The Wretched of Muirwood

“No,” Lia said, her stomach fluttering.

“There is a first - something I can do that you cannot. If we go under, do not panic. Do not cling to me too hard. I can bring you to the other side. If you squeeze me too hard, I will not be able to swim myself. Do you understand?”

She nodded, biting her lip.

“Then we cross,” he said, tapping the stallion’s flanks and nudging it into the water. It balked, snorting warily at the scum-flecked pool. Colvin tisked with his tongue and stamped harder, guiding the stallion off the riverbank. The mud was loose and slick and Lia felt her insides churn like butter as the horse began thrashing. With a splash and heave, her legs were soaked, then up to her waist. The gritty dress clung to her, the weight of the water crushed against her hips. She squeezed Colvin in a panic.

“It is all right!” he shouted. “Just hold the orb! Hold it tight!”

“Can horses swim?” she said, nearly choking with fear. The saddle was slippery and she felt herself going off the back.

“Of course they can! Hold tighter, you are slipping. Slipping!”

He caught her arm as the motion and lapping waves swept her. His fingers dug into her bones and it hurt, but he managed to pull her back up on the saddle.

“Just do not drop the orb! Do you have it? Good. The water is cold. It is all right. There we are, it is not that deep after all. Do you feel steady?”

“I am,” Lia whispered, feeling ashamed of her fear. The stallion bucked a little, but the river was not that deep at the point and it was soon churning through the muddy gap without swimming. After crossing the midpoint of the river, the stallion lunged up the far bank, and again Lia had to hold tight or fall off. The reeds slapped at them as they advanced up the slope to slightly more stable ground.

Colvin sighed with relief. “We will rest here a moment. Climb down.” He followed and landed in the squishy mud. His pants and tunic were soaked as well. “Let us walk a ways and let the horse rest,” he said, patting the stallion’s neck. “He will need his strength if the sheriff’s men catch up to us. Though how they would find us in this swamp is beyond me. Are you all right?” he said, noticing her scowl finally.

Lia looked down at her skirt. The lower half was no longer blue, nor was her cloak, but dark with brownish, grayish sludge, and clung to her uncomfortably. Part of her sleeve was torn, probably when he grabbed her arm to keep her from sliding off. Her shoes were filling with ooze. Looking back, she could no longer see Muirwood, though she thought she could see the Tor saluting them in the distance.

“Well enough,” she said with as much tartness as she could muster and stamped past him.

* * *

Lia was exhausted, cold, miserable, and above all, thirsty. There was no clean water to drink, nothing but brackish, cloudy pools that even the stallion avoided. In her mind, she thought of the lion’s head Leering and wished she had drank more from it. The thought of the clear, cool water tormented her. The sun was setting, and they had reached a small hillock to pass the night above the ankle-deep waters permeating the Bearden Muir. The vast swamp stretched in every direction. The land looked inhospitable. There were no signs of human life, other than their own. The hillock had three gnarled and diseased oaks crowning it and the turf was thick with sharp-pointed desiccated leaves laying beyond the reach of the foul waters.

Colvin huffed the saddle off the stallion and carried it up the hillock, straining with the weight of it. Lia would have helped, but she sat against the trunk of one of the oaks, hugging her knees and trying not to cry again. She hated crying, and she had succumbed to tears during the day. Silently, her loneliness and grief dropped from her lashes unnoticed on Colvin’s shirt. He might die at Winterrowd, and then where would she go? Not back to the abbey. Never to Muirwood. She had stolen the Cruciger orb. The Aldermaston would never forgive her.

“You can use this,” he said with a grunt, plopping the saddle next to her. “As a pillow tonight.” He breathed heavily and bent over, planting hands on knees, and gulping air.

“My arm is the only pillow I have ever known,” she said sullenly. “I am a wretched. We sleep on rush-matting on the floor.”

He nodded brusquely and then opened the saddle bags and withdrew three apples. His hands her filthy, but he extended them to her first. “Which one do you wish to eat? This one is the most scarred. It will be the sweetest then, by your measure?”

“Then let the horse have it,” she said. “It labored the most to carry us this far.”

He gave her a disdainful look. “As you wish it then,” he said with a snort, tossing her one of the other ones and started down the hillock. She wiped the apple clean, as well as she could on her sleeve, and held it to her nose. The smell of the swamp overruled most of her senses, but there it was – the hint of its scent, still clinging to the skin. She took a bite. The moment the juice touched her tongue and the flesh crushed in her mouth, an even deeper sadness filled her and spread as she swallowed. She gazed at the deepening gloom, knowing soon it would be darker than any night of her life. The flavor was Muirwood. She pressed some of its unblemished skin against her nose again and inhaled, choking back sobs as she tried to eat it. Her throat was so parched, the juice only tantalized it. As tears dripped from her lashes again, she watched Colvin stroking the horse’s mane while it fed on the apple. Why could he not understand what was torturing her?