by Vicki Grove
Mam asked quietly, “Will those ruffians truly stay upon their boat when your vigilance is elsewhere, Almund? Or will they . . . skulk about?”
The reeve looked at her. “The captain seemed willing enough to do as told, Aigy. He’s escaped the hangman’s noose often enough that he knows his reputation alone might hang him if he’s seen about on shore with a murder just done. His words to me were, ‘We’ll stay tight upon this craft as living crew, or skeleton crew, if ye get my drift.’ Then he leaned over the ship’s rail and retched quite heartily. At that, I gladly turned my mount. ‘Captain, you’re too stringy tough to die,’ I called over my shoulder as I rode on. ‘And don’t neglect to clean up that mess upon our beach, or I’ll send our bailiff out to meet you. And I’ll be sure to put in a word to Bertha, who cooks for prisoners in our gaol, just to let her know you enjoy a fine helping of well-aged goat!’ ”
Granna and Rhia laughed at that, though Mam, the worrier of the three, did not.
“We’ve raised the hue and cry throughout the manor and will beat the fields all day,” Reeve Clap now told them. “My men have talked to those in the forest cottages that lie along the trail to town, but no one seems to have heard or seen a thing. I myself went to Hilda Mopp’s house, as her son Arnold is a sulky sort of lad and has had some brushes with the law. Nothing approaching this sort of heinous crime, but a hare poached now and then, a cabbage pilfered, each leading to a whipping or other discouragement. Dame Mopp was quick with their alibi. She told that they both had been abed early, it being fogged, though she declared Arnold slept with a heavy club aside himself, always protective of his mother. She claims they saw no stranger pass their way in the night, nor during the previous day, for that matter. Arnold was not at home, but when I come across the boy, I’ll see if his story is a match for his mother’s.”
“And so your interviews have yielded up no felon, and you will beat the fields all this day,” Granna mused, chewing hard upon the stem of her pipe. “And I’m certain our vicar will decide there must needs be a laying of hands upon the corpse for the morrow.”
Almund nodded wearily. “Vicar Pecksley has declared that the body will indeed be displayed on the wide table before the butcher shop tomorrow noon, and all in the manor will be required to take part in a laying of hands on it, including yourselves up here upon the bluff. Unless the crime’s positively solved by then, of course, in which case only the captured murderer will lay his hands upon the corpse as proof positive of his guilt. It seems unlikely we’ll have our man by then, so assume it’s on if you’ve not heard otherwise by tomorrow dawn from me or one of my men.”
“The dead man’s wounds will gush blood when they’re touched by the hands of his foul murderer,” Granna murmured, staring at the flames.
It was one of those things beyond explaining. A newly dug well won’t fill right unless a shoe is hung inside it. Bees will bring misfortune upon a place unless informed of all goings-on. And the wounds of a murder victim will gush blood when the vile murderer lays his, or her, hands upon the body. And so all must take a turn doing it.
Rhia didn’t really mind. She’d done it three times before during the other three murder investigations in her lifetime. The touching was bad, but it only lasted a moment, and on the good side, it brought an excuse to go down into town, where the sellers and street performers would likely take advantage of such a crowd to make the day merry.
She might even link with her friends to hear the new gossip!
Rhia was instantly ashamed of that thought, for there could be no good part in such a dire crime, of course. Still, it wasn’t her fault, this bloody murder, and if her friends showed up to gab, how could she courteously refuse? She could not, that’s all.
Glossy, the big red hen, suddenly stuck her beak through the willow of the chicken cage and began nibbling at some small thing stuck to the elbow of Reeve Clap’s tunic.
“A business such as this murder is why you women had best forsake this high bluff,” the reeve quietly observed. He drew his hands across his face, thereby moving his elbow and robbing Glossy of her juicy tidbit.
“Rhia, a cool drink for our guest,” Mam ordered from the table near the doorway where she worked sorting greens. Her back was mostly toward them all, though Reeve Clap kept stealing glances her way, and she his.
Rhia hurried to fill him a mug with ale made from their malt.
