Damaris awoke with the blue light of mid-dawn soft in her room. She stretched, a little stiff from yesterday's travel but refreshed and languid, unwilling yet to start the day, until she abruptly remembered that by late morning the guests for tomorrow's wedding would be arriving – distant friends and relatives of Gweneth's family and the Helms, some to stay here at Thornoak, others to be accommodated at Ashbrigg, but all of them needing attentions. Today, from breakfast onwards, she would be busy with those and other preparations, so now, before the household was a-stir, would be her only time to herself for today and tomorrow at the very least, and quickly she kicked clear of the covers and rose to dress, not caring that it was too early yet for Agnes to have brought warm water for washing.
The sunlight's first gold was spilling over the hills as she let herself out the rear door onto the garden path. Inside their walls the gardens were still drenched in dew and shadows. April had been warm this year and Damaris' cursory glance into the kitchen garden showed it greening with young shoots of eager plants in the vegetable beds. But her aunt's herb garden was her true goal, and when she had stepped inside and shut the gate, she leaned against it and looked all around her for a happy moment before going forward. She kept to the path, avoiding the greensward where her soft shoes and hem would have been dew-soaked in an instant. It seemed every plant was familiar to her. From her aunt's letters she even knew what was planted in which annual beds, and in the way she had unconsciously learned from her aunt she spoke to the plants as she bent over them, stroking their leaves. The camomile was spread further between the paving stones, she saw, and the thyme had come back well though Aunt Elspeth had been worried over it.
At the lavender border, she broke off a stem, taking it and its strong, quieting scent with her as she went on. By the time she finished her circuit the sun had risen over the wall, filling the garden with a warm light. With it came the smell of cooking ham that told her Cook was at work, and Damaris was abruptly very hungry; but she paused in the gateway to look back at the garden, wondering what she would do when this was no longer a haven and pleasure she could dream of returning to.
"Fair as a rose herself, and just as thorny," a voice said cheerfully over her head.
Damaris looked up with ready laughter to the face smiling at her over the top of the wall and exclaimed, "Lauran! I didn't think to see you until later."
"I came early in hope of seeing you alone like this."
"Liar. My all-too-familiar charms aren't nearly enough to drag you out of your bed, thank you for the thought anyway. You're here to see Uncle Russell on needful business and in hope of breakfast. What are you standing on to look over the wall?"
"My horse."
"Lauran!"
He gave a small spring and a scramble and was astride the wall. The early sunlight was rich in his hair, and his smile was as charming as ever. "You're here for a week, I think Kellan said. And then back to school? For how long?"
"Another month and a half."
"And then here for the summer before setting off to make your way in the wide world, yes?"
"Not so wide a world when my choices are teaching or governessing," Damaris answered far more lightly than she felt.
"Well, you can always find a great love, my sweet, and settle into wedded bliss."
Despite herself, the thought of James Harris came into her mind and a blush warmed her cheeks to a red that surely showed because Lauran's eyebrows rose and his mouth had a sudden wicked quirk. "Ah ha," he said with interest.
But behind her Aunt Elspeth said, "We wondered where you'd flitted to, Damaris. Lauran, scaling the wall must have made you hungry. Will you come in to breakfast?"
Lauran ducked his head to her in a light bow and laughed. "Oh no, you don't. There's a wedding here tomorrow and once you've lured me in you'll most likely expect me to be useful. But dressing up and standing at Nevin's elbow with the ring is as much trouble as I mean to give the business. Tell Russell I'll be at the stable when he's through with breakfast, will you?"
"Coward," Aunt Elspeth said cheerfully.
"To the core," Lauran agreed and, swinging around, slid from sight beyond the wall. A moment later they heard his horse going away toward the stables.
Aunt Elspeth, still smiling, tucked Damaris' arm through her own and patted her hand. "At least you won't refuse breakfast. You know you'll be put to work whether you eat or not."
Damaris laughed. "I'm resigned to my fate." They began to walk back to the house, and because this was likely the last chance they would have to talk alone for at least two days, she said, "Gweneth seems very good, the little I've seen of her."
