The Promise Read online

  "There is not a bit of extra on you," she said. "Nothing to spare. Perhaps you don’t get enough to eat. Have you been spending too much time with the monks?"

  "Ha. They’re the worst cooks I know. I bring my own salt when I eat at a monastery. I offered it to Brother Arros once, but he refused.”

  "He’s accustomed to flavorless food. I, too, have offered him salt. And herbs. And oil. But he’ll have none of it."

  She settled under his arm, watching the steam rise around them. Long golden rays of late afternoon sunlight streamed across the meadow. The dog snapped at damselflies on the other side of the stream.

  "I eat plenty," he said. “I’ve always been like this. Am I not pleasing to you?"

  With his fingertips he traced a path from her neck down each knob of her breastbone, around the curve of her ribcage. His hand settled at the very base of her belly, igniting a wild flutter somewhere deep inside her.

  “Yes, Xabi.” She leaned into his touch, her heartbeat quickening. “I like you as you are.”

  4

  Autumn, 1483

  The days grew short. Dark clouds scudded across the sky, sometimes opening up to let tawny light fall across the meadow. When that happened, Elena stopped what she was doing and raised her face to the sun. Soon winter's grip would take over the land and heat would be only a memory.

  In the evenings, Xabi tooled leather and she sewed rabbit skins into a blanket. She used the curving iron needles that he kept in his shepherd's toolkit, threading them with long lengths of sheep gut that he had trimmed and dried. As they worked, she told him stories of Basajaun and Tartaro, the gods of the mountains. Xabi told her of his family in Basque country, of the people he had met on his travels.

  One night as they undressed for bed he traced the ridges of the burn on her arm with his fingertips.

  “How’d you get this?”

  She frowned. “It’s an ugly scar with an uglier story behind it.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “When I was a child.”

  “Was it an accident?”

  “Some would say yes.”

  “How did it—“

  “Xabi!” she said in exasperation. “Stop asking me questions. Tell me a story.”

  He sighed and tucked the furs around them.

  “When I first left home in search of a livelihood,” he began, “I went west to stay with a cousin on the seashore. The villagers spent their days fishing. They gave me the job of patrolling the beach in search of treasures. I never grew tired of poking at the strange things that washed up—long ropes of glittering seaweed, red crabs, broken birds, fish with their eyes missing and half their scales sheared off.”

  Elena closed her eyes, listening to Xabi describe feathery drifts of seafoam on the pale sand, the raucous shrieks of gulls, the slick bodies of dolphins leaping from the water. He told her about the round faces of seals bobbing offshore, their eyes placid pools of black light.

  “Did you see monsters?” she asked dreamily. “Brother Arros used to tell me stories of the sea when I was a child. He spoke of monsters with fearsome teeth and snapping jaws.”

  “When did he go to the sea?”

  “As a young man. He walked to Compostela along the pilgrim’s trail.”

  “I suppose some might call a whale a monster, though the one I found had no teeth.”

  Elena sat up in bed, her eyes alight. “You saw a whale?”

  He nodded. “After a fortnight or so, I found a whale that washed up dead on the shore after a storm. The flesh was too rotted to eat, but that was not the true value of the beast. We wrapped our faces in scarves to ward off the stench and hacked off great slabs of blubber. Upwind, the women piled stacks of driftwood around their iron kettles. All day they tended the fires, rendering the blubber into oil. Then we sold the oil to merchants who used it to fuel iron lamps. I got a bag of silver coins for my part in it all.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I bought what I needed to hire myself out as a shepherd, and then I turned east again.”

  Elena pulled Xabi’s face to hers, luxuriating in the heat that radiated from his lean body. He explored her most tender places, finding spots she had not even known to be sensitive. His brown, work-worn hands moved gently on her skin, sending currents of desire rushing down her spine. With each wave of pleasure her tension evaporated until she felt her mind go soft and indolent. Curled under the furs with him, she forgot the dread that had knitted itself into her bones, the anger that carried her through the world. The jumble of dark worries that haunted her had simply vanished.