“You choose to exert yourself to such a sweat climbing up here on a hot spring day, Almund Clap,” Granna observed, back to teasing now that she had her fill of information. “We’ve never asked for invite down from you, and never invited you up the bluff to us.”
“Aw, Moira,” said Reeve Clap, flustered. He took the ale from Rhiannon and gulped it down in one long quaff, then wiped his mouth with his thick fingers and said again, more forcefully, “I do worry about you three women up here alone.”
“You forget there are others up here, Almund,” Mam said quietly. “And what of them tomorrow? There be six invalids at the moment in four of our five hospice cots, and not a one of them can walk down the bluff to file by a dead man, as can’t my mother with her aged legs, not easily.”
To Rhia’s surprise, Granna didn’t contradict her.
“Only the fit to walk must come tomorrow,” Reeve Clap said. “Your invalids and idiots can stay put. But if the murderer’s not discovered and Vicar Pecksley orders a second laying of hands for the next day, Lord Claredemont’s orders may change in that regard. If it comes to that, we can find strong men to carry down all who dwell up here.”
“Har!” Granna roared, throwing back her head. “The day Woethersly calls its forgotten damned back down this bluff is the day the town will sink into the sea!”
Shocked, Rhia looked quickly to Mam, sure she’d give Granna sharp reproof for her heathen language. But Mam was looking down at her hands, stilled in the midst of sorting those greens. Rhia looked then to the reeve, who leaned back against the wattle as before, but now with his head bent so he stared at the floor.
What had there been in Granna’s riddling words to cause such a strain to fall upon the house? After some time of that tight silence, the good reeve stood and handed Rhiannon his empty mug. He smiled his thanks, but his eyes then quickly shifted to Rhia’s mother.
“Aigneis, I’d like a private word before I go back down, if I might.”
Mam stepped out with him. Rhia, breathless, watched from the window as they walked to the edge of the woods, her mother so small with her clouds of red hair flowing in the breeze and the reeve gangly-tall and light, a big old Saxon through and through, but not bad to look at if you like that kind of thing.
For all her sad-eyed agreeing about her legs being old, Granna jumped up and skittered quick as a hare to Rhiannon’s side so she could get a good view as well.
Chapter 3
They watched as Mam and Reeve Clap passed through the bracken and then were cloaked from sight by the deep shade of the thick oak trees at the forest’s edge. When they could no longer see them, still they stood at the window, trying their best to.
“Granna?” Rhia whispered as they peered. “Why’d you give Ona and her girls and Gimp Jim and Dull Sal such a heathen description, saying they were the town’s forgotten damned?”
“You’ve forgot the Man Who Sleeps,” Granna muttered, then spit into the rushes that covered their floor. “I was including him as well in my heathen description, Rhia. He, too, is one of the forgotten damned, brought up here and left to die.” In a low voice she added, “Don’t mention this floor-spitting to your mam, if you please. I forgot myself.”
Rhia turned to look into her grandmother’s eyes. “But their sicknesses and injuries are not their own fault, Granna! So how could God damn them, if He is just? And if He isn’t, why do we go to such trouble trying to please Him?”
It was an important question, possibly the most important thing Rhia had ever thought to ask. Granna poked with the toe of her boot at the rushes she’d grimed, hiding them under others that were f
resher, then fished in her waist pouch for the fine bone comb she’d inherited from her own granna. She handed it to Rhia and turned her back so’s Rhia could braid her hair. Once, Rhia’d found a small bird nested within her grandmother’s thick and snarled tresses. Another time she’d uncovered Granna’s favorite smoking pipe, which Granna’d feared was lost forever.
“So you’d have it that only the Lord God can dispense damnation, heh, granddaughter?” Granna’s head bobbled as she spoke, as Rhia was just then chopping with the comb at a mass of spiderweb. “Oh, human beings can give a person a damning too, and one that may have a sting greater than the merciful Almighty’s! Tell me, child, how many would you count have gone back down the trail once they’ve been brought up to us, each one of them all addled or crippled or, like Ona and her worst-burned twin, singed by house fire crisp as a twig dropped into the firepit?”
Rhia didn’t have to think. “No one has gone back down,” she answered quietly.
