The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [53]
‘Now here, Morwen seems to be taking good care of the lad.’
‘Oh, I suppose she’s fond of him. She’ll never have a child of her own.’ She paused for a ladylike sneer at the very thought. ‘Well, as to Varynna, her brother was ever so angry, having a bastard in the family, but he could do naught about it thanks to the will.’
‘Hold a moment. What will?’
‘Tsk, you’re so easy to talk to, I keep forgetting you’re not from around here, good herbman. Their father’s will. You see, he died of a fever, so he knew he was going, like. So he called in the priest of Bel and a few other men of good standing to hear his will. The farm went to the brother but only on the condition that he provided for his mother and the two sisters.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘So brother Dwal was stuck, like, with the three of them. The mother died not long after her husband, though. She’d not been quite right since Morwen was born.’ She tapped her forehead and winked. ‘It was the shame of it, I suppose.’
‘Now here, why blame her?’
‘It must have been her doing, producing a deformed get like that. No doubt she stepped over a crack or killed a hare or suchlike when she was carrying the child. That’s the way these things always happen.’
‘Not truly. It’s much more likely to be the effect of malefic lunar influences on the four humours, you see, early in the pregnancy. The moist humour is particularly susceptible.’
‘It is? Well, fancy that!’ She looked utterly unconvinced. ‘But, truly, we were speaking of our haughty little Varynna. So anyway, this spring all the old gossips had a fair bit more to wag their tongues about. A merchant and his son came in, all the way from Abernaudd, they were, and come to look for Westfolk horses. And the son was fair taken with Varynna, turned quite daft he was. But the father, well now, he had more of a head on his shoulders, and he wasn’t too pleased to find that his son’s new ladylove had a bastard. Back and forth they went about it, yelling and pounding on the table right here in my inn, and finally the old man relented. As long as the bastard never darkens my door, says he, you can marry her and take her away.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Nevyn said. ‘And now Evan’s father is coming to collect the little lad.’
‘Just that.’ The innkeep’s wife finished her cup of ale in one long swallow. ‘And Dwal’s fair pleased to be rid of both of them, I tell you. He’s planning on finding a wife himself now.’
‘Poor little Morri! Losing the lad seems to be aching her heart, and badly.’
‘I suppose it is.’ She shrugged the issue away. ‘Her nose-in-the-air sister wants the child far away from her, as far as he can get, and truly, the Westfolk live on the edge of nowhere, and so that’s that.’
Late that evening, after the innwife had gone to bed, Nevyn stayed by the glowing coals of the dying fire and considered Morwen’s strange situation. The unusual harelip was a clear example of repercussion, as the dweomerfolk call it, where some mark or wound from a particularly violent death carries over to the victim’s next life. The victim’s flood of ancient emotion marks the budding etheric double of the child in the womb, which in turn influences the physical body. Yet since such repercussions rarely last more than a single lifetime, Morwen’s scarred lip indicated that this incarnation was her first since Branoic’s horrible death all those years past.
And she’s so scrawny, Nevyn thought. No doubt she’d had a difficult time eating as a baby and a small child. Most children with harelips did. Once she’d grown older, most likely her kinsfolk had begrudged her food. Nevyn realized that he wouldn’t need some complicated scheme to take Morwen away from her family. Most likely her brother would be glad to see her go if Nevyn could convince her to leave.
On the morrow Nevyn left his stock of medicinals in Wffyn’s care and went with Gwairyc to Morwen’s brother’s farm, which lay not far beyond the town wall. It was a prosperous-looking place, three round houses joined together in a cluster, all of them white-washed and roofed in new thatch. They sat on a square of green grass,