Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  “Well,” Reeve Clap summarized, slapping his knees. “Here’s what we have, then. Jim’s possibly been scapegoated as murderer by the vicar, enlisting the bailiff and his men as help in getting the wounds to bleed when Jim’s hands were upon the corpse. And let us assume for argument’s sake that this has been done because the true murderer is known but must not be discovered. Then our question must be, who is the real murderer, and why so protected? We’ve no place to begin in our thinking about that, no hint of a suspect. And without a suspect, all this is only far-fetched speculation.”

  “All saints above, will ye please keep us from idjits!” Granna howled. She immediately remembered herself, pulled in her lips, and looked apologetic. “No offense, Reeve, as you’re no idjit, of course. I meant no disrespect with such an outburst, but how can you not have thought how there’s but one house and one house alone round here that could have the money and power to swing such an expensive thing as bribing the vicar! Lord protect us all, as hell’s surely just around the corner a short walk when the nobility of the manor commits the most mortal of sins and can pin it on the local peasantry without so much as rippling the pond!”

  “Bribery?” Mam sounded shocked. “Oh, Mother, you cannot believe our vicar could be bribed to do this thing?”

  “Daughter, surely you don’t believe it’s prayer that’s turning the vicar’s humble church into a grandee’s stone palace? A dog will not bite the hand that feeds it, that’s all I say. And always and forever that golden hand is attached to the arm of the gentry.”

  Granna’s hot words brought a memory to the surface of Phia’s churning thoughts. Tap! Tap, tap, tap. Lord Claredemont had tapped his chin in measured rhythm when she’d glimpsed him yesterday, as though considering some matter of import. She’d seen him at that window twice, in point of fact—once after coming back with Maddy, then a second time when Jim had just been exposed as murder suspect.

  Rhia sprang to her feet. “Oh!” she cried, her hands flown to her cheeks. “I’ve just remembered that I . . . I saw Lord Claredemont up in his salon, looking out upon the crowd. And as someone stepped to lay hands, he shook his head! And . . . and then later, when Jim was brought from the tent, I glanced the direction of the manor house again, by accident, as I was seeking Granna in the crowd. And there was Lord Claredemont at the same salon window still, only now, he . . . he nodded ! Oh! He . . . nodded his head, just slightly! Was he . . . was he nodding as signal to . . . to the bailiff and the vicar to proceed in making Jim appear the murderer?”

  Rhiannon must have looked alarming, as Mam stood and came right round behind her. Rhia turned gratefully into her mother’s arms, trembling all over and weak in the knees.

  And though the last thing she wanted was to be taken back to the cottage, Mam had led her most of the way there before Rhia noticed it was happening.

  “I won’t go home, Mam!” she protested, though she could not dig in her heels or lift her head from Mam’s shoulder for the weakness she felt.

  “Too much responsibility has clean worn you out, daughter,” Mam pronounced.

  And before Rhia’d been able to find a way to stop her, Mam had gotten her up the ladder of the sleep loft and into bed, where still Rhia determined to protest in the strongest fashion that she was no child now but indeed fourteen and fifteen in three months and therefore would not be left out of the meeting.

  But she could only whisper, “Mind that Sal’s out upon the stoop.” Then, she slept.

  Chapter 11

  When Rhia awoke, it was more dark than light. She kicked the blanket from her legs and cast aside the lavender cloth Mam had placed upon her forehead. Her wits were cobwebby from the long sleep, and she staggered a bit as she hurried to the corner to see out the twiggy sparrow’s hole in the roof.

  No one seemed about. Most likely Thaddeus and Almund had left some time ago, as it was twilight now. She’d wasted so much of this important day sleeping! Mam then appeared in her line of vision, walking brisk along the stone path that connected the cottages. Rhia was surprised to see her pass the two cots that were occupied without going in to check the invalids. She walked right past the two newly empty cots, as well. When she reached the outermost of the cottages, Mam pushed her shoulder against the heavy door and went inside.