The first of the invalids had come to them six Januarys before, when Rhia had been only eight. He was an old uncle who’d been sleeping on the beach when a freeze set in and ice took hold of his feet and hands, turning them soft and black with rot. They figured he’d made it up their path by accident, just wandering with his wits inflamed. Mam eased him mightily with her salves, and when he died, they three women had buried him inside the largest of the faeries’ stone circles, within the sacred heart of the forest.
When word of that got down to the village, it quickly became routine to bring such invalids up their path. They’d had elders who’d lost their reason or use of their limbs, two babies born lacking wits, and several of all ages, men and women, so horribly hurt by animals or mischance that Rhia sometimes could scarce keep from turning her head or covering her nose when Mam sent her to their bedsides with food and drink. Each had been pulled up the trail on a carrying sledge or led by a waist rope, and each slept eternally now within the stone circle.
“But soon enough, I expect Jim may well return to his own home, now that he manages so well with his stick,” Rhia quickly pointed out. She added, with a defiant lift to her chin, “In fact, he was out some-wheres when I looked into his cot this very morn.”
“Oh, yes, of late Jim rambles the woods at night,” Granna allowed.
Rhia, who thought she knew everything, had not known that. She blinked in surprise. “But . . . should he not fear walking our woods, and at night?” she whispered.
“It’s Jim’s business where he wanders, Rhia, and none of our own. And I reckon Jim chooses dark night as he wishes no gawkers whilst he practices his hobbled gait.”
But had Granna forgot there’d been murder done in the woods just last night? Rhia picked at an intricate knot of bristly hairs and mused that Granna was in most ways right—it was not, strictly speaking, her business where Jim rambled. But then again, so much was not her business that it ofttimes seemed truly annoying!
She let it go, but with a peevish sigh. “Back to the other then, Granna. Does it not insult my mother for you to say that her patients are damned? Mam’s the best healer in all Lord Claredemont’s manor, mayhaps in all Wessex. She knows all manner of things about gathering the herbs of the forest for her decoctions and ointments. She can call the birds to herself as well!”
“Exactly so, Rhiannon,” Granna soberly agreed. “Being bird-descended, she can, and makes good use of the eggs they give in her calming salves. Mind now that you comb out that little fringe along me neck and catch it in the braid, as it tickles me mightily in my sleep if it’s left down to hang.”
“She uses the dropped feathers of our sister birds in grave wraps for too-early-born babes,” Rhia murmured as she tucked in those neck hairs. “In hard circumstances she’s used squabs to make a gruel for someone fevered, and the doves have not seemed to resent such frugal use of their young. They gladly help in her work with their sacrifice, and would never think her patients ‘damned.’ ”
Rhia knew she’d pushed it with that last nervy statement. Granna stepped forward so’s her hair was jerked from Rhia’s grip, then turned to grip Rhia’s shoulders.
“Rhiannon, dear, now don’t be daft. Your mother’s work is not what damns her patients—far from it! Here’s the gist of the thing, then. In Woethersly these days they’ve grown so grand that they take pride in having naught to blemish their view nor cast a pall upon their light- heartedness. And so they send up to us whatever, whoever, might get in the way of that. We care for those misfortunates, then we safekeep them in our cemetery, and those below never even have to know when they’ve passed from this world to the next. Your mother’s good medicine is exceeded only by the goodness of her heart, but folks in town now turn away when she walks by as if she does the devil’s own work! No, dear girl, proud Woethersly won’t welcome back to their midst someone sent up our path, as t’would remind them of much they’ve decided they will never, ever think about again.”
Rhia could only shake her head. “That . . . makes no sense,” she whispered.
Spent from her strong riddling, Granna shuffled toward her stool. “No, dear Rhia, like much that humans feel, that makes little sense. Still, I reckon humans will go on feeling nonsense until the Almighty calls an end to time.”
