Chapter 17: A prisoner in his own house
Laurelman’s wife rushed into the squat house yelling “The
squash is spoiled!”
The shrill sound of her cry stirred him from his concentration,
trying to fix the flue to the hearth – something clogging it somewhere up in
the chimney causing smoke to blow back down into the house.
“We must have offended one of the gods,” he thought, but
could not imagine how. “We’ve done everything we are supposed to.”
But now this?
“What do you mean the squash is spoiled?” he asked
His wife, a robust woman with an apron stained from her
chores, could barely get more words out from her breathless condition.
It took a lot to get her flustered, Laurelman thought. She’s
usually the calm one among us.
“Come look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” the flustered
woman said, pointing in the direction of the door beyond which the garden
began.
He shoved open the door with the heals of his hands,
plunging into the cool morning air, casting a glance over his shoulder to make
certain the horseshoe still hung right over the door behind him, startled when
he saw one of the rusted nails had broken and the rusted horseshoe had fallen
sideways – not upside down, luckily, he thought, some luck may still be in it.
He’d had to fix it before night fall lest it let witches in.
Then, he saw the garden patch with its collection of pumpkins
and squash, withered, as if from a dragon’s breath, their leaves curling brown
at the edges, each piece crushed and bleeding seed. Beyond it, the small apple
orchard bore the same marks of violence.
“What could have done this?” he asked.
His wife, standing at the open door, shook her head, wiping
her hands on her apron, leaving more marks from her cooking across it, like
slashes or wounds.
“Whatever it is, we’ll be short for the winter,” she said.
“We can sell the corn and wheat,” Laurelman said. “I’ll buy
what I can down at the harbor.”
“We need the apples especially,” his wife said. “And not
just for the hard cider you and your friends like to drink. We need the vinegar
for medicine, in case our kids get sick again this winter.”
“I’ll get apples,” Laurelman said. “If they have any. Fruit
is difficult to come by these days with the war going on in the south.”
“I’ll scrounge near in the woods,” his wife said. “We might
find flowers and herbs I can use – though they won’t be as good as the vinegar.”
“I’m more concerned about what this means,” Laurelman said. “Have
we offended the gods? We’ve tried to keep up with our rituals, tried to say the
proper prayers. But it’s difficult. I’m up before dawn to milk the cows, and
after dark tending to our crops and other things. Sometimes there just isn’t
enough time.”
‘We need to make time,” his wife said. “I’ve had a bad
feeling growing in me for a while, something is wrong, and I know it’s only
going to get worse.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Laurelman said. “Let’s check everything,
make sure we have all the protection we can. I’ll start with the barn. Things would
be much worse if we lost our cows or our mule.”
*****************
“I am a prisoner in my own home,” Ely thought as he paced his
small chambers, bowl of food untouched on his wooden table, as cold as the approaching
winter outside, the clink of armor from the hall telling him of the king’s
determination to keep him there until he decides.
“We are not all against you, sire,” one of the guards had whispered
to him earlier. “But we must do our duty.”
Duty, of course, Ely thought, again, as the rattle told him
of the changing of the guard, new faces replacing the old, like an army of
ghosts, moving along passages Ely had wandered through more freely as a boy,
when he and his brother pretended to be the knights they were destined to
become, reliving old battles from the hall of heroes, inventing their own that
would allow them their own place in that hall for future boys to admire, once
even believing that as twin princes they would become the last great defense of
the kingdom with their backs against the walls of the high tower, never once
imagining how close to truth this might become, each prince taking turns
playing the role of villain, one putting the other behind the great door as
prisoner.
“Not in a hundred life times would I have believed that
might come to pass as well,” Ely thought, and worse, a prisoner at the command
of their father, the king.
Then, from beyond the rattle of guard’s armor outside his
door, and down the long corridors came the echo of angry voices raised, and
then suddenly quieted, leaving Ely once more to the loneliness of the chamber
and the chill easing in through the battlement, out which he could just make
out the ragged tip of the castle walls and the sprawling city below it.
“We are not ready,” he thought. “We have enclosed ourselves
in for far too long. We do not know how the world has changed and know not that
our old ways will not hold back the tide.”
If he squinted hard
enough, through the gray haze, he could just make out the tip of that distance
mountain, upon which a single tower sat in whose vaults the treasure of all
treasures was kept, the last real hope for the west, if he could ever reach it.
He touched the hilt of the sword still at his side and although
he knew the worth of the guards outside, he also knew he had the ability to over
come them, and beyond that, they knew it as well, each terrified that they
might have to engage in combat in which their prince might slay them.
He glanced at them through open door, and they saw him. He
lifted his hand in a gesture of peace. He wished them no harm, his anger fading
into sadness. They merely lived up to their oaths.
“They are better than I am,” Ely thought, then sat down on
his cot, taking stock of the confined space around him. He would not be here
long.
He had already made up his mind, even if he didn’t yet know
it, and laid back to sleep.
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