Tale of Gwyn by Cynthia Voigt Page A

shrugged. “I’m not the one who needs to learn.”
    He wanted to refuse, she could see that and hear it in his sulky boy’s voice. But he also wanted to see if he could get through her guard again, so he turned to fetch his staff.
    â€œHe’s always there,” Tad reported. “Watching. I don’t like being watched.”
    â€œI don’t think the Lords are much concerned with what you like,” she answered. “Defend yourself.”
    Instead of doing as he was told, he raised his staff and moved toward her, with short, thrusting strokes. Gwyn was surprised and unready. She had to retreat a few steps, while he smiled at her discomfort, before she could make her own attack.
    While the thaw held, Granda’s health held. He was too weak to leave his room, but he swallowed broth and cups of warmed wine. However, when the cold flooded down over them from the north, as if the mountains blew their icy breath down over the hills, he declined again. Always, then, behind the daily work, they listened for sounds from the rooms above the barroom. Gwyn sat her turns with him, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Granda was old, fifty-eight, and had long outlived his friends. Until the autumn he had been alert and spry, saying over and over that he planned to live to sixty, and maybe even beyond. They had thought he might, but he’d taken a cold before the first snow and had been sickening ever since. The family cared for him, as he had cared for them.
    They left him alone only at the end of each evening, when they gathered in the kitchen to eat. On the third night, as they sat over bowls of stew, they heard distant sounds, as if furniture were being tumbled about upstairs. They rushed into the barroom.
    Granda stood on the stairs, out of his room for the first time since the snows began. He wore a white nightshirt. In the dim light of candles, his face could not be seen, but his long white hair shone wildly around his head, and his beard shone white. His voice rolled around the empty room, like the cry of a caged animal.
    â€œWhere is my son?” he cried. He held himself erect with one hand on the railing. “I want my son, where is he?”
    Da stepped to the foot of the stairs, holding up a candle. “Here I am, Father.” The light showed the old head shaking from side to side, the shadowed eyes searching out the dark corners of the room.
    â€œI want my son. Where is my son? Where is Win?” Granda roared. Then, as slowly as the last flames burning out on a bed of ashes, his legs folded beneath him. Da ran up to catch him. Gwyn stood by Rose. Burl held a candle in one hand and Tad’s shoulder with the other, to keep him from leaving the room. Their mother went up the stairs and murmured to Da, who nodded his head.
    â€œHe’s dead,” Mother announced. “Burl? You’ll help carry him back to his bed. Rose, put on water for the washing.”
    Burl passed his candle to Gwyn, and Tad followed Rose into the kitchen. Gwyn watched the three living figures take the fourth back up the stairs. Then she sighed and turned around, not knowing what to do.
    The door into the parlor was closing gently. She had only a glimpse of a man’s figure standing against the light, and a long clean-shaven face, before the door closed.
    The next evening they carried Granda’s body out to the flat stone at the west of the village, where a pyre had been built up. Da and Burl laid the body on top. Da took up a torch to light the sticks. In the fall, the priest would come and say prayers there, for all who had died during the year.
    Heavy dark clouds crept across the sky from the east and the sun flamed over the distant mountaintops, turning them black. The smoke curled up from the pyre. Nobody spoke among the circle of those who had come to bid Granda farewell. The villagers had come, and Wes stood beside Rose, their solemn faces lit by growing flames. Cam stood apart,