“Canoc, can we leave—go? Now?” my mother said in a whisper, in the long stone passage that led to our room.
“Wait,” he answered. We got to our room and shut the door. “I need to talk to Parn Barre. We’ll go early. He won’t do us any harm tonight.”
She gave a kind of laugh of despair.
“I’ll be with you,” he said. She let go of my arm to hold him and be held.
That was all as it should be, and I was very glad to hear we were going to escape, but I had a question that needed an answer.
“The girl,” I said, “Vardan.”
I felt them look at me, and there was a little silence while no doubt their eyes met.
“She’s small, and not ugly,” my mother said, “She has a sweet smile. But she’s…”
“An idiot,” my father said.
“No, Canoc, not that bad— But… not right. She’s like a child, I think, in her mind. A little child. I don’t think she’ll ever be anything more.”
“An idiot,” my father repeated. “This is what Drum offered us as a wife for you, Orrec.”
“Canoc,” my mother murmured, scared, as I was, by the fiery hatred in his voice.
There was a knocking at our door. My father went to answer it. There were low-voiced consultations. After some while he came back, without my mother, to where I was sitting on the edge of my cot. “The child’s been taken with seizures,” he said, “and Daredan’s asked for your mother to help her. Melle made fast friends with most of the women here, while we were out pig hunting and making enemies.” He gave a humorless, weary laugh. I could hear him sit down, letting himself down all at once like a tired hound, in the chair before the unlit hearth.
“I wish we were out of here, Orrec!”
“So do I,” I said.
“Lie down and sleep. I’ll wait for your mother.”
I wanted to wait for her too, and tried to sit up with him; but he came and pushed me over gently onto the cot and covered me with the fine, warm woollen blanket, and I was asleep the next moment.
I woke suddenly and was wide awake. A cock was crowing away down in the barnyards. It might be dawn, or long before dawn. There was some small noise in the room, and I said, “Father?”
“Orrec? Are you awake? It’s dark, I can’t see.” My mother felt her way to my cot and sat down beside me. “Oh, I’m so cold!” she said. She was shivering violently. I tried to put the warm blanket up around her shoulders, and she pulled it around us both.
“Where’s Father?”
“He said he had to talk to Parn Barre. He says we’ll leave as soon as there’s light to see by. I told Denno and Daredan we were leaving. They understand. I just said we had been away too long and Canoc was worried about the spring plowing.”
“What was wrong with the girl?”
“She gets overtired easily and has spasms, and her mother is frightened by it, poor thing. I sent her off to get some sleep, she doesn’t get much, and sat with the little girl. And then I half fell asleep there, and I don’t know…It seemed…I got so cold, I can’t seem to get warm…” I hugged her, and she snuggled up next to me. “Finally some of the other women came and could stay with the child, and I came back here, and your father went to find Parn. I suppose I should get our things ready to go. But it’s so dark still. I keep looking for the dawn.”
“Stay and get warm,” I said, and we sat there trying to warm each other until my father came back. He had his flint and steel and could light a candle, and my mother hurried our few things together into the saddlebag. We stole through the halls and passages and down the stairs and out of the house. I could smell dawn in the air, and the cocks were crowing as if they meant it. We went to the stables, where a sleepy, surly fellow roused up and helped us saddle our horses. My mother led Roanie out and held her while I mounted. I sat in the saddle waiting.
I heard my mother make a little surprised, grieving noise. Hoofs clopped on the cobbles as another of the horses was led out. She said,
“Canoc, look.”
“Ach,” he said in disgust.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The chicks,” my father said, low-voiced. “His people set the basket down where your mother gave it to them. Left it. Left the birds to die.”
He helped Melle mount Greylag, and then rode Branty out of the stable; the stable boy opened the courtyard gate for us, and we rode out.
“I wish we could gallop,” I said. My mother in her anxiety thought I meant it and said, “We can’t, dear,” but Canoc, riding close behind me, gave a short laugh. “No,” he said, “we’ll run away at a walk.”
The birds were all singing now from tree to tree, and I kept thinking, as my mother had, that I would soon see the light of dawn.
After we had ridden several miles, she said, “It was a stupid gift to bring to a house like that.”
“Like that?” said my father. “So grand and great, you mean?”
“In their own eyes,” said Melle Aulitta.
I said, “Father, will they say we ran away?”
“Yes.”
“Then we shouldn’t—should we?”
“If we stayed, Orrec, I’d kill him. And though I’d like to kill him in his own house, I can’t pay the price of that pleasure. He knows it. But I will get a little of my own back.”
I didn’t know what he meant, nor did my mother, till in the middle of the morning we heard a horse coming up behind us. We were alarmed, but Canoc said, “It’s Parn.”
She drew up with us and greeted us in her husky voice that was like Gry’s. “So, where are your cattle, Canoc?” she said.
“Under that hill, ahead there.” And we jogged on. Then we stopped, and my mother and I dismounted. She led me to a grassy place by a stream where I could sit. She took Greylag and Roanie into the water to drink and cool their feet; but Canoc and Parn rode off, and soon I could not hear them at all. “Where are they going?” I asked.
“Into that meadow. He must have asked Parn to call the heifers.”
And after what seemed a long time, during which I listened nervously for the sound of pursuit and vengeance coming down the road and heard nothing but birdsong and the distant lowing of cattle, Mother said, “They’re coming,” and soon I heard the grass swishing at the legs of the animals, and Branty s greeting whuff to our horses, and my father’s voice saying something with a laugh to Parn.
“Canoc,” my mother said, and he replied at once, “It’s all right, Melle. They’re ours. Drum looked after them for us, and now I’m taking them home. It’s all right.”
“Very well,” she said unhappily.
And soon we all went on together, she first, then I, then Parn with the two heifers following close behind her, and Canoc bringing up the rear.
The cattle did not slow us down; young and lively, and of a hauling, plowing breed, they stepped right out with the horses and kept up a good pace all day. We came onto our own domain by mid-afternoon, and cut across the northern part of it, heading for Roddmant. It had been Parn’s suggestion that we take the heifers there and leave them in the Rodd pastures for a while with their old herd. “A little less provocative,” she said, “and a good deal harder for Drum to steal back.”
“Unless he comes calling on you,” Canoc said.
“That’s as may be. I’ll have no more to do with Ogge Drum in any way, except that if he wants a feud he’ll have one.”
“If he has it with you he has it with us,” Canoc said, joyfully fierce.
I heard my mother whisper, “Ennu, hear and be here.” That was always her prayer when she was worried or frightened. I had asked and she had told me long ago about Ennu, who smoothed the road, blessed the work, and mended quarrels. The cat was Ennu’s creature, and the opal Melle always wore was her stone.