Farewell Stranger

The first thing Elias managed to do for himself was spill a bowl of broth.

He had got it off the table without help. That part had gone well. He had even brought the spoon to his mouth twice before the bowl began to tilt, and might have saved it if Will had not made a grab for his elbow. Between them they emptied most of it into the bed.

Will stood holding the spoon while Elias looked down at the spreading stain. Broth had found its way beneath his thigh. It was warm, unpleasant, and rapidly becoming another thing someone would have to clean up for him.

“Don’t call Annet yet,” he said. “Give me that cloth and help me get the blanket off before it reaches the mattress. And if you tell her I insisted on doing it myself, I’ll tell her where the sugared pears went.”

Will put the spoon aside and took hold of the blanket. “She knows where the pears went. She put the next lot on a higher shelf, which seems unnecessary when I’m the only person in the house who can reach it.” He examined the damage beneath the blanket. “I think we’re past the point where a cloth will make much difference.”

Seraphina found them trying to decide whether the sheet could be turned around.

She had a basket hooked over her wrist and a blue-grey scarf tucked into the neck of her cloak. Elias had grown familiar with both over the days since he had properly woken. The basket usually contained whatever Annet had asked her to bring; the scarf ended up on whichever chair Elias subsequently wanted to sit in. His mother had begun calling her Sera, as though a princess who carried washing up the stairs might reasonably be given a shorter name. Elias had followed her example without asking.

Sera surveyed the bed, put down the basket and went for clean linen. She returned before he had finished explaining that most of the blame belonged to Will.

“Annet could have helped you sit a little higher. The bowl wouldn’t have been balanced on your leg, and we should all still have a dry bed to look at.” She handed Will a folded sheet. “Take the other end, please. Elias, don’t try to lift yourself until we’re ready.”

“I asked him to hold the bowl. He decided to hold me instead. Apparently there’s something about being in this room that makes everyone forget I had arms before I came here.”

“I remember your arms perfectly well. One of them knocked a cup out of my hand three days ago.” She cleared the wet blanket from his legs, then paused when she saw him preparing an answer. “You may tell me why that was also Will’s fault once we’ve got you dry.”

Will escaped with the spoiled linen, leaving Elias too exhausted by the necessary movement to pursue the matter. Sera settled a fresh blanket over him and placed the empty bowl on the table. Her sleeve had got wet. She examined it, pushed it back, and sat down with the basket between her feet.

Elias watched her unpack jars and lengths of folded cloth. He disliked how easily a few moments of effort could use him up. Only that morning he had been certain he could walk to the window. Now the window might as well have been at home.

“I want to be able to eat without somebody sitting here waiting for me to finish,” he said eventually. “By the time Annet’s cut everything up and Father has asked whether I’m comfortable, I don’t want it anymore.”

Sera stopped sorting the linen. She looked at the bowl, then towards the doorway through which Will had gone.

“There may be a little table downstairs that would fit across the bed. I’ll ask Annet. You would still need help getting into position, but you could manage the rest.” She placed the last jar beside the basin. “And I shall tell everyone you wish to spill things in private.”

He would have objected if she had looked pleased with herself. Instead she was already measuring the width of the mattress with her hands. The following morning the table appeared, its legs shortened by his father, and Elias ate half a bowl of porridge while everyone made an unconvincing effort to be occupied elsewhere.

He left the other half because he was full. It pleased him to be able to make that decision too.

• • • For another week his world remained the upstairs room, the landing and the distance between them. Master Renn came every day. There were still places on his back that bled when the linen was removed, and one beneath his shoulder that kept the physician at the bedside longer than Elias liked. Some afternoons he could follow a conversation for an hour. On others the fever returned and he lay listening while ordinary life continued downstairs without him.

His mother washed his hair over a basin, scolding his father for holding the jug too high. Will brought news from the street, most of it concerning people none of them knew. Annet complained about the amount of hot water they used, then left more heating on the fire. Sera came each afternoon, sometimes late enough that the lamps were being lit, and stayed until somebody sent her home.

She had opinions about all of them. His father ought to sleep in a bed. His mother ought to let Annet cook. Will ought to stop buying food from a woman who clearly charged him twice what she charged everyone else. Elias, who was expected to do very little, nevertheless seemed to provide her with the greatest number of things to correct.

