The heartfelt early rose of dawn was paling to full daylight when those who had gone a-maying came back through the village carrying green boughs broken off in the woods along the river and – when the night had thinned enough to show them – flowers found along the roadside. More groups than one had been out – walking, laughing, singing in the star- and moonlight – and they had met and mingled and gone their separate ways more than once, until Damaris had lost all track of who came and went, save for Kellan who was always there. Now, walking with him and half a dozen others along the curve of the village’s street, leaving greenery and flowers on every doorstep not decked with them already, she realized there were fewer of their companions all the time as people reached their own doorways and turned in with tired, happy good-byes, until finally only she and Kellan and one of the kitchen maids and a boy from the stables were left climbing the last small slope to Thornoak from the village.
"We're in time," Kellan said as they reached the gateway.
Damaris, concerned with nothing now except her aching legs and how much she suddenly longed to be in bed, looked up to see Thornoak's small carriage pulling away from the manor door, with Nevin driving and Gweneth beside him, both of them finely dressed for travel. Feeling stupid to be so surprised but surprised nonetheless, she waved to them with the others as the carriage swept by. They waved back and were gone.
"They're going so early," she murmered, still puzzled. "Aren't they tired?"
"Bedtime for you," Kellan said and she knew he was laughing at her but she did not know why and was far too tired to care.
But after she had dragged her weary way up to her room and been barely able to take off her dress and petticoat before crawling into the welcome shelter of her bed, she was not too tired to remember again – before sleep took her – the warmth and pleasure of Lauran's kiss beside the dying bonfire. She had not seen him again in the night, but she was smiling as she went to sleep.
When she awoke, she knew by the steep slant of the sunlight through her window that it was early afternoon. As she dressed and went downstairs, she was aware of how quiet the house was. She was glad to find the remains of a cold, light luncheon waiting on the sideboard in the dining room, and was sitting down with a filled plate when Betty came from the kitchen, offering tea and word that the mistress and master were both out and so, she thought, was Master Kellan, and all the overnight guests had left this morning, yes, and Gweneth's parents just after mid-day.
That all the guests were gone was a relief. She seemed to have been making polite conversation with strangers and near-strangers ever since she came home, and although making polite conversation was one of the arts taught at Miss Edwards' School for Young Ladies, Damaris had always found it an arduous one. One of the pleasures of Thornoak she had not appreciated until she was away was that, usually, making conversation was not required – you talked if there was something to say rather than said something for the sake of talk.
She was coddling her last cup of tea in silence when Betty came to tell her that her aunt was returned and in the garden. Damaris thanked her, finished the tea, and went out. In the gateway to the herb garden, she paused to enjoy sight of the garden's ordered beauty, with the sunlight and bright air driving out the last dregs of lassitude left from her odd-houred sleep. Aunt Elspeth was sitting on the bench in the midst of the greensward, smiling welcome to her. To see her sitting, doing nothing else, was so unusual that Damaris asked while crossing toward her, "Is everything all right?"
Aunt Elspeth shifted to make room for her on the bench. "Everything is fine. We've survived the wedding and all our guests, and Mary Thwaite had a lovely baby boy this morning."
"That's where you were?"
"Since just after Nevin and Gweneth left. The message that she needed me probably came as you were falling asleep."
"Have you slept at all?"
"I will," Aunt Elspeth said serenely. She rarely let herself be outwardly touched by whatever exhaustions might come.
"Everything's well?"
"With Mary Thwaite? Yes, they'll all be fine, even Jack." Mary's husband who suffered through every one of Mary's birthings more than Mary ever did.
They talked of manor and village things a while. It was good talk, of people not only familiar but close in caring to both Damaris and her aunt. Then they sat silent a while, until Aunt Elspeth took Damaris' hand in her own and said, "Now there's you to talk of."
"I'd rather not." For the little time she had left at Thornoak, Damaris wanted to pretend this was not her last while here.
Aunt Elspeth went on, regardless, "You'll be done with school the end of this term. You’ve surely thought of what you'll do then?"
Turning her hand over to hold tightly to her aunt’s, Damaris stared at the lavender border until able to answer, "It's likely Miss Edwards will offer me a place as teacher. There's one coming open this autumn. Otherwise I'll advertise for employment in another school or as a governess."
"And in the future?"