Aunt Elspeth nodded. "Since our visit to her family last winter, so we could come to know each other a little, I've thought she and Nevin will be happy with each other. But what was your blushing all about?"
Despite herself Damaris felt herself blush again. "Lauran was teasing me about wedded bliss. That I should settle into it instead of into teaching or governessing."
"And you very indiscreetly blushed. And now you’re blushing again."
Damaris pressed her aunt's arm against her waist, not minding being teased, and answered lightly, "It's James Harris. Remember I wrote of meeting him at Christmas time at Mary Elaine's? He's written to me a few times since and–" She shrugged. "–that's all."
Aunt Elspeth squeezed her arm, both amused and sympathetic. "The first few letters are often the best time of knowing someone. It’s what comes later that matters more. Meanwhile, if Lauran teases you, just stick your tongue out at him like you used to. He'll find that hard to answer."
"Aunt Elspeth!" Damaris protested in mock indignation, and their laughter went with them into the house.
As Damaris had foreseen, the day was crammed with duties and arriving guests, and everyone went to bed late that night but in high good humor. The wedding day dawned gloriously fair and bright, cool since it was the last of April but not cold, as it might have been, given how far into the hills Thornoak was. Damaris was one of Gweneth's maids-of-honor and at first a little shy with the other two, who were friends from Gweneth's home, but in the joyous business of readying the bride her shyness soon went. At mid-day they tried eating something upstairs in Gweneth's room, too nervous to manage much and Gweneth unable to more than nibble. Not long after that they heard the men in the front hall, laughing and jostling among themselves as they went out the door. They were to walk the two miles down the dale to St. Cuthbert's church. The women would follow later in carriages.
Gweneth, the waiting almost done, hugged her ladies – Damaris as dearly as any of them. "Soon," she said happily. "Soon." And soon enough, when the men had had time to be well away from the house, Gweneth’s mother and Aunt Elspeth came to the room.
"Now," said Gweneth’s mother, and suddenly there was no more time for readying, only for going.
At the manor gateway Thornoak's villagers had gathered to cheer the bride as she went past in her carriage with her bright-faced, smiling maids-of-honor, while her mother and Aunt Elspeth and the women guests followed in other carriages. All the wayside from Thornoak to the church was gay with springtime flowers in the grass along the gray stone walls, and the coachmen had been told there was no need to hurry, so they did not but kept the horses to a pace that let the villagers follow easily behind the last carriage, singing and calling to each other.
Another crowd of folk from otherwhere in the dale was gathered at the church, waiting to see the bride. The men of the wedding party had already gone into St. Cuthbert’s, except for Gweneth's father standing at the churchyard gate to take her hand on his arm. The two of them smiled at each other warmly, then stood aside, along with Damaris and the other maids-of-honor, while the ladies went inside. When there had been time for them all to flurry to their seats, St. Cuthbert’s organ – small and hand-pumped but its sound reverberating very satisfactorily inside the church's thick stone walls – burst into a wedding march, telling that everything and everyone was ready. With all smiles suddenly gone now that the solemn moment was come, the little gathering of maids-of-honor and bride and father made their procession into the church.
Through the ceremony then, Damaris found herself watching Nevin, standing there so grave and intent beside glowing Gweneth; found herself thinking how very much he looked what he was becoming – a married man; found she had not, until now, even begun to think of him as more than her cousin. Her cousin and her friend and somehow, in her head, still the boy who had teased her, the boy she had so happily teased back. But despite what her heart and head had held to, boyhood was several years behind him. It was behind Kellan, too, standing with Lauran as groomsmen on Nevin’s other side, and was even farther behind Lauran, despite the teasing to which he could still sink.
And if she was not ready for them to be grown, what about herself? Her girlhood would be supposed to end very soon, along with her schooldays, but whatever outward show she made – standing here in her floor-long taffeta dress and myriad petticoats, her hair womanly fastened up – she knew she was still the Damaris who had roamed the dale and moors with her cousins and Lauran; was more that Damaris than any other she was supposed to be. She could dress in long skirts and put her hair up and leave the dale when the time came, because those were the things required of her, but when would the inward change come to her? When would she become that woman she outward seemed to be but doubted that she was?
