Chapter 6: Valley of the Shadow
Merlin stood for a moment – or an hour – beside the right front wheel of the murderer's wagon, frozen in uncertainty. The setting sun was warm on the right side of his face, warm through the rough blue fabric of his shirtsleeve, down one trouser leg… horses whickered and stamped in the roomy corral somewhere behind him on his left.
He could still hear the woman's scream echoing in his ears.
A scream as his mother must have screamed. Had some specter of the murderer ridden with them, ridden with him? Had he brought death? Here? Again?
Merlin took a single step forward, feeling a dizzy disorientation, and couldn't move more.
If he went into that kitchen, would he find Padlow at work with his bloody knife? Would he find a brown-haired rancher and his pregnant wife, their little child? Would he find Balinor and Hunith, his two golden-haired baby sisters?
Where am I? Who am I?
The rancher rushed from the house, the door swinging wildly and banging behind him. He was hatless, eyes wide with shock. Merlin took two more steps, bringing himself into the man's path as he headed for the barn in a daze.
"She's–" he said to Merlin, licked his lips and started again. "She's having the baby. Need to – go for Doc." His eyes met Merlin's, and focused. "She's having the baby – I need to go for Doc," he repeated, then ducked around him and entered the barn at a run.
Merlin followed, watched him toss a saddle over the back of a beautiful dark brown filly, fumble the straps and buckles.
"Your woman said she'd stay with Helen," the rancher said, glancing up. "You'll forgive me if I observe there's no need for you to go into the house until I'm back?"
"Not unless I'm called for," Merlin said without offense.
"It's just, there are stories," the man said, gathering reins and leading the filly from the stall. "A family was murdered here, years back…" He mounted. "Be back in less than an hour, hopefully." He kicked his mount, clattered across the barnyard, and disappeared through the trees in the direction of town.
Merlin remained in the barn.
It was dim and dusty, horse smell, manure smell. Hay and filtered sunlight. There were two horses – no, three – inside, shuffling in the stalls, crunching feet, whiffling breath. Watching him, probably. It was a larger barn than his father'd had, taller and longer. More stalls. No cows. Doors at the back that would open into a corner of the corral, hill down to the hayfield. But a barn, nevertheless.
The ground felt unsteady under his boots, as if he were trying to walk through a deep-plowed field after a summer downpour. His father might come around the corner anytime – hurry with the chores son your mother baked a pie for dinner – or his mother would call from the house – Merlin dinner is ready wash and come–
Was that his sisters giggling in the loft overhead – or only pigeons?
He turned abruptly and stalked out. "He's dead, he's dead," he repeated under his breath, not even sure who he referred to, or who he addressed.
Was it ironic that he unhitched the murderer's horses, easing the tongue of his wagon to the ground that was once Merlin's own? Was it ironic that he brushed those horses down, pumped water from a well dug by his own father at his age, filled the trough in the corral, and turned the murderer's horses loose to graze? Was it ironic that the murderer's widow was inside the home built on the ashes of his, helping another mother expecting to bring new life into the world?
"Damn me, I'm going mad," he gritted between his teeth.
His hat felt too tight; he had a pounding headache in a thick taut band across his forehead. He laid his hat in the wagon, rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, and stuck his head under the pump. Cool, fresh water washed over his head, down his face, down his neck, trickling over the skin of his back, his forearms, his chest.
The water was cold, it was real. It was now. He shook the water off, but didn't bother trying to find a towel, just let the warm air dry him as he did the rancher's evening chores. There was no further sound from the house, but lights flickered up in the curtained windows as dusk drew closer.
The sun was just slipping behind the curve of the earth when the rancher returned, followed by an open chaise pulled by a long-eared brown mare. The driver was an older man, portly and florid under a tall hat and mutton-chop whiskers – not the doctor Merlin vaguely remembered, though he didn't know whether to feel relieved about that, or not.
Merlin took the reins of the dark brown filly as the rancher tumbled from the saddle and yanked his back door open eagerly. The doctor, in his black coat despite the warmth of the weather, took longer to clamber down from the chaise, and gave Merlin a kindly wink.
"Don't bother much about the mare, son," he said, drawling a little. "She's used to standing on her own til I return."