He discovered that she disliked being interrupted while reading, especially when he disagreed with a note she had written herself. He also discovered that she would return the next day with evidence, sometimes in the form of another book and once in the form of a map so large they had to remove his supper to unfold it.

The map concerned a village whose grain had been requisitioned during a siege. Sera had objected to the burning of its mill, which she considered wasteful; Elias had objected to almost everything else.

“There,” she said, smoothing a crease beside a river. “Three days from the city, with carts available and soldiers to escort them. I accept that the villagers should have been paid. But leaving grain in store while people starved within reach of it would have been indefensible.”

Elias studied the little squares which represented the village. The mapmaker had found room for a church, a bridge and a wood, but no fields.

“Some of that would have been seed. If you take it all, what are they supposed to put in the ground? You can pay a man enough to buy grain, but that doesn’t help if every village he can reach has had its stores emptied too.”

She began to explain that another district might have supplied it, then stopped and looked further across the map. He waited while she examined the roads. Her finger came to rest on a pass marked with the same small crossed swords as the approaches to the city.

“That route was closed,” she admitted. “I hadn’t considered when they would need to sow. The account only mentions the quantity collected.”

“My father counts what we keep before he counts what we can sell. You should have him write in your book. He’d use fewer words than you, though you’d have to make room for some unpleasant ones.”

She looked up. “You have filled the margins of that chapter quite adequately without his assistance. And you might allow me a moment to agree with you before becoming unbearable about it.”

He grinned at her across the map. It was the first time he had caught her out in something she cared about, and he intended to enjoy it. She rolled the map away from him with unnecessary precision, revealing his abandoned bread.

The next afternoon she brought a different account of the siege. She had marked the pages concerning the following winter. They read those together, arguing less, and when he grew tired she left the book open where he could reach it.

Her willingness to come back to a question surprised him. At home, if two people disagreed for long enough, somebody usually reminded somebody else whose land or tools were involved. Sera could be appallingly certain of herself, but she listened closely enough to become properly annoyed when he made a good point. He began reading ahead so he would have one ready.

It helped the hours pass before she arrived.

• • • The first time he stood, his father held him beneath one arm and Will held the other. Master Renn had insisted on being present. Elias thought this excessive until his feet touched the floor and his knees began to tremble.

He had imagined weakness as a lack of strength available for difficult things. He had not imagined the weight of his own body becoming difficult. The boards were cool beneath his soles. He could feel each place his toes pressed against them, but the connection between his feet and the rest of him seemed uncertain.

His father told him to take his time. Elias stared at the chest across the room and concentrated on remaining upright. He had carried sacks heavier than Will without thinking about it. Now Will was taking most of his weight and pretending he wasn’t.

They got him back into bed before he fell. He lay with sweat cooling beneath his arms, too angry to answer when Renn asked how he felt. The physician waited, then explained how much more he had done than the day before. Elias knew the man was right and found him no easier to listen to for it.

Afterwards his father sat beside him while Will went to wash.

“You were looking at the door,” his father said. “I know what you meant to do. We’ll get you there, but there’s no sense spending everything you’ve got on the first attempt.”

Elias watched the light move on the boards where he had stood. He remembered those same hands helping him from a ditch when he was small, lifting him into a cart, steadying the first blade he had sharpened. His father had always been able to put him on his feet again. There were grey hairs in his beard which Elias did not remember seeing before the fair.

“When we’re home, I want you to teach me,” he said. “What you learned in the army. I don’t mean tomorrow, and I don’t mean with a stick for an afternoon until I lose interest. I want to learn properly.”

His father did not ask what had brought this on. He sat with his hands resting on his knees and looked at the same patch of floor.

“I can teach you some things. Getting strong enough to use them will take longer, and there’ll be work waiting for us too. I won’t have you tearing yourself open because you think you ought to be further along.” He turned towards Elias. “And don’t mistake knowing how to fight for being beyond anyone’s reach. Better men than me have made that mistake.”

Elias knew what he meant. Knowing it did not alter what he had decided. He could not bear the thought of another man taking hold of him and discovering so little resistance. He wanted strength enough to matter, and the knowledge to do something with it. He would begin with whatever his father could teach him.

“I’ll do the work,” he said. “Tell me what I need to do first, and I’ll do that. But don’t agree because I’m lying here and then hope I’ll forget when we get home.”

