Damaris and Lauran walked on in a silence that Damaris could not read as either friendly or unfriendly but more as if Lauran were in deep thought about something. What the something was she found out when they came to the end of the field path and the last stile to the road below Thornoak's gateway. There he stopped and said, "I'll not come on with you. There are things I should see to at home. But I'm not saying I won't ask you later about marriage. I wasn't jesting just now. But that aside, if any time you want to talk about whatever is troubling you, I'll gladly listen." His voice lightened. "When there's need, I can listen as well as I can talk. Just don't tell Irene I've almost asked for your hand in marriage and you’ve almost refused me."
Trying to match his lightness, Damaris answered, "For both our sakes, I won't. I'd no more hear the end of it from her than you would."
"True," Lauran agreed wryly and left her with half of a wave.
For the second time that day Damaris watched someone who cared about her walk away, then turned to face Thornoak, trying to ready herself to face whatever waited for her there.
Instead of what she expected, Gweneth, meeting her in the front hallway, exclaimed cheerfully, "There you are! You must be starved. You've been out for hours without breakfast or dinner either."
Disconcerted, Damaris managed to answer, "I had breakfast with Father Gedney and dinner at Ashbrigg," while trying to understand Gweneth's carefree greeting – as if she had no idea that anything had changed between them. Following her into the parlor, Damaris asked, "Is Aunt Elspeth here?"
"She's been gone since before breakfast, just like you. Someone at Uppercross Farm is having trouble with a baby."
"That would be Tom Biggins' wife. She's due with their third," Damaris said. "Her last birthing went hard and she's worried about this one. Have you seen Kellan much today?"
"Hardly at all. Here, will you help me with this yarn? Nevin twitches so when I'm trying to wind it."
Damaris sat down opposite her on the sofa, took the offered skein, and spread it between her hands. Beginning to wind it into a ball, Gweneth went on, "Kellan had only just come in to breakfast, late, when his father said he had to come on an errand with him, so Kellan caught up toast and some bacon and off they went and haven't been back. Nevin went out right after dinner to see how near to harvest the fields are down dale. We’ve been left behind by everyone."
So Kellan had had no chance to talk to Aunt Elspeth, and there was no knowing what he had said to his father by now. Damaris had been prepared for a great many things but not the simple familiarity of an ordinary day. She shrank from the idea of facing her aunt and at the same time wanted it over and done with. So the afternoon became a long torture of waiting, which even thought about Lauran’s half-jesting offer of marriage could not help, not least because she was unsure of her feelings that way so that it was easier not to think of it at all.
Nevin, Kellan, and Uncle Russell returned barely in time for supper, with no word from Aunt Elspeth of whether she would be there or not and no chance for Damaris to say anything alone to Kellan. The most he was able to do was meet her eyes across the room and give a small shake of his head that she took to mean he had said nothing to his father or anyone yet.
They were finishing when Betty came in with a message brought from Uppercross Farm that Mrs. Biggins' baby was not come yet and that Aunt Elspeth would be staying until it was over. Damaris, with the evening to be gone through, refused Kellan's offer of a chequers game and pretended to lose herself in a book in a corner of the parlor, with every sound beyond the parlor door frighting her with thought that Aunt Elspeth was come home, yet leaving her disappointed when it was never her aunt. Why it had to be Aunt Elspeth she spoke to before anyone else, she did not know. That was simply how it had to be, and Kellan must think the same, if he had said nothing to his father.
Aunt Elspeth was not returned at bedtime, leaving Damaris despairingly facing a whole night of uncertainty, but unexpectedly, she slept heavily almost from when she lay down until early morning, with no memory of any particular dreams. Once awakened, though, she could not endure her room, and so she dressed and was downstairs before anyone else was stirring, she thought, until she met Agnes in the lower hall. She took the chance to ask, "Did Aunt come in last night?"
"Not until after midnight," Agnes grumbled. "If that silly widget at Uppercross has any more children let her do it on her own, she's so stupid as to go on having them, knowing what it does to her. Your aunt is none so young as she used to be, to be putting up with foolishness."
"Is she all right?"
"She will be, given time, only worn out. We're letting her sleep in this morning, mind you."
"I meant Mrs. Biggins."
"Hips like a cow and a brain to match," Agnes said unsympathetically. "She'll do, only the baby is another boy and what she needs is a girl to be helping her around that place. Her husband is pleased enough though, I dare say. Go eat your breakfast while it's warm."
Damaris tried to eat, but food and her stomach wanted nothing to do with each other. When Kellan came in alone, she was instantly ready to say something to him, but he warned her with a small shake of his head, warning that Uncle Russell was just behind him, leaving her with no choice but to wish them both good morning, then make her escape with murmured excuse about having to see to something in the stillroom.