  Rhia snatched at her sleep-tumbled hair and worked it into a knot, preparing to hurry down the ladder to quiz whoever she might—meaning Granna. Through the twiggy hole, she now perceived Daisy running from behind the beehives with Queen Matilda nearby. A skirt and apron showed beneath the hives as well, which meant Granna was working at the big stump they used as a chore table there.

  Rhiannon hustled down the ladder, but was stopped for a moment downstairs by the surprise of finding Mam’s small charcoal brazier set up in the medicinal corner. The wood table and stone grinding slabs were covered with fresh greens as well, and a large quantity of Mam’s dried herbs had been untied from the rafters and spread loose.

  What decoctions could she be thinking of making in such quantity, with Ona and Primrose past needing salves and remedials and even Jim gone beyond her nursing?

  And then the last shreds of sluggish sleep cleared from Rhia’s brains and she remembered the lepers. So it’d been decided as she slept that the lepers were to be housed in that nether cottage Mam was just now inspecting! What all else had been decided without her? Rhia ran straightaway from the cottage to complain to Granna.

  “There is nothing so upsetting as not being included when a thing is decided, as though I be a child and not fourteen, fifteen in three months!” Rhia hotly informed Granna when she had hard-rounded the hives and come to a rocking stop. She stood breathing hard and glaring, waiting for an explanation and certainly an apology.

  “There ye be, sleepyhead!” Granna greeted her mildly. She had the bread trencher upon the stump and was kneading a big quantity of dough, which Rhia’d come close to knocking clean over. “As this is your usual job, I’ll yield it to you, granddaughter.” Granna stood straight and pushed her doughy knuckles into her back. “And when you’ve finished, I’ll enlist your help in turning the hives back right round. As you see, I had Almund turn them early this morning so’s they faced away from the forest, as the bees must face away from a funeral and not be made upset by it.”

  “Granna!” Rhia huffed, throwing up her arms. “You have such an abundance of sympathy for the bees, but can you not see that I, your own closest kin, am much upset?”

  Granna reached out and amiably patted Rhia’s cheek, chuckling a bit. “Yes, girl, and kneading is a very good cure for upset, whate’er the reason for it.”

  With this, she walked away. And Rhia, seeing naught else to do, rinsed her own hands in the stream with much angry splashing, then set to the job at hand.

  As Granna had predicted, kneading that big dough finally got the bile worked from Rhia’s spleen, or most of it at least. Good thing, too, because Mam was surely too tired to have to deal with Rhia’s foul mood when she finally came back from the nether cottage. It was so late that the bread was not only risen but baked and cooled on the kitchen slab. The chickens were even asleep, as were Granna and Daisy, who now shared the pallet up in the loft whilst Rhia’d been changed to sleeping with Mam, below.

  “I’m weary to my bones,” Mam admitted, pulling off her apron, which was plain filthy. “I’d meant to just eye the nether cottage, to see what shape it might be in. But here I went to cleaning it after I’d gave it an eyeing. Are Granna and Daisy above?”

  Rhia nodded. She’d been set to quiz Mam about the afternoon’s decisions, but from the look of her she decided she’d wait. “I’ll put that to soak,” she offered, taking the apron from Mam with two fingers and walking it quickly over to the washtub.

  She could imagine the job Mam had had, as they’d housed their two pigs and the milch goat in that cottage throughout the part of winter it had stood unoccupied.

  And even if she’d not been able to imagine, she could have gone by smell.

>   “I’ll go wash myself at the brook before starting in on this,” Mam said, looking toward the big job awaiting her in the medicinal corner. She sighed and blew upward to move her hair from her sweated face. “I wish I hadn’t got it all laid out to do, as now I’m stuck with doing it still tonight.” Her voice was ragged with exhaustion.

  While Mam was washing at the stream, Rhia looked for the pestle in the mess of greens covering everything in the medicinal corner. She’d found it and had already started crushing some of the feverfew lying upon the mortar slab when Mam walked back, drying her arms and neck with a flaxen rag.

