The woman who had been my wife in all but name, and the man who had raised me and been my friend had turned to one another. He had kept a roof over Molly’s head, and seen that she was fed and warm while my child grew within her. With his own hands, he had delivered my bastard. Together they had kept Nettle from Regal’s men. Burrich had claimed both woman and child as his own, not only to protect them, but to love them. I could have gone back to them, to make them both faithless in their own eyes. I could have made their bond a shameful thing. Burrich would have left Molly and Nettle to me. His harsh sense of honour would not have allowed him to do otherwise. And ever after, I could have wondered if she compared me to him, if the love they had shared was stronger and more honest than …
‘You’re burning the stew,’ Starling pointed out in annoyance.
I was. I served us from the top of the pot, and joined her at the table. I pushed all pasts, both real and imagined, aside. I did not need to think of them. I had Starling to busy my mind. As was customary, I was the listener and she was the teller of tales. She began a long account of some upstart minstrel at Springfest who had not only dared to sing one of her songs, with only a verse or two changed, but then had claimed ownership of it. She gestured with her bread as she spoke, and almost managed to catch me up in the story. But my own memories of other Springfests kept intruding. Had I lost all content in the simple life I had created for myself? The boy and the wolf had been enough for me for many years. What ailed me now?
I went from that to yet another discordant thought. Where was Hap? I had brewed tea for the three of us, and portioned out food for three as well. Hap was always ravenous after any sort of a task or journey. It was distracting that he could not get past his bad mood to come and join us. As Starling spoke on, I found my eyes straying repeatedly to his untouched bowl of stew. She caught me at it.
‘Don’t fret about him,’ she told me almost testily. ‘He’s a boy, with a boy’s sulky ways. When he’s hungry enough, he’ll come in.’
Or he’ll ruin perfectly good fish by burning it over a fire. The wolf’s thought came in response to my Wit questing towards him. They were down by the creek. Hap had made a temporary spear out of a stick, and the wolf had simply plunged into the water to hunt along the undercut banks. When the fish ran thick, it was not difficult for him to corner one there, to plunge his head under the water and seize it in his jaws. The cold water made his joints ache, but the boy’s fire would soon warm him. They were fine. Don’t worry.
Useless advice, but I pretended to take it. We finished eating, and I cleared the dishes away. While I tidied, Starling sat on the hearth by the evening fire, picking at her harp until the random notes turned into the old song about the miller’s daughter. When everything was put to rights, I joined her there with a cup of Sandsedge brandy for each of us. I sat in a chair, but she sat near the fire on the floor. She leaned back against my legs as she played. I watched her hands on the strings, marking the crookedness where once her fingers had been broken, as a warning to me. At the end of her song, I leaned down and kissed her. She kissed me back, setting the harp aside and making a more thorough job of it.
She stood then and took my hands to pull me to my feet. As I followed her into my bedroom, she observed, ‘You’re pensive tonight.’
I made some small sound of agreement. Sharing that she had bruised my feelings earlier would have seemed snivelling and childish. Did I want her to lie to me, to tell me that I was still young and comely when obviously I was not? Time had had its way with me. That was all, and to be expected. Even so, Starling kept coming back to me. Through all the years, she’d kept returning to me and into my bed. That had to count for something. ‘You were going to tell me about something?’ she prompted.
‘Later,’ I told her. The past clutched at me, but I put its greedy fingers aside, determined to immerse myself in the present. This life was not so bad. It was simple and uncluttered, without conflict. Wasn’t this the life I had always dreamed of? A life in which I made my decisions for myself? And I was not alone, really. I had Nighteyes and Hap, and Starling, when she came to me. I opened her vest and then her blouse to bare her breasts while she unbuttoned my shirt. She embraced me, rubbing against me with the unabashed pleasure of a purring cat. I clasped her to me and lowered my face to kiss the top of her head. This, too, was simple and all the sweeter that it was. My freshly-stuffed mattress was deep and fragrant as the meadow grass and herbs that filled it. We tumbled onto it. For a time, I stopped thinking at all, as I tried to persuade both of us that despite appearances I was a young man still.
A while later, I lingered in the hinterlands of sleep. Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.
I came awake. My eyes were open, studying the details of my darkened room before I realized that sleep had fled. Starling’s wide-flung arm was across my chest. In her sleep, she had kicked the blanket away from both of us. Night hid her careless nakedness, cloaking her in shadows. I lay still, hearing her breathe and smelling her sweat mixed with her perfume, and wondered what had wakened me. I could not put my finger on it, yet neither could I close my eyes again. I slid out from under her arm and stood up beside my bed. In the darkness I groped for my discarded shirt and leggings.
The coals of the hearth fire gave hesitant light to the main room, but I did not linger there. I opened the door and stepped barefoot into the mild spring night. I stood still for a moment, letting my eyes adjust, and then made my way away from the cottage and garden and down to the stream bank. The path was cool hard mud underfoot, well packed by my daily trips to fetch water. The trees met overhead, and there was no moon, but my feet and my nose knew the way as well as my eyes did. All I had to do was follow my Wit to my wolf. Soon I picked out the orange glow of Hap’s dwindled fire, and the lingering scent of cooked fish.
They slept by the fire, the wolf curled nose to tail and Hap wrapped around him, his arm around Nighteyes’ neck. Nighteyes opened his eyes as I approached, but did not stir. I told you not to worry.
I’m not worried. I’m just here. Hap had left some sticks of wood near the fire. I added them to the coals. I sat and watched the fire lick along them. Light came up with the warmth. I knew the boy was awake. One can’t be raised with a wolf without picking up some of his wariness. I waited for him.
‘It’s not you. Not just you, anyway.’
I didn’t look at Hap, even when he spoke. Some things are better said to the dark. I waited. Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone only to ask the wrong one.
‘I have to know,’ he burst out suddenly. My heart seized up at the question to come. In some corner of my soul, I had always dreaded him asking it. I should not have let him go to Springfest, I thought wildly. If I had kept him here, my secret would never have been threatened.
But that was not the question he asked.
‘Did you know that Starling is married?’
I looked at him then, and my face must have answered for me. He closed his eyes in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have known you didn’t. I should have found a better way to tell you.’
And the simple comfort of a woman who came to my arms when she would, because she desired to be with me, and the sweet evenings of tales and music by the fire, and her dark merry eyes looking up into mine were suddenly guilty and deceptive and furtive. I was as foolish as I had ever been, no, even stupider, for the gullibility of a boy is fatuousness in a man. Married. Starling married. She had thought no one would ever want to marry her, for she was barren. She had told me that she had to make her own ways with her songs, for there would never be a man to care for her, nor children to provide for her old age. Probably, when she had told me those things, she had believed they were true. My folly had been in thinking that truth would never change.
Nighteyes had risen and stretched stiffly. Now he came to lie down beside me. He set his head on my knee. I don’t understand. You are ill?