Maggie rushed along the little path by the river, her way dappled by the common trees that grew behind the gardens above. The soil was a soft dusty grain of hard-packed silt underfoot, the stones few. Across the way the trees rose away from the broad glitter of water, all below them packed with a sub-canopy of bracken and bramble, ground elder and ramson, threading a spice of pepper and garlic through the thick green smell of dampened spring. A kingfisher flashed away from her now-trotting, now-loping flight, bright as a jewelled snuff-box hurled into the shrubbery. Something low and fast came down to pace her on the opposite side awhile, though all she could see was the twitch and thrash of the ferns and bramble-leaves, and it curved up and away as she saw the road open up clear ahead.

Mud squished through Maggie's toes at the road's edge, letting her feel the gravel of the roadworks beneath as she noted the quickest route across without striking excessive splatter or hard stones or getting beshitten feet. Listening for any coach or rider going at full clip, she dared and darted out like a deer and rushed up the lane to Goodie Westcott's house, scattering sparrows and a collared dove up from their congregation at a puddle as she went. The cottage seemed quiet as she clicked through the gate, the scant breeze ruffling the untrimmed froth of pale blushing spring roses over the door.

In all probability Mercy was around the back somewhere if she was in, pulling weeds or turning earth or any of the myriad things needing done to produce food and home ale and cures - the work of two people with no husband, child or servant at hand. The path to the back garden was better worn than that to the front, though Maggie could see little past the straggles of coppiced hazel and the bloom of the hawthorn that grew to the left of the path. The collared dove and its mate were on top of the thatch now and wok-wooed with nervous stupidity at her activity far beneath.

Maggie stopped inside the gate to catch her breath and order her thoughts. After a moment, she follows the path to the back garden, pausing at the back corner of the house to call: "Woo-hoo! Mercy! Miz Westcott. 'Tis Meg Yendale come with news of doings in village. Haloo!" Her anxious eyes scan the back garden.

"Hang on, hang on, you wait 'til I'm finished my doings..." came a voice from over behind the midden heap; shortly after Goodie Westcott stood up and made her way over.

"See, I've come in to some of these squash from the Colonies: like marrows, they are, a vine plant: won't come good without a woman or a bitch has added 'er piss straight to the soil...but what is it that's going on that you need to come tell me so quick, for you've been running or I'm a pepperpot," Mercy said, giving Maggie a good squint-over.

Maggie grins to see the feisty older woman and bobs a quick curtsy to show respect for her years and wisdom. She babbles out a disjointed tale of black stag and mazy hares and rabbits and bloodshed and doctor and preacher and general tumult in the village.

"I thought me t'come tell ye all th' doings. What can it all betoken, d'ye think?"

Mercy frowned, then answered with a question: "Barney Criddle hasn't gone and knocked over the Binding Stone or aught, has he?"

Maggie's reply is a shrug. "We could go take a look," she adds.

"He'd need his heavy horses, but he might have come by at night...let's go and see to be sure, right enough. If the old marker's standing then we'll worry about someone stirring the Wood up on purpose, like. Let me get my basket, though, I've salves to deliver down that way..." The goodwife bustled off to her shed for concoctions, and gestured that Maggie might lead on down the village's back lane.

[[Spot Hidden, Mistress Maggie.]]
This message was last edited by the player at 12:04, Wed 25 Aug 2021.

Maggie stepped out into the lane with half an expectation that something should await there.

Margaret Yendale rolled 75 for Spot Hidden 25.
[[GM edit: taking advantage of empty post.]]
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:08, Wed 25 Aug 2021.

The lane was clear, the greatest motion the sparrows furling themselves back to the bushes again to wait for the humans to pass. Maggie could hear them chirp and twitter with pocket-sized impatience, feeling the sun on her shoulders and a faint notion of catching someone's stare. No-one was behind her, nor in front.

Mercy came out with her basket and stepped along with Maggie, easily keeping up even if it was with two brisk steps to each of the younger woman's. The green spring scent and damp earth mingled with spikes of sweet cow parsley from the ditches and the sparrows whirred back down behind them.

Goodie Westcott looked back once, before the lane's curve took her roof and the surrounding trees from sight. "Hm, and you say Bart Phippin thought some of the lads would come bother me for these troubles?"

Maggie makes some effort to slow her stride to match the older woman's. Worried she may have missed something important, she retells the story of the black stag and Andrew and the doctor in bits and spurts, non-chronologically.

"Bart he seemed a might worried that some o' them might come looking for ye and wanted me to give ye fair warning, aye. Y'know they're all just talk mostly but some times... well."

Goodie Wescott did not slow down for Maggie's concern for her old legs, leaving the taller woman at a half-skip until she started rambling over the morning's history and forgot the buisness altogether. She nodded to Maggie's thoughts on those headed for her.

