Maresi Red Mantle Read online

“Mother told me you were home again, but I didn’t quite believe it,” she said, inspecting me as closely as I was inspecting her. “You haven’t braided your hair?” she said in wonder, fingering a brown strand. “And what a cloak you have!”

  For a moment I felt embarrassed about wearing it. It is so costly and fine, so unlike anything the folk of Rovas are used to seeing.

  “Let the girl in,” came an old woman’s voice from inside the house, and Marget led me inside. And there, seated around their red-painted table as if they had been expecting me, the whole family was gathered: Marget’s little sister Lenna (who is younger than Akios), their mother Seressa, and grandmother Kild. Only the father Ádon was missing.

  “Father’s out tending to the animals,” Marget explained before I could even ask. “We’ve a cow and a pig,” she continued proudly.

  “Bought with borrowed money,” muttered Kild, but nobody seemed to pay attention to the old woman’s words.

  The woman of the house raised a horn of firewater to me, and once again I drank and passed the horn around before presenting my gift.

  “Goodness me!” exclaimed Seressa. “You’ve clearly done well for yourself out in the big wide world. We thought we’d never see you again, Maresi, so we did.”

  Lenna set the drinking horn aside, sat back down and returned to her handicraft. “Else we didn’t think you’d return with virtue and honour intact. That’s what Grandmother said anyway.” She looked at me innocently. “Do you, Maresi? Have your honour intact?”

  She did not know what she was asking, but the elder women did, and I caught Seressa looking me up and down. Marget hushed her sister angrily, but I looked her straight in the eye.

  “Yes I do, Lenna. According to your definition, and mine.”

  I sat down at the table and looked at the other women. They all had something in their hands: Lenna was engaged in some simple needlework, Marget was working on a beautiful embroidery and Seressa was spinning. Only Kild’s eyesight was too poor to manage crafts. It felt strange to sit there as a guest, taskless, while everyone else was working.

  “So I said to her, I said, your eggs aren’t worth that much,” Seressa continued the conversation I must have interrupted with my arrival. “I gave her a bit of cheese, and told her that would have to do!”

  Kild nodded. “She’s always been one for high prices. It’s just her nature, but she’s no stranger to a bit of haggling.”

  “Maresi, what did you use to wear in that abbey of yours?” asked Marget.

  “Certainly not what you would call beautiful clothes,” I said slowly. “We dressed simply. Trousers, a linen shirt and a headscarf. White scarves for the novices and blue for the sisters.”

  “Does everyone have cloaks as fine as yours?” Marget looked longingly over at the cloak, which she had hung on a peg on the wall.

  “No. My friend Jai sewed it for me as a farewell gift. She said it would keep me warm and dry on the journey home, and she was right.”

  “How did you dare travel all that distance alone? Weren’t you afraid?” Lenna brought her needlework closer to her face and concentrated as she stuck the needle through the fabric.

  “Sometimes. But not too much. I knew I would survive the journey.” I had no desire to explain the ways of the Crone and that when she opens her door for me, I will know. I did not want to speak of all the things that made me different from them. I changed the subject.

  “Marget, what is that you are embroidering?”

  Marget’s cheeks flushed red. “A bridal bonnet,” she said quietly.

  “Marget’s planning on marrying your Akios,” said Lenna saucily. “She wants to become the housewife of Enresbacka.”

  Surprised, I turned to look at Marget, who was leaning so far over her embroidery that all I could see was the crown of her fair head.

  “Akios is only fifteen! Is that not a little young for marriage?”

  “It is,” her mother answered firmly. “And Akios hasn’t even asked her.” She looked pointedly at her youngest daughter, who scoffed. “Lenna, don’t meddle in things you don’t understand.” Then she looked at Marget. “But a girl can sew herself a bridal set, there’s no harm in that. It’ll be a few years before it’s ready. A lot can happen in that time.”

  “I hope you don’t mind,” whispered Marget.

  “No, of course not,” I replied, but only later did it occur to me what she meant. If Akios married Marget, or indeed another, my status as the unmarried sister in the family would rank bottom of the hierarchy after Mother and Akios’s wife, and I would hold the least sway in all matters concerning the organization and running of the household.

