She awoke to strong sunlight shining against her closed eyes and awareness that she was chill and damp and – when she made a small movement – stiff. Slowly, as if her eyelids had stiffened with the rest of her, she opened her eyes, found her head was resting on her arm and that she was looking toward a sky warm with the first pink and yellow flush of a clear dawn.
She was still on the hillside above the Lady Stone.
Held there by the tangle and misery of her thoughts, she had fallen asleep instead of slipping away, and now it was dawn. With the beginning of panic, she started to raise her head but stopped with a small sound of pain at her neck’s stiffness.
Beside her, Kellan said, "It's all right. No one else knows you were here."
Damaris jerked onto her side and gasped again at her body's protest.
"If you don't want to hurt in the morning," said Kellan, sounding faintly amused, "I suggest you try sleeping some place besides the moor."
Damaris averted her face from him and sat up slowly.
"Slowly is best," Kellan agreed, offering to take her elbow to steady her.
Damaris twitched her arm away from him. She still would not look at him, and if she could have trusted her legs she would have stood up and left him, but she guessed her legs would work no better than the rest of her did yet, so she stayed where she was, her eyes down, not wanting to see him.
Quietly, the amusement gone from his voice, Kellan asked, "Is it as bad as that? Damaris, look at me."
Sooner or later she would have to, she knew, and accepted that it might as well be now. Shivering with the morning chill – and something deeper – she raised her eyes to him.
He was not changed. He was still Kellan. But...
"You're part of it," she whispered, accusing him. "You've always been part of it."
"Yes."
"Last night..." Again the accusation, stronger now.
"There’s the outer circle and the inner circle and the heart. Last night I came into the inner. I’ve taken old Mr. Thwaite’s place."
Damaris made to rise. No matter what her legs wanted, she did not want to be here with him.
Kellan laid a hand on her shoulder to keep her where she was. Still too stiff to rise in spite of him, Damaris settled for shrinking down from under his touch. With both disbelief and pain in his voice, he said, "You can't be afraid of me. How could you think to be afraid of me?"
"I'm afraid of all of you," she said fiercely. Except her voice shook.
"Why?" He sounded honestly bewildered.
"Because I've seen what you do here! Because you've all lied to me for years! Every day I've been here has been a lie!"
"It hasn't."
"It has!"
"Damaris." Kellan’s sudden quiet oddly steadied her. She pulled back from her beginning hysteria, instead clenched her hands together in her lap and stared down at them, refusing him anything else; but when he moved as if to lay his own hand over hers, she drew hers away, closer to herself, protectively. "Damaris, we didn't lie because we wanted to. Your mother..."
"She knew about all this, didn't she?"
"Of course she did."
"And when she came back here, she died. She and my father both died."
Kellan did not answer that immediately. When he did it was with a question. "Damaris, how did you know to come to the Lady Stone last night?"
Bluntly, with no reason to protect Virna, she said, "Virna told me. She said if I came here at the full moon's rising I'd learn something about my mother's death and my father's."
It was only part of the truth, but what truth did she owe Kellan or anyone else at Thornoak? Their lies to her had gone on for years.
Quietly Kellan said, "Your mother's dying had nothing to do with this. Or your father's. His horse fell and he was killed. Your mother... the doctor said afterward that something inside her was diseased. She only happened to be here when it went fully to the bad and she died of it. There was nothing that could have been done to save her, no matter where she was. Didn't anyone ever tell you, ever talk to you about it?"
Damaris shook her head. Or if they had, she had not heard it in her grief. And she had never asked.
"She would have died wherever she was," Kellan said gently. "It wasn't because she was here that she died."
"That’s easily said," she retorted bitterly.
"And easily disbelieved. But Damaris, why believe Virna instead of me?"
"Because you've all lied to me. Over and over again, you've lied to me!"
"Not because we wanted to. Your mother was Aunt Elspeth's sister. She was part of all of this. It's been part of our family, part of Thornoak, for generations past remembering. There aren't many places left that hold to the old ways. It's mostly died out. Nevin had to go to Cheshire to find a bride."
"Gweneth is part of it, too," Damaris said. Everyone was part of it, except her.
"Gweneth, too," Kellan agreed gently.
At least now she could ask what she had been wondering about Gweneth. "Why was Aunt Elspeth so angry at Nevin for Gweneth being afraid of lightning, of storms?"
"Because Gweneth will be Lady of Thornoak after her. Damaris, I can't tell you anything close to everything. It's what your mother did that's made us lie to you. No, listen! She was part of this but she came to be afraid of it. From what I've heard said, she was easily afraid of things. She left. No one made her and no one tried to stop her."
