Winter Rose Read online

“Go on,” I said impatiently, my arms tightening around my knees. I sat on the grass with my skirt trailing over my knees, my bare feet. I could smell the sweet crushed grass around me. “What curse does she remember?”

  “She says Nial Lynn said to his son with his dying breath, ‘Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will hound you and yours and the children of yours until Lynn falls and rises again.’”

  My father raised a brow. “He said all that in one breath?”

  “What did he mean?” Laurel asked curiously. “Lynn falls and rises again. The house? The family?”

  “Shave’s aunt couldn’t be precise about that.”

  “It’s a convenient curse, with the house beginning to rise already.” My father tapped his pipe against stone. I looked out over the darkening wood, and wished I were something wild that prowled at night. I would run through moonlight until I reached the hall, where the wild roses grew among the tame in the old rose garden. And then, from some secret place, I would see what he became when moonlight touched him.

  I shifted restlessly. Laurel dropped a hand on my shoulder, said gently, “Can you find me lavender, or roses—something sweet to scent my wedding cloth until I work on it?” She had sensed my impulses; I had already brought her so much lavender to dry that the whole house smelled of it.

  I nodded wordlessly. Perrin sniffed at the air. “No rain, yet.” He fretted to be done with the harvest. Then the world could drown around him. Such stillness seemed charged, dangerous: There should be snakes’ tongues flickering dryly above the trees at least, and the low, distant mutterings of thunder.

  Laurel leaned back. “It’s too hot to sew. My needle sticks in my fingers, and I can’t remember what I’m doing. I can barely remember your name, Pernel. Or is it Perekin?”

  “Don’t,” Perrin breathed, his face averted in the dark. She laughed and put her hand on his arm. They were both growing odd, prone to uncertainties and superstitions about their love. I supposed they would be unbearable by the time they married. And then they would forget their doubts as easily as you forget rain that falls at midnight.

  She took her hand away again, her laughter fading. “It’s too hot…” Her voice sounded unfamiliar; if I were an animal, I would have pricked an ear. I couldn’t see her; all our faces had grown dark. If I had been her flute, I would have played a minor tune. If I had been her, I would have made a restless movement in the hot, sweet night; I would have wanted to touch and not touch; I would have misplaced my name.

  The next week unburied another curse.

  Perrin had got his grain into the barn; he helped our father finish his hay-making before the rains came. Each evening the clouds on the horizon turned the color of bruises, or overripe plums; the air seemed to listen, as we did, for rain. But the rains did not come. Work in the fields, work at Lynn Hall, continued.

  Laurel, who had not yet seen Corbet Lynn, brought home the next curse. She had gone into the village to buy dyed thread and bone buttons and more linen, of which she seemed to require extraordinary quantities. She came to supper laden with gossip.

  “Leta Gett broke another bone and is bedridden again. I asked Beda to make her some soup.” She passed me cold beef and salad; it was still too hot to eat hot food. Perrin and our father, drinking ale, both looked as if they had, some time that day, dunked their heads in it. Their eyes were red with weariness; their hair stuck up stiffly; they wore threadbare beards, which they rasped absently and often but would not shave off until the hay was in. We ate outside again, fat candles smoking around us to drive away the insects. “I thought you or I could take it to her tomorrow, Rois. You could bring her some wildflowers.” I made a noncommittal noise, my mouth full of radish. Laurel touched my arm, and lowered her voice, which caught the men’s attention. “And here’s a bit of scandal—Crispin must get married.”

  I swallowed what felt like a whole radish. “Who?”

  “Aleria Turl.”

  I sucked in breath, just like an old gossip. “Aleria—she’s a child! And plain as a summer squash.”

  Perrin grinned. “She’s not that young, and she’s had her eye on Crispin since she was seven. Maybe that’s why he’s working so hard suddenly.”

  “He’ll take the money and run,” our father grunted. Perrin shook his head.

