Taminy Read online

  “Now, Osraed Tynedale must surely have told you that.”

  “Oh, well, yes. For his Uncle Haefer locked up in Halig-liath. But tha’s just the scum reason, in’t it?”

  Taminy glanced at her sharply. “The scum reason?”

  “Like the scum stuff tha’ floats atop a bog puddle. The real is underneath, in’t it? I figure that were Ruanaidhe’s toppermost reason—the one that come out of his head first. But Halig-liath’s no kind of prison and his uncle were happy there, which Ruanaidhe must’ve known, too, for he spoke with him not a sevenday before he went off and murdered Cyne Siolta.”

  “Then why do you think he killed the Cyne?”

  Gwynet stopped walking to ponder that. “Not for his uncle. For himself, I think. ’Cause he was grieving.”

  “Grieving? For what?”

  “For the loss of his uncle. He must’ve known the Hillwild was prenticed to the Osraed and that he meant to take the Pilgrim Walk. Well, Haefer Hillwild was the Meri’s then, sure as could be. Dead to Ruanaidhe, like. He’d no more lead his men into battle with Her Kiss on his soul. Angry, the young Hillwild must’ve been at tha’ and powerful grieved. And so he gave his anger to Cyne Siolta who’d put his uncle away from him. And he passed on his grief to those who loved Siolta as he loved Haefer Hageswode.” She paused, nodding, then said, “How raw to know, in the end, that it could nowise stop the hurting. All that grief and he put the biggest burden on himself. He lost all and every. Poor Ruanaidhe.”

  She put her hand upon the bridge wall and leaned out to peer over into the water running, thick, below. “Do you think he really trans-ported into a river silkie like as they said?”

  Poor Ruanaidhe, thought Taminy. “Transformed, you mean,” she said aloud. “And in a hundred and forty-five years I doubt five people have cried for Ruanaidhe Hillwild. But you—you cry for everyone.” She put a hand on Gwynet’s shoulder and pressed it. “Bless you, Gwynet.”

  “Am blessed, mistress,” she murmured, shooting her a sideways glance. “And greatly so.” She looked back at the water. “You know these things, mistress Taminy—did Ruanaidhe the Red become a river silkie?”

  “What? And ruin a perfectly good legend? You must wonder along with everyone else.” Taminy grasped Gwynet’s shoulders and turned her toward the Greenside shore. “Walk, or we’ll never get our errands done.”

  They visited the Mercer’s first, for candles, cook pots and oddments, then the Tanner’s for some shoes and, last of all, they went to the shop of the Webber, Marnie-o-Loom. The shop had belonged to Marnie’s aged grandfather when Taminy had last set foot in it. And, here, there was change. The cloth that hung on display on wall or rack, that lay folded soft on table and in window, was finer, showed more variety of color and pattern than the old Webber’s. Marnie was a wonder at her craft. The shop walls had been covered in places with cloth that was skillfully attached with glue or varnish of some sort. And the floors had the gleam of polished new pine and were covered with a riot of hand-loomed rugs.

  A young man behind the cutting table was the only person in the shop, but from an arched doorway at the rear of the room came the clatter-thunk of working looms—like a chorus of arrhythmic drums.

  “May I help you?” the young man asked and smiled engagingly.

  Taminy returned the smile, her hand flitting over a roll of soft, thick twyla wool perched next to the table on a cutting rack. “I’m looking for winter cloth,” she said, “for cold weather gear.”

  “Ah, coat cloth then?”

  “Coats and hoods and good, warm blouses.”

  “That piece you’ve got your hand on is as fine a bit of wool as you’ll ever see. Softest in town and truest of color.” He winked. “Granmar’s secret.”

  “It is lovely,” Taminy agreed, admiring the vivid green of the fabric. “How much per yard?”

  “Seventy-five oonagh. It would look grand on your little sister,” he added, smiling at Gwynet, who was inspecting a fleece hood, “and even grander on you.”

  “Thank you. You’re very kind,” said Taminy and felt an odd stirring of pleasure at the compliment.

  “You’re new to Nairne,” the youth observed. “I saw you at Tell Fest, didn’t I?”

  “May have. I’m Taminy. Taminy-a-Gled. Gwynet and I live up at the Manor with Osraed Bevol.”

