Jackaroo

by Cynthia Voigt

  He shook his head slowly.

  “And why not?” The heat was in her voice.

  “Because I serve the Earl only as his Steward. I have no power to—”

  Gwyn hadn’t thought of that. “Who has the power?” She cut him off.

  “The Earl, if he wanted. I’m afraid what you ask is impossible for me to do.”

  “The people are hungry and afraid. They fear famine and the Lord’s taxes, they fear the soldiers and the rumors of war. Now they fear one another. Does the Earl know what men filled with fear and with little to lose might do?”

  Of course the Earl knew this. Why else did he guard his own with so many soldiers?

  The Steward’s light eyes assessed her masked face. “Yes, he knows.”

  “Then, Steward, you will have to convince him. The people will remain quiet under a Lord who protects them.”

  He couldn’t argue the truth of that.

  “Will you convince them?” Gwyn asked.

  “I will try. I give you my word.”

  Gwyn didn’t care to rely on his word. Cold again, and scornful of his cowardice—he feared her, he feared his master, who did he not fear?—she made a suggestion. “The Earl will be grateful to the man who put into his hands such a means of quieting the unrest in his land.”

  His face showed how he was calculating that. “Yes,” he finally agreed, “and especially if that man sought no fame for himself in the deed.” He considered the whole thing, and then nodded his head, once again himself, Steward to Earl Northgate. “You have proof?”

  “The proof of my eyes.”

  “I doubt somehow that you will be allowed an audience with the Earl.”

  Gywn didn’t care for his sarcasm. She didn’t respond, but stared icily down at the man sitting cross-legged in his finery on the ground, until the Steward remembered his own situation.

  “Then, sir, can you give me a description of the men?” he asked her.

  “One has a gimpy leg, and one has a scar like a crescent on his cheek. The third—has no such mark on him. All are unshorn, unkempt, filthy. They live together half a day’s journey to the west from the waterfall that begins the river that runs to the west of the High City. Their hut has no fireplace and no bed. There is a shed nearby, a three-sided shed. The holding sits on the eastern side of a rocky hill.”

  The Steward opened his long book and wrote in it with charcoal. Gwyn looked down on him, watching his hands move. She held the sword steady.

  “And if they say they are innocent? Which is what they will most probably say.”

  “Put the book before me,” she said. He placed it open at her feet. She crouched down, shifting the sword to her left hand. He dragged himself back several paces, to show that he would not try to attack her. And no wonder, Gwyn thought; if he could gain favor with the Earl, that would be worth more to him than capturing Jackaroo.

  She turned to a fresh page. THESE ARE THE MEN, she wrote. Underneath, she wrote her name, JACKAROO.

  She stood up, and he crept over to read what she had written. “It’s not—”

  “Men have been hanged for less,” she told him. “The birds have had their eyes while the people danced below.”

  That silenced him.

  “My word is good,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Now, I will have your ring,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Give it to me.” She spaced the words well apart, so that his heart would fail. He slipped the Earl’s signet off his finger. She leaned down to take it from him.

  “This will come back to you when the three have been taken,” she promised him. “You will know by that that you have taken the guilty men. The Earl would not want to hang innocent men.” The Earl, as Gwyn well knew, cared little about hanging innocent men, and neither did his Steward. This was the only safeguard Gwyn could think of, and she hoped that it would make the Steward careful to take the right men. It would be all too easy for a troop of soldiers to ride out of the city gates and take up the first three men they saw and hang them. But if the Steward had lost his master’s ring, he would be eager to get it back before the loss was noticed. Eager enough, Gwyn hoped, to see that the job was done properly, and quickly too.

  The interview was over. She planted her feet apart and held the sword out straight at him, its hilt in both her hands. “You may go.”

  He scrambled up. He gathered into his arms the soldiers’ clothing and his long book. He stared hard at her. “I will know you again, sir,” he said, bold enough now.