Merlin nodded once and turned to walk the filly back to her stall in the barn. He figured the rancher had pushed her on the journey to the doctor's residence, but they'd returned at the pace of a middle-aged mare pulling a heavy man in a buggy. The filly wouldn't need much cooling down.
The rancher was out on his porch, leaning on a supporting post, when Merlin left the barn – and it seemed the presence of the physician made all the difference to his state of mind. He nodded his thanks as Merlin approached, inhaling deeply on a stumpy cigar.
"Don't usually," he said, indicating the cigar. "Helps me to calm, though. Thanks for your help with all–" he waved the cigar in a slow circle to encompass the barnyard – "all this. Boy, maybe, this time. Got one of each already, so it doesn't matter much. Hoping for a boy, though…" He clenched the cigar between his teeth to extend his hand. "Name's Chadin. My wife's Helen. You're welcome to stay the night, ah–"
"Merlin," he said, once he realized from the silence that no other response would do.
"Merlin, Merlin," the rancher repeated, shaking his hand, then removing the cigar in a cloud of exhaled smoke. "Sounds familiar, though I don't know your face. Come on in the kitchen – your woman fixed up a real nice dinner. Couldn't eat much myself, but you're welcome to anything you can fit in your belly." He opened the door and motioned for Merlin to enter, then stopped him with a raised hand. "Sorry, forgot to say, my Helen has a rule about boots inside the house. Hasn't been crazy about getting down to scrub the floor these last months, you know."
Merlin looked down. The rancher was himself in stocking feet, his dusty black boots bent sideways on the porch next to the door. Merlin shrugged and pulled his feet from his own boots, kicking them beside the others.
"Doc's in with Helen, says he'll eat later on. Says things are going fine for the mama and baby, but it'll be a couple of hours yet til he – or she – makes an appearance. Your woman is sure good with the other children, though–"
Merlin entered the rancher's kitchen – smell of warm bread and beef stew, a small wooden horse on wheels with its pull-string limp on the colorful rug, lid of the coffeepot rattling quietly on the stove as the liquid inside bubbled. Woodbox in the corner half-full, one of the four chairs at the table askew.
And Freya stepped into the kitchen from a room further in the interior of the home.
Her head was bare, dark hair curling down onto her shoulders, a serenity in her brown eyes he'd never seen there before. A sleeping baby held in the crook of one elbow, the curly head and pursed mouth tucked close against Freya's neck. An older boy followed, hand folded confidently in Freya's free hand, chattering unintelligibly. Her eyes met Merlin's. She smiled, her heart full and happy there for him to see.
The room reeled – he reached for a wall, a doorframe, his hand found nothing.
A kitchen, a mother. Two trusting babies. Welcome for a stranger.
And bloody violence followed after.
His eyes dropped to the floor – clean-swept, even in front of the stove and woodbox. Toy horse on the rug.
Blood. Tiny bodies, unnaturally still, unnaturally twisted, a mother's hand outstretched, never to caress soft curls again.
Freya's hand on the little boy's curly hair, her eyes now questioning, concerned.
Freya on the floor, black curls soaking in a pool of blood, brown eyes dark and blank, face frozen in agony.
The murderer was dead. Powerless. And Merlin had never touched woman nor child with intent to hurt.
Burning, burning. He'd burned it all to the ground.
This home was new, was fresh. This family untouched, happy, whole. Growing, even.
Flies in the blood, pooled dark and sticky. Splattered across the rug, the furniture, even the waiting firewood. His father's body had been left tied in one chair, head tipped back at an impossible angle.
Merlin looked up from the floor, up, away, anywhere. Clean, new floorboards. No blood. White-washed walls…
His eyes focused on the one ornament hung on the kitchen wall, just above the family table. It was a large iron tree, the metal worked in imitation of branches and leaves…
Slightly twisted, slightly darkened with flame.
That tree had hung in their kitchen. Had been polished carefully by his mother, humming and smiling as the baby learned to crawl, and the older sister clapped her hands and danced encouragement. That tree had witnessed the murderer cross the threshold, grip and wield the knife. And his family was dead.
Had blood spattered it? Had it been washed off?
He was only vaguely aware of Chadin, the rancher still chatting behind him, leaving the doorway yet still on the porch with his cigar. Freya moved toward him, hampered by the two children, concern deepening into worry.
