By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle Read Free Book Online Page A

nets and cause storms at sea. She said a man who took a priest in his boat would surely die because the sea gods would drown him.”
    Maddie chuckled. “I never heard anything so silly. Priests aren’t dangerous.”
    â€œAnyway, we didn’t need them,” insisted Carver. “If we needed something, my mother would pray and kill a chicken and watch the birds that came to eat its insides. Then she knew what was going to happen.”
    â€œThat sounds like nonsense, too,” commented the girl. “Father Mac says no one knows the future. You can trust a priest like him. He’s the servant of God, the One True God, and there aren’t any other gods.”
    The young man looked unconvinced. “Maybe not on land,” he muttered.
    The first time Father Mac came over after Carver was well enough to be up, the invalid was plainly uncomfortable about it. He sat hunched on a stool, fidgeting with his hands. An uneasy silence settled over the room.
    â€œSon, I was hoping you’d help me,” remarked Father Mac. “I’ve cut a new staff, and it’s not to my liking. You see, when I put my hand here, this knot catches my palm.”
    The task soothed the young man’s nerves like magic. He sat beside the two men, smoothing and shaping the wood, and Father Mac did him the kindness of ignoring him completely. Maddie glanced up from her spinning after a few minutes to find him cutting a decorative band of diamonds into the staff.
    As the game went on, Carver began to pay less attention to his project and more attention to the chessboard. He picked up a captured pawn and turned it thoughtfully in his fingers, evaluating the clumsy woodwork. Quietly and calmly, Father Mac began to explain the game as they played. By the end, the young man was interested enough to ask questions.
    â€œJames, I’d better go,” announced the priest, reaching for his staff. The wood-carver gave a guilty start.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he muttered, handing it over. “I didn’t finish it.”
    â€œAh, well,” said Father Mac with a smile, “there’s always tomorrow night.”
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    Every house had to be supplied with its fuel to feed the hearth fires during the long months of winter. The small bricks of dark brown peat, cut out of the bogs in early summer, were dry and ready to be brought home. Maddie and Bess worked long days lugging the peats to the houses and building them up into round stacks. Well enough to walk now, Carver began to help them.
    The two girls made their way home with heavy baskets slung across their backs, leaning forward against the pull of the headbands that helped them manage the baskets’ weight. They talked and laughed, spinning thread as they walked along, and the silent young man followed them with a half-loaded basket of his own, listening to their songs and carefree chatter. He almost looked like one of them now in the new shirt Fair Sarah had made him and one of her long sheepskin blankets wrapped around his shoulders and waist. He persisted in wearing his woolen breeches, though, and Bess thought that was funny. All the other men she knew went about with their legs bare below their knee-length shirts. Although he wore a much longer shirt, even Father Mac didn’t wear breeches.
    In the evenings, the young man sat by the weaver’s fire mending harvest tools. He had set aside Lady Mary’s box without finishing it, and that woman was not happy with him.
    â€œI already paid him half the price for the work,” she complained to Maddie one morning, looking out a narrow window at the gray day outside. She rarely left her dusty room. Maddie didn’t know how she could stand it.
    â€œBut it’s harvesttime,” pointed out the girl, tidying stacks of books. “And the tools break so often. Carver says in the south they make them out of iron.”
    â€œI’m the one who paid,” snapped the old woman.