by Vicki Grove
She carried the bowl to the raised pallet, so teared up over Sal’s so lightly ruined life that she barely noticed that the man was still a frozen effigy, his ankles neatly crossed.
“Mam’s right and I’ve merely dreamt you awake,” she murmured, moving beside him with a deep sigh and prying at the man’s lips with the maplewood spoon he’d nearly spoilt the day before. “Yet, Sir Pirate? Even your constant stillness canna rattle me on a day when I’ve considered a brother bashing in a sister’s brains for three stupid fish.”
His eyes came open and he grabbed her wrist and swirled to a sit so’s the bowl was knocked to the floor and clattered there.
“Adela, are we finally given privacy?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
Chapter 13
Rhia stifled a scream at this shock, but once she’d had a cat’s whisker of time to get back her wits, she decided it was flattering, really. Most folk wanted Mam, never her.
And as for him calling her that false name, Adela? Well, she’d seen dim-brained misrecognizing before among the invalids. For instance, an old grandfather had been brought to them with his hands and knees constantly ashake, and he’d called Rhiannon his good wife’s name, Bertha, the whole two months they’d had him, though his Bertha’d died of ague some forty years before.
“Yes, for certain we are alone,” Rhia answered, swallowing down the dregs of her fear. “Calm yourself,” she bent to whisper, “as any commotion may bring the others.”
He nodded quite readily and loosed her wrist. “Where are we, Adela? Pray tell me we’ve caught the tide and are all safe returned to Francia again. It seems we’re lodged for the night in some fisherman’s sheds, yes?”
Last night she’d told him plain and clear that he was come to England. But she’d not mention it again if she could avoid it, as it had occasioned such a heartbreaking outburst.
“Well, sir, if you so say.” That wasn’t lying, was it?
“I don’t mind a night’s stay in such rough lodgings all that much,” he allowed, wrinkling his nose as he looked around the cottage. “This is crude and dank, of course, but it smells a bit better than some such places. And, well, a soldier’s up for anything.”
Rhiannon considered that a right stingy description of their nice, clean cot, but she tried not to show her feelings. Instead, she cleared her throat, and said, “Sir, I hear you are a soldier, but now I’d hear you speak your name.”
He smiled, though his smile was wan. “Quit your jesting, Adela, and tell now of the others. Are all the knights put up in these lodgings? I’d prefer you ladies were taken to lusher halls, but if these are the best in the vicinity, tell your gentle maids to take heart, as God willing we can try for England again upon the morrow.”
And then, his faced pinched up and he turned strange. He reached out like a blind man and gripped Rhia’s shoulders with both hands, squeezing tight. “Adela, good sister, all of a sudden I have pictures in my head I cannot account for!” he cried. “Nightmare sights, Adele! My head fair splits with the pain and sickness of such hellish visions!”
“Lie down now,” Rhiannon said firmly, using the nursing authority Mam had taught her. She took his shoulders and pushed him down, then lay her palm upon his eyes to close the lids. “I’ll find you a draft to ease your head, but you must lie still.”
He caught her wrist as she turned. “Don’t leave me, Adela! I’m lost and afraid!”
Rhiannon bent close again. “I’ll be back straightaway with the draft, I promise you.”
“I . . . know not what my name is.” He was whimpering now, like a small boy who’s lost from his mother. “I know not how I’ve come to overnight in this place!”
“Sir, you’ve been here some time, and came with some injury. You’d a hard blow to your forehead that raised a knot the size of a hen’s egg and kept you sleeping for weeks. In fact, we’d not figured you’d ever awake, so now that you have, give thanks to God.”
He looked at her with a misery in his eyes worse than any she’d ever seen, and she’d seen plenty of misery among those brought up to the bluff.
“Lady, I’d that God had left me sleeping until I slept eternal,” he whispered.
Then he closed his eyes and slowly crossed his wrists and ankles, his limbs going back to their contrary places all natural, as they’d got used to such positions.
And just like that, he was a stone effigy again, with no need for headache draft.