Behind a closed door hard on his right, a woman's moan rose into a shriek, swiftly cut off.
Merlin wheeled, hands finding the doorframe, pushing himself through, out into the open air. He felt a stabbing pain in his chest as he gulped for breath, the acrid sweet smell of cigar smoke – thick black kerosene sweat-scented smoke – and he stumbled from the porch to the packed dirt of the yard.
Three years ago he'd slipped out the seldom-used front door to avoid the boring politeness of company for dinner, the questions that made him feel inadequate as a boy, a son, a person – Big help to your father, aren't you? Going to follow his footsteps and farm the land someday? Got your eye on a girl yet? Make your parents proud?
You can't run, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. The same voice he'd heard three years ago, when his life had ended.
Why hadn't his life ended?
I'm not running. I'm walking, he argued. No one in that house is in any danger.
As long as I'm not there.
If the rancher had suddenly clapped a hand on his shoulder, unexpected from behind, would he have reacted fighting? Right there in the kitchen, Freya watching in shock, protecting the children, baby on the way in the next room, the expectant father forced to defend himself against a wild stranger.
He saw himself as he'd been reflected in Percival's plate-glass window – haggard, hard-eyed, dangerous. Who am I? Who in hell…
Merlin walked on blindly, vaguely aware of earth and twigs beneath his feet – boots left on the porch – the scent of night flowers and approaching rainclouds – chirp and hoot and croak filling the air around him.
If he'd walked away from his cadet unit in Sage Springs, his feet would have drawn him over hill and over flat, here.
Here.
Maybe he should find that ditch to lie down in. Why was he still alive? The murderer was dead… his family was dead. Why did he not join his family? Why did he keep dragging air into his lungs, day after endless day?
The stars were bright overhead when he found that he'd stopped walking. His hands ached – he looked down to see them clutching weathered strips of planking, nailed to horizontal supports, securely pounded, at one time, into the ground.
It was the fence around Ealdor's small shady cemetery. No need of shade at night.
Merlin tumbled over the fence, landing more or less on his feet. No need for the gate. Didn't keep anyone out. Didn't keep anyone in. And no one was here, anyway, not really. Only him.
Yet here was his family, over here in the corner. Someone had put up wooden markers with names burned into them, to match the one of his two older sisters, lost to red fever nearly ten years ago. They'd gone peacefully enough, one in her sleep and the other slipping into a calm delirium in mother's arms before ceasing to labor for breath. Barely a day apart, they'd been buried together, side by side as they'd slept every night.
And these four new graves. That wasn't right. It wasn't right to separate a mother from her babies. It should be two – it should be one, all of them all together.
It was illogical, he thought distantly, to think of them lonely and cold, still reaching, they for her and she for them. Surely they were now together, in warmth and light and love and happiness.
And he, by his own choice, outside in the dark. Was it always to be that way? Could he not find his way into the light also?
Grass had grown over the raw scars in the earth. Of course it would, after three years. He remembered none of the ceremony. Was I even there?
Merlin dropped to his knees by his father's grave at the edge of the plot. Exhausted and empty, surprised to be alive. Now slipping down to lie on his back, listen to the roaring in his ears, strain to breathe around the tightness squeezing his chest.
Why bother?
The stars blurred; drops burned and cooled down his temples, into his hair. He felt the first two teardrops, then no more. Endlessly, the stars blurred, then cleared, again and again, as the world spun slowly into eternity, and he lay limp and unresisting, waiting to tip off into oblivion.
It occurred to him… that he could take a more active role in his own death.
He hadn't carried a long knife at his belt since the night of the hanging – it had been dropped on the porch of Percival's Place and never retrieved, never sought or claimed. He could, he supposed, break a splinter from one of the fence-posts, unbutton his shirt, lay his heart open. He knew where to slash the inside of his limbs to bleed to death within minutes. He'd seen a girl once who'd attempted to open the veins of her wrists after the accidental death of her only child – that would do the trick also, but it would take longer.
