Tathan brings a lamb from the fold

There were men outside – at least two.

Ffraid ducked beneath the height of the window before they could have seen more than a flash of flaming hair.

“Get the light,” she growled softly at Aelfgyth.

Aelfgyth squeaked and scurried to the back window. Frithugyth whispered, “Is it men?”

“Course it’s men!” Ffraid hissed. “Who else ever comes to the front?”

“In the middle of the night?” Aelfgyth whimpered fearfully.

“The light!”

Aelfgyth grabbed the lamp and puffed out the flame. Ffraid peeked up at the door just as the man outside pounded on the frame and cried through the crack: “Ffraid! Open up! It’s Ram!”

Ffraid groaned, “Ram!” and pulled herself up by the handle. “It’s your Da!” she told the girls.

Ffraid pushed, and outside Waleram pulled, but the door strained and creaked in a struggle between its hinges and the several feet of snow that had piled up outside as they slept.

Ffraid poked her head out into the frosty air as soon as her head would fit, but Waleram said, “We gotter get it open, Ffraid. Tathan’s got a girl he’s gotter get in there.”

“Tathan’s girl! Godamighty! Why didn’t you say so?”

Waleram grabbed the edge of the door with both hands and pulled and pulled, gradually scuffing a quarter-​​circle through the snow.

“It ain’t – his girl – ” he panted between grunts. “He found ‘er.”

Ffraid stepped back into the house, unable to find anything to say to that.

Grunt by grunt the door opened to reveal Tathan’s dark body against the snow, shadowy and massive and silent as a tree. One thin branch hung limp and ominously askew.

“Bring ‘er in!” Waleram called.

Tathan plowed through the snow like an ox, but he minced and tottered when he reached the door, trying to fit his broad shoulders through without battering the body of the girl. Finally, with a mighty shrug, he flung the dangling arm over his shoulder and sidled in.

At the sight of the limp hand Aelfgyth whimpered, “Oh my God, Gifu!”

“T’ain’t Gifu!” Waleram said. “Tathan found ‘er in the snow.”

Tathan spun halfway around, nearly banging the girl’s legs against the wall. The arm flopped free again and swung at her side.

“Who is it, Da?” Frithugyth begged.

“It’s a girl what Tathan found, sweetie,” Aelfgyth explained.

“What girl?” little Editha asked.

“All right, that’s enough!” Ffraid bellowed. “What girl! Now out of the way! Put her down on Gyth’s bed and get the hell out of my way!”

They all scrambled, as panicked people will when told what to do. Ffraid slammed the door and stomped after them, bearing up her crackling fury in spite of the snow and slush her bare feet were slapping through.

“Watch ‘er legs!” Waleram warned as he and Tathan lowered the girl onto the rumpled bed. Her head hung sickeningly like a strangled bird’s until it nestled into the pillow. As the body unfolded, Ffraid saw that the front of the girl’s cloak was glittering with a crust of crushed show that had frozen into the weave.

She elbowed her way to the bedside as soon as the flopping of the settling limbs had ceased.

Aelfgyth gasped, “She’s just a little girl!”

“She ain’t dead, is she, Ffraid?” Tathan whimpered. “She was mewing and mewing when I found ‘er – ”

“Just like a kitten!” Aelfgyth lamented.

“But she hain’t made a peep in so long…”

Ffraid brushed a few locks of stiff hair from the the girl’s mouth and tried to finger out a pulse in the frigid neck.

Tathan blubbered, “And all the way I just kept praying and praying, Lord Father, don’t let ‘er die in my arms!”

“That’s better nor dying in the snow, Tathan,” Aelfgyth soothed him.

“You think so, Aelfie?”

“Will you two bitches shut up back there?” Ffraid barked. “I’m trying to listen!”

Tathan squeaked, “Sorry, Ffraid…”

Ffraid bent her head to the girl’s.

Her cold throat smelled of winter and of Tathan’s sweat. The collar of her cloak swelled over her breast like the rim of a wound packed tightly with a clot of snow.

But Ffraid heard the hiss of a sighing breath at her ear.

“She’s alive,” she announced.

“Praise God!” Tathan gasped.

“Where’d you find her, Tathan?” Aelfgyth asked.

