The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  “Lord Jacott,” she said, her heart thudding. “Does he sniff ructions in Clemen?”

  “He do look a mite put out more than usual,” Hamelen admitted. “He be called south to Eaglerock castle, and court. Lord Wido too. It’s fast they’ll be riding, no fanfare.” A swift, sharp look. “But that b’aint Pig Whistle gossip, Molly.”

  As if she needed telling. She knew which news to sell, and which to hold close. “Do they look to stay here, passing through?”

  Another shrug. “Stay or fresh themselves. The lords and their high stewards will say which, not me.”

  “Have ye heard it told that yon beardless barnacle, Baldassare, would dance a man over a ship’s side sooner than ask a ransom for his life? Well, friends, if y’heard it, I be here to tell ye, t’aint no lie! Didn’t I see that young demon dance a good man to his death, with these eyes in m’own head?”

  Culpyn’s wild tale had caught the imagination of every man in the room. Even the traders from Pruges, who must have pirate tales of their own, seemed amused. Molly leaned closer to Hamelen, not wanting to shout above the cries and urgings for the trader to go on, go on, what dread thing happened next?

  “And what be the news from Harcia? Ructioned Clemen’ll see them dancing, for sure.”

  “Like a jester’s dogs,” said Hamelen, leaning close from his side. “But word is Aimery be holding off, for now. Still bruised from that killing business with his heir, he is, and not eager for more strife.”

  And that was wise of Harcia’s duke, to see how the winds in Clemen blew. “So, Hamelen. Have you met him, this bastard Duke Roric?”

  Hamelen swallowed ale. Belched. “No.”

  Neither had she, but she knew a little of him. Sharp with a sword but kindly, it was said. Phemie had stitched him once, after a skirmish with Harcia’s Marcher men-at-arms out past Bollard’s Marsh. Nasty business, that. Seven men and their horses lost. Harcia’s Lord Egbert should’ve known better than to stand sword on that boggy ground. Them who escaped the skirmish said Harald’s bastard cousin retreated soon after, so no more Harcians would perish for their feggit lord.

  “Clemen wants this Roric, do they?”

  “Eaglerock wants him.”

  And in Clemen, the lords of Eaglerock were kings. Or nearly.

  “—does he look like? Why, black as night, didn’t I tell ye? And muscled like a hunting cat all the way from Agribia. Gold hoops in his ears, a ruby set in his nose, here, and emeralds braided into his hair. And his eyes, his eyes, green as the Sea of Sorrows where he plies his curs’t trade. Friends, if y’asked me, I’d swear his mother was a soul-eater.”

  “Lord Jacott,” Molly said, as her belly tightened again. “Does he stomach this bastard?”

  Tankard empty, pie eaten, Lord Jacott’s farm steward picked up his dice then stood. “I need to piss.”

  It was his rough way of telling her he was done. Crude he might be, but she could live with it. Had to live with it, didn’t she? The Pig Whistle made a good part of its living on the secrets Hamelen sold.

  Hamelen, and a few others like him.

  The farm steward went outside to the easery, and she joined Iddo at the bar to serve ale and bowls of stew and the last of her famous pies. Culpyn reached the end of his tale and laughed as he was cheered and clapped for a right one. He took himself off to bed in the dormer soon after, too tired, he said, for more jibberjab. But he’d happily chumble with her come the morning, and take any letters she wanted carried north into Harcia. Lugo started piping again and the night rolled on gently, customers going home or to their traveller beds in dribs and drabs till the oft turned-and-emptied hour glass behind the counter emptied for the last time, and had Iddo calling time.

  She bolted the door behind the last man out and rested her forehead on the old oak, so tired. Sighed to feel Iddo’s lips press against her mussy hair.

  “I’ll pass eye over the privy rooms and the dormer,” he said, rubbing her back. “Then take Gwatkin and his lad their pies and ale, and see they got no stable strife.”

  Her Iddo had a rough face and a broad nose. No woman would call him handsome. Diggin, he’d been handsome, but his good looks hadn’t saved him. A living plain man was more use any day than a handsome one, buried.

  “And I’ll wipe down in here,” she said, smiling at him through her weariness. “Then start on the kitchen.”

  He pursed his lips. “Hamelen?”

  “Had news,” she said. “We can talk on it later. Ye make sure that hoity-toity herald be sweet.”