"I can't see that far." The idea of years of school and days full of girls had small charm for her, but there were so few possibilities and taking this one would at least save her the trouble of looking for a position somewhere she did not know and was unknown. Carefully, because she had thought about it, she answered, "If I can keep hold of my inheritance and save money from my salary, I might later try to have a school of my own." This was the hope she clung to in her moments of worst longing for what she could not have. "In Skelfeld, I thought." Not in the dale but near.
Answering what Damaris had not said, her aunt said, "Damaris, I'd have you here for always if your mother hadn’t wanted otherwise for you."
"My mother is dead."
"But my promise to her isn't. She left the dale when she was young, and she wanted to be sure that you did, too. I promised her you would go."
Damaris knew that now was when she should demand the why of all of that. Why had her mother left? Why had she wanted so much to have Damaris leave, too? Those were the questions Damaris had wanted, over and over again, to ask these past four years. But she never had and she could not now. Partly, her own pain held her back, fearful of more pain. Partly... she did not know. The fear of what her aunt might answer? Or fear that her aunt would refuse an answer? Either would hurt, and afraid of the hurt, Damaris bowed her head, kept her questions to herself, and said, "I know. You promised her. There's no choice. It's all right."
But it was not all right and they both knew it, whether they said so or not, and they sat in silence, holding to each other's hand until Aunt Elspeth gathered herself with a shake of her head and said, "I must go lie down a time. It’s been too many hours since I did."
She kissed Damaris’ cheek and went away, leaving Damaris alone in the garden, and Damaris realized that what she wanted most to do just then was to go for a long ride alone on the moors, away from questions, away from her future. Since coming home she had managed only one short visit to the stables and no ride at all. A long one would do both Fansome and her good, and there was still time for it this afternoon. Besides, there was always the probability of rain tomorrow, and the day after that she would return to Hull, so now might be her only time.
She let herself out the garden’s back gate and crossed the yard to the stable where she found Albert sitting in the tack room doorway, oiling harness leathers, whistle-hissing through his teeth. He looked up at her and grinned but went on working, not bothering to speak.
In the comfortable silence, she fetched out Fansome's saddle and bridle on her own. Albert and her Uncle Russell had taught her not only to ride but how to saddle and bridle her own horse. She had once pointed out that Irene never saddled her own horse, and Uncle Russell had answered by asking, "Why should you stand around dandling your riding whip while one of the stablehands interrupts his work to do what you can do yourself?"
The question was a good one, because without her uncle ever saying so, Damaris knew he thought Irene a silly girl. Besides, the foolishness of standing idly by while Albert or someone did something for her that she could do herself had made Damaris smile then and made her smile now as she came into Fansome's stall. The mare pulled around on her headstall to whicker down her nose in greeting.
"That's my pretty lady," Damaris said, drawing a hand down the mare's neck, feeling the strength of her under the velvet skin. "Shall we go for a ride? Up to the moors and very far away?"
Fansome was quite ready to go out but stood with her usual good manners while Damaris saddled and bridled her, and only danced a little, her shoes clicking on the stone-flagged floor, as Damaris led her out to the stableyard. There, she held steady while Damaris mounted, but then tossed her head, tugging the reins to show it was time to go. Damaris agreed, and it was only with difficulty that they both constrained themselves to a walk until they had reached one of the green rides that crossed the moor, with nothing around them but distances and sky. Damaris briefly drew rein there, breathing the clear air deeply into her lungs, her mind light with happiness as she looked all around. There were people who found the moors an empty, barren place. For her they were neither, and on them she felt more alive than anywhere else.
She leaned forward, whispered in Fansome's ear, and loosed the reins. In answer, Fansome sprang forward into a gallop, and Damaris, bent close above her neck, laughed aloud into the wind of their going.
Later, walking, the end of her afternoon's ride brought her around to The Place, just as she had intended, saving it for last on purpose. Fansome could rest and crop the grass, and she could dream for a while over the dale. At school, time for dreaming was scarce and another thing she missed along with everything else here.
