A Widow's Charm

Hilde

Death slipped in at the end of a perfectly ordinary day, creeping over the threshold of evening as if it might go unnoticed—as if the consequences of it would not shape all that was to come.

Just before supper, Lady Hildegarde Croft descended into the root cellar. Cook had informed her that the last basket of beetroots and onions she’d brought up to the kitchen were going mushy, which was only natural, given that it had been a long winter.

But nature, in this matter at least, was not something that Hilde was inclined to indulge.

Sure enough, all the beetroots had a slight squish when she pressed her fingers against them. Her Charm, cast when the manor’s stores were being put up for the cold months, had worn off. It was a problem easily remedied, just so long as she remained unobserved. She raised up her hands and focused. Then, one by one, she touched each beetroot and onion.

As her fingers pressed against them, they became as sound as they had been when they were first pulled out of the ground. And if, after her ministrations, the beetroot was both sweeter and more earthy than it had been, and the onions so strong that Cook would have to use only half as much as her recipes called for . . . well, at least they didn’t go to waste.

Before she had become the Lady of Croftholde, Hilde had been a farmer’s daughter and a maidservant. She had grown beetroots and onions, and she understood their value far better than any fine lady could, especially when a portion of every crop was sent to feed the endless war between Eldmere and Relance. What was left was never quite enough, so wasting food seemed to her to be a far greater sin than working a little Charm—no matter how reviled Charmers might be. That she was careful about how clandestinely she worked her Charm was a simple matter of common sense.

She emerged from the root cellar, brushing an errant cobweb from her face. Han, her sister, was striding across the yard toward her.

“Where’s his Lordship?” Han asked, scraping her swoop of cropped black hair back with one hand.

“Thorgoode went into the village to talk to the new farrier.”

This farrier was not inclined, as the old one had been, to take promises of future chickens or as-yet-ungrown sacks of barley as payment for his services, and Thorgoode was determined he rethink this position. The village ran largely on goodwill and trust, and the sooner the new farrier learned to trust his neighbors, the better.

“He hasn’t returned?” said Han.

Hilde squinted at the sky. The sun was already sinking down below the walls of the Croft.

Han was right. He should have been back.

“He probably got caught up drinking an ale at Jak’s, or stopped to help deliver a calf or some such. You know how he is.” Thorgoode was the sort of man who had ten jolly conversations before breakfast.

Han’s scowl deepened. “We’re supposed to go over the plans for the new well.”

“I’ll fetch him. Will you please tell Cook we’ll have supper a bit late?”

Han nodded. Hilde tucked her skirts up into her belt and set out to find her wayward husband.



By way of the main road, it took little more than a quarter of an hour to walk from Croftholde down into the village. Croftholde was essentially a keep. It had once been a fortified tower, built almost a thousand years back—before Eldmere had been unified under one king—so that some little northern lord could sleep dry and safe. With its tall outer walls and rough-hewn stone, it still looked formidable upon the hill, though its function had changed over the years, from fortress to hunting lodge to glorified farmhouse.

For many centuries, the village had existed within Croftholde’s walls, but time had passed as it was wont to do, and slowly the threats that made walls necessary waned. Some enterprising soul built a mill in the nearby valley, several little houses soon joined it, and within the span of a hundred years, the whole village had migrated down the hill. So now there was Croftholde and there was the village, and they were no longer quite the same place.

Both were home to Hilde. She could easily have walked the road between them blindfolded without so much as a stumble, but on this day, her eyes were put to good use. She searched the tracts of farmland that she passed, peering through hedgerows and around boulder-built walls to see if she could catch a glimpse of Thorgoode. The long, slanted light of the sun going down turned the fields to golden furrows, then faded into the pale pink of twilight.

There was no sign of him, and she could tell by the warm lanterns beginning to glow from the windows of the cottages she passed that the day’s work was done and the tenants were tucked in for their own evening meals. Thorgoode was not delayed with helping at some farm task, then. He must be at Jak’s.