“In the fold, just like a little baby lamb,” Tathan gabbled. “My dogs was barking till I thought it was a wolf…”

“All right!” Ffraid interrupted. “Enough of your barnyard jibber-​​jabber! Aelfie, you go get a kettle of water heated up for me, and Tathan, you take this here pail and go get me some snow – or just scoop it up off the floor, with all the mess you’re making with your boots!”

“Sorry, Ffraid…”

“And Aelfie, you get some wine warmed up, too, in case she wakes. And better give some to these two fat-​​bellies, too,” she said wearily.

“Thank you kindly, Ffraid,” Tathan bowed.

Ffraid shrieked, “Move!” and they all scattered. “Not you, Ram!” she hollered. “Get back here and help me turn her over and get this coat off her!”

Ffraid clawed at the laces of the cloak, but they were frozen into the glassy plaques of ice that clung to the wool like a breast of mail.

Waleram unsheathed a knife and said ponderously, “Let me try.”

Ffraid snatched the knife out of his hand and sawed up through the laces herself before Waleram had the time to do more than be offended.

“Your manhood, sir,” she muttered as she handed it back to him.

“You hain’t seen my manhood yet, honey,” Waleram breathed at her ear.

“Lucky for your manhood,” Ffraid grumbled as she yanked the flaps of the cloak’s breast open. “Godamighty!” she gasped. “How in hell? She’s stuffed full of snow like a roasting hen full of butter!”

She scooped the snow away in handfuls and swept it back onto the floor, and even heedlessly across her own bare knees.

“Better look at ‘er legs,” Waleram advised, his voice gravely serious once more. “Tathan said one on ‘em wasn’t hanging right.”

Ffraid leaned aside on her elbow and watched as Waleram tugged on the hems of the girl’s cloak and dress. He had scarcely drawn them up past her ankles when Ffraid saw that one of the feet was lying at an impossible angle.

“It’s broke,” Waleram grunted.

“Godamighty,” Ffraid sighed. “Did it break the skin?”

Waleram slid his big hands up the leg, delicately twisting it straight again. “No.”

Ffraid sighed again and pushed the cloak back over the shoulders as far as she could.

“I guess she was crawling,” Waleram said.

“Help me roll her over and get this coat off her.”

As they struggled with the sleeves, Tathan came thumping back through the door with his pail full of snow. “Where should I put it, Ffraid? Oh! Lord! Her leg!” he wailed.

“Put it down by the door and go in the kitchen.”

“I knew it was broke or something!”

Ffraid pounded her fists down on the straw mattress and howled, “Move!”

Tathan dropped the pail and hurried around the wall.

“I guess she was dragging herself,” Waleram muttered.

Ffraid pressed her fists beneath her cheekbones and pushed with all her strength, trying to squeeze the image out of her mind.

“Will you shut up unless I ask you a question, you addle-​​witted mongrel?” she growled.

Waleram grunted and lifted the girl’s body high enough for Ffraid to tug the cloak out from beneath her.

“That’s a nice ‘un,” Waleram said knowingly. “She’ll be a maid from up to Raegiming.”

Ffraid stopped struggling to turn the girl over in search of laces, and slid her hand down the soft sleeve to its end. The girl’s fingers were cold and ominously hard.

“She won’t be working no more,” Ffraid prophesied grimly.

She patted the girl’s icy cheek and touched her thumb to the white lips. They parted stiffly and slowly folded back into an expressionless line.

“You don’t think she was coming to see you, Ffraid?” Waleram whispered.

Ffraid took a deep breath of anger and held it in her lungs, savoring its toxic essence like a mouthful of wine and bitter herbs. She did not believe the old lord had yet been responsible for the death of a girl, but she had always known it would only be a matter of time. She had simply not known it would be like this.

Subtly she stretched out an arm beneath Waleram’s nose and slid her hand down the girl’s ribs to her flat belly.

Waleram turned his head and breathed down the length of her arm, ruffling its fine, coppery hairs like wind over grass.

Ffraid curled her fingers and pressed down, probing into the hollow between the bony heights of the girl’s pelvis. She found nothing but a partly-​​filled bladder. Subtly she withdrew her hand.

“I don’t think so,” she whispered.

“Maybe it’s too soon to tell?” Waleram suggested.

Ffraid sighed warmly over the white face. The girl’s eyelids were already raw and swollen from the clumsy rubbing of numb hands over frigid tears. The tip of the pretty little nose was already steel blue.

“Ram, that’s going to be the least of her worries.”