The Secret Keepers Daughter

 Etain cursed the full moon that night. The way it picked up the dust encrusted moths nestled within the oaks. How it illuminated the light blue veins threaded across the back of her hands. There should be no way of hiding secrets on a night such as this, she thought, as she slid the clods of damp soil back over the hole she had scraped from the ground with her bitter cold fingers.

 Her breath swirled before her in great plumes of icy blue smoke, as though she had the power to exhale a wisp and not air. The tears had flowed from her pale grey eyes were now frozen to her chapped cheeks. Absently, she tried to wipe them away, smearing the brown earth across her face. Etain sat back, her knees tucked neatly below her. She tried to wipe the dirt onto her long brown skirts. Closing her eyes and trying her hardest not to remember what she’d done, Etain stood up. She took a tentative step back from the untidy mound.

 It was over. She had to remember that now. Etain took another shaky step towards home, and another. Each new step away from the mound of dirt struck her heart like a hammer on a china doll, leaving deep cracks criss-crossing the hollow surface.

 A lonely owl called out hopefully to her mate. Etain smirked as the call was left unanswered. Etain had done the same with Whistler. Etain had called to her lover, desperation etched into every fibre of her face and he had left her call unanswered. Now he lay each night with Ove, the blacksmiths daughter. She wondered if their matching golden bands glinted in the moonlight? No, she decided with a shudder, she had to push all these thoughts away. She’d go as mad as the hare if she let the thoughts settle and sprout in her mind.

 Exhaustion clung heavily onto Etain as she emerged like a ghost from the cover of the woods. Along the old dusty lane, she could see her home. Her tired eyes glanced up and Etain felt her heart freeze.

 It was late, almost dawn, but a golden glow shone through the broken shutters next to the door. Mother must be awake, she thought, terror coursing through her veins. Had the old woman gone to seek Etain? Found her bed empty? Or worse, would the bitter tang of blood still hang in the air?

 The door opened. Etain hid herself behind the rough bark of a wide oak, peering around the outside. A figure was silhouetted against the amber glow from within. A tall figure, wide shoulders, a flat cap. A man. Relief flooded through Etain. Merely a customer! Though why this one had come so late was a mystery. And a mystery it would always remain, she thought. Etain’s jaw twitched. Her night must become a mystery too and soon. She had to find a way of getting the Mother back to bed as quickly as she could.

 The man walked away from the ramshackle white house. Smoke already pluming from the broken chimney showed Mother had finished her task and would be busy counting her coins. Etain waited until she could no longer hear the fall of the man’s boots echo about the lonely marshes and she rushed towards the house.

 The warmth from within swept over her as she pushed open the heavy door and entered.

 “Etain?” The figure stooped over a dark oak bench looked up, startled. Her heavily lined face bore the mark of terror as her unseeing pearl white eyes looked towards the door.

 “Yes, Mother. It’s me. Don’t worry so.”

 Etain picked up a brightly coloured shawl and rushed over to the huddled figure. A wide, bright smile lit up the crone’s face as her daughter enveloped her with the shawl, pushed the stray wisps of fine silver hair away from her face.

 “Where have you been Etain? It’s so late.” the mother asked, her voice as cracked as her face.

 “I needed some cool air,” Etain lied. “Why was that man here so late?”

 Etain led the old woman to a chair by the fire, pushing the woman to sit as she let out a toothless chuckle.

 “Why do they all come here?” She said, her glassy eyes reflecting the embers of the fire. “The man had to lay his secret to rest. To hide it with the others.”

 Etain felt a ripple of fear flow through her. She had her own secret she needed to hide. With her fingers trembling, Etain took hold of a wooden cup. She ladled in the boiling water that bubbled above the dying flames in the grate.

 She took some chamomile, lavender and crushed them together, adding them to the water. The deep, heavy scent temporarily stilling the tremble that threatened to expose her. She held her breath, and looking back to check the old woman, Etain took a pinch of black powder from a high up shelf. She dropped the ebony grains quickly into the water. Her heart racing as she stirred them together briskly.

 “Here,” Etain said gently, taking her mother’s withered hand and placing the warm cup within. “Drink this. It will help you to sleep.”

 The Mother nodded her head. Her lips pursed together in a thin line. Etain tried to still the rapid beating within her chest as the mother took a sip of the tea, nodding gravely again.