  “Thank you, Rhiannon,” Mam said, looking a bit surprised and truly grateful.

  Rhia stayed beside her for all the hours of that big job, crushing what herbs Mam put by the mortar for her to crush, whilst Mam blended and cooked and portioned things out. It was necessary to make good use of the charcoal while the brazier burned, not waste it in cooking part portions, though this meant working late into the night.

  Rhia was a bit surprised at herself for hanging in and helping like that without so much as being asked. She was in the habit of waiting to be nagged some when Mam decided she required help, to tell it true.

  But tonight Mam had looked so tired, and there was something else. She’d seemed downhearted. It was upon her face, and in the set of her neck and shoulders. It was a fumbling of her fingers as she worked, when she was never a fumbler at all. Strange for a mother to be downhearted, but there it was, upon her.

  Rhia wondered as she crushed the herbs—: When had Mam developed such a range of humors—this one of downheartedness, for instance? Rhia herself sometimes felt downhearted, ofttimes when she was lonely, or when she was worried or confused. But she’d never much thought about a mother feeling such a thing.

  “Well, now, that’s been some job, but we’re down to stoppering the bottles,” Mam finally whispered. “Thank you again for helping with all this, Rhiannon.”

  Rhia cleared her own throat and said quietly, “I didn’t mind.”

  For a moment she considered bringing up the afternoon’s decisions now. But Mam was so clearly tuckered Rhia decided to let her peevish questions go, though it rankled.

  “I know you wonder how everything was left today, Rhia,” Mam all of a sudden told on her own. “Not much more was said after you’d gone. Almund will let us know what’s happening in regards to Jim.” She stretched on tiptoe to return the small onion braid to its hook. “He or Thaddeus, one or the other, will be back with word in two or three days. But one thing—I did get to talk with Thaddeus a bit alone, right before they left. I wanted to learn more about the . . . the contagion carried by the folk.”

  Mam moved to the window and looked out into the darkness, crossing her arms. “Everyone fears leprosy,” she said quietly. “You hear so many rumors, and it is such a dreadful ailment.” She frowned, then added in a whisper, “They’ve a lazarhouse, a hospice for them, near Glastonbury Abbey, so Thaddeus has seen some of it, firsthand.”

  She pushed her bright hair from her face and turned from the window to face Rhiannon more direct. “Rumor is the hardest thing, daughter. It can be deadly enemy to those least able to fend against its poison, like the poor souls left stranded out there in our woods.” She’d recovered some pep, and her green eyes flashed her indignation.

  Rhiannon swallowed. “What’d . . . Thaddeus have to say about it?”

  Mam moved to begin stoppering her filled potions with wax from the hives. “Well,” she answered carefully, “he said many who care for the lepers never catch the disease at all. Others do, and some quickly enough. But most often those who catch it have spent years working close around them. It’s not like true plague in its contagion, then. Still, it’s an awful thing, and can for certain be caught.”

  “We’re bringing them to the nether cottage,” Rhiannon said flatly, unable to wait longer for this to be out. “Aren’t we? You and the others decided it, without me.”

  Mam turned quick and looked at her direct. “No, Rhia, I’d never let something like that be decided without you! The two men would have it that we leave those people in the woods, is my thinking. But we didn’t really discuss it because I didn’t want them . . . intruding. This is . . . ours. This is for us, up here, to decide! Just as those years ago we decided together that we’d use the ancient cottages and our own hands to offer care to all who were brought to us.”

  Then, without warning, Mam just came apart. She covered her face with her hands and bent far forward like a willow branch. Her white elbows supported her against the wood table, else Rhia thought she would have collapsed to the floor.

  Rhia had never, ever seen this from her before and she knew not what to do.

  “Mam?” she whispered, rushing to steady Mam’s shoulders, alarmed at how much she felt her mother’s trembling through her own palms, up her arms.

