The Wretched of Muirwood (6 page)

The flames were gold and orange and waves of heat came from the oven, making the shirt rustle. Sowe quietly padded over and opened a crock and withdrew two nutmeg seeds, as large as walnuts. “I’ll crush them,” she said in a small voice.

Lia smiled at her then turned around to face the squire. “You need a new bandage then. Now sit on the stool near the fire. I will get some warm water.”

He obeyed and sat on the stool while she fetched the kettle and some linen cloths to clean the wound. Standing over him, she untied the knot of the bandage and gently peeled it away from the crusty skin. He winced once, but remained still, though his jaw muscles clenched.

“You seemed surprised that it was only a ring. Why?” Lia asked.

“Not surprised really. Perhaps the ring was left with you when you were abandoned here.”

“Then why did you wish to see it?”

“You are too curious, girl.”

“Life is curious, is it not? I like to ask questions. Now give me an answer. Why should it alarm you that I can use the Medium? Not because it is difficult. You were frightened that I could do it.”

“Because there are only two ways to affect the Medium. One way is through inheritance and learning about your potential and letting it work through you. The other way…forces it – controls it. I wanted to be sure you were not doing the latter. Those who were not born into the power wear a medallion to force it to obey.”

“What does the medallion look like? The one you fear?”

“I do not fear it. I am wary of it as I have trained to be. Any way I could describe it to you would not be suitable, but I have seen its likeness. It resembles a braided rope – flat though, like leaves or the sashes on a maypole woven together into a circle.”

“I see – so it does not look like a wedding band. Since you do not fear them, what if I had been wearing one?”

“I would have ripped it from your neck instantly.” He looked up at her, his eyes deadly earnest. “With it, you may have sought to control me.”

She pinched the ring between her fingers and looked at it again. “Then we are both grateful it is only a plain ring. You would not have enjoyed me scratching your face and leaving more scars.”

Sowe coughed over at the table and dropped the mortar with a thud.

Lia pretended she did not care and continued to clean his wound. “You said most second or third year learners cannot summon fire,” she said, dabbing his eyebrow with a soaked piece of linen. “When did you first do it?”

“By my first year,” he answered.

“Why are you so surprised that I can? As I told you, I saw the Aldermaston do it.”

“I could do it because my father had taught me for years before I even went to the abbey in my Hundred to learn. My Family is strong in the Medium. That is important. As with his father and his father before him, he started teaching me as a small boy. I have used the Medium before I became an armiger.”

“What is an armiger?”

He closed his eyes, his mouth twisting into a snarl. “I bear the arms of the knight-maston I serve.”

She sensed his discomfort and wondered at it. “I see. Since I cannot study the tomes, I like using Leering stones when no one is around to practice. They do so many different things.” The scab was softened by the moist linen, but it did not start to bleed again. She sponged his forehead and cleaned away dried blood.

“I have always hated that your kind calls them that. It is not the proper name.”

“It is a very proper name.”

“I doubt you know what the word ‘leering’ means.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “It means a sly or cunning look.” Bending closer, she squinted at the wound and patted it dry with a clean linen. She took the dirty ones and tossed them into the fire and watched them shrivel. “There is a learner here who tells me what words mean. Leering stones are faces carved in rock. Some are carved into suns. Some into the moon at different degrees of fullness. Some seem to be carved out of stars. But they each have faces. And they always stare at us.”

“Then why not name them Staring stones then? The word leering has other meanings.”

“Such as?”

“I do not want to discuss it.”

“Why? Are you too proud to tell me?”

“The connotation – what it represents – is not modest.”

“What do you mean?”

He was getting even more impatient. His eyes blazed with anger. “Words have specific meanings, yet they can have multiple meanings. The word ‘leer’ is to stare at. But it also means to stare at someone in a certain way.”

She looked at him pointedly, raising her eyebrows to ask the question.

His expression clouded over, as if he were nearly frantic with discomfort. His hands clenched in his lap. “I should not be discussing this with you like this.”

She folded another linen into a padded square and pressed it against his wound. With a long length of linen, she secured it to his head and then tied off the knot.

“What a riddle you are,” she said with contempt. “Most learners are. You study the true meaning of words and how to engrave them. How to use them. How to understand them. Yet you keep that knowledge to yourselves and then get proud when someone like me gets it wrong. Do you think that because I am a wretched, I cannot understand difficult things?”

“No, that is not it.”

“Then why not tell me? If I do not understand,
then
you can mock me. But why withhold it?”

“Because I am not comfor…because it has to do with the way that some men look at women. A leer is not a flattering look. It is not a look of love.” His hands were trembling. “It is not a look of respect. I have seen this look and when you see it, you will know it. I have seen it in wretcheds and I have seen it in knights.” He stood, clenching and unclenching his hands, his thoughts visibly troubling him. “The stone carvings are merely emblems. Their proper name is
gargouelle
.”

Lia shook her head, confused. “I do not know that word…”

“No, of course you do not.
Gargouelle
is from another language, the Dahomeyjan word for ‘throat.’ If you ponder it, maybe you will see why they are named such. Most wretcheds do not know the language of Dahomey exists let alone how to pronounce it properly.”

“You said they were emblems. Explain that word.”

“An emblem is used to represent something else. The carvings are an emblem of the power of the Medium inside us. They bear the face of man – or woman or beast – to show that the link to the power of the Medium is within us. In both of us. You are not bringing fire out of the stone. The stone helps you bring the fire out of yourself. They are powerful emblems – and should not be misunderstood, misused, or mispronounced.”

Something in his words caused heat to rush through her. They were exciting words and thrilled her. A great deep thought brushed against her mind, so large she couldn’t feel the edges of it. That somehow, the ability to cause fire, or water, or plague, or even life slept inside of
her
, not the stone.

