The Forbidden Circle (35 page)

He wondered if she would have preferred him to sleep elsewhere, but when he asked her, she said shyly, “No, I like to have you near me.” It occurred to him that perhaps this intimacy, sexless as it was, was a necessary first step in her reawakening.

Forty days after the marriage the high winds and snow flurries gave way to heavy snows, and Andrew’s time was taken up, day after day, in arranging for the wintering of the horses and other livestock, storing accessible fodder in sheltered areas, inspecting and stocking the herdmen’s shelters in the upland valleys. For days at a time he would be out, spending days in the saddle and nights in outdoor shelters or in the far-flung farmsteads which were part of the great estate.

During this time he realized how wise
Dom
Esteban had been to insist on the wedding feast. At the time, knowing the wedding would have been legal with one or two witnesses, he had been angry with his father-in-law for not letting it take place in privacy. But that night of horseplay and rough jokes had made him one of the countryfolk, not a stranger from nowhere, but
Dom
Esteban’s son-in-law, a man whom they had seen married. It had saved him years of trying to make a place for himself among them.

He woke one morning to hear the hard rattle of snow against the window, and knew the first storm of the oncoming winter had set in. There would be no riding out today. He lay listening to the wind moaning around the heights of the old house, mentally reviewing the disposition of the stock under his care. Those brood mares in the pasture under the twin peaks—there was fodder enough stored in windbreak shelters, and one stream, the old horse-master had told him, which never completely froze over—they would do well enough. He should have separated out the young stallions from the herd—there might be fighting—but it was too late now.

There was gray light outside the window, through a white blur of snow. There would be no sunrise today. Callista lay quiet in her narrow bed across the room, her back to him so that he could see only the braids on her pillow. She and Ellemir were so different, Ellemir always awake and astir at dawn, Callista never waking until the sun was high. He should soon be hearing Ellemir moving in the other half of the suite, but it was early even for that.

Callista cried out in her sleep, a cry of terror and dread, again some evil nightmare of the time when she had lain prisoner of the catmen? With a single stride Andrew was beside her, but she sat up, abruptly wide awake, staring past him, her face blank with dismay.

“Ellemir!” she cried, catching her breath. “I must go to her!” And without a word or a look at Andrew she slid from her bed, catching up a chamber robe, and ran out into the center part of the suite.

Andrew watched, dismayed, thinking of the bond of twins. He had been vaguely aware of the telepathic link between Ellemir and her sister, yet even twins respected one another’s privacy. If Ellemir’s distress signal had reached Callista’s mind it must have been powerful indeed. Troubled, he began to dress. He was lacing his second boot when he heard Damon in the sitting room of their suite. He went out to him, and Damon’s smiling face dispelled his fears.

“You must have worried, when Callista ran out of here so quickly, I think Ellemir was frightened too, for a moment, more surprised than anything else. Many women escape this altogether, and Ellemir is so healthy, but I suppose no man can tell much about such things.”

“Then she’s not seriously ill?”

“If she is, it will cure itself in time,” Damon said, laughing, then sobered quickly. “Of course, just now she’s miserable, poor girl, but Ferrika says this stage will pass in a tenday or two, so I left her to Ferrika’s ministrations and Callista’s comforting. There’s little any man can do for her now.”

Andrew, knowing that Ferrika was the estate midwife, knew at once what Ellemir’s indisposition must be. “Is it customary and proper to offer congratulations?”

“Perfectly proper.” Damon’s smile was luminous.

“But somewhat more customary to offer them to Ellemir. Shall we go down and tell
Dom
Esteban he’s to expect a grandchild some time after Midsummer?”

Esteban Lanart was delighted at the news. Dezi commented, with a malicious grin, “I see you are all too anxious to produce your first son on schedule. Did you really feel so much obliged by the calendar Domenic made for you, kinsman?”

For a moment Andrew thought Damon would hurl his cup at Dezi, but he controlled himself. “No, I had rather hoped Ellemir could have a year or two free of such cares. It is not as if I were heir to a Domain and had urgent need of a son. But she wanted a child at once, and it was hers to choose.”

“That is like Elli, indeed,” Dezi said, dropping the malice and smiling. “Every baby born on this estate, she has it in her arms before it is a tenday old. I’ll go and congratulate her when she is feeling better.”

