“You could not have been so hungry, for you did not eat even that.”
“I am not a savage like you,” she retorted. “I need a sweet pudding or perhaps cake with citron and currants.”
“You only want those things. What you need would have been well provided by the turnips I’d found.”
“Then you have forced me to beg.”
She stepped from the carriage, took my hand, and tried to walk toward the lights. I held back.
“Come with me,” she sweetly coaxed. “Protect me.”
Her lightheartedness was both vexing and confusing. Did she wish to entrap me or did she really not understand the danger?
“Together we will attract more attention,” I said.
“Then I will go alone!”
She smacked the horse on its flank. While I restrained it from bolting, she ran from me toward the village. A lone man was walking down a path and she hailed him.
It is over now, I thought. He will have heard of us. He will know at once who she is. My muscles tensed in anticipation of flight.
I could not hear what Lily asked. In answer, the man pointed toward one of the thatched houses. She hurried to the front of it and knocked. Apparently ignorant of who she was, the man continued on his way down the path.
After tying the reins, I crept closer. I was unable to hear what pitiful tale Lily told; I only saw great gesticulations on her part and a baffled expression on the face of her audience, an older woman with white hair, arms floury to her elbows. The woman shut the door. Lily stamped her foot and knocked at a second cottage. Again she was refused.
“They are a selfish lot,” Lily said, seeing me. “What is a slice of cake to them?”
“Come, before they make a public complaint.”
She knocked at a third house before I could leave. The door opened so quickly I could scarcely step to the side. For the first time I heard her story.
“I am so sorry to trouble you,” she said, anxious and apologetic. “My friend and I are part of a group traveling to London. We became separated in a terrible storm. Until we catch up with them, we have nothing. Might you spare us cake?”
While her story was one of woe, her voice and face conveyed near hilarity. I no longer wondered why doors had closed on her. What was this strange mood?
“What sort of group was it?” asked a young voice.
“Oh!” Lily waved dramatically. “A theatrical group! Actors and acrobats, magicians, sword swallowers, singers, dwarves—and a giant! Please? My friend and I are very hungry.”
“Your friend? I see no one else.”
“He’s very shy.” Lily waved to me. “Victor, come here,” she urged. I peered round the corner of the house. Peering back was a young woman; a girl, really. She had a broad blotchy face and tangled brown hair, and she carried a child on her hip. From within the cottage came the whimper of an infant.
Even from the shadows, my cloaked figure made the girl’s eyes pop, so that she resembled a strange bug.
“The giant?” she asked.
“Him? Oh no,” Lily said scornfully. “He’s just one of the actors. A very bad one. He seldom gets a role.”
“But he’s so tall!”
“He’s nothing compared to our giant.”
“Why is his face covered?”
“He’s so handsome he attracts too much attention. It’s wonderful on the stage—no one notices his acting then—but it’s quite a nuisance the rest of the time.”
I stood mute with incredulity.
The girl stared at me openmouthed. Then she sighed and her eyes grew distant. “I always fancied myself on the stage,” she said, her face turning deep pink. “I sing.”
“Do you?” Lily asked pleasantly.
“Oh yes, but …” She lifted the child up as explanation.
“Well, we would enjoy listening to you,” Lily said. “Perhaps over tea and cake?”
The girl shifted the child from one hip to the other. Her face was a transparent working of opposite emotions. Clearly we were strangers of questionable status, not to be trusted, perhaps not even to be talked to … and yet … she understood, she thought, our ragtag actors’ life. Decision settled over her features.
“There’s a cottage in back,” she said, the words tumbling out. “Just the one room. I’ve been meaning to bring Mum up from Spennymoor to stay with us, though Harry says we’d be better off letting it out, profitable, you see, and quieter too, for Mum likes to talk, but I guess it would do no harm if you wanted to stop the night there—if you’re very quiet—and get a bit of food too and—and—”
“Hear you sing?” Lily asked.
The girl smiled a gap-toothed grin.