There was the knife in his boot, he remembered, like the one he'd used on Arthur, when he thought he'd killed the agent. He could even the score, roll over to thrust the blade awkwardly into his own back… it wouldn't be the first time he'd felt steel there. He could try to duplicate the wound he'd received on the outskirts of Turad, that rainy night when he'd been robbed and left for dead in a ditch himself…
Why had he not died there? Why had Gwaine seen him, Morgana commanded the carriage to stop, and take him in?
But his boot knife was in his boot, on the porch. And that led him to think of Freya.
Alone in the world, except for the unknown cousin – in Turad, of all places. With Merlin dead, she'd be welcomed at the rancher's place, a few days anyway. Then she'd be stuck again, this time in Ealdor, left again in a small unfamiliar town by someone she'd trusted. Would she try to settle in Ealdor, starting all over knowing no one, slowly making friends in her shy, quiet way?
Would she try to drive the wagon on herself? Turad was not a friendly place – those taking tolls at the gates and bridges would surely try to cheat her. Would she trust a stranger enough to drive with her? But why did she trust Merlin?
He guessed he'd have to live a little longer.
And didn't notice or care when sleep claimed him.
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"Something wrong with your man?" the rancher said, puzzled, staring after Merlin. Freya stood beside him in the doorway, swaying gently to rock the sleeping baby. They watched Merlin stalk into the gathering twilight, disappear around the corner of the house. "He left his boots."
"Yes," she said, troubled. "Yes, there is."
The rancher turned black eyes on her, questioning, evaluating. "Tell me," he said.
"It's not–" she began, and couldn't go on. Not her story to tell, not her secret, not anything Merlin would be happy to have her say.
"Ma'am, it's not that I don't appreciate what help you've given me with my missus and my little ones, I do. But my lady is down, and there's another little one due any minute. I need to know how concerned I should be about you and your man being around right now. You're welcome to stay, but I need to know if I should ask you to sleep out-of-doors, and lock up my house and my barn til morning. Being strangers passing through, I guess you wouldn't know this land has a history. The stories I could tell you–"
The rancher's face went slack, his eyes blank for a moment, the cigar sagging from his lips. Then he looked at her, gaze sharpening. He chewed the cigar, then addressed the child trailing behind Freya.
"Donny, run outside and play for a little while."
"Otay, dada, Donny wun an' pway!" the boy agreed cheerfully, darting out the door.
The rancher dropped the cigar down to his side, leaning through the open door into the room while keeping his trailing smoke outside. "Your man said his name was Merlin," he said to Freya in a low voice. "Would he be the same Merlin as the son of the family murdered in the house that used to stand here?"
She nodded.
The rancher opened his mouth to say more, but was interrupted by another groan-rising-scream ripping out from the bedroom next to them. Silence followed, broken only by the playful shouts of the boy outside, the near-snoring of the baby on her shoulder, and the rattling of the coffee lid. Freya thought the rancher was holding his breath; she knew she was.
Was it panting she heard from the bedroom, or the pounding of her own heart? Another short gasp, unmistakable, and the low rumble of the doctor's voice, encouraging. And then – oh, thank goodness! – a slap of skin, and the newborn wail of outrage. The rancher, his pale face flooding with joyful color as a grin started and widened, held up a single finger as a request for her to wait on his return, and slipped into the room.
The little boy came clattering onto the porch, skidded to a stop. "Where's dada?" he asked her. "Sun go ni-night. Tan't pway inna dark."
The rancher returned more swiftly than Freya expected, holding out his cigar apologetically. "My Helen's fine," he said, still grinning. "She can kick me out for bringing cigar smoke into her birthing-room, she's just fine. A boy, ma'am, a fine boy. Little small, but plenty start life a little small. He's strong, though, a fighter." He leaned out the door over his son's head and flicked the stub of the cigar out onto the dirt of the yard.
"Mama gotta baby outta tummy?" the little boy said, dark eyes wide. "We gotta 'nother one baby?"
"Another one baby," Freya agreed, smiling herself. Feeling a little dizzy, actually, it was hard to feel relieved and pleased and happy for this family, and also tense and worried about Merlin, and what would come for him, for them, tonight and tomorrow.
"Doc'll get them cleaned up, then we can visit a little before bedtime, how about that?" the rancher said; it wasn't clear whether he was addressing his son or her.
"I'll put Anna Jo in the crib in the sitting room," Freya suggested. "So the noise won't wake her." She moved into the dim sitting room.
