Chapter 25: River of God
Even as they spoke, the hovering gray sky began to pour rain. The wind blew from the north, surprisingly warm. Ramsaidh led them off the road, across the slope in the face of the rain. When they had well left the road behind, Ramsaidh turned his horse around to them.
"We will have to make our way down to Salimont. If we continue north and west, we will inevitably find the great Marish. If we skirt it to the westward, eventually we will come to the Brad River. Once we cross it, we must only continue west, and where we come out of the forest, we will be in Ardinéa."
"Squire Ramsaidh," said Margaret, "Why do you do this?"
"I have hated this whole affair. The Bradmeads have always held that we need to flex our arm now and then in order to retain our fief, for former kings have often tried to put us under tribute or eliminate our independence; that is, until Fearnon. These past few years we have entertained these Vallards, while they plumped up our pride and ambitions. When I say we, I mean my father and his father and brothers, and the Tolebroughs and Gawens of Saint Fay and all the Southards. They thought that hosting the Vallards was a wonderful way of flouting King Fearnon. There were some who were suspicious and said the Vallards had other designs. I never knew what to think, but I know now. Now we have overreached, and are all spread along our border, and the Vallards are ravaging the coast, and it is our own doing."
"But will you not be expected to join the troops in Caer Tolebrough? What will they do when they learn what you have done?"
"Probably Lord Givson will be hoping that his ill-fated foray will have been forgotten. Do ye know, we set out to take Caer Aldene, by night? But we were bewildered, then we came out on the road, and there were yeer sister and friends, and we had to capture them, for they had seen us. In questioning Lady Hildreth we realized it was too far from Aldene to make our way there secretly, and Saint Savior's offered an easily taken refuge. Then Givson had the brilliant idea to recoup the loss by kidnapping Hildreth and ye." Disgust and anger registered in his demeanor.
He turned his horse, and Margaret and Willa looked at each other. Hope lit each face, wet with rain.
In silence they rode through the dreary afternoon, but Margaret's heart sang with gratitude, and was sick in other moments with worry for her sister and nieces. The warm rain began to come in sheets, until about an hour before sunset, when the storm suddenly swept away, taking the clouds with it. The group stopped to camp and ate bread. Ramsaidh took out a flint and steel and some fibrous material and started a campfire to dry their clothes. He opened the mule's packs and fed them grain. He handed them the bundle of small things Givson had taken from them at the abbey. Margaret was almost beside herself with happy anxiety to be going back to her own country. But Willa was thinking, "What is he giving up for us?"
From Margaret's pocket she pulled the gold chain she had hidden there and put it on. Willa withdrew from her pocket the tortoiseshell comb Ramsaidh had loaned her.
Willa handed it to the squire. "Thank you, I have my own comb again," she said. He examined it, squatting in the firelight, rubbing his thumb along the smoothness of the teeth. "My mother also is dead," she said softly.
He looked at her uncomprehending for a moment, then understood. "I am sorry about yeer mother, Maid Willa. My own mother is living, in the convent of Saint Fay's." He looked at the comb, his homely brow knitting, looking troubled. His chin actually began to quiver and he turned away. Willa began to move away, but he turned suddenly and cried out, "Pray for my soul, Willa! What a wicked thing I have done, shunning my own conscience and calling it duty -- I don't even dare ask forgiveness."
Willa turned back to him, moved in spite of herself. She laid a hand on his arm. "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive," she murmured.
"But--"
"Do you think your sin is too big for God?" said Willa, relentlessly. "Did He die on the cross for only little sins? Or was His sacrifice not sufficient for Ramsaidh FitzElleryn's sins?" Ramsaidh began to chuckle through his sniffles. He tried to look at her, but had to turn away to mop his face before turning back.
"All right then. His grace is sufficient, thank God. But I will not ask for grace from ye-- not that I don't think ye would give it; but because I know ye would, it is my desire to earn yeer esteem." He patted her hand that still rested on his arm, then took it and pressed the comb into it. "Please keep this. I have other tokens from my mother, and ye have more need of it than I." Then he moved away and began to fix up a shelter for them to sleep in.
Late in the next morning they reached the bank of the Brad River. As they began to follow it west, they were forced to dismount and lead the animals down the rough places where the river descended. Margaret wondered if ever they would find a place to cross, but cross they must, for the other side of the river was Ardinéa. But the river was swift with yesterday's rain.