Dom
Esteban asked, as Callista came into the room, “How is she, then, Callista?”

“She is sleeping,” Callista said. “Ferrika advised her to lie abed as long as she could in the mornings, while she still feels ill, but she will be down after midday.”

She slipped into her seat beside Andrew, but she avoided his eyes, and he wondered if this had saddened her, to see Ellemir already pregnant? For the first time it occurred to him that perhaps Callista wanted a child; he supposed some women did, though he himself had never thought very much about it.

 

For more than a tenday the storm raged, snow falling heavily, then giving way to clear skies and raging winds that whipped the snow into deep, impenetrable drifts, then changing to snowfall again. The work of the estate came to a dead halt. Using undergrown tunnels, a few of the indoor servants cared for the saddle horses and dairy animals, but there was little else that could be done.

Armida seemed quiet without Ellemir bustling about early in the mornings. Damon, idled by the storm, spent much of his time at her side. It troubled Damon to see the ebullient Ellemir lying pale and strengthless, far into the mornings, unwilling to touch food. He was worried about her, but Ferrika laughed at his dismay, saying that every young husband felt like this when his wife was first pregnant. Ferrika was the estate midwife at Armida, responsible for every child born in the surrounding villages. It was a tremendous responsibility indeed, and one for which she was quite young; she had only succeeded her mother in this office in the last year. She was a calm, firm, round-bodied woman, small and fair-haired, and because she knew she was young for this post, she wore her hair severely concealed in a cap and dressed in plain sober clothing, trying to look older than she was.

The household stumbled without Ellemir’s efficient hands at the helm, though Callista did her best.
Dom
Esteban complained that, though they had a dozen kitchen-women, the bread was never fit to eat. Damon suspected that he simply missed Ellemir’s cheerful company. He was sullen and peevish, and made Dezi’s life a burden. Callista devoted herself to her father, bringing her harp and singing him ballads and songs, playing cards and games with him, sitting for hours beside him, her needlework in her lap, listening patiently to his endless long tales of past campaigns and battles from the years when he had commanded the Guardsmen.

One morning Damon came downstairs late to find the hall filled with men, mostly those who worked, in better weather, in the outlying fields and pastures.
Dom
Esteban in his chair was at the center of the men, talking to three who were still snow-covered, wearing bulky outdoor clothing. Their boots had been cut off, and Ferrika was kneeling before them, examining their feet and hands. Her round, pleasant young face looked deeply troubled; there was relief in her voice as she looked up to see Damon approaching.

“Lord Damon, you were hospital officer in the Guards at Thendara, come and look at this!”

Troubled by her tone, Damon bent to look at the man whose feet she held, then exclaimed in consternation, “Man, what happened to you?”

The man before him, tall, unkempt, with long wiry hair in still-frozen elf-locks around his reddened, torn cheeks, said in the thick mountain dialect, “We were weathered in nine days,
Dom
, in the snow-shelter under the north ridge. But the wind tore down one wall and we couldna’ dry our clothes and boots. Starving we were with food for no more than three days, so when the weather first broke we thought best to try and win through here, or to the villages. But there was a snow-slide along the hill under the peak, and we spent three nights out on the ledges. Old Reino died o’ the cold and we had to bury him in the snow, against thaw, with n’more than a cairn o’ stones. Darrill had to carry me here—” He gestured stoically at the white, frozen feet in Ferrika’s hands. “I can’t walk, but I’m not so bad off as Raimon or Piedro here.”

Damon shook his head in dismay. “I’ll do what I can for you, lad, but I can’t promise anything. Are they all as bad as this, Ferrika?”

The woman shook her head. “Some are hardly hurt at all. And some, as you can see, are worse.” She gestured at one man whose cut-off boots revealed black, pulpy shreds of flesh hanging down.

There were fourteen men in all. Quickly, one after another, Damon examined the hurt men, hurriedly sorting out the least injured, those who showed only minor frostbite in toes, fingers, cheeks. Andrew was helping the stewards bring them hot drinks and hot soup. Damon ordered, “Don’t give them any wine or strong liquor until I know for certain what shape they are in.” Separating the less hurt men, he said to old Rhodri, the hall-steward, “Take these men to the lower hall, and get some of the women to help you. Wash their feet well with plenty of hot water and soap, and”—he turned to Ferrika—“you have extract of white thornleaf?”