From the kitchen she heard the rancher say, "Wait for dad, now, Donny, don't go in Mama's room yet." So she wasn't surprised when the man's shadow darkened the doorway. "Ma'am? Still need to know if your man intends trouble. Why are you here? Why did he come back?"
Freya laid the baby down, soothing her with a hand gentle on her back, pulled a soft knit blanket up over her. She waited til she reached the doorway again to answer, also in a low voice.
"He means no trouble." She wanted to be honest without betraying Merlin's trust. "He wouldn't have come here at all if I hadn't asked him to show me his family's land. We're just passing through, Camelot to Turad; we don't intend to stay."
"We were told he was underage when it happened," the rancher said; she nodded. "No one spoke up to foster him, so the land was for sale. No one here wanted it, we were told, so it was cheap, and coming as we did from further south, the stories don't mean as much to us. The house had been burned before we got here, so we built new, and tried not to think of the stories–"
"I don't think he wants the land," Freya said. "And he knows about the fire. It's just – harder than I thought, for him to come back. I'm sure there's lots of memories, I just hoped it would be good for him to think on the good–"
The rancher slapped his forehead. "The tree in the kitchen," he said.
"What?"
"When we started building – using the old foundations of course, we found all sorts of things that weren't burned in the fire," he explained. "Some tools, buckles and hinges and the like. That tree on the wall in the kitchen, we found that too, and Helen liked it so she cleaned it up and kept it, not superstitious at all, just as kind of a link, a tribute, to the family…"
The tree. No wonder Merlin's face had gone so white and emotionless. No wonder he'd turned and fled – the walking pace demonstrated incredible control, under the circumstances.
She wished she could be with him, this night. Be there for him, wherever he was…
…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Merlin woke aware that he was lying on the ground.
Muscles stiff, bruise forming under his left shoulder blade from a stray stone not shuffled aside. He woke aware of the increased ache in his feet, starting to heal after the hellish march from Sage Springs to Camelot. He woke aware of another's presence before he opened his eyes, and lay still.
There was sunlight on the backs of his eyelids, weak early morning sun, but already the day was warm. He lay, he remembered, in the corner of the graveyard; did it really matter if the unknown person meant him harm? No, he decided, but neither would he simply wait for something to happen to him, now he was awake. He opened his eyes and sat up in one motion.
It was a middle-aged woman, short and pear-shaped, with a light shawl over thin shoulders and a long faded blue skirt falling from wide hips. She stood on the outside of the fence, almost to the corner, arms folded over the edges of the shawl, bright black eyes sharp on him.
He recognized her. She hadn't changed much, just added pounds to her hips, a wrinkle or so to the corners of her eyes.
"Merlin," she said, nodding slightly. So she recognized him as well.
"Iris," he returned flatly. Ma'am, would have been more appropriate; it was what his mother would have required. But his mother wasn't here.
"Knew it was you when I saw you drive past yesterday," she said. "Figured you'd make your way here, sooner or later. Didn't figure you'd do it stocking-footed."
He looked down at his feet. His socks were filthy and ripped, and a patch of dark blood marked the blister the loose nail had rubbed into the side of his left foot. It was three miles from the farm – Chadin's ranch – to Ealdor's graveyard, and he hadn't exactly been watching his footing. He wasn't surprised it had bled again.
"Almost thought I was seeing things, yesterday," she continued conversationally. "Took me back twenty years. You look a lot like your father did when he first brought your mama up our lane. 'Course, she wasn't as dark-haired as your lady is."
Merlin lifted his hands from the ground and scrubbed them across his face, disregarding the clumped earth and bits of detritus that stuck to his palms. She's not my lady, he wanted to say. I don't want to talk about my father. And mama–
"Didn't really expect to see you back here," she said, taking no notice of his lack of reply. "Not an easy thing for anyone to face."
He let his hands drop. "It wasn't my choice. I'm taking the lady on to Turad. Didn't make sense taking two more days to go around the valley."
Iris nodded. "Although," she added, "looking at you now, couldn't convince me you are facing it."
