Rhiannon (7 page)

Daisy ran to crouch near the small splash of Granna's coin, and Rhia bent beside her. They looked at the glitter of it sinking as Rhia whispered, “In olden times coins were given to rivers for luck, Daisy. Granna still believes a bent coin will guard us from mischance on this journey to town, and who's to say her nay?”

Then something caught Rhia's eye there in the fast water, just a few paces beyond the coin. A clamshell it seemed, though it glittered much as the penny glittered. She waded close, pulled up her sleeve, and fished the little shell from its rocky bed, and the shiny thing
bit
her, just as if it
were
a living clam! She sucked her pricked thumb as she turned it over to explore it close. A tiny pin was fastened to the back of it. How very strange . . .

Then suddenly, the ground was ashake and a group of horsemen was right upon them, bursting from the woods as though summoned from hell itself. Rhia just had time to take in a swirl of bright color and flash as she slipped the clam pin into her waist pouch and sloshed frantically to the bank to grab up Daisy.

The careless riders had kicked up a fine cloud of rocky soil, and by the time Rhiannon had batted the air enough to find herself and Daisy a clear breath, the pack of them had galloped on across the river and disappeared into the copse of ancient willow trees at the south edge of the manor's private grounds.

“Not everyone that can
afford
to ride
deserves
to ride,” Rhia complained loudly. She put Daisy to her feet, ripped out the grapevine pieces holding her own painstakingly constructed horse's tail in place, then bent and threw her loosed hair forward to shake out the dust. “The
nerve,
” she stated when she'd straightened back up.

“That was King Henry and his knights, riding from King Henry's castle!” Daisy sang.

Jim and Granna laughed, and Rhia recovered her good spirits and smiled along.

“We won't see King Henry way out here,” Rhiannon told the child, combing the dust from Daisy's hair with her fingers. “King Henry owns dozens and dozens of castles throughout all of England and much of Francia. The earl holds some three or four castles for King Henry, and Lord Claredemont takes care of this one for the earl. The earl himself comes sometimes to stay awhile in it and hunt in the forest hereabouts, but not often, as his wife dislikes the country life. Anyhow, that's what I've heard.”

“I expect those riders be the earl's son and his cronies, the young squires from the manor house,” Jim guessed.

“Well, our Rhiannon should know all about
that,
” Granna said with a jolly har-har.

Rhia rolled her eyes. “Could be them,” she said lightly, her chin in the air. “I've only seen them the once, when they arrived, and I'm sure I was much too busy just now saving Daisy from a deadly trampling to especially notice.”

“They've cleared land back of the manor house as a tilt field for them to practice their swordplay and horsemanship,” Jim eagerly told them. “Looks like they've also cleared more land in this vicinity since I had my accident and was took to your bluff. Cleared for an archery range, I'll wager. I'd heard talk they'd be needing that as well.”

More land
was
being cleared from the bottom edge of Clodaghcombe Forest's bright green skirt. In fact, Rhia could hear the ring of axes this minute as Lord Claredemont's foresters assarted another piece of field from the forest trees for the lord's personal use.

Suddenly, she was itchy with impatience, for the sooner they got to town, the sooner she could link up with her friends, who would certainly have a great variety of details about these reckless young squires.

Her friend Maddy and the others would doubtless know something about the handsome walker on the beach, as well.

 
Woethersly had no charter from the king to hold a fair, but a murder investigation would be the next best thing. As they reached the outskirts of Woethersly, they joined a steady stream of folk picking their way along the road that led to the center of town, most wearing what most surely was their best attire. The ladies were generally in their light woolens, as she and Granna were, but those able to afford it showed off finer spring linens. The men were in their cleanest tunics, girded at the waist, and their bracca were braided up with woolen strips to keep the bottoms from flapping in the road mud.

Though she saw no one in motley or other outrageous garb at that moment, Rhia knew that traveling entertainers might well be drawn by expectation of such a crowd, and merchants from as far away as the next shire might come to show their wares.

