The next thing I knew it was late evening, the room was full of puppies and children again, and we rose and ate big hot bowlfuls of vegetable soup that had been simmering over / the fire all day. Then it was time to pull on our boots and go. The women, from their vantage point high on the slopes, had seen no riders, so we were not pursued yet. Marjorie kissed Mhari and the smallest of the babies, and warned me not to offer them money. Mhari and her friend insisted that we take bags of nuts and a loaf or two of the hard‑baked bread, telling us they had too much to load on their pack animals on the way down into the valley for winter. I didn't believe a word of it, but we could not refuse.
The next two or three nights of travel were duplicates of that one. We were blessed with good weather and there was no sign of pursuit. We slept by day, concealed hi herd‑huts, but these were deserted. We had food enough, although we were almost always cold. Marjorie never complained, but I was desperately concerned about her. I could not imagine
any woman I had ever known enduring such a journey. When I said so to Marjorie, she laughed.
"I am no pampered lowland lady, Lew, I am used to hard weather, and I can travel whenever I must, even in dead winter. Thyra would be a better companion, perhaps, she is hardened to long journeys with Bob, in and out of season ..." She fell silent, and quickly turned her face away. I kept silent. I knew how close she bad been to her sister and how she felt about this parting. It was the first time she spoke of her life at Castle Aldaran. It was also the last.
On the fourth or fifth morning we had to ride far into daylight to find any shelter at all. We were now in the wildest part of the mountains, and the roads had dwindled away to mere trails. Marjorie was dropping with weariness; I had half resolved that for once we must find a sheltered place in the woods and sleep in the open, when suddenly, riding into a small clearing, we came on a deserted farmstead.
I wondered how anyone had ever managed to farm these bleak hills, but there were outbuildings and a small stone house, a yard which had once been fenced, a well with wooden piping still splashing water into a broken stone trough in the year‑all wholly deserted. I feared it had become the haunt of birds or bats, but when I forced the door open it was weathertight and almost clean.
The sun was high and warm. While I unsaddled Marjorie bad taken off her cloak and boots and was splashing her hands in the stone trough. She said, "I am past my first sleepiness, and I have not had my clothes off since we set out. I am going to wash; I think it will refresh me better than sleep." She was suiting action to words, pulling off her riding‑skirt and fur‑lined tunic, standing before me in her long heavy shift and petticoat. I came and joined her. The water was icy cold, coming straight down from a mountain spring above us, but it was marvelously refreshing. I marveled how Marjorie could stand barefoot in the last melting runnels of the last night's snowfall, but she seemed not as cold as I was. We sat in the growing warmth of the sun afterward, eating the last of the herdwomen's coarse bread. I found a tree in the yard where the former owners had fanned mushrooms, an intricate system of small wooden pipes directing water down the trunk. Most of the mushrooms were hard and woody, but I found a few small new ones high up, and we ate them at the end of our meal, savoring their sweet freshness.
She stretched a little, sleepily. "I would like to sleep here in the sun," she said. "I am beginning to feel like some night‑bird, never coming out into the light of day."
"But I am not hardened to your mountain weather," I said, "and we may have to sleep in the open, soon enough."
She made a mock‑serious face. "Poor Lew, are you cold? Yes, I suppose we must go inside to sleep." She gathered up our heavy outer clothes and carried them. She spread them out on an old, abandoned pallet in the farmhouse, wrinkling a fastidious nose at the musty smell. I said, "It is better than dog," and she giggled and sat down on the heap of clothing.
She had on a thick woolen shift, knee‑length and with long sleeves; I had seen her far more lightly clothed at Aldaran, but there was something about being here like this that roused an awareness that fear and weariness had almost smothered. AH during this trip she had slept within the circle of my arm, but innocently. Perhaps because I was still recovering from the effects of Kadarin's brutal beating. Now, all at once, I was aware again of her physical presence. She felt it‑we were lightly in rapport all the time now‑and turned her face a little away, color rising along her cheekbones. There was a hint of defiance as she said, "Just the same, I am going to take down my hair and comb and braid it properly, before it gets tangled like Mhari's and I have to cut it off!" She raised her arms, pulled out the butterfly‑shaped clasp that held her braids pinned at the nape of her neck, and began to unravel the long plaits.
I felt the hot flush of embarrassment. In the lowlands a sister who was already a woman would not have done this even before a grown brother. I had not seen Linnell's hair loose like this since we were little children, although when we were small I had sometimes helped her comb it. Did customs really differ so much? I sat and watched her move the ivory comb slowly through her long copper hair; it was perfectly straight, only waved a little from the braiding, and very fine, and the sun, coming in cracks through the heavy wooden shutters, set it all ablaze with the glint of the precious metal. I said at last, hoarsely, "Don't tease me, Marjorie. I'm not sure I can bear it."
She did not look up. She only said softly, "Why should you? I am here."
I reached out and took the comb away from her, turning her face up to meet my eyes. "I cannot take you lightly, beloved. I would give you all honor and all ceremony."
"You cannot," she said, with the shadow of a small smile, "because I no longer ..." the words were coming slowly now, as if it were painful to speak them. "‑no longer acknowledge Beltran's right to give me in marriage. My foster‑father meant to give me to you. That is ceremony enough." Suddenly she spoke in a rush. "And I am not a Keeper now! I have renounced that, I will not keep myself separate from you, I will not, / will not!"
She was sobbing now. I flung the comb away and drew her into my arms, holding her to me with sudden violence.
"Keeper? No, no, never again," I whispered against her mouth. "Never, never again‑"
What can I say? We were together. And we were in love.
Afterward I braided her hair for her. It seemed almost as intimate as lying down together, my hands trembling as they touched the silken strands, as they had when I first touched her. We did not sleep for a long time.
When we woke it was late and already snowing heavily. When I went to saddle the horses, the wind was whipping the snow in wild stinging needles across the yard. We could not ride in this. When I came inside again, Marjorie looked at me in guilty dismay.