The ceremony ended. Gweneth, properly glowing and smiling, and Nevin, the same, went arm and arm together down the aisle and out the door into the sunlight and churchyard where the crowd of villagers and farm folk showered them with dried oats and cheers as they paused on the church door’s threshold, then ran, laughing, to their carriage as the guests came out of the church behind them with talk and laughter, too.
Carriages enough for the whole wedding party and guests were waiting at the gate to carry them all back to Thornoak for the wedding feast. Damaris, no longer bound to be with the other bridesmaids, shared the Ashbriggs’ carriage with Irene and her mother, both suitably tearful, but ended separated from them at the house where family and guests were crowded inside, while trestle tables had been set up in the yard and heaped with food and drink for everyone else who might come. Damaris, inside and crowded elbow to elbow with several score of mostly strangers or less-than-close acquaintances, thought that by all means the ordinary folk outside in the yard had the better of it, but everyone’s high good cheer carried her through until at last, in the late afternoon, the party began to wear itself out, and Damaris helped Aunt Elspeth to see those guests who were not staying the night on their way.
Mistress Ashbrigg, Lauran, and Irene were the last of them. By then the sun was nearly down, the shadows stretching long across a yard now empty except for the servants clearing away the trestle tables and debris. With farewells said, Damaris and her aunt went back inside, aware of each other's weariness and nonetheless triumphant with the day's success. Only family on both sides and some near cousins of Uncle Russell were left. Nevin and Gweneth were sitting together on the sofa in the parlor, holding hands and seemingly too intent on each other to know there were even others there. They were to stay here tonight and begin their wedding journey early tomorrow. That had somewhat surprised Damaris, but, little acquainted as she was with weddings and their aftermath, it now made sense not to end the exhausting day by starting a journey. Certainly she wanted to go nowhere. There were now empty chairs where she might have sat, but her stomach was prompting her to notice that she had eaten very little today since breakfast, and she went to see what was left to eat on the small round table at the parlor’s far end. Surprisingly, there were still several delicate if slightly drying sandwiches left on a serving plate and even two small squares of cake. She had eaten all but the last sandwich when Kellan joined her, took the sandwich for himself and said, voice low, "There are people here I haven't seen in a dozen years, and if one more person tells me how much I've grown..."
"You're so much taller than when you were ten," Damaris said sweetly.
Kellan fixed her with a malevolent stare and finished, "...I'll probably turn violent."
Uncle Russell appeared in the doorway, returned from wherever he had gone, and said in a quiet, carrying voice, "The bonfire has been laid."
Around Damaris the room became still. Conversation died. Everyone turned to look at him, everyone except Damaris seeming to understand more than merely what he had said. Under the rustle of skirts as the women rose to their feet, Kellan said low in her ear, "It's the May Eve bonfire. You wouldn't remember it. You've been gone to school whenever we've done it."
Damaris gave him a startled glance. Yes, she had been away at school through every May these past four years, but she had been here at Thornoak at least one May Eve before then. Was this another memory she had lost with her fall from Fansome? She had taken a long time to grow used to the fact that several days of her life were simply gone from her mind. Had she lost more than that without knowing it? After all, if something was gone, how would she know unless someone said something – as Kellan just had – that betrayed a gap where there should be a memory?
Uncle Russell stepped aside from the doorway. Agnes came into the room, crossed to the hearth at her steady shuffle, and there knelt laboriously down and began to put out the small fire. That there was even a small fire in the parlor’s fireplace today had puzzled Damaris. For Agnes to come now and put it out, with everyone watching in silence while she did, puzzled her even more, and she looked questioningly at Kellan. Again at a whisper in her ear, he said, "She's the oldest of the household. She's bringing an end to the family fire. They're doing it everywhere on the manor – all through the village and in all the farms the hearth fires are being put out. Remember Summerhill?"