Rhia stood looking at him. He was young when awake, much younger than he seemed when he was so gravely sleeping. Why, he seemed not much older than Thaddeus, hardly a grown man at all. He was to grown man what she was to grown woman, about that.
Whatever his story and whatever his true Christian name, he surely had times when he felt at least half child still, as she so often did. That had showed in the fit he threw.
But what could possess him to say he’d sleep eternal if he could? Mam, who had such sympathy for the invalids, would not countenance that dark wish from anyone.
Rhiannon felt itchy and restless back inside the cottage, taking a casual meal with the others. She had this large important secret filling her up right to her tongue, and here they talked willy-nilly of this and that, none of it mattering one sparrow’s breath.
Daisy giggled at some standoff between the uppity tortoise and their six chickens. Granna watched her, greasing her bread, then pointed out, “It’s that quick laugh made you heal fast, Daisy. When God Almighty opened wide your mouth to put your soul into you, he was laughing at some good joke. That blessed laughter still circles around your innards and healed them right up, whilst Aigy’s good salves worked on your outsides.”
A small subject, Daisy’s laughter-made soul, whilst Rhia had such a huge thing to talk about that had to go unspoken! Well, didn’t have to go unspoken, but Mam had not believed her one whit this morn about the man, so why speak again of something that would only be met with smiles? The man had chosen her as confidant—her alone!
One of the chickens gave Queen Matilda a smart peck, which sent her bald head into her shell. She stayed in there, all asulk, till Daisy bent to try and lure her out with bread.
“Child, don’t waste that, as your pet finds greens aplenty outside,” Mam said quickly. “The bread we make will have to go further now, with the folk in the woods to feed. We’ll likely need more rye and barley than we can manage to grow.”
“We’ll have to pad with acorns,” Granna allowed, nodding. “Else I’ll send down some wax effigies to be traded in town tomorrow for more flour.”
Everyone looked at Mam. Granna made tiny figures from the beeswax, wax effigies that folk said had healing powers. But Mam, who had real healing powers, was doubly critical of this notion. It was false medicine, for one. And heathen practice, for two.
But Mam had been peering out the window, and now jumped to her feet so quick, she nigh turned over the bench they sat upon. “It’s someone come from the group in the woods!” she cried out.
They all turned to the window. A lone figure stood at the edge of the bracken, slender and tall, clothed in rough wool layers. A rag veil was across the figure’s face so’s only the eyes could be seen. In a gloved hand it held a bowl and was tapping it with a clapper.
Mam was by then rushing outside without a thought.
“Aigneis!” Granna called after her. “Mind you don’t—”
“Our guest will let me know how close I may safely come!” Mam called back.
And sure enough, as Rhia and Granna and Daisy watched, Mam ran forward until the figure in the bracken held up one gloved palm, telling her to stop.
Granna sighed and shook her head, then took Daisy’s hand. “Well, Aigy will for sure stay longer with that poor soul than my old eyes will keep open. Come up to the loft, child, and I’ll show you how to make wax figures afore I nap.”
Rhiannon eyed out the window as she cleared up from the meal. As Granna had predicted, Mam and the woman stood for a good long while. Lucy the cat sidled on out
side and lay on her back in the dandelions near the stoop, boxing at mites she saw in the sunlight. Queen Matilda kept her head in and was much underfoot, so’s Rhia had to pay constant attention not to think her some useless stone and kick her from the path.
Above, Granna and Daisy talked in drowsy voices that made a sort of choristers’ song, the high and the low of it. And by that lulling sound Rhiannon went to lollygagging, to thinking that if only she knew her letters, she would put a sign upon the door of the troubled young pirate who wished he slept eternal. Her letters would be quite large and would read PRIVACY so’s by them Mam and all about would know that only Rhia herself was allowed to go in under any circumstances. He was hers, after all. Her big secret . . .
“Rhiannon, come, daughter! Come!” How long had Mam been calling her to come out and meet the other? Rhia shivered off her daydreams and ran quick to the bracken.
“Mistress Todd, this is my daughter, Rhiannon,” Mam said, taking Rhia’s arm when she drew up close. “Rhiannon, this is Mistress Todd.”