"The Ragge lads just egg each other on to nonsense, and Sam...what I've told him about having a back cross somewhere in the line with that cousin-wife of his he doesn't want to hear, and Anne just prays to God the next child'll thrive. I'm not making off with their luck or refusing to help them out, but if Anne won't get another bull for her byre she's as like to die on some stuck stillbirth as raise anything that'll live a year." Goodie Westcott scuffed a stone along the lane to express her frustration.

"It's not me hangs about at the field edges when he goes up to church, being a hare. At most it'll be one of Herself In The Wood's girls, more likely a buck rabbit seen in an odd light. Hm, I didn't know they could speak, though, the girls, or laugh, at least..." Mercy looked thoughtful some moments then shook out of it.

"Has your sister had any luck with getting with child yet?"

Maggie's face sagged in sorrow for her sister's woe.

"Aw no, Kate's no quickened yet. It weighs on her terrible, y'know. They keep tryin' 'most ever night, but no luck."

"No patience in that Jack Hurley, that's their first trouble...tell her we'll all three lay a plot together to keep him from covering her a fair two weeks if she'll let us, for it's dry earth pulls the water deep. If she can ride Saint George as she says for missing him, so much the better."

The wheel-ruts of the lane glimmered intermittently with brown water and a blackbird scolded chuk-chuk-chuk from somewhere in the right-hand hedge. The Binding Stone poked up over the lowest parts, sunlit and ordinary, and Goodie Westcott crossed the hedge line to come up to it, the grey-brown nub of rock scarcely meeting Maggie's height. Grass rustled about her feet, and though there was a faint smell of stoats there was no stain or disturbance about the stone itself.

Shadows stretched out from the nearby trees to set a lace above its position, drawing the eye up a field that was still more turned tan soil than mist of shooting green. The Wyzenwood stretched above, trying to cover the horizon, and it only looked like trees. If not for the complete silence and lack of motion up there where rooks should wheel and call coarse croaking so to each other, thrushes scuttle or pigeons roost, it could be any wood in England. Goodie Westcott touched the stone, confirming it solid beneath her fingers.

"Polly's dead, then," she said quietly, as though the stone had told her so.

Maggie only understands half of Goodie Westcott's advice about Kate's troubles, but nods confidently, pleased at being included in the woman's schemes. At her pronouncement about Polly, Maggie gasps and tears spring to her eyes, having known the young woman all her life.

"Say not, Mercy! Aye, th' poor girl. How's it happened? The stag?"

Mercy looked up, the age showing sharp in the lines of her face. "The stag's an answer. If this last free stone still stands then someone woke and invited her power into the village. Can't do that from down here."

She nodded up at the Wyzenwood. "John Collins has asked these past three days and got no word of her on the road or in any village she might reach; stands to reason she never left. Vengeance, despair or foul play, I wot she's in that wood and meant to raise up the Power that dwells there."

Maggie heaves a sorrowful sigh. "My Dad never did come back after he went in. I always wonder what become of him. D'ye think they'll go a-searchin' the Wood, then?"

"Always someone who thinks it won't be them gets what's come to every one before," Goodie Westcott said, though not entirely without sympathy. She looked up at the quiet trees above on the hill.

"They'll try, maybe. Foolish, though. They say even if you gets out, after dark, you don't really get out. Sicken and die or feel a great urge to go back and...well, dying's about the best can be hoped for up there. You said they were thinking to meet at the inn, these searchers?"


[[another optional Spot here if you'd like.]]

Much sobered by Mercy's words, Maggie trudges along beside the smaller woman.

Margaret Yendale rolled 4 for Spot Hidden 25.

Taking Maggie's turn to motion as an affirmative, Goodie Westcott followed on. Looking back to see that the midwife was truly about to come alongside, Maggie caught sight of a hare in the field above to their far left, then another almost at the hill's shoulder further down to their right, both facing the stone and the women retreating into the lane and the village proper.

Since they did not move, Maggie's gaze swept away but then caught on one more hare, directly above at the edge of the Wyzenwood. It stood up as she watched.

"Old hares're watching, Mercy," she says quietly, turning her gaze away from the creatures and gently flicking a hand to cast the wise woman's gaze in their direction. 'Twould seem rude somehow to point.

"What? Oh..." Mercy turned, took two steps towards the watchers. "Hey! We don't want any, you hear? Whatever this nonsense is with stags and birds and rabbits, we don't need it! You tell 'er that!"

There was a pause that felt as though something had been taken from the air, leaving it thin and sharp. Then the topmost hare broke off and ran eastward, the leftmost stood and another loped up to join it, stopping two paces downslope.

"Hmph," said Mercy, and turned away from them. "Come on, let's to the inn before they think up some foolishness about bringing fire to the Wood - I don't know if She'd even tolerate a gun in there."


[[Feel free to head over to Thread 2 as you like at this juncture.]]