  He shifted awkwardly. “Ah, of course! You set my Granmar’s tongue wagging, right enough. Like to have fallen off. Leastwise, we’d have liked it to at times. So, are you ... er ... are you going up to Halig-liath?”

  “No.”

  His open, apple-shiny face gleamed with relief. “Oh, that’s fine, then.”

  Taminy’s mouth twitched with the desire to grimace. Not one of those girls, then, eh? “I tutor Gwynet. She’s attending the Academy. And doing quite well, too. Osraed Bevol says she has a natural Gift.... You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Oh! Ah. It’s Terris. Terris-mac-Webber.” He shuffled momentarily behind his long table, then circled it, coming to stand just across from her at the rack of green wool. “My Gram wove this roll. Smooth as velvet for all it’s a double weave.”

  Taminy ran a hand over the thick fabric. It was as vivid to the touch as it was to the eye. That amazed her—not the cloth itself, but the sensation of touch. How different this world was from her world of water and spirit. Amazing, too, was her awareness of this boy—no, his awareness of her. The intensity of his regard prickled her face and made her skin flush.

  “Daeges-eage, Terris,” said a girl’s voice from the doorway of the shop.

  Terris jumped like a spooked cat and Taminy realized other eyes than his had tickled her senses. She turned. A trio of girls stood in the doorway. Iseabal-a-Nairnecirke was one of them. The other two, a vivid redhead and a small, darkling cailin with a froth of deep brown hair, Taminy didn’t know. It was the redhead who’d spoken, and she now regarded Terris-mac-Webber as if he was a dog she had caught raiding the larder.

  “Oh! Daeges-eage, Aine ... ah, Iseabal, Doireann.” He glanced quickly at Taminy, his face reddening. “I ... was ...”

  Before he could force another word from between his lips, Taminy rescued him from his discomfiture. “Yes, I will have some of this fine green twyla. Four yards, please and, ah....” She glanced at a neighboring bolt. “And two yards of the blue. And I’ll need some softweave for leggings and sous-shirts.”

  “Oh. Over there.” Terris motioned across the room to a table piled high with goods, then moved to measure Taminy’s wool.

  Taminy took Gwynet across the shop to inspect the softweave while the other girls, with the exception of Iseabal, moved to linger at Terris’s cutting table. Iseabal gave them a glance, then followed Taminy and Gwynet.

  She stood silently for a moment, fingering some softweave with careless hands. “I was looking for you, Taminy,” she said finally. “I thought maybe you would go to that pool again today.” A sideways glance through dark waves checked Taminy’s face for welcome.

  She put welcome into her smile, and saw it catch fire in Iseabal’s eyes.

  “Will you, do you think? Go to that place?”

  “I thought we might, after our errands. You’re welcome to come.”

  “Am I? Am I really? I didn’t get in the way of your lessons last time? I was afraid I might have ...All my questions-”

  “They were good questions.” Taminy pulled out a length of gray softweave and glanced over at the cutting table where a flash-flushing Terris talked awkwardly with his two companions. “Do your friends fancy a trek to the woods?”

  “Them?” Iseabal first seemed shocked at the idea, then admitted, “I suppose I hoped they might, though when I told Aine about your herbals she only wondered if you might have a poultice that would lift off her freckles. And Doireann, well, a trek in the woods would most certainly scuff her shoes and stain her skirts and riot her hair.”

  Taminy laughed and was immediately aware that the other girls had shifted their attention from blushing Terris to
her and Iseabal.

  “So,” said Aine the Red, crossing the shop’s rug-littered floor. “So, you’re Taminy. I saw you at Tell Fest—well, the whole town did, didn’t we? Imagine Terris’s Gram thinking you were Meri-did-a-Lagan. All that white hair of yours—and, of course, you’re so much thinner than Meri-did.”

  “I don’t think you should call her that,” said Iseabal, blushing. “It’s unkind. She’s-she’s dead, after all.”

  And Gwynet, who had been watching the overhead exchange, piped, “No, she’s not. She’s with the Meri. Isn’t she, Taminy?”

  Taminy only smiled. This was not the time to argue or to shock or to make inveterate enemies. Enemies. Those would come all too easily in days ahead. Gathering up an armful of softweave, she moved past Aine to the cutting table. “She’s where she needs to be.”

  “Oh, like as if you know,” said the other girl, following her with appraising hazel eyes.

  “Uh, how many yards?” stammered Terris. He caught up the softweave as if desperate to have something to do.