“How d’ye do, Mistress Todd?” Rhiannon tried hard not to stare, for even at quick glance Mistress Todd’s face seemed made of scaly lye and ashes.
Mistress Todd cast down her large eyes and made no reply.
Mam extended a hand, by instinct seeking to take Mistress Todd by the arm, though there was the space of two men’s height between them. “There’s more bread than we can eat in the house, and some good goat cheese. I’ll send Rhiannon with those things.”
Again the woman dropped her head in a sort of nod, then she turned and began a trudge back into the woods. She’d brought back Mam’s bread basket and the ale pouch, and Mam picked them up and handed them to Rhia to be refilled once they were home.
“Say nothing,” Mam whispered through closed teeth as they walked back.
Rhiannon rolled her eyes, some insulted that Mam would think she’d babble about Mistress Todd’s poor face within her hearing, like some child the years of Daisy.
No, she waited till they were good and inside the cottage with the door closed, and even then she spoke in a whisper. “Are they . . . all like that, do you think? Her skin.”
Mam put her hands upon her hips and frowned, staring at nothing. “She would hear no plan for their comfort,” she whispered, sounding mystified. “She would only say, ‘We are dead,’ as though she thought them truly buried in the ground and beyond all need for shelter or medicinals. Only a little food would she consider.”
Rhia swallowed. “Did Thaddeus tell you about the funerals they’re given? How the priests declare them dead before sending them to a place like our woods to fend for themselves? That’s why she’d say such a thing as ‘We are dead,’ I’ll wager.”
Mam looked at her, instantly angry. “That explains as well why she said they are all ‘unclean,’ and ‘under a curse for vast sins.’ She’s so battered of mind that she can’t be reasoned with!” Mam’s green eyes shot daggers. “There are two children among them. I ask of God Almighty, what sins could two spotless little lambs commit?”
This was not a question likely to be answered anytime soon by the One it was addressed to, so Mam turned to the medicinal corner and began slamming pots and jars around. She’d have to be left alone to work out her bile in making salves, as Rhiannon had worked hers out in kneading dough yesterday.
Rhiannon knew her own best course was to fill the bread basket and the ale pouch and to take them straightaway back to the place in the bracken where she’d picked them up empty.
After this small task was accomplished, she began preparing for the morrow.
Rhia quietly moved around Mam as she gathered up what goods were supposed to be taken down the trail to be sold at market, and when she had them she was plenty glad to escape the cottage altogether, a place made steamier by Mam’s rage. She carried the things to the work stump to load them into two pack slings, one for each shoulder.
Mam had not said a straight-out nay to the wax effigies, so they were going, along with beeswax candles and clover honey, some loaves of bread and also some braided herbs and leaf-packets of sorted seeds. Right now was the time seeds could fetch their best price, as in April housewives would be hard at work grubbing up garden spaces within their crofts. The rarer the seeds, the better for bragging later as the gardens sprouted, so Rhiannon had hopes of a good profit tomorrow. The seeds she gathered at bluff’s edge were known throughout the town to be ofttimes highly unusual.
Granna ambled out and dropped a few more just-made wax figures onto Rhia’s pile.
“Now, granddaughter, I’ve thunk up three things you’d best find out about Jim tomorrow,” she instructed. “And here they are. Ask what was said by the bailiff or the vicar just before Jim’s confession. Ask who was witness to such a misthought confession. And then, most important, find out who profits from it.”
“Granna, the only profiteer would be the murderer!” Rhia protested. “I’ll for certain not be able to find that out, not even from your savvy friends at the ale-tasters’ booth.”
She put the first pack onto the ground and sat on it, then bounced a few times to try and make it some flatter and less cumbrous.
“Others may profit as well from a confession,” Granna insisted. “And Rhia, mind you put those wax figures deeper in the sack, lest near the top they trigger some especial notice by your mother.”
Rhia sighed, dumped the pack, and started over, this time putting the effigies in first.