  “I’ll wager not. He’s still here. If he were going to run, he’d have done it the moment she told him. And he can’t argue it’s not his—everyone knows Crispin was all she ever wanted. And everyone knows her. He’ll stay.”

  “He’ll run,” my father said briefly.

  “He’s too lazy to run.”

  “He’ll not make his own wedding.”

  “He will,” Perrin insisted. “He won’t leave the place he knows.”

  Laurel looked at me; I shook my head. I knew both of them and neither of them at all, it seemed. That Crispin would father a child with a girl with eyes like gooseberries and a mouth like a paper cut seemed inconceivable to me; that she might possess secrets and mysteries that caused him to veer wildly off his chosen course of doing as little as possible was something no one would have bet on. But there it was.

  “A keg of your apple brandy to a cask of my beer,” said Perrin, who grew hops, “that he’ll stay to marry her.”

  “When?” I asked Laurel. She was smiling a little, ruefully, at the bet, or at Aleria.

  “Summer’s end,” she said. “How long can she wait? And that’s not all—I found another curse.”

  “They’re growing,” our father said, slapping himself, “as thick as gnats.”

  “What is it?” Perrin asked, chewing celery noisily. I leaned my face on my hands, staring at Laurel, wondering at all the imminent, invisible dooms hurtling across generations at someone who had not even been born before he was cursed, if he had ever been born at all.

  “Leta remembered it,” Laurel said. “She had drunk some port for the pain in her hip, and she cleaned out her attic, as Caryl Gett put it.”

  Perrin chuckled. “Go on. What did she find up there?”

  “That Nial Lynn had cursed his son with his dying breath saying, ‘You are the last of us and you will die the last: As many as you have, your children will never be your own.’”

  We were silent; it seemed, oddly, more terrible than the other curses. Perrin broke the silence.

  “If that’s true, then who is in the wood rebuilding Lynn Hall?”

  I turned to stare at him. But it was an idle question; he did not wait for an answer. He pushed himself up, sighing, and went to kiss Laurel.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I must be up at dawn.”

  “I know.”

  “Will you miss me?”

  “Will you?”

  I got up at that point, and wandered across the grass. I heard our father call Beda to come and clear the cloth. I stood looking across the half-mown fields to where, I knew, Lynn Hall would be bathed in moonlight, broken and not yet healed, still open to light and rain and anything that moved.

  “Rois,” Laurel called, and I turned reluctantly. A stray raindrop hit my mouth as I went in. A few more pattered on the steps, vanishing instantly on the warm stone. I looked up, but it was only a passing cloud, a reminder of what was to come.

  I took the soup to Leta Gett the next day, wanting to hear more of what she remembered of the curse and Nial Lynn. Who told you? I wanted to ask. Were you there? Who was there, that saw the murder and told of the curse? What did Nial Lynn do to his son that drove his son to murder? And that made Nial so hated that everyone looked the other way while the murderer fled? And if everyone was looking the other way, who was there to see what happened and to hear the curse?

  But Leta Gett was sound asleep. Her daughter, Caryl, took the soup and the wild lilies I brought for her. When I asked about the curse, she only shook her head and sighed.

  “It was a long winter, and too many people had too little to do besides spin tales. Nial Lynn was murdered, his son vanished, but no one was there to hear Nial’s final
opinion, if he said anything at all about the matter.” Then she smiled. “It’s all we’re doing again: tale-spinning. Rois, will you make my mother a tea against the pain? She can’t keep drinking port.”

  I promised I would. It gave me a reason to go back into the wood, to look for camomile and lady’s-slipper. I would bring back water from the secret well, I told myself, knowing that I would go there, not for Leta Gett’s sake, but for the sake of memory. I would drink the sweet water and watch the light…

  I crossed the green and heard the flock outside the apothecary’s door: ancient men and women sunning themselves on his benches while they waited for his potions. In the light their hair looked silver and white-gold, their skin softly flowing like velvet, or melting beeswax. The gnarled bones in their hands resembled the roots of trees. They sat close to one another, arguing intensely in their bird voices, not listening, just wanting to remember. They paused briefly, their eyes, smoky with age, putting a name to me, a place. And then, as I entered the apothecary’s open door, they began to speak again. I stopped in the shadows to listen.

