Read Online The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw - Free Book Online Page A

she asked.
    “I dunno. I saw it—” Saaski’s glance went to the shed wall, and Old Bess’s followed it. The mark was there again, slightly glimmering, then partly gone. “D’you see?” said Saaski. “It comes and goes like that.”
    Old Bess gazed silently at the wall, then at Saaski. “I see nothing,” she said.
    “But—” Saaski went to the wall, stood on tiptoe to put one finger on the mark itself. “Just there.”
    “Aye, I don’t doubt you, child,” said Old Bess slowly. “But I can’t see it.”
    For a moment their eyes met—Saaski’s puzzled, Old Bess’s speculative.
    “Draw it again—on the ground there,” said the woman.
    Saaski tried her best. It was not the same, but close enough. “What is it?” she asked. “I saw it t’other time, too.”
    “What other time?”
    There, now, I’ve gone and let it out, thought Saaski, bracing herself for a tongue-lashing. She drew a long breath. “T’other time Moll was milked afore I got here.”
    “I see.” Old Bess did not really seem surprised. “So that’s happened again today?”
    Saaski nodded, and waited, uncertain which was coming—the expected scolding or totally unexpected support.
    Old Bess said quietly, “The mark is a rune. I think it is a sign meaning a cow may be milked here—and the thief will go blameless because the blame will fall on someone else.”
    Saaski could feel her eyes stretching wider and wider. The word rune was echoing and re-echoing in her mind, filling all its spaces. It was several moments before she grasped the rest of the remark. “Somebody wants me blamed?” she faltered.
    “Maybe not that, exactly. Just—there is safety for the thief if you are.”
    Saaski barely heard the answer. “What is a rune?” she asked urgently.
    “A kind of writing.”
    “I think I know some other ones,” whispered Saaski, rather frightening herself. “Or once did,” she added confusedly. “I daresay ’twas a dream.”
    “Could you draw one of the others?”
    “I could not,” Saaski said quickly, unwilling to try or even to ask herself why she was unwilling. She cast about hurriedly for some safe subject.
    Old Bess supplied it. “Suppose we wash this mark off the wall. If you guide my hand, I will do the washing.”
    “Will we tell my mother?” whispered Saaski.
    Old Bess smiled briefly. “We will tell Anwara the cow was milked. But I will come with you to tell her. The washing we will do later, when she has gone to the Lowfield to weed her peas.”
    So it happened. Saaski did not know why it was so much easier to break the ill news with Old Bess standing, calm and silent, behind her, but it was. It even seemed easier for Anwara to take the blow—or else she was too dismayed to rage. She merely stood by the table and heard Saaski out, her hands motionless in the bread dough, her thin shoulders drooping. Then she sighed deeply, wiped her hands, and went to poke up the fire.
    “Put away the churn, then,” she said harshly. “You will bake the loaves this morning while I’m at my weeding. Don’t let them burn.”
    “I won’t, Mumma,” Saaski murmured, and that was the end of it.
    Later, when Anwara had gone to the Lowfield and the loaves were cooling, Old Bess came back, carrying a smallcloth-wrapped bundle. “Fetch a bowl and put a little water in it,” she told Saaski. “And a pinch of salt,” she added when the bowl was ready.
    Saaski hesitated, then found a spoon to dip the salt out of its wooden box. Salt had always stung her fingers.
    “Now come along,” said Old Bess.
    Saaski obeyed, carefully balancing the bowl and eyeing the little bundle still tucked under Old Bess’s arm. Except for old man Fiach and his dog, both dozing in a dooryard, the street was empty. From the smithy just beyond the cowshed the clang of Yanno’s hammer sounded rhythmically on the still, sun-warmed air. Old Bess walked straight to the shed wall, stooped down, and opened her bundle on the ground. It was full of