  The knock on the Pig Whistle’s front door came as she mopped ale from the final bench in the public room. Curse it. Iddo hadn’t quenched the bar’s welcome torch yet. Dropping her damp wiping-cloth, she trudged back to the door, drew the bolt and pulled, ready to turn away the most parched of customers.

  A girl stood before her, soaked to the skin, flame-flickered and shivering. In her arms, a bundled baby. It was mewling like a cat.

  “Help us, mistress,” the girl whispered. “Me and my brother, we’re near to perished. Please, please, help. Don’t turn us away.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “–Or where she come from! Keep her? Molly, ye’ve slopped yer common sense out with the swill!”

  “I done no such thing, Iddo. Peg yer lips, man. Seems to me she be spirit-sent, for Tossie.”

  “Oh, Moll…”

  The voices softened, so Ellyn couldn’t hear them any more through the heavy leather curtain behind the bar. Feeling sick, her belly a tangled ball of hope and dread, she held Liam in the crook of one arm and with her free hand plucked at her slowly drying linen skirt. The inn’s fire burned boldly, not yet banked for the night. Its heat was like a faery-favour, reaching all the way to her bones. She was so cold. Aye, and hungry. They’d feed her soon, wouldn’t they, the man and woman squabbling about her behind that leather curtain?

  Liam squirmed a little, whimpering, grown so thin and feeble since she’d fled with him from Heartsong. Her milk was all but dried up, nightmares and not enough food or sleep to blame. The bastard Roric was to blame for it; that wicked, murdering man. That thief.

  “Hush, lamb, hush,” she whispered, pressing the babe to her flattened chest. “They’ll feed you soon, lovey. They’ll feed my little lamb, they will.”

  They had to, surely. Whatever they feared of her, they couldn’t fear an innocent child. Not when they didn’t know who he was. Not when she’d never tell them, not ever. Not even if they beat her until her blood ran.

  The leather curtain behind the bar creaked as it was pushed aside. Out came the big woman, Molly, and close behind her the even bigger man she’d called Iddo. He carried a serving paddle laden with a tankard, an earthenware cup, a thick slice of buttered rye bread and a bowl wafting aromatic steam. Ellyn swallowed the rush of juices into her mouth.

  “Sit, girl, sit,” said Molly, slapping the bar’s wide counter. “Y’should be warm and dry by now.”

  “Yes’m,” she murmured, approaching. “Thank you.”

  Molly held out her arms. “And best ye give me that babe,” she added. “Afore ye drop it.”

  “Him,” she said, her hold tightening. “Willem.” The name she’d decided for Liam the night she’d fled Heartsong. Not his true name, but near enough. “He’s Willem. He’s my brother.”

  “So he be Willem,” said Molly. Her lips were soft, but her eyes were watchful. “And what name d’ye go by, lass?”

  The woman’s arms were still outstretched, and her man Iddo showed no sign of putting that food down on the counter. Since running from Heartsong she’d not let Liam go, not once. But she was so hungry, and the man Iddo was staring. He reminded her of the heavy-shouldered black-and-brown guard dogs that prowled Eaglerock castle and its grounds at night.

  “I’m Alys,” she said, her voice catching, and gave her precious lamb to Molly.

  The big woman gathered Liam to her pillowy chest. He didn’t protest, not even a whispery wail. “Iddo.”

  That wa
s enough for the man to thump down the bread and bowl, the tankard sloshing with ale and the mug. There was a carved wooden spoon, too. Giddy with hunger, Ellyn nearly snatched it. Nearly wept at the first taste of warm beef and barley. She ate standing up, not needing a stool. Dipped the bread into the stew’s gravy and swallowed, hardly chewing. Swallowed the ale after, rich with malt. She could feel Molly watching her, and Iddo. Judging her. Summing her up. She didn’t care what they thought of her gobbling, no better than a pig-herder and his pigs. All she wanted was somewhere safe for Liam.

  “The lass could do with more stew, Iddo,” said Molly. “And y’can bring me one of Benedikt’s suck-tits.”

  Iddo’s sparse brows tightened into a frown, but he retreated behind the leather curtain again. Molly dipped a finger into the earthenware cup. When she pulled it out, it dripped white.

  “Goat’s milk,” she said as Liam wriggled in her firm grasp, scenting food. “Nice and warm. Good for a baby. He’ll take it from a suck-tit?”

  Ellyn nodded. “Yes. But—”

  “My son sleeps in the kitchen, Alys. Benedikt. He be a few months older than Willem, here, by the look of it, but still on the milk. How long since yer brother supped?”

