"This foot is blistered to hell," he said rubbing it and I ran to fetch him a poultice.
Of all my siblings Tomas was the one I remembered best. He was the oldest and had always been the one to pick me out of puddles and, with a story and a kiss, tuck me into bed in the small dark room at the top of the stairs where we children slept in two big beds. My adored elder brother who had always seemed so big and strong. Now I was almost as tall as he was.
The other brother, Hamel did not sit.
Instead he took my hand and squeezed it tight. His hands were huge and covered in calluses.
"We are very glad to find you, Dion, and to see you so well," he said smiling with such sincerity, that despite the fact that I wasn't sure which of the others he was, I warmed to him instantly.
"Aye," said Tomas. "We've been on the road for almost three weeks now. We've been to Gallia and back. I spoke with your friend Kitten Avignon. In fact she gave me this letter for you. Here!"
He reached into his coat and passed the small white packet to me. I stood there uncertain about opening it. A letter from Kitten Avignon was normally a great event for me, but brothers ... That was even more so.
Tomas smiled at me for the first time. "We heard stories of your power to make a brother's heart proud. They still speak of your fight with that demon with awe. You're almost a legend in Gallia." He grinned. "As you were in Annac. Do you remember that time when you were three and you threw Arvy Ironmonger into the horse trough because he threw horse dung at you?"
"Yes!" I cried, my shyness chased away by delight. My memories of that time were the fuddled memories of a very small child, but one of them fitted what Tomas had said. "Was he a mean boy with black hair that stood up in the front? Who used to always call us whore's spawn? Oh yes! Did that really happen? That was great. He ran off bawling, didn't he?"
"Aye! And Aunt Minnette begged Marnie to put you in a witch manacle before anything worse happened. Sweet Tansa, Dion! Even when you were small, you were so powerful. Magic used to just flow out of you. Do you remember how the others used to get you to pull the sugar tin down from the mantle? Marnie had to put an iron chain round it in the end."
"Marnie?"
"Our mother," said Hamel quietly. "Dion looks like her, doesn't she Tomas?"
Tomas shrugged.
"How is ... our mother?" I was not sure I really wanted to know. When I had asked my foster father about that half dreamed mother at that half remembered inn, he had told me that being careless, foolish and of loose morals, she had had more children than she could feed and had happily sold me for a minimal sum to a passing mage. In the end I had come to believe him. That didn't mean I wanted the story confirmed.
"Ah Dion. I'm sorry," said Hamel. "She's been dead these three years."
"Oh!" I felt disappointment deep inside me. A door closed forever.
"And she never got to know of your success," said Tomas regretfully. "She would have been so proud and happy. She agonized about sending you away."
I blinked in surprise.
"Well don't look so surprised. What mother wouldn't?" said Tomas sharply. "But she had to. You had to learn to control your power. You were a danger to yourself and others as you were. She was trying to get the fee together for the healer's college when that Michael came and offered to take you. Even offered money for you which we always needed. But that didn't mean she liked doing it. She never even spent that money in the end. She buried it under the statue of the Blessed Mother in the Holy Way with a prayer for your protection. So have a bit of gratitude for her. You were lucky. You got away."
"Oh yes?" I snapped. His anger came out of nowhere and it made me angry. I could feel how much I wanted to believe this nice little story, a story which didn't fit with the heartless, promiscuous woman I had long believed my mother to be.
"Tomas, don't be such a bear," said Hamel easily. "You don't know what its like to be sent away. And you know Marnie said she would be full of doubting. Why shouldn't she be? Dion has no way of knowing any of these things. Marnie sent me away too," he told me. "When I was eight my father, Jean Miller took me away to be his apprentice. His wife was barren and he had no other child. Even though he told her not too, Marnie used to walk almost 7 miles to see me. At least once a month. Even to just wave at me in the street. Now I will be miller after him. A respectable profession with security. I missed her so much then and hated her sometimes, but it made my fortune. And it made yours. Can you not see?"
I was filled with the most astonishing and bitter jealousy.
"She never came to see me. All those years and not one word."
"That pig Michael insisted on that," said Tomas. "That was the kind of miserable fellow he was. He told her that if she ever contacted you, he'd send you back. He believed that contact with "a disreputable woman," he actually called her that to her face, can you believe it, could only do you harm. Possibly he was right. She believed him right. But that doesn't mean she didn't think of you often. She disobeyed him almost immediately. That day he took you away, we all watched you go, and the minute you disappeared over the hill it was as if a kind of panic took her and she turned and told me to follow you.
”'Find out where he's taking her,' she cried, ‘and if there's aught ill about the place or how he treats her, steal her away and bring her home to us.' So I walked behind you all the way to Mangalore, almost eighty miles that was, and I slept with the Wanderers under a hedgerow there for a week and everyday I'd creep around his house watching how he treated you, till he caught me, boxed my ears and sent me away with a harsh message for her. I saw no reason to take you away. There was nothing for you at Annac."
I was silent thinking of my foster father, that hard, judging man, of my childhood with him, the endless study, the tasks that never pleased him, the continual threats of abandonment when I displeased him. Of how I'd always thought I'd failed him.
"She knew you were safe," said Tomas. "She had the power of knowing these things. She knew Michael was honest."
"Michael of Moria was a cold man. He was no kind of a parent."
It looked as if Tomas was about to snap at me again, but instead he swallowed his anger.
"Aye! I can guess. But believe me Dion I've seen what might have happened to you if you stayed in Annac and you were much better off with him."
"Why did you never get in touch with me? You didn't even come and tell me when she died."
"We're here now," said Tomas gently.
"Dion." Hamel took my hand and squeezed it again. "You must understand us. Marnie was only an inn servant. And she had seven children, most of them out of wedlock. Those who didn't call her worse names, thought her mad. She had no chance of respectable work. The only reason she kept her job at the inn was that Old Halley was her half brother and couldn't bring himself to see her starve. Though he didn't treat us all that well. She believed that you were better off forgetting us all. Think of it Dion. You where the bastard daughter of the village scandal and that is all you ever would have been in Annac, no matter how great a mage you were."
I knew what he meant. Small villages have long memories. They never let you forget were you come from.
"You had a chance to be respectable," continued Hamel. "To be someone more than a servant's daughter, to have proper training, to maybe even be important, to make your own money, to have the power that money brings. The choice was so clear for her. But don't ever think it was easy."
It was as if the color of the sky had changed. I stared at him, my head full of churning thoughts. Had she cared after all? Suddenly I felt such grief that I would never know her. And suspicion. I was bought up to be suspicious of people and I wanted so badly to believe him. The desire to believe is a trap. I wanted to put my hand on his head and enter his thoughts just to be sure he was telling the truth, but it was hardly kind to do so.
Now as I stared at him a