Black Spring by Alison Croggon Page B

like the goat-boy. Her impatience infected me as well, and in my free time we made a game of it, running to the front room, even when we only imagined the sound, and driving my mother to distraction. She was setting up the household to her satisfaction, and in between was catching up with her own relations, whom she had not seen for ten years; there was a lot of news (most of which, when I was forced to listen as I sat in the kitchen peeling carrots, I found very boring) about who had died and who had been born and who had married and who had bought the short field down in the village south, or how Old Wanda had lost her mind finally and had been seen talking to the sheep on the high road, thinking they were her dead brothers, and so on.
    Then, quite suddenly, the clouds lifted and a morning dawned fresh and sparkling, so the raindrops hanging from the buds on the bare hazels shone like jewels from a king’s ransom. For the first time since we had arrived, you could see the mountains in the distance, and I went outside and stared at them: they looked black and forbidding, jutting up into the sky out of the plains as sheer and dangerous as the steel knives in the kitchen; but I saw that they were beautiful too, and they sent a shiver through my soul. In that moment I remembered that I was born an uplander, and I felt the hard bones of this land beneath my feet and the high pale sky above me. I knew then that, for better or worse, this was my own country, and I belonged here.
    At breakfast, Lina predicted confidently — as she had every day before — that her father would arrive that day. This time she was right: he arrived late that afternoon, when it had begun to rain again and shadows were gathering into nightfall. Lina was beginning to coil herself up into a tantrum of disappointment and was picking a quarrel with me, poking me as I was trying to do my chores and generally being tiresome. She heard a horse coming up to the house and then a rap on the door, and she started up, her face glowing with hope and excitement, and rushed to the door, with my poor mother wringing her hands behind her, telling her to mind her behavior. She flung open the door violently and then teetered on the threshold, stunned with disappointment. Instead of her father, a boy stood on the step, wrapped in a cloak against the chilly rain.
    “Who are you?” asked Lina rudely. “And where’s my father?”
    The boy stared at her sullenly and didn’t answer. And then the master strode into view — he had been giving instructions to the groom — and she forgot her disappointment instantly and ran into his arms. He swung her up and kissed her and then set her down and said, “Lina, here is a companion for you. Damek, this is my daughter, Lina. Lina, this is Damek, who will be your foster brother from now on.”
    I turned involuntarily to my mother, who was unable for a moment to hide her astonishment, and I knew she had been given no warning of this new charge. Lina stared at the boy, as amazed as the rest of us. “But I don’t want a foster brother!” she said at last.
    “Nevertheless, you have one,” said her father, and there was a grim edge to his voice that took the light out of her face. “And we have been riding all day and are tired and hungry and wet, and I want to come into the house. If you will permit us to get past you, Lina.”
    My mother, flustered and perhaps a little angry, led the two travelers into the house and took their sodden cloaks and sat them down at a table, which she laid with earthenware pots of soup and a casserole and fresh bread and tankards of beer, and for a while, there was no talk, just some serious eating. We had already had our supper in the kitchen, Lina with the rest of us, but I was allowed to wait on the master and pour his beer, and Lina sat at the table with both of them. There was a stormy expression on her face, and she darted hostile glances at the boy, who took absolutely no notice of her at