The Innocent Read Free Page A

buffet. She’d first heard it on the previous day, even before they’d reached the walls of the city and the Convent of the Poor Clares where they had spent the night in the strangers’ dorter. Then it was something muttering on the wind that came and went as they’d walked the muddy roads toward the city—a resonant buzzing hum unlike any sound the girl had heard before.
    Fancifully, as she had lain awake on the scratchy straw palliasse among the other women in the strangers’ dorter, she’d thought it was the voice of some great beast that was never quite stilled, even in the darkest hours of the night. Then she had felt happy and excited to be going to the city.
    Now as she followed Deborah across the bridge, and looked up to check the clouds to see what the day would bring, she saw only a small patch of sky above her head between the buildings, and was engulfed by a choking sadness.
    For all of her nearly fifteen years Anne had lived among the trees of their forest, hers and Deborah’s, but there’d always been the sky and the clouds above their little mud-and-wattle house.
    In the warm weather when she sat on the thatch of the highest part of the roof, Anne could see the weather coming and she could see where the forest ended and the straggling village at the edge of their domain began. It had always been quiet in their clearing except for the wind and the calls of birds, or the cough of deer in the depths of the trees. But now the enormous voice of this foreign place was all around, in her head, hardly allowing her to think.
    Now, very soon, she and Deborah would part, and she would be left alone here in this buzzing, booming, reeking people-hive.
    And all because of last Samhain, the feast to celebrate the time when the gates between the worlds were open and winter began. As usual they had joined the villagers on the common land outside their little cluster of wattle-and-clay houses, and contributed to the feast with good black puddings from the pig they had raised through the last year and just slaughtered. It was blood month, the time when animals that would not be fed through the winter were killed, like their pig. And as the last of the summer beer had flowed, Deborah had pleased the villagers, though not their priest, by future-telling for all those who’d wanted her to. He was a good man, their priest, and tried hard to win his people from their dark, old ways, but he’d given up with Samhain. It had an ancient force, this long day of gluttony and drunkenness, a force stronger than any sermon he could preach to them. So, like a sensible pastor who had the long-term good of his people at heart, he joined them at the feast hoping, by his presence, to curb the wildest excesses.
    It was common at Samhain, however, for prophecy to be given and heard with respect, and this time Anne had asked Deborah for a future-telling as well.
    “You’re too young. This is not a game, Anne. The priest will not like it, you know that.” Deborah had taken the girl to one side, away from the long trestle board crowded with shouting, well-fed, happy people. The older woman’s expression was severe, and that puzzled the girl.
    “Why do you want the scrying?”
    “Only to see if I may have a husband too. You seemed happy to tell the others…”
    Deborah had turned away when she caught the priest’s eye, his shake of the head. Now she looked back toward their home in the forest. It was as if she were listening for something, searching for something among the silent trees, something that was far, far away. Then she sighed deeply and nodded, being careful the priest did not see. “That is fair. Sit here.”
    Anne settled herself against the trunk of an oak, burrowing into the dry brown leaves of last autumn, while Deborah went to fetch her scrying bowl from the trestle board. There was a little warmth left in the fast-westering sun, and filled with good meat and good beer, the girl had begun to doze.
    Deborah’s voice had