Page 106 of Wild Reverence

LXXXI

In Dreams and in Death

VINCENT

To live alone on the edge of the woods, in the quiet space between river and mountains, was something I had once dreamt of.

But that first winter taught me many things.

One—I did not know what I was doing. Two—if I were to last in this place and put down roots, I had to humble myself and ask for help.

I had to learn an entirely new set of skills.

Help was the next-door tenants: James, a jovial farmer a few summers older than me who seemed tireless and never angered, and Lara, a shepherdess and weaver as well as a gardener.

They lived together on the plot next to mine and grew barley in the spring and autumn.

They had a thriving flock of sheep which they sheared every year for wool, an apiary of honeybees, a coop full of pheasants, and a trio of collies that I could sometimes hear barking from across the vale.

While James showed me how to repair the thatched roof, Lara tilled the garden plot behind the cottage.

They brought firewood for my hearth, a cask of ale, loaves of bread, wheels of salted cheese, and a basket of their autumn produce.

They gave me seeds to plant when spring came again, a shawl that Lara had spun and dyed and woven on her loom, and hay for my horse as well as to refill the lumpy mattress in the main bedchamber.

“If you can make it through your first winter, you’ll be fine, lord,” James said with a hearty grin, clapping me on the shoulder. “We are glad to see the fires lit here again. This sad cottage has been empty for far too long.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the cup of ale Lara poured for me. “We shall see if I can survive it.”

“Give yourself a full year,” she said with a gentle smile.

I suddenly wondered if we were talking of farming or something else. If my grief was still etched on my skin. I wondered if the doomed story of Matilda and I had been carried on the wind, across the moors.

“Yes, listen to her, lord,” James said, and the way he looked at Lara made my chest ache. “She is always right.”

I had to glance away.

But I said, “Of course. And please. Call me Vincent.”

I froze every night that winter, curled up beneath heaps of blankets and the shawl Lara had woven. My bed was cold without Matilda and so I often slept in the chair before the fire, to draw as close to the light and heat as I could. Even then, I could not shake the chill I felt.

Winter always made me think of my father, my brothers. My uncle. The solstice when the hall had been splattered with blood. My old scar would become tender with the memory, as if it had been carved upon me only yesterday.

But not even the dark, bitter cold could drive me away. I was determined to remain here in this ramshackle cottage, and so I did.

It was a relief to see the days grow longer. Spring came again. My second one without her.

James and Lara were quick to aid me, helping me plant my own barley field as well as the garden. They provided me a flock of sheep and a few pheasants, and one of the collies to be a companion.

“I do not need a dog,” I said stubbornly.

“Yes, you do,” James insisted. “He will keep you company. His name is Reeve.”

I accepted the dog and was glad I did. I could not have managed the sheep without him. He also curled up at my feet every night; my loneliness suddenly did not feel so keen.

By the time summer arrived, the cottage was beginning to feel comfortable.

A place I could call home. I had become familiar with its nightly creaks and pops.

How the wind whistled through its many cracks.

I had learned the slant of the floors and could walk them with my eyes closed.

I could predict when it would rain, because the hearth would begin to smell like moss and wet stone.

Ivy grew up the outer walls, and birds would perch on the windowsills.

My garden was full of weeds, but I looked at it and felt a sense of pride.

Nathaniel often visited in those early days, sometimes bringing Anton.

They loved each other, and I was happy for them.

They were wed not long after that. Edric and Hyacinthe also came to see me, bearing gifts from Alyse.

Bade even knocked upon my door one warm evening.

I offered him a cup of ale and we sat, mainly in silence because neither of us could bear to say her name.

But my closest friends were James and Lara, and the little boy they brought into the world on the last day of summer.

He was tiny. I was afraid to hold something so fragile until James set him, bundled and sleeping, into my arms.

I had never desired children—I have always been this way—but I decided in that moment that I would love him as if he were kin to me.

Tristan, they called him.

Time had felt unbearably slow until then.

Once there is a child, you begin to see how quickly the days pass.

How the sennights melt like ice beneath the sun.