She reached her place beside the firepit and eased down to a sit upon her three-legged stool. Rhia regretted seeing Granna’s hair so lopsided now, half a braid and half dangling loose. That loose part stuck out bristly and coarse as a donkey’s tail. Rhia reached with her arm to sweep under the fall of her own long black hair, bringing it round over her shoulder to make use of the comb she still held. Its teeth went through her thick tresses easily as through water. The small flowers she liked to braid in here and there usually slid right out, so sleek were her locks, but her hair was every bit as thick as Granna’s. Could she expect a tail of donkey hair herself one day, ages and ages and ages from now?
The fire popped and blew sparks up toward the rafters, causing Rhia to jump, shamefaced and guilty. Could Granna possibly read her ungracious thoughts?
“Shall I finish your braid for you now?” she asked meekly.
Granna laughed quite heartily. “Nay, Rhia, best start water for the turnips as it grows late for our meal. My donkey hair will wait.”
Reeve Clap left directly and they fixed their meal in silence for as long as Granna could stand it, around the time it took the turnip water to come to a bubble.
“Well, Aigneis!” she finally demanded. “What did he talk to you private about?”
Mam sighed. “He brought a sort of warning, Mother, though it made little sense. Almund wanted to let us know that the earl’s ship docked last night in Woethersly with cargo for us up here, though Almund knew not what the cargo was.”
Rhia looked at Granna, and Granna looked harder at Mam, squinting her eyes. “Well, what sort of a Saxonish half-brained warning is that to be giving, Aigneis?”
Rhia cleared her throat and ventured, “I saw a grand ship leaving the quay while I gathered seeds this morn! It was aristocratic in its draperies, but its cargo couldn’t really be for us, could it? He must have meant it had come from the earl for them below, in the world. I mean, in Woethersly.”
“Strangely, Rhia, I think he meant it was for us up here,” Mam said quietly. “Almund was at the manor house very early today giving an account of the murder to Lord Claredemont, and as they spoke a messenger came to inform the lord that the earl’s boat was leaving after delivering its cargo for the bluff. Almund distinctly heard those three words, but could learn nothing beyond that.”
Rhiannon frowned, remembering something else. “Mam, do you recall the day last winter when the earl’s son and his friends arrived, the young men now squiring at Lord Claredemont’s? You and I were down at market, and everyone stopped their business and went to the docks to see the fine spectacle they made as they left the ship and rode to the manor house with their packhorses and servants.”
“The whole town stopped, you say!” Mam played s
hocked and went wide-eyed. “I remember your friends came to fetch you, and that Maddy begged me hard to give you leave to go with her and the other girls to gawk and giggle as those fellows left their boat!”
Granna laughed as Rhia blushed and shrugged. “Well, it was only fit that someone give them welcome!” she protested weakly. “Anyhow, the boat they came on was much more sprightly than the one I saw this morn, yet it was the earl’s boat.”
“That would have been the earl’s pleasure boat, Rhia,” Mam said. “The one you saw this morn was apt to be the boat the earl keeps for his dirty work. His men use it for hauling ox and loads of building stone and battle horses and such. It’s grand enough, but he’d never have his kith and kin sail in such a filthed contraption.”
Mam turned briskly back to her pots. “Turnips smell done, so bring the bread, Rhia, and let’s eat,” she instructed.
As a rule they ate in silence, chewing good and slow to make sure that what they’d got would stick to their bones and spleens and livers and be of good use to their bodies. But that day they made short work of their meal, having morning chores to catch up.
Mam stood, turned to her medicinal corner, and said, “I’ll finish this batch of salve, then go right quick to change Ona’s bandages and see about her little girls.”
Granna, muttering something softly to herself, moved from the eating bench to Mam’s sleep pallet in the nether corner. Almost immediately, she was snoring.
Rhiannon pushed the table to the wall and wiped the bench of crumbs. Lucy sprang eagerly down from the window ledge, and Rhia bent to shake a finger at her. “Crumbs are for the poultry, selfish Lucy, as you well know.”
She pulled the latch of the pen and let Glossy and her chicks out to rummage their leftover bits from the floor reeds. Lucy licked her paw and would not look at Rhia, proudly pretending this licking job had been her only intent all along.
Then suddenly, Lucy stopped, her head cocked and her paw motionless in the air. She was onto some smell or small racket under the reeds.