"But when she came back, she died."
Kellan's face hardened. "Believe what you need to believe. I’ve told you the truth about it. As for all the lying there’s been, it's been because of her. When she knew she was dying, she made her sister, your aunt, my mother in all but blood, promise to keep you out of all of this, made her promise you'd have no part in it or even knowledge of it. Then she bound her with an oath she knew Mother would never break. Mother made the promise because of how desperately your mother wanted it, and she's kept her promise and made us and everyone at Thornoak keep it, too, no matter what it's cost us to do it. Have you thought what it's cost us to keep all this from you? We've had to live in the lie your mother wanted and we've hated it!"
His anger at that cut at her own hurt, the strength of his certainty striking at her own confusion. She felt tears wanting to come and put her hands over her face to stop them. "I don't know," she whispered. "I can't think clearly anymore. Kellan, I'm frightened and I don't know anything from anything."
The anger gone, he asked, "But do you really believe what you saw here last night was something wrong? I know it isn't what you've been taught, but did it feel evil or look evil to you?"
Her face still covered, Damaris shook her head. "No." It had felt strong. It had felt beautiful. It had felt as right as anything she had ever felt. And that frightened her, too. "I don't know," she whispered. Did not know what to do or how to answer him.
Kellan took hold of her wrists and gently drew her hands down from her face so she would see him, and said quietly, "I can't tell you about it, Damaris, because I'm still bound by the oath Mother made us all take never to tell you. But I'll swear to you if you want that as far as I know no one has ever been willfully hurt by what we do here. We've helped but we've never harmed so far as I know of it. Will you believe that at least?"
"Yes," she whispered. It was far easier to believe in him and what he said than in Virna's hatefulness; and that freed her to ask, "Kellan, how did you know I was here but no one else did?"
Kellan’s mouth twitched with a smile very much his mischievous own. "I felt you. Haven't you ever noticed how I can tell where you are? Not all the time but when you're in worst need? How do you think I knew to come looking for you the day you went to Virna's, when I should have been with Father and Nevin? I felt something wrong and turned back to find you. You do it, too, sometimes, with me, only I don't think you know it. You've never been taught."
He did not add that that was something else her mother had done for her, but she felt it behind the words. With her eyes fixed on his face, she said, "It's real what you do here, isn't it? It's not pretending to power. It's real."
"Oh yes. It's real," he said simply.
The tears she had been holding back too long spilled out, along with a gasp of pain at their release, and when Kellan gathered her into his arms, she let him, crying onto his shoulder the way she had on her uncle's when she was little. Kellan held her until the tears were done, then gave her his handkerchief and asked gently, "Can you come home with me now?"
Damaris flinched from the thought. She believed what he had told her and yet... "I can't. I need time to think. I need time before I face everyone. I need..." To find out what she was feeling.
Kellan accepted that. "I'll tell Mother first if you let me. Tell her that you know. That changes things, but I'm not certain how. Will you talk with her then? Ask her everything you want to know and listen to her?"
"She really doesn't know I was here?"
"No one else knows. No one else felt you. And I took the blanket out of your bed so anyone who went to wake you this morning would think you'd simply gone out for an early walk." He helped her to her feet and took an apple from his pocket. "And I brought you this because I thought you might be hungry after sleeping out all night. And–" He fumbled in another pocket and brought out some of her long hairpins. "—these, because your hair is down."
She took the hairpins and the apple and said, with the closest she could come to a smile, "Thank you."
Kellan smiled back and left her; and she watched him stride away down the slope toward the path and felt desolate that he was gone. But she also found, to her surprise, that she was hungry, and she sat back down, first to coil her braid to the back of her head and pin it there, then to eat the apple. When she had finished it, she gathered herself up and set off down a sheep track along the hillside, not particular where she was going so long as it was not back to the house. Still chilled and somewhat dew-damp, she headed instinctively toward the rising sun. The light was a dazzle in her eyes and she walked without thinking about how far, without thinking much of anything at all, until she found she was curving down from the moor into woods and saw St. Cuthbert's tower showing squarely among its trees nearby.
