K Parker - Pattern

'Well.' Hart hesitated, and Poldarn could see he was getting ready to be tactful. 'You know how it is, twenty-odd years is a long time. I don't suppose I look much like I did twenty years ago.'

'As bad as that?'

'Oh, I don't know, in some respects you've improved. Not so skinny, for one thing.' Hart nodded gravely. 'All knees and neck and elbows,' he said, 'I've seen healthier-looking skeletons. My wife, rest her soul, she was convinced you were starving to death, she used to shovel food into you like stoking a furnace, but it never seemed to do a bit of good. Took a real shine to you, she did,' he added innocently. 'Mind, you always did have the knack of appealing to other men's wives.'

Poldarn looked up sharply. 'What's that supposed to mean?' he said.

'Just seeing how much you really do remember,' Hart replied, with a grin. 'No offence intended.'

'None taken,' Poldarn replied, drawing the trap to an abrupt halt. 'But you're going to explain what you just said, or we aren't moving from this spot.'

Hart sighed. 'Another thing about you that's changed, you always used to be able to take a joke. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean anything by it.'

Poldarn grunted impatiently. 'I'm not upset,' he said, 'just curious. Really, I don't mind jokes so long as I'm let in on them. What's all this about other men's wives?'

'It was just the one time,' Hart said sullenly, 'or at least, just the one time I know about. That's how you came to be spending time over at my place, because you were having some kind of fling with a married woman. And before you ask,' he went on, 'no, I don't know who it was. I didn't want to know then, and I don't want to know now. That sort of thing doesn't happen very much in these parts-well, think about it, one thing you can't do is keep a secret. But you could. You had this knack you've got now, of closing off your mind so nobody can see what's going on inside it. They tell me you've pretty much stuck like it since you've been back, but in the old days you could turn it on and off whenever you wanted to, and I guess the woman, whoever she was, she could do the same. It's more common than we like to think, actually.'

Poldarn nodded. 'All right.' he said, 'but it seems a bit unlikely to me. I can't have been old enough to interest married women, back then.'

'Apparently you were,' Hart said, looking away. 'Your grandfather-he was the only one who knew about it, except for you and me-he said it was an old fool who'd married a young girl, which is usually a mistake, of course.'

'Quite,' Poldarn said coldly. 'And somebody local, presumably.'

'I guess so,' Hart said. 'Otherwise it'd have been a bit obvious, you'd have been spending too much time away from home.'

'Well,' Poldarn said thoughtfully, 'that must narrow it down a bit; one of the farms within a day or so's ride of Haldersness. Can you think of anybody who fits the bill?'

'No,' Hart said, a little too quickly. 'It was a long time ago, and my place is a long way from yours. I didn't get out this way often enough to know all the families round here. Look, all I know is this. I was over your place, on my way back from visiting my uncle's family on the coast. I stopped off at Haldersness just to be polite, say hello, and one evening Halder called me outside and asked if I'd do him a favour, put you up for a month or two until you'd got over this thing with some other man's wife. I didn't like the sound of it much, because-well, put yourself in my shoes, will you? I knew Halder, sure, always got on pretty well with him, but we weren't close friends or anything. Would you want some love-struck kid mooning about your place, with maybe a jealous husband turning up on the doorstep with an axe one morning? But Halder told me it was all right, it hadn't gotten very far and if you could be got out of the way for a while it'd all blow over sure enough. So I agreed, and you rode back with me-it was your idea, you knew this thing was trouble waiting to happen-and as it turned out you settled in, made yourself useful, no trouble to anyone. Most of the time you spent out on the barley, scaring off the birds. Then one day you came to me and said it wasn't working and you'd decided to go abroad for a while, completely out of harm's way, where you couldn't make trouble for anybody. Seemed a bit over the top to me-I mean, going to live abroad, it's practically unheard of-but you'd set your heart on it. Halder agreed, apparently he'd thought up something you could be doing while you were over there, and so when the raiding season came on, off you went, and that was the last I saw of you till today. And that's it,' he concluded, 'that's all I know. Sorry I can't tell you any more, but there you are.'

Poldarn was silent for a while. 'Well,' he said eventually, with an effort, 'thanks for telling me, anyway. You can see why I'm a bit concerned about this. For a start, what's going to happen if I run into this woman at some point? It could get very difficult.'

'No danger of that,' Hart replied. 'She's dead.'

'Oh. You didn't mention anything about that. I thought you'd told me everything.'

'I forgot,' Hart said lamely. 'So happens I ran into Halder a few years later. I asked after you, how were you getting on, when were you coming back, that sort of thing. He said he didn't know, he'd more or less lost touch; but it'd be all right for you to come back at that point, because the woman had died. Like I said, I really didn't want to know the details, so I left it at that and changed the subject quick. And that really is everything, I promise you.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said abruptly. 'And you're positive that you and Halder were the only other people who knew?'

'That's what he told me. Come to think of it, he reckoned he only found out because you'd told him-told him out loud, he didn't see it in your mind or anything like that. And if it'd been common knowledge at any point, I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it. You can't keep stuff like that quiet for very long in these parts, once word gets out.'

Poldarn drew a long sigh. 'That's all right, then,' he said. 'It's just worrying, that's all. You can imagine, I'm sure-not knowing what you've done in the past, what secrets you might have been hiding, all that. At times, I feel like there's this other person who looks like me who's following me around, just waiting to cut my throat as soon as he figures I'm not looking. I'm getting a bit sick of him, to tell you the truth. I only came here to get away from him, but it seems like he's followed me. I wish to God he'd pack up and go away.'

Hart smiled. 'You should count yourself lucky,' he said. 'I've never been what you'd call a tearaway, but there's still nights when I wake up sweating, thinking about some of the really stupid things I've done over the years. I guess everybody does that. Except you, of course, because you've forgotten it all. That's a pretty good trick, if you ask me. I wouldn't complain about it if I were you.'

That seemed to be all that was fit to be said about the subject, and neither of them mentioned it again as they creaked back to Ciartanstead, unloaded the trap and stowed the rest of the freight in the hay cart. Once Hart was safely on his way, Poldarn took the damaged wheel down to the old house for Horn the wheelwright to look at. As he'd expected, the prognosis wasn't good; it'd be far easier and quicker to scrap it, salvage the unbroken spokes and make a new wheel. Fortuitously, both Horn and Asburn weren't too busy, and they reckoned they could get the job done before Hart came back; especially, they hinted, if they had prime salt beef to sustain them instead of the same old porridge and mouldy leeks, which didn't comprise the sort of diet a man needed if he was expected to exert himself over a rush job. Poldarn could see the sense in that; in fact, he'd anticipated it, because one of Hart's barrels had travelled down to the old house along with the wheel.