“I’ll take the candles to the cottages,” Rhia said the moment the sky was dark enough that night for her offer not to appear suspicious. “In fact, that’ll be my doings from now on, Mam. I’ll see to the two invalids in the cots, morn and night, as you’ve much to think about with the ones in the forest. Your care will go to the forest folk, and I will attend to the folk in the cots. Understand?”
Mam looked at her round-eyed, undoubtedly perplexed.
“All right then?” Rhiannon asked, pocketing two tallows. “Just believe that those two cots are as empty as the others and pay no mind to them.” She took a lit tallow and kissed Mam’s cheek. “Never, ever look in upon the folk inside.”
Granna was smoking her pipe and watching squint-eyed as Rhia left. As Rhia hopped the stoop and walked back past the window from the path outside, she saw Granna and Mam exchange a look and a shrug.
Well, they’d not objected, just been puzzled. Rhia took that as a - go-along.
Yet, oddly, now that it was time to check the pirate, and some dark outside, she felt a bit nervous about it and was glad to linger at Sal’s a bit before going. She’d brought bread in her waist pouch and honey on two folded leaves. Dull Sal would not eat a piece of honeyed bread direct, but she’d suck it, as a babe will suck a milky rag.
“Are you awake?” Rhiannon whispered as she secured Sal’s tallow on her sill.
Sally was on her side on her pallet, her knees pulled up nigh her chin. “Fish,” she mentioned, and yawned large.
Rhiannon sat down beside her, opened a honeyed leaf to drip it over a piece of the bread, then opened Sal’s clenched hand and put the honeyed bread into her grasp. Sal clamped it in a tight fist. She’d suck it off and on throughout the night. It would give her comfort and help fill her belly, though in the morning Sally’s hair would be matted with honey, and oft as not stuck fast to the pallet as well. Mayhaps a beetle-bug or two would have been entrapped in all that sticky mess of hair and pallet straw, which was why Mam lacked enthusiasm for Sal’s honey treat. But Rhiannon believed what real harm was it for the pleasure it gave? It all came clean in the brook, where she’d give Sal and the bugs a good washing in the morning.
“Sally, here’s a puzzle. Some sleep in the woods who think they are dead. And one who sleeps up here wishes he were. Dead, that is. Pray tell, who is the luckier, the ones who are alive and know it not or the one alive who knows it and likes it not?”
Sally smiled around the bread she sucked and closed her eyes. Suck, suck, suck.
What mothe
r had Sally had? No living mother on the day her bad brother cuffed her, and that was a blessing. No mother should have to know of such a thing. Still, mayhaps a living mother would have stopped his hand. Rhia, sighing at all the wrong things in the world that might have stayed aright with one small nudge, hugged Sally good night.
She determined not to look at the sleeping or waking French or English soldier until she’d secured his candle good in the window. She’d have to play this right. Earlier he’d been skittish and fitful and determined in his dim-brained state to call her by his sister’s name, Adele or Adela. If he’d been all that in the daytime, he might be worse in the dark. She wanted a good light for it, anyhow.
The candle flickered, then flamed bright. Rhiannon turned toward the pallet, fear and anticipation running apace within her. He lay there, but his ankles had come uncrossed, and his hands were folded on his stomach with his thumbs diddling round and round.
“I’ve waited all day,” he said crossly.
She took a breath. “For what, sir?”
He sat up. “For what? For . . . for service! I starve! I thirst!”
She hastened to pull his portion of the bread from her waist pouch, slathering it with honey from the folded leaf. Six quick steps put her close enough for him to reach it with urgent hands. He gobbled it in four huge bites, then licked his fingers. Honey ran through the little beard on his chin and dribbled to the sleeveless jacket he wore over his shirt. Rhia hurried to the water jug Mam kept in the corner. She got him a dipperful, and again he grabbed and guzzled, wiping his mouth with his sleeve when he’d finished.
“You’ve water just over there.” She pointed. “You may find your legs poor support at first, as you’ve not used them in weeks. I’ll set the water bucket closer, but you’d best start in on walking a bit. Come the morrow, we should—”
