Agnes appeared, with Roche behind her carrying a wicked– looking dagger. Kivrin had thought that knowing who he was would work some transformation, but he still looked like a cutthroat, standing there looming over Agnes.
He handed Agnes one of the coarse bags. “You must hold the bag open like this,” he said, bending down to show her how the top of the bag should be folded back, “and I will put the branches into it.” He began chopping at the branches, oblivious to the spiky leaves. Kivrin took the branches from him and put them in the bag carefully, so the stiff leaves wouldn’t break.
“Father Roche,” she said, “I wanted to thank you for helping me when I was ill and for bringing me to the manor when I—”
“When that you were fallen,” he said, hacking at a stubborn branch.
She had intended to say, “when I was set upon by thieves,” and his response surprised her. She remembered falling off the horse and wondered if that was when he had happened along. But if it was, they had already come a long way from the drop, and he wouldn’t know where it was. And she remembered him
There was no point in speculating. “Do you know the place where Gawyn found me?” she asked, and held her breath.
“Aye,” he said, sawing at a thick branch.
She felt suddenly sick with relief. He knew where the drop was. “Is it far from here?”
“Nay,” he said. He wrenched the branch off.
“Would you take me there?” Kivrin asked.
“Why would you go there?” Agnes asked, spreading her arms out wide to keep the bag open. “What if the wicked men be still there?”
Roche was looking at her as if he were wondering the same thing.
“I thought that if I saw the place, I might remember who I am and where I came from,” she said.
He handed her the branch, holding it so she could take it without being stabbed. “I will take you there,” he said.
“Thank you,” Kivrin said. Thank you. She slid the branch in next to the others, and Roche tied the top shut and hoisted the bag over his shoulder.
Rosemund appeared, dragging her bag in the snow behind her. “Are you not finished yet?” she said.
Roche took her bag, too, and tied them on the donkey’s back. Kivrin lifted Agnes onto her pony and helped Rosemund mount, and Father Roche knelt and linked his big hands so Kivrin could step up into the stirrup.
He had helped her back on the white horse when she fell off. When that she was fallen. She remembered his big hands steadying her. But they had come a long way from the drop by then, and why would Gawyn have taken Roche all the way back to the drop? She did not remember going back, but it was all so dim and confused. In her delirium it must have seemed farther than it was.
Roche led the donkey back through the firs and onto the path, going back the way they had come. Rosemund let him get ahead and then said, in a voice just like Imeyne’s, “Where goes he now? The ivy lies not this way.”
“We go to see the place where Lady Katherine was set upon,” Agnes said.
Rosemund looked at Kivrin suspiciously. “Why would you go thence?” she asked. “Your goods and gear have already been fetched to the manor.”
“She wots that if she see the place she will remember somewhat,” Agnes said. “Lady Kivrin, if you remember you who you are, must you return home?”
“Certes, she will,” Rosemund said. “She must needs return to her family. She cannot stay with us forever.” She was only doing this to provoke Agnes, and it worked.
“She
“Why would she wish to stay with such a mewling babe?” Rosemund said, kicking her horse into a trot.
“I am no babe!” Agnes called after her. “You are the babe!” She rode back to Kivrin. “I do not wish you to leave me!”
“I won’t leave you,” she said. “Come, Father Roche is waiting.”
He was at the road, and as soon as they rode up, he started on. Rosemund was already far ahead, dashing along the snow– filled path, sending up sprays of snow.
They crossed a little stream and came to a fork, the part they were on curving away to the right, the other continuing nearly straight for a hundred meters or so and then making a sharp jog to the left. Rosemund sat at the fork, letting her horse stamp and toss its head to express her impatience.
I fell off the white horse at a fork in the road, Kivrin thought, trying to remember the trees, the road, the little stream, anything. There were dozens of forks along the paths that criss-crossed Wychwood Forest and no reason to think this was the one, but it apparently was. Father Roche turned right at the fork and went a few meters and then plunged into the woods, leading the donkey.
There were no willows where he left the road, and no hill. He must be going back the way Gawyn had brought her. She remembered them going a long way through the woods before they came to the fork.
