shuddering and fighting my tears. When it was over at last I was spent, exhausted, relieved. Canoc had stood through the lament unmoving, enduring it, like a rock in the rain.
Soon after Melle’s death, Parn went up to the Carrantages. The people of Borremant had heard of her skill in calling to the hunt and sent for her to come. She wanted Gry to come with her, to begin to practice her gift. It was a rare chance to go among the wealthy highlanders and gain renown there. Gry refused. Parn got angry with her. Once again mild Ternoc intervened: “You go and come as you please,” he said to his wife, “so let your daughter do the same.” Parn saw the justice in that, though it didn’t suit her. She went off the next day, without Gry, not bidding anyone goodbye.
The colt Blaze had been returned, fully trained, to Cordemant. When Gry came to us, she rode a plow horse, if one was free; if not she walked, a long walk to go and return in a day. It was too far for me to go alone on Roanie or to walk with Coaly. And Roanie was getting old, and though Greylag got over his distemper he too was an old horse now. Branty was a splendid four-year-old, much in demand as a stud, which suited him very well indeed, though it interfered with his other duties. Our stable was pretty thin. I said one night, gathering up my nerve as I always did when I spoke to my father now, “We should get a new colt.”
“I’d thought of asking Danno Barre what he’d want for that grey mare.”
“She’s old. If we got a colt or a filly, Gry could train her.”
When you cannot see the speaker, his silence is a mystery. I waited, not knowing if Canoc was considering what I said or had rejected it already.
“I’ll look about,” he said.
“Alloc says there’s a lovely filly over at Callemmant. He heard about her from the smith.”
This time the silence went on. I had to wait a month for the answer.
It arrived in the shape of Alloc shouting at me to come out and see the new filly. I couldn’t do that, but I could come and feel her coat, and scratch her topknot, and swing up in the saddle for a short led walk round the courtyard, Alloc praising her manners and beauty all the way. She was just a year old, he said, a bright bay, with a star, for which she was named. “Can Gry come and work with her?” I asked, and Alloc said, “Oh, she’s to stay there at Roddmant for a year or so and learn her job. She’s too young a lass for your father and me, see.”
When Canoc came in that night, I wanted to thank him. I wanted to go to him and put my arms around him. But I was afraid of blundering in my blindness, afraid of making a clumsy move, afraid he did not want me to touch him.
I said, “I rode the filly, Father,” and he said, “Good,” and bade me goodnight, and I heard his weary tread on the stairs up to the tower room.
SO THROUGH the dark time, Gry could come to me riding Star, two or three or four times in a halfmonth, sometimes even oftener.
When she came we would go out riding together and she would tell me what she and Star were doing. The filly was as sweet as new bread, and as a riding horse needed little teaching, so she was learning fancy gaits and tricks, to show off the trainer, Gry said, as well as the horse. We seldom rode far, for Roanie was getting rheumatic. Then we’d come back to the Stone House, and if it was warm we’d sit out in the kitchen gardens, or in cold or rainy weather in the corner of the great hearth, to talk.
There were many times in the first year after my mother died that though I was glad Gry was there, I could not talk. I had nothing to say. There was a blankness, a deadness around me I could not get through with words.
Gry would talk a little, telling me what news she had, and then fall into silence with me. It was as easy to sit in silence with her as it was with Coaly. I was grateful to her for that.
I cannot remember much of that year. I had sunk into the black blankness. There was nothing for me to do. My only use was to be useless. I would never learn to use my gift: only not to use it. I would sit here in the hall of the Stone House and people would be afraid of me, and that was all my purpose in life. I might as well be an idiot like the poor child at Drummant. It would make no difference. I was a bogey in a blindfold.
For days at a time I said nothing to anyone. Sosso and Rab and the other people about the house tried to talk to me, cheer me; they brought me tidbits from the kitchen; Rab was brave enough to offer me tasks to do in the household, things I needed no eyes to do and had done for her gladly when I was first blinded. Not now. Alloc would come in with my father at day’s end, and they would talk a little, and I would sit with them in silence. Alloc would try to draw me into the conversation. I would not be drawn. Canoc would say to me, stiffly, “Are you well, Orrec?” or, “Did you ride today?” And I would say yes.
I think now he suffered as much as I did from our estrangement. All I knew then was that he was not paying the price I paid for our gift.
All through that winter, I made plans of how I could get to Drummant, get within sight of Ogge, and destroy him. I would have to take off the blindfold, of course. Over and over I imagined it: I would go out before daylight, taking Branty, for the older horses were not fast or strong enough. I’d ride all day to Drummant, and wait hidden somewhere till night, and wait till Ogge came out. No, better, I might disguise myself. The people at Drummant had only seen me with the blindfold, and I was growing taller, my voice had begun to deepen. I’d wear a serf’s cloak, not the coat and kilt. They wouldn’t know me. I’d leave Branty hidden in the woods, for he was a horse people would recognise, and I’d stroll in on foot, like a roving farmer lad from the Glens, and wait till Ogge appeared: and then, with one look, one word— And as they all stood in horror and amazement, I’d slip out, back to the woods, back to Branty, gallop home, and say to Canoc, “You were afraid to go kill him, so I did it.”
But I did not do it. I believed the story as I told it to myself, but not when it was over.
I told it to myself so often that I wore it out, and then I had no story to tell at all.
I went far into the dark, that year.
Somewhere in the dark at last I turned around, not knowing I was doing so. It was Chaos, there was no forward and back, no direction; but I turned, and the way I went then was back, towards the light. Coaly was my companion in the dark and the silence. Gry was my guide on the way back.
She came once when I was sitting in the hearth seat. There was no fire, it was May or June, and only the kitchen fire was lighted; but the hearth seat was where I sat most of the day, most days. I heard her come, the light clatter of Star’s hoofs in the courtyard, Gry’s voice, Sosso greeting her and saying, “He’s where he always is”—and then her hand on my shoulder; but more, this time; she leaned down and kissed my cheek.
I had not been kissed, I had scarcely been touched, by any human being since my mother’s death. The touch ran through my body like lightning through a cloud. I caught my breath with the shock and sweetness of it.
“Ash-Prince,” Gry said. She smelled of horse sweat and grass, and her voice was the wind in the leaves. She sat down beside me. “Do you remember that?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, you must. You remember all the stories. But that one was a long time ago. When we were little.”
I still said nothing. The habit of silence is lead on the tongue. She went on, “The Ash-Prince was the boy who slept in the hearth corner because his parents wouldn’t let him have a bed—”
“Foster parents.”
“That’s right. His parents lost him. How do you lose a boy? They must have been very careless.”
“They were a king and queen. A witch stole him.”
“That’s right! He went outdoors to play, and the witch came out of the forest—and she held out a sweet ripe pear—and as soon as he bit into it she said, Ah, ha, sticky-chin, you’re mine!’” Gry laughed with delight as she recovered this. “So they called him Stickychin! But then what happened?”
“The witch gave him to a poor couple who already had six children and didn’t want a seventh. But she paid them with a gold piece to take him in and bring him up.” The language, the rhythm of the words, brought the story I had not thought of for ten years straight to my mind, and with it the music of my mother’s voice as she told it. “So he became their serf and servant, at their beck and call, and it was, ‘Stickychin, do this!’ and ‘Stickychin, do that!’ and never a free moment for him till late at night when all the work was done and he could creep into the hearth corner and sleep in the warm ashes.”
I stopped.
“Oh, Orrec, go on,” Gry said very low.
So I went on and told the tale of the Ash-Prince, and how he came into his kingdom at last.
When I was done there was a little silence. Gry blew her nose. “Think of crying over a fairy tale,” she said.