"Of course I remember it," Damaris said, almost indignantly. Summerhill was a high outthrust in a pasture west of the house. It overlooked most of the manor's fields. Why would he think she would not remember it? She often lay in her dormitory bed in Hull remembering everywhere at Thornoak.
Seeming not to notice her voice’s edge Kellan went on, "There's a bonfire been built on Summerhill. Everyone will be gathering there, waiting for Father to come and light it. He has to do it the old way, the slow way, by rubbing wood on wood, and until he's done it, until he's brought fire out of the wood, there won't be any light or warmth anywhere on the manor."
"What if it doesn't light?"
"It always does. It has to, because once the fire is burning, folk will take it home to light their hearth fires with, just as we will. Then there's dancing around the bonfire afterward." As if he sensed Damaris' blankness, he added, almost as if apologizing, "It's something old. It's always been done that way here at Thornoak."
The hearth fire was out, and as Agnes sat back on her heels from the dead coals, Uncle Russell said in the same quiet voice he had used before, "Shall we go out then?"
The sun had set while Agnes was putting out the fire. With the lamps unlit, the room's only light was from the sunset, and though it could only be her imagination that the room had become colder, Damaris shivered. People were drifting toward the doorway, talking again, taking up conversations they had paused. Kellan bowed slightly to her with a grave formality that meant he wanted to be laughed at and said, "May I have the pleasure of your company?"
The strange, shivery moment of the fire's death was gone. Instead there was the excitement of a bonfire to look forward to, and Damaris answered, matching his tone, "I would indeed be most pleased," and put her hand into his outstretched one.
Kellan glanced down at her dress. "You might want to change."
Now that Kellan mentioned it, she did agree that taffeta at a bonfire did not seem a good idea. "Wait for me," she said and hurried upstairs.
Good sense then would have been to choose her plainest dress, the one she most often used for walks and riding, but without quite understanding why, she put on her moderately good gown, pale, with small flowers, telling herself that after all this was an occasion of sorts, being the night of the wedding and all. Belatedly she wondered at Gweneth going out still in her wedding dress, but that was Gweneth’s concern, and Damaris flung a shawl around her shoulders and was fastening it in place with a large brooch as she hurried down the stairs to join Kellan waiting by the front door.
They were last away from the house but not much behind the last of the household folk going toward the hill, and there was not far to go, only up the long, easy slope to the wide-topped shoulder of the hill where the bonfire waited. As she and Kellan joined the crowd there and she scanned faces in the deepening twilight, Damaris saw there was no particular order to the gathering. It was just a mingled coming of everyone from the manor, the village, the surrounding farms. They were all surprisingly subdued, though. Even the children. More solemn even than church, Damaris thought, and though that might have amused her, oddly it did not.
Led by Kellan, she joined Aunt Elspeth, Nevin, and Gweneth among the people nearest the unlit heap of wood. It was not so large as the Guy Fawkes’ fires she had seen on the green in Hull each November, but was large enough at ten feet across and nearly five feet high. She was distracted from wondering why she could not remember a bonfire here before by seeing Lauran standing a little behind Aunt Elspeth. He must have left his mother and Irene at home and ridden back here at a canter, but he shifted to make room for Kellan and her beside him without saying anything.
From there Damaris could see Uncle Russell kneeling beside the bonfire-to-be, working two sticks together. He was not alone. There was a man crouched on either side of him, but like everyone else they were only waiting, not part of whatever he was doing, and what he was doing – making new fire, from what Kellan had said – seemed to be taking forever. When Damaris passed the point where she could be interested in not understanding what he was doing, she looked around at the gathered people instead. There was still enough after-light in the last glow of the sunset to somewhat see them, and those that were not wedding guests were all familiar to her. A little way around the curve of the circle she saw Mrs. Easby's daughter Delia, with Tom Steward hovering at her shoulder. Damaris did not know who Delia's other suitors were but if Delia chose Tom with his good farm beyond the village and his hard-working ways she would do well enough. And there was Granny Wells who lived at the near end of the village, stooped over her cane with her granddaughter and grandson on either side of her. And Sam Keeper and his wife from their farm along the moor edge farther up the dale. There were several score of folk all told, and all of them were silent, almost unmoving, as they watched Uncle Russell twirl and rub the sticks in the small pile of tinder at the bonfire’s edge.