His father met his eyes. After a moment he reached across to straighten the blanket, then seemed to think better of it and left it alone.

“I don’t think you’ll forget. For now, you do what Renn tells you, including the parts that bore you. When he says you’re ready, we’ll begin.”

The next morning Elias stood for as long as he was allowed, then sat down before anyone had to make him. It was harder than attempting the extra step would have been. He did the same the following day, and on the third he reached the chest.

Sera was there for that. He saw her smile at his father before she turned back towards him, and was pleased with himself for the rest of the afternoon.

It did not prevent their worst argument.

She found him alone on the landing three days later, standing with one hand against the wall. He had been to the window at the end of the passage. The return journey had proved more ambitious than the outward one.

She put down her basket and came straight to him, offering her arm. He took it because the alternative was to remain where he was until someone larger arrived. By the time they reached the bed, she had demanded to know where Will was and how long Elias had been standing there.

“Will’s allowed to leave the room,” he said. “I wanted to see something other than the back of that yellow house. I got there perfectly well; I should have waited a little before coming back.”

“And if your legs had given way? There was nobody upstairs to hear you. You might have fallen against the stair rail, or tried to catch yourself and opened your back again.” She knelt to pull his slippers off, discovered her hands were shaking and stood instead. “You have only just stopped bleeding every time Annet changes the linen. You don’t get to decide that no longer matters because the view has become tiresome.”

He hated being spoken to while she stood above him, though she could hardly have helped it. He hated that she had found him needing assistance after he had been so pleased to leave the room alone.

“You all say you want me on my feet, but the moment I try anything there has to be a council about it. I can’t spend the rest of my life asking permission to walk down a passage.”

“Renn gave you permission to walk with someone beside you. You’ve chosen to leave out the part that inconveniences you, and now I am apparently being unreasonable for remembering it.”

“Perhaps you prefer me in bed. It must be easier when I stay where I’m put and let you arrange everything. You certainly liked me better when I couldn’t answer back.”

The words were out before he had considered them. He expected anger and saw something else first, so briefly that he almost missed it. Sera stood very still beside the chair. Then she picked up her basket.

“Annet is downstairs. I’ll tell her you’re back in bed.” She had to clear her throat before continuing. “You may explain the rest to her yourself.”

She left hard enough that the door struck the frame. Elias sat listening to her footsteps on the stairs and wishing, uselessly, that he had stopped a sentence earlier.

• • • Sera returned the following afternoon with everything Annet had requested and nothing to say to him.

She asked his mother about a letter from home. She consulted his father about the gate, which was now the best-working object in the house. She told Will that his cheap boots would admit rain through the left sole. Elias, who had been preparing an apology and then reconsidering its exact wording since breakfast, received a clean folded cloth placed on the table beside him.

He tried asking about the book. She told Will it was in the basket. When Elias asked whether she had brought the map again, she went downstairs to see if Annet needed help. The performance became more irritating as the afternoon wore on, particularly because everyone else seemed prepared to let it continue.

Eventually his mother took one look at him and sent Will out with her to buy onions.

Sera remained at the washstand, cutting a strip of linen into smaller pieces. Elias waited until she finished one before speaking.

“I shouldn’t have said that yesterday. I know why you come here, and I know what you’ve done. I was angry because I couldn’t get back to the room without help, and you happened to be the person who found me.”

She laid the scissors down but kept her face towards the washstand.

“You needn’t tell me you were angry. I had gathered that. I would like you to understand that finding you halfway down the passage, looking as though you might fall, was not an enjoyable opportunity to give orders.”

“I do understand. And I’ll take Will next time, even if all he does is tell everyone afterwards that he carried me both ways.” He shifted carefully against the pillows. “But if you’re going to keep being angry with me, could you at least do it yourself? Will’s enjoying being asked to pass on messages far too much.”

Her shoulders moved with a breath he couldn’t quite interpret. She gathered up the cut linen, made two piles of it and brought them to the table.

“I spent one night holding a basin while Renn tried to bring your fever down. Your father was on the other side of the bed, and neither of them would answer when I asked whether you would live until morning.” She looked at him then. “I remember that rather more readily than you do. You might allow for it occasionally.”

He had no recollection of the night she described. There must have been many things he would never remember which the people in this house could not forget.

