The Wretched of Muirwood

All her life she had been raised at Muirwood. She had never realized how much safety there was in its smells, its habits, even its mottled stone. She missed Pasqua and her fussing and scolding. She missed seeing the Aldermaston in his gray cassock, looking up from a tome when she would arrive with a tray bearing his supper. She missed the laundry nearby and having a spare dress so she could clean a soiled one. All that day she had slowly realized that she lived in the most beautiful and perfect place in all the world. The Bearden Muir was desolate, frightening, and overwhelming in its vastness. As a fugitive, she had to leave the abbey behind. Memories would be her only comfort, and they were not enough.

Colvin mounted the hillock again, his face pinched with fatigue. He looked grim in the blood-stained tunic, his face a mess of dirt, bruises and whiskers. The shirt she had cleaned for him days before was fit to be burned as was the blood-stained tunic from Maderos.

He sat by the saddle, a little away from her, holding the last apple.

“Are you still hungry?”

She shook her head slowly.

“What is the matter?”

Everything since you came into my life, she wanted to say, but remained quiet. She said nothing.

“I have been too harsh,” he said with a stern look. “To you. I am…I am sorry.”

“It must hurt you to apologize to someone like me, Colvin,” she said softly, then added spitefully, “I am glad of it.”

Her thrust riled him again. Anger flashed in his eyes. “I am a blunt-speaking person,” he said. “I speak the truth, no matter how hard it is to hear it. I do not seek apology that your questions were bothering me. They were. I spoke what I felt, just as you do. I had no intention of bringing a girl like you with me. I would not consider it now but for Maderos’ counsel. Where I go, there will be war. And I did not come all this way for nothing. Those thoughts have…preoccupied my mind today. You are the only one that can take me to my destination, no matter how I wish I could have left you behind in a safer place.”

“I have no doubt that you have been distracted today,” she said, tearing another bite from the apple. She chewed it viciously.

“What is vexing you?” he asked.

“Can you not imagine?”

“My rudeness? Or what you perceive as rudeness?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “From the moment you awoke in my kitchen, I have had little else but rudeness from you. But I still helped you.” She did not want to cry in front of him, but the thought of sobbing filled her with fury, and she clung to it desperately, choking the desire.

“Though I am skilled with the Medium,” he said, “I am not gifted with reading thoughts. If you would tell me, then tell me! How can I guess what you are thinking?”

She lowered the apple, still savoring its flavor, yet suffering as well. “I left my home today,” she whispered. “I will not be welcomed back. Believe me, your rudeness is great indeed, but not great enough to afflict me so much. I suffer because I miss Muirwood. I long to see it again. All my life, I wanted to be away from its walls. Now that I am, I can think of nothing but wanting to go back. Each footstep brings me farther from the place I love the best.” Her voice choked up and she could only whisper, “And nearer to the thing I fear the most.”

“And what is that?” he said seriously, his eyes finally showing a spark of sympathy at last.

“That despite anything I may do, you will still die at Winterrowd, and I will have nothing left in the world. You promised me your man might teach me to read. But you may lose all to the king’s fury. Even your steward! Then I have gambled everything to achieve a dream…” She paused, bowing her head. “But in my waking, to have lost everything instead.”

His eyes were as dark as shadows. “It is you who do not understand. You are a silly girl. You bound me by the Medium. You will get what I promised you, even if I do not live to fulfill it in person. Did you not feel the Medium when I gave you my oath? By Idumea, it feels a lifetime ago! What a day. What a haunting day.” He closed the saddle bag snugly and then turned back to face her again, leaning forward. “The truth of the matter is that you were and are no longer safe at Muirwood. You were not safe the moment the sheriff came looking for me. It is not a haven for you. Not while the sheriff seeks you. What I do not understand is what he wants from you. There are sordid reasons, for certain, but would he risk the Aldermaston’s wrath, or brave a festering marsh like this, without sufficient provocation or motivation? What I cannot understand is why, what reason he could have?”