The Daughter of Odren Read Free Page A

Fern said, and his hands were always on her, pressing and caressing. None of the people of the house dared show much kindness to the children, for fear of the sorcerer’s ill will. For he was truly a man of power. My niece had seen what he could do. She never would tell me what it was, but she’d learned to fear him.
    â€œThere was a gardener’s man, though, who was kind to the little boy, a west country man. The great folk in the house took no notice of him, so I suppose he didn’t fear the sorcerer.”
    She stopped. The listener asked no question, though the pause went on a long time.
    â€œThen came news that the pirates were defeated. One ship alone came back to port, down at Barreny. Her crew told of the long pursuit, and a hundred sea-battles when the pirates turned their fleet upon us or lured aside and destroyed one ship or another of ours in their wicked cruelty. But at last we’d scattered them and defeated them, sunk their ships, cleaned them out of the Closed Sea, and our ships would be coming home—those still above the water.
    â€œThen one ship and another began to come in to port all up and down the coast. They’d all been scattered by the spring gales as they tried to sail west. But no sign or word of our ship. Summer went on, autumn came again. And word of what the sorcerer had seen had got about, so people all said he’d seen truly, and the
Lady of Odren
was lost.
    â€œAnd then one bright morning the daughter of Odren comes crying from the sea-cliffs over the cove, ‘The ship! The ship! My father’s ship!’
    â€œAnd it was her, the
Lady of Odren,
her sails all stained and worn, sailing in on the wind from the east.
    â€œMy niece was there in the house, and what I tell you now, she saw and told me.
    â€œWhen the Lady Lily looked from the window and saw the ship entering the cove, she stood like stone. She spoke to the sorcerer in her room for a moment. Then she went out and down the long stairways to the beach along with many others, and was first on the pier to greet her husband as he came off the ship. His hair had grizzled, but my niece said he looked a warrior, a big powerful man, laughing aloud, and he picked his lady up and swung her about in the joy of seeing her again. And she held to him and stroked his face and said, ‘Come home, come up to the house, dear lord!’
    â€œShe had the cooks make a feast, and that evening the candles were all lighted, and the lord told his tales of sea-battles and showed his scars and squeezed his wife and petted his son and daughter. And Ash, he smiled and kept aside like a humble sorcerer.
    â€œThe lady stayed with her husband, clinging to him every moment till they went to their bedroom. So it was her daughter couldn’t speak to him alone, nor anyone else.
    â€œNow, in the morning at first light the lady came from her room asking the women had they seen her lord. She had waked and he was gone from her bed. No one had seen him. She made light of it, saying he must have gone out to walk his domain as he often used to do, alone and early. And she told them to make breakfast ready for his return. But then as the day came, someone looked from the window and said, ‘The ship is gone.’ And so it was. The harbor was empty.
    â€œAnd from that morning on there has been no sight or sound or word of the Lord of Odren, or his ship the
Lady of Odren.
”
    â€œStrange, strange!” said the listener, in a subdued tone. “What can have become of them? Was it . . .”
    She didn’t finish her question, and the innkeeper didn’t answer it. She said, “Well, then they found that Odren’s children were gone too. The people told the lady that. She’d been wailing and weeping for her husband, but she went silent then as if she’d been struck. All she could say was ‘The children? My children?’ And she didn’t weep, but began going about the house