by Vicki Grove
“And what of heartier fare, meat for starters?” he demanded. “And stronger drink?”
She began to feel flustered by his rough manner. “We . . . we’ve some milk from our goat, though Daisy needs the most of it. As for meat, we’ve fish sometimes, and a little rabbit on certain holy days.”
Most common people would be hanged as poachers for eating from the lord’s woods, and as this soldier was seeming now like an uppity aristocrat of the most spoiled and bossy type, Rhiannon thought she’d better quick explain.
“Lord Claredemont looks the other way with us a bit on eating some rabbit, because of Mam’s service to him as . . . as a healer. I’ll try to get you a little dried fish in the morning, all right? And a cup of milk.”
“I puke to think of milk! Powerful ale is what I need for my splitting head!”
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, holding his head as illustration.
Well, now Rhiannon was in a quandary. Granna brewed some ale, of course, but she didn’t like it known about, as her cronies at the official ale-tasters’ booth were meant to have the lock on ale brewing, with no one else allowed to do it.
“I think,” she ventured, then cleared her throat and started afresh. “I think, sir, that you’re too young for strong drink. You look to be the age of a monk friend of mine, say, seventeen? Or mayhaps eighteen? I’m allowed a bit of well-watered ale if the rain’s stirred up our stream water so’s we dare not drink it for a day. Elsewise, Mam won’t hold with strong drink for, as I said, the young, like . . . like us.”
“Who’s this Mam you speak of? Hey Nonny, she sounds a right prissy old prune!” The man threw back his head and laughed aloud, slapping his thighs with the great joke.
Well, Rhiannon had been patience itself with this rude soldier, but at that, she flamed. She marched smack to the water bucket and threw the dipper back into it, letting the splash express her outrage. Then she got so nervy as to march to the candle, thinking to just plumb blow it out and leave him in the dark to make merry alone.
But he’d not be able to see her anger with no flame, and she wished him to have a good look, so she left the candle alone and walked back close to glare at him with her knuckles upon her hips. She stood before him with daggers flying from her eyes.
“You’re not . . . Adela, are you?” he said quietly, cowering back a bit.
She shook her head very slowly. “I am not.” She crossed her arms. “I’m Rhiannon, whose backdames come from Wales, called Cymru by us true Brits. We have lived upon this bluff since the ancient days of Arthur and before, that is, long before your kind so much as arrived. And neither is Mam a . . . a prune. She’s beautiful, if you’d like to know. She’s an angel as well, and has saved your life many times over!”
He dropped his chin to his chest as that awful misery of earlier in the day fell upon him again like a gray cloak. “And more’s the pity she did,” he whispered. “For I know not who I am, but I fear that I’d sooner sleep forever than come full awake and find out.”
Well. Rhiannon had been certain that after the dire insult to Mam there was nothing he could say or do that would make her have one oat’s weight of sympathetic feeling for him ever again. Nor would she even be courteous to such a wag and drear scoundrel as would order her around like some kitchen wench. I hunger! I thirst! I puke! Well, let him puke and see how she cared! Let him live on gruel and keep his limbs crossed forever, and she’d not take any of it away from him by offering bread and honey and polite answers to his queries! He could shrivel to dust for all she cared!
But now, this. Of all he could say, this saying was an arrow that hit her right in that big part of her that craved first the hearing of a mystery and then the knowing of how it might finally come unraveled.
“Sir, I cannot imagine anything you could have done so horrible in another time and place that you’d so fear knowing yourself the doer of it in this one. I can think of no action whatsoever that would qualify.”
But the man either did not understand or did not want her to know that he did. He closed his eyes and crossed his limbs to feign lasting sleep again, only did it not so sprightly as before, when they’d locked back in place right quick from long practice.
Rhiannon could see that whether he liked it or no, this haughty soldier was inching back to the sunshiny world, losing his hidey-hole in the shadowy realm of dreams.
Chapter 14
It was some cold in the brook when Rhiannon bathed Sal’s hair the next morning, but she felt she couldn’t tarry for the sun to shine hotter. The earlier she got down the trail, the more apt she was to get the scoop on Jim. She made a few splashes do, then finished with a light scrubbing over Sal’s ear with river weeds.