  After he fell asleep, one hand draped over her hip, she lay awake for a long time watching the embers of the fire go cold one by one. She had wandered alone through the world since she was a girl, had not shared a home with a companion since her mother’s death so many years ago. There had been moments of lust, other shepherds who had caught her eye. But none of them warranted more than a night in a cabin, or an afternoon in a meadow.

  Until now.

  Perhaps the gods were smiling upon her after all.

  5

  Winter, 1484

  On a gray midwinter morning, Elena awoke with a bitter metallic taste in her mouth. Her tongue felt thick and mossy. She thrust her feet into boots, shrugged a cloak around her shoulders and pushed the door open. The pine trees behind the cabin sagged under the weight of the snow on their branches. A short distance from the cabin, she squatted to relieve herself and was overcome by a wave of nausea. Retching uncontrollably, she toppled forward face first into her own vomit.

  "Elena?" Xabi’s voice was laced with concern.

  She rolled away from the mess, her cheek pressed into the wet snow. Curled on her side, she stared dully into the pines, unable to move. It was as if some unseen weight pinned her to the earth.

  Then Xabi's hand appeared in her line of sight.

  "Come."

  She put a hand in his and he hauled her up. Inside, she sat on the bed and watched him remove her boots and slip off her cloak.

  "Lie back," he ordered. "You are not well."

  She did as he told her. He went to the fire and began poking the coals with a stick, searching for a live ember.

  “A life grows in me,” she said to his back.

  He dropped the stick and turned to her. "Are you sure?"

  “As sure as any woman can be.”

  Xabi stared at her soberly. Then he sat next to her on the bed.

  "We can take the child to the Abbey of Belarac, over the mountains in Béarn," he said.

  “No.” She kept her eyes trained on his hands.

  “Why not? It’s where children go who have no other place to live. Brother Arros told me.”

  “He sent me there when I was a girl.” She took in a long breath. “The place was nothing but a crumbling ruin. They put me to work in the kitchens. Would you truly want a child of yours to toil as a kitchen waif?”

  “Maybe it was like that then, but no longer. Brother Arros speaks highly of Belarac. He says the new abbess is an intelligent woman."

  Elena looked at him, astonished. "He’s said nothing of this to me."

  "Do you know him to be untruthful?"

  "Never."

  "Perhaps he doesn’t want to upset you. It’s obvious the place displeases you."

  She scowled. "Even if what you say is true, Xabi, it comes at a price. For a child to be anything more than a servant at an abbey, one must pay with silver, and plenty of it."

  "But I can pay," Xabi said. "Our child wouldn’t be a servant."

  “It’s no use talking about this. There won’t be a child, Xabi. What’s inside me is only a quickening, a pulsing in my belly.”

  Xabi sighed and put a hand to her cheek. “You can’t stop a baby from coming,” he said softly.

  “I can.”

  He sat silent for a while, then reached out and put a hand on her abdomen. She batted it away.

  "We are both wild things, Xabi. We move wit
h the seasons, chasing the grass as it grows, melting into the shadows at the approach of a bear. That’s no life for a baby."

  His expression tightened, but he said nothing. After a moment he got up and went outside with the dog.

  6

  Winter, 1484

  Elena’s mother Maria had taught her how to end a life in the womb. She knew which combination of herbs to use, steeped in a bitter tea that was mixed with honey to make it go down easier. The trick lay in knowing how much of the stuff to administer. Too little, and the woman’s belly would continue to swell. But too much could be catastrophic. Elena had once watched a woman bleed to death after ingesting a double dose, despite her warnings.

  And now, on the first night of a storm that wrapped the cabin in a haze of billowing snow, she would mix up a cup of the brew for herself. She silently recited the recipe as she measured out herbal powders and covered them with boiling water. Then she forced down sips of the mixture, her face twisting with disgust. It tasted like poison.

