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Authors: Cynthia Voigt

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BOOK: Tale of Gwyn
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They could say what they wanted, Gwyn decided. She brushed back the heavy hood and looked boldly around her at curious eyes. Besides, they'd say it anyway. And she didn't blame them, she thought, as pity closed its hand around her heart.

The crone behind her spoke up again. “Osh aye, it's never the child to blame for who her father is.”

Gwyn's head turned. Murmurs of agreement met that statement, but she would not hear people suggest such things about her father.

Little dark eyes met hers and one eyelid lowered slowly: Why should the woman wink at her, Gwyn thought furiously. The crone added then, “For good or ill, it's not the child's doing.”

Gwyn stared at the aged face, the mouth sunken into folds of skin, the hooked nose, the body bent so badly that the old woman had to tilt her face sideways to look at Gwyn while the voices around took up the idea and carried it away.

“Nor a woman to blame for her man.”

“She's in the right about that, no woman to blame for the good or ill of her man.”

“More ill than good is what I've seen.”

Gwyn thanked the old woman with a smile. Then she whispered to Tad, “Ask if she'd like you to hold her basket while we wait.”

He shook his head.

“Do as I say.”

He shook his head more vehemently. His hood fell off and his bright red curls, looking as warm as fire, ruffled as if a wind had blown over them.

“Or I'll tell Da you wouldn't play with the others,” she threatened. That wasn't fair, she knew. The boys would have pummeled him, if their mother's feelings gave any hint of how the rumors ran. Still, if she'd been Tad, she'd have stayed outside—and given as good as she got.

Sulky, he moved over to speak to the old woman. She shook her head, holding the handle tight in gnarled and knitted hands. But she pushed over to stand behind Gwyn, following Tad's path through the crowd of bodies. “Steward was late last fortnight too,” she said, to nobody in particular.

“Because he doesn't have the long walk back to his own fire.”

“—Women who live in the city should let the others go first—”

“Until the Lords say it has to be done that way I'll not—”

“What brings you to the Earl's Doling Room, Innkeeper's daughter?” the crone asked.

“Da told us to,” Tad answered her shortly.

Gwyn resisted the urge to kick her brother. Instead, she explained more politely, “Lord Hildebrand's messenger came around at the start of winter. He told us his master's storerooms were not over full. There are many of us at the Inn to share out the journey, so Da decided we should come to the Earl, who has more.”

She kept her voice low but the ears around her listened to her words.

“You'll have a long journey back,” the crone observed.

“Yes,” Gwyn agreed, because it was the truth.

She looked again to the door behind the table, at last becoming impatient. She knew that many of the women in the room were also thinking of the long walk home, to get back to their families before dark fell. Even to the poor and especially for women, there were dangers—from thieves, and after dark, from the soldiers too. They were right. The women from the city, which lay within circling stone walls just beyond the Doling Room, ought to let those with longer journeys go first when the Steward came. They would not, she knew, even though they ought. Three hungry winters made everybody less willing to look to her neighbor. And the dangers of city streets were worse, she'd heard. A man might die between his own house and his neighbor's, killed for the clothing he wore. The people of the cities suffered worse in lean years, when fevers came, when the land was uneasy. If she were a man, and a Lord, she thought angrily, she'd find a way to keep the people safe. But there was no way to change the way things were, any more than you could change the weather. All she could do was get home safely and advise Da that they shouldn't send again to the Doling Room, even for Old Megg. That was all she could do, just see that the people of the Ram's Head were kept safe.

“They say the Innkeeper at the Ram's Head pours a fair measure,” the crone said to her.

“He does,” Gwyn agreed, thinking of her father's heavy voice and the stolid temper that belied his red hair.

“Your sister is dark.”

“Like my mother. Only my brother and I have Da's hair,” Gwyn said. Her hand went to the braids coiled over her ears, in the fashion identical to every other woman in the room. “And mine is growing darker. But do you know our father?”

“I knew him,” the old woman answered. “Long ago.”

Gwyn was about to ask her about that, but the door at the front of the room clanged open, giving them a glimpse of low gray skies before it filled with men. The entire long room fell silent. Every eye in the room watched the Steward enter, peel off his heavy gloves, take off his cloak and hang it over the back of the chair. He turned to the fire and rubbed his hands before its warmth. He stood there with his back to them, in leather leggings and a blue woollen overshirt belted about the waist. Three soldiers entered after him, in shorter cloaks and high boots, their swords sheathed at their sides. They lined up behind him as he sat at the table and opened up his long book.

The open door let a blast of icy air blow down the length of the room, while servants in sheepskin wraps hauled in the great baskets of turnips and the barrows of grain. There was no sound in the room now except the scrape of feet and the drag of baskets. A baby fussed somewhere ahead of Gwyn and was quickly put to its mother's breast to quiet it. The silence held itself tense while the Steward, without looking up at the crowd of women, slowly turned the pages of his book. He lifted his head once, to call for a cup of hot wine, which one of the servants scurried away to fetch to him. Slowly, the Steward sharpened his quills with a little silver knife, laying them out in a row before him, ready to hand. He uncapped the jug of black ink. He put beside this two thin sticks of charcoal. The soldiers stood motionless behind him, their eyes fixed above the heads of the women, their hands ready at sword hilts.

As if, Gwyn thought angrily, anyone in this room would be a danger, all women and weak from long hunger, all standing in patient and humble obedience until they could step forward to be given the food that would keep their families alive for the next two weeks. She was shamed to be here, standing so. She would rather be home in the kitchen, under the lash of her mother's voice. Even knowing it was for Old Megg, not for themselves that they came, she was shamed.

Gwyn and Tad waited, as silent as everyone else. The men at the front of the room might as well have been alone from human company. They could have been standing before a herd of cows, preparing to pour fodder into the troughs. Gwyn felt her throat close up in pity for these women, who had worked—she knew it and their hands and backs showed it—worked so hard for such poor crops, for such long hours, and who were now come hand in hand with hunger and shame because the rains in the spring had been too hard and the summer too hot and dry. Gwyn knew that without the Lords' food, many would die, even more than winter claimed by right. She thought, then, that the women had reason to be grateful.

At last the Steward allowed the women to come forward, one at a time. The servants put into their baskets the measures of grain and the turnips, while the Steward wrote the record into his book. The crowd shuffled forward, in that unquiet silence.

Gwyn moved steadily with the crowd and at last stood before the Steward. She identified herself and watched his hands turn the long pages over. Each page was ruled into columns, each column headed with the lines and circles that those who knew could interpret. When he found the column he wanted, his slow quill scratched marks in black ink. Gwyn gave her basket to be filled. Tad stood behind her.

The Steward never looked up once at her, and while she stood there before him she studied the top of his head, where a pink scalp showed through thin blond hair. The firelogs crackled behind him. His pen ceased moving. He reached to dip it into the inkpot. His hands were white, the nails smooth and clean. The Earl's signet was on his finger, the sign of the bear cut deep into the gold. Gwyn's basket was returned to her, heavy now. She and Tad moved out of the room.

She pulled Tad aside by the doorway. For a while he was content to breathe deeply of the clean cold air. Ahead of them, women called their children out of the group now huddled together for warmth, then moved quickly off, looking at the low sky with worried faces. Gwyn too hoped the snow would hold off. The King's Ways were all bordered by rail fences, so you wouldn't get lost in a snow, but they had ten miles to walk, long enough in good weather.

These women had wrapped their felt shoes around with woollen rags and probably lined the inside with straw as well, uncomfortable to walk on, but it gave protection against the cold ground. Unfortunately, when the felt footwear got wet, as theirs had with melting snow, while they waited the long time in the Doling Room, their feet would be colder still on the journey home. Gwyn looked down to where her own feet were covered by the cloak, glad her heavy leather boots were hidden.

But why should she feel badly to have warm, dry feet? Or guilty—because she felt guilty too—that she had good fortune and did nothing to share it. Even if she did give her boots away, that would be only one pair of feet, out of the many, kept dry and warm. Only one pair of feet out of the many. Still, she half wished she had the heart to give them, even though it would do only a little good.

What her mother would say, though, and her father too if he were told, if she did that!

“Gwyn, let's
go.
” Tad pulled at her arm.

Gwyn saw the old woman. The door slammed quickly shut behind her, and she hesitated in the pathway, her basket pulling her body lower, like an aged apple tree over-laden with fruit. “Which way do you take, Granny?” Gwyn asked. The face did not look surprised to see her. “We're going east and could carry your basket.”

She smiled up at Gwyn, showing a mouth where few teeth remained. “Osh aye, I'd be glad of the help and of the company,” she said. “It's not so far.”

“Tad”—Gwyn fixed him with her sternest expression—“you can carry our basket. It's lighter,” she added quickly, as he opened his mouth to object.

“Let's just get going,” he muttered.

Behind them the city walls rose up into the sky, the stone as gray as the clouds. Women and children moved between the oval gatehouses to enter the city through the narrow gate. Thinking of what might lie waiting for them in the narrow, empty streets, Gywn didn't envy them their briefer journey home.

Chapter 2

E
ARL NORTHGATE'S CITY LAY BACK
in the foothills, against the mountains that ringed the northern border of the kingdom. The King's Way went off to the east, down hillsides, then up. Dark figures moved along it. Close to the city, the snow had been packed down by feet and the hooves of horses. It was firm underfoot, but often slippery. Their companion moved with stiff, shuffling steps, her hand on the fence rail, her head weaving from side to side. They walked abreast, Gwyn in the middle, Tad shifting his basket from hand to hand every few steps, glaring up at Gwyn every time he