Part 30 (1/2)

I watched her, fascinated. The words were soft, even tender. ”You loved him,” I said.

She glared at me, and her words were hard again. ”What does it matter if I did? He's been gone near twenty years. He was a fool, and what do handsome looks and a kindly way matter then? Why he thought he had to go there that day, why he couldn't leave it to others-to her own people-I don't know. But he took up an ax, and he-”

Her lips pressed together in a tight line. I should have gone, should have left her alone with her memories. Instead, I moved another step closer. ”He took an ax-to the tree, you mean. The tree on the green.”

For so many months I had lived in dread of Mrs. Darendal and her ire; I had sought always to stay out of her way. Yet at that moment it was her eyes that were alight with dread. She retreated a step.

”Aye,” she said in a low voice. ”To the tree.”

”And others went there.” A peculiar energy came over me, like the lightning that precedes a storm. ”They brought axes with them, like Mr. Darendal. I saw the ax heads there, rusting in the gra.s.s. They brought torches as well. But why?”

Mrs. Darendal took another step back, but the table was behind her; she could go no farther.

”What happened to Mr. Darendal that day?”

The housekeeper shook her head, leaning back against the table.

”Why did they go to the green in Cairnbridge?” I made my voice sharp. ”Why did they burn down the tree?”

The housekeeper struck the table behind her with her palms. ”Because the witch had gotten to it!”

A piercing scream rang out. For a moment I thought it a woman's scream. Then Mrs. Darendal glanced at the stove behind me, and I remembered the kettle.

Now it was I who retreated. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up a cloth and used it to pull the kettle from the stove. As its noise dwindled, I lifted a hand to my brow; my head throbbed. At last I dared to look at her. Her expression was hard once more; the knife was back in her hand.

”The witch?” I said. ”I don't understand.”

”Don't you, Miss Lockwell? You are from the city, but you have read the histories, I am sure. Have you never heard of a Rising?”

”A Rising,” I said faintly. Suddenly it was difficult to draw a breath.

She gave a grim nod, then went back to her work. I thought she would say nothing more to me, that our conversation was over. I started to leave the kitchen.

”She was an Addysen as well,” Mrs. Darendal said.

I stopped at the door and turned around. ”The witch?”

”Aye. Now get your tea, Miss Lockwell, and sit down.”

I did, and then I listened as the housekeeper spoke of what had happened on the green in Cairnbridge nineteen years ago.

L OW THUNDER RUMBLED as I entered the front hall. According to the almanac, night would not fall for two more hours, yet I could hardly see to find my way. The only illumination came from the occasional flashes of lightning, which sent shadows scurrying and made the heads of stag and boar on the walls s.h.i.+ft and move as things again alive.

I sank into one of the horsehair chairs. Another flash of lightning cut through the gloom, as sharp as the knife Mrs. Darendal had wielded as she spoke of what happened to the tree in Cairnbridge-the gallows tree, she had called it.

Long ago, the tree on the common green would never have been allowed to grow. That was the first thing she had told me. In the country, it was the custom to plant no tree within four furlongs of a stand of Wyrdwood, and it was less than that from Cairnbridge to the patch of ancient forest that had stood on the hill to the north of the village.

But it was only a little less than four furlongs, people had said-surely very near to four-and the patch of Wyrdwood was small, no more than three hundred paces all around the wall that enclosed it.

Even so, had it not already been a great tree by the time people settled again in Cairnbridge, it would have been cut down. However, the county had been all but devoid of population after the Plague Years. For over a century the village had been empty of people, its fields fallow, and in that time a seed had taken root on the common green.

By the time people returned to Cairnbridge, the tree was already a great thing, spreading its branches across the common field, providing shade on long afternoons and acorns to roast in the cold depths of a greatnight. Nor did people entirely recall the reasons for the old customs. So it was that the proud oak had been allowed to grow until its branches reached over the entire green, and no one ever thought of the little stand of straggled trees that stood on the hill to the north.

Yet the ancient trees of the Wyrdwood sink their roots deep, and over long years the slender fibers might travel far beneath the ground. A few of them must have finally reached the New Oak on the commons nearly half a mile below, twining with its roots, merging with them. All the same, nothing might ever have come of it. Only then...

Where the two men came from, no one knew for certain.