“Good enough. A lick and a promise for now, Sally, with more to come later.”
Sally brought her elbows close to her body and shivered, her teeth clacking and her hands all aflail. Though her wet flaxen nightshift must have felt clammy, she smiled wide and happy. In Sal’s world, shivering was as good an adventure as any other.
“What d’ye think I should do about the high and bossy soldier in the house next to yours, Sal?” Rhia queried as she toweled her hair. “I might leave him a fish on the sill of his window and let him try and walk for it, then laugh if he stumbles. Or I might take him in a fish and then refuse to give it, all haughty myself as he himself was to me last night. I might even eat it in front of him with great lip-smacking and finger-licking! How’s that? Give him a dose of his own aristocratic spleen and spit, huh?”
Nervy talk, and not a whit of it in Rhia’s power to do, as she had no fish.
“Fish! Fish!” Sally was delighted to hear her word on another’s tongue. “Three!”
Rhia stayed upon her knees and bent far forward to see her own reflection in the waters of the brook. With a willow stick she made part after part in her glossy hair, until she’d braided a dozen small braids throughout it. She shook her head and watched the water approvingly as they jumped and danced about her head, then she washed her face, scrubbing it and then her arms and then her legs until she felt tingly all over, chilled, too.
“Crawwwk!” said Gramp disapprovingly from the yew tree.
“Yes, I know the seeds must be gathered, Gramp, but we’ll make short work of it. You wouldn’t have me go to town all dusty and bedraggled, would you?”
So much to do! She needed to change into her other shift with her red skirt for over it. And there was also the soldier to be handled. She dreaded it, her nervy talk about the fish having been a ruse to cover how off-balance and fearful she felt around him now. She figured, truth be told, that mayhaps he was too much for her. Deep waters over her head, best left to Mam, much as she’d have liked to keep the mysteries of him for herself.
She sat back upon her heels and sighed, shivering as she fiddled with the waist pouch that hung from her sash. She felt a hard acornlike knob in the bottom of it and remembered the clamshell, pocketed on the last trip to town but forgotten in all the mess of Jim’s arrest.
“Sal, looky here.” Rhia loosed the pouch string and pulled out the gleaming little shell. “Pretty, see? It shines in the sun as though it be silver. It’s a pin, Sally, made to seem a fishy clam.”
Sally’s eyes grew very wide indeed as she beheld the glittering thing.
Rhiannon pinned it upon the bodice of Sally’s shift and Sal looked down at it, enchanted.
“Now you look like a princess,” Rhia told her, grinning.
“Daughter!”
Rhia quickly stood and turned toward their cot, where Mam was upon the stoop with the gruel pot hung about her arm and bread in a cloth.
“Bring Sal in so’s I may give her breakfast!”
“But . . .”
“I know, Rhiannon, you’ve said you’ll do the caring for the two in the cots. But I’ll feed them just this morn as you’d best gather some seeds right quick, then get to town!”
Some relieved that the decision of whether to hand the soldier ove
r to Mam was taken from her hands, Rhiannon lifted Sal beneath the arms. Though Sal pulled to walk straight toward her home, Rhia edged her zigzag to meet Mam along the stone path.
“Crawwwk.” Gramp sounded as if his patience was at an end, but he nevertheless began an activity of picking lice from his wing with his strong beak, biding his time.
As they neared Mam, Rhia blurted, “I must warn you that the man has been awake for me of late when I’ve checked him. I doubt you believe me, Mam, but you should! He may play at sleeping, but he’s as awake as you or I!”
Mam sighed, smiling patiently at Rhia’s folly. “I long to see him wake, daughter, though I fear it be the stuff of dreamy imaginings if it happens after all this time.”
Mam patted Rhia’s cheek, then walked on, leading Sal.
Rhia faced Gramp, shaking her head. “Me? Dreamy?”