  “Go to the storehouse Marget,” said her mother, “and fetch some of Lenna’s lingonberries.”

  “I picked the berries myself last autumn and preserved them in water!” Lenna explained proudly. “And I milked Clover and skimmed the milk, so we have cream to go with it!”

  Eventually I bid my farewells, left White Farm and headed for the last remaining house in the village, Streamside Farm, so called because of its proximity to the stream. Only two people live there: the widow Béru and her son Árvan. I was dreading this visit the most. I had not often been inside their home, and Árvan is the only other young man in the village besides Jannarl and Máros. I am not used to the company of men. My father and brother are one thing, but—after what happened in the crypt when the Crone devoured every last man who had invaded our island—I find it difficult even to hear male voices. They frighten me. For eight years I saw no men other than those who came to the island hunting for you. I still remember the shaved heads, the tattooed hands, their weapons and cruel laughter. I remember your father’s silken, ice-cold voice. The smell of the men’s blood when they were dragged through the door of the Crone—the door that I held open.

  Although the men here in the village are nothing like those who invaded our island, they conjure up the memories nonetheless. Their voices have similar tones. Their bodies are male bodies. It is not fair, and I am ashamed of these feelings, but sometimes I flinch and recoil if a man approaches me with a sudden movement. When two men call to one another outside our house in the evening, I do not hear their talk of rain and compost: I hear words of violence and blood and… and what they did to Sister Eostre when she still served as the Rose. Then my heart begins to race and I hardly dare breathe, I am so afraid.

  Streamside is the largest homestead in the village. The house has a real floor of planed wooden planks, covered in woven rugs. There are three bedrooms and one family room with a large brick fireplace. Béru’s husband came from a large family with many sons and daughters, but they are all deceased now, apart from some daughters who married into other villages. Béru only had one child, her son Árvan, before her husband died. I do not know him particularly well; he is some years older than I and did not take part in our childish games because he had already started working to help his mother.

  I was welcomed in by Béru, whom I was always afraid of as a child. The same stern, dark eyes met me now from under a wreath of brown braids as she handed me the greeting horn.

  “Blessings on your journey, Maresi Enresdaughter.”

  She said no more and returned to her rocking chair before the white-mortared hearth. Béru is always very well dressed, in a grey blouse, plain grey-striped skirt and an apron with simple embroidery on the hemline. I have never seen her wear anything else. She has real curtains in her windows, and thick knotted rugs on the walls to keep out draughts. Her son Árvan is so unremarkable that I almost did not see him sitting there on a bench by the wall, re-soling an old boot. He nodded at me but did not meet my gaze. I sat down timidly on the edge of a bench by the table and set down the greeting bowl.

  The conversation did not flow smoothly. Árvan said nothing at all, but I saw him glance in my direction from time to time. It was Béru and I who spoke, and the conversation consisted of her asking me questions. What had I learnt at the Abbey? What embroidery stitches did I know,
and was I deft at spinning and weaving, and what did I know about plant dyes, and pickling and juicing? I answered as well as I could, embarrassed both by her questions and by her son’s silence. As soon as possible within the restraints of courtesy, I gave her the salt pouch, thanked them for their hospitality and headed for home.

  I was exhausted. I suppose I am not used to meeting new people, and though these are the neighbours I grew up with, they feel like strangers. It is night time now and I will blow out my candle soon. I am sending you my thoughts. If you were lying in bed next to me now, my tiredness would surely disappear and we would lie here talking long into the night! Instead I must curl up alone, without your breathing to listen to.

