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By Matt Spencer
Chapter Eight
Follow Me Down Into My History
SOMEONE HAD BUILT a new church on the hill overlooking the crossroads, where the old drinking hall used to be. Heidira had seen it in daylight, through a carriage window. A lovely place, yes, but who’d found their way here with the money to build such a thing? Otherwise, Finiston looked much like it had five years ago, like any quiet village that ever sprang from the rustic English fields and forests. It had no more ghosts than most. When owls hooted at night, they were generally thoughtful enough not to look you in the eye.
It was the rest of the world that had changed, since the wars had reached the countryside, and with them this new sort of religious mania. She’d been someone else back then, too. These days, it may be worse to be the town witch than the town harlot.
Of course, she wasn’t this town’s anything. Lady Seibre was only stowing her here, to hide out for a month at most.
Either way, there’s no arguing with all the old sights and smells of a place, the taste of the air, the spots underfoot you’d know blindfolded. The bloodstream comes alive with something you’ll sooner or later need again, no matter how far you roam. It was late spring, so such smells were particularly strong, from the loose, rich earth to the tips of the ash and beech trees. Familiar faces looked longer and deeper set. Of the younger folks, she wasn’t sure who she’d once known as shorter and rosier faced, and who came with families who’d settled here since. No one seemed to recognize her.
Lady Seibre had advised her to lay low, so she’d stayed indoors ‘til everyone else was asleep. All arrangements at the inn were in place, Lady Seibre assured her. So Heidira had been left with no money, for the innkeeper would provide all food and toiletries. What sway Lady Seibre held over the innkeeper, Heidira couldn’t guess.
‘If you’re truly worth your salt, girl,’ Lady Seibre had said, ‘you’ll know by now how to draw to you anything else you might need or want.’
‘What of the troubles from which you’re hiding me? What makes this wretched place safer than anywhere else?’
‘My circle of protection shrouds this village from any that mean you harm. For now, do sit tight and watch the clock.’
As she walked the familiar moonlit streets, every sound sent her hand twitching toward the silken purse sewn to the side of the dress, where she kept her dagger. She’d lately stabbed the blade through a bulb of garlic, so the juices seeped into the metal and dried, turning the edge to deadly poison. All she’d wanted was to get lost in the moonlight, for her existence to be that simple again, just for a little while.
She should have known to avoid this crossroad, from where the new church loomed blackly against the clouds that drifted frosty blue across the moon... so near to where her mother had worked herself raw and dry, pleasuring drunken farmhands and local lords, until the night she died with her knees in the air and her back to a clay alley wall... all to feed and clothe three squalling children, two lads already dead in the wars after being pressed into service in Cromwell’s army while still little more than boys, and a daughter with nothing much to look forward to but a fate much like her mother’s. That was before a rich woman stopped in this village... speaking words Heidira had never expected to hear in waking life or from a human tongue.
Lady Seibre had handpicked her special circle from the peasantry and the educated nobility alike. Whatever else she was, she was a woman who knew how to sense out the puzzle pieces she wanted. She answered to no man. If there were limits to her wealth or followers at her beck and call, none could tell. While kings and clergy and soldiers vied for provincial power, secret sects such as hers bartered with the winds and waves, making witless pawns of worldly political figures. In any village less remote than this, any woman presenting herself as she did would still have risked being hanged as a witch, no matter how much wealth and privilege with which she presented herself. Or so Heidira would have thought, before Lady Seibre’s carriage had next rolled out of Finiston, with Heidira seated within, at her side.
During their first journey together, Lady Seibre had stopped preaching lessons and started asking questions... of the faces of Heidira saw in dreams, of what they said. When Heidira answered, she felt for the first time in waking life like the bearer and teacher of lessons... rather than some oblivious old fool or other preaching them at her, oh so smugly sure of their own stuffy wisdom. Since that day, Lady Seibre’s people had practically made Heidira a priestess in her own right. Now, look at her, right back where she started, in Finiston, as the church bells chimed out two o’clock.