Gramp was all akimbo, balanced on one foot with opposing wing outstretched and the feathers crimped where he beaked. Though he might have given support against this false judgment, he went on with his lice hunt, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“Well, let’s get the seeds done, then,” Rhia murmured, her feelings a large bit hurt.
She began a dull tramp toward the bluff’s edge and Gramp had no choice but to give up his quest for lice and follow her. That’s the way of it oft enough. The animal awaits the human for long hours, but the human does not give a single care to the animal’s present business when the tables are turned.
At least Gramp was soon able to resume his toilet, as they say in Francia, because Rhiannon made short work of gathering the seeds, scooping up what was easy and not taking time to find others. Arriving back at the cottage, she added the seeds she carried in a fold of her skirt to the others she was taking, then hurried up the ladder to get into her other shift, the clean one. She shook out the trail dust from her red skirt, pulling it carefully over her head so’s her braids didn’t tangle, then lacing it tight at her waist with a jerk of its rawhide string. She slid down the ladder, shouldered her two heavy carrying packs with a small grunt, and appeared before Granna draped like a packhorse.
“I start off then, Granna. Here’s your questions, so check if they’re right. What was said by the bailiff or vicar just before Jim confessed? Who was witness? Who profits?”
Granna nodded, pleased. “Good, Rhiannon. Find answers to those and we’ll be on our way to fetching up the true felon.”
Mam came in from giving breakfast to the invalids and hung the empty gruel pot on its peg. “Ready to leave then, daughter? Now mind, you must start back up before the sun goes past the nether side of steeple tower, understand? We’ll be sick with fretting if you’re not back by twilight.”
“I know,” Rhiannon said, watching Mam close. Since she wasn’t going to volunteer information, Rhia had no choice but to ask. “How ... did you find the man?”
Mam shrugged lightly. “He sleeps, as he has e’er we’ve had him with us.”
Rhia could think of no way to convince her that he was not “dreamy imaginings,” so she took her farewell. But it rankled. She went some paces toward the trail, trying to shut the sneaky soldier from her mind, but she couldn’t manage it. Slipping off the packs, she ran to his cottage and threw her weight against the door so it opened with a slam against the wattle.
Sure enough—there he lay, stone effigy.
The door rebounded hard to slam closed again, and at that commotion he turned his head and looked at her, having the fine nerve to smile a little at his own deception.
She stomped close. “Why would you fiddle with Mam and me like this?” she demanded. “She thinks I dream you awake! What a fool that makes me seem!”
He rose to an elbow and pulled his face straight, though his eyes twinkled. “Maybe you do but dream me.”
“And still you’d fiddle whilst I’m late getting down to town!”
“Nay, I’m very serious. Everything may be but a dream. We mortals may only be doing a play in the mind of God, so what do you think of that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not much is what I think of it. And you’d do well to drop your ruse and let Mam attend you, as you need the nursing only she can give.”
“Ours lives may be but a dream,” he whispered. “Mere . . . candle smoke.”
Shaking her head, Rhia turned and proceeded toward the door. “I go to town now,” she threw over her shoulder, “since you’ll not so much as listen to one word I say!”
“Wait!” he implored. “I’m sorry! Truly, I am. Last night, I teased you, I think, though I’ve only a fogged memory. These ways of being, of speaking . . . they flicker across me as lamplight flickers upon the wall. Here’s a way I might act, then it’s gone, and another one’s taken me over. I feel I’m trying on myself as one might try on cloaks, discarding them in a pile as none are a fit. I know not which voice is mine when I hear it! I only know I have need of a friend while I find myself. Not a nurse, kind Rhiannon—a friend.”
She stopped in her tracks. Not because of his speech, though it had been pretty enough, but because he’d called her by her own name and not that other—Adela.
She turned back around. “All right. But . . . I’ll be gone till twilight.”
“I’ll gladly wait,” he answered with a genuine enough smile.