She was there, finding enough to do among the drying herbs and stored medicines to keep her busy, when Kellan finally came in, his breakfast finished. She was washing out a mortar and went on with it, to keep from having to look at him while she asked, "Have you told her yet?"
"There's been no chance. All I’ve been able to do is say to Father I have to stay at the house today. When she's awake, as soon as she comes down, I'll talk to her then."
She wanted to ask him what he thought would happen then, but instead carefully dried the mortar and set it aside. Kellan waited. If she asked him, he would tell her, she was certain. He might even reassure her. But suddenly feeling too much like a cornered animal, she swung around, her eyes downcast to keep from seeing him, said, "I'm going out for a walk," and brushed past him, out of the stillroom and toward the rear door.
Kellan let her go.
The steep effort of walking up to the moor cleared her head, and once she was on the moor itself, alone with only the distances, the wind and heather, with no walls or people's eyes around her, she felt better, able to breathe more easily. Today it hardly mattered which way she went. She knew the moor tracks well enough she would be able to circle back to Thornoak when she chose, but just now what she wanted most was to be away from Thornoak, and she followed a crest of the moors at a long angle away from the dale. It was a cloud-streaked day with a warm wind; shadows and sunlight came and went across the hills as she walked, and there might have been no one in the world but herself.
Just now that was how she wanted the world to be.
But the time inevitably came when she knew she had to start back. Putting off what had to come would not make it better, and she left the moors by way of a path down a small stream cut so steep-sided and tree-filled that it was a way she rarely came in her walks and never when she was riding because a horse could enter only from the lower end and only leave by turning around and going back the way it had come. It was near no farms, was not frequented even by sheep, so Damaris was somewhat surprised as she made her way through the trees to find that the path had somehow become well-trodden. Puzzled, with a small unease prickling in the back of her mind, she followed the path anyway, down the narrow valley, and came soon enough to where the valley widened a little and the path passed through a clearing beside the small stream tumbling here among boulders.
Unexpectedly, to one side of the clearing there was a roughly-built shelter of branches and a canvas backed against a rock outcrop of the near valley wall. Blankets were spread over a thick heap of dried bracken on its floor; herbs hung in drying bunches from its cross-pieces; a small fire burned in a pit in front of it; and Virna was straightening from setting a kettle on a tripod over the low flames.
Damaris drew back a step, instantly not wanting to be there, her mind already raising barriers against whatever Virna might try against her.
But all Virna said simply, eyeing her almost warily, "You've come then."
"By accident," Damaris said tersely. She started forward, meaning to make a wide curve past Virna and continue down the path. "And I'm going."
"You've seen them, haven’t you?" Virna said sharply at her. "You've been there. On the moor at moonrise."
Damaris stopped, stood staring at the ground in front of her feet, making no answer but unable to go on.
"So you know," Virna insisted.
"I know."
Virna waited for more but Damaris did not give it, wanted to leave and could not and went on refusing to look at Virna until finally Virna demanded, "If you know, why are you still here? Now that you know, why aren’t you gone? When are you going?"
Damaris finally lifted her gaze and turned to meet Virna’s. It came to her suddenly, for the first time, that Virna could demand but Virna could not take what Damaris did not choose to give. Virna could sow her poisoned seeds of insinuation and fear, but in that moment Damaris accepted it was her own choice whether she let them grow in her mind or not. She had let them grow and they had flourished, but when it came to a choice between her aunt's lies and what passed for truth with Virna, she knew suddenly and very clearly which she preferred, and staring straight back at Virna she said with a voice as hard as Virna's own, "I know what you meant me to know, and I am still here despite it, and I will be here until I choose to leave. That's all you need to know. That’s all you are going to know."
Virna's eyes darkened to black with anger. Damaris felt like a hard shove in her mind the force of Virna’s anger at her. Because somewhere in herself she had been expecting that, she was ready and her own mind hardened to meet it, block it, shove it away the way she had more clumsily fought off the smothering at Virna's gate in the village.
She saw Virna's expression change to startled, and the pressure in her mind disappeared. Suddenly Virna seemed only a tired woman who knew defeat when it rose up in front of her. Even her voice was diminished and softened as she said, "Then there's nothing more to be done, is there? You've chosen. We might have been friends if I'd chosen differently. If you think I’m an enemy now, the fault is mine. Let it be over between us." She looked aside at the kettle over the fire, the water in it just beginning to boil. "Let's end as we once began. With peace between us."
Damaris was set somewhat off balance by the change. She neither said nor did anything as Virna went to her low shelter, saying as she bent into it, "Remember the first time I saw you? I was bringing you some stew and bread and cheese, I think it was." She straightened and turned around, two battered metal mugs in her hands. She smiled; she was truly beautiful when she smiled, with her fair skin and pale hair. She held up the mugs. "Now, here at the end, let me at least give you tea. A cup between us in token for what might have been, and then an end. I’m leaving, you see. The Lady wants me to leave, and I will. So this will be the last time for us."