“I’m sorry, Sera. I won’t say it again.”

She accepted that with a small inclination of her head and returned to the basket. When she took out the book, he moved his cup to make room for it. She sat where she usually sat, though for a while she read with the excessive precision of someone still determined to be offended.

Later, when a page had to be turned back, she complained that he was anticipating an argument before she had finished presenting it. He felt so relieved that he agreed to hear the whole thing, which proved to be a considerable commitment.

• • • By the time the last troublesome wound closed, the afternoons had begun to cool. The window stood open for an hour instead of all day. Annet brought blankets downstairs, and Elias discovered that the narrow sitting room at the front of the house smelled of beeswax and the apples stored beneath the stairs.

He reached it first with his father and Will, taking the steps one at a time. His mother had put a cushion on the chair nearest the window. He sat carefully forward, keeping his back from the wood, while Annet brought tea and pretended the occasion did not merit the cake she had baked.

Sera arrived as his father was cutting it. She stopped in the doorway, smiling at the sight of him downstairs, and for once made no attempt to conceal it. He moved his plate so she could sit beside the little table.

That became their place. He learned which afternoons the knife-grinder came through the street and which neighbour would argue over the price. He learned that the man in the tavern opposite wheeled an old piano beneath the awning in fine weather, where he played for whatever people left in the chipped dish on its lid. Most days he played cheerful songs which Will knew badly and insisted on finishing. Sometimes he worked at a passage over and over until Sera closed the window.

Elias had heard fiddles, pipes and a church organ, but never a piano at such close quarters. When Sera explained how the hammers struck the strings, he wanted to look inside it. She said he should ask the man when he was well enough to cross the street. He began considering the distance every morning.

Their afternoons grew less orderly. Reading gave way to whatever they had been discussing before the book was opened. She could spend half an hour explaining why an orchard at home had failed, only to become indignant when he blamed the people tending it. He described how his father pruned their trees and drew a branch on the back of a discarded letter. The following day she brought him a drawing of her own, a tree so neatly proportioned that he asked whether the gardener had been consulted before it grew.

She reached for the paper. He kept it long enough to mark the branches he would cut, and they argued over one which shaded a seat she liked. Eventually she admitted that she would rather have the shade than the extra fruit. He told her she might have spared them both some time by saying that first.

He learned that she could ride, had very firm ideas about horses and enjoyed being outdoors more than her household considered suitable. She learned that he could mend a harness but could not sew a straight line in a shirt, a distinction she found suspicious. His mother supported her, and Elias spent an afternoon repairing a torn cuff while both of them offered advice.

Sera was worse at doing nothing than he was. When she listened, she unwound her scarf and folded it, or opened a book without reading, or made small alterations to the position of things on the table. One day he put the inkpot back every time she moved it. She continued speaking for several sentences before noticing, then put it deliberately beyond his reach.

“It was catching your sleeve,” she said. “You may prefer having something to complain about, but I don’t intend to spend the rest of the afternoon explaining ink to your mother.”

“My mother’s had ink explained to her before. Usually by me. She knows a good deal about it.” He reached for the paper instead and nearly upset the pot with his elbow. Sera caught it, looked at him, and enjoyed his silence with such obvious satisfaction that he had to laugh.

The laugh pulled at his back. He stopped abruptly, and her hand came towards him before she remembered he disliked being fussed over. He caught it for a moment to steady himself. Neither commented when he let go.

There were things he noticed afterwards which he had scarcely considered upstairs: the way she took off her gloves finger by finger when she arrived cold, the small frown which meant she was trying not to laugh, the particular sound of her step in the passage. He could distinguish it from Annet’s before he saw the doorway. On afternoons when she was late, he found reasons to remain downstairs.

His strength returned slowly enough that he had to remember what had been impossible the previous week. He walked the yard with his father, then without him. He learned how far to raise his arm before the scarred skin tightened, how to turn his whole body when reaching behind himself. His shirts hung differently. When he first saw his back in the little mirror Annet held for him, he took longer looking than she expected, then asked her to put it away. The skin would never be what it had been. He wanted to know what movement he could recover.

Renn showed him, and Elias practised without an audience. Sometimes he became angry at how little had changed by the end of a day, but he returned to it the next morning. His father watched him more thoughtfully now. He had stopped promising that everything would soon be as it was.