Jak’s was an inn, if an inn’s definition was measured by virtue of it having a room to house any visitors who might pass through the village and find themselves in need of a place to sleep for the night. Certainly that was how the king measured inns, and his laws would grant a license to sell drink only to establishments that met that condition. So on the very rare occasion that a visitor did somehow make it all the way to the most remote village in what the rest of Eldmere referred to as the Far Reach of the King’s Gaze, Jak would kick his two youngest sons out of their room and send them to sleep in the hayloft for the night, and thereby legally serve drink to the locals all the rest of the year.

Jak’s was always bustling in the evenings. As Hilde entered, the heat of the hearth prickled on her cold skin. Once the sun set on these new spring days, winter crept back in for the night.

She smiled at the Bramleys, who sat by the door nursing bowls of whatever Jak had over the fire that night, and they bobbed their heads at her, returning her greeting. Young Ian almost crashed into her as he swung around carrying four pints of ale from the bar to where he was sitting with the Fortuny boys by the window, but he righted his gangly limbs just in time. He winked at her.

“Sorry, Lady Croft!” he said. “Didn’t see you there.”

She knew that a real lady would be horrified by such a casual salutation from a tenant, but not two weeks ago, young Ian had watched her stick her hand halfway into the backside of a ewe so she could reposition a breech lamb. How could you expect people to bow and scrape to you when they saw you up to your elbows in sheep placenta every spring during lambing season?

“Evening, Ian. Have you seen Lord Croft?”

“Nah, but I just got here, my lady. You should ask Jak.”

Jak was slicing trenchers of bread at the bar, scowling at Rud, who was already so drunk he could barely sit upright. Rud’s wife, Janey, had died the previous winter of a sudden fever, and ever since, he’d taken to drinking his nights into oblivion and then fighting with whoever was on hand and drunk enough to not know better. Hilde ought to have a word with Jak about it, but now was not the time.

“Evening, Lady Croft,” said Jak, transferring his scowl to her. Jak always seemed cross, but he rarely meant it. “Our Ed minding himself right?”

Hilde had taken Jak’s eldest son on as a footman. Ed was a very bright and dedicated lad, always sunny where his father was stern.

“Splendidly, Jak. He’s a real credit to you.”

Jak’s glower softened.

“Aye. He was down to visit a few days back and said his Lordship told him that he could have a future working service in some big house. Maybe even be a valet someday.”

“If that’s what he wants, then I’m sure he will manage it,” she said.

“Just so long as he doesn’t get it into his head to run off to the front like some fool boys.”

The war with Relance had been slowly draining the youth from Eldmere’s villages for generations, and the only way they ever came back home again was in boxes. As far as Hilde could see, it was a colossal waste. She counted it as one of her successes that since she had become Lady Croft, none of Croftholde’s youth had enlisted.

“I think your Ed is a little too fond of sleeping in a bed and eating regular meals to find that appealing, but I promise I’ll keep an eye on him. Speaking of eyes, have you seen his Lordship tonight?”

“Aye, he stopped in to have a drink with the new farrier. But he left for home over an hour ago. If you walked down from the Croft, you should have crossed him.”

Well, of course; he must have taken the shortcut through the fields by the millpond and missed her. No doubt he was home now, going over those plans with Han.

She bid Jak good night, stopped and asked young Ian and the others to make sure Rud got home safely, then stepped out into the rapidly darkening evening. She decided she might as well take the shortcut herself and try to make it home before night fell completely.

Leaving the village, she cut across a field, skirted a hedgerow, then walked through a copse of windbreak trees. Coming out onto a little laneway that led to the back gate of the Croft, she paused, squinting in the near dark. Was that a dead sheep just ahead, lying across the path? If it was one from the Croft’s flock, she’d have to remember to tell Han.

It wasn’t a sheep.