‘Where was all this wisdom twenty years ago, messire?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘I hadn’t a grain of it, sweeting.’
She shook her head. ‘I miss Rupert. Seems an odd thing to say to you, but he was solid. And he was better with Pippa than I am.’
John shook his head, leaned into the chimney corner and stuck his booted feet out towards the fire. ‘I was never jealous of him. I’d never make a husband.’ He looked at her. ‘He’d never ha’ made a knight.’
‘True that,’ she said. ‘I crave your hands on my body,’ she said suddenly.
‘Now who’s wanton?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Any gate, you best not come to me tonight while the nun is here.’
He smiled and rose. ‘In that case, I’ll not quibble to hold the plough and work up a good sweat.’
‘Though you look very fine,’ she replied.
As swift as a sword strike, he bent over and planted his mouth on hers.
Three long breaths later, she broke away. ‘Fie!’ she said. Delight rather ruined her attempt to be severe. ‘Broad daylight!’
Later the nun came into the yard, and Ser John, now stripped to his hose, took her palfrey, and then used a fork to muck the straw and put in new. She brought feed.
‘I have your package,’ he said. ‘Right here in my saddle pack.’
She smiled. ‘You needn’t have. We’re not much for things of this world.’ She smiled more broadly. And then frowned. ‘I haven’t seen a Wild creature, but down towards the old ferry I saw a swathe of destruction as if a herd of oeliphants had made a dance floor. Trees are down. And there’s a house I think I remember intact, now roofless.’
‘By the ferry?’ Ser John asked. He was rooting in his pack and it began to occur to him that he’d left her package on his work table in Albinkirk. ‘How often do you get to the ferry?’
‘Every week,’ she said. ‘I have a special dispensation to say mass at the ruined chapel there. It’s the only kirk for seven mile.’
Ser John had a sudden notion. ‘Wait,’ he said. He reached in his belt-purse, and there it was – a package the size of a big walnut. ‘Not in my saddle bag at all, I fear,’ he said ruefully.
She took the package and looked at it. He thought she looked disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘May I borrow your eating knife?’
He drew it from the sheath of his roundel and handed it to her, and she slit the waxed linen of her package. It proved to actually be a walnut. She cracked it open it and gasped.
He paused and then said, ‘Are you all right?’
Her face worked, and she was weeping silently. Then she gathered her wits. ‘Bastard!’ she spat, and hurled the walnut shell across the stable to clatter against a distant stone wall, lost in the darkness.
Ser John, provided with yet another test of chivalry, elected to slip quietly out the main stable door. Some things are too perilous for mere men, and the air around her had begun to glow a golden green, casting light in the dark stable, and he didn’t think he was up to whatever she might be about to face.
But in a few heartbeats the light died away, and he heard a fragile laugh. She stepped into the dying light of the day from the darkness of the stable, and something glittered on her hand.
‘He sent me a profession ring,’ she said. She held out her hand, the way a woman might show a betrothal ring. The ring bore the letters ‘IHS’ in beautiful Gothic script.
‘Who did?’ asked Ser John, feeling like a man caught in someone else’s story.
She frowned. ‘I think you know,’ she said.
Ser John bowed. ‘Then I think he’s a bastard, too.’
Over dinner, the women admired the ring. It was gold, and very handsome. Sister Amicia was back in control of herself – she showed the ring calmly, and admitted readily that Ser John had brought it to her.
Phillippa tried to tease her, leaning forward and saying, ‘Perhaps it is from a secret admirer!’
The look she received caused her to sit silently for five whole minutes.
Helewise kept shifting in her seat, looking at the ring from various angles, and finally she reached out, almost unconsciously, and caught Sister Amicia’s hand. ‘It seems hermetical,’ she said.
‘It is!’ Amicia said, obviously delighted. ‘I can store potentia in it. It is a blessed thing.’ She smiled at Helewise. ‘How did you know?’
Helewise shrugged. ‘It seems to change shape.’
‘Change shape?’ asked the nun. She grinned. ‘I haven’t seen that. What shape does it take?’
Helewise shook her head. ‘You – a holy woman of power – accepted this token and put it on without question?’
Amicia paled. But her face cleared when she drew the ring easily from her finger, and it sat, heavy and potent, in her hand. ‘You are right, Helewise, and Sister Mirim will rightfully assign me a penance for recklessness. Among other things,’ she said, frowning.
‘There it goes again,’ said Helewise. ‘It changed shape in the palm of your hand. Just for a moment.’
‘What did it look like?’ asked Amicia.
‘Much the same, I suppose,’ Helewise said, looking at Ser John for support. He smiled at her, having seen nothing.
But young Jamie leaned forward with the earnestness of the young. ‘Ma soeur, sometimes it doesn’t say IHS.’
Amicia flushed. ‘It doesn’t? What does it say?’
He shrugged. ‘It looks to me like “G amp;A”.’
Amicia sighed. ‘Damn,’ she said, and dropped the ring into her belt pouch. Then she smiled her girlish, impulsive smile at Phillippa, and said, ‘I think you are right after all. A secret admirer.’
The Wild North of the Inner Sea – Thorn
Thorn had walked several hundred miles, by his own count. He had crossed the Adnacrags, and then he had crossed the Wall, and then he had crossed the river. He had gone west, and he had gone north.
His wanderings took him to the great marshes where boggles bred in the freezing headwaters of the immense river system that defined the borders of the far west. He worked his will on them, not once but five times – in a swamp so vast and desolate that there seemed nothing alive but rotting vegetation and ooze for a day’s walk in every direction, and the massive mounds that bred the boggles rose like organic volcanoes at his command.
And then he started east, now on the north shore of the mighty Inner Sea. He had never been here before but he walked with confidence, and the knowledge of where to place his feet seemed to roll like a helpful poison from the black space in his head.
Somewhere to the east lay the land of the Sossag people. Beyond them was the country of the Northern Huran.
Thorn felt it would be petty for a being of his power to avenge himself on the barbaric Sossag for their failure to aid him in his hour of need. He felt such behaviour was beneath him, but he found himself plotting it nonetheless. The Huran had lost many warriors in his service. The Sossag had not. They had chosen to go their own way.
North of the Inner Sea was a different kind of country – Wild, indeed, but thickly populated with Outwallers. He had had no idea that the Great North Woods held so many men and women and children, and he moved cautiously. It was not that he lacked the power to destroy; but he had learned enough humility to know that moving undetected created fewer complications. He moved cautiously west, skirting the settlements of the great beaver and the Gothic swamps of the Kree where the Hastrenoch bred amid dead trees and brook trout. He passed to the north of the outlying Sossag villages and their northern cousins of the Messaka, and turned south into the squalid villages of the Northern Huran, whose markings he recognised. There were also ruder settlements – wild irks without a lord, and in the middle of the lakes, islands made of great logs and piled rocks by the Ruk. The giants.
The black space in Thorn’s head had plans for the Ruk.
He stood on the shore of a lake in the burned lands and waited until the Ruk came to him. He gave them gifts, like children at a party, and turned them to his own ends. The Ruk were too simple for debate and argument – instead he ensnared them and sent them on his business, breaking them to his will as easily as a man disciplines a dog.