool night air. ‘My mother has run from nothing. She is Mrs. Lamb, landswoman. She didn’t even run from the horror of betrothing me to Bellingham. Any normal mother would have run a million miles from that.’

‘But Ana, let’s think on that for a minute.’ With a swish of her skirts and tossing of hair over her shoulder, Adelina had joined them, passing each of them a glass of muscat, which glowed gold in the firelight. Pausing to light a cheroot, she sucked on it and then blew out a perfect smoke ring occasioning a lift from Kholi’s eyebrow. ‘The Bellinghams are rich, aren’t they?’

‘Yes...’

‘Was your farm in trouble?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure.’ Ana looked down, disconcerted. ‘I didn’t listen to Mother and Peter at night. I would go off on my own. I know we had a spell of footrot and I think there was a crop failure and I suppose Fiona’s dowry won’t help that much because she’s the daughter of a l
andsman and she has three sisters, so the dowry chest would be fairly small.’

‘So?’ Adelina turned up her hands enquiringly, the cheroot glowing as the breeze brushed past its tip.

‘We were unable to hold our sales at the beginning of summer because of the footrot. And sales on the wheat came to nothing because we had no wheat to sell.’

‘And I am guessing,’ Adelina took another puff and then flicked the exhausted cheroot into the fire, ‘this would involve the loss of substantial income?’

Ana nodded. Her face had flushed, as if she had almost been caught in a misdemeanour. It seemed Adelina had pinpointed her accidental disinterest in her family’s trials; that lost as she was in her own grief, she had neglected to wonder how her mother, Peter and her father’s legacy of ‘Rotherwood’ were coping.

‘Well then,' Adelina continued. 'You can understand why your mother would betroth you to a wealthy family in desperation, can’t you?’

‘To a point.’ Ana spoke with a sharp edge. ‘But not to the Bellinghams. There are other wealthy sons in our district.’ Anger began to flare. ‘Honestly! The man was set to rape me and would have if you, Kholi, had not happened along. Why are you taking my mother’s side? What about me?’

‘But Ana, maybe Bellingham made an offer too good for your mother to refuse.’

‘Too good?’ Scorn sounded like a cymbal clash. ‘Too good to ignore me being assaulted? Too good to ignore Bellingham’s reputation? Do you know he raped a friend of mine? Aine, Adelina, how could a mother do that to her own daughter?’

‘Because I suspect she was utterly desperate and afraid she would lose her family’s farm, her home, her loved husband’s legacy, that she, you and Peter may end in the Poorhouse. And now she is even more desperate, having lost you. From what you have said as we travelled, you have had a loving, secure family for your whole life. Don't you think you think your mother regrets her actions, Ana? She is living with the fact that what she did in a moment of panic has driven her daughter away, possibly that her daughter might be dead. I am not condoning her choice,
muirnin
, not by a long shot, but I think I can see what she was trying to do. As Kholi says, I think she is mired in her own grief and thinking only as clearly as her emotions will let her. As are you, my dear. Please Ana, will you not return?’

‘Never! To marry that... that...’ She fell silent and her hands shook.

Kholi reached for them and held them in his own, aware the assault was even now coursing through her memory. ‘But, my dear princess, you would not have to marry him. You see, he’s dead.’

The fire crackled and spat and lines of sparks drifted into the night sky.

‘When, how?’ shock reduced Ana’s reply to a faint whisper.

‘Last night.’ Adelina replied, shifting herself to sit on a convenient log, closer to Kholi. ‘He didn’t return to his home and a search party found his remains at Buck’s Passing.’

‘What do you mean, his remains?’

Adelina sat for a moment, visions of her dark, black notion filling her head. ‘It’s believed he was a victim of the Cabyll Ushtey.’

Ana’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes widened. But then a grey shadow passed over her face, eyes as cold as iron, mouth bitter and grim. Like watching a winter frost harden, Adelina thought.

‘It’s no loss,' said Ana. He deserves his end. Besides, it just happened quicker than fate would have decreed had I married him. Because by the Napae, I would have killed him myself I tell you. I hated him.’

‘Ana!’ Adelina admonished.

Kholi raised his eyebrows and scrutinized the young woman’s eyes,
seeing a desperate hunger for vengeance. This girl was troubled and no wonder, he thought, as he reached for her hand. Abuse of any sort bruised a tender psyche. ‘See, little princess,’ he said. 'There’s no need for you to stay away from your family now. You can return. Your mother deserves to have her daughter back, to know you are alive.'

‘No!’ she was adamant. ‘If nothing else this whole event has just propelled me to be a master of my own destiny, not my family’s. Don’t you see?’ she looked at
her friends. ‘Please try and understand. My family don’t respect me. They have ignored my hurts. They have! I so desperately needed them when Pa died, let alone after Bellingham.’ She shuddered. ‘And anyway,’ her voice flattened. ‘I am a woman. Whatever happened, ultimately I would have left home to marry or perhaps to work on another estate. I have just brought the leaving to fruition sooner. And without the entanglement of an unsuitable match.’