  “‘…will die at the year, the hour and the moment I die, and so will all your heirs.’”

  “‘…will hate as I have hated, and die as I have died, and your sons, and their sons…’”

  “‘…never speak your own name again, and no one will know you when you die, and even your gravestone will stand silent…’”

  “‘None of your name will raise this house again, nor will the fields grow for any of your name, for I bequeath all to the wood and that is my final will.’”

  I felt hollow suddenly, as if I heard the dying man’s voice among their voices. The apothecary, filling a cobalt jar, said lightly, “They’ve been like this for days; it’s just something to do. Telling stories of the dead, to remind them that they are still alive. Did you want something, Rois?”

  I shook my head, swallowing. “Just to hear them. Just an answer.”

  He paused, then corked his cobalt. “It’s my guess Nial Lynn broke his neck falling down drunk, and his son was never even there. Will that do?”

  I bequeath all to the wood…

  He has his grandfather’s face…

  I straightened, pushing myself away from the wall.

  “It will do,” I said, “until the next.”

  He smiled, though I could not. “Send Mat Gris in here, will you? And I could use more mandrake, if you spot it.”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering. “I know where it grows.”

  And that’s where he found me early next morning: beside the wild raspberries and beneath the silver elm, digging up mandrake root in the shadow of Lynn Hall.

  Three

  Again I could not see his face; it seemed blurred with light. Then I realized that he stood with his back to the rising sun, and though light spilled everywhere around him, his face was in shadow. He squatted down beside me to see what I was pulling out of his land, and I could see him clearly.

  His face, like everyone’s, was burned brown by the sun; his hair, streaked with all shades of gold, fell loosely across his brow. His lashes were ivory. He regarded me curiously out of heavy-lidded eyes; their green, washed with light, seemed barely discernible, an unnamed color that existed only in that moment. His hands, reaching for what I held, were big, lean, muscular; hauling stones, uprooting trees for half the summer, had laid muscle like smooth stones under his skin. He looked older than Perrin, or maybe only his expressions were older.

  “I’ve seen you,” he said, “in the village.” His voice was light, calm; his eyes said nothing more. He looked down at what he held. “Mandrake.”

  “It’s for the apothecary,” I said. I still crouched in the elm roots, staring at him. He seemed human enough; he met my stare and matched it, expressing nothing but mild curiosity, until I added impulsively, “They say you’re cursed.”

  “Oh.” He looked away then, smiling a little. “So I’ve heard.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  “Which what?”

  “Which curse? Which is true?”

  He stood up then, studying the mandrake root in his hand. He did not answer my question. “What’s this good for?”

  “Sleep,” I said. “Love.” I rose, too, aware of the soft bracken under my feet, the cool, crumbled earth beneath, the scents our movements stirred into the air. “It’s dangerous,” I added. “I don’t use it; the apothecary knows how.”

  “Is this what you do?” he asked. “Find things for the apothecary?”

  “I find things,” I said. “Herbs for cooking and for soothing oils, flowers to dry, roots and berries that may be useful, or may not be. I don’t find things for anyone; I take what catches my eye, and then give them away or use them.”

  “Are you a witch?”

  The question made my breath catch, it was so unexpected. Then I laughed. “No, of course not. I just love these woods.”

  He smiled too. “Yes. So do I. You know my name; I don’t know yours.”

  “Rois Melior. My father has that farm just east of your land.”

  “Ah, yes.” He looked down at the root he held. “Don’t you have a sister—?”

  “Laurel.”

  “Laurel Melior.” He said her name softly to the mandrake root; I heard the letters lilt and glide as if he spoke an unfamiliar language. Then he put the root into my hand. He glanced toward a sound; again his eyes caught light, and I thought, surprised by what I already knew: Light does not always reveal, light can conceal. “What is your father’s name?” he asked.