Leaving Fansome to graze, knowing the mare would not wander far, she went to stand by the Lady Stone. Try as she might through the years, she had never been able to see any shape of a woman in the stone, no shape to it at all except that of a great black stone, but there was a quietness around it, here in The Place, as if stillness went deeper here than anywhere else on the moor or in the dale. Sometimes she felt that if she chose, she could go into that stillness as if it were a place as real as where she stood. Could go into it so deeply she need never come out. It was good, sometimes, to feel that stillness, and she gave herself up to it now as she stood gazing out at the dale, her hand laid lightly on the side of the Lady Stone, and yet was wondering how it would be when she could no longer call the dale and Thornoak home. Would there be some place else that would be home to her, somewhere else that stillness ran this deeply?
She was not sure how long she had been standing there – not long enough for her shadow to have much lengthened on the grass away from the westering sun – when a small tendril of certainty curling through her mind told her Kellan was behind her. But she stayed as she was, and a moment later he said from a little way away, "Sad thoughts?"
She looked at him over her right shoulder, her hand still on the stone, and answered, "Somewhat." Then added, to keep him from asking about her thoughts, "I didn't hear you come. Or them," she added with a nod at Pitty, Patty, Dirk, and Trey sitting near Fansome with their tongues lolling out.
"I've been trying to train them to go silently instead of scaring everything away for five miles around," Kellan said. He came to stand beside her, gazing out as she did at the dale. "What were you thinking about?"
"What I'll be doing now that school is nearly over for me."
"You have plans then?"
"I think Miss Edwards will offer me a teaching position at the school."
"Will you like that?"
"No."
"But you'll do it?"
Damaris looked up at him. He was the lighter-hearted of her two cousins, perhaps because he and Nevin had always known the burden of Thornoak Manor would come some day to Nevin rather than to him. But he was also always the one to whom she could most easily tell her thoughts, sometimes even more readily than to Aunt Elspeth, except that presently she did not want to think about later and so settled for saying, "It's somewhere for me to be and something to do. "
"There's marriage."
"No one has offered."
"Lauran says you were blushing about someone. He thinks you have a suitor somewhere."
"Lauran gossips as badly as Irene," Damaris said, deliberately prim. "I've been in correspondence with a friend of Mary Elaine's brother, that's all."
"Still, he might be better than being a teacher or governess."
"I doubt it." Tartly now. "Not if a husband is half as much a trouble as boy cousins and neighbors are."
But Kellan was not a boy anymore. Nor was Lauran. Nor was she a little girl any longer, and soon everything she had had while she was a child would be lost to her, and the sadness of that caught in her throat for a moment, bringing her perilously near to tears. To force them away and protect herself from Kellan realizing too much, she said, still tartly, "Now be nice or I'll make you tell me how many damsels you were hiding from last night. You didn't stay with me for my sake. You kept my company so they couldn't all lay claim to you at once, yes?"
"That," said Kellan with mock-injured dignity, "is hardly something I'd confess to even if it were true. And it isn't. Your suspicion wounds me deeply."
"My suspicion comes from long acquaintance. I still remember the time you tried to convince me the dead caterpiller on my plate was a pale string bean and that I should eat it."
"I was having trouble with my eyes. It looked like a pale string bean to me."
"It had large black spots and a great many legs."
"What about the time you tricked me into eating a biscuit you'd put ground-up dog food in? Wretched brat. I've never felt safe eating biscuits again."
"Good!" Damaris answered remorselessly. "I’ve never felt the same about string beans!"
But they were both laughing.
Still, it was time they went home. If they did not start down now, they would be late to supper, and she left the Lady Stone, going to gather up Fansome's reins as Kellan snapped his fingers at the dogs, who sprang as if on coils to come at his heels. But Damaris had another thought and paused, backed up a step, and gazing eastward down the dale asked, "Remember when you told me about the Old Ways?"
Kellan hesitated a small twitch of time before answering slowly, "I remember. I thought you'd forgotten."
"Of course I haven't. Now look there." Damaris pointed ahead to where the moor path turned from the ridge to slant away down the slope through the break in the cliff face to the pastures below. The band of trees that grew along the foot of the rocky scar were still in their young leaves, not totally obscuring the view eastward. "You can see St. Cuthbert's tower from here. See?"
"I see."
"There's a Way runs from St. Cuthbert's down the dale through Ellerbee farmyard and other places, and because you can see St. Cuthbert's from here, I'm wondering if you can't see here from St. Cuthbert's."
"See the Lady Stone from St. Cuthbert's? I don't think so," Kellan protested.
"Maybe not, but the gap in the scar that the path goes through might show up against the skyline if the angle is right."
"There are trees in the way."
