The Crimson Skew (The Mapmakers Trilogy) by S. E. Grove (22)

21

The Long House

THEO WAS HAVING a nightmare; he was bound to a railway line. He could not move. In the distance, inexplicably, he could hear the conversations of the people aboard the approaching passenger train. They sounded content, their tone calm and conversational. As he came to, the railway ties hovered before him, and he realized that he was looking up at a ceiling made of dark beams and white plaster. Theo turned his head and saw clusters of dried herbs hanging from one of the beams. Along the wall, wooden shelves stacked with innumerable bottles and jars surrounded a stone fireplace. Sunlight streamed in through two mullioned windows on the opposite side of the room. The windows flanked a green door. The door stood open. Theo could see grass and clumps of flowers beyond the open doorway.

“He’s awake,” a woman’s voice said.

Theo tried to lift himself up, and pain knifed down his left arm, running all the way from his shoulder to his fingers.

“There now, one step at a time.” Casanova’s scarred face came into view. Beside him was a woman of some fifty years. Her dark hair was laced with gray and drawn into a long braid; she tossed it over her shoulder as she bent over Theo with a look of concentration. He lifted his right hand to fend her off. Casanova took it reassuringly. “Don’t worry. This is Smokey. It’s thanks to her you’re awake. She is an excellent medic.”

“I need to look at your shoulder, Theo,” Smokey said.

Theo found that when he opened his mouth, he could barely croak a reply. He nodded. Smokey lifted the cloth that covered his shoulder. “The infection is contained,” she said, her voice firm. “I think the worst has passed.” She gave Theo an appraising look. “If you can sit up, we could get some food in you, and that would help.”

Theo swallowed. “Yes, please,” he managed.

Smokey smiled, altering her face entirely. Her dark eyes shone, making fans of fine wrinkles at her temples. “That’s good,” she said approvingly. “Lift him up, Grant,” she said to Casanova, and turned away.

Casanova gently lifted Theo’s head with one hand and slipped his other arm under his back. Theo felt the pain in his shoulder again as he tried to shift upward, and he gritted his teeth until he was propped up against the wooden headboard with pillows stuffed under him. “How’s that?” asked Casanova.

“Good,” Theo gasped. Now that he was sitting up, he took in the room around him. Smokey stood by a wood stove. There was a large table covered with herbs, knives, bowls, and jars. At the back, a darkened corridor led to the rest of the house. The bed he lay on had clearly been temporarily pulled into this kitchen-workroom. Casanova sat down in a wooden chair beside him with a pleased expression. Theo wasn’t sure what to ask first. “Where are we?” he finally croaked.

“This is Smokey’s house. We’re in southwest New York.”

“How did we get here?”

Casanova raised his unscarred eyebrow. “You don’t remember any of the journey?”

Theo shook his head. “I remember . . .” He winced. “I remember the attack.”

Smokey approached the bed with a wooden platter. It held a cup of water, a bowl of steaming soup filled with mushrooms and green onions, and a bowl of late-summer berries. “Go slowly,” she said, “and see how it lands in your stomach. You haven’t had much to eat for days now.” She pulled a chair up to the other side of the bed, near the window, and drew a bunch of hand-sewn linen pouches toward her. She began stuffing them with dried herbs from a tray.

Theo lifted the spoon with his right hand and sipped. He sighed; he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. The green onions smelled of grass, and the mushrooms smelled of earth. “Thank you,” he said to Smokey. “This is amazing.”

Smokey smiled at him. “I’m glad.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked Casanova after another spoonful of soup.

“Do you remember how your shoulder was injured?”

“I only remember seeing the bowmen come out of the woods, and then the mule beside me was struck. I tried to run to keep up with the wagon.”

“Well,” Casanova said. “Let’s see. The bowmen came out of the woods, and everyone started running every which way. I didn’t see the mule get struck, but it and the other one must have panicked, because they bolted, dragging you with them. You couldn’t run fast enough with that harness attached, so you fell.” He shook his head. “I think the yoke protected you some as you were pulled along the ground. But I had trouble catching up. And trouble getting the harness off.” He gave Theo a grimace. “By the time I finally got you free of it and into the back of the wagon, the mules had carried us away. I thought about going back to the company, Theo. I did.” He shook his head again. “But I wondered whether we’d have any troops to return to. And your wound was pretty bad. I cleaned it and bandaged it with the major’s best napkins, but you had scrapes all over you from being dragged. When you woke up, you seemed poorly. And I realized there might have been something poisonous in the arrowhead. Those are the kind that break on impact, and I hadn’t pulled all the pieces out most likely. I decided then and there we’d head here to Smokey’s. Luckily, we were just on the western side of the border, so all I had to do was ride northeast. Soon enough we were in Pennsylvania and then New York. We got here at dawn yesterday. You’d had a fever for more than twenty hours. Smokey opened up the wound right away and took out all the rest of the pieces. She sewed you up and put you right.”

“So we’re deserters,” he said when Casanova had finished.

Casanova looked into his lap. “Afraid so. I’m sorry.”

