Thomas looked at the darkness beside him where Waldroup should have been. “Not even here, then keep your turnabout advice to yourself. If I’m to hope to survive, I have to identify the walkers before they identify me. Right, big brother? Or else get picked for their teind like my brother.”
When Waldroup’s shade failed to dispute him, he continued his walking alone.
“We need to know their number,” he muttered. “I need to know what they’ve done with Innes.”
XV. The New Teind
By the time his irregular vigils finally bore fruit, Thomas had planted his first crop of bere and beans. Lusk had shown him to divide his oxgangs into three sections, ploughing two of them, planting just one of these for now, and leaving the third fallow for a season. The second section would be for wheat and rye come the fall planting, at which time he would plow the fallow third.
Thomas had by then added four sheep to his shieling. They mingled with Lusk’s herd, which the boys tended. They looked after both his oxen and sheep, so he let them stay in his shieling hut to which he’d added a small byre for the oxen. His bond with that family continued to grow.
During that time, Janet Cardden crossed his path repeatedly. It seemed that she often visited the Lusks and other tenant farmers; she brought them things, items as barter or trade for the bounty they provided—for instance, a shawl for Mrs. Lusk. He happened to be on hand for that, and asked her about her weaving.
“You cannot possibly care to hear about teasels and carding wool, sir knight.”
“That’s not true at all. When I was a boy, my sister sat at her loom for hours and hours. The way she worked her shuttle through the warp, how she altered patterns and colors, it all fascinated me. She made patterns out of nothing but what she imagined. Of course, I was a simpleton then. So maybe it wasn’t as astonishing as I remember. A sunbeam could dazzle me for an hour.”
“Is that why you chose war as an occupation? Because you were simple?”
But he refused to be riled by her needling. “I’m sure there’s some truth in that,” he replied. “I was good with a bow, and not much else.”
“Oh, but you lie, sir. Your way with stone is most impressive.”
He leaned back. “Have you just complimented me for something?” he asked.
Janet blushed. “If I did, it was an unfortunate accident.”
“Unfortunate. Of course. Still, you must show me your loom one day.”
“To remind you of your sister?”
“That, and to see if I’m still a simpleton.”
She turned then and walked away. He followed. Outside, she had settled upon her palfrey, and pretended not to see him there.
As she rode off, Waldroup’s ghost commented: “What a long way you’ve come, little brother, from when first you met a lady and couldn’t untie your tongue.”
“There’s something in her unties it,” he said, “and wraps my heart in her weft at the same time.”
Waldroup laughed. “Oh, off your head, you are, Tommy, and God help ye.”
“Off my head to return here, too, you said. But I—”
“Promised your Innes. I know. I know.”
Thomas continued his nocturnal forays to the ruins of Old Melrose abbey. Talking to Janet had reminded him of Innes and his thus-far failed pledge to return to her. That duty overshadowed his brief and barbed encounter with Cardden’s daughter, and he might have let the matter of what she stirred within him go, provisionally; only, upon one of his varied night routes to the abbey, he chanced upon her bathing in the Teviot where a hooking spit of land formed a deep pool. He’d fished from that very sandbar, caught bream for his supper, but not thought to bathe in the still pool it created.
He stood among the trees and watched her, a naked undine unaware of him. Had he not been making a point of not being seen on his way to Melrose, he might have wandered out, engaged her in more verbal combat, even joined her in the pool if invited. Instead, he dismissed such possibilities and reluctantly continued on his way.
Nevertheless, he felt as if she had somehow known he would turn up, though that was impossible, since even he did not know the route he would take. In truth he had little experience of women—just enough from his travels with Waldroup that he was lucky not to have the pox.
Then, waiting bootlessly in the gorse above the ruins, he found himself thinking of her, seeing the curve of her hip as she rolled in the pool. The image of Janet bathing even drowned the impish voice of Waldroup for a night. That was an accomplishment.
Time passed and he didn’t encounter her again. The Lusk boys assisted him in building his house, gaining—as their father had hoped—some skill of their own with stonework.
As the house took shape, Janet turned up only in his dreams. He dreamt of her as a selkie, swimming gloriously naked in the pool while he crept down and stole her sealskin from off the strand. He awoke from the dream aroused and frustrated, the more so for having not encountered her swimming or otherwise. He suspected, perhaps feared, that Forbes the miller was taking up all her time.
He continued to make his nocturnal journey to the rocks above Old Melrose; more often than not he fell asleep in a bowl-shaped depression, exhausted, to awaken hours later soaked with dew, at which point he gave up and made his way home. Nights when it rained, he didn’t bother going out; he doubted the ceremony of the teind would take place in a downpour. He no longer had any real expectations that he would behold anything. As Waldroup’s gadfly voice liked to remind him, Onchu had been taken in broad daylight, not in the dark of the night.
Thus was he surprised one night to be awakened from his dozing by a sizzling sound. It was coming from below.
His head came up like a hound’s on point. He rubbed at his eyes and sat upright, stared over the edge of the outcrop.
Below, in exactly the same spot where they had taken Onchu, a group of four figures stood gathered around a tall, gray-haired man who had just cut open the night. Brightly lit by the spitting green fringe of the portal, the man looked vaguely familiar. Thomas couldn’t say where from, but guessed the village of Roxburgh. He hadn’t been very many places since his return, and had been introduced to almost no one, but had traveled to Roxburgh for his plow and other supplies.
The three others clustered behind two black-armored and spiky Yvag soldiers on their grotesque steeds, and behind their new teind—a girl this time, perhaps sixteen. She had already obediently undressed. Yet, the nearest Yvag had her on a leash, as if she’d fought them hard and might yet try to get away. Where was the Queen? he wondered. She’d needed no leash for Onchu.
The girl’s Yvag keeper stared at her, and she walked vacuously forward. He could see her clearly even through the ring, though it distorted her shape. Even so, she vanished the moment she stepped into it; by then he wasn’t watching her any longer. The remaining three skinwalkers had come forward alongside her, their faces ardent as they neared the flickering ring.
His heart froze.
One of the trio was his father: older, thinner, and so tired-looking, but there could be no doubt of his identity.
The other two, a tall man and a woman, were unknown to him, but that didn’t matter. He could not string his bow, could not strike them down. Of course it wasn’t his father, not any longer, exactly as Waldroup had said years ago. Even while he acknowledged that, he could not make himself bring the swift retribution he’d intended for them. He’d sat up here all these nights for nothing.
He bowed his head, his course of action lost. No matter how he reasoned it, that was his father down there.