As the sun began to descend the sky, they passed a place where the river spread, and it looked as if the animals could cross. Still they continued on for some time, hoping for better, but then Ramsaidh said that they should turn back and cross there.
"I must go over first, and build a good fire, for inevitably, our things will be dunked, and this clear sky means a chilly night. Although it should be our last in the forest-- by this time tomorrow we should be at the gates of Hearthbrough."
He took the leads of the mules, and plunged his unsaddled palfrey into the greenish water. The water reached his thighs and the mules were required to swim; Ramsaidh merely released the lines and the mules swam across, reaching the bank farther on. Once across, he jumped off his horse and ran down the bank to fetch the mules. He had the fire going and the blankets from the mules' loads spread in about an hour, while Margaret and Willa sat on the opposite bank, listening to the roar of the river, and spotting migrating hawks and geese overhead, a pair of weasels foraging the riverbank, and an otter who disappeared shyly beneath the water. Then Ramsaidh crossed back over to them. "Yeer Skara can easily make this crossing. The old fellow, Thistle, I am not sure of. He'll most likely have to swim a bit. Ye, m'lady, cross on Wintauk-- my palfrey, here. Tuck yeer legs up high as you cross, and lay on his neck. I'll swim over with the old one."
"Swim!" said Margaret, but saw no alternative. She mounted the huge horse and gripped the rein firmly, and spoke the horse's name. The shaggy bay's ears turned to her voice as she clucked him into the river, his hooves crunching the gravel under the water. Willa soon followed, and Ramsaidh walked into the water, leading the old dun, who immediately began to give him trouble, balking rather than face the water. Patiently Ramsaidh worked him farther into the stream, talking firmly to him and walking by his head, gripping the reins close to his mouth.
Margaret recoiled from the water, drawing her legs awkwardly onto the horse's back. Willa did the same as they entered the deepest part of the channel. Margaret kept her eyes on the cheering sight of the fire at the opposite side-- in Ardinéa.
Then Wintauk stumbled.
She fell forward over his neck and slipped toward the downriver side as the horse struggled with his footing. The cold water was a shock and she cried out, trying to regain her seat by pulling up on the reins and the horse's mane. The horse that Ramsaidh was leading reared and bellowed, and Wintauk yanked his head away from Margaret, turning to the sound of the struggle between his master and the other horse. Her gloved hand slipped to the end of one rein as the current pulled her away from the horse; she gasped from the cold closing over her, filling her boots and gloves, her heavy garments wrapping around her and dragging her down. Willa shrieked and kicked Skara ahead toward her, but the unruffled mare merely continued.
Ramsaidh had let go the dun, who turned for the bank from which they had come and ran into the forest; while Ramsaidh plunged into the river. But Margaret was being swept along much faster in the middle of the stream, her head and flailing arms rising and sinking. Wintauk reached Ramsaidh and he climbed on the horse's back and crossed
the river. He began to ride down the other bank, for Margaret had vanished down the rapids where the river narrowed.
Margaret gasped and coughed and struggled for a breath over and under the dark water, every inch of her skin screaming from the cold. Boulders flashed threateningly by and the water sucked her ever faster away. Dark blots began to crowd her dimming vision, as a strange warmth and peace began to enfold her. She could no longer feel or move her limbs or get a breath and did not care. Then her body slammed against a submerged rock, and she forgot her struggle and surrendered to the delectable sleep of darkness.
The water slowed where the river widened, and in the twilight, bare feet disturbed the smoothness of a slow-eddying pool where Margaret drifted. There was a sound in the dusk, as of silver bells.
In the last light, Willa picked her way down the bank on Skara's back, sobbing occasionally as she desperately scanned the bleak water. She met Ramsaidh, his head hanging, leading his exhausted horse back up the river bank. Both he and Wintauk were stumbling. Willa cried out at the story his sagging shoulders told. He shivered violently and could barely lift himself to Skara's back. Uncaring, Willa felt dampness seeping through her clothing where he leaned against her back, breathing hard.
Empty and numb inside, the tears drying in tracks on her freckled face, she rode Skara back to the dying fire. Ramsaidh collapsed by its warmth, as Willa threw some sticks on the embers and stirred them to life. They hissed and reluctantly began to burn, smoking heavily. She watched the smoke drift over Ramsaidh, and in the crackling silence she realized that his shoulders were racked with more than shivers. Blindly she picked up his woolen tunic that he had discarded earlier and brought it to him as he stripped off his damp linen shirt. He put it on and then turned to his horse, leading him closer to the fire and rubbing; but after the long walk up the bank, the horse didn't seem to need it. Ramsaidh fed the animals.