They were drifters. Some who spoke to them at the inn said they had been driven off the land they had occupied when it was enclosed by an earl for his private hunting ground, in one of the counties nearer to Invarel. With nowhere to go, they had gone westward, to places enclosure had not yet reached, and with no good work to do, they had taken to drinking. They had come to the inn at Cairnbridge early on a short day, and by that evening they had been thrown out and told to be on their way.

What happened then no one witnessed, but it could be guessed well enough. As they stumbled from the village in the dusk before a greatnight, they had come upon a young woman riding home. Being rough, and drunk, and full of hatred, they had accosted her. The woman fled, but the men overtook her, dragging her from her horse and away from the village, up a hill to the north. Until they came to an old stone wall.

Again lightning cut through the gloom, and I shuddered. Had the men used her ill? Perhaps they had, or perhaps they had only tried. Either way, the result was the same. The young woman had cried out for help.

And the Wyrdwood had answered.

Perhaps she had not known she was a witch. Or perhaps she had fled toward the wood with purpose. It did not matter, at least not for the two men. By the time people from the village came up the hill with torches, they found the pair swinging among the branches, hung by lithe green switches braided around their necks.

By then the great oak on the commons was burning. However, the tree was not destroyed without terrible cost. In contact with the trees of the Wyrdwood, the oak on the green had heard her call just as they had. It had lashed out with no warning, taking two men as they stepped from the inn and strayed near the green. It had taken three more who had tried to free the first two from its branches. For, in the witch's blind fury, they were no different from the men who had accosted her.

The folk of Cairnbridge might have forgotten the old ways before then, but they remembered them quickly enough that night. The bell on the village church rang out; men answered the call with ax and fire. They hewed at the hard wood of the oak, threw oil against it, and set its branches alight, until it became a column of flame a hundred feet high. Thus the great old tree was brought down-but not before it took two more men and hung them high in the gallows of its branches.

One of those men was Mr. Darendal. Seven men in all were killed in the Rising that night, in addition to the two drifters who met their end in the Wyrdwood on the hill.

And what of her? I had said when Mrs. Darendal fell silent.

What of Merriel Addysen, you mean? She looked at me with hard gray eyes. The witch was still hiding in the Wyrdwood when they burned it from wall to wall. I am certain her spirit now dwells in the darkest pits of the Abyss. For G.o.d knows the doors of Eternum are shut to such a thing of sin.

With that Mrs. Darendal had set down her knife and left the kitchen.

Thunder rattled the windows again, and I rose and staggered up the stairs. There had not been a Rising in centuries, if there had ever really been one at all-so I had always thought. Yet if Mrs. Darendal was to be believed, there had been one in this very county not twenty years ago.

And I did believe her. How could I not? I had seen the burnt patch on the hill north of Cairnbridge. I had seen the looks they gave me in Low Sorrell. Had Merriel Addysen possessed green eyes? I could not doubt that she had, not when I had seen the way they regarded me.

Yet if this had happened here, if there had indeed been a Rising just as in the ancient accounts, why was it never spoken of? Why was it not taught in schools and written about in books? Surely the king would want such a thing widely known, so people might be warned and take precautions.

I could not think; my mind was aflutter. Another peal of thunder shook the foundations of the house. My only thought was that I must go to the children, that they would be frightened of the storm. I hurried down the corridor and opened the door to their room.

It was empty and silent.

”Come out this instant!” I said, certain they were playing a trick on me-some ruse of Clarette's devising.

I peered through the murk. The covers were thrown back on their beds. The door of the wardrobe hung ajar. So they were hiding elsewhere. I was on the verge of turning to go in search of them when I felt a chill draft. The curtains to either side of the window billowed outward. I went to the window to close the sash against the gale. Just then lightning flared again outside. As it did, motion below caught my eye.

Two small figures ran across the grounds behind the house.

I could not move. Dread was a cold metal cage enclosing me. The two little shadows flitted away from the house and vanished into the mist.

The curtain brushed my face like a damp hand. I lurched back. Then, my paralysis broken, I dashed from the room. Stumbling down the stairs, I made for a servants' entrance at the back of the house. The latch was stiff. I pried it open with my fingers, pushed the door open, and ran outside into the dreary air of late afternoon.

”Chambley!” I cried out. ”Clarette!”