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THE TROUBLE WITH PURPOSE is knowing you might never achieve it.
—Mother Seema, Cathuran monk
is
* * *
THAT EVENING, GWEN’S grandmother had been delighted to learn about the upcoming trip; her father, less so.
“I don’t like what people are saying about Gabaldi,” Jacob told his daughter as they sat near the hearth after dinner. “I’ve never known the hunter’s son—”
“Rolf. His name is Rolf Rosenkranz, Father.”
“I’ve never known Rolf to be less than coolheaded. Even the first time he brought me game. He was calm and a lot more grown up than the Frank boy who was with him.”
“He was angry today, Father. I saw that myself.”
“I heard that too, but what made him angry enough to challenge a master swordsman? The boy’s smart as a raccoon.”
“I don’t know. By the time I got there, he was bleeding and angry. None of the other boys said a single word. And none of the villagers were there either, so they have no right to talk about this as if they were. But I do know something they don’t. Like I told you, Rolf’s father died a month ago. A whole month. And in all that time, he didn’t tell anyone about it, not even his best friend. Since then, he’s been quiet. You know the kind of quiet I’m talking about—the kind that’s brewing a blow-up. It was like that. Maybe Rolf said or did something. Maybe it was an accident like Master Gabaldi told everyone it was. It doesn’t matter because I won’t be going to Sutherhold alone with Rolf Rosenkranz or Master Gabaldi. Madame Gabaldi is coming too.”
Jacob Ahlgren all but snorted. “And what’s she going to do if he attacks another one of you younguns? Teach him to death? Hit him upside his head with a book?” His smirk highlighted just how ridiculous he found the idea of Madame Gabaldi being able to protect anyone against a seasoned soldier.
Though tempted to laugh because what her father said did conjure humorous images, she recognized the critical need to keep the conversation serious if she was going to convince him to let her go to Sutherhold. She tilted her head the way she remembered her mother doing when she and her husband disagreed and he made light of something with sarcasm. Her father must have caught the similarity of expression because he blinked, and his smirk disappeared into solemnity.
“It won’t just be Madame Gabaldi. The other boys will be there too. And even if they weren’t, Madame Gabaldi would be just fine. You should have seen her today, Father. She stepped right between Rolf and her husband and gave that man a good tongue-lashing for letting Rolf get hurt. He hushed right up and put his sword away.”
“Well, he’s telling the villagers Rolf got frustrated and angry and tumbled into the sword, and that’s what caused the accident.”
Gwen bit her tongue and refrained from using her father’s sarcasm to say, “Twice? In a perfect X? Some misstep, that.” Instead, she asked in a calm, controlled tone, “And don’t you think his explanation is the most logical? Father, training accidents happen.”
Her grandmother had been silent after her initial reaction to the news about Gwen, but now she spoke up. “Jacob, you know it’s true. Have you forgotten almost cutting off a thumb when you were an apprentice?”
Jacob shook his head. “I haven’t forgotten, Mother.”
“Gwendolin’s not his apprentice, and if he’s as vicious as you fear, then all the better she’ll have someone like him to protect the wagons on the road, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.” Jacob stared into the fire.
Gwen’s grandmother put her darning in her lap and reached over to Jacob, placing a hand on his arm. “I know it’s hard, but it’s time to let her go, Jacob. There’s nothing for her here now anyway.”
The truth of her grandmother’s statement burned in Gwen’s heart. If Vasterberg held nothing for Gwen, it had been her grandmother’s doing. She’d cut off the option of an apprenticeship with Mignon and had forced Gwen to make a choice between the lesser of two evils. But now Gwen was committed to the choice she’d made, and the time had come to use one final tactic to win her father’s approval for the trip. She felt guilty for the half-truth she was about to utter, but she was willing to carry the guilt. “I want to go, Father. I have to go. I’m called to go.”
Her strategy tipped the balance, not quite as far as she’d have liked but far enough to elicit an agreement from her father to speak with Madame Gabaldi and give fair consideration to what the schoolmistress had to say. That night, Gwen crawled into bed hopeful, and by noon the next day, her father gave his reluctant permission. She was dismissed from lessons to start packing the one trunk she would be allowed to take with her.
They left the schoolmistress’s private quarters, where they’d held their discussion out of range of the overly curious students Esmerelda Grayston was tutoring. Gwen walked with her father toward the butcher shop, passing the boys training outside with Master Gabaldi, who spoke to his charges in a calm, patient tone while he demonstrated a sword technique. She wanted to roll her eyes at him. He’d never treated the boys with kindness or understanding before the incident with Rolf, but then, nobody had called into question his suitability for educating Vasterberg’s young men in the art of killing others. This was pure performance, and it made her dislike the schoolmistress’s husband all the more.
“I didn’t see the Rosenkranz boy,” her father said when they’d put some distance between them and the training circle.
She lied. “I didn’t notice. I’m sure he was there somewhere. Some of those boys are broad and tall enough to hide a pony behind them.” The truth was Rolf’s absence had been conspicuous. She’d noticed when she arrived at the schoolhouse and had watched for him. By the time lessons began and he still hadn’t arrived, Gwen had begun to imagine the worst. She’d worried about him all morning. Now she was doubly concerned. Her father was under the impression Rolf would be traveling with the group, and he’d expressed relief in knowing someone he trusted with a bow would be near his daughter. Gwen wasn’t convinced her friend would come back to training as long as Master Gabaldi was in charge, much less travel under Gabaldi’s lead and command. She changed the subject. “Madame Gabaldi says we’ll be leaving in a day and a half. I’d like to walk Gilly home tomorrow afternoon and say good-bye to her and her mother.”