  “Six of the gray and four of the heather, please.”

  “Taminy and I are going to the pool I told you about,” said Iseabal. “Over on the Bebhinn, up Lagan way.”

  “Hunting for weeds?” asked Aine, and Doireann silently wrinkled her nose.

  “Not weeds,” said Gwynet from the midst of them. “Herbals. Taminy knows bookfuls about herbals.”

  “Weeds,” said Aine. “Common weeds.”

  “Nothing in creation is common,” Taminy said. “Everything has a place and a purpose. A weed can be a wonder in its rightful place.”

  “And I suppose you’ve herbals that can cure warts and make eyelashes grow?”

  “Well, I know that sassafras purifies the blood and takes away the mooning pain. Skybell, crushed with rosemary and chamomile, makes the skin glow.” She thought her own flesh gleamed as she said it; Aine’s eyes told her she wasn’t wrong.

  “Is that true?” Doireann spoke for the first time, her dark gaze raking Taminy’s face. “Can your herbs really change someone’s complexion? That can’t be ...Can it?”

  “Herbs can help, of course. But it’s not just what you put on the outside. It’s what you put inside, as well. What you eat and drink. What you think and feel.” She glanced pointedly at Aine’s overly ruddy face.

  “Nonsense,” Aine said. “What I eat can’t possibly affect my skin.”

  “Of course it can,” persisted Taminy gently.

  Aine put her fists on her hips. “Oh, do tell me it’s sugar creams and iced-cakes that’ll make my freckles fade. I’ll eat them away in a week! Oh, and chocolates to make my hair brown, too, I imagine.”

  Taminy laughed. Doireann almost smiled.

  “I’ll get my herbs at the Apothecary, thank you,” Aine concluded.

  Taminy shrugged. “Where do you think all those fine Apothecary powders and elixirs come from, Aine? Someone must collect them and sort them and process them before they go to the Apothecary.”

  “Aye!” said Gwynet with much feeling. She glanced down at her green-stained fingertips. “I surely know who washes them.”

  “Hot and cold water,” opined Aine. “That’s what my Ma says. That’s the common healing. Leave the artful stuff and the inyxes to the Osraed. They know what they’re doing.”

  “Girls shouldn’t go up to Halig-liath,” murmured Doireann, sullen eyes on Gwynet. “It’s not our domain.”

  “But you’d go, wouldn’t you? If they said it was all right?”

  Iseabal glanced from one girl to the other. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Never,” said Aine. “Musty books and histories. Submission and servitude and all that studying. And look at the little one’s hands. All green and frog-like from cleaning weeds.”

  “It’s not right,” said Doireann.

  “I’ll tell you what’s not right.” The voice thrust into the air like a gnarled old tree limb. “What’s not right is my grandson wasting precious shop time flirting and fawning with a pack of dandelion brained cailin.” Marnie-o-Loom stood in the doorway to the nether room, glaring at the knot of youngsters grouped around her cutting table.

  Terris paled, then flushed, then paled again. “Granmar, I—”

  Taminy shot the old woman a welcoming smile. “Oh, hardly wasted, Mam Webber. He’s mostly been waiting on me.” She held up an end of vividly green wool. “This is wonderful fabric, Mam. It feels as if you’ve woven the warmth of sun on wool right into it.”

  “Odd you should say that, girl,” Marnie said. “For it was told of my Granpar that he could weave the spring and summer into his winter cloth. But then Granpar were a little fey. He wove more than fabrics, if you take my meaning.” There was pride in that and a little wistfulness.

  “I think you inherited his Gift,” Taminy told her.

  “God, mighty and merciful! What are you on about, cailin? What would an old woman like me be doing messin’ about with Weavin’?”

  “It’s not such a difficult inyx,” said Taminy, perhaps incautiously.

  “Ah! And you’d know it, I s’pose?”

  “I do know it.” Yes, indeed, I do. And so suddenly and so clearly, I can feel it in my fingertips.

  Various noises of disbelief rose around her and Marnie said, “Scraps! If you knew such an inyx, you’d use it yourself.”

  Taminy shrugged, smiling. “But, Mam, I don’t know how to weave cloth.”