“And Harry—will he cause me trouble?”
“Harry will—” The girl’s mouth closed, her cheeks darkened, and her eyes slid to the side. “There’ll be no trouble, only you must be quiet,” she whispered. “Harry’s not the sociable sort. I can sing for you now because he’s not home, and besides I’m always singing to myself, like. But he’s not fond of company. I won’t even mention you’re here when he comes back, and then he won’t know, will he? Because you’ll be quiet?”
The girl was so clearly without guile, I did not fear a trap, only that she might speak a loose word. But each time she referred to Harry, there was something in her bearing that assured me she would mention us to neither him nor even her neighbors. Slowly I understood how much she was risking to have her song heard.
The cottage was little more than a hut with a dirt floor with a smell that indicated animals had been kept in it. But it did have a fireplace and was warm and dry.
While Lily used the privy, the girl returned with bowls of steaming stew and chunks of bread; I pocketed the latter for tomorrow. Setting down the tray, she stammered, “I’m Cassie Cooper. I mean, Cassie Burke, Mrs. Burke.” Misery was plain on her face. She was as young as I had supposed, perhaps sixteen, but her waist was thick, her skin was rough, and deep creases showed on either side of her mouth: life had already set its mark on her.
“I am Victor … Victor Hartmann.” I was no more familiar with my name than she was with hers.
She nodded that quick bobbing nod.
“Sir, you are really the giant, aren’t you? Why does your friend tease you?”
“I don’t know why she says such things.”
Cassie nodded again, with as much feeling as one might put into a nod, as if she, too, did not understand what caused people to act.
“And”—her glance up at me was furtive—“you don’t wear that hood because you’re too handsome, do you?”
I shook my head.
The words burst from her: “Once, Harry said he’d put an oat bag on my head before he’d let me in bed. That was my fault, you see, because I cried so hard at a sad story I once heard and had just remembered after years and years, and it made me all red and puffy.”
Twisting her apron, she stopped speaking as suddenly as she had started.
“Even a queen cannot cry without reddening her eyes,” I said.
“The queen?” Cassie at once forgot her distress. “Have you seen her? I don’t mean, have you seen her cry, for she never does, she mustn’t! But have you seen the queen at all? Oh!”
Lily had appeared at the door. Perhaps recognizing the arrogance in her posture, the girl half-curtsied.
“What tales are you telling, Victor?” Lily asked. “Of your many audiences with the queen?” Her voice was now sullen and mean-spirited.
“I brought you something to eat, miss,” Cassie said.
Lily settled on the floor. She prodded at the bowl’s lumpy contents, pursing her lips with distaste. She pushed the bowl aside.
“I asked for cake. I cannot even give this a name.”
“It is food from her children’s mouths,” I said tightly. “Thank you, Mrs. Burke.”
“Oh, your dress is so beautiful, miss,” Cassie said, rushing into the silence. “Why, it puts me in mind of a wedding. You must have
been playing at being a bride when the storm came, and that’s why the dress is dirty and torn. You’ll need a new costume when you meet up with your group again, while this one is being repaired.”
Lily said nothing. Under her stony eyes, the girl dropped her gaze. She stood before us without moving, fingers knotted in her apron. Her expectation was obvious and full of hurt.
“Would you like to sing for us now?” I asked.
Cassie sighed gratefully, but before she could open her mouth, from the house came a loud crash and a louder caterwaul, followed by a thin whimper.
“I cannot stop being a mum to blink!” she said, running out.
There were cries, more screams, a slap—abrupt silence that yielded to sobbing. I did not know if it was Cassie who wept or the child, as both their faces were wet when she returned. On one hip she held the child we had seen before, now squirming and blubbering; on the other hip, a squalling infant whose cheeks and neck bore inflamed boils ready for lancing. There was also a rapidly forming bump on the infant’s forehead.
Ignoring both children, the girl strode determinedly to the center of the little room and began to sing.