“Druce, good friend!” Jim suddenly called out as they neared the mill.

Rhia turned and saw Druce Hulce, the miller, stepping from his grain-storage shed.

“Well, the devil take me. Is that really you, Jim?” Druce called, hastening in Jim's direction. “We'd expected ye to die, Jimmy, so bloodied up was ye that day ye was run over by them ox!”

Rhia bounced on her heels, eager to witness the happy reunion of Jim and his friend.

The miller's wife, Ardith, meanwhile had come from the mill house and stood frowning there beside the turning wheel with her hands upon her hips. “Will you waste more time, Druce, when time's been lost already this morn?” she called to her husband.

“Wife, do you not see it's our good friend Jim?” the miller called back.

“I see that well enough.” Ardith stood glowering a moment longer, then went back inside, slamming her door so hard, it caused a breeze that sent a spray of water out from the mill wheel.

Druce turned back to Jim, all hangdog. “I'm sorry, old friend. With the murder trial on the square, we've made a late start with our work today.” He took Jim by the arm and added, “It's a great shock you've given Ardith, Jim. We'd no expectation ye'd survived that runaway cart! All have took ye for dead, y'see.”

Jim squinted his eyes, thinking hard about that, then nodded. “Tell Ardith I regret it,” he said. “I'd not meant to give her such a jolt.”

Druce nodded too, looking down. “Well, good luck to ye, Jimmy,” he said gruffly.

“G'bye then, Dulce.” Jim turned away.

Daisy, catching something strange in the sound of his voice, stopped in her play with the ducks and skipped over to take his hand. The four of them moved along.

Rhia could think of nothing to say as they walked, so hard did she feel toward Ardith Hulce at that moment. Granna had
plenty
to say on that same subject, but there was a loud racket now that made it hard to hear. The commotion—hammering and clanking, it was—got louder as they went through the rest of the mill yard and toward the main road, until finally Granna gave up talking altogether at the high price of leaving Ardith partly unscolded.

As they cleared the last of the mill buildings and came in view of the churchyard across the way, Jim gave a long whistle of surprise. Granna, Rhia, and Daisy stopped walking and stood agog.

Stone was piled everywhere around the church, and even in the road! Not merely the chunky stone ballast that was dumped from ships, but big squared slabs of beautiful gray stone. There were lots of men about, many of them dressed in the garb of artisans. Some were kneeling and hammering at that stone. Several folk Rhia recognized from the village were at work as well, doing the less exacting job of hauling cut blocks to parts of the churchyard. All that pounding and shifting of rock!

The line of folk going to the green stepped carefully around, the women holding high their skirts against the pool of stone dust hanging like heavy fog above the road.

“Well, for years I'd heard grand talk that the church was going to be built over in stone, and the castle tower as well, but until this day I'd ne'er seen a sign that it was more'n just gossip!” Jim told Granna, shouting to be heard. “Saints save us, it's certain that things prosper greatly in fair Woethersly of late!”

And more great change progressed across the road. Where there'd been a collection of old sheds when Rhia had last been down here, there now was a cleared lot of ground. A high crucked roof had been raised, and the straight trunks of a great many ash trees made a framework beneath it. The whole thing resembled the bones of a huge and fearsome dragon, just waiting to grow flesh.

Jim gave a long whistle. “Whatever
that's
to be, it'll rival the manor house in size.”

Three wives of the town were coming quick down the road, bringing empty buckets for filling from the town's water well. They shared merry talk as they ambled, laughing and poking with their elbows.

Jim beamed when he saw them. “G'day to ye, mistresses!” he called. “How does that good husband of yours, Adda? Say to him that Jim's ready to come back and will be around right soon to see to that ax he wanted fixed!”

The three of them stopped and stared as though Jim were a ghost. The fat one in the middle put her hands over her face and right out sobbed, “Oh, Jimmy, that ax was mended long months ago!”

The other two linked their arms through hers and hurried her over across the street.