Theo tried to smile. “Nothing to be sorry for. Well, maybe. If you regret saving my life.” He felt the blood pulsing in his temple. Casanova had brought him to safety, but at what cost? Would it be impossible to return to Boston now?

“He’s getting tired, Grant,” Smokey said.

“I’m fine,” replied Theo. He looked out through the doorway at the green grass. “Where are we, exactly?”

“This is Oakring,” Smokey said, following his gaze. “We’re in New York, just south of the Eerie Sea.”

“Is this where you’re from?” Theo asked Casanova.

Casanova shook his head. “No. But I spent some time here before moving east.” He and Smokey exchanged a glance. “Smokey took care of me once. Just as she’s taking care of you now.”

“Ah,” Theo said. “She knows about the burns.”

“I do,” Smokey said, without looking up from her task, “but if Grant won’t talk about them, it’s not my place to.”

“What if he gave you special permission?”

Casanova gave a short sigh. “It just so happens that when you were sick, I made a promise.”

Theo looked at him hopefully.

“I promised that if you got better, I’d tell you the story.”

“Finally!”

“Maybe when you’re a little better. The story’s not one to lift your spirits. For now, you need food and sleep, not tales of misery.”

Theo felt his eyes closing. “I like tales of misery,” he mumbled.

“I can see that,” Casanova replied lightly.

“When I wake up.” He smiled tiredly. “Tell me the story when I wake up.”

He woke again in the evening, when the setting summer sun made the kitchen a jumble of purpled shadows. Casanova and Smokey were sitting outside, just beyond the door; Theo could hear their murmuring conversation and the occasional crack of a wood fire. For a few minutes, he lay still in the growing darkness, letting his senses waken fully. The pain in his shoulder was no better and no worse, but the overwhelming lethargy he had felt earlier was passing. He smelled the herbs hanging above him from the rafters, and his stomach grumbled.

Pushing the blanket off carefully with his good arm, he swiveled slowly on the bed and lowered his feet to the floor. The packed dirt felt good, solid beneath them. He levered himself upright. As he tried to take a step forward, the room tipped precariously. Theo grabbed ahold of the bed with his right hand.

“Theo?” Casanova stood in the doorway. He hurried over. “Sure you want to get up?”

“I’m sure.”

“Walk slowly,” Casanova admonished, walking him the short distance to the door.

It was a warm night, but Smokey had lit a fire in a small pit surrounded by stones. She sat on a wooden bench, and Casanova lowered Theo down beside her. He sighed with pleasure, stretching his bare feet toward the fire.

“We have cornbread and beans, Theo, if your stomach finds that agreeable.” Smokey held out a plate.

“Very agreeable,” he said happily. “Thank you.”

Smokey waited to see that he was eating before she said, “Grant has told me of your connection with Shadrack Elli.”

“You know him?” Theo asked, his mouth full.

She nodded. “Most everyone knows him. But I know him perhaps a bit better than most. We’ve been corresponding during the war. There’s a trader named Entwhistle who travels through here and other places. He gathers news and then goes to Boston. When he makes the return trip, we hear from Shadrack, too. Perhaps you’d like to have him take Shadrack a note?”

“Yes, thank you—I’ve met him. When will he be here next?”

“He is due any day now.” Smokey watched Theo with satisfaction as he ate. “You are healing well.”

“It’s no wonder,” Casanova said with a smile. He sat on a tree stump a few feet away, the scarred side of his face in shadow. “He’s in the hands of Sarah Smoke Longfellow, the most skillful medic in New Occident and the Territories combined.”

Smokey laughed. “Grant likes to exaggerate my talents,” she said to Theo.

“It’s no exaggeration,” Casanova said firmly.

“Speaking of Smokey’s talents, you promised you’d tell me the miserable story,” Theo reminded him.

“This story is not one that is likely to make you feel better.”

“Come on,” Theo said, his mouth full of cornbread. “I went and got myself shot just so you would tell me the story, and now you refuse?”

Casanova smiled ruefully, then fell silent. “The truth is,” he said at last, staring into the fire, “that usually I don’t think of that time at all, but lately I have thought of it often.”

“Because of the war?” Smokey asked.

“Yes. No doubt. And because of the ash.”

Casanova leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. He held one of Smokey’s cups in his hand, and he swirled the liquid in it slowly, as if pondering its contents. “You will have heard everyone call me a coward,” he said to Theo.

“Once,” Theo acknowledged. “After that, no one said it in front of me.”

“Thank you, but there was no need for you to defend me. There is no doubt that I am a coward. I have always been.”

Theo waited for Smokey to contradict him, but she only watched Casanova with a closed expression, as if braced for pain.

“I was born west of here,” Casanova began, “in a village near the border. When I was seven, my parents and my brother were killed by settlers from New Occident. I only survived because they thought I was dead. The blood of my little brother, which covered my head and shoulders, protected me. Passing over us like vultures, the settlers did not notice my breathing. They saw only two bloody boys, lying still in the dirt.”

Theo stared at Casanova. He felt the food turning in his stomach.