She should have had a voice as sweet as her nature, making her presence in this town like a rose growing in a dung heap; alas, she did not. Her voice reminded me of a drunken barmaid’s I might hear at night passing an inn. The older child twisted and kicked as she sang, begging to be let down. When Cassie ignored him, he struck her hard across the mouth.
The girl’s lips trembled, then she burst into a fit of weeping and ran out.
“What ugly mewling brats,” Lily said, her beautiful face drawn into disgust. “They should have been drowned at birth, the way you’d drown a litter of kittens.”
She leaned against a wall and shut her eyes.
Late that night, a staggering step and mumbled curses warned me that Harry had at last returned. I prepared to leave. His angry words were followed by blows and crying, a sound I had heard too often these past hours. I put my finger to my lips to silence Lily and quietly walked outside.
The substance of Harry’s argument was that his dinner had not been kept waiting for him.
“It would have dried to paste,” Cassie said between hiccuppy sobs. “Let me cook you a meal right now. It won’t take a minute.”
“It’ll still taste like paste,” Harry growled. “Where is it? I’ll eat it all the same.”
“I—I gave it to a stray dog. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted it and the dog was so hungry—”
“You gave my dinner to a dog? Damn you! Every time I turn my back you find another way to steal me blind!”
I made a scratching noise just below the window.
“There’s the cur now, still hungry after your cooking, I’ll wager. I’ll show it what it will get here from now on!”
The shutters were thrown wide. Through them emerged a large hand clutching a boot, then a muscular arm, then a bearded face that turned this way and that. Harry Burke was tall and thick with a mean swaggering expression and downturned lips. Before he could spy me, I grabbed him by the throat and yanked him out of the window so forcefully he broke a shutter coming through. Loose thatch spilled over both of us as I slammed him against the wall repeatedly until he howled. I did not fear alarming the neighbors; they were accustomed to violence from this house. I grabbed the boot and, using its heel like a hammer, struck him full in the face and broke his nose. He gurgled a bloody plea.
From my right a mouse squeaked. I backed up, Harry still in my grip, and saw Cassie framed by the open window, her hands pressed to her mouth. Her forehead bore a fresh lump to match her infant’s.
I pulled back my fist and held the pose, an archer taking careful aim, till Harry’s eyes gaped. Then I shattered his jaw with a blow. Broken teeth flew out, his eyes rolled back to white, and he lost consciousness. Tossing his body aside, I smiled at the blood where his teeth had scraped along my knuckles. Then I thought, was it for this feeling rather than Cassie’s protection that I had struck him?
Harry would blame her for this, too, I realized, if only because she had seen it happen.
From behind me Lily rushed up.
“Come with us,” she said, grabbing Cassie’s hands through the window. “This very moment. Do not stop to think.”
Cassie looked back over her shoulder deeper into the cottage.
“The children,” she whispered.
“Leave them! They are a millstone waiting to crush you. You can come with us, but you must leave now and you must come alone!”
A single tear slid down Cassie’s cheek, all the sorrow she had left.
“Come,” Lily urged her again. “You cannot think on it. The doing is always easier than the thinking.”
The girl shook her head.
“Then you must tell Harry we were thieves,” Lily said. “Say there were five of us, so that he will not have his mighty pride offended by being overcome by just one. Turn his pockets inside out, take his purse, and ransack your house for hiding places. But do not spend a halfpenny of whatever you find or he will know. Even if you wait for months, he will know! Bury the money where no one—no one—can see you do it. Where no one can ever find it. Save it for when you run away, which you must. If you have a third child, you will never escape. And never, for a moment, let him think a stranger was trying to save you.”
The girl nodded, the understanding between them shockingly immediate.
I ran back to the woods, slowing only after I had stepped within the shadow of trees. Later I felt Lily’s touch on my shoulder, letting me know she had returned.
Confused beyond reason, I did not ask how it was that she in her callousness had done more good than I in my attempt at compassion.
