Where the Path Leads-Chapter 17

Another Chance

Brutus Morantur paced restlessly in front of her as Emily stood stiffly, trying to work the kinks out of her neck and shoulders from being cramped inside the wardrobe. She looked nervously around the cavernous room, edging her way nearer to the darkness and out of the pool of light cast by the fireplace. He looked every bit the lord of the manor, a man of great physical strength, richly clad in a scarlet tunic with gold embroidery. 

         “So, you are the girl causing all the trouble among the laborers.”

         How was she to answer that? She had just presented another point of view. 

         “I didn’t mean any harm. I’m sorry.”              

         He took a deep draught from a goblet before answering and sat down in a massive oak chair. “You pretend to be unaware of the seriousness of your crimes.”

         “Crimes?” About to deny that she’d done anything serious enough to be called a crime, she remembered Will saying that people had been hanged for less. “I didn’t know what would happen. How can it be a crime to speak your mind?” She wondered after she said it if the question sounded sarcastic.

         Brutus cocked his head. “It’s only a crime if I say it is, since I make the laws around here.” He stroked his neatly trimmed beard. “I also punish the offenders.” He took another long draught, letting his words hang in the air between them.

         She was beginning to tremble, perhaps from fatigue, and took a deep breath to steady herself. 

         “Now, I’m trying not to let you anger me, but when you tell the laborers that the land is theirs because they farm it, and that they needn’t answer to their overlords . . . .”

         “I just told them there are other ways to live.”

         He compressed his lips and stood up.

         “I brook no interruptions, girl,” he said, his voice low and ominous. “Do that again and you won’t like what happens.”

         A current of fear ran through her as she wondered what he was capable of.

         Tilting his head back to finish his drink, he thundered, “MORWEN!” 

         The gaunt, greasy haired steward appeared instantly.

         “More wine,” he ordered, then walked over to stand in front of her.  “Understand this. There is no other way to live here.” He was close enough for her to smell the wine on his breath and see the firelight glinting on strands of his dark hair. He had invaded her personal space but she forced herself to stand her ground, although inwardly she shrank from him. “Where is it you come from that is so different?”  

         She should have known that question would come up. It was impossible to explain to him what she didn’t understand herself.     

         When she was silent, his handsome face contorted into a sneer. “As I thought. Just a troublemaker. An agitator. A mouthpiecefor the downtrodden.”

         “They are downtrodden!” she insisted.

         Quick as a snake, he struck her with the back of his hand.

          She cried out, clutching her cheek which stung like fire and tasting blood as it trickled down the corner of her mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes but she blinked them back.

         “I could throw you in the dungeon and forget that you exist . . . or send you to the ecclesiastical court in Wessex. Heresy is dealt with harshly, since it disturbs the order of the Absolute.”

         She didn’t trust herself yet to speak. No one had ever hit her before. Now she was visibly trembling with fear, and rage.

         “But . . . ,” there was a pregnant pause and he went back to his chair and sat down again. “. . . I have a use for you.”

         She groaned inwardly, suspecting something awful and hoping it wasn’t more hard labor.

         “Do you wish to redeem yourself and, perhaps, your Mistress?”

         Licking the blood from her swelling lip, she answered shakily, “Yes.  I would be grateful for that.”

         Morwen entered then with a pitcher and refilled Brutus’s goblet, bowing low before turning to leave.

         “Stay, Morwen . . . .” 

         The obsequious servant bowed again.

         “. . . but close the door.” 

         The steward’s steps were as silent as the slithering of a snake. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire.

         “Tell her what is needed?” Brutus commanded.

         “Master?” 

         Morwen’s face was hidden behind long stringy hair, but she heard his surprise.

         “Tell her,” Brutus repeated.  “We can use her, and her Mistress, to serve our purpose.”

         Setting down the pitcher on a table beside the Seneschal’s chair, the steward looked at her for the first time, his glittering dark eyes boring into her. “Do you really think she’s capable, Master?”

         “She will be, or she’ll die trying, won’t you girl?”