The seasons spin faster, the years suddenly feel much shorter.

You hardly feel your own age, or how the years have marked you, until you measure them against those of a child.

The years, then, began to pass quickly.

I was there when Tristan started to speak.

A babble that inspired endless delight in both Lara and James.

I was there when he took his first steps.

When he burned his hands on the hearthstone.

When he grew his first milk teeth and became a biter, leaving marks on my forearms. I was there when he learned to say my name, and he shed his grub-worm appearance at last for that of a child who was beautiful, blue-eyed and dark headed, rosy cheeked and often solemn.

I was there as if I were his uncle, bound by blood, and I never grew tired of his wonder.

Of watching him grow and change, becoming his own person.

He was precious to me.

But when he turned four, two odd things happened.

The first was that James brought his sister to my house, to introduce her to me.

I was kneeling in the garden, harvesting carrots and radishes for Tristan’s birthday dinner, when they appeared at my gate.

“Vincent, hello!” James called with an exuberant wave. “May we come in?”

“To the garden?” I asked, still thinking we meant him and Lara and Tristan.

People whom I considered kindred, whom I was comfortable with.

I swiftly realized that a stranger was with him.

A tall, thin woman with hair so blond it looked silver when the sun touched it.

Quickly, I rose, my hands stained with soil.

“This is my sister, Henriette,” James said. “She is from Oath and has come to visit for Tristan’s birthday. I thought the two of you might enjoy each other’s company?”

I froze. No, I thought, sharply. No, I did not want to enjoy a stranger’s company.

My upbringing as a lord’s son, however, saved me. I granted her a thin smile and a bow of my head.

“A pleasure to meet you. I fear I am not suitable company at the moment.”

“Don’t worry yourself!” James said. “We aren’t staying. But we shall see you tonight, at our place? For Tristan’s birthday?”

I could not say no. Not when it came to Tristan.

I nodded and watched them go. A cold feeling slithered through me.

I felt uneasy, distressed. I was full of dread when Reeve and I walked the path to their cottage that afternoon.

Somehow, I managed to speak a few words to Henriette, and paltry ones at that.

James noticed, and while Tristan was destroying a honey cake, he took me aside.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he murmured, low so the women could not hear us as they laughed over Tristan’s antics. “But I thought you might want to begin meeting… other people. That perhaps you would like to have a family of your own someday.”

A lump welled in my throat. I considered them my family, as well as Nathaniel and Anton.

Edric. Hyacinthe. Bade, even. But I knew what James was saying to me.

Did I not want a companion? A wife? A lover?

Someone to grow old with? Someone to live at my side day after day? Shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath?

Matilda had been gone for almost six years. By all means, I should have moved on. But when I sifted through the layers of my life, I had to acknowledge one simple truth: I could never love another as I had loved her.

She had taken my fire with her to the mists. And I did not dare utter these words, although I dwelled on them every autumn when the date of her death approached.

I still hoped that one day, she would return to me.

“I am perfectly content,” I said, but a sad light flickered through James’s eyes.

Our conversation was interrupted by Tristan, who began to wail. His cheeks looked redder than normal; he had whined and cried through most of his birthday supper.

“I think he needs to sleep,” Lara said, gathering him into her arms.

They invited me to stay for ale and pie as the moon rose.

I declined; Tristan continued to cry, restless, and I walked back to my place by starlight, Reeve on my heels.

It was a new moon, and the stars were exceptionally bright that night.

I stopped to look up at the sky, finding Matilda’s constellation.

If she could see me now, what would she think? I had peeled away my power and prestige like it was calloused skin. I had given it away, and now lived a very simple routine. It was one that I enjoyed, but I was not certain where it was taking me. What did I want out of this life?

That night, the second odd thing happened.

A white owl visited me.

The shutters were open in my bedchamber. I was setting another log upon the hearth fire and did not hear the bird—she had arrived with such stealth—but Reeve growled. I glanced to see the owl was perched on the sill, watching me with her piercing golden eyes.