• • • The subject of home returned first through a broken fence.

His mother received a letter describing the repair, who had helped and which sheep had made it necessary. She read it aloud over supper, and his father spent several minutes explaining how he would have done it differently before remembering to be grateful. Elias laughed with Will, then found himself trying to picture the lower field. The grass would be shorter now. There would be work in the sheds and the familiar smell of the house after rain.

He wanted to see it. The wanting came so suddenly that for a moment he felt he could leave that evening.

Renn considered the journey the following week. He examined Elias standing, watched him cross the room and asked where they could stop along the road. There was a carrier his father knew who would take them at an easy pace. They began discussing blankets for the cart, dry weather and whether the road beyond the ford had been repaired.

Sera sat with a book resting against her skirt. When his mother asked whether another week would make much difference, Sera said Renn would know best. She had always had an opinion before.

After that she came as regularly, but something in the afternoons changed. She no longer insisted they finish a chapter if he became distracted. Once he objected to an account of a cavalry charge and she agreed before he had properly explained himself. He looked at her, wondering whether she had even been listening.

“You argued the opposite last week,” he said. “There was a hill involved, and you made Will hold the map while you found it. You can’t agree now without telling me what happened to the hill.”

She looked down at the page. “The hill is presumably still there. I haven’t thought about it enough today to defend it.” She closed the book over her finger. “Your father says the carrier has room on the cart. Has Renn agreed to that day?”

Elias told her he had, provided the weather held. She nodded and asked whether his mother needed more cloth for the journey. He said he thought there was enough. They sat through a silence which would once have annoyed neither of them.

He tried telling her about the fence, expecting her to question his father’s certainty that everyone else had repaired it wrong. She listened, smiled in the appropriate place and looked towards the window. He wanted to ask what he had done. The answer seemed close enough that he was afraid of hearing it.

A few days later she told him her own household would soon be leaving for her father’s city. She spoke of it while putting a book away, as though it were a small alteration to the following week’s arrangements.

“They’ve begun sending things ahead. I shall have to be there for the winter court, and my aunt has already written about fittings. Apparently I have been growing at an inconvenient rate.”

Elias looked at the fine stitching along her cuff. He could picture the fittings more readily than the court, and neither belonged to any place he knew.

“Will you have your own horse with you? You said the mare doesn’t like being shut in. There must be somewhere you can take her out.”

Sera sat down with the book still in her hand. “There is, when someone is available to accompany me. I can ride here because my aunt believes I’m with my mother’s relations, which is true often enough to remain useful. At home there are rather more people available to notice where I am.”

He had never asked exactly how she managed the visits. Their secrecy had become one of the household’s ordinary arrangements, like leaving the gate unlatched before dusk. Now he thought of her travelling through the city each day, then returning to people who could ask for an account of the hours.

“You could tell them you were visiting Annet,” he said. “She’d frighten anyone who came to check.”

Sera smiled, but it faded while she looked at him. “I have had more time here than I expected. I wouldn’t have been allowed it if anyone had thought to ask properly.”

Elias wanted to say she should come to the farm. He could imagine her in the yard with his mother, disputing the state of their apple trees, discovering that the sheep were less interested in instructions than he was. Then he tried to imagine the arrival: the horses, whoever must travel with her, his neighbours gathering to see why a princess had come down their lane. He could not find a way to offer it which did not sound like a game.

Sera turned the book in her hands.

“People travel,” she said after a while. “Your father came here for the fair. There will be other reasons, I suppose, and other years. I should like to hear how you are.”

“I could write when we get home. Mother will want to send Annet half the things in the pantry as soon as she has one of her own again. She could put a letter in with them.”

Sera told him she would like that. Neither attempted to arrange anything beyond the letter, and when Annet brought the lamps in, they were still sitting with the book unopened between them.

• • • On his last morning in the house, Elias walked across the street and looked inside the piano.

The man who played it showed him the hammers, let him press a key and explained why two of the lower notes sounded wrong in damp weather. Elias crouched carefully to examine a wheel which had been wedged with a piece of wood. He could have repaired it once. He hoped he would be able to repair something like it again before long.