  Mam raised up a little, but her hands were fisted and her knuckles bone white. “I know not what to do, daughter!” She pounded the table hard with one fist. “I don’t know how to . . . to think about this!” She pounded a second time. “It’s stumped me! Nothing’s stumped me that I can ever remember, but this has!”

  Suddenly, then, she stood straight and took Rhiannon’s face in her hands. “Tell me, daughter, what would you have us do?” Mam brought her anguished face close to Rhia’s own and searched Rhia’s eyes. “Truly, this is a decision that much involves you, and I’d be grateful to have your considered advice. We could take these salves to the woods and merely leave them there in a basket to be found. We could take food as well and let those people live rough under the trees! We could go that way, though halfway it would be.”

  Rhia could not think at all. But suddenly, she had the strange feeling that she was floating upward, rising and rising until she hung high above their roof thatch. She hovered in a place so far above the ground that she could see all below, not just some.

  For a moment, she possessed the clear viewpoint of a bird, or of an angel.

  “It doesn’t seem enough to do, not with that biggest of the cots standing empty.”

  “Oh.” Mam made that one little sound, then covered her face with her slim white hands again. She stood that way, facing Rhia and shaking her head. Was she crying?

  “I’m sorry, Mam,” Rhia whispered, helpless, her throat aching. “I did not mean to cause you more trouble in your mind! I just said that from picturing how it all might seem from high above, as then it all looked so much simpler.”

  Mam grabbed round Rhia’s neck and hugged her then, burying her face in Rhia’s hair.

  “I know, and I feel both joy and pity at your answer,” she whispered. “Sometimes you seem so much your granna’s, so little my own. But daughter, what you’ve just described is how I’ve come to every decision of my life.”

  They stayed hugging like that for a while, neither anxious to give up such comfort on the midnight of what had been such a fraught and anxious day.

  It was Mam who finally pulled away, slapping her forehead and laughing a little. “I forgot to put candles in the two invalid cottages tonight! I must be more tired than I realized. Quench the tallow near you, Rhia. I’ll finish damping this brazier, then I’ll quick take the candles so’s we may finally get a bit of sleep.”

  “I’ll take the candles,” Rhia said quickly, which was surprising, seeing as how she always resisted going after dark into the cot of the Man Who Sleeps. And surely she’d forgot for a moment his bite upon the spoon that afternoon or she’d never have made that bold offer. But there you have it—she hadn’t thought of the spoon in hours, and now she lifted the tallow there beside her and found the two others to be lit from it and was off into the midnight darkness, propelled by how Mam had just made her feel of such value.

  Leaving Sally’s candle was easy. Going next to the other’s abode was not.

  Knock, knock, then quick, expecting and receiving no call to enter, she pushed open the pirate’s door. With blood rushing in her ears,
she hurried to the window. She’d not look in his direction, no need for that. No need at all, and besides, she’d remembered the bite by then and her fingers had gone all atremble so if she didn’t pay attention she might let the light go out from fumbling it.

  She let a bit of wax drip upon the sill to hold the tallow, then . . .

  “Halt!” he called from the deep shadows behind her.

  It was more a plea than a demand, made by one who’d recently been more dead, you might say, than alive. The command came out all hollow and filled with wind, more a whisper, really, than a call.

  But ’twas enough to give Rhiannon the biggest scare she’d ever have, so that her heart was then a hare inside her chest, clamoring to climb right out and run to the woods.

  She whirled around, though she’d not meant to look at him, and clearly saw the pirate sitting up on the raised pallet where he’d lately looked so much a corpse that they’d crossed his arms and legs, as for a killed Crusader! Sitting right up straight, he was!

  She could not see him well, as the candle had fallen from her shaking hands and was extinguished. She could just make out his head and shoulders, dark against the lighter daub of the wall behind him. He was facing her direct, his legs adangle from the bed.

  “Tell me, Adela, is this . . . Francia?” he asked.