  Gwyn did not respond. She waited where she was until his footsteps had faded and then turned quickly to mount her horse and ride off. One of the first things the Steward would do, if she read the man correctly, was return to this place with a troop of soldiers.

  With Da’s cloak flung over the front of the saddle, she rode for open fields, skirting the edge of the woods. She dared not take the King’s Way. It was too crowded in those days.

  Gwyn scarcely recognized the field she rode beside until she turned her head to the left and saw the log house there, its chimney smoking only a little on the warm day, and the three figures outside in the sunlight. Hap leaned his back against the side of the house and Granny walked slowly, bent over, to pour out a bowl of dirty water. The goat was grazing peacefully.

  The goat lifted her little head at the sound of hoofbeats. Granny saw it and looked up. Gwyn reined in the horse. She lifted her hat from her masked head and waved it in the air. The old woman’s hand rose in answer. Gwyn rode off.

  There was a smile on her face as she rode on east, but it soon faded. As the horse cantered along underneath her, she wondered where the gladness had gone.

  But she knew the answer: Because ride as she might, all the days and nights of her life, she could never do all that might be done. The Kingdom was too large. It needed more than Jackaroo to safeguard the people.

  The Steward’s ring hung heavy on her thumb, rolling loosely around. It was cast of gold, with the bear cut deeply into it. As Gwyn walked back from Old Megg’s, leading the horse, she held the ring heavy in her hand. She would hide it with her few remaining coins. How she would return it to the Steward, she had not thought. If Jackaroo rode in to give it back, they would be waiting for him.

  First, she would see those three men brought in, then she would worry about the ring. In the meantime, there was her father to be answered.

  It was not only Da, but Mother and Tad as well, in the kitchen when she entered. She hung Da’s cloak back up where it belonged. Burl had taken the horse from her without a word and told her they wanted her inside. He had no question for her.

  Mother started in while Gwyn’s back was still to the room. “Well, Gwyn. And what do you have to say? Aye, don’t try to make excuses. I don’t know what you’ve been up to, where you’ve gone—who you’ve met with. Leaving your day’s work for other people is bad enough. And the worry—Just look at her, husband, walking in here as if she—as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. It’s a thrashing she needs, and I say so to her face.”

  Tad’s eyes danced. Gwyn thought she’d like to clip him one, just to take the smugness off his face.

  “Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Mother continued. “Where have you been?”

  Gwyn didn’t speak.

  “She’s no better than she ought to be, I’ll tell you that,” Mother warned Da.

  “Was it a man?” Da asked.

  Gwyn didn’t answer. It would be better if they thought she had been meeting a man.

  “It’ll be that Cam, I’ll wager,” Mother muttered. “She’s just about that much sense. Well, you can try to talk to her. I’ve no interest in her. I’ve sheets to hang out and no time to waste on a girl who doesn’t care how her family worries, or what people say. You should have made her marry, husband, and I told you so at the time. If the fancy strikes you, daughter,” she said bitterly, “you might make some pastry. Tad—you come with me.”

  “But, M
other,” Tad protested.

  “You heard me. Don’t you start giving me trouble too. You see how it is, husband?”

  When they were alone, Da told Gwyn to sit down. She obeyed, holding her hands folded together in her lap, to conceal the ring she wore on her thumb.

  “Well, daughter?” Da asked. He stood by the fire, looking down at her. Gwyn met his eyes, but said nothing.

  Da looked unhappy, and she was sorry for that. But there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Were you with a man?”

  Gwyn did not answer.

  Da sighed and sat down facing her. His neat beard was redder than his head, which dimmed as he grew older. His eyes studied Gwyn’s face. “Is it that you are regretting your choice?” he asked gently. “Because if you are, I would say you had changed your mind. Let people talk; I would say that for you.”

  His gentleness almost undid Gwyn. “You know you can’t do that,” she reminded him.