         Not knowing what she was agreeing to, Emily still nodded.

        “Now, tell her,” Brutus commanded again.

         “The lord Seneschal desires an object which is difficult to obtain. You will get it for him.”

         She nodded uncertainly.

         Brutus sneered. “You seem fond of leaving your work, girl, to hide in the forest. Now you have leave to explore Blackwood. Continue Morwen.”

         The scrawny steward, who reminded her of a crow, templed his bony fingertips and bowed his head, then began a low chant.

                   For he who would events control

                            and master be of all,

                   Take heed these objects thou possess

                            and learn the fearful skill.

                   Of one who can creator be

                            of thine own destiny.

                   Onyx black, from stolen heart

                            will lend you power to see,

                   Wood eternal that knows no death,

                            cannot forgotten be.

                   Own you must the feather of owl,

                            for sight eternally.

         His head still bowed as if he were going to say more, Morwen stopped and the room was silent for several minutes. When he finally looked up, his black eyes were shining.

         “What do you want from me?” Her voice sounded small in the large room.

         Brutus stood again and began pacing.

         “Not the onyx. I have plans to get that myself, but the wood eternal.  That is where you come in.”

         “I don’t know what you mean by ‘wood eternal.’”

         “Silence!  Morwen?”

         When he pushed back his thin strands of black hair, Morwen’s long sharp nose was revealed. The man gave her the creeps. He appeared furtive and cunning.

         “Far to the north,” Morwen said, his voice smooth as a sharp knife, “in Blackwood forest, there exists a deep crevice in the earth we call the abyss. Some say it is a bottomless opening to hell. Others, mostly ignorant folk, say a dragon lives in its depths. You needn’t concern yourself with either story. What the Seneschal desires is a branch from the cypress tree–the wood eternal–that grows at the edge of the abyss. It’s called that because, even after it’s cut, the wood never breaks down; it’s so hard that it turns to stone.”

         She found all this difficult to believe, wondering how Morwen knew and how a branch could make anyone creator of his own destiny.     

         “What do you want it for?” Looking from one to the other, she recalled Thea’s comment once about the Seneschal being a man of dark intentions. This time when he walked towards her, she did back up.

         “Listen girl!” he hissed, reaching out and seizing her wrist in a vise-like grip. “Do you want this chance or not?”

         “Yes.  Yes,” she cried, the pressure on her wrist excruciating. “ I’ll do it.  I’ll do my best.  Please . . . let go.”

         He threw her wrist away as if it were something rotten, wiping his hand on his finely woven tunic, probably made from Sophia’s cloth. She wondered, briefly, how the fabric made him feel, recalling how the homespun tunic had made her feel on May Day. She was wearing it now, and somehow it made her feel closer to Sophia.

         “Your future and the weaver’s depend on it,” he said.

         “You’ll let her go, then?”  Emily wanted to be sure, as she rubbed her sore wrist.

         Brutus absently fingered a gold and diamond brooch at his neck, which glittered in the firelight, then went back to take another drink of wine from his goblet on the table. Morwen watched every movement like a cat eyeing a mouse.

         “Yes,” he finally answered. “If you bring me a branch from the cypress tree by All Hallow’s Eve.”

         “How . . . how far is the abyss?” Her mind thinking ahead, planning.  “Is it difficult to reach?”

         Brutus waved his hand dismissively.

         “It’s up to you to figure out the details. That is the chance I’m offering,” and he held out his goblet for Morwen to pour more wine.

         “Since I’ve agreed to do it, could Sophia go home . . . now?”

         He sat back down in his oak chair and drank, then smiled another insincere smile, although he still appeared  handsome. “Sophia is my insurance that you’ll come back, on time, with what I desire. If not . . . ?” He shrugged. “I really can’t say what will happen to her, what the respetados of the Absolute in Wessex will do to a solitary old hag with dubious talents.” He and Morwen exchanged glances, some private knowledge passing between them which Emily was left to imagine.

         Surely a tree in the forest couldn’t be all that hard to find, she thought, even if it was at the edge of a dragon-sheltering abyss.