"How?" Merlin demanded, on his feet so suddenly she leaned back from him. "You tell me, how do I face something like that? You were there – you saw–"
Her face and eyes softened in infinite sadness. "I remember," she said. "I was coming to spend the morning visiting with your mama. I brought her a loaf of spice bread; I was going to ask after Chloe's cough."
He remembered, vaguely, like a dream from long ago – Hunith had been worried about that cough, especially after losing two daughters already to the red fever, years earlier.
"I knew something was wrong when I saw your mama hadn't tended the chickens for – a time. And inside – I thought it was all of you. You had as much blood on you as – as if you were dead yourself. And lying so still, there on the kitchen floor–" she broke off, eyes sharp on his face again. "You don't remember."
He remembered the blood. Always that. There was so much. But after – he remembered little. There were holes in his memory til after he'd been a few weeks with Morgana.
"We'd have fostered you," Iris said suddenly, surprising him. She reached as if to touch his face, cup his cheek in a motherly way, but he jerked back, glaring hotly, and the sorrow was back in her face. "But you didn't make it easy for folk to care for you, then. Nor now, I'm thinking."
"I didn't ask for anyone to care for me," Merlin said roughly.
She nodded, a faraway look in her eyes as she walked back through her memory. "That was hard on your mama," she said. "After the fever took the two older girls, she wanted so much to give you all the mother's love and attention she had. But your father, he was determined, if you were going to be his only son, his only child, he was going to make sure you learned your responsibilities." She sighed. "Your mama used to say, you were both too much alike to get along well. Hard and stubborn. Your mama wanted you to be able to love your father, and see he loved you."
"I did love my father," Merlin said, before he knew he was going to speak. "I knew he loved me."
Iris raised an eyebrow. He scowled; he didn't owe her an explanation. How could he explain to anyone what had confused him even then? His mother, smothering him with petting and polishing, his father unyielding in his demands for more and better.
"I should've been there," he mumbled, drawing his hand roughly over the stubble of his hair. "I shouldn't have left, or spent the night by the creek. I should've been there."
"Oh, my boy," Iris said, once again reaching out.
He took half a step back, turning his shoulders so she couldn't reach him over the fence, but she continued anyway.
"I knew Balinor and Hunith well. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for them that night, but in their place, I would never have wished my son there to share in something like that!" Her vehemence startled him; he dropped his hands to his sides. "I am convinced that your father and mama both were thanking their lucky stars you'd left, and hoping for all they were worth that you wouldn't come walking back in to your own death."
Watching the murderer's hands destroying those two baby girls, watching him put his hands on Hunith with Balinor tied and helpless. Thanking… lucky…
"Ah, boy, your face right now would break your mother's heart," Iris said, sighing again.
He'd known that for years, known that he wasn't what they would've wanted. But he didn't have to stay and listen to someone else say it out loud. He stalked toward the gate, stepping over carved stones, weaving around the higher wooden markers.
"Your mama had high hopes of the man you'd someday become," Iris said after him, raising her voice. He could pretend not to hear, but she knew he could. "I hope she passed without considering that their deaths might drive you to this."
Merlin left the gate unlatched behind him. He passed a shaggy pony and a two-wheeled cart in the yard next the cemetery, and veered away from the road to tramp through field and garden and yard. He had no idea if Iris had plans for her morning in town, but the last thing he wanted was for her to catch him up on the road and keep talking as her pony jogged along. And cross-country, he could avoid other folk easier.
As he walked, not hurrying but not lagging either, he discovered that he actually felt better, as if he'd taken a dive into a waterhole just after the spring melt. Not fully rested, though he'd forgotten when he last felt that, but not so completely exhausted. And not nearly so confused and foggy as he'd felt driving into Chadin's yard, walking into his kitchen.
It was Chadin's ranch, his yard, his outbuildings. His kitchen. Balinor's fields had been turned – by nature, but also by design, Merlin suspected – into grazing land for a herd of horses fairly fine for the area, and for Chadin's main livelihood.
The grays were rested; he himself could travel all day on what little poor sleep he'd gotten. If Freya was ready, they could leave without further delay, leave all the memories behind, undisturbed.
Merlin's feet were battered enough that walking anywhere would pain him for a while, but the long thick grass eased his soles somewhat. He came up to the ranch from the east, through the gap between the side corral and the two-story house, and stopped, just inside the packed-dirt yard.