  “Mathu.”

  “Perhaps I will come and visit. It would be neighborly.”

  “Yes,” I said instantly. “My father loves company. But I warn you, we are all very curious about you. Especially me.”

  He looked at me, smiling the little, pleasant smile that said nothing. “Why you?”

  “Because you live in these woods.”

  His expression did not change. I saw you, I wanted to cry then, shaping out of light beside the secret well; you are not human, you are wood; you are the hidden underground river; you are nothing we know to name.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But soon.”

  “Soon?”

  “I barely have a roof on my house to live here.” He turned his head again toward voices—a shout, a laugh; his workers were arriving.

  “Here comes your house,” I said, and his face opened then.

  “I hope so,” he said with feeling. “At least one room, a door, a fireplace, and a roof over it all that won’t leak icicles above my head all winter.”

  “You don’t act like a man cursed,” I said baldly; he shrugged the curse away, more interested in his roof.

  “That’s in the past,” he said a little shortly, and I added, apologetic,

  “Tell me if you want me not to dig on your land.”

  “Oh, no,” he said quickly, and found my eyes again. “If you love these woods, you will do no harm. Come as you want, take what you like. Perhaps you can give me advice when I begin to clear the gardens.”

  I nodded. He lifted a hand in farewell, and went to meet his workers; I heard him whistle to a mockingbird, and the bird’s mocking answer.

  “I spoke to him,” I told Laurel breathlessly, later, as I piled roots and myrtle leaves and wild orchids on the table. She fingered the mandrake root curiously.

  “Who?”

  “Corbet Lynn.”

  “Is this him?”

  “What?” She looked up, then dodged the orchid I threw at her. She was laughing.

  “They look so strange, these roots…like little shrunken images. Did you ask him about the curse or were you polite?”

  “Of course I asked him. And of course he did not answer.” I moved around the table restively, frowning, seeing him as he wanted us to see him, then, confused, remembering what I knew he was. “I was rude. He wouldn’t be likely to tell some stranger how his father died, or what compelled him to return here.”

  “No,” Laurel
said thoughtfully. “You’re right.”

  “But maybe with enough of our father’s brandy in him, he’ll tell us something.”

  She gathered the orchids. “You’re very curious about him.”

  “And who isn’t?”

  “What does he look like?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Words wanted to come out of me, words I had never used for any man. His hair, I wanted to say. Those eyes. That warm skin. His hands. I could not speak. But I told her; she stared at me, wide-eyed, and breathed, “Rois, you’re blushing.”

  I felt the heat in my face then; I looked away quickly, wondering at myself. “It’s hot,” I said shortly. Laurel, tactful as always, studied the orchids as if they might suddenly take wing. But a little smile came and went on her lips. I leaned against the table, suddenly helpless in the heat, confused as much as ever.

  “It’s nothing,” I said finally. “I’m not used to strangers. Around here, there’s so little new to look at.”

  Her brows went up, and then together. She said softly to the orchids, “I hope he is a kind man.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask for kindness. Just to wander in his wood.”

  She lifted her eyes then, smiling again, but still with the faint, worried frown between her brows. “Did he mind?”

  “No. He loves the wood too, he said. He said I could go where I wanted…” The frown was fading; I added, “He seems to want, above all, a roof over his head. He means to stay through winter. He means to stay.”

  I heard her loose a breath. “Good,” she said briskly. “Then we can get to know him better.”

  “The curses,” I said slowly, “deal so much with hate. There seems nothing about him to hate. He just seems—like one of us. Come home. But from some strange, distant place.”

  “Some strange past…” She was, I realized then, every bit as curious as I. As who wouldn’t be, in that place where the little that happened loomed so large we were still talking about it down the generations.

  I did not see him again in the wood then, though I could have; I could have looked for rosehips in the tangled gardens, or burdock seeds. But I could not pretend, under those strange eyes, about what I had truly come to find. I could have watched him secretly; I was afraid those eyes would find me. How could I hide anywhere in his wood?