Page 42 of Hallow Hill at Halloween: Part One

“I pulled a chunk of bread from my pocket and ate, drinking ale from the skin I’d lifted from the tavern. It would’ve been better to take water, but I had no experience with planning. Fortunately, the bread soaked up much of the wine and left me with a pleasant sensation of feeling full and pain free.”

She stopped for a sip of toddy and a deep breath. “Told you it’s a long story, didn’t I?”

“I feel very touched that you’ve chosen to share this with me,” I said, meaning every word in the sincerest way.

I’d thought I was setting off on a more or less carefree afternoon to say hello to Esme, talk about clothes, and imbibe a toddy before getting back to the work that brought me to Hallow Hill. But I wasn’t sorry in the least that it turned into an opportunity to hear my friend’s story. It made me feel ever so much closer to her and, oddly, more protective of her.

She lowered her eyes so that her natural long black lashes brushed her cheek then took a sip of toddy. “This is good,” she said.

“A cure for what ails you.”

“Have you heard enough?” The look in her eyes told me that she was hoping I’d say no.

I didn’t have to tell one of those innocent social lies. I was in for a pound. “I want to hear everything you will share. Honestly, I feel like I didn’treallyknow my friend before today.”

“Not many know my beginnings, shall we say. Fewer than five.”

“So long as you want to keep this secret, it’s safe with me.”

“Even from the sephalion?”

“Yes. Even from him.”

“Because I don’t want Kagan to…”

I was dying to ask why, but I stayed diplomatically silent, a rare occurrence for me.

“Anyway, where was I?”

“You got a ride to Tamworth from a nice redheaded man.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes. He was kind. I hopped off when we reached Tamworth. As he’d said, it was midday. In some ways, the town was familiar. It sat in the shadow of a castle not nearly as large or pretty as Kenilworth, but decidedly Norman. The town, on the other hand, was much larger and busier.

“I stood near the main intersection of mostly pedestrian traffic and looked around wondering what had brought me there. Strangely, I’d had a sense that I was being guided by something unseen. Fate. My mother’s spirit. Intuition. I was still puzzled as to why I wasn’t afraid and more than a little guilty about the feeling of exhilaration. I mean. Farcas. My mother had been burned at the stake two days before. I had no right to feel anything except grief. But there I was in the middle of Tamworth. No fear. No grief. Only an abiding belief that I was where I was supposed to be, as was my mother.

“So, I began a look about to see what was there. Just past the end of the main street was a weaver’s hut. The door was open, so I looked in and saw a middle-aged woman spinning and humming as she did. A girl close to my age was working the loom, weaving something worthy of my mother.

“When I knocked on the door jamb, both of them looked up. The woman stopped both her humming and spinning, but the girl continued the rhythm of working the loom.”

“’Come in, girl,’” she said. “’Don’t just stand there in the lovely sunshine.’”

“It was a curious thing to say, but I did as I was bid and stepped in.

“Do you know how to weave?” she asked.

“I nodded, looking over at the loom. Then I looked at the spinning wheel where she sat. It was both larger and finer than my mother’s. It even had a rosy polish that made it seem grand indeed.

“’Do you know how to spin as well?’” she asked.

“Again, I nodded.

“’Are you mute or can you speak?’” she demanded.

‘“I can speak,’” I said.

“’And you’re here looking for work?’”

“Was I? I supposed that could be the thing that had drawn me to the spot where I stood. So, again, I nodded.

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