Or bear the brood it would take to upkeep this sprawling place properly. If you think that scruffy creature might help, go ahead and try to find him.’
Late night made the vigil the hardest to bear, when the candle carved harsh shadows that rendered Efflin’s wasted face cadaverous. He had not touched the stew brought for his supper. The sorry, cold mass congealed in the bowl, that hard straits and poverty saved to reheat for Tarens upon his return. Since the plan to seek help must wait for the vagabond to emerge from his hidden cover, the lonely watch extended far into the night.
Kerelie fetched a rushlight for thrift, and her osier work-basket. She stretched new linen onto her embroidery hoop, then snatched for the illusion of solace by plying her needle. Against the laboured breaths of a brother’s decline, she sewed life: small birds, brilliant butterflies, and entwined summer flowers. The simple beauty that nurtured her delight bloomed under her hands in lovingly set, intricate stitches. Frantically as she sought to escape from her grief, the pervasive astringency of cailcallow tea and the bitter aroma of willow bark made the sick-room oppressive.
Religion had never founded her peace, but nothing else fed her stark absence of hope. She lacked the wisdom to tell if the vagabond was in fact a rogue sorcerer. Her prayer to the Light appealed for clear guidance, or lacking that, the gift of clemency. Should the human heart be asked to choose between a blind adherence to faith, or succour for a dying brother? Hours passed to the whine of the wind through the eaves and the bang of a loosened shutter. The northerly cold that brought in early blizzards seeped through the casement and flared the coals as the kitchen fire subsided to ash. Kerelie arose and piled on fresh logs. Almost, she wished Tarens would be unsuccessful, that the gall of her doubts might stay the brute course on known ground, without liability. Perhaps the refuge of belief was best kept unchallenged by troublesome questions that bordered on heresy.
The latch clicked in that moment of harrowed uncertainty. Kerelie met Tarens as he stepped in, bone chilled but triumphant. The disreputable vagabond dogged his heels, slight and graceful in step as a ghost.
Kerelie’s start of jangled trepidation met green eyes, oddly sparked by ironic hilarity. Then the wafted stink brought indoors with him assaulted her nostrils. Her mouth, just opened to scold, snapped shut against sudden nausea. Hurled beyond dignity, Kerelie back-stepped, hands clutched to her middle.
For of course, denied any civilized shelter, the vagabond had been forced to survive on snared game. Necessity made him fashion his jerkin and jacket from green hides, skinned off the animals he trapped for sustenance.
Kerelie whirled, forearms braced on the window-sill until her shocked spasms subsided. ‘Light’s grace attend us!’ she gasped. ‘Your sorry friend will breed rampant pestilence, reeking of rot as he does!’
Before Tarens managed a heated response, she collapsed on the bench, flushed bright pink. She drew several taxed breaths, then abandoned propriety and curled up, not sick, but helplessly laughing.
‘My fault, I admit, for pinch-fisted thriftiness since I refused to spare any other warm clothing for someone so desperately needy.’ Her contrite change of heart came on as the spring storm, without apology and brisk enough to level pride and presumption. ‘Tarens! Fetch in the wash-tub and draw water for bathing. Then ask that poor creature to strip to the skin! Burn his unholy mess of raw fur out of doors and throw the ashes onto the midden. I’ll fetch the good soap and scrounge proper dress from Uncle’s left things in the cedar trunk. Be sure of this! I won’t let that appalling charnel stench anywhere near Efflin’s sick-bed.’
Scoured clean by his own hand, also shaved and refreshed by the scent of lavender soap, the vagabond soon passed the sister’s critical muster to be admitted to her brother’s bedside. Kerelie ensconced herself in Aunt Saffie’s rocker, once used to settle her infant sons after nursing in the late hours. Now, the worn cushion held a bristle of jabbed pins to take in Uncle Fiath’s good winter jacket. Tarens tucked cross-legged on the window-seat, reluctant to rest and abandon the beggarman to his sister’s prickly temperament.
Efflin alone showed no apprehension. Bone-pale, he lay lifelessly still, the smoothed quilts on his chest scarcely stirred by his shallow breaths. His cheeks were sunken into his skull, with his half-opened, flint eyes glinting empty and listless. He seemed to have drifted past Fate’s Wheel already, with naught but a shell left behind as his sturdy frame wasted.
The vagabond absorbed the cadaverous flesh at one glance. Restless or driven, he retreated into the kitchen and slipped back out into the night. A taut interval passed. Before Kerelie loosened her guard in relief, and while Tarens wrestled impatience, the fellow returned with an armload of logs from the wood-pile. His hand-picked cache contained only birch. The sweet fragrance lightened the air as he built up the kitchen fire.
Once the crackling flames caught from the embers, the ruffian stood up and quartered the croft cottage, length and breadth. His industrious survey peered into crannies and touched random objects with an interest that ran beyond curiosity. His rapt manner frayed Kerelie’s already rattled state of anxiety. She dropped the distracted pursuit of her needlework, stalked into the kitchen, and hovered over his shoulder, though Tarens chastised her rudeness.
‘Let him be, Kerie! He isn’t a thief.’
‘What’s he doing, then?’ Trailed after the man’s furtive step up the stair, she bridled as his brazen exploration turned down the second-floor hallway. Before he presumed the unthinkable and breached the shut door to the boys’ empty bedroom, she called downstairs, benighted, ‘Shouldn’t somebody check to be sure he’s not up to mischief?’
Which comment froze the snooping stranger at the forbidden threshold. His head turned. Kerelie caught the brunt of his razor-keen stare, charged by a contempt that prickled her hackles. Then, undeterred, he spun on his heel and invaded the family’s most sacrosanct shrine. The room was pitch-dark. He carried no light. Since Kerelie could not bear the desecration, she refused the loan of a candle. Instead, she fled headlong downstairs and collided with Tarens, who captured her into his steadfast embrace.
‘You know where he’s poking his inquisitive nose,’ she objected, muffled by her brother’s warm shirt.
‘Let him do as he must,’ Tarens urged, also shaken, but unready to surrender his last glimmer of hope to the stifling shadow of grief. ‘Everything that man’s done has held purpose! I’d place my trust in the same goodwill that spared you from Grismard’s clutches.’
Kerelie sniffed. She conceded the point, enough to suppress her outraged nerves until the intrusive, quick footstep re-emerged and descended the stair. Her stare still shot daggers for flagrant presumption. Worse yet, the glow from the kitchen fire brushed the tell-tale gleam of polished wood in the pilferer’s hand.
Rankled, Kerelie shouted, ‘He’s got Paolin’s flute! Efflin’s going to be furious!’
Tarens clamped her arm, curbed his own blast of temper, and whispered a plea for restraint. ‘Efflin’s riled nerves might be for the best. Force him to take a stand and maybe he’ll rejoin the living.’
If the vagabond noticed their umbrage, nothing deflected his course as he poked through the cottage kitchen. No pot and no spoon on the rack went unfingered. He laid his ear to the trestle, eyes shut, as if the scarred planks spoke like a book’s riffled pages, scribed with the past layers of ingrained conversations.
While Kerelie glowered with prim disapproval, he moved on and ran a near-reverent hand over the contents of Aunt Saffie’s dish cupboard. As if the tactile slide of bare fingers garnered the nuance of buried impressions, he lingered, drew in a satisfied breath, and savoured a pause before he pressed onwards. Glimpsed by the frangible gleam of the fire,