Jacob stopped at the door to the butcher shop. “Right, then. You go on home and spend the day with your grandmother. She’ll miss you, you know.”
She nodded though she doubted her father was right. As soon as she got out of the village and well beyond her father’s sight from the shop window, she headed straight toward the spot where she and Gilly and Thomlin and Rolf had spent their first afternoon as friends together. Standing in the cool shade under the same spreading limbs of the elm tree they’d sat beneath, she called out Rolf’s name repeatedly, hoping he would hear her if he was hunting in the woods. Each time, she listened for him to call back, but she heard nothing except the scurrying of woodland squirrels and the rustling of branches as birds took flight. Time was too short for her to trek into the woods to his cabin. If time and her skewed sense of direction didn’t deter her, the thought of venturing into the woods alone stirred up memories of her mother’s death and gave her goose bumps. While she continued calling Rolf’s name from the moderate safety of the meadow and strained to listen for any sign of response, she picked some wildflowers haphazardly and looked warily over her shoulder at the edge of the woods with regularity. Though she delayed as long as she could, she finally conceded she had to leave if she was going to make it home early enough to avoid arousing her father’s suspicions about Rolf, or more precisely, the apparently missing Rolf.
Gwen avoided her father and discussion of Rolf after dinner by excusing herself to begin packing her belongings. Deciding what to take proved easy enough. She had only one trunk. How much could possibly fit in it? She used the space as efficiently as she could and managed to get four cotton shifts, three nicer dresses, a pair of brown leather flats, a nightgown, and a shawl into the trunk before it became apparent that one of the fancy dresses was taking up too much space. She winnowed down her stash by one cotton shift and the space-hogging dress. In a small, wooden box, she placed her quill, ink crock, and plant snips. She put the box and her herb journal on top of the clothes, along with another small box containing her hair comb, a few pieces of ribbon, and a small square of rough cloth for washing. One box for her passion, the other for her pleasure. Although she had to shift the contents of the trunk several times and finally push down as hard as she could to make room for the book Madame Gabaldi had given her, Gwen closed the trunk before she heard her father’s chair scrape the wooden planks near the hearth.
She blew out the lantern and hopped into her bed, her back to the door and her eyes shut. The thud of his boots grew louder, and when the hinges of the door to her room creaked, she could feel his gaze. After a few moments, the hinges creaked again, and the latch clicked. Gwen lay in bed awake for a good, long while, her gaze fixed on the growing moon, her mind filled with a mixture of anxious thoughts about what her life would be like, excitement about exploring the world outside of Vasterberg’s confines, and sadness about leaving her father. She would miss his tender kisses atop her head and the smell of smoked meat in his hair.
By the time she awoke, dawn had come and passed into a bright midmorning, and the sounds of the Ahlgren homestead floated in through the open window. Nestling swallows cheeped for their second meals of the day from the rafters in the open barn, and the hogs she so despised grunted and squealed loudly as they vied for spots in cool mud hollows where they could settle down for their post feeding naps. Gwen found her grandmother chopping parsnips on the cutting table near the kitchen window, the old woman’s eyes fixed on the maple tree near the fence that ran along the edge of the road to their cottage, her fingers pressing down on a parsnip and curled against the knife’s edge as she lifted it up and down, slicing cleanly through the dense vegetable.
“Good morning, Grandmother.” Gwen picked up a heated kettle hanging in the fire and filled her bathing bowl with steaming water.
“When the stew’s in the pot, I’ll go to the cellar and bring up some dried fruits. You’ll be a week on the road to Sutherhold. Your pa’s bringing home some dried meat too. You’ll not be hungry getting there.”
Gwen placed the kettle back in the fire and picked up the bowl. “Thank you, but please don’t go to any trouble for me, Grandmother. I can go down to the cellar. You slopped the hogs for me.”
“We’ve still got time to wash a few of your clothes if you don’t take too long bathing.” Her grandmother continued to chop and stare out the window.
“Everything I’m taking with me is clean but thank you. I’ll wash the rest later and leave them out on the line. If you don’t mind, would you remind Father to take them into town and give them to Esmerelda Grayston? She can see to it that any of the smaller children who need clothes get them.”
“Fine. If that’s what you want.”
The awkwardness of the conversation urging her to walk as quickly as she could without sloshing the water out of the bowl, Gwen carried it into her room and shut the door. She bathed and towel-dried her hair before braiding it. Then she spied the treat she’d set aside for a day she wanted to remember always: her favorite dress, a blue one with a low neckline, off-the-shoulder sleeves, and a feature her Grandmother was known for perfecting—a delicate draping waist ruffle cascading with such gentleness as to look like no more than a shimmery shadow atop the blue fabric. But when the skirt moved, the ruffle shuddered, and its wearer looked ethereal. Gwen found it calming. Soon she would have to give up her worldly goods, and though she’d packed two of her best dresses to wear while in Sutherhold, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of a total stranger ending up with her favorite dress. She’d decided to leave it behind with her other clothing and let a needy student benefit from her loss. But for now, she thought as she slipped it over her head, she was going to enjoy every worldly pleasure she could, especially the finery that a girl from such modest family means rarely dreamed of, much less had.
Once she’d tucked a sprig of the wildflowers she’d harvested the afternoon before into the single braid hanging loosely at the nape of her neck, she folded the braid up and secured it with a wooden stick she wove in and out of the hair. Then she tidied up her bed and took the bowl of water out to the garden, where she tossed it into the nearest hollow in the pig pen. A plump hog, who clearly had no idea he would become next winter’s ham, snuffled the mud with such content Gwen almost felt sorry for him.