  Xabi tended the fire and watched over her, his eyes creased with worry. When the pains began, he laid her gently on the bed and covered her with his cloak.

  By dawn she had a raging fever. Following her instructions, he boiled boxwood leaves and fed her the broth. It seemed to quell the burning of her brow somewhat. When blood began to flow between her legs, he wiped her clean with a damp flax cloth. He pressed the water pouch between her cracked lips and made sure she swallowed, smoothing the sweat-soaked hair away from her forehead.

  The moan of the wind forcing its way through chinks in the stone walls did not cease for two more days and nights.

  Finally they awoke one morning to silence, and Xabi flung open the door to let in sunshine. They heard the trickle of water released from the long icicles that hung from the eaves. Then came the tentative warble of a songbird and the whoosh and thump of snow sliding off the pine branches and landing in the drifts below.

  “I’m so thirsty,” Elena whispered.

  Xabi went outside and broke off an icicle that hung from the eaves. He brought it to her. The open door let in the scent of pine.

  The tip of the icicle melted against her tongue.

  "I feel the breeze," she said weakly. "It's a spring breeze, Xabi."

  He nodded, his anxious eyes scouring her face. "Winter's end is near."

  The dog bounded outside and foundered in the soft snow. A knot of ice slipped from a pine tree and landed on his head. He snapped at the air, swiveling his neck to get a view of the invisible attacker. Xabi and Elena both began to laugh.

  She held her tender abdomen with both hands, willing the hurt to go away, the pain to stop, the quickening to be over, once and for all.

  Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and she blinked them back before Xabi could see. This was the only way. There was no place for a child in her life.

  But instead of relief, she felt only sorrow.

  7

  Spring, 1484

  When the snows had melted enough for them to travel, Xabi sharpened his tools and readied his supplies. It was time for him to follow the shearing cycle through the mountain lowlands. He would begin at San Juan de la Peña, since that was where Elena was headed. When there was no more shearing to be done, he would journey to Jaca, hire himself out, and take a flock to summer pastures.

  For her part, Elena would stay a time with Brother Arros, restocking his supplies of medicinal herbs and honey. Then she would make her way to high country for the summer meeting of the mountain people.

  The day before they left the valley, they emptied the cache and carried what was left of their smoked trout and rabbit to a high meadow. They left it in neat rows on a flat-topped limestone rock, as an offering to Basajaun and Tartaro, gods of the mountains.

  "If a priest spied us doing this, there’d be trouble," Xabi said.

  "What priest would climb that high?" Elena scoffed.

  "I have heard of them searching for offerings. The shepherds talk of it."

  "The shepherds grumble because they leave out cheese for the gods that they'd rather eat themselves. If it’s gone the next day they must find someone to blame for it."

  "Are you saying they eat their own offerings, on the sly?" A rumble of laughter rose in his chest.

  Elena threw her head back and laughed too. She caught sight of a great bird tracing circles in the sky.

  "Griffon vulture," she said, pointing up.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Golden eagle.”

  “Say what you like. I know what I saw.”

  Crossing the meadow, they spied a slim stone jutting from the ground. It was deeply grooved with carvings.

  Elena crouched and ran her fingers down one side of the stone. “It used to be that the mountain folk did nothing but fight. But the peace agreements, the fueros, changed that.”

  “That’s what the shepherds in the summer pastures say. Stones like this one tell the people where they can graze their animals, and when.” Xabi squatted, examining the marks. “Just how carvings in stone can keep the peace is hard to fathom. I’m not sure I believe it.”

  "There’ll always be disputes. That’s what the summer meeting is for. To work out arguments.”

  He rocked back on his heels, squinting up at her. “How?”

  "If anyone damages a pasture or steals animals, they’ve got to pay for it with cheese, meat, wool, wood. The people who’ve been harmed decide what the amends will be.”