If you’d asked Rhiannon later how the trail had been, whether sunshine prevailed or mist made the footing treacherous that morn, she’d have had no idea how to answer, as her mind had been aswirl with so much else as she traveled down. She might have said, “What trail?” Gramp stayed above her nearly clear down to the river crossing, too, a thing he disliked doing, as hunters abound on the common grounds just past the river. Of course, if Gramp had not been so proud in his own birdy way, he might have realized no hunter would waste so much as one moldy arrow on such a stringy old bag of feathers as himself. Still, Gramp clearly perceived that Rhiannon needed to be watched over that particular market day even more than most, as she was sure to be spinning all the week’s mysteries in her head and letting her feet fall where they would.
By the time she’d crossed the barley field and was up even with the watermill, the temptation grew large within her to knock upon the church door to find immediate news of Jim. But she knew she dasn’t go that way. No, first the trade, then the news, lest the trade get neglected as she spent too much time hearing the news from he who opened the church door—meaning, she hoped, Thaddeus.
Still, what harm to walk the side of the street the church was on? So she checked with her hands to be certain her braids were in some sort of order, then crossed.
The stonework progressed at an astonishing pace, with the accompanying noise and dust very much progressed as well. Rhiannon saw no clergy about, just stonemasons and pullers of sledges. In the church was surely Jim, but the dust that hung everywhere blotted any chance she might have seen him through a window. Would they even let him near a window, lest he might escape and break sanctuary? Well, he’d be declared outside the law if he did, and must be killed on sight like a ravening wolf. Wolf’s head and first target to all law-abiders, they’d call him—a strong reason for him not to budge.
She coughed some dust from her throat and walked to the grassy lot just beyond the church. There she dropped her heavy packs to the ground for a few moments’ relief to her shoulders, noting that black ashes still marked several small squares of ground in the nether corner where cots had recently stood, including Jim’s.
Some digging had been started near the middle of the lot for the prior’s fishy pond, and a young woman sat upon a tree stump near those diggings. A babe was at her breast.
Strange place for such activity, Rhia thought, with all the sooty dust. In fact, the young woman looked fairly well grimed from kerchief to boots, and the ash on her face appeared tracked through with tears.
Rhia dared walk closer. “If you’re in distress, may I help?”
The woman looked up. “Help? What could ye do?” she asked bluntly.
Rh
iannon shrugged. “I just thought, well, this seems a dismal place for resting. If you’re stranger to Woethersly, I might show you greener space and water for drinking.”
So quietly Rhia barely heard, the woman said, “Oh, I know Woethersly well enough.”
There’d been bitterness in her voice, and she suddenly glared hard at Rhia, anger burning bright behind the tears in her eyes. “If you’d help, pray tell me how fair Woethersly’s come to this,” she whispered miserably. “Tell me how a daughter may wed and move but a three-day ride from her own birthplace, then return widowed two years later to find things tangled to a snarl! My father for certain is become dimwit, and my mother lies asleep in yon churchyard. All I’d dreamed of was her joy in seeing this babe, her grandson. Even our house has turned to ashes! All is ashes! How can this be?”
She clutched her child more tightly, her red cheek pressed against his head and her tears flowing freely into his downy orange hair. She stared at the sooty traces of what had been her homely neighborhood last she’d seen it, or imagined it.
Rhia watched helplessly. “I’m sorry for your loss,” was all she could think to say. “I . . . I have a friend whose home, like yours, was burned when they cleared this lot. They told him nothing of it, either, and he had to arrive and find it gone, just as you have.” She sighed. “At least he has no child to bear the shock of it as well.” Though Jim had said if he had had a child to give week-work to the lord, his cottage might have stood.
“Rhiannon! Rhia, fine friend, I’ve found you at last! Don’t move, I’m coming!”
Rhia winced and whirled round to see a girl running toward her down the path from town. Everyone Maddy passed seemed knocked off-kilter a bit by the sheer energy of such a lively runner. Rhia felt off-kilter at the sight of Maddy as well, especially at remembrance of the trap she’d set and sprung for her regarding Beltane Eve.
“I’m sorry,” Rhia whispered to the weeping woman, who wasn’t paying the slightest attention anyhow, so lost was she in her world of woe. “My friend comes and I fear when she reaches me I’ll have no choice but to—”
