Alys grinned. “I was a willful girl,” she said.
“Willful?”
“Some said wild.” Now Alys laughed aloud. “And wanton.”
Claire found that the laughter was making her own anger subside. Looking at Alys, wrinkled and bent, it was hard to imagine her as a willful, wild girl. But in the unrestrained laughter Claire could hear a hint of the carefree creature she must once have been.
The children, curious about what seemed a mystery (for people spoke of it in whispers) but too young to judge her, were open with their questions to Claire. They were on the beach, gathering driftwood to dry for the fireplace. The wind was sharp and snapped at Claire’s skirt.
“Did it grow in your belly, like my mum’s?” Bethan asked.
Claire nodded, resigned to their knowing. She added a bent stick to the pile.
“Were it a boy?” Delwyth’s eyes were wide.
Claire nodded again. “Yes,” she said. “A male.” She startled herself. Why had she called it that? Everyone knew a baby was either a girl, like Bethan’s new sister, or a wee boy. Why had she said that odd word, male, as if she had given birth to a creature of woods or fields?
“Where did it go, then, your male?” Solemn little Eira looked worried. “Who took it?”
Claire smiled to reassure the child. “Someone else needed it,” she explained. “Just as your mum needs these pieces of wood! Let’s drag that big one over here and see if we’re strong enough to break it, shall we?”
“I’m strong!”
“Look at me, how strong I am!”
“As strong as a boy! As a male!”
The children strutted and shouted as they ran about in the wet sand. Claire glanced toward the high bank that bordered the beach and saw Einar watching. He balanced a wooden yoke across his wide shoulders, and two buckets hung level from either side. He was coming from the spring where he got fresh water. With his shoulders bearing the weight, he was able still to use his walking sticks. Now, seeing her watching, he lifted one hand and waved to her.
Claire waved back, and smiled. So, she thought, there’s one young man who doesn’t think me stained. Or is it that I’m now ruined, as he is?
She watched him make his way along the path, his feet dragging, one after the other. Beside her, in the sand, the laughing children imitated Einar, dragging their feet and limping dramatically, and then watching the furrowed ruts they made fill with seawater and smooth over.
Nine
Winter descended suddenly, with bone-chilling cold. The damp, raw wind swept in from the ocean and entered through cracks in the walls of the hut. It made the fire flicker and hiss. Claire wore a thick furred vest that Alys has stitched for her from an animal hide, and warm boots from the same hide, laced with sinew.
She accompanied Alys one morning to Bryn’s cottage, where the baby girl, now named Elen, was swaddled in layers of woven cloth and warmed in her cradle by wrapped stones made hot in the fire. Alys chuckled after listening to the shrill cry of the infant. “Summer babies fare better,” she told Bryn. “But this one sounds to be strong.”
Bryn poured tea into thick mugs. Outside the wind blew, and on the floor near the fire little Bethan, humming tunelessly, sorted acorns into families. Claire excused herself and slipped away.
Outside, she wrapped her shawl tightly over the fur vest and pulled her thick knitted hat down to protect her ears. She started up the hill, following the deserted path as it wound among the wind-tossed trees. No one was about. The cold weather was keeping people indoors. But perhaps, she thought, Einar would be in the meadow, tending his creatures, and would welcome her company. Climbing, she held her mittened hands to her mouth and breathed into them for warmth. Her feet slipped now and then on mud frozen to ice.
It was hard for Claire to understand seasons. Her returning memory had told her nothing of the way the leaves in summer showed their undersides as a storm approached, then withered and dropped when the nights were chill. Now there was the cold, and she could not remember it. She had never had a coat before, or shawl, she was sure of that. And rain! It had been new to her in summer, and now, with the cold, it was mixed with spits of ice, and who was to guess what might follow! Each day came as a surprise, though Alys, realizing, tried to prepare her and explain.
Claire knocked at the door of the wood-slatted shed where Lame Einar lived, but there was no answer. She pushed the door open, peeked in, and saw that the ashes of his fire were still hot; wisps of smoke drifted from the chimney and disappeared with the wind into the gray sky. He would be up in the field, she knew. She closed the door tight, pulled her shawl closer around her, and climbed the path.
She found him rubbing salve into the leg of a sheep that had caught itself in a thorny bush.
“Here—help hold him still, would you? He keeps pulling away.”
Claire wrapped her arms around the neck of the impatient creature and tried to soothe him by murmuring meaningless sounds. “Shhhh, shhhh,” she said, as she had heard Bryn whisper to the baby when she cried. She leaned her head against the matted fleece of the sheep’s neck. It felt like a pillow, though its smell was strong.
“There.” Einar released the leg, and the sheep shook itself and pulled loose from Claire’s grasp. It bounded away through the high, dry grass, and she could hear the nasal bleats of greeting from its flock.
He looked at her and said, “You’re cold.” Claire laughed at him because he had said the obvious. She was shivering, and breathing again into her own cupped, mittened hands. “Come down to my shed,” he told her. He looked out over the flock, saw that they were huddled together, heads hunched low, out of the sleet. Then he went down the path and she followed.
She sat on the heap of skins that he used for sleeping while he poked the ashes into a red glow and then added a thick piece of oak branch. She could feel the warmth expand.
“Tell me why you’ve come out on a foul day like this,” he asked her.
She hesitated, uncertain how he would react. Finally she said carefully, “They tell me you climbed out, once.”
He glanced over, then turned back to the fire and rearranged it a bit, though it seemed to Claire unnecessary. She thought that perhaps he simply needed to look away.
“Aye. I did,” he acknowledged. “Do you want to know the why of it?”
“The how. I want to know the how. I look at the cliff and it looms there, unclimbable.”