"There needn't always have been trees. And there's always the Old Woman – "
In her enthusiasm Damaris started to turn toward the black stone that stood on the crest of the moor beyond the Lady Stone, but she saw Kellan's expression, a mixture of questioning and wariness, and she stopped. "Kellan? What is it?"
Slowly he said, "You've asked me this before."
"No, I haven't. It suddenly came into my head a few weeks ago in Hull. I haven't had a chance to ask you."
"But you did." Kellan had begun to rouse toward a cautious excitement. "Four years ago. The day you fainted and fell and lost your memory. We'd been here, all four of us, and we were riding home and you fainted and woke up not remembering some things."
"I know." She hated being reminded of that gap in her mind; like a horse avoiding a fence where it had fallen, she shied away from Kellan and the thought together, but he caught her arm, holding her where she was.
"You asked me exactly this question that day, here by the Lady Stone," he insisted. "Maybe your memory is coming back."
Bitterness strong as an actual taste rose up in Damaris. What use would it be to her, having that piece of her memory back? Nothing she wanted changed would be changed. In her mind, that fall had been the beginning of her being sent away from Thornoak, and sometimes – when she was not careful enough – her anger at that rose up, all the worse because no matter how angry she might be, nothing was going to change.
None of that was Kellan's fault, though. His hand was on her arm, and his voice was eager, as if her lost memory mattered more to him than she had ever thought it did. So she closed the bitterness away and said, trying to match his eagerness, "It might be. That little bit has come back and the rest might, too."
Kellan's expression was abruptly unreadable, shut as if he had set a barrier across some thought he wanted to keep from her. Or maybe she only imagined it, because the next instant he was smiling, saying, "And either way, it's a good idea about the Old Woman. You maybe can see it from St. Cuthbert's. On a clear day, anyway. And there's the chance the Way goes on beyond it, if there's a site point from up there."
They both turned toward the Old Woman's hunched black shape above them on the crest of the moor. And saw it was moving, shifting against the sky, changing shape.
Damaris gave a startled cry that had nothing to do with Kellan's hand on her arm tightening to hurting.
The next moment, though, Kellan swore, "Damn her!" just as Damaris realized what they were seeing was not the stone moving but the shadowed silhouette of someone standing beside it or beyond it, so close that their shape and the stone's would have seemed like one if they had not moved.
Relief flooded over Damaris’ momentary panic, leaving her weak, but Kellan freed her, was going to Fansome, ordering as he went, "Stay here." Seizing Fansome's reins, he swung into the saddle, pointed up the hill, and added to the dogs, "Seek."
Pitty, Patty, Dirk, and Trey streaked away.
"I want to come!" Damaris protested.
Ignoring her, Kellan brought Fansome around and set her into a strong canter up the slope toward the Old Woman and whoever was there. Furious, Damaris stamped her foot. Miss Edwards' School admitted nothing further than that to women in moments of extreme annoyance, but it was definitely insufficient at just this moment, and despite the School's behest to practice womanly obedience and patience, Damaris started up the slope after him.
The slope was not steep, and there was a sheep track that went nearly the way she wanted, but the footing was treacherously rough and the worse because she was watching ahead more than paying heed to her feet. She stumbled some and stones slid out from under her feet and she was nowhere near when the dogs reached the Old Woman, started to close in on it, then drew abruptly back, one of them giving what sounded like a frightened yip as finally whoever was there stepped away from the stone into plain view.
Virna.
Even seeing her as no more than a dark shape against the sky, Damaris knew without doubt that it was her.
The dogs drew further back as Virna moved forward. Kellan rode past them and directly to her. Damaris was still too far away to hear what he said or Virna replied, but their mutual anger was plain in Virna’s gesture at him and his back at her. Damaris forced herself more quickly up the slope, determined to know more, and was perhaps a dozen yards away and near enough to make out that the words between them were short, sharp, and vehement, before Virna snarled a last word at Kellan, stepped back from him, turned a glaring long look at Damaris, and said, deliberately loud enough for Damaris to hear, "On all of you!", then spun away and set off at a running walk across the moor by one of the many sheep paths criss-crossing near the stone.
Damaris, coming level with the Old Woman and Kellan too late and out of breath, made as if to call after her but Kellan said curtly, furious, "Let her go. The further the better."
Still short of breath, Damaris protested, "Why are you so angry at her being here? What’s to be angry at about that?"
