“You carry bread?” Jase asked, wide-eyed.
“Joumeybread,” Gar clarified, “but if we soak it awhile, it’ll be soft enough to eat. Light a fire, somebody, and I’ll brew some tea.” He turned to rummage in his pack.
The door opened and three clansfolk came in with a fourth in their midst, a man who wore a jacket of a different tartan and carried a white flag on a three-foot staff. Alea turned to Moira with excitement and hope, but the seer only shook her head, mouth tight against disappointment. Alea turned back, disappointed herself, and saw that the flag was scrupulously made, the cloth stout and the edges serged, but also a bit worn, obviously washed many times. This flag of truce was no harbinger of peace; it was only a device, a convenience in the endless and deadly war of the feuds.
A pathway cleared between the doorway and Grandma, and the sentries marched down it, rifles still at the ready, the stranger holding his chin high and his flag upright. “We’ve a Cumber come to talk to you, Gram,” one of the sentries said.
The Cumber nodded in deference to Grandma’s years. “Good day to you, Helen Campbell.”
“And to you, Alan Cumber.” Grandma’s tone could have frozen the duck pond. “To what to we owe the pleasure of this visit?”
No one seemed to notice the irony of the empty social formula. Then Alea glanced at the men and women to each side and realized that it might not have been so empty after all. Whether it was simply a break in the monotony or a genuine pleasure at seeing someone from outside the family, the Campbells really were glad to see Alan Cumber. One of the older women even had a gleam in her eye as she watched him, a gleam dulled by regret. Alea looked at the intruder again, looked beneath the grizzled hair and the lined and weather-beaten skin and saw that Alan Cumber had once been handsome—in fact, that he still was, if you had eyes to see it. A pang of grief shot through Alea, grief for a romance that might have been, grief for the poor woman who had wasted her life in yearning.
“A pleasure it is indeed to see you again,” Alan Cumber said gallantly. “I come to ask a favor, though.”
“And no little courage it took to come into the stronghold of your enemies.” Grandma returned compliment for compliment. “Don’t know as how we can do a favor for a Cumber, but some requests we can’t refuse out of simple human decency. Is this one of them?”
“It is that, ma’am,” Alan said, “for we hear you’ve a healer come to visit, and our Gram is took sorely ill.”
“What, Emily Farland ill?” For a moment, genuine concern and fright showed in Grandma’s face before the granite mask stiffened again. “We were girls together, played snap-out at barn dances and sang play-party songs with the others before she turned so addle-brained as to marry a Cumber.”
“Yes, you never have had a quarrel with the Farlands, and neither have we,” Alan returned equably.
Alea stared, shocked. The neighbors to either side were enemies, but the family one farm away were friends! When she stopped to think about it, it made sense—both Campbells and Cumbers were feuding with the Gregors, and the enemy of their enemy was their friend. But how did they get together to socialize? And how rarely did they see one another, with an enemy in the way? She suddenly realized the lives these people must lead, each clan beleaguered, with an enemy in every direction and no sight of a friend save at special occasions that couldn’t come more than a few times a year.
“No, Emily and I had no quarrel, till she married a Cumber,” Grandma said, and there were undertones of grief and anger at what she still perceived as a personal betrayal. “Still, I’d do what I can for her in the name of days gone by. Do you wish to ask the healer to come to her, then?”
“That I do.”
“There she stands.” Grandma gestured toward Alea. “Ask her with our blessing.”
Alan Cumber turned to Alea, hat in his hands, and asked gravely, “Ma’am, will you come heal our Grandma?”
Alea stared, confused by the undertones of friendship and caring—no, need, need of other people under the mask of the feud.
“Surely you will, won’t you Alea?” Moira asked. “You said you’ll heal anyone who’s ill, after all.”
“I said I’ll try,” Alea corrected her. “There are many sicknesses beyond my knowledge and skill.” She turned back to Alan Cumber. “But yes, I’ll come. I’ll see her and talk to her, and if I can, I’ll heal her.”
“She don’t talk so good any more, ma’am,” Alan Cumber said.
Stroke, Alea thought, but beyond Alan Cumber she saw the naked realization of tragedy in Grandma’s face.
Then the old lady recovered her composure and turned to look from one side of the great room to another at her children and grandchildren. “Who’ll go as escorts to see these ladies safely to Marsh Creek?” She turned back to Alan. “That’s where your kinfolk will meet her, isn’t it?”
“The boundary between your lands and ours. Yes, ma’am.” Grandma nodded and looked out over the throng. “Who wants to go?”
Half a dozen men and women stepped forward, all of them young. A second behind them, their parents stepped forward, too. Alea turned to Alan Cumber. “Will you swear by Belenos to bring me back here safely?”
“Or on to the next clan that needs you? Yes, ma’am. I swear it, and that binds all my kin, since I’m their messenger.” But Alan Cumber was clearly hiding amusement. Looking about her, Alea saw the same covert smiles on the faces of the Campbells, even Grandma’s.
She couldn’t ask Moira about it until they were on the road, when the young folks’ merriment drew their anxious parents’ attention enough so that the two women could speak with a certain measure of privacy. “Moira, why are they amused by taking an oath to Belenos?”
“Why, you know why—because nobody believes in the gods anymore,” Moira said with deep regret, “no one save the Druids and a few odd ones like myself, that is.”
Alea turned back to the road. “What use is their oath; then?”
“None,” Moira said, “but their word is good. In fact, anyone caught breaking his word is liable to exile and outlawry.”
Alea stared at her. “Let me see if I understand you. They don’t believe in their own gods, but their promises are sacred?”
“Of course,” Moira said. “Something has to be.”
Gar pulled bread and cheese from his pack and was surprised that the outlaws didn’t stare and swallow; they were better fed than the last batch. Now that he noticed, they were better dressed, too; their jackets and trousers were of stout tan homespun cloth, clean and mended, not the ragtag worn-out plaids he’d seen before. The hunting must be better in this part of the forest.
One young man gathered some sticks and started a fire with sparks from his flintlock while the other members of the band slowly sat down. The leader took some strips of dried meat from a pocket and offered them to Gar. “It’s tasty, if you can chew.”
“I haven’t lost that many teeth yet.” Gar hadn’t, in fact, lost any, but he well knew that some of the clansfolk who appeared middle-aged weren’t really much older than he—a subsistence society could do that to people. He accepted a stick of jerky and took a bite in proof. It was indeed tasty, had been dried with some sort of spice. These people weren’t particularly hungry, but sharing food was a sign of mutual trust. Gar reminded himself that it wasn’t an alliance, just a beginning.
“I’m Regan,” the woman said. “What have you to trade?”
“Needles, pins, some spices, lace … that sort of thing,” Gar said.
“Lace?” Regan looked up in surprise. “Where did you get that?”
“Traded for it with an outlaw some miles from here.”
“Some miles?” Regan asked, bristling. “How many?” The bandits muttered darkly.