When he returned, the room upstairs had already begun to look as it had when he first opened his eyes. His father’s shirt was gone from the chest. The jars beside the basin had been packed or put away. His mother had left out the clothes he would wear on the road, including a loose shirt which no longer scraped his back.

He folded the few things remaining to him and carried them downstairs one at a time. Will offered to do it, then seemed to understand and went to help with the cart instead.

Sera came later than usual. Elias had begun to think she would not come at all.

She wore the blue-grey scarf and carried the green book beneath her arm. She greeted his mother in the passage, speaking quietly for some time before she entered the sitting room. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. She unwound the scarf and laid it across the chair by the door.

“Annet tells me you went out this morning. I gather the entire street survived the occasion, though you might have waited until someone could go with you.”

He heard the familiar note in her voice and was so glad of it that he answered too readily.

“I crossed a road, Sera. Renn said I could, and the man was sitting there watching me come. I was in very little danger unless he decided to attack me with the piano.”

She placed the book on the table. “You know perfectly well what I mean. You’re spending tomorrow in a cart, and it would have cost you nothing to rest today. Your father says the road beyond the ford is dreadful.”

“Father thinks every road is dreadful unless he helped lay it. And I wanted to see the thing before I left. I’ve been listening to it for weeks.”

She began removing her gloves, drawing at a stubborn finger. “Then I hope it justified the expedition. I’ve brought this for you. There are two chapters left, and you might as well discover how it ends.”

He looked at the book, recognising the place where the leather had worn beneath her thumb. She had written in almost every chapter. There would be parts of it he could hear in her voice without trying.

“You haven’t finished telling me what’s wrong with it. If I take it now, I may end up believing something you intended to correct.”

“You have never shown much reluctance to correct it yourself.” She put her gloves beside the book. “Keep it dry on the journey. And don’t fold the corners as Will does. The ribbon is there for a reason.”

He thanked her, more quietly than either of them had been speaking. She looked towards the window and asked when they would leave. He told her before first light. She nodded as though she had been expecting a different answer and would have to make do with this one.

They had supper with the others. His mother had cooked, insisting Annet sit down for once, and his father brought out a bottle bought that afternoon. Will described their first day at the fair carefully enough to avoid several events which might have spoiled the meal. Elias watched Sera listen to his mother explaining where they would stop on the road. She asked questions, offered a suggestion about an inn and laughed when Annet said the innkeeper would charge extra for the suggestion if he learned who had made it.

Afterwards his mother went upstairs to finish packing. His father and Will took the last things out to the cart, and Annet carried the dishes into the kitchen. Sera remained by the window while Elias put another log on the fire. When he straightened, slowly, she had already moved towards him.

He rested his hand on the mantel until the stiffness eased. “You needn’t look like that. If I’d needed help, I would have asked. It’s a log, and I picked it because it was small.”

“I hadn’t said anything. You might allow me to stand up without deciding I’m about to interfere.”

“You were coming over here. I know what that means by now.” He turned towards her, aware that he was making an argument out of very little and unable to find a better way to keep her speaking. “At home I’ll have to put wood on a fire occasionally. We can’t all wait for someone to appear with a basket.”

Her expression tightened. “I know how to carry wood. I also know how long it took you to stand without someone beneath each arm, which you appear determined to regard as an unreasonable thing for me to remember.”

He could have let it stop there. Instead he said she would have fewer things to worry about tomorrow, and saw at once that he should not have said that either.

Sera turned away. He watched her pick up her gloves and put them down again. Across the street, the piano sounded a few tentative notes while the man settled himself beneath the awning. Elias had heard him do it almost every evening the weather allowed. Usually a lively tune followed, something the drinkers knew well enough to interrupt.

This time he began slowly.

The first notes came through the open window so clearly that Elias glanced towards it. A lower phrase repeated beneath them, patient and even, while the melody rose a little, lingered and returned. There was room between the notes for the sound of the street, but Elias found himself listening past it. He had never heard the man play like this. The music seemed almost familiar until it moved somewhere he had not expected, and something in his chest tightened with the change.

Sera was still beside the chair.

“I don’t know why you keep saying things like that,” she said. “You know I want you well. You know I want you to go home, and yet you speak as though I’ve spent these weeks trying to prevent it. I should have thought you could allow me one evening without—”

“Will you dance with me?”