Often it’s those with no interest in bothering anyone who most easily catch folks off guard while at their most overly vigilant. So it was that the raggedy young man didn’t even notice Heidira as he came shuffling wearily into town, along the old dirt road. Then one of his holey shoes scraped up a loose rock, not four feet behind her. She spun and faced him, her dagger already out and pointed at his throat.
‘Here now, whoa there!’ He shambled back, palms flying up. ‘There’s no need for all that!’
‘All what?’
‘I was only—’
‘Take your whore-sniffing elsewhere!’
‘What’s the matter with you? This how everyone around here greets travellers?’ He shook and teetered with hunger and weariness. He had a slight limp, she noticed. Even so, his eyes blazed with a feral defiance, telling her a knife mightn’t stop him if it came to that.
‘All right, then.’ She lowered her blade and placed her hands on her hips. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’
‘I can stand just fine.’ He leaned against the church wall.
‘Suit yourself. Where’d you come from?’ She edged closer for a better look.
His wrists were raw from ropes. One shoulder was a little lower than the other, as though from breaking and not healing right. Old burn scars showed through his torn clothes. ‘London... no, somewhere on the road between London and the sea... I don’t know.’
‘You walked the whole way here? How long since you slept?’ She sat on the church step. ‘You really should sit. It doesn’t look like your backside could get any dirtier.’
With a sigh, he slid down the wall and rested his arms on his knees. ‘I’m not certain when I last slept. I don’t even know when I’m dreaming or awake half the time anymore. Except when I’m awake, I keep to the forests. When I dream, I’m on a road... it winds and twists all over but usually doesn’t take me anywhere, and the sun never comes up. There’s wind, and there’s fire, and they sing me songs that tell me what to watch for. I don’t see the wind and fire right now, so I must be awake. Except I can’t even remember how I found my way here. Took you for a dream when I first saw you…’ When she smirked, he drew up a bit. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! That’s to say, you are very beautiful, but I wasn’t... Look, I’m just tired and hungry, is all... Now here’s this dirty little village, at an hour when everyone ought to be asleep in bed, and now here’s a strange girl out in the middle of nowhere, dressed up like she’s royalty or something, and…’
‘That’s all well.’ She chuckled, though he already had more of her attention than he could know. Or did he? She studied him carefully. ‘Why have you been walking so long and far, only using the road like a sensible person when you’re asleep?’
He stared at the ground and shook his head. ‘You’ll think me wicked.’
‘Only should you behave wickedly toward me.’
‘You’ll hear what I’ve done and call the town watch!’
‘What did I just tell you?’
‘My indentured master, he was one of those Puritans fleeing to the new world. He wouldn’t sign my papers of freedom, was out to force me to go with him. He’d booked passage on a ship. We were traveling by wagon. I... I... he caught me trying to run, started hitting me with his stick worse than usual. I got the stick away from him.’ He looked at his palms like they were still soaked in blood.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Frionti.’
‘My name is Heidira.’ She gazed off into the night. ‘That new world doesn’t sound so dreadful. They say there’s freedom to worship as one chooses.’
‘Aye, for the likes of my dead master.’ Frionti spat. ‘Freedom to put folks in the stocks overnight for skipping church or working on Sunday. They’ll still bugger you while you’re locked in those same stocks when they happen by, if you’ve no one sitting out with you. Good riddance to those Puritan devils!’
She shrugged. ‘A woman can still be hanged for witchcraft if she’s not careful.’
‘Are you a witch?’
She studied his gaze. Whatever he was, he was more than some weary, raggedy fugitive. ‘Yes,’ she said.
He sighed. ‘Goes hard on those who remember the old ways these days, with the wars, with the church in such an uproar and all.’
‘What do you know of the old ways?’
He blinked, bowed his head, then jerked upright. For a moment he looked at her as though noticing her for the first time, like he’d forgotten where he was.
‘I don’t suppose you took any coins off your dead master,’ she said, ‘for a room at the inn?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, come along. I’ve a room. You can sleep there tonight. We can decide what’s to be done about you in the morning.’
He peered at her incredulously. ‘You mean to cast any spells on me?’
‘No. But I sleep lightly. There’s plenty of space on the floor for you. If you try to crawl into bed with me, I shall stab you.’
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