Marigolds

-1-

As the young woman died within the house beyond, the three cloud-walkers debated who would take her with them.

“It won’t be long now,” muttered Foirfe, her voice dry and sharp, like the willow wand she resembled. She had her timepiece in hand and nodded her approval. “Three hours now, the child is a fighter. She’ll do well with me.”

“I like the ones who never give up,” said Sutha, his eyes vanishing as another bout of laughter took his huge frame,”they always turn out to be much more fun.” His chuckle boomed out of him and echoed back from the stark gables of the village.

“Be quiet Sutha, they’ll hear us.”

“They won’t.” said Owrassa. Alone of the three he had his hood up and leaned back against the chimney breast of the roof they waited on. “They don’t ever listen.”

“I think she’ll be perfect for me.” said Foirfe.

“You say that every time, and they’re never good enough,” laughed Sutha, “do you think they like learning under you?”

“Better with me than with an obese, drunken letch.” said Foirfe. Sutha chuckled again.

The clouds began to draw over the moon and soon enough the wail of the broken-hearted mother pierced the night, sweeping over the village and getting lost in the hills beyond. Foirfe placed a pious hand on her breast, Sutha tossed another cherry into his mouth and Owrassa raised himself and jumped soundlessly to the next roof. Foirfe and Sutha gave a knowing look to each other and followed.

“He’s eager, tonight.” muttered Foirfe.

They congregated on the roof of the grief-house, a light rain now falling, and each imagined the scene within. They had seen every variant and form of the drama in the room below: the mother, exhausted and hood-eyed, crippled by grief and holding the child’s hand as it died, soon to be sick herself ,the father, holding his wife and allowing tears to dribble in his beard, his face a pale mask of confusion and anger, as if his honest toil and patient labour should have defended his family from the touch of death. Sometimes there was a doctor, or an apothecary, or a holy person, or a family pet with head bowed as it smelled death.

Half of the doors in this part of the village wore the mourning-flowers now, the cheerful marigolds that contrasted so vividly with the darkness of the weathered, studded oak, or painted pine. They shone like little glimpses of the stars against the night sky.

“The girl’s name?” asked Sutha.

“Tagete.” said Owrassa, who was now listening intently. In one motion he swung himself over the eaves of the roof and hung there, looking in the child’s window. They saw the light reflected out onto his grim face diminish and then disappear as a candle was blown out.

“It’s time.” Owrassa called, and pushed backwards, falling slowly to the ground below.

In front of the house was a square or a yard of some sort. It seemed as if the girl’s father was wealthy. Perhaps a taverner, or a local merchant leader. There were a few metal carriages, and a horse trough and a statue of a woman at one end of the square, her cold marble face peering down at them with acerbic distaste.

“This always seems like a bloody waste of time.” moaned Sutha.

“I’m sure your food and drink and whores will wait.” said Foirfe.

“I’m surprised we can take you from your prayers.”

The three walked out into the square, faced each other, and then stepped back, forming a widening triangle.

Foirfe unsheathed a rapier, long and glinting, from the scabbard on her thin waist. She raised the hilt to her face.

“I hope she’ll choose, but if not, a good fight, brothers.” she called.

“Yeah yeah.” muttered Sutha, and from a baldric under his cloak he took a great axe. He spat a mouthful of half-chewed cherries and grinned at them.

Owrassa lowered his hood and tasted the air. He felt the stones beneath his boots and smelled the encroaching moisture of the clouds. He stilled his mind and called to the young woman. He took the longsword from the sheath and took a low guard, calling again for the girl.

The three cloud-walkers stood, with weapons drawn, and waited for the test to come.

-2-

Tagete awoke to the soft sounds of a man gently calling.

“Come now Tagete, we must go. Come now.”

She opened her eyes and saw she was in her little room at the top of her father’s inn. The bed was the same, the little table, the shelf with her books, the window with the broken shutter.

There was something wrong. A coolness that had never been there before.

Her mother sat in the chair that she usually folded her clothes over. It was pulled right up to the side of the bed, and her mother slept now, wrapped in a shawl, and breathing fitfully. Tagete gazed at her, feeling a distant but powerful sadness. Mother had always been so beautiful, so elegant, and now as she slept she appeared wasted, very nearly old. Tagete got from the bed to find her mother an extra blanket, there was a patched quilt in the chest.

Along with the indefinable wrongness, and the cold, there was a smell to the room. The room smelled cold, and had a taste of death in the air. Tagete was mortified that she might have created it in her sickness.

She had been sick, she knew, very sick indeed. In her mind, she could not place any thoughts in sequence, and had only flashes of images.

Her mother.

Her father.

The doctor, Arselius.

Marigolds.

She remembered the marigolds, coming early, along with the Spring Chill, which had seemed to seep in with the clouds down along the grazing pasture where her father sent the cows every year with the droving teams.