She did not wait for Damaris’ acceptance but, suddenly brisk, set down the mugs on a flat stone beside her fire and rummaged quickly in a basket set close by, bringing out two small cloth bags. Dropping one into each mug, she said eagerly, "I've made a particular tea of raspberry and mint that you'll surely like. It’s my own favorite." With her hand wrapped in her skirt, she took up the kettle and poured the boiling water into the mugs. "See now," she said, setting the kettle aside and taking up both mugs. She held out one to Damaris. "It needs to cool a little before we drink, but I think you'll find it different and good."
"You must think I’m quite stupid," Damaris said coldly. "To think I’d take anything you offered me."
Still smiling, Virna came a step toward her, the mug still out-held as she coaxed gently, as if to a small child. "This last time. That’s all I want. All that I’m asking of you. To drink with me."
Above her smile, her eyes were fixed in a stare on Damaris’, and Damaris suddenly wondered if a snake charmer’s snake, with its dark, unblinking eyes, ever charmed him instead of the other way around. She put her hands behind her and took a step back. "No," she said, her voice hard with certainty, and saw the flicker of anger in Virna’s eyes as control of her hatred faltered.
That was enough. Damaris made to turn away, to return to the path and away from here. But all unexpectedly, Virna let go heed of her, snapping her head toward the path at the clearing’s lower edge with an impatient, angry sound in her throat. A half moment later Damaris heard a horse’s muted hoof-fall on the path and went equally alert. No one would ride up that narrow path that went nowhere without particular purpose, and the only purpose here was... Virna.
Damaris had urge to fade out of sight among the trees, to leave unseen before she saw who would ride into the clearing, but before she could more than think it, Lauran rode from among the trees on Ribbon.
He drew rein hard at sight of them standing there together. His glance went sharply back and forth between the two of them before he demanded, "Damaris, what are you doing here? What are you playing at, Virna?"
"She happened here," Virna flung angrily back at him. "I've offered her tea. That's all."
Lauran swung Ribbon partly around and held out a hand at Damaris. "Damaris, come with me," he ordered. "You shouldn’t be here."
Neither should he. In the confusion of the moment, that was one thing of which Damaris was certain. She had come upon Virna here by accident. He surely had not.
He had to have come here because of Virna.
Frozen and a little sickened by that thought, Damaris stayed where she was. Beside the fire, Virna’s anger crumbled. Almost piteously she held out a hand to Lauran and cried out, begging him to deny it, "Is it over, then? Are you angry because she happened here? Don’t say that now you want me gone, just like everyone else."
"Gone is exactly what you had better be," said Lauran coldly.
Her hand still out to him, Virna pleaded, "Ah, Lauran, after what there’s been–"
"Virna!" Lauran cut her off.
Between them. That was what Virna had been going to say. Damaris was certain of it, but was already horribly certain of what there must have been between them, for him to be here – for Virna to cry out to him in that voice. She began to back away from them both. She would go back up the path, go back onto the moor. She would–
Virna set down her mug, taking the other one in both her hands, and went toward Lauran, holding it out to him, saying in a singing cry that was still pleading but now for forgiveness, "Then at least let you and I end as friends. Or almost-friends. Not in anger. Let there be at least this left between us. Drink with me to my departing, Master Ashbrigg. Please."
Her eyes were locked to his, begging, as she held the mug up to him. Lauran hesitated, then reached out and took the mug from her. "To almost-friends and your departing," he said, his anger curbed, still there but no longer raw-edged. He raised the mug in salutation – or farewell. Damaris startled forward, protest rising to her lips, but before words came, Lauran drank off the tea in one long draught, and Damaris drew back again. So the tea had not been dangerous and she had spoiled the last chance there might have been for peace with Virna. She did not know whether she cared or not, sick as she was with knowing too much else.
Lauran held the mug out to Virna who took it, her eyes never leaving his face the while. Ignoring her, he held his hand out to Damaris again and said, "Now, Damaris. Please. Come away from here."
She did want away – away from both of them but most of all away from Virna, and Lauran was the surest, swiftest way for that. The rest of her confused feelings and stunned beginning of anger she would work out later. For now, simply to be away from here would be enough. She went to him, circling wide of Virna, and he leaned over and pulled her up to sit sideways in front of him. Holding her there with an arm around her waist, he started to swing Ribbon away, back the way he had come. But Virna in a cold and loathing voice said, "Lauran."
He drew rein, startled, along with Damaris, into looking back at her. She stood with the mug still in her hands, her head raised defiantly high, all pleading gone from her, her eyes fixed on Lauran, black with some dark emotion that Damaris could not read. But Lauran could. Damaris felt him go rigid in the saddle, meeting Virna’s stare for the length of a long-held breath, the both of them frozen into a stillness out of time, out of where they were into an immensity of something consuming Virna from within and drawing Lauran after her, so that when he finally spoke, his voice matched that cold and empty void.
