Read Online The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw - Free Book Online

the moor, you hear? You’ve got no call to be there. You’re never to go there again.”
    Saaski was staring at him now. “Not ever?” she gasped.
    “Leastways till you’re a grown maid and know what’s what. Moor’s a wild sort of place. No playground for snippets like you.”
    “But Da’—but please—”
    “That’ll do, now. No argufying.” Yanno glanced toward the doorway as Anwara stepped in. “Your mother’ll say the same!”
    Anwara pulled off her shawl and hung it on its accustomed peg, asking absently, “The same as what?” Without waiting for an answer she added, “What was the great forgathering up around the well just now? A body’d think ’twas a conventicle!”
    “Conventicle of gossiping, same as every day,” Yanno muttered. His glance at Saaski told her clearly to keep her mouth shut. She was glad to obey.
    “Gossiping about what? They broke up fast enough when they saw me coming!” Anwara was eyeing them both suspiciously.
    “How should I know? I was at my forge. Cattila’s cousin Mikkel was around, blethering some tale!” Yanno wavedthe subject away. “The child here was on the moor again this morning—right among Mikkel’s sheep, she was, ’cause he saw her there. Now, wife, I’ve told her to stay below the wall—and off the moor. From this minute till I say different! You’re to tell her the same.”
    His tone was stern enough to divert Anwara’s attention from the well gossipers to Saaski, who stood numb and despairing, thinking of Tam and the juggling and the piping, now never to be hers. There was no use hoping Anwara would defend her this time. She had ever fretted about the moor, scolded when Saaski ran away there, begged and ordered her to stay below the wall. The moor was wild and dangerous. Some said there were wolves. Everyone knew there were treacherous bogs, tales aplenty of grown men wandering off the trails and losing their way, breaking a leg in some mishap and dying helpless of pain and starvation—and other, darker tales of bogles and hobgoblins, of Moorfolks’ mischief and the fool’s-fire that led you where it willed. . . .
    It sounded nothing like Saaski’s beloved moor, which for her was wide with freedom and unshadowed by fear. But Yanno meant what he said this time. He and Anwara changed the list of her duties and the shape of her day; before they were finished she was all but house-tethered.
    It was all that rattlehead shepherd’s doing, Saaski thought bitterly. Yanno was afeard of his tongue, that was the long and short of it.
    Her vexations were not over. Ill luck came in threes, everyone said, and the third blow fell a few mornings later. She went out to the shed to milk and again found Moll’sbag empty. Someone—or something—had once more got there ahead of her. This time no one could blame the calf, which was now stalled in Siward’s ox-shed, across the road.
    They would blame Saaski. She knew it well.
    She stood a moment, baffled and angry, just outside the shed door, telling herself to go on, go back home and get it over with, but dreading to face Anwara and start the village tongues wagging once again. Suddenly she turned to scan the rough wooden wall beside her, remembering the strange mark she had seen there—or almost seen—that other morning this had happened.
    And there it was again.
    It seemed clearer this time. Fresher. There were three straggling lines crossed by another, all contained within a mark curved like a cupped hand. She stared at it until it wavered and vanished, then put down her empty bucket, found a twig, and tried to scratch the pattern in the dirt.
    It was oddly hard to copy. She was on her third attempt when a shadow fell across her hand, and she found Old Bess leaning over her, watching. Quickly she straightened up, scrubbed at her scratchings with a bare foot.
    “Nay, child, don’t rub them out. Let me see.” Old Bess put out a restraining hand, but she did not sound angry. “What is that mark?”