“There is some in the still-room, Lord Damon; I will ask Lady Callista.”

“Soak their feet with poultices of that, then bandage them and put plenty of salve on them. Keep them warm, and give them as much hot soup and tea as they want, but no strong drink of any kind.”

Andrew interrupted. “And as soon as any of our people can get through, we must send word to their women that they are safe.”

Damon nodded, realizing that this was the first thing he should have remembered. “See to it, will you, brother? I must care for the hurt men.” As Rhodri and the other servants helped the less injured men to the lower hall, he turned back to the remaining men, those with seriously frozen feet and hands.

“What have you done for these, Ferrika?”

“Nothing yet, Lord Damon; I waited for your advice. I have seen nothing like this for years.”

Damon nodded, his face set. A hard freeze such as this, when he was a child near Corresanti, had left half the men in the town with missing fingers and toes, dropped off after severe freezing. Others had died of the raging infections or gangrene which followed. “What would you choose to do?”

Ferrika said hesitantly, “It is not the usual treatment here, but I would soak their feet in water just a little warmer than blood-heat but not hot. I have already forbidden the men to rub their feet, for fear of rubbing off the skin. The frost is deep in the flesh. They will be fortunate if they lose no more than skin.” A little encouraged that Damon did not protest, she added, “I would put hot packs about their bodies to encourage circulation.”

Damon nodded. “Where did you learn this, Ferrika? I feared I would have to forbid you to use old folk remedies which do more harm than good. This is the treatment used at Nevarsin, and I had to struggle to have it used in Thendara, for the Guards.”

She said, “I was trained in the Amazon Guild-house in Arilinn, Lord Damon; they train midwives there for all the Domains, and they know a good deal about healing and caring for wounds.”

Dom
Esteban frowned. He said, “Women’s rubbish! When I was a lad, we were told never to bring heat near a frozen limb, but to rub it with snow.”

“Aye,” broke in the man whose feet were pulpy and swollen, “I had Narron rub
my
feet wi’ snow. When my grandsire froze his feet in the reign of old Marius Hastur—”

“I know your grandfather,” Damon interrupted. “He walked with two canes till the end of his life, and it looks to me as if your friend tried to make sure you had the same good fortune, lad. Trust me, and I will do better for you than that.” He turned to Ferrika and said, “Try poultices, not hot water alone, but black thornleaf, very strong; it will draw the blood to the limbs and back to the heart. And give them some of it in tea too, to stimulate the circulation.” He turned back to the injured man, saying encouragingly, “This treatment is used in Nevarsin, where the weather is worse than here, and the monks claim they have saved men who would otherwise have been lamed for life.”

“Can’t
you
help, Lord Damon?” begged the man Raimon, and Damon, looking at the grayish-blue feet, shook his head. “I don’t know, truly, lad. I will do as much as I can, but this is the worst I have seen. It’s regrettable, but—”

“Regrettable!” The man’s eyes blazed with pain and fury. “Is that all you can say about it,
vai dom
? Is that all it means to you? Do you know what it means to us, especially this year? There’s not a house in Adereis or Corresanti but lost a man or maybe two or three to the accursed catfolk, and last year’s harvest withered ungath ered in the fields, so already there is hunger in these hills! And now more than a dozen ablebodied men to be laid up, certainly for months, maybe never to walk again, and you can’t say more than ‘It is regrettable.”’ His thick dialect angrily mimicked Damon’s careful speech.

“It’s all very well for the likes of you,
vai dom
, you willna’ go hungry, what may happen or no! But what of my wife, and my little children? What of my brother’s wife and
her
babes, that I took in when my brother ran mad and slew himself in the Darkening-lands, and the cat-hags made play wi’ his soul? What of my old mother, and her brother who lost an eye and a leg on the field of Corresanti? All too few ablebodied men in the villages, so that even the little maids and the old wives work in the fields, all too few to handle crops and beasts or even to glean the nut-trees before the snow buries our food, and now a good half of the ablebodied men of two villages lying here with frozen feet and hands, maybe lame for life—regrettable!”