Read Online Night of the Wolf by Alice Borchardt - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alice Borchardt
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pushed her way through the cave’s cover and took her zigzag path down the hillside.
Sometimes she did tend the flax. Its patches of blue flowers lay the way a fine dyestuff would if spilled by a careless hand, soaking into the deeper pine green covering the steep sides of the ridge, creating a patchwork effect up to the hilltop.
During the worst and driest part of the summer, drought resistant as flax is, it needed watering. She carried water from a stream flowing down the ridge from garden to garden, a difficult task even with his help.
Flax wasn’t the only thing she tended. On the driest, hottest, most exposed outer parts of the hillside, she cultivated the herbs she used to dye her thread. Tiny aromatic chamomile, yarrow, elecampane, and a multitude of others he couldn’t put a name to. Some grew wild. All she needed to do with these was to protect and encourage them. Others, like the elder, needed no encouragement, but grew rampantly and required only harvesting at the right season.
Her knowledge of weaving and dyeing was handed down to her by the women in her family—noble women who didn’t do most of the work themselves, but were trained to supervise the multitude of workers attached to their households in the manufacture of large amounts of cloth. These fine weavings were sold or traded as far as Greece on the one hand, and some even crossed the channel to the British Isles on the other.
Here on this farm she was alone, so she was forced to do all the work herself. Yet still her manufactures were always in demand during the quarterly fairs accompanying the great feasts at each season of the year.
Over time, he came to know the whole family—not difficult since they were now very few. All of Kat’s brothers but one had died in the wars that raged over Gaul after Caesar’s invasion. As Clarissa had said, the work was done by Imona, Kat, and Kat’s husband, Des.
Des was a big, quiet man who feared his wife’s tongue and temper. The wolf was puzzled by his industry, sustained labor being as foreign to the gray wolf’s nature as Imona’s weaving skills, until Imona told him that Des’ work in the fields allowed him to escape Kat’s continual hectoring.
Maeniel knew the odors of each. Imona was a collection of seductive fragrances. Kat was sour, as if her frustration with life communicated itself to her clothing in a succession of harsh statements. Des smelled of the work he did, brassy sunlight and perspiration.
Imona’s husband, Leon, was the strangest of all. To the wolf, he smelled dead. Not the raw scent of the newly slain or even the heavy carrion smell of a carcass rotting in the sun, but the dry, moldy smell of a pile of bones lying in the shadows, covered with dark splotches of lichen and gray patches of moss.
When it grew dark, the wolf crept down. He peered through chinks in the walls of the hut. They were eating, gathered near the fire. A rushlight illuminated the round house. Leon ate without seeming to be aware of anything around him. Des appeared to enjoy his food and the company of his sister-in-law.
Kat’s elderly mother, toothless and exiled from the table because of her sloppy habits, sat in a corner, slobbering over a bowl of porridge.
“I like the one you have on the loom now,” Des said to Imona.
She laughed and replied in a low voice. “Red is hard to get. Finding a red dye that will set and not run when it’s washed is the very devil.”
The wolf surmised they were speaking about Imona’s newest weaving. He’d watched Imona struggle long and hard warping the loom. It had taken up most of the last three mornings. And even when she’d been with him, Imona had seemed preoccupied. But when he saw her intentions turned into cloth, he reveled as much as she did in its loveliness.
She’d used the softest flax she had, and dyed it with just enough blue to make it glow with a pearl’s sheen, then added a sprinkling of green threads and, at last, a touch of red, a fiery
Sometimes she did tend the flax. Its patches of blue flowers lay the way a fine dyestuff would if spilled by a careless hand, soaking into the deeper pine green covering the steep sides of the ridge, creating a patchwork effect up to the hilltop.
During the worst and driest part of the summer, drought resistant as flax is, it needed watering. She carried water from a stream flowing down the ridge from garden to garden, a difficult task even with his help.
Flax wasn’t the only thing she tended. On the driest, hottest, most exposed outer parts of the hillside, she cultivated the herbs she used to dye her thread. Tiny aromatic chamomile, yarrow, elecampane, and a multitude of others he couldn’t put a name to. Some grew wild. All she needed to do with these was to protect and encourage them. Others, like the elder, needed no encouragement, but grew rampantly and required only harvesting at the right season.
Her knowledge of weaving and dyeing was handed down to her by the women in her family—noble women who didn’t do most of the work themselves, but were trained to supervise the multitude of workers attached to their households in the manufacture of large amounts of cloth. These fine weavings were sold or traded as far as Greece on the one hand, and some even crossed the channel to the British Isles on the other.
Here on this farm she was alone, so she was forced to do all the work herself. Yet still her manufactures were always in demand during the quarterly fairs accompanying the great feasts at each season of the year.
Over time, he came to know the whole family—not difficult since they were now very few. All of Kat’s brothers but one had died in the wars that raged over Gaul after Caesar’s invasion. As Clarissa had said, the work was done by Imona, Kat, and Kat’s husband, Des.
Des was a big, quiet man who feared his wife’s tongue and temper. The wolf was puzzled by his industry, sustained labor being as foreign to the gray wolf’s nature as Imona’s weaving skills, until Imona told him that Des’ work in the fields allowed him to escape Kat’s continual hectoring.
Maeniel knew the odors of each. Imona was a collection of seductive fragrances. Kat was sour, as if her frustration with life communicated itself to her clothing in a succession of harsh statements. Des smelled of the work he did, brassy sunlight and perspiration.
Imona’s husband, Leon, was the strangest of all. To the wolf, he smelled dead. Not the raw scent of the newly slain or even the heavy carrion smell of a carcass rotting in the sun, but the dry, moldy smell of a pile of bones lying in the shadows, covered with dark splotches of lichen and gray patches of moss.
When it grew dark, the wolf crept down. He peered through chinks in the walls of the hut. They were eating, gathered near the fire. A rushlight illuminated the round house. Leon ate without seeming to be aware of anything around him. Des appeared to enjoy his food and the company of his sister-in-law.
Kat’s elderly mother, toothless and exiled from the table because of her sloppy habits, sat in a corner, slobbering over a bowl of porridge.
“I like the one you have on the loom now,” Des said to Imona.
She laughed and replied in a low voice. “Red is hard to get. Finding a red dye that will set and not run when it’s washed is the very devil.”
The wolf surmised they were speaking about Imona’s newest weaving. He’d watched Imona struggle long and hard warping the loom. It had taken up most of the last three mornings. And even when she’d been with him, Imona had seemed preoccupied. But when he saw her intentions turned into cloth, he reveled as much as she did in its loveliness.
She’d used the softest flax she had, and dyed it with just enough blue to make it glow with a pearl’s sheen, then added a sprinkling of green threads and, at last, a touch of red, a fiery
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