The intensity of their watching drew Damaris’ gaze back to her uncle and held it there. Except for the scrape of the wood as Uncle Russell worked the pieces together, there was silence – a taut, waiting silence, as if more than the mere lighting of a bonfire was at stake here. Without understanding it, Damaris found herself caught up in that waiting, could not have said how long it had gone on when for no good reason she suddenly raised her eyes to look across the bonfire to the other side of the circle and met a pair of eyes staring back at her – eyes in a narrow face surrounded by a cloud of hair so fair it seemed to shine of itself in the twilight.
Virna.
Since sent away to school, she had seen Virna only in distant glimpses, not spoken to her at all. Once she had asked Aunt Elspeth about her. With a finality that cut off all other questions, her aunt had answered, "I have nothing to do with her, nor she with me. She comes and goes from the village as it suits her, and if she should never come back, that will be well enough for everyone."
But here she was now, except that, as Damaris saw her, she faded sideways behind someone's wide shoulders, out of sight.
At the same moment, something changed among the people around her and with Kellan and Lauran beside her. Where there had been an almost frozen stillness of waiting, now there was a general leaning forward, and Damaris saw that the waiting for the lost fire had ended. Uncle Russell was still working the sticks together as intensely, but one of the men crouched beside him was leaning forward, blowing on the dry tinder clustered under the twirling sticks, and where there had been only darkness there was now a smouldering glow. He blew again and there was a single small flame, then more flames, still small until the second man with great care laid the thinnest of twigs across them. The flames grew then, greedy, and Uncle Russell gave over working the sticks and began helping lay small branches into the flames until they were strong enough that their little pile of burning kindling could be pushed under the edge of the bonfire pile itself. The flames reached up eagerly and began to spread crackling among the branches. The fire would live!
The crowd cheered. Damaris surprised herself by shouting excitedly with them.
As if joyous to be freed, the flames raced upward, to burst through the pile in a tower of flames and sparks against the dark sky. The heat drove those nearest to it back a few paces, Lauran pulling Damaris with him, and she found Kellan had disappeared from her other side, but that did not matter. All around her the crowd’s tension of waiting was gone. Wreaths of sweet woodruff were appearing from somewhere, passed hand to hand through the crowd, and Lauran captured two, put one on her head, the other on his own, then grabbed her by both hands and exclaimed, "Now dancing!"
The crowd was spreading out around them, forming three circles, one within another within another, around the fire. Lauran freed one of her hands to catch that of a girl on his other side, and Tom Steward on Damaris' other side took her own free one, joining them into the middle circle. There were dancers in front of them, between them and the fire, and dancers behind them, between them and the dark. Somewhere someone was playing a fiddle, setting a tune that feet could not help but dance to, and though Damaris did not know what steps were needed of her, it was not hard to find them. There was singing, too, but soon breathless with laughter and trying to keep up, Damaris did not try to follow the words. How often the dancers circled the fire she did not know but the circles had shrunk noticeably from people tiring and dropping out before she finally dragged back on Lauran's hand, crying, "Enough!"
But all the dancing was ending then, the circles falling apart. Her one hand was freed as Tom Steward disappeared with Delia, who had been on his other side all the while, and Damaris pushed her woodruff garland back off her forehead where it had been steadily slipping toward her eyes, then reached out to straighten Lauran's. He caught her hand, kissed it and then the one he already held, laughing with her at himself, then let her loose to grab two cakes from a basket someone was carrying through the crowd. He gave one to her. Biting into it, she found it was an oatcake but, "Different," she said, puzzled by the flavoring.
"Special for May Eve of course," Lauran said, as if she should know that.
The vague disquiet of failed memory moved in her mind again, but something else was happening, distracting her. Through the broken circles of dancers, men carrying unlit torches were going up to the fire that had long since collapsed in on itself to a steady-burning heap of embers. The men thrust the torches into the sunken blaze, and when the torches lighted, sprang back to swing them over their heads to make them blaze up more strongly.