"What have you done?"
Virna smiled with an ugliness no smile should have and said, her voice an echo of his own, "You'd better go."
For another long moment Lauran went on staring at her. Then his breath hissed in between his teeth as if at pain and he jerked back savagely on Ribbon's reins, dragging the horse full around to the path and driving in his heels, so that Ribbon sprang violently forward. Damaris gasped. The path had not been made for either horses or hurry, but hurry was what Lauran now demanded from Ribbon. As low branches whipped at her, Damaris flung herself forward along the horse’s neck and felt Lauran bend low over her in turn, still not letting Ribbon slow, until they came clear of the trees. There Lauran straightened, letting Damaris come upright, too. Ahead of them a pasture of rough, broken ground sloped steeply away, no better ground than the stony trail but open, and Lauran rammed heels into Ribbon’s flanks, driving the horse into a full gallop.
His arm was around Damaris’ waist like a vise, keeping her against him and firm in the saddle. By the fierceness of his hold, she judged he would not heed any plea to slow or let her down, so she made none, closed her eyes and found the blindness worse and opened them again. Clouds broken on a strong wind were streaking the green reaches of the dale with shadows and flaring sunlight, and Lauran rode sun to shadow to sun again as if the Wild Hunt were clamoring down the sky behind him. Damaris’ one hope was that at the bottom of the long pasture where the stone wall lay along the road a shut, wooden gate barred the way. Beyond it, the road was narrow and bound on the far side by another stone wall. He would have to stop for the gate or else swerve aside from the wall because there was no room for a leaping horse to land beyond the gate and escape disaster.
But Lauran made neither to stop nor turn aside. Past all sense, he set Ribbon toward the gate at a wide angle. To clear it that way, Ribbon would have to leap more its length than its width and slantwise for bad measure. Knowing they were going to crash, with nothing she could do to stop it, Damaris clung to saddle and mane as Lauran urged Ribbon up with heels and hands. Magnificently, Ribbon leaped with everything Lauran asked of him, and they came down in the road, diagonal to the gate and with room enough for Lauran to wrench Ribbon’s head around and away from the farther wall and toward Thornoak that rose gray against the daleside a mile away, setting heels to the gelding’s sides to drive him back into a gallop.
At the house, hardly slowing, he careened Ribbon through the open gateway into the drive and across the lawn, to bring him to gravel-skidding halt in front of the steps as Nevin and Kellan came at a run around the corner of the house. Before they could speak or Ribbon had quite steadied, Lauran swung Damaris from the saddle, shoving her away from him into Kellan's arms, saying savagely, "Take her. Guard her. Virna tried to kill her in the woods just now." And then in a clear, carrying voice he cried out, "Lady of Thornoak! Come to me! By the Goddess and the Three, come to me in my need!"
Aunt Elspeth was there as he finished his cry, flinging open the door so that she stood framed against the hall’s darkness as sunlight swept the yard behind a cloud racing past overhead, setting Ribbon's sweated coat to bright fire, Lauran's hair to shining gold. For a moment she stood there, then stepped forward and said in a voice not Aunt Elspeth's of the manor but the woman's on the moor beside the Lady Stone, "You've called me, Lauran of Ashbrigg, and I'm here. What is your need?"
Lauran cast up his head proudly. His voice still clear and carrying, answered, "To live, Lady, but I think the time is past."
Aunt Elspeth stepped sharply forward. "Lauran!"
He shook his head and the strength of his voice broke as he said, "Damaris met Virna in the wood and would have taken the drink except I came. I drank it instead because I didn't understand. I think there's no hope."
"Lauran," Aunt Elspeth said again but with no more hope in her voice than he had in his, only infinite grief.
"Yes," Lauran agreed. He drew breath as if it hurt and bent forward over his saddlebow, clinging to it with white-knuckled hands. Kellan pushed Damaris aside, moving with Nevin toward him, but Lauran forced himself upright again before they reached him, still looking only at their mother. "She hates," he forced out as if there was nearly no voice left in him. "She'll kill any of you that she can. She..."
He bent forward, knotted with pain again, gasped, "Lady of Thornoak, help me!" And fell.
Nevin and Kellan caught him. As they lowered him to the ground, Damaris – stunned past feeling anything – sank to her knees to take his head on her lap as Aunt Elspeth came in a single swift movement to kneel beside him and take hold of his hands. She gripped them tightly, and Lauran clung as tightly back, his breath choking in his throat as he fought for air. She held him and went on holding him until he lost the fight. Until he shuddered, spasmed, and went still. More utterly still than Damaris could have imagined him ever being.
After a moment, with great gentleness, Aunt Elspeth laid his limp hands together on his chest and closed his empty eyes.