 It was the curse of the secret keeper to know and hold each secret that they hid. No matter if the butcher had been lying with a woman who was not his, or a beggar had stolen a loaf to feed her hollow eyed children or a King who was so scared for his throne that he had slit the throats of his brothers in their sleep, the secret keeper bore the weight of the knowledge so no one else ever would.

 It was a future Etain had not wanted. Since she had first learnt that she would one day take the scrolls and write down the secrets, she had fought against it. Her pale grey eyes sought out the town beyond the horizon. No, she had told the mother, Etain would never be the holder of the secrets. She had always refused. She day dreamed in the lessons, glaring at the mother as she wrapped her knuckles as punishment for not concentrating. This had never been what Etain desired. Not until tonight anyway.

 Etain sat quietly, listening to the crackling of the fire, watching the old woman’s whiskery chin nod down towards her chest. The cup tilted and Etain prised it from the claw like grip of the Mother’s twisted fingers. She placed it back onto the table and trying to stall her breath, tip toed away from the Mother, and through a door into the workshop.

 Two candles danced in the breeze as Etain entered. She carefully picked one up and headed to the long workbench. It was cooler in here and the tools the Mother had just used still lay upon the rough surface. Etain snorted, the Mother had never been the tidiest. The air was thick with the rich scent of ink and parchment. Etain sat herself on the tall stool, rearranged her skirts and smoothed down her hair. Her pale eyes looked from the myriad of ink pots that sat glistening in the weak candle light. She closed her eyes and tried to recall her lessons.

 Each secret required its own special ink. It was the only way that it could be concealed correctly. Her long fingers traced over the letters on each pot, desperately trying to recall which ink she would need to use. There was only ever one chance. If you chose wrong, then the secret could seep out, spill from the parchment and those you wished to hoodwink would suddenly know what you intended to hide from them. Secret keepers had been murdered for getting it wrong. Another reason why this was not the future Etain hoped for. Now there was no longer a choice.  

 A small shiver of a memory danced towards her. The Mother telling her how the blood of the elder stag would hold the secrets of death.

 Etain straightened her spine as though to defy the exhaustion that threatened to envelop her. Unlike the broad man who had left with a lighter step, Etain would not be free from her secret. It would continue to slice away slivers of her soul for eternity.

 She dipped the quill into the scarlet ink, and began to scratch her story onto the thick parchment. Huddled over the yellowing paper, tendrils of hair escaped and brushed her cheeks. She stopped only to refill her quill and wipe away one, stray tear.

 She told the parchment how she had lain with Whistler, how she had allowed herself to be taken in by the words, the gentle touch of his fingers against her skin. She knew he’d been promised to the blacksmith’s daughter. She was well aware that he shouldn’t have been hers. He never could really be fully hers, and yet, those soft whispers that his lips told her, of them leaving, waking together, they had filled her with a glorious glow she had never experienced. The parchment didn’t judge her as she wrote how she found herself carrying his child. It didn’t shed a tear as she explained how she had gone to him the night before his wedding nor did it feel any pity for her as she had sat on the ground before a stony-faced Whistler, sobbing and begging. Her body wasn’t strong enough to cope with sitting in the chapel and watching them become man and wife, so her body took the decision from her. It didn’t allow their baby to stay in this world and so, in the chill night air, she had walked through the shadow of the woods. With her slender fingers she had ripped the sodden mud from the ground and placed their tiny child in a shallow grave.

 Etain arched her back, cricked her neck towards the crack in the shutters where the weak light of the new day sliced through. Mother would wake soon, and she would have to continue as though all was the same as it ever had been.

The parchment was rolled and Etain watched as the thick flow of molten wax sealed it for ever. She wrote her name over the still warm wax. It was done.

 There was a faint rustling from the main room. Etain sighed, knowing she would need to hurry. She went to the shelves, where row upon untidy row of secrets lay.

 What would happen if she were to reveal them, she wondered? Would the world go mad? Father against son? Husband against wife? Lover against lover? She noted the dried dirt that still lay under her white nails and wished she could go to the river and wash the memory of last night from her as her eyes slid over the names on the scrolls; Elijah, Johannes, Aubrey, Willowson.

