“Come on, Bluebell, I wanted to be home an hour ago,” moaned Dunstan, pulling on the yoke. Bluebell, for her part, seemed unconcerned by his pleas, and maintained a steady pace down the track.
“We’re making fine time, we should be home by sundown,” his father, Aldrich Wainwright, said from atop the wagon. He picked up a stick and poked at the the two oxen, Bluebell and Rosemary, who plodded along the narrow road ahead of him, refusing to be rushed by the lanky man’s prodding.
Dunstan sighed at his father’s pronouncement, but didn’t argue with him.
“If you want to go faster, you could try pushing the wagon from behind,” Aldrich grinned from underneath his wide-brimmed straw hat. “You’re a strong lad!”
It was true. Dunstan was tall and broad-shouldered, with arms as thick as most men’s legs. His shaggy blonde hair hung down into his brown eyes, and those who didn’t know him thought he looked imposing, though in reality, his temperament was as gentle as the oxen he was trying to goad into walking faster.
Dunstan let the wagon pass him, then grabbed the back. He leaned in and gave a shout, and the wagon did actually begin to go a little faster.
“That’s the spirit!” laughed Aldrich, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. He cast an uncertain glance ahead, where a green hilltop rose above the surrounding trees toward the sun, now low in the sky of an early summer evening.
A short time later, the ox-drawn wagon rumbled into a courtyard patrolled by a company of chickens. It was bordered on one side by a low, stone barn, and the others by a whitewashed post and rail fence. A thatched cottage sat behind one of the fences, surrounded by a garden filled with flowers and vegetables. A row of raspberry bushes seemed to be trying to swallow the fence whole.
“I’ll put the girls away, you go wash off, or your mother will make you sleep in the barn,” Aldrich told his son. Dunstan thanked his father and jogged over to the water pump. He half filled a bucket, removed his shirt, and poured the water over himself. He scrubbed at the sweat and dust, then refilled the bucket and walked to the back door of the cottage, where there was a wooden tub just large enough for a person to sit in.
“We’re home!” he called, after opening the door. “Could someone bring me a change of clothes?” He returned to his task, making a couple of trips to add a few inches of water to the tub.
“Welcome home!” his mother, Evelyn said, smiling as she stepped out the back door with a linen towel, clean shirt, trousers, and a jar of unpleasant-smelling soap. “I told you that you’d be home before dark!” She was shorter than Dunstan, but with the same brown eyes and straw-colored hair.
“Did you break anything?” Elspeth, his little sister, taunted from inside the house.
“No, we got everything unloaded fine,” Dunstan sneered back, emptying his latest bucket into the tub.
“Thank you for going with your father, I know you were worried you’d be late getting back,” Evelyn told him.
“It was no trouble,” Dunstan replied, walking back to the pump.
“Just the same. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, I’ll leave you to it.” She smiled and went back inside.
When he was clean, Dunstan joined his family at the table. Dinner was a stew of pork and vegetables, with a fresh-baked loaf of bread on the side.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“How was the market?” Evelyn asked, as Aldrich dipped his bread in the bowl.
“Busy!” he replied. “Hal picked a good time to go, I’m sure he’ll get all that furniture sold. There were certainly enough people around, some of them are bound to have the coin and a place to put it.”
“Did you enjoy yourself, Dunstan?” his mother turned to him, her smile bright.
“It was alright,” he admitted. “There was a cart selling sweet rolls that were really good.”
“And you didn’t bring us any?!” Elspeth exclaimed, outrage on her face.
“I tried, but the basket was in the wagon with Da, you know how he gets.”
Aldrich shrugged, a guilty look on his face, while Dunstan kept his eyes on his bowl, and tried to hide the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth behind a slice of bread.
Elspeth was taken in for a moment, as she glanced back and forth at the two men, but they’d played similar tricks too many times for the deception to last.
“Where’d you put them?!” she demanded.
“After dinner,” Aldrich said, “we can all have one.”
“Ma and I should get two! You already had one!”
“You could have come with, if you’d gotten up before sunrise, yoked Rosemary and Bluebell to the wagon, rode to Hal’s, loaded the wagon full of furniture, walked into Dalkirk, unloaded the wagon, bought everything on Ma’s list, and walked back,” Dunstan told her. Elspeth stuck out her tongue at him.
“We were busy ourselves, though we did start a little later than you,” Evelyn said. “The laundry doesn’t wash itself, and there was plenty of work to do in the garden. Speaking of which, Dunstan, can you help dig up the turnips tomorrow? We should be able to get another harvest in before winter, if we can get those out of the ground and that spot replanted in the next couple of days.”
“Mrs. Abernathy saw him unloading the wagon and asked him to help her with a tree that blew over by her home. She does alright for someone her age, but that’s too much heavy lifting for her.” Aldrich informed her.
“I should be able to help with the garden the day after,” Dunstan said. “One day won’t make a difference, will it?”
“That’s perfectly fine, love. We’re proud of you for helping, aren’t we, Aldrich?” His father nodded in agreement as Evelyn continued, “It’s not everyone who has children that care about the older people in their village.” Dunstan blushed slightly, and went back to his soup.
After dinner, they had sweet rolls, then sat next to the hearth as Aldrich told them humorous stories about his father, and Evelyn played a few songs on her guitar. Elspeth sat next to her and watched, she was trying to learn the instrument. Dunstan had given up on it two years earlier, concluding that his fingers had become too thick to easily pick out the notes. He’d always preferred listening to the songs, anyway.
Shortly after sunset, they all retired to bed. Dunstan changed into his nightshirt, and stepped over to the small, inward-hinged window that had been opened to let the summer breeze flow through the cottage. Widburh Mound loomed above, and sheep grazed on the grassy slope where the ancient fort had once stood. To Dunstan’s eyes though, there were more than just sheep wandering the hillside. One of them stood on the other side of the fence enclosing the garden, looking at him.
“Wæs þu hæl,” it called.
Dunstan scowled, grabbed the shutters, and slammed them shut, followed by the window, and then the curtain, just for good measure.
"Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel,” shrugged the dead man, to no one in particular. He turned and climbed back up the mound, past where the ghosts left behind by a dozen battles roused themselves for another night of strife. He paused before a rider atop the hill, and shook his head. The rider, whose face was hidden behind an elaborate helm of iron and bronze, stared down the hill at the little cottage for a moment, then tugged at the reins of his spectral steed, which spun lazily around and ambled through a gate that had been burned to the ground so long ago that the names of the men who’d done it had all been forgotten.
In the cottage below, Dunstan climbed into bed, yanked the blanket over his head, and wished again, like he had every night for as long as he could remember, that he didn’t see them.