Chapter 9: What the Stones Said

"Coming!" I shouted, and threw myself at my clothes.

Garrick was on his knees picking glass off the kitchen floor with his bare hands.

"Leave it, you'll cut yourself. Hide."

"Where?"

"The bedroom. Go."

He took his jeans and went.

I pulled on my sweater inside out, caught it, flipped it, and opened the door with honey in my hair.

Dottie stood on the porch in a raincoat with the baby strapped to her chest in a sling.

She looked at my face.

She looked at the honey.

She looked past me at the broken jar glinting on the kitchen floor.

"Oh, you did not," she said in a whisper that carried to the next county.

"Dottie."

"Hester said to bring you now, and I said, she's busy, and Hester said, she's always busy, and I thought, you'd better be wearing pants."

"I'm wearing pants."

"Both of them?"

"What does Hester want?"

"She wants you at the Hall. And the king, if he's here." She raised her voice. "If he's here!"

From the bedroom came a muffled, "I'm here."

Dottie put a hand over her mouth and shook with silent laughter.

The Hearth Hall at night was a different room.

The big hearth in the middle held a low fire.

Chairs had been pulled in a ring, and a dozen older women sat in them with shawls on their knees.

Hester stood at the long table with a wooden box in front of her.

It was a plain box of pale ash, the size of a bread loaf, with a brass hinge.

"Sit, Moira."

I sat.

Garrick came in behind me and stopped at the door.

He was not allowed past it.

The Count had ended, but the Hall was the Hearth's, and he knew it.

"The king may stand there," Hester said. "He may hear. He may not speak."

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