Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [44]
“Mam and Da are still out in the fields,” he said. “That’s why Gram said to bring you now.”
Gram herself came strolling out of the house. A stout, hard-muscled woman with gnarled hands, she was wearing a black headscarf and a brown dress, pulled up into her dirty kirtle to leave her ankles and muddy bare feet free. She gave Jill a look of honest sympathy and turned to the boy.
“Bucket of slops and greens by the hearth,” she announced. “Them chickens is hungry.”
When the boy ran into the house, she gestured at Jill to follow and led her down to the gate where he couldn’t overhear. Flies buzzed round them, and distant chickens cackled.
“Now what’s all this, lass? Gwedda’s a nasty sort with her tongue. Hah! Mincing round with her nose in the air over you, and here she’s buried two husbands and so eager to get another you’d swear she was a bitch in heat, you would, and at her age!”
“She was wrong, too. I’m not with child. I was trying to tell her, but all she did was natter on and on at me, and I couldn’t say much with my man right there.” Jill glanced round as if expecting Rhodry to pop up and spy on her. “It’s about him, you see. Here I gave up my family and everything when he asked me to go with him, and every town we ride to, he’s looking over the lasses. I can’t say a thing about it. What if he just left me? Oh, by the Goddess herself, it aches my heart.”
“Ah. Them handsome men, all face and no heart, truly.”
“So I’m finding out.” Jill did her best to sound bitter. “So I thought, well, maybe Aranrhodda could help me keep him faithful. You hear about things, charms and suchlike, to keep your man in your bed and nowhere else.”
“So you do. Now, how long are you going to be in Lughcarn? You can’t make up a powerful spell like this one in between baking your bread and cutting your dinner meat.”
“At least a few days. My man’s going to go up to the gwerbret’s dun and see if he can find a hire, but we’ve got money now, so he won’t be in any hurry.” She noticed the mention of money bring a smile to the old woman’s face. “He spends every copper the minute he gets it, but I sneaked a bit for myself.”
“Sensible lass, and if you’ll listen to an old woman, you’ll go on sneaking a coin here and there and laying it by, like, somewhere in your clothes where he won’t find it. Now, our Lady of the Cauldron can help you keep him, sure enough, but the day’s going to come when you won’t want to keep him, and then what are you going to do?” She fixed Jill with a stern look. “A woman with a bit put by can find herself a husband who’s got a cursed short memory for what she done before she met him. You remember that.”
“I will, good dame, and my thanks, but I can’t imagine ever not loving my wonderful Rhodry.”
The old woman rolled her eyes heavenward at the follies of young lasses, then considered the problem, idly tracing a line in the dust with her big toe.
“I’ll need a bit of his hair,” she said at last. “Just a bit will do.”
“I’ve got some. I was combing his hair last night, and I kept what was in the comb.” She reached into her brigga pocket and took out the strands of Rhodry’s hair, carefully wrapped in a scrap of cloth.
“Oho! You seem to know a bit about our Lady’s power.”
“Well, my Mam knew a Wise Woman near our house. And sometimes I heard them talking when I was just a little lass.”
Smiling, the old woman tucked the bit of hair into a fold of her kirtle.
“Now, tonight, when it’s good and