Rhiannon (20 page)

“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.

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
him
self 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 over 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.