  "The nobles don’t intervene?"

  She shook her head. ”They let the mountain people govern themselves."

  "I reckon they’re too lazy to climb up here and get involved in the business of shepherds."

  “Thank the sun and stars for that.” Elena straightened up, frowning. “I’ve seen what nobles do to the people who live within their grasp. They bring nothing but sorrow and trouble.”

  She shaded her eyes, squinting up at a limestone cliff that loomed over the meadow. Approaching it, she drew her dagger from its sheath and began to hack at something.

  "What have you got there?" Xabi stood off to the side, watching her.

  "Butterwort. Brother Arros needs it for his infirmary.” She stuffed the long, hairy leaves into her satchel.

  “What else does he need?”

  "Boxwood. For fever. Willow, for pain. And star aster, for stomach ache, sneezing, coughing. There are so many more, I can’t name them all. He writes my healing recipes in a book he calls his 'Herbal.’”

  "You don’t keep hidden any secrets for yourself?" he teased.

  "Why should I?" She stopped what she was doing and turned to him. "If I can help him save a life, I will. I owe him every secret these mountains share with me. Anyway, they’re none of them my secrets, Xabi. They belong to the mountain people, and always have."

  When she finished harvesting, they angled through the meadow down toward the woods, luxuriating in the sun’s warmth on their faces. Elena spied a darker place amongst the grasses, a scar in the earth made by a bear's long claws. Clods of soil that it had flung aside now sprouted tiny shoots of grass. She wondered where the bear had sheltered during the months of ice and snow. Perhaps under the tangled roots of an oak tree, or in the hollow trunk of a fire-scorched pine. Now, with the advent of spring, the bear was free again to roam where it pleased.

  Like her.

  8

  Spring, 1484

  A strong late-afternoon wind gusted when Elena and Xabi came to the steep trail known as the Bonecrusher. More than one traveler had been smashed to death by rocks falling from the great white cliffs that soared above it. Despite that, the Bonecrusher was heavily used by smugglers because it was the fastest alternative to the toll road that connected Aragón to Béarn, and wide enough to accommodate mules.

  Before Xabi and Elena stepped out to cross the trail and continue along the animal track they followed, they rested in the shadows a moment. The wind died, revealing the sound of voices. They crept through the trees and spied a pair of men
standing on the trail, dressed in the black hats and long cloaks that marked them as pilgrims.

  "This cannot be the way,” said the taller of the two men, his voice tight with anxiety. “Darkness comes and there is no safe place to sleep ahead. It is all cliffs and boulders.”

  There was a rumble and a clatter of stone. “Saints protect us!” shrieked the smaller man. “A stone the size of my head just tumbled from the sky.”

  “It’s nearly time to make camp anyway,” Elena said in a low voice, watching the men with trepidation. “We should help them.”

  "Pilgrims," Xabi said, shaking his head. “How any of them survive these mountains is a mystery.”

  Reluctantly they made their way forward.

  * * *

  While Elena built a fire, Xabi went to the edge of a nearby creek and busied himself skinning and butchering the rabbits they had captured that day.

  The pilgrims chattered about their journey from a place in the north called Flanders all the way south to Compostela. Their eyes gleamed as they described the holy relics they had seen in the cathedral at Compostela, their fingers endlessly tracing the grooves in the sea shells they wore around their necks. They had been sidetracked on their return journey by talk of a healing grotto in a limestone cavern. Eager to experience the restorative powers of its warm, bubbling springs, they had left the relative safety of the King’s Road and blundered into the Bonecrusher.

  Elena eyed them as she blew on a smoldering bit of dried moss, teasing it into flame. Perhaps, long ago, when the pilgrims first adopted the habit of wearing identical hats and cloaks it had been a good idea. Now it had become a horn-blast to bandits—though since pilgrims rarely carried anything of value, they made sorry pickings.

  “Do you know the cavern of which we speak?” asked the taller man.