  “Aye, and I don’t. I know that nobody has done it.” He was angry. “I know also that I would want you to have a husband, to govern you. It’s almost my birthday.”

  Gwyn didn’t know why he should mention that.

  “I’ll be naming my heir. I would name you my heir.”

  He had utterly surprised her. She opened her mouth, but could find no words to put into it.

  “It would be better if you had a husband.”

  Gwyn had never thought she would be named the heir. Not when he had a son to inherit. She didn’t know he thought so well of her, or so little of Tad. She was pleased and she was sorry, and she didn’t know what she might say to him. “Aye, perhaps it would. But it is too late for that now.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “I would say you had persuaded me against my better judgement. Let people talk—they could do nothing.”

  Gwyn shook her head. If she had known he was thinking of this, there were perhaps men . . . If, if, again if. She remembered her thought on the day of the fair: If there were a man who also saw the body hanging above the walls, then that man she might make her life with. But there was no such man and now it was too late. The announcement had been made.

  “You might take a widower,” Da suggested.

  “No,” Gwyn said. She had made her choice and she would abide by it. She had put Jackaroo’s mask on and worn his clothes. She had become him and he had become her. There was no going back now.

  “Then I will name you even without a man.”

  “Da, you must let me think.” She could be the Innkeeper, and she would husband the holdings and take care of her family; she would do it well, she knew that, and she could do it easily. “You must say nothing until I think,” she told him. There was steel in her voice.

  Da recognized it, and she knew she had routed him just as much as she had routed her mother. There was no one but herself, now, that she would follow. Others might try to impose their ways on her, but they could not now move her, any more than the winds could move the mountains. She felt sorry for Da, though, and glad of his faith in her. “You think too little of Tad,” she said.

  “Think you?” he asked, without real interest. “Perhaps there is only so much second best that a man will take for his fair measure.”

  That puzzled Gwyn and she could not answer it, so she held her tongue.

  “You’ve changed, daughter.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  “I think I should never have sent you north with the Lords. Did something happen, while you were away—?”

  She couldn’t tell him that what had happened had happened when she returned, and that it was he himself who had done it. There would be no profit to telling him that. So she smiled at him, her face a bright mask, and said no, nothing happened. “But something will happen if I don’t start the pastry.” She laughed.

  “Aye,” he said, giving up, giving way. “We’ve had word that the highwayman will journey by here in two days, so there’ll be an extra lot of baking to be done.” He left her then.

  Gwyn hid the ring away in her purse with the remaining five gold pieces. Before she set out to work measuring flour and lard, she went into the stables to see if Burl needed help with the horse she had ridden. She found him currying the animal. “Have you time for this?” she asked.

  “Osh aye, I do,” he answered quietly. “But we must be more careful with these beasts. Too many get away when they are in our care.”

  “Did the Captain ask for it?”

  “Aye, and he’ll be pleased to learn that you have caught it.”

  So now Gwyn knew what to answer should anyone question her.

  “Gwyn, are you content?”

  What an odd question, of all the questions he might have asked. Gwyn thought for a bit before she answered. Burl asked questions even as the land grew grass, as if he would wait easily for the answer. She was, she thought, happy enough, and proud, yes, that; she was fearful, and with some reason. “I’m content,” she told him. The question was so like Burl, it was so like him to think to ask that question, that her spirits eased a little. “Are you?” she asked.

  Burl had a slow, easy smile. “Content enough, if you are.”

  Whatever that might mean. “Da wants to name me his heir.” Gwyn surprised herself by saying that aloud. She thought she had learned to govern her tongue.

  “Will he do that, now,” Burl wondered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if he should.”

  “Until it is decided, I don’t think you should tell anyone else,” he advised her.

  “How stupid do you think I am?” she snapped at him, turning abruptly on her heels and leaving him behind. But she heard him laughing quietly behind her as she strode across the yard with her head high.