  “A day and a bit,” she whispered. “There was a village. A woman milked a drop from her cow. ’Twas all she could spare and I had no coin for more.”

  Molly’s gaze was sharp again. “Y’took to the road with a sucking babe and not enough coin to keep him in milk?”

  Tears rose, misty blinding. She’d never thought she could dry up so fast. And the copper nibs she’d run with, that were spent mostly on Liam, they’d trickled through her fingers like water.

  “I never meant to harm him. I love Willem, I swear I do.”

  Iddo came back with another bowl of stew and a suck-tit for Liam. There was such relief he’d be fed properly for the first time in days that her knees buckled. She dropped onto a stool.

  “Hmm,” said Molly, then shook her head. “Ah well. It be done. Best ye eat up, girl. Ye be almost as starved as yer brother.”

  So she ate the second bowl of stew then wiped both bowls clean with the last of the rye bread, as Molly poured warm goat’s milk into the kid leather suck-tit and filled Liam’s belly. Not too fast, though. She knew not to make him sick. All the while, Iddo stood wide-legged by the leather curtain with his arms folded and his forehead creased. His head was good as bald, what little brownish grey hair he had scraped to stubble. There were old scars on his freckled scalp. From the size of him, and the promise of fierceness, she thought he could likely thump a drunken man senseless with one fist.

  Molly’s hair was long and rusty red, loosened by hard work from its braid which she’d pinned to her head. She was much younger than Lady Morda but looked just as stern, even though her deep-set brown eyes were gentle in her broad face as she fed Liam his warm goat’s milk. She held him close, and easily. She knew about the care of babes, that much was no lie.

  “Where d’ye hail from, Alys?” she asked, not shifting her gaze from eagerly sucking Liam. “Be ye a Marcher lass?”

  It was too dangerous to say yes. The Marches were a strange, mistrustful place where foreigners wandered freely. They were full of folk who obeyed lords from both Clemen and Harcia–or sometimes neither. No better than mules were Marcher folk, Duke Harald used to say. Not one thing or t’other and never to be trusted outright. Too often them as lived in the Marches liked to think they ruled themselves. Oh, how cross the duke would be if he knew she’d brought his son here.

  Harald.

  Ellyn felt her heart seize, remembering he was dead. Slain by the bastard Roric, who’d sent that cripple Lord Vidar to see Liam dead too.

  “Alys,” said Iddo, his voice like gravel beneath a warhorse’s iron-shod hooves. “Ye give answer t’Mistress Molly.”

  She flinched. “Beg pardon,” she mumbled, shivering again even though she was almost dry down to her skin. “I’m from Clemen. A village. Berrydown.”

  “T’aint known t’me,” said Molly, smiling at Liam and rocking him so the milk would settle. “It be a goodly few leagues from the Pig Whistle?”

  “A long way, yes. Days and days from the Marches.”

  “Days and days,” said Molly. She looked up, her gaze sharp. “And what brings ye to my door, lass, trudging days and days till ye near kill this child with hunger?”

  She’d cobbled together a story after deciding on Liam’s new name, knowing their only hope was to make the tale sad enough for pity. Over and over she’d told it, to carters and peddlers and milkmaids and alewives, with only the name of the village changing. She’d told it so many times she almost believed it, and didn’t blink once as she stared into Molly’s unsmiling face.

  “If I’d stayed in Berrydown we’d be dead, we would,” she said, earnestly. “My da, he’s an ale-sop. He drinks and he drinks. He lost his temper with my ma, and he beat her head in. He beat me too. Lots of times. Broke my bones, once. See?” She thrust our her left forearm, snapped in a tumble from a farmer’s bucking calf when she was six. Though it had healed well enough, there was a bump and a smudged mark like an old bruise. “I was scared he’d beat Willem, I was. I had to run, to keep him safe.”

  Molly raised eyebrows at Iddo, and Iddo pinched his lips. “Her arm’s been broke, man, y’can see that,” the woman said. “And y’know better than most what an ale-sop be like.”

  Iddo’s folded arms tightened. “The folk in Berrydown couldn’t help ye, girl?”

  “They never helped my ma.”

  Still comfortably standing, Molly settled Liam’s head against her shoulder. Full of milk and drowsy, he smacked his little rosebud lips and sighed. “What age be ye, Alys?”

  “I’m fifteen.”

  “Poke out yer tongue.”