Many years had passed since one of Fate’s owls had visited me, bearing dreams of Matilda. I hadn’t expected to see one again.

“I am no poet,” I said to the bird, even as my throat went narrow.

“I am no bard. I care nothing for the myths of the gods.” A lie, I thought, because I did care about the myths concerning one divine, and she was gone.

But I had started to wonder what it would feel like to write my story, entwined with hers, down on paper. “Why have you come to me now?”

The owl made no movement, no noise. She merely pinned me with her gaze.

I decided to forgo the tonic I drank every new moon to dull my dreams. I could brew it myself now, with herbs harvested from my garden that I crushed and steeped in hot water. But with the owl’s visit… something stayed my hand, and I left the tonic on my bedside table.

That night, beneath the watch of the owl, I dreamt of Matilda.

She broke through the fog of my sleep like a beam of light.

I dreamt we were swimming in the river, and she was just as I remembered her.

Long pale limbs that flashed in the water, her hair bright as copper.

The moonstones gleamed in her ears, and her eyes were dark and rich as amber when she smiled at me.

We wore nothing but our skin, and my heart gave a painful lurch as I swam closer, reaching out to touch her.

Just as my fingertips grazed her ribs, the dream broke.

I gasped awake as if I had been drowning.

The owl was gone, and I stared up at the darkness, my body brimming with fire, with aches.

I lay there awhile longer, wondering how much I had missed due to fear.

How much had I cut myself off from, worried I would be wounded by it?

I lay there and wondered if the owl was showing me a glimpse of my future, as impossible as that seemed, until I acknowledged sleep would not find me again, and I rose and stirred the embers in the hearth.

I was warming some water over the flames when I heard the scream echo across the vale.

It was Lara.

She screamed again, a sound that made every hair rise on my arms.

I dropped the pan and bolted out the door, Reeve on my heels. The dog outran me, but I sprinted over the vale faster than I ever had, heart hammering in my chest. I do not know what I expected to find when I flew into their cottage, but it was not the scene that met me.

Tristan, limp and pale in James’s arms. James and Lara weeping, unconsolable.

“What happened?” I panted.

They did not see me. They did not seem capable of speech, only wails that turned my blood to ice.

It was Henriette who answered. She took hold of my arm, felt me tremble.

“A fever,” she whispered. “He is dead.”

I dug a grave the next day.

My shoulders burned as the shovel hit the earth, again and again. Mindless work, work I wanted to lose myself in. My breaths were jagged, my palms rubbed raw. Soon, they cracked and bled, but I continued to dig and dig and dig, until my strength ebbed.

I knelt in the dirt and wept.

Time seemed to halt. At some point, Henriette joined me.

I had dug the grave a good distance from the house, a beautiful plot of earth that was tucked between two trees. She brought a jug of ale for us to share and we sat beside each other on the grass, our faces nipped from tears, our eyes rimmed red. We stared at the grave as the sun began to set.

“Lara refuses to bury him,” Henriette finally said. “Soon, his body… it will begin to rot. You must help me convince them both, Vincent.”

I was not the one for that task. Had I not kept vigil at Matilda’s side for days in the sepulcher, waiting for the impossible? Refusing to seal her in stone?

We sat in silence until the ale was gone, and then I rose to continue digging. The sun was setting, and the clouds above were rippled in scarlet and gold when I heard another shout, drifting from the house. I dropped the shovel, preparing to run across the yard, when I saw Tristan.

He was walking to me, his hand in Lara’s.

For a moment, I thought, This is another dream. It was just a dream, and I would awaken, tears in my eyes. But I rushed to meet them, and the ground remained solid, the grass whisking at my ankles. My palms burned, and I could taste the dirt and the cool promise of evening staining the air.

When I took Tristan into my arms, he laughed, a joyous sound I felt in my blood, and I could only look upon him and marvel.

“He woke,” Lara said, and her smile was brilliant. “As if he had only been sleeping.”

Tristan patted my face, and I studied him. I took his tiny hand in mine and a shiver traced my bones. I knew it, then.

I knew that Matilda had been the one to carry him home.