"A torch for each household, to relight their hearth fires," Lauran said. "For anyone living too far away there'll be a pot to carry home hot coals later. Look!"
The men were leaving with their torches, setting off at a run down the hill toward their homes, streaking the hillside with fiery tracks of light. It was beautiful in the darkness. That was maybe why Lauran was for once unmocking as he said, "Every year all the hearth fires die together, and every year come back to life from this one fire. One into many so the many will remember that they're really one."
Damaris looked at him, with the darkness behind him and his face touched with the firelight, and saw what she so often forgot in her familiarity with him – that he was handsome.
To shake off the unsettled feeling his nearness suddenly gave her, she asked belatedly, "Why aren't you at Ashbrigg? Aren't they doing this there?"
"At Ashbrigg? No. I’m told Ashbrigg left off most of the old ways before I was born."
"Except the barley harvest one. I remember that."
He turned a look on her that said he was thinking of something other than what she had just said before he answered, "And a few others, though no one there seems to remember what they're supposed to be about."
Damaris might have asked what he meant by that, except the sound of cattle lowing behind her turned her around, startled.
"Ah," Lauran said. "Time for the livestock. Let's go this way."
Since he seemed to know what was happening and she surely did not, she let him take her hand and draw her uphill away from the fire that men were now scattering out along the ground into a long bed of failing embers. Around it the crowd had spread out, too, so that beyond them Damaris could see the shadowy shapes of not only cows but sheep and horses being brought up the hill.
"What are they doing?" she asked, completely puzzled.
"It's an old custom. Old as May Eve itself, probably. Watch."
"But..."
"There’s no harm in it," Lauran assured her
The animals seemed not to agree with him, but the men bringing them knew what was needed, had them quickly into a rough line, then drove them, one after the other or sometimes several together, through the spread remains of the fire. Sparks scattered and flew around their hooves. The cattle lowed and bellowed, sheep maaed and baaed, horses threw up their heads and had to be led one by one by men holding their headstalls and running beside them.
"These aren't everyone's animals here," Damaris said. "I think there are only the manor's, aren’t there? There's Fansome!" she added in surprise.
"We'd be here all night if they had to do all the livestock from all the Thornoak farms. So the manor's own stand in for all the rest."
"But why?"
"Running through the May Eve fire is supposed to bring fertility, health, prosperity. And look," he added.
The animals were all through and being collected and driven away. Except for their herdsmen, everyone's attention had now gone to Nevin and Gweneth standing hand in hand on the far side of the much-diminished embers. They were flushed and laughing, crowned with sweet woodruff garlands wound with flowers. The crowd gave them a cheer mixed with much laughter. Nevin waved to them and then he and Gweneth were running toward the small embers of what had been the fire's heart. They leaped it together, still hand in hand, and as they landed Nevin whirled to steady his bride, caught her close to him, and kissed her. The crowd cheered in earnest and immediately the dying firelight was full of couples forming a rough line to take their turn to jump the fire themselves, hand in hand. Damaris found herself with the rest, pulled along by Lauran, too laughing to resist – nor wanting to. She ran with him and leaped what was left of the fire and on the far side he turned and caught her around the waist, pulled her to him and kissed her full and long on the lips.
The same was happening all around them; it was not the thought of being seen that held Damaris rigid where she stood. It was the shocked thrill that ran all unexpectedly through her body. All the kisses she had had in her life had been familial or friendly or in jest. This kiss of Lauran’s took her so utterly by surprise that it was Lauran who drew back first, a startled look on his face.
They stood staring at each other, but before either of them had made choice of what to do next, a swirl of other couples enveloped them, and Kellan with Amy from the village on his arm among them called, "Damaris! Go a-maying with us! Dawn's not so far away that going to bed is any use."
"Now?" Damaris found she was confused by too much happening too quickly. "A-maying?"
"To bring summer in," Amy said. "Come on then!"
Damaris looked around for Lauran, but he was not there. Somehow he had disappeared among the jostle of others, and so she simply let herself be swept into the group and away down the hill into the star-touched night.