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Alys Clare: The Paths of the Air

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Alys Clare The Paths of the Air

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Hand to her mouth to suppress her scream of horror, Ella backed out of the outbuilding. Terror made her clumsy; she tripped and fell. As she hastened to stand up again, a sob broke out of her. Then, with a wail, she flew back across the yard and in through the kitchen door, recovering sufficient presence of mind to stop her noise as she entered the house and to make sure she closed and fastened the door without a sound. Then, trembling violently and longing only for the blessed safety of her bed and Will’s snoring presence beside her, she took off her shoes and her cloak and crept into the little room off the kitchen.

She would have tried to bar the door, only Will would have noticed in the morning and been suspicious.

She scolded herself. She had been unbelievably foolish and look where it had got her. Why, the foreigner was as much of a mystery as ever!

But at least — and in the silent darkness it seemed quite a lot — at least nobody knew what she had done.

Ella was wrong. Someone did know, for he had both heard and seen her.

He had been setting off on his regular night-time mission, carrying the usual burden. Ella had guessed more accurately than she knew, for the reason that he slept the day away was indeed because he was out all night.

Tonight he had done as he always did and waited until well after the household had gone to sleep. That time always seemed to him unbearably long but he knew this was an illusion, brought about by his desperate need to be on his way. To ease the agony of having to wait, he would sit quite still on his straw mattress and make body and mind relax until he could walk in the quiet inner pathways in the way they had taught him in that mysterious land so far away. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it did not.

Finally he got to his feet, shouldered his satchel and the pack and let himself out, fastening the door so that it would look closed to a casual glance. He crossed the courtyard to the place in the wall where it was possible to climb over and was actually sitting astride, about to drop down onto the frosty grass on the other side, when he spotted her.

The only reason he saw her was because of a slight change in the light. Perhaps she had cast a momentary moon shadow; perhaps he had caught a fleeting movement out of the corner of his eye. Up on the wall he froze.

She had not seen him; she was intent on the outbuilding. He watched as she unfastened the twine, eased the door open and looked inside. He heard her suppressed sob and for a moment he felt her terror, as if the emotion was so powerful that it blasted out of her and assaulted everything and everyone around. He was sorry for her then; sorry for her suffering and her extreme fear.

She stumbled off, back the way she had come. He sat quite still on the wall, and when he was satisfied that she had really gone inside, slipped down on the far side and hurried away, breaking into an easy, loping run that covered the ground with surprising speed.

When he was some distance away he stopped and turned around, looking back the way he had come. He sent a silent thank you to the generous, unquestioning souls who lived in that place where he had been taken in.

Then he slung his satchel over his shoulder and hitched the pack higher on his back. His sword was in its scabbard beneath his tunic, his long dagger in its sheath at his waist. Everything he possessed in the world was either on his person or in his satchel. Not for the first time, he was thankful that he always took everything with him when he went out at night. This time this deeply ingrained habit would serve him well.

Two

They could not comfort Ella. When they discovered the stranger had gone, at first she kept her silence. But it was clear something was gravely wrong, for she bit her lips and frowned, muttering to herself under her breath, and she jumped at the slightest noise. Eventually she burst into tears, threw herself into the meagre comfort of Will’s scrawny arms and confessed what she had done.

Will decided to put the matter before his master.

‘Ella reckons she knows summat about the foreign fellow’s disappearance,’ he said to Josse, apprehending him on his way to the stables and firmly clasping Ella’s hand in case she decided to cut and run. ‘She says he’d gone from the outbuilding last night and his bed hadn’t been slept in.’ He turned to Ella. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ He gave her a shake, not ungentle. ‘Go on,’ he added in exasperation as her face crumpled, ‘Master won’t bite!’

‘Ella?’ Josse said, surprised. ‘Is this true?’ What on earth had she been doing out there in the darkness?

Ella raised her eyes to meet Josse’s. She nodded. Then, encouraged by his smile, she burst out, ‘I reckoned he were a spirit of the night, see. One of those shades that sleeps all day because they’re out a-haunting through the hours of darkness, and I just wanted to find out if what I feared was true because if so then we — then we-’ But, overcome, she pulled up her apron and buried her face in it, shoulders heaving.

Will, after a moment of staring at her in mystified incomprehension, put his arms round her thin body. ‘Come on, old girl,’ Josse heard him mutter.

But Ella seemed incapable of further explanation. With a shrug and a lift of the eyebrows in Josse’s direction, Will led her away.

He left Josse frowning and puzzling over the strange ways of women, in particular those such as Ella in whom the deep and unshakable superstition of the peasant was so strong. One of those creatures who haunted through the night and lay up all day? Well, that would explain John Damianos’s habit of sleeping the daylight hours away. And Josse realized there had been something slightly unearthly about the man… those unfathomable eyes, shadowed by the headdress so that it was impossible to determine colour or expression. His speech, sometimes just the few hesitant words of a man speaking an alien tongue and sometimes — very occasionally — fluent and grammatically accurate. And where had he come from? Josse had not gone beyond his initial assumption, that John Damianos was a native of Outremer brought to England by a returning crusader.

Why did I not ask him while I had the chance? Josse thought. Had I known his history, I could now be comforting Ella and telling her not to let her imagination run away with her, because our mysterious stranger was no more than a body servant from Acre brought home by Sir Somebody of Somewhere and released from his master’s service to find his own way home.

He wondered briefly whether to tell her this anyway; it would be a kind lie if it succeeded in removing her terrified anxiety. But he knew he was a poor liar, and if his brief explanation brought forth a torrent of questions he would soon be floundering.

No. Best to let Will take care of his woman. She’d soon forget all about John Damianos.

But she didn’t. Three days later, she was still afraid of her own shadow and she refused to go anywhere near the outbuilding. Since she had to pass it to get to the hen house, the root-vegetable store, the little shelter where Will stacked bundles of kindling and the earth privy, this meant life was becoming quite trying for everybody, especially Ella herself.

Summoning Will after overhearing yet another outburst of hysterical weeping, Josse asked wearily if there was any chance of Ella seeing sense.

‘None at all, sir,’ Will said bluntly. ‘Me, I’ve kept hoping the fellow would come back, then I’d have pinched him, punched him or snagged him with my knife to show her he was no spirit but felt pain and bled just like any other man.’ There was considerable vehemence in Will’s tone and Josse sympathized; it must be hell having to live cheek by jowl with a woman in Ella’s current mood, not to mention having to empty a daily bucket for her while she was incapable of using the yard privy. ‘But he’s gone,’ Will concluded. ‘Gone without a kiss my arse — er, gone without a word of thanks. We shan’t see him back here, sir, that’s my opinion.’

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