  Your friend,

  MARESI

  Venerable Sister O,

  I have been home for nearly a whole moon now. I am beginning to slip back into the daily routine of my childhood, but some things remain foreign to me that were once so familiar. The earthen floor of our house is damp and cold. The lack of cleanliness is making my skin crawl—I miss the Abbey’s morning wash more than I could have imagined! The people here only wash their hands and face occasionally. The children bathe in streams and rivers in the warmest of the summer months but the adults never do. I cannot get used to the odours. I leave the door ajar on purpose and my mother looks offended. Yesterday she calmly asked: “Can you no longer stand our smell?” So I shut the door on the cool spring night, while secretly thinking that she was absolutely right: I can no longer stand it. But it is more than just bodily odours. Mother has a few hens that live in the animal pen at one end of the house and the smell of chicken droppings permeates the building. Chicken droppings and cabbage, and the rancid grease on Father’s newly greased boots, and smoke from the fireplace, and everything is so musty. Mother is cleanly; she makes sure we have clean clothes and changes the straw on the floor at least once per moon. Her pot and pan are scrubbed and well kept, and she airs out the bedclothes, and every autumn we have new straw in the mattresses. Yet it is always musty. No fresh ocean breezes sweep through the village, and there is nothing like Body’s Spring where we can bathe in hot water and then cleanse in cold.

  I go out into the central yard every morning to wash myself in rainwater and perform the sun greeting facing the eastern forest, despite the fact that the sun has rarely shown itself since I arrived. Last year Rovas was plagued by drought, and now rain threatens to be equally damaging. I hear the men mutter about seeds rotting in the ground. Ever since the hunger winter the people have been in debt and unable to save up a store of seed or flour. There is just enough and no more. I hear Mother and Father talking early in the mornings, when Father gets up to sow the last of the spring seeds. Their debts are greater than they led me to believe. They are behind on their payments. If the seeds rot away now… I do not know what Father will do. And I am yet another mouth to feed, an unexpected addition to the family.

  I think of the purse of silver that the Mother Abbess gave me before I left the Abbey. It is at the bottom of my bag, under my books. It is the silver I am going to use to build a school.

  I gave Maressa the shell necklace that Heo gifted me. She loves it and wears it around her neck day and night. Please tell Heo. I hope she does not mind. Shells are rare here and considered very beautiful. I am wearing the snake ring you gave me on my finger, and it attracts many looks, though nobody mentions it.

  I am not alone. I have my family around me, and my friends. Marget and I see each other every day. But our friendship is no longer as effortless as it once was. When I talk about the First Mother and her three aspects, or about the Crone and her door, Marget listens politely for a while but soon starts gossiping with my mother about the neighbours, or discussing the best remedy for nappy rash and colic with Náraes, who often comes to see us and brings the children. I am no longer one of them. I am an outsider, an oddity they can inspect and muse over, but who is completely disconnected from them and their everyday lives. I have put off visiting the nearest village, Jóla. I have no desire to relive the experience of interest and well-meaning curiosity transforming into utter bewilderment because I do not braid my hair, or no longer speak as they do here.

  At times I feel as lonely as I did during my first year on Menos. But please do not tell my friends. I do not want anybody to worry about me. I am sure it will be fine—everything turned out well at the Abbey after all. I made friends with Ennike, I learnt the language, and I learnt what was expected of me.

  I will start work on founding the school soon. However, there is so much to do during spring and summer that no one would let their children join a school at this time of year anyway. The children have to help on the land. Even the little ones can be of use picking harmful insects off the vegetables. Autumn after harvest will be a better time to start a school. Now my family needs me. I cannot expect them to simply provide for me.

  I am not going hungry, not yet, but there is little to eat. Mother makes stew from the last of the autumn’s cabbage, which is in bad condition and does not taste good. Sometimes she adds beans, turnip or onion. We have no meat. Sometimes Akios has time to go fishing in the river, and then we get fresh fish to eat, which is a real feast. I would gladly go with him, but Mother wants me at home to help with the housework, so I do as she asks. I have only just returned, and I do not want to displease my mother so soon. During winter, Father and Akios went out hunting for the small game that we are allowed to hunt, but they will not lay traps now that the animals are tending to their young. My stomach aches often. You can tell Sister Nar that the peppermint leaves she gave me have been very beneficial. Akios has helped me dig a little herb garden along the southern wall of the house where I have sown the seeds I brought with me. Mother cannot understand why I am wasting energy on growing anything other than food.