"Not for being here. For this!" Swinging down from Fansome, he went to the standing stone and in a single furious jerk wrenched up a plant growing at its base. Damaris gasped. Hellebore. An herb that Aunt Elspeth had shown to her in an herbal and bade her know it well, but would not have it in her garden because, even used with the utmost care, it was dangerous. Used carelessly or with ill intent, it was deadly. More than that, it had no natural place on the moor. To be here at all it had to be deliberately planted and be cared for.
"And this." Kellan crouched and scrabbled a small, tied bag out of the ground where the plant had been. He thrust it at Damaris. "Smell this."
Damaris put up her hand, repulsing the stenchy thing. "Ew! That’s horrible! What is it?"
"Witchcraft," Kellan said. Then, as if it made a difference, "Black witchcraft." He was more furious than she had ever seen him. "She's–" He stopped himself, began again with more control, "Her mother, her grandmother, they were always the village 'wise women'. The ones who would do a love charm or tell your fortune. Silly stuff. Mostly harmless. But Virna has pushed beyond that. There's nothing harmless about this." He was holding the bag at nearly arm's length as if wishing he did not even have to touch it. "Come on," he said. "We're going home. Mother has to deal with this."
He was still angry, but the anger was cold now and deep in a way Damaris had never known him to be. Neither Fansome nor the dogs wanted him close to them: The mare shied away when he approached her with the bag; the dogs circled him as widely as they had Virna. With Damaris leading Fansome and the dogs following, they walked the way down to Thornoak, mostly in silence, and parted in the stableyard.
While Kellan went toward the house with the noisome bag and the uneasy dogs, Damaris went to the stable to unsaddle and groom Fansome. By the time she came into the house, whatever passed between Kellan and Aunt Elspeth was over, and although she expected some talk of it over supper, not a word was said about it. In fact, Kellan and Aunt Elspeth were simply themselves, and if Uncle Russell knew anything he was not showing it. She thought of bringing it up herself, but talk went on so easily and normally of manor matters that the ugliness of what there had been on the moor seemed too much an intrusion, and so she kept quiet, thinking there would be a chance to ask about it in the parlor afterward. But as they finished the meal, Aunt Elspeth said she was tired and going to bed, and Uncle Russell went to his study to work on accounts neglected among the wedding business, and Kellan challenged her to chequers and played ruthlessly enough she had to concentrate on every move. The most she managed to ask, as they were putting the game away after her fifth narrow win and before Agnes came with a candle to see her up to bed, was, "What did your mother say about Virna?"
Kellan shrugged easily, as if it were after all a little matter and said, "She'll see to it," with enough dismissal in his voice that Damaris did not ask more.
After all, she told herself as she readied for bed, it was all only a silliness – the plant, the bag, the "witchcraft". She simply wished it had not happened, marring her next-to-last night here before going back to Hull. She wanted everything to be as if Virna never was, and was only a little satisfied to know that Virna likely felt the same about her.
The next morning was gray with fitful rain, just as Damaris had expected when she had taken her last ride the day before. Yet as she stood at her window, brushing her hair and watching a curtain of rain pass up the dale, followed by a fit of sunshine unfortunately closely pursued by another sweep of rain, she sighed. Another few days and there would be no moors, no dale, no riding; only Hull’s streets and buildings every way the eyes turned, with occasional decorous strolls in a park with fellow schoolgirls and sometimes – height of delight – a carriage ride into the countryside for a polite picnic, again with all her fellow schoolgirls. Her eyes strayed to her trunk sitting against the wall, already half packed, with her riding dress presently topmost, brought up by Agnes last evening after its hem had been dried and brushed clean of the mud she had got on it on the moor. Tonight, when she and Agnes finished with her packing, her riding dress would disappear under other dresses and things – gone, along with all her days in the dale, because in Hull she would leave it stored in the trunk, to go into storage with other things that were of no use. Miss Edwards’ young ladies were expected never to do anything so venturesome as riding.
The brief sunlight had already swept past, and the dale and hills were disappeared again behind a new curtain of rain as gray and dismal as her thoughts. She knew she was feeling sorry for herself and did not care.