“What you are saying,” she said in a near-whisper, “is that I do not really need the Leering to make fire.”

“No, no. That is a twisted understanding. For you see,
you
have no control over that. It is the tragedy of your state. Your ability to use the Medium is an inheritance. It is a result of who your parents were, not you. Who your grandparents were, not you. Who your ancestors were back to the original fathers. Not you.”

Lia glanced over at Sowe, who stared at them, her hands idle on the mortar and pestle. She lowered her gaze and started crushing the seeds again. “So even if I did become a learner, it does not mean that it would be easy to practice it. Someone born from a weak lineage would not…”

“…Be able to warm a cup of water,” he replied. “No matter how hard they studied. As a wretched, you will never know your full potential until you know your parentage. Learners spend a great deal of time learning who their forbearers are to understand how their gifts have mingled and been passed along to them.”

Lia wanted to ask what it meant that
she
was able to do something that some learners could not, when a heavy knock sounded at the kitchen door, startling them.

The wounded young man started for the ladder to the loft, but Lia caught his wrist. “There are windows. You will be seen. There, behind the changing screen!”

He rushed to the wooden screen beneath the loft. She could see part of his boots in the gap beneath the screen and cursed herself. Another heavy knock sounded and she crossed the kitchen to the door.

“What will we do?” Sowe whispered fearfully.

Lia silenced her with a glare, then had an idea. “Take the kettle to the screen and rinse your hair. Tell him to hide in the tub.”

“I am not going to bathe…”

The look Lia gave her must have been more frightening than a grim-visaged Leering, for Sowe snatched the kettle and rushed to the screen without a word. Lia watched the boots disappear and heard him settle into the small wooden tub they used for bathing.

She raised the crossbar and pulled the door open a bit, grateful that the glass was so smudged with soot. Light from the lamps spilled out on Jon Hunter’s bearded face. His clothes were filthy, his shirt loose from the leather girdle, the collar open to a forest of gnarled hair.

“Oats, Lia,” he said and started to push past her, but she held the door and put herself in the gap.

“Sowe is washing her hair. Go to Ailsa’s kitchen for oats if you are hungry.”

He sighed. “Lia, I am not walking to the other kitchen when I am here.”

“Why not? Is she trying to kiss you or something? Or just being stingy with the honey ladle?”

Jon sighed, his eyes flashing. “You have been lingering around Reome too much. The oats are not for me.”

“Who are they for?”

“I am not supposed to tell anyone. Another reason I came here.”

“Very well. And you know Pasqua’s rules about letting anyone into the kitchen but the Aldermaston after she is gone.” She rested her head against the door and raised her eyebrows.

His voice was soft. “Does the Aldermaston know you stole one of the rings from the old cemetery?” he whispered, nodding down to the front of her dress.

Lia nearly lost her composure. She had forgotten to tuck it back inside her dress and now he had seen it. She said as calmly as she could, “The Aldermaston knows everything that happens at Muirwood. Surely you know that. Why do you need the oats? You know I can keep secrets, Jon Hunter. You know that very well.”

He sighed. “I will tell you, but remember it is a secret.” She nodded eagerly. “I found a horse in the woods today.”

“Really? Can I see it?”

He smirked. “If you do not tell anyone, Lia.”

“Even Pasqua?”

“Of course not her, though you know the Aldermaston trusts her.”

“I will fetch your oats then.” She held the door a moment and then shouted, “Sowe, don’t come out yet. It is Jon.”

She quickly ascended the ladder and carried down a sack of oats. After shoving it into Jon’s hands, she was about the close the door when he stopped it with his boot.

“Whose shirt is drying by the fire?”

For a moment, Lia’s mind emptied of all ideas. Jon was trained as a hunter, and his watchful eyes noticed everything, first the ring and next the shirt. She stood for a moment, guilty, her ideas gone to the winds. Her mouth went dry. What could she say? What could she tell him?

“It is my secret,” Lia said, blushing uncontrollably, and then she had the next idea. “I cannot share it, but you could ask Reome since she knows.”

Jon gave her a confused look and withdrew into the night.

After she shut the door, she pressed her forehead against it. Hiding a man for three days would be more difficult than she thought.

* * *

“The first commonly accepted reference to the term ‘Aldermaston’ was engraved in the Third Tome of Soliven, one of the more tedious texts that learners struggle to translate their first year. The passage can be read thus: ‘And he that is the Aldermaston among the brothers and sisters of the Family, upon whose head the anointing oil was poured, and is consecrated to put on the garments of chaen, shall not reveal his wisdom, nor rend his clothes; neither shall he go in to any dead body; neither shall he go out of the Abbey grounds, nor profane the Abbey grounds; for the crown of the anointing oil is upon him.’ The record goes on to speak about what wife he may take and what blemishes may disqualify him from the anointing.

“This is the accepted origin of the term ‘Aldermaston’ by most learners, and many hold mastons themselves to these high standards, excluding knights, armigers, or squires who fight in the service of their king, properly sanctioned, and thus visit death upon the bodies of their foes.

“I am told there exists another translation of the Tome of Soliven, which mentions and describes the first use of the term ‘Aldermaston’ in a different manner. It tells of King Zedakah, back in the day of the first Family. As a young boy, he was strong enough in the Medium to stop, as Soliven wrote it, the mouths of lions and quench the violence of fire. He instructed the ancestors of the first Family in the order of Aldermaston, telling them that they should have power, through the Medium and by their lineage, to break mountains, to divide the seas, to dry up waters, to turn them out of their course; to defy the armies of nations, to divide the earth, to stand in the midst of the sun; to do all things according to the will of the Medium, and at its command, subdue principalities and all powers.