Every moment was an effort and a burden for Willa. She stared at the flames as Ramsaidh stripped the gear from the horses and moved tiredly about. After a time he squatted by her, offering bread, which she refused with a slight shake of her head.
"I will take ye back to yeer people tomorrow," he murmured huskily.
"I have no people." She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, laying her head upon them. "Margaret was all I had."
Silence dragged slow like a rusted chain, marked only by the crackling of the fire and the weeping of the river. Finally Ramsaidh bestirred himself to lay out the horse blankets for them to sleep on opposite sides of the fire. He found Willa's cloak in the gear and very slowly wrapped it around her shoulder. Her hair drooped forward, hiding her face, straying in the dirt too close to the fire. Gingerly he brushed it back over her shoulder. His hand brushed her neck and he felt tears wet the back of his fingers. Washing over his howling self-reproach was the desire to wrap himself around her.
But Willa's own longings were barred within the stone wall of her eyes. She sat, numbing from the outside in, unable to move. She drifted to sleep, sitting, late in the night, and strong hands softly gripped her shoulders and laid her on the blanket, tucking the cloak around her. Though it woke her, she did not stiffen or recoil, but found that one small edge of her engulfing loneliness melted away.
Tamlyn knelt in the white chapel in Caer Leighame. Part of his mind counted the strikes of the tower bell. With the other part he forced himself to form coherent phrases of intercession to mingle with groanings that could not be uttered. He had arrived in King's Leigh to find that Clewode had finally deferred to Princess Liona, now Queen Liona, in order to get on with things; but the reality was that it was Clewode who commanded the Ardinéan legion, while Liona occupied Caer Leighame as a beloved figurehead. Even more surprising was the development that the troops were to muster out beginning the following morning to march unopposed into the heart of the Fiefs, to fight with Southards against the Vallards. The matter of Deermont and the abbey and his slain men-at-arms was being tabled; the hostages were in the process of being returned.
But his relief was short-lived, for his wife and her handmaid had come up missing. Before running south with tucked tail, Lord Givson had reported the loss of his best squire and oh yes, two Ardinéan females. Highwaymen were blamed; one of their horses had returned to its owner at the site of the new castle.
Five bells. Vespers was in one hour, then he must report to Clewode for final instructions before the morning's march. Clewode wanted to see the horse he had given Tamlyn, who had to be geared up. Tamlyn needed to pick up his sword from the arms shop where it was being sharpened. No, he would send Faulk after it: that bought him some minutes in the sanctuary.
Margaret had prayed in this very chapel, wondering where he was. The same God heard her prayers then, and his now.
By now all Ardinéa was aware of the attack on the Fiefs, and Ramsaidh was accepted in the Priory at Hearthbrough, though the brooch Willa had returned to him plainly declared him a Bradmead. He turned over the possessions of Saint Savior's and offered coronets to pay for their return there. Both were given baths and Willa ate in the refectory, Ramsaidh in the priest's house.
Vespers' echo was dying away in the gleaming chapel, the candles being snuffed. Ramsaidh had slipped in late and knelt behind Willa, whose washed hair glinted in the candlelight about her bowed head. She stood and he stood, waiting, and finally she turned. He was shaven and dressed in good clothing, a white shirt and dark jerkin and trousers. Her eyes went wide and she held her breath. Ramsaidh offered her an arm and they walked from the chapel. When they were out the door, he said, "Maid Willa, I need to know what ye plan to do. I wish to put myself at your service, if you wish it."
Willa was still, looking at the silver clasps of his jerkin. "I know I must find Lord Tamlyn, and tell him--. . ." Her chin quivered.
"I will take ye there." It was an offer. Willa realized she was being asked.
"Aye, Sir. I suppose so." She wiped her eyes and looked up at him. "I am not accustomed to making the decisions. I would be waiting to know your plans."
"If Tamlyn doesn't have me jailed, then I don't know. I can no longer serve Lord Givson. I must find another master then, or...think and pray what to do next. What I'd like to do next, is hold ye," he thought. "I'd like to wed ye, and make ye mine. But I cannot ask that of ye now. Jesu, help me."
Willa's hand touched his arm. "My lord Tamlyn is not a vengeful man," she said with sad pride lighting her eyes. "So we will ride for King's Leigh in the morning? And I will pray for you, that you know what to do next, and you for me?"
"Aye, that I will," he said, his voice deserting him.