Then suddenly she did care. Yesterday’s ride had been spoiled by Virna. After this morning there would be no more riding, because even if the rain ended by afternoon, as well it might, Mistress Ashbrigg and Irene were coming for their farewell visit and there was no foregoing that. There was only this morning: Her last chance for one more, unspoiled ride, rain or no. And with suddenly firm, defiant purpose, she snatched up her riding dress, shook it out of its careful folds, and put it on.
Going down to breakfast, she found she was later than she had thought. Everyone else had gone out, and so she made a quick breakfast of tea and toast and eggs alone, aware of Agnes eyeing her riding dress with disapproval but saying nothing, perhaps warned off by the stubborn set of Damaris’ chin.
In the stable, Fansome greeted her with a glad whickering, obviously not put off in the slightest by the thought of a wet ride. Albert, coming along between the stalls, chuckled and said, "She looks like a fine lady, but she's not tidy in her ways. Likes a good slog through mud, she does."
"And the pleasure of being rubbed down afterwards," Damaris pointed out.
Albert chuckled. "That's true enough."
The trouble with that was that Fansome enjoyed the rubbing down so much she would forget herself in pleasure and take to leaning into the person rubbing her. When Damaris was smaller and before Albert had shown her where to prod the mare behind the elbow to remind her of her manners, trying to dry Fansome off before being pressed into the side of the stall had been an alarming procedure – and a source of merriment to Nevin and Kellan.
Today, in commonsense, she stayed off the moors, keeping instead to the dale’s more sheltered rides. There were enough miles of them for a long ride, but she was thwarted of it when the light rain in which she had set out, instead of easing, thickened toward what promised to be a downpour.
"This is silly," she told Fansome. "Let's go home."
Fansome flickered her ears backward and forward, spattering raindrops in what looked like agreement, and Damaris turned her into the next farm lane toward the house. The lane was narrow, stone-walled on both sides and without shelter from the worsening rain except for a blackthorn tree leaning its gnarled trunk against the wall, its white-blossomed branches sweeping low over the narrow stile in the wall where a field path running down from the woods under the scar met the lane. As Fansome neared the tree Damaris saw someone was there, wrapped and hooded in a gray cloak that blended with the gray day and gray stone walls. They were also partly obscured by the branches, and Damaris leaned forward to see better whoever it was; but they were already stepping out from under the sheltering branches and twisting through the stile into the lane. A pale face and fair hair showed in the gray shelter of the cloak’s hood, and Damaris said, surprised as much as displeased, "Virna." Then she wished she had said nothing, had simply ridden on. Except she couldn’t. Virna had stepped into Fansome’s way.
Looking up, Virna said, "You were with Kellan yesterday."
Forced to draw rein, and angry at Virna for yet again spoiling her ride, Damaris said sharply, "Master Kellan." Reminding Virna of the distance between her and the Helms, now that there was no friendship left there.
"Master Kellan," Virna mocked. Her smile was unlovely. "You were with Master Ashbrigg, too, at the bonfire. You're making busy after being gone so long." She came nearer as she spoke. Inadvertently Damaris tightened the reins and Fansome backed a few steps. Virna's smile twisted farther, into a kind of triumph, and Damaris forced herself to hold where she was despite Virna kept coming, asking as she came, "Have they told you anything? Master Kellan or Master Ashbrigg?" She mocked the names. "Has your aunt? Have you even dared to ask her anything beyond the little she's been willing to tell you? You've forgotten the full moon, haven't you? You remember nothing, do you? You've forgotten everything she’s wanted you to forget and never guessed at all the lies she’s told you. That’s all you’ve ever had from her, from all of them – lies and forgetting."
Confused by the questions and Virna’s deep-etched scorn, Damaris caught at one thing out of it all. "The moon? What about the moon would I forget?"
"What she wanted you to forget. What she wants you to never know." Virna was very near now, still in Fansome’s way in the narrow lane. "Your aunt will make you forget everything. One way or another. Even Thornoak, if she has to."
As she said the last, she held out her hand as if offering Fansome an apple or carrot. But there was nothing in her hand and she was looking, still smiling, up into Damaris' face. Damaris felt a sudden panicked need to be away from that smile and the hard, hating eyes, but before she could do anything at all, Fansome hurled violently backward, rearing and twisting as she did. Thrown first hard against the high front of the saddle, then flung sideways, Damaris had no time to grab or hold to anything. Thrown sideways, she saw the gray stone wall of the narrow lane hurtling at her... then nothing.