It was very quiet; the doc's cart and the long-eared mare were gone. The chickens scratched for feed, the horses stepped around the corral, but there was no sign of the rancher. A slight sound caught his attention, a rattle of pebbles from the direction of Freya's wagon. He stepped closer and knelt on one knee to check beneath it.
The little boy, three or maybe four years old, sat drawing in the dust with a bent twig. He was wearing Merlin's dusty brown boots, which came up past his knees, and his hat from the bed of the wagon, which settled around the boy's ears. He looked up, startled into a guilty expression, then grinned in unabashed delight.
"Got a hat an' boots!" the youngster crowed.
"I guess you do," Merlin said dryly.
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When Freya woke, the morning sunlight was streaming in the sitting-room window.
Little Anna Jo was still asleep in the crib in the only shady corner. The two-person settle under the window wasn't much smaller than her bunk below Gwen's, or her corner of the box bed in Padlow's hut. She was stiff and her neck and left shoulder ached, but her muscles would loosen as the day went on.
The house was quiet as she stepped into the kitchen; it didn't look like anything had been moved since she'd done the washing up, a little before midnight. She listened for a moment at the bedroom door, heard a faint masculine snore. Then silence. She smiled; everyone was exhausted from the ordeal of bringing a new baby into the family.
The outside door was ajar; she pushed it open against the outside wall of the corner of the bedroom and stepped onto the porch, her mind already on Merlin. Where had he gone? Where was he now? And in what state of mind? What would she do if–
And she saw him, halfway across the yard, squatting on his heels with his head turned away from her. She stepped down from the porch, walked slowly across the dirt-packed barnyard as though approaching a wild animal momentarily at rest, circling slightly so she didn't come up from behind him.
Then she saw Donny, kneeling in the shade of the wagon, wearing a pair of boots and a broad-brimmed hat laughably too large for him – Merlin's. The boy scratched in the dirt with a stick, looking up to laugh delightedly into Merlin's face.
As she neared, she saw that Merlin's socks were bloodstained. His clothing, hands, and face were filthy and scratched - but the look on his face was a slight smile for the little boy.
He looked up at her, and let the smile linger for a moment.
"Are you all right?" she said, still keeping some small distance between them. She wanted to throw her arms around him, burst out how sorry she was for asking to come, for the shock of the decorative iron tree on the wall, for all that had happened to him. But she couldn't; he wouldn't take that from anyone. He might tolerate it from her, but he wouldn't thank her for it.
He dropped his eyes at the question. And because she was standing and he was crouched down, that meant she could see no part of his face for a moment. Abruptly he pushed himself upright, crossing his arms over his chest, his face once again hard as stone, and unreadable.
"Are you ready to leave?" he said only.
Freya made herself stop twisting her fingers. She was sorry for the hurt he'd felt again at their arrival and the immediate crisis following, but seeing him so calm this morning made her wonder if it was good for him to face the memories instead of running again. She wavered over the request she was about to put to him - as she had for hours last night, listening to Chadin voice his concerns - whether to mention it to Merlin at all. But she was pretty sure he'd take hearing it calmly… and then… it would be up to him.
"I wanted to talk to you about that," she ventured. "Helen had her baby last night – I guess Chadin told you? – but after he was born, well, things were a little – different – than normal…" She risked a glance at him, but if his expression held anything, it was patience. "I wondered if you minded greatly if we – stay a few more days? To help out?"
Merlin closed his eyes, tipping his head back slightly.
"I know I'm asking a lot," she rushed on, feeling a little breathless. "If you really don't want to, we don't have to, but… Doc said it would be best for Helen, if she didn't… Chadin said there was one or two women who might be able to spare a few hours occasionally, til Helen gets her strength back and can get up and do things herself, but I thought, since we're already here…"
He opened his eyes and stared at the sky, or maybe at the tops of the trees. "Hell," he said softly, and she wasn't quite sure how to respond. But he continued in a quiet, tired voice, "If you want to stay, we can stay."
Freya put her hand on his sleeve, enough so he could feel she'd done so, but not actually touching him through the cloth. "Are you sure?"
He shook his head, not meeting her eyes, still gazing into the distance. "I guess we'll see."