  Bewildered, Ellyn looked at her. “Mistress Molly?”

  “Do as yer told!” said Iddo, stepping closer. “Poke it out, or be off with ye.”

  She poked out her tongue. Iddo peered at it.

  “She be clean, Moll,” he said, and sounded sorry.

  “There be a sickness, lass, comes and goes in these parts,” said Molly. “The Marcher lords be mighty strict on it.”

  Fear burned her. “Willem.”

  “He be fine,” said Molly. “If he was sick, ye’d be sick with him. But to be sure, lass, answer this. Did ye come into the Marches from east Clemen? And best be warned, I can sniff a lie like a truffle hog.”

  She didn’t know what a truffle hog was, but she believed the woman. “West,” she said, truthful. “I swear it on Willem’s life.”

  Silent, Molly stared at her. She stared back, unblinking. She didn’t need a fancy mirror from Ardenn to know she looked a fright, like the worst kind of wagtail strumpet who lifted her skirts behind one of Eaglerock township’s misbegot slummish taverns. She’d not bathed herself head to toe since Heartsong. Her skirt was mud-stained, her hair brambled with knots. Her ragged fingernails were filthy and her breath stank. She knew it. If Iddo, misliking her, rode roughshod over Molly, if the woman let him…

  “We had a lass here,” said Molly, her eyelids drooped half shut. “Tossie. Yer age, she was. She served ale and pies, and cleaned the inn. She fed the hens and fetched their eggs. She milked the cow and the goat and minded my son Benedikt when I told her. Then last week she danced herself off with a peddler.”

  Hope stirred. “I never would.”

  “She worked hard, did Tossie,” said Molly. Her rough, careworn palm pressed to Liam’s cheek. “Time to time, her fingers bled.”

  “I don’t fear hard work, Mistress Molly. I fear dying in a ditch with Willem.”

  Molly shifted her hand to rest against Liam’s gently breathing chest. His filthy blanket was in tatters. His linen nightshirt, the plain one she’d snatched up because a baby wearing it wouldn’t look like a duke’s son, it was filthy too. They shamed her, the blanket and nightshirt. But at least he looked like an ale-sop’s brat and not the rightful duke of Clem
en.

  “I see shadows in yer eyes, Alys,” Molly said, looking up. “I see shadows and gnarly dreams. D’ye bring trouble with ye under my roof?”

  “Iss,” said Iddo. “Keep the babe if ye must, Moll. But send this troublesome slut on her way.”

  Ellyn leapt to her feet. Curse it. If only she hadn’t sold poor Emun’s dagger. “You can’t. Willem’s mine. I don’t bring any trouble. I’ll work hard. I’ll earn our keep. I’m not some Tossie, sniffing at peddlers, and I don’t care if my fingers bleed. I’d do more than bleed for Willem. I’d die for him, I would.”

  Molly lifted one thick, straight eyebrow. “And would ye kill for him, lass?”

  She already had. Nelda and Tygo. She’d do it again and never blink. “Yes.”

  “Iddo,” said Molly. “Can ye manage without me?”

  Iddo dragged a broad hand across his chin. “Moll…”

  Molly’s smile was crooked, and something of a comfort. “Don’t ye fret, man. I b’aint in danger. Be about yer business so I can tend to this babe, and Benedikt. Sun’ll be up soon enough and we need our shuteye, we do.”

  “Thank you,” Ellyn whispered, as Iddo stamped his way out. “Mistress Molly, thank you.”

  “No need for thanks, lass,” Molly said, briskly. “Ye’ll earn yer keep, never fear. Now come with me to the kitchen. We’ll bathe yer brother there, then it’ll be bed for both of ye. Ye’ll have Tossie’s room and the truckle Benedikt grew out of. I’ve his little clothes too. Ye can have them, and the skirts Tossie left behind her.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m ever so grateful. You won’t be sorry. I promise.”

  “No?” Molly held the heavy leather curtain aside. “I’d best not be. Now hush, and come along. I don’t abide gabbiness, lass. Be warned.”

  Peddler-sniffing Tossie had slept in the Pig Whistle’s attic, tucked tight into a corner against the inn’s steeply sloping thatched roof. There’d been more room in Lady Morda’s closet. Liam’s little truckle and a sleeping pallet took up most of the bumpy wooden floor. Three pegs on the wall were for holding her clothes. There was a pot to piss in, one tiny window behind an unpainted shutter, a single tallow candle for light and a narrow shelf to sit it on.