“How came ye back in such a state, Jim?” one of them scolded over her shoulder, staring rudely at the stump of Jim's lost leg.

Rhia felt a gorge rise in her throat, and she could not bear to look Jim in the face.

Even Granna, who always had a word or two, seemed stymied for any talk and merely stood there with her arms at her sides.

It was Jim himself who presently rallied them. He pulled his cap back upon his head and squared his shoulders with a heartiness he could surely not have felt.

“Well, let's move along, then,” he said. “My own place is near here. My home lies just back from this churchyard, tucked prettily enough beneath two fine, well-grown willows. I've longed to show it to ye, and here's my chance!”

And so they went on along, though Granna looked in the direction of the mill and bit her thumb hard at Jim's false friends.

Past the church, the stone dust that hung in the air cleared a bit, but big patches of black on the ground showed where some burning had been done to clear a big lot.

Jim stopped walking. The wind kicked a bit of blackened grass against Daisy's skirt, and Rhia bent to brush it off.

“Let's hasten past this waste, Jim,” Rhia complained, “before we're sooted good.”

But Jim was silent and seemed frozen to the spot. Rhia looked up to see him staring at one of those blackened patches. He spoke then, but as if in a dreamy daze.

“There was my cot, where the ground is black ashes in yon corner. Mark how the smoke still wafts? Willow burned green will simmer like that for a good long while.”

And then, something just seemed to pass right out of Jim, as if his spirit, so strong through all his torment of healing, now had met its match at seeing his home destroyed. They saw him sway a bit, and it was lucky there was stacked stone just beneath to catch him, for he would otherwise have surely fallen clean to the ground.

“I planted those willow sprigs two springs before my Maizie died.” Jim's words were spiritless and heavy. “I thought they'd give over last year with the drought, but no, they came along, they did. Maizie so loved those willows, and I thought of her ever I looked at them. The cottage we lived in was small and nothing special, fit to be burned some might say, but those willows of Maizie's . . .”

Jim's words petered out, and he just sat slumped upon his hard granite seat.

“Look, Rhia, will you?” Daisy whispered, taking one of Rhiannon's fingers.

Rhia was too gloomed to do aught but give a glance to where Daisy pointed. Three robed men were leaving the church by its coffin door. One of them held a page of vellum with some writ, and they'd stopped to give instruction to four local peasants who were heaving a sledge of stone to the nether side of the building.

“With so many priests at work, no wonder ill play's afoot,” Granna muttered.

Rhiannon saw her hard-eye one of them to emphasize her point, but then she looked quick away when he glanced in her direction. Even Granna was scared of a thing or two, such as fire in the roof thatch, brain fever caught from wild pigs, and churchmen.

“Granna, you were right as rain when you spoke yesterday,” Rhia forced out, her chest all tight and raw. “Jim is forgotten as well as damned by his so-called friends. And now these churchmen have burned his cot and trees to make room for their fine stone buildings! They seem to have no care that their church will be made grander by the loss of all Jim had left in this whole world!”

Then all of a sudden Rhiannon's legs, with a life of their own, were pounding along hard through the stone dust, heading her right toward those fine clergy like a bull will run full-tilt at a marauder to his field!

The robed priests turned toward her as she got near, seeing the shocked expressions of the local workers that already faced her way. For Rhiannon was flailing her arms like a berserker, though it wasn't really hitting she wanted, unless she could have torn their heads clean off, which, of course, she'd not the strength for.

She began to scream at all of them, clergy and workmen alike. “You fine religious with your stony church, will you be building it upon the bones of a brave man? Because you've kilt Jim's large soul with your burning his cot, so you'd might as well have burnt his whole self while you were about it! He's a just man who deserved not such ill treatment of his willow trees, one-legged though he be! Granna had warned of such a clear damning as this, though I would not believe it, and from God's own clergy yet!”

The dust was churned by her stomping feet and blown about by her whipping arms. She felt it settle on her face, gummed to angry tears she'd begun to spout.