“The few of us who lived were taken in by another village, and I grew up among them. It was one of the warring villages. Over decades—centuries, most likely—they nurtured an enmity with another people on the shores of the Eerie Sea. Sometimes the villages made war on each other every few months. And sometimes there would be peace for years at a time—perhaps a decade, when we were lucky. I grew to manhood during one of these periods of peace. The village did well. When I was old enough, I married and had a child. Though I was always an outsider because I had been adopted into the village, I began to feel that my place was there, among them.

“And then the peace we had was broken. It was unclear how. But the warring began again, and I refused to take part. No one could believe my refusal. Every grown man—every boy, even—was eager to prove his valor, his loyalty to the village. They called me a coward.” Casanova threw the contents of the cup onto the fire, and it flared angrily. “Of course, they were right. But I had seen my family killed by settlers, and I had no grudge against the people with whom we warred. When I imagined going with them, my thoughts conjured a vision of what would surely happen in the end: I saw myself hovering like a vulture over the body of some bloodstained boy, just as someone had stood over me. I much preferred to be a coward.

“Then the man who led us—everyone called him Four-fingers, for as a child he had lost one finger to a dog bite—Four-fingers said that if I did not fight, then my family would be exiled. Set to drift, alone, without anyone to offer aid in the hard winters.” He shook his head slowly. “I should have said, ‘Yes, give us exile.’ But I did not.

“My wife, Talise, had been raised in the village. Her entire family was there. I could not ask her to leave them forever, and to wander with me and Ossa—only four years old—in search of a new place. Where would we go? How would we eat? We could not take up with the settlers to the east; they would kill us. And all the people near the Eerie Sea would know the reason for our exile. They would not take us in: a coward and his family.

“So I went. It was a night in April—clear, moonless. We approached the village silently—forty-six of us, all as quiet as snow in late spring. Four-fingers gave the sign, and we sent arrows into the village as a first warning. Then their men came out to meet us. I could not see the battlefield. My vision was filled with a red mist that I thought at the time was blood. But it was not blood. It was a memory.

“My mind flew back to the past. Instead of seeing the place around me, I saw myself in the bright sunlight fifteen years earlier. I felt the earth shake under the horses’ hooves. The house was only a short run away. I saw my brother taking uncertain steps backward, and I reached out for him, too late. The horse charged past, and my brother, broken in half, soared toward me like a crushed bird. I felt his weight upon me, and I went still.

“I struggled to plant myself in the present: in the dark April night, in the battle that surrounded us. And then, as clearly as if she had been standing beside me, I heard my daughter, Ossa, call out for me.

“Now all visions of the past vanished. I saw where I was. I heard Ossa’s cry, repeated—she was calling out in pain. Without even considering how it was possible, knowing she was more than three miles away, I knew that her cry was real. I fled from the battle. I ran as fast as I could. Believe me . . .” Casanova paused. He swallowed. “I used every fragment of strength in my body. But still, I arrived too late. I could smell the burning wood from half a mile away. At that point, my daughter’s cries faded. I could no longer hear them.

“When I arrived, the long house was charred black. The door had been barred from the outside. I lifted the bar, and the people who were yet alive spilled forth. I went in and carried out those who lay on the dirt floor, felled by the smoke. Still I did not see them—Talise and Ossa. At last I found them—toward the back, surrounded by flames. My wife held Ossa in her arms, wrapped around her as if her body would somehow stop the fire.

“But it did not. I carried them out of the long house and extinguished the flames. They were already gone. They held one another so tightly, even in death, that I could not pry them apart. We had to bury them together.”

Casanova turned his face so that the scars were visible. He smiled grimly, the scar twisting with the effort. “Afterward, they called me a coward for having left the battle.”

“You saved more than thirty people in the long house, Grant,” Smokey said quietly.

“Yes.” Casanova looked back at the fire. “But you and I do not reckon lives the way warriors do. It is another method of calculation that I do not understand. To them, the loss of so many people was only greater reason to make war again. And again.

“We learned that the long house had been burned by settlers. Allied with our enemies. Making use of our absence. With all of the grown men gone, it was easy enough to herd the women, children, and old people into the long house. Terribly easy.”

He took a small stone and dropped it into the fire. “I was glad to leave them, then. Glad to be exiled. I would have gone anywhere, but I knew of Oakring. Everyone knows it as a place of tolerance. A place that takes in exiles. So I came here.”

“Grant does not mention that half his body suffered from burns,” Smokey said. “It is a wonder he made it here at all. The recovery was slow—many months.”

“But in anyone else’s hands I would have died.” He looked at her solemnly. “And I would have welcomed it, then. Perhaps I chose too skillful a healer.”

“I’m sorry,” Theo finally said. He was ashamed now of having prodded Casanova so many times, of having made his friend unearth a thing of such pain. “This war must seem disgusting to you,” he added.

“It seems pointless,” Casanova replied. “Mindless. Destructive without reason.”

Theo felt a sudden chill. He shivered. Casanova, he realized, had always planned to desert Major Merret’s company. The only question was when.