“There are marigolds in the road now.” Her mother had wailed, as her father looked helplessly on, and Tagete had felt the chill, and then the fever grip her.

They will put marigolds on the door for me, she had thought, when the fever allowed her a moment of respite.

But surely it was too early in the year for marigolds? They always came with the summer dances, when the harvest was completed and the stores were full, when mother and she would stop the travelling fabricker and buy bolts of colourful cloth to make into Harvest dresses. It would be one of the last she attended as a maiden, this Festival.

And it could not be later than May, could it? There had been no Midyear Ceremony, no seasonal workers coming in, no carnival or circus, no music til the late hours as the islanders played their music and kept the sun from going down until much past her preferred time.

Yet each morning the marigolds came, springing up out of the mud of the street in front of a house who had lost someone, dancing up towards the sky with fierce, jolly pride and eventually being picked and affixed to the stern wooden doors as another child, another old person, another friend, had succumbed to the illness.

“Come and see us Tagete, come to us.”

Tagete might have gasped, but she was too focussed on finding her mother another blanket. The voice came from beyond the window this time and she cracked the broken shutter open to look out. In the square, where her father’s ostler took care of the horses, there were three figures. She saw them clearly, the thin woman, the giant, and the dark man. The woman was elegant but felt brittle. The giant was cheerful, but Tagete sensed he was untrustworthy. The dark man was sad and determined. Behind her, Tagete heard her mother grunt.

“Mother, have you seen…” she began, whirling around. She froze.

The young woman lying in the bed looked cold, lifeless. The blanket was clutched under her bosom with a pale, thin arm trailing out to rest in the older woman’s hand.

Not ‘the older woman’, Mother she tried to think.

Her mother had woken, pushed some hair from the forehead of her girl, then emitted a dry sob and seemed to return to sleep.

“We must hurry, Tagete.” said the voice.

She did not belong here, and the call of the voice was irresistible. She kissed the Woman on the head, traced a finger along the woollen shawl, feeling none of the usual warmth, and then turned to the shutters. She threw them open, climbed onto the sill and jumped out into the night.

-3-

The cloud-walkers saw the girl come, and hesitated.

“You feel anything?” Sutha asked. They all shook their heads. “Old fashioned way, then.” He grinned and raised his axe.

The huge man surged forward and the woman and the dark man mirrored him. Owrassa saw the swing dance over Foirfe’s whipping hair and caught the glint of her blade stabbing into Sutha’s chin. She hastily withdrew the tip as Owrassa’s own blow came down on her head and she parried.

Sutha’s axe whooshed through them as they clinched, and Owrassa heard a crunch of metal and flesh. He looked up to see Foirfe tottering, a deep score in her face.

Owrassa attacked Sutha then, darting forward and turning his wrist at the last moment. The axe was deflected and slid along his blade to thud into the ground. He placed his left hand on the blade of the sword, took a step to the side and thrust it, like a spear, into Sutha’s neck.

Foirfe had collapsed and Sutha now fell, gouting blood. Owrassa stepped back, the contest won. He had noticed the warmth in his fingertips as the fight progressed. The young woman would come with him, train under him. He had called her, and she had made her choice.

“We could have just waited two minutes,” huffed Sutha’s voice, “I liked that body.”

“You, and you alone.” came Foirfe’s voice. “Be a dear, Owrassa, would you?”

Owrassa pushed the tip of his longsword through the body of the woman, the blade going between the ribs to find the heart.

-4-

Tagete walked towards the dark man as his opponents dropped in the falling rain. The longsword danced in his grip as he swirled it back into a guard position, and then relaxed.

“You called me?” she asked.

“I did.”

The clouds were drawing down now from the drovers’ hillsides, sheeting mist on the village, covering the square.

“And you’ll take me with you?”

“I will.”

She came beside him, looking up into those dark eyes. She could sense that he might smile, or even laugh, if he was in the right mood.

“One thing to do first” he said, and he lifted his head in the direction of the Inn.

She was amazed she had forgotten; she knew exactly what to do. How could she almost forget? She skipped back to the house she had lived in and placed both her hands on the door, and kissed the dark oak.

“Fair fortune.” she whispered.

In the ground beneath her feet, she could feel the new life suddenly appear and begin to develop. She revelled in the warmth under her toes, and as she walked back into the square, the green shoots were already peering up at the night sky. There would be a healthy growth of marigolds to bless the house by the time the dawn came.

She rejoined the dark man, Owrassa, her mind told her, and the clouds came in to cover her. She took his hand, feeling the warmth, the callouses, the steady grip.

He started walking into the mist. “We have a long way to go.” he said.

She walked with him, feeling the heat of his hand as they walked into the clouds.