  Marnie gave a hoot of laughter. “And me, I don’t know how to Weave inyx. And wouldn’t, if I could. I’ve never uttered a duan in my life. Scraps! If I tried, the Eibhilin would just shut up their ears and wail. There’s folks as take me for a Wicke already. I’m not like to give ’em more grounds. And neither should you, girlie.” She pointed a gnarled finger at Taminy. “You’re not Meredydd, but you’re like her. Careful you don’t go the same way she did. Now, sell ’er the cloth, boy.” She glared at Terris, then disappeared into her workshop.

  Too late, old woman, Taminy thought. I’ve gone Meredydd’s way. Now, I am going my own.

  “Uh,” said Terris, fumbling the softweave. “That was six?”

  She turned back to him. Sweat beaded on his forehead. She nearly laughed, smiled instead, and said, “Six of the gray, four of the heather.”

  “Marnie’s right,” said Aine, behind her. “If you knew any Runes you’d Weave them yourself.”

  “That’ll be six ambre, fifty,” said Terris.

  “Osraed Bevol knows a Rune that will crumble stone,” Taminy said. She fetched out her belt pouch and counted out six gold ambres and a sorcha. “I don’t think he’s ever had reason to use it.”

  “You don’t know any Runes. I’ll bet you don’t even know the simplest duan.”

  “Yes, she does,” said Iseabal. “I’ve heard her sing.”

  “I do know some Runes,” murmured Taminy, handing Terris her coins. Yes, all neatly stacked in my head like books on a shelf. Useless unless read. And my eyes fail me. “Or I once did.”

  “If you knew the teeniest, tiniest inyx,” persisted Aine Red, “then you’d have used it to put some color in that hair of yours.”

  Taminy took up her package and turned to look at the other girl appraisingly. Ah, that’s the way of it. “And why would I do that? I like the color of my hair. Don’t you like yours?”

  She left the shop then, slipping out onto the street to a pleasant assault of Nairnian sights and sounds and smells. The Backstere’s next.

  The others had followed her, leaving Terris alone to sulk.

  “I do like my hair, thank you,” said Aine, striking a defensive pose in the middle of the flagstone walk. “I think it’s glorious.” She tossed it for good effect, making sunlight ripple through it like fire.

  Taminy nodded. “You’re right. It is glorious. If I had hair as bright and beautiful as that, I’d be very glad of it. And very careful about eating too many chocolates.”

  Doireann giggled and Taminy, ignoring Aine’s gawping stare, glanced from G
wynet to Iseabal. “I think we should go to the Backstere’s before we take our packages home, don’t you?”

  Gwynet’s eyes lit up like twin lightbowls. “Oh, could we, Taminy? Could we go there?”

  “We’ll still go to the woods, won’t we?” asked Iseabal, eying her two friends.

  “If you like.” She turned to Aine and Doireann. “You’re welcome to come along.”

  Doireann’s dark eyes flickered from Taminy’s face to Aine’s and back. She licked her lips. “Do you really know a poultice for the complexion?”

  “Doireann Spenser! You are that gullible!” With a flick of blazing tresses, Aine turned and walked away.

  Doireann, blushing rose beneath her olive skin, gave Taminy one last glance before tailing after her friend.

  “But she says she knows,” Doireann’s voice came back to them, whining. “What harm is there in calling her out?”

  Aine said nothing and the two went their way. Iseabal looked after, her brow furrowed, while Taminy smiled.

  “Cream cakes!” she said, and led the way to the Backstere’s shop.

  They didn’t go to the pool after all, for the afternoon became cool and dark with blue-gray clouds that threatened rain. Instead, Taminy invited Iseabal to supper and, after a grant of permission from the Cirkemaster and his wife, the three girls started up the road toward Gled Manor, carrying Marnie’s fine cloth and blinking against a lusty breeze.

  “Delicious!” exclaimed Taminy. “Oh, delicious breeze!” And she laughed when it kicked up her skirts and flirted with her hair.

  Rain began to fall, raising tiny puffs of dust in the roadway. The rhythm of it put a song on Taminy’s lips and she sang it:

  “Tiny, bright, jeweled, light—

  Spilling on the ground.

  Who has tilt the silver box

  And sent the rain gems tumbling down?

  Is that you, saucy breeze,

  Playing tap-tunes on the leaves?

  Does your mistress know you play

  And toss her Eibhilin jewels away?”

  “How pretty!” said Iseabal. “You have a wonderful voice. Mama will want you in her chorus, I know. Where did you learn that?”