  The evening meal is stew. Breakfast is rye-flour porridge. We have no other meal and no bread. The hens are not laying much, but we hope that they will later in spring.

  I did not celebrate Moon Dance. Was that wrong of me? It felt far too strange to go outside and dance alone without my Abbey sisters. There is no Maidendance to dance at, in any case, and no feast to celebrate afterwards. The First Mother is not here—she abides on Menos. I do not think she would have heard my song.

  Still, on the night of the Moon Dance I went out to relieve my bladder and saw that it was one of the few clear nights we have had since I came here. The Moon was full and hung just above the horizon, larger than usual. I stopped in the yard and bowed to her. I was fully clothed, and neither sang nor danced. A kite called from the darkness and its wailing cry sent shivers down my spine and at once I was overcome with cold—the same cold as I felt in the presence of the door of the Crone.

  I miss the Crone. I miss the chill of her crypt. I miss the snake on your door. I miss our lessons in the treasure chamber, which you taught for me and me alone. At the Abbey I could speak with the Crone, and sometimes even hear her answer. I no longer feared her and even grew to enjoy the feeling of being her chosen one. She shared her secrets through you, and only I was party to them. Here I learn nothing new, and fear has crept back into my heart. Sometimes I think about the winter that, though still far off, approaches nearer every day, and then it becomes difficult to breathe.

  There are soldiers in the forest as well. I do not know why they are there; no one will talk about them. They only warn me not to stray too far from the village alone. When they mention them, in brief snatches and hushed tones, I can almost hear the clattering weapons of the men who came to our island, and their voices, and the hissing whisper of the Crone. I become so frightened that I can barely move.

  There is no one I can talk to about all these things.

  You will not tell anybody else what I have written, will you?

  Yours,

  MARESI

  Dearest Jai,

  I am going to send this first bundle of letters to the Abbey soon, to let you know, at long last, that I have arrived safely. A whole moon
has passed since I returned home, and the worst of the rain has been and gone. The roads should soon be dry enough for travel. It may be that the best route for letters is via Irindibul. Goods are transported from Rovas to the city several times a year, usually along the Kyri River.

  Grey Lady is doing well. She is pleased that she no longer has to walk constantly, and the land is teeming with grass and other good things for her to eat. We also give her the straw that we sweep out from the house. She could live inside with the hens, but she seems happiest outside, even in the rain. She can shelter under the roof where it protrudes from the wall, or under a tree, where she gazes out at the falling rain surrounding her like a curtain, and appears content. Sometimes we employ her for farm work, but not often. Mainly she helps us to carry water, or wood from the forest in panniers.

  Yesterday I made the decision to finally visit our neighbouring village, Jóla. It was necessary, because I need to know how many girls there are for my school. I think that the school will initially consist mainly of the daughters of our village and Jóla, and then once it is all up and running I can accept pupils from other villages as well. The air was misty and my cloak was soon damp, but it kept me dry inside. I wore Father’s old boots, for there has not yet been time to make a pair of my own. They kept getting stuck in the muddy path, and I had to lean on Grey Lady for support as I pulled myself free.

  I passed the shabby woodcutter’s cabin that Mother—by which I mean my own mother, not the Mother Abbess—said belongs to a woodcutter by the name of Kárun. I have no memory of him, but I do remember his house. It is a small grey hut with a single window, not far from the stream. No smoke came from the chimney, so I supposed Kárun was out chopping down trees or whatever it is that woodcutters do. Water was dripping from the roof, which was green with moss, and I saw no vegetable garden. I wonder what he lives on.

  The path between our villages is not long. It crosses the fields, rises onto a ridge and continues through woodland until the landscape opens out on to more fields, and there lies Jóla. It was a short, easy walk, despite the muddy path and my unsteady steps. It felt right to go on foot, with Grey Lady by my side. Finally I was on my way—finally I was beginning the work I came here to do! Spring birds were singing despite the miserable weather and I saw a snake wriggle across the path. It must have just awoken from its winter sleep, for its movements appeared sluggish and slow. I greeted it with respect and asked it to pass on my greetings to the Crone, and for that moment I felt close to all of you in the Abbey again.