She stopped. Elias had not raised his voice. He had scarcely known he was going to ask until the words were there, and now he stood with his hand extended, unable to think of anything he wanted more than for her to take it.

Sera looked at his hand, then at his face. Her lips were still parted around whatever she had meant to say. For a moment he thought she would refuse because of his back, or because she was angry, or because he had mistaken every afternoon they had spent in this room.

Then she put her hand in his.

He drew her towards the space between the table and the hearth. His mother had taught him enough to manage a harvest dance, though he had generally preferred the ones in which it was difficult to go wrong for long. Here there was nobody to follow. Sera came closer, placed her free hand lightly on his shoulder and waited until he found where to rest his at her waist.

He began carefully. His first step was too large; hers shortened to meet it, and they found each other again before either could stumble. He felt the movement of her breath beneath his hand. She looked down once at their feet, then up at him, and the faintest smile touched her mouth.

The next turn pulled across his back. He altered it, making the circle smaller. Sera moved with him, her hand shifting away from the tender place without his having to tell her. She knew where it was. The knowledge passed through him differently now, standing this close to her, and he could not bring himself to look away.

Outside, the melody climbed. The man’s left hand kept the same gentle measure beneath it, giving them somewhere to place each step. Elias could hear a slight roughness in one note, the fault the man had shown him that morning. It belonged to the music now. He listened for its return while Sera’s fingers settled more securely between his own.

They moved beyond the brightest light of the fire and back into it. Her face changed with the light, but her attention did not leave him. Without the next argument waiting, he could see how young she looked when she was uncertain. He wondered whether she could feel how hard his heart was beating. He could feel hers only as movement and warmth beneath the cloth at her side, and the wonder of being allowed so near her made him careful with every step.

There had been so many things between them: cups, books, the edge of a bed, the little table which she was always rearranging. He had sat inches from her for hours and never known the shape of her hand as he knew it now. Her thumb rested beside his. When his grip shifted, she held on.

The room grew quiet around the piano. He no longer followed the sounds from the kitchen or waited for a footstep in the passage. He knew where the table stood without looking. He knew how much space they had before they must turn, and how to make the turn small enough that she could remain close. Her skirt brushed his leg. Once she drew a breath as though she might speak, but she only lowered her eyes for a moment and came a little nearer.

He wished he had asked her sooner. Then he was glad there had been no practice for this, no earlier evening he would have to compare it with. He could give all his attention to the slight pressure of her hand, the dark curve of her lashes when she looked down, the way she followed a movement before he was certain he had begun it.

The melody returned to its opening phrase. Elias recognised it and felt an unreasonable resistance to hearing it completed. There must be another passage, some part the man had yet to play. He kept moving, listening for it, while Sera’s hand tightened briefly on his shoulder.

The last notes came farther apart. He took another small step with her, then another, and the lower accompaniment fell away. A single higher note lingered through the window. They had stopped by the time he could no longer hear it.

Sera was looking at him.

For a moment neither moved. Her hand remained in his, and he could still feel the measure of the music in the way they stood. Then her face altered with an effort he recognised too late. She pressed her lips together. A tear slipped down one cheek, followed by another, catching the firelight before it reached her jaw.

Elias loosened his hand at her waist. He wanted to touch her face, but she had seen that he had noticed, and something like anger came into her eyes. She withdrew her hand from his and turned sharply towards the door.

She caught up her cloak without putting it on. One glove fell; she snatched it from the floor, impatient with the moment it cost her. He stood where she had left him while she crossed the passage. The outer door opened, admitting cold air along the floor, and closed hard enough to stir the papers on the table.

He said nothing. The cart was packed in the yard. Before the street was properly light, his father would be waiting beside it.

For a while Elias remained near the hearth, his hand still remembering the small of her waist. Across the road someone spoke to the pianist. He could hear the man answering, an ordinary voice after the music, and the scrape of the stool being moved.

The scarf lay over the chair by the door.

He went to it and lifted it carefully, freeing one end from beneath the cushion. The wool was finer than anything he owned. Along one corner, almost hidden in the folds, an S had been worked in pale thread, its curve passing through a second embroidered flourish. He traced it once with his thumb.

When he brought the scarf close, he caught her scent, the same faint sweetness that had reached him when she leaned over a page beside him. He stood with it against his mouth, then gathered the loose length into both hands and held it tightly against his chest.