This did not seem to bother or offend Lee Brimble, whose smile dimmed not a jot. “Then you will know all the secrets of the place,” he said in a whisper too bright to come off as conspiratorial. “And you are honor-bound to share them with me, hm? Now that I have so bravely rescued your spoon.”
“Magnanimous of you,” I said drily, but without irritation. “Somehow I feel I am gaining the more advantageous side of the bargain.”
“Without a doubt,” he said, taking a few steps away from the fire. “Ho there, Foster, what do you see?”
“A simple job,” the driver called back. He stomped back toward us, appearing like a yellow ghost under the lantern light. “We should all be back on the road in an hour, perhaps two. What the devil are all those birds doing in your wagon, old woman?”
“Foster, manners,” Rawleigh Brimble corrected him sharply. Then he cringed. “And here I’ve forgotten mine—introductions! This is my uncle, George Bremerton, and that of course is Foster. We never call him anything else.”
The driver snorted.
“And what do we call you?” the uncle asked, staring with bold suspicion at the crone. His coat buttons flashed in the lantern light, gold, an intricate Celtic cross pattern worked into the metal of them.
“Why, me?” Her voice, still softened, quavered like a plucked harp string in the gloom. “You can just call me Granny. Now eat up and get to work. It’s still a long way to Coldthistle House.”
“Shall I call you ‘Granny,’ too?” I asked, helping her dish up what was left of the porridge for the men. The tattered sleeve of her coat slid up her wrist as she stirred the pot, and, though but an inch was revealed, I saw several strange markings. Tattoos, perhaps; symbols I didn’t recognize. She quickly fixed her coat, but she had seen my wandering eyes.
“Not with that attitude,” she muttered. “There are hungry travelers to feed and a wagon to fix. Vexing me should be the last of your priorities this night.”
“Yes, Granny,” I replied, still with a smirk. Let her keep her secrets, I thought—as long as she delivered on her promise to give me employment and shelter, I would count her as a friend. Or an ally, at least.
A shiver ran through the buckthorn and birch crowding the road. Trees shaking at night always filled me with dread—it was a sound that made me long for a warm bed and thick walls. The others heard and felt it, too, shrinking down into their collars. Foster had left the safe yellow ring of the firelight without eating, choosing instead to rummage in their coach for tools.
“It’s a spot of luck that we found you,” Lee said, taking his bowl of porridge from the old woman and tucking in. He ate precisely, with a nobleman’s neatness. For a stranger, he stood close to us, a mark of a trusting nature. His uncle, by contrast, ate apart. The boy didn’t protect his coat pockets well, and even a fence less proficient than I would have no trouble swiping the coins from him in a wink.
“A spot of luck,” his uncle spat, shaking his head. “This will put us back by hours now. ’Tis folly to linger here on the side of the road in full dark. We are easy fodder for cutpurses.” At this, he gave me a cold, hard stare.
God help me, he wasn’t wrong. The old woman and me, we were the thieves, the threat.
“All that jostling in the carriage has made him grumpy,” Lee cut in with a chuckle. “I apologize on his behalf, and not for the last time, I’m sure.”
“The cold makes curmudgeons of us all,” the crone said, almost politely. “Do not fear overmuch. I travel this road frequently, and it is safer than most.”
She had served up the last of the porridge and now gathered her threadbare clothes close around her, moving away from the fire and toward the cold, dark emptiness of the fields and forests beyond. I watched her go, only half listening to the men discuss the state of the wagon and the most expedient way to mend it. There was an odd sort of deliberateness to the way the crone strode away from us, as if she had suddenly heard something out there in the field.
At first they seemed a trick of the eye, the little lights that began to dance in the dark. But no, they persisted and grew in number and brightness. The others did not notice, only me, and I watched what seemed like a hundred glittering eyes gather in front of the old woman, as if she were consulting a hidden cabal of yellow-eyed minions. A single, sharp hoot came from that direction, and it occurred to me that these were birds, owls, many of them flocking to that one spot near the old woman.
I hadn’t heard them arrive, but I did hear them go. Facing away from me, the crone gave a solitary nod. There was no telling if she had spoken to these birds or not, but then suddenly they all lifted into the air at once, and I knew it was no hallucination; I felt the buffeting wind of their wings as they departed, and saw the dusting of feathers like snow that drifted down and down and settled softly around the crone’s torn hem.
Chapter Five
It was silly, of course, to look for traces of the owls in full darkness. Still, I fought exhaustion, staring out the window of George Bremerton’s carriage.
The wagon rumbled along ahead of us, driven by the crone, and we followed along closely. The carriage driver, Foster, had suggested they lighten the wagon’s load as much as possible, and keep the back end of it unburdened to avoid further damage to the wheel. The crone would not let them touch a single item under the coverings, and instead ordered me to ride with them in the carriage. I did not see how the loss of only my small frame would be enough to ease the strain on the wagon, but the men were too cross, wet, and tired to argue with her.
“You can sleep, you know,” Lee said quietly. His uncle snored across from us on the opposite bench. The carriage smelled of pipe tobacco and whiskey, a comforting, warm scent I had not experienced in many years. It reminded me of leaving Ireland, of the dock workers who congregated on the waterfront, drinking and smoking, the ones who hooted and called at me and my mother when we boarded the boat for England.
“Nobody here will harm you,” Lee added.
It is not you I fear, oddly enough.
I didn’t take my eyes away from the window and what might be in the sky over the woods. “Did you not see a preponderance of owls?”
“Owls?” He laughed a little. “When?”
“Before we left,” I replied. Or ever. What a stupid question. But I had seen the feathers. I had felt the power of those wings beating the air. “In the field not far from the fire . . . I thought I saw dozens of owls.”