 Suddenly, she stopped, blinked. With an icy grip on her soul one of the newer scrolls cried out to her. She picked it up. Her fingers traced over the spidery, ill formed writing of the mother.

 Ove.

 There was a grumbling now from the main room. The Mother would want her porridge. Etain should put the scroll back. She should never read what secret her rival had.

 “Etain?” came the weak call from the other room.

 With her fingers trembling, she placed the scroll back with its fellow secrets, took a step towards the main room.

 But the anger and hurt she carried overwhelmed her usual judgment. Etain’s fingers grabbed the scroll, split the seal with a crack that echoed and she rolled out the curling paper on the workbench, scattering the tools that had been left there.

 It was as though she had been plunged naked into the frozen river. A raw and creeping baptism as her eyes darted about and she absorbed the secret of the blacksmith’s daughter. Etain’s shoulders shook and a flash illuminated her steely eyes.

 “Etain?” came the desperate call from the other room.

 She straightened up, looked towards the door and tilted her chin high.

 “Etain? Are you there my child?”

 Something scraped on the workbench and Etain walked out from the workshop.

 The Mother sat in front of the dead fire, thin swirls of smoke twirling in the grate beyond her. The Mother’s bottom lip trembled and she turned sharply as she heard the door to the workshop close behind Etain.

 “Etain?”

 “Yes, Mother.” The voice was hers, but Etain had no concept of how her voice was as still as the waters of the river on a dry summer’s day.

 “Why are you in the workshop?” said the old woman, her forehead becoming a mass of etched lines. “What have you been doing?”

 Etain walked toward the Mother. The shawl had fallen from one of her shoulders and Etain gently placed it back over the fragile frame. Taking a deep breath, Etain sat neatly on the stool before the Mother. She tilted her head and stared into the unseeing white clouds of her Mother’s eyes.

 “I went out last night Mother,” she said, laying her hand softly over the leathery mass of bones that was her Mother’s.

 “I know,” she chuckled. “You’ll catch your death if you do that.”

 “I didn’t have much choice though,” Etain continued.

 The old woman furrowed her brows. “I’m in no mood for riddles, Etain. Come and get the breakfast. We have much to sort today.”

 “No,”

 “No?” anger flashed across the shrivelled face. “And why do you say no to me?”

 “You know why I went out, don’t you?” Etain’s voice was low and soft.

 The Mother’s lip trembled, she drew her hands back.

 “You wanted to take air. Now come, we …..”

 “You know that’s not the reason, don’t you Mother?”

 Etain leaned in closer. She could see the white hairs sticking out of the crone’s nose, smell the sour milk and chamomile on her warm breath.

 “I don’t want this nonsense.” The Mother said, her voice high and pained. She tried to lift her old bones from the chair, but Etain reached out, pushed the old hag back.

 “You knew I was having his baby. You both did.”

 The Mother’s face lit up with shock, her mouth wide and floundering like a fish on the bank of a river.

 “You both knew that we were going, didn’t you?” Etain continued, enjoying watching as the Mother squirmed below her. “She came to you, didn’t she? And you couldn’t bare the thought of me leaving. You couldn’t bare the thought of me being anything other than this.”

 “You read a secret?” The Mother hissed.

 “I read how you created a tincture, a potion. I know how you and Ove subdued his mind. Made him hers. How you’ve been adding juniper to my water. She got you that juniper, didn't she? You both killed my baby.”

 Etain sat back and saw the lips of the Mother purse tightly, her eyes traced how the colour left her cheeks a ghostly grey. She delighted in how the old woman twisted in her seat. She watched patiently as the Mother collected her thoughts, opened her mouth ready to argue.

 That was when Etain struck. She twisted the pallet knife in the space where the rotting heart should have been, watched as the old woman shrieked and writhed. She waited while she saw the blood spill and bubble over her grey lips and heard the final grasping groan escape her.

 Etain sat back. She pushed her finger into the Mother’s cheek and smiled as the skin sagged inwards.

 She raised herself and locked the door. Etain was going to have a very busy day after all. She had another secret to write now, a new body to hide. By the time the pale lemon sun would dip behind the trees announcing the day was done, Etain would have a plethora of secrets to hide too. She smiled serenely. Ove wouldn’t understand why, but then that was the job of the secret keeper. To bare the shame of the secrets others could not.