Drexham
November 28
“What’s wrong?” I had asked Lily earlier at noon.
“The worm,” she whispered.
She had scarcely touched her food. I thought at first it was our journey that stole her appetite. Exhaustion, too, played its part, as we had walked since morning, the second horse having also fallen lame from her abuse. At noon she gazed longingly at each mouthful I ate, while her own hand shook when she tried to bring to her lips the bread I had saved from yesterday. Her eyes filled with tears, and she dashed the morsel to the ground.
“The illness is still with you?” I asked.
She pulled her lips into a thin smile. “Did you think you had destroyed that along with everything else of mine? Would that you had.” Her grin grew more dreadful. “It is eating me alive.”
“We’re close to the border,” I said. “I had meant to bypass Drexham before we cross to Scotland. But I see that I’m wrong. Drexham is a city. There should be doctors in Drexham better than the one you had in Tarkenville.”
“Doctors …” A strange light came into her face. Was it hope at last? “You’re right, Victor. All I saw was the one, and who’s to say he was capable? Drexham is a city. It will have many doctors.” The light faded. “But I have no money for his fee.”
“You could pay with your barrette,” I said. “If it is very valuable, pry loose just one of the stones.”
Lily’s thin hand closed over the hair clasp, a last remembrance of her wedding. She darted me a look of hatred.
“You cling to your whore’s necklace. Give it here and I’ll pay with that, since it seems to have such value.”
More sharp words sat on her tongue, but she did not say them. At last she shook her head and pressed her hands to her stomach, wincing.
It was dusk when Drexham appeared on the horizon, and night when we entered the city. We stayed close to its outer edge, as if the more easily to escape. Neighborhoods worsened, buildings sagged, alleys tightened. There was debris everywhere, from rotting garbage to such broken furniture as Mirabella had once salvaged for us.
Four poorly clad roughs slid from the darkness and blocked our path.
“You put yourself in more danger than you know,” I said, having no wish to
fight.
“Did you hear that, Jack?” one of them said to a thin, weasel-faced man. “He’s a bleedin’ gentleman, givin’ the four o’ us the opportunity to run from the one o’ him.”
Jack signaled to them to circle us.
Lily pointed to a nearby crate. “I’m tired. May I sit while I watch?”
Her request surprised him into a laugh and he nodded. As she sat down, the shepherd’s blanket she had been wearing as a shawl fell aside.
“Eddie, look at the white dress!” Jack said to the runt of the group, and then to me: “I know who you are. There’s money on your head.” He pointed to Lily’s barrette. “And that is not paste.” I could hear his greed coagulate into thought.
The four of them rushed me at once.
A few easy blows drove off two of the men, but Jack enjoyed the fight, and Eddie possessed annoying tenacity. They took my own restrained swipes as a game, insulting me playfully as they tugged on my cloak until I turned and swung at empty air.
“What is wrong, Victor?” Lily taunted. “You fight as if you’re blindfolded.”
My next blow landed sharply, and she applauded.
Jack jumped me from behind and dragged my hood away. Eddie backed up in wonder.
“No wonder he’s got to steal his women.” Eddie shuddered. “It makes me crawlylike even to think about it.” With a grin, he said to Lily, “We’re doin’ you a tremendous service, miss.” He picked up a loose board from the debris and swung it like a bat to test its heft.
“Have a go at him, Eddie.” Jack bowed with a great flourish, then withdrew to Lily’s side, familiarly slipping his arm around her shoulders.
These men were gnats and did not know how easily they might be squashed.
Eddie swung and poked and prodded with the board. I moved as quickly as he, yet only to block his blows. I pushed him away again and again till luck allowed him to slam the board against my ear. The breath whistled from my lips. I snatched the board away as from a naughty child and shoved him down with my palm flat on his chest.
Jack was less careless and much faster. He leapt in and out beyond my reach, peppering my body with a dozen differently aimed blows till he thought he had found a weakness in my lower torso and hammered at the point. Each blow stoked my temper.
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