  Chapter 21

  THEY KNEW, ALMOST TO THE hour, when the highwayman and his escort of soldiers would journey along the King’s Way. By early afternoon the Inn was crowded with those who had come from fields and hills. The day shone with early summer sunlight, and the people were merry, as if it were a fair. Gwyn served cider to the women, who waited in the Inn yard with the children. Tad helped Da inside, among the men. When the time was right, they all went to take their places alongside the King’s Way, basking in afternoon sunlight and holiday conversation.

  The Innkeeper and his family, Rose and Wes with them, stood in a little group together. No hint of a wind moved the sign under which they stood. Burl waited nearby, his pipe playing quietly until he took it from his mouth at the sound of hoofs.

  Two soldiers on horseback came first, their green capes bright and their faces tanned. Behind walked two more soldiers, high boots dusty and short swords at their sides. Between them walked the third man.

  The highwayman’s clothes were brown and torn, stained with dirt and sweat. Two ropes circled his neck before leading like reins, one to each of the soldiers walking guard. His hands were tied behind his bent back. His feet, the soles of the felt shoes flapping, dragged with exhaustion. As he came up to the pathway to the Inn, he lifted his face and squared his shoulders. He looked about him.

  The people stared at him, even the children silent. His faded hair hung lank and uncut down to his shoulders; his beard hung gray and greasy over his chest. His eyes scanned the watching people without interest.

  The little procession halted, so that the people could look their fill.

  His face was lean and pale. His nose jutted out. His eyes moved listlessly over the faces and then toward the land beyond them, where the Inn stood invisible. He breathed in, as a thirsty man drinks water. Gwyn could not look at him and turned her eyes to the dirt at her feet; but she could still see him—a tall, thin, exhausted figure, with the ropes leading off as if he were a dangerous animal.

  She heard her mother draw in a hissing breath. When she looked to see what was wrong, she saw that her mother stared at the highwayman with a stony face.

  “Innkeeper”—the highwayman broke the silence—“I could swallow a glass of ale.” His voice was cracked a
nd ragged, but still bold.

  Da answered slowly. “Highwayman, it is not permitted.”

  The highwayman shrugged thin shoulders and then smiled right at Da. His teeth were rough and yellow, where they were not black with rot. When he smiled he looked like a wolf.

  “Come on, you,” one of the soldiers said. The procession moved along, took the turning to the village, and headed north. Some of the people followed, joining others who walked along behind; others turned back to the Inn while the rest returned home. There was an air of excitement. “Aye, he’ll not hang easy.” “He’s been kept hungry, and whipped too, I don’t doubt, in the cells.” “Osh, if that’s all they’ve done to him he’ll count himself lucky.”

  Da had an arm around Mother’s shoulder and she walked close up next to him. He told Burl to serve with Tad in the barroom and went with his wife into the kitchen, sitting down beside her at the table. Their shoulders touched as they sat there, but they did not speak to one another. Both stared unseeing at the table.

  Gwyn waited for several minutes before she opened her mouth to ask them what was the matter. But she never got to ask the question, because Blithe marched into the kitchen at that moment, her black hair shining and her shoulders high. In her arms, she carried a baby, wrapped around with a soft blanket. She sat down facing her parents, her expression defiant, the baby close to her chest.

  Da and Mother looked at one another, but Blithe was already talking.

  “Guy has gone to see the man at the village. We were late leaving the holding, but I wanted to visit with you. How have you been keeping, Mother?”

  This was the old Blithe, her lips biting back a smile, her chin stubborn as she waited to hear what her mother would ask about the child.

  But Mother was slow to speak, so Da said, “We have been well. We have soldiers quartered here.”

  “Soldiers are quartered everywhere, in all the nearby villages,” Blithe said. “So I hear. Aye, and there’s need of them. One of our neighbors, Am, the pigman, was attacked in his own house. Beaten and robbed.”

  “Am robbed?” Mother asked. “But what could he have to take?”