She had come nearly to Gillingthwaite. From there she could go back to Thornoak by the road, or she could cut through the churchyard to a field path that would be a longer way home, or she could turn back to the moors. She had had enough of the moors for now but was still unready to face anyone at Thornoak, so was drawn to the shadowed peace inside the church. She could sit there and try to think, she thought. Or at least rest for a time. But as she passed the rectory, Father Gedney straightened up from among his beans beyond the wall, startling himself and her, before he smiled his warm, deep smile and said, "You're early at your walking, my dear. Would you care for a cup of tea? The kettle is warming and there's yesterday's scones if you're hungry."
At the mention of "hungry" her stomach made a clamor for attention, the apple long since used up, and she said, "Yes. Thank you. I could do with a cup of tea and something." Almost apologetically, she added, "I've been out longer than I meant to be."
"I thought so." Father Gedney opened his gate for her. "Just go right in and I'll be there in a moment. The mirror is in the hallway."
That odd last remark became clear as soon as Damaris looked in that mirror in the rectory’s front hallway. Despite she had put up her hair, she looked very much as if she had been out too long and up to no good in the bargain. She straightened her dress and smoothed her hair as best she could, and was in the kitchen taking the boiling kettle off the fire when he came in. He put the colander full of fresh-picked beans in the sink and brought out the scones, butter, jam, knives, spoons, plates and cups while Damaris brewed the tea in the rectory’s large brown teapot. She brought it to the table, and they sat down together. Father Gedney said a small grace, and at his gesture for her to help herself, Damaris did.
Surprised by her hunger, she ate rather more than she meant to, with only manners keeping her from gobbling. Not until the worst edge was eased did she realize that Father Gedney was eating more slowly, while watching her across the table.
Aware when she became aware of him, he asked mildly, "You spent the night on the moor, my dear?"
There was no accusation in it or prodding curiosity, only an invitation to talk if she wanted to, or felt the need. Damaris knew he would not press her. From all she knew of him, nearly the only thing deeper in him than his knowledge of his people – he had been rector here for more than thirty years – was his kindness. His kindness... and his faith.
She had only to tell him all that she now knew and everything would be out of her hands. He would know who must be told, and after that...
But to betray... everyone...
Part of her, hot with angry hurt, wanted that. Wanted to betray them all as deeply as she had been betrayed. Wanted to hurt them all as badly as she was hurting. There would be such savage satisfaction in doing that to them all...
Satisfaction as savage as anything Virna probably felt against them all.
That thought stopped her with the thoroughness of running into one of the dale’s stone walls. Taking another piece of toast she did not want to give her somewhere to look besides at Father Gedney, she answered his question carefully. "I was out before dawn and walked farther than I meant to."
Father Gedney regarded her in silence for a moment, then said, "Have you heard from your friends that were here? Everything's well with them?"
That was safe to talk about, and Damaris did, until she saw a way that might tell her more than she asked, and with feigned ease she said, "Do you know, after Mr. Harris saw the Midsummer bonfire and all, he commented on how he was surprised at how in earnest everyone seemed to be. He was wondering if they really believe in that sort of thing anymore. Do you think they do? Some of them?"
Again Father Gedney regarded her in silence, apparently considering the question before he answered, "You mean, do folk here believe in our power to participate in Nature and strengthen it to our own needs? Or, alternatively, for us to be strengthened by it so we may meet its needs as well as our own? There have always seemed to me to be two sides to it. As to so much else." His voice was shaded with consideration and regret, as if it were a worrisome problem with which he had long dealt and found no answer to yet. "What I’ve had to ask myself is whether they are worshiping Nature, or the power of the Divine as it’s revealed in Nature."
Damaris blinked. "What?"
"What has you troubled is your uncertainty about what they mean by what they do at these seasonal festivals, yes?" Father Gedney said calmly. "Is it genuine faith for them? Or a crude, unthinking paganism?"
Staring at him, Damaris whispered, "You... know."
"I know a great deal, my dear. Not all of it. I’ve taken care not to know more than I could help. But of course I know. I’m of the dale myself. Not of Thornoak itself, but of the dale. I chose a different path of faith, have taken my vows in the Christian church as my way toward God, as my way of seeking to fulfill his will, hopefully learning along the way to make my will the same as His. For me, God is our ruler and the ruler of everything that is, and my duty is to serve and obey Him as best I may. The idea behind paganism as it’s lived here, as I understand it, is that everything is God, and what they wish is to unite with Him – or perhaps ‘with It’ would be a better way to say it, since I gather they don't see God as male and made in our image, but rather as a unification of all existence. A Power, rather than Being. What they wish to do by their ritual efforts is unite with this Power, insofar as anyone can unite with the divine while still encompassed by the flesh. Whereas in my faith I seek to serve God, they seek to become one with the divine."
He broke off, smiled a somewhat embarrassed smile, and said, "Oh my. That's not what you were asking me at all. To answer your question, yes, I think there are people here in the dale whose faith in what they do is real. They believe more in what they do than they believe in what I do. But I don't think... Oh dear, this is difficult." He looked down as if needing to concentrate on stirring his tea that had long since cooled past needing stirring, until finally – still watching his stirring – he said firmly, "I don't think that their belief is evil. Perhaps I should, because it is not my belief. But it seems to me that with any belief, even the Christian, a belief’s value depends on the use to which it is put. A good belief turned to evil and selfish ends is no better than a bad belief, and in all my years here, I've never known this belief of the people to be turned to harm. Never. And that, I think, counts for very much."
He looked up, met Damaris' stare in a long and speaking look, and went on, still carefully, "The faith your aunt and family live in has been their family's faith for time out of mind, and I've found no evil in it more than I've found in my own. There's goodness and strength in your aunt. In all of your family. There are Christians with much less of either who come unchallenged into churches every Sunday. So I let her come, unchallenged, for the sake of everyone. More than that, knowing her challenge is here, I've found that I try harder toward goodness and kindness myself."
Despite his words, a sadness came openly over him, and he looked away from her. "Still, perhaps I should have done more. I don’t know. I'm no brave man, my dear. I maybe should have challenged your grandmother when I began to understand what she was, but I didn't. And I wonder sometimes. I can't have been the first pastor here at St. Cuthbert's to realize what your family is, but no one else has ever spoken out against them either. We seem to have a kind of understanding without ever having spoken of it. The people here come freely to both me and to your aunt, depending on their particular need of the moment. The matter is balanced between our faiths and I think perhaps even beginning to come my way as the world changes. But if I fought her openly, I think there is a very strong chance I would lose, and a great certainty that much harm would be done, much good undone. So I have not fought her. For that I'll have to answer to God when my time comes. I can only hope my answer is good enough."
His sadness at the thought was so deep and honest that Damaris put a hand over his near one, squeezed it, and said, "He's said to be a god of love, and most surely you're a loving man, Father."
Father Gedney placed his other hand over hers. "Indeed, my dear, that is one of the finest things ever said to me."
A brisk knocking at the kitchen door startled them apart, and Irene came in, not waiting for an invitation, saying happily as she saw them, "There you are! Damaris, too! Mama sent me over with this lettuce." She held up a string bag full of greens. "Mama heard the snails had gotten into yours, Father Gedney, and we have ever so much, so she said I should bring you some." She upended the lettuce onto the drainboard by the sink. "It's all washed and everything. Damaris, are you leaving? Would you like to walk home with me?"
Damaris, not ready yet for whatever had to be said next between her and Father Gedney, said quickly, "Gladly. Thank you for the tea and scones, Father Gedney."
"A pleasure to have your company, dear," he assured her. "Please come again soon. Whenever you need."
A day with Irene was not what Damaris had had in mind, but it suddenly seemed better than the company of her own thoughts – or returning to Thornoak. She listened gratefully to Irene’s happy talk about the latest magazine, brought from Skelfeld yesterday along with a letter from her mother's distant cousin in Hampshire.
"He doesn’t live on the coast, but I'm nearly sure Mama will agree to go to her for at least a little visit, and then who knows what else she’ll be persuaded to? I should so like to meet some new people. Even Lauran is being pleasant about our going. Not that he means to go with us, of course. But he does tell her he thinks a change of place would do her ever so much good, and she always listens to him. Though if you ask me, what Lauran needs is someone he would have to listen to."
They were to her front door. She was just beginning to open it but paused, her hand on the handle, and looked back at Damaris to ask seriously, "Are you really so set on marrying Mr. Harris and leaving us? Wouldn’t it be better to marry Lauran? You'd both enjoy that, and it might settle him. He's always off wandering about these days."
Surprised into laughter – something she had not expected to ever be able to do again – Damaris said, "I can hardly imagine Lauran listening to anyone, or settling, no matter who he marries!"
"I’m pleased to hear it," Lauran said, opening the door away from his sister’s hand. He stood aside with a gallant bow to let them enter. "I saw you coming and came to usher you in, and what do I hear but my name being taken in vain. What's Irene uttering against me now?"
"Actually she was saying you were encouraging your mother to go to Hampshire to visit her cousin."
"Actually I'm encouraging Mama because she'll take Irene with her and I'll have a little peace. But what I overheard was something about marrying,"
"What I was saying was that you ought to marry Damaris," Irene informed him firmly. "She hadn’t said yet whether she would or not. Why don't you ask her yourself?"
"Not here in front of you!" Lauran protested.
"Then I'll leave," Irene said promptly and started forward as if to leave them then and there.
Damaris caught her arm, linked her own around it, and said, "If you leave, he'll just say rude things about you behind your back and never come around to asking anyway. So don't be so disobliging as to leave me with him."
"All that means," said Lauran cheerfully, "is that I’ll say rude things to you face to face, Irene."
"I know," she said. "You’re so disgusting, Lauran."
As Damaris had hoped, their talk went away from marriage into familiar friendly insults between brother and sister and the usual questions as to how everyone was at Thornoak, no visits having passed between the houses in two whole days. Then Irene and Damaris joined Mistress Ashbrigg in the parlor, and the same questions were gone through again and the new magazine had to be shared, and the letter from the cousin to be discussed. Lauran was long gone by then, but he reappeared for dinner at mid-day, and after that, when Damaris said she should be going back to Thornoak (despite the inward quailing of her stomach at the thought), he said he would walk her home.
"In this heat?" his mother protested. "No, no, I’ll call the carriage for her. You mustn't think of walking, Damaris."
Damaris assured her that walking would suit her very well, that the heat was hardly great at all, but conceded that the sun was indeed shining and she had no hat, and mollified Irene’s and Mistress Ashbrigg’s out-pouring of concern by accepting one of Irene's wide-brimmed summer hats.
"And you're not to think of going, Irene," Mistress Ashbrigg said. "You'd have to come all the way back and would have a headache the rest of the day from too much sun. I know it."
In truth, Irene had made no offer to go, which had at first surprised Damaris, until she caught Irene's gleaming glance from her to Lauran that said it was not to please her mother that she was staying home but desire to have Lauran and Damaris alone together.
Damaris did not doubt Lauran fully understood what Irene’s purpose was, but when they had left the house and he had asked, "Shall we go by the river path? It's a little longer but the woods make it much cooler," and Damaris had agreed, they went on their way in companionable silence. Lauran was less in Damaris’ thoughts than how she was going to face anyone at Thornoak. What had Kellan told them by now? What was she to say or do when everything was changed between her and all of them? She hardly noticed when Lauran stopped where the woods along the path opened to the river’s bank for a few yards. She merely stopped with him without thinking about it, watched with her mind far away while he took up a dry stick from the ground, broke pieces from it, and tossed them one by one into the water to float away. Only when he had cast away the last of the stick, did he turn to her and ask, still looking at the flowing water, "Shall I propose marriage to you, the way Irene thinks I should?"
Startled, Damaris jerked her gaze from the water to his face, more than half expecting to see he was teasing. If he was, it did not show, but not ready by any measure to take him seriously, she said lightly, "I think you’re supposed to ask the girl to marry you, not ask her if you should ask her."
He took a step toward her, so near she could feel the warmth of him. There was intent in his gaze on her, and Damaris unthinkingly took a step back from him, no longer certain he was jesting, or how to answer him if he was not. But she did not resist when he reached out, took gentle hold on her arms, drew her to him, bent, and kissed her – gently, the way he was holding her. Once. And then again. And again after that.
At first, Damaris took his kisses, then found she wanted them, was returning them, was eagerly seeking them on his warm mouth; and he drew her hard against him, no longer gentle, his kisses demanding, but her own were demanding in return, wanting everything he could give her... everything... until she realized what she was doing and with a shuddering gasp forced herself back from him, not out of his hold but away from his body that her own had begun to answer to too passionately. Breathing quickly, aware that he had responded to her as strongly as she had to him, she averted her face, trying to steady herself, but he recovered first, pressed his face against her hair, and asked huskily, "What if I ask you now to marry me?"
Carefully Damaris withdrew herself from his arms. She needed to be not so near him, because no matter what her body was demanding of her, questions she had been refusing to see all morning were still aching in her mind. Had Lauran been on the moor last night? Was he part of all the lying, too? Until she knew more – including her own feelings more clearly – she wanted nothing else to complicate her pain and questioning. Not even Lauran's love.
If she asked him...
But she could not. If he denied it, what good would his answer be, given all the lying she now knew there was around her? Unable to look him in the face, she whispered toward the sun-sparkling river, "No," not even sure what she meant by it. But when he tried to draw her close to him again, she did not let him, said, "No. Don't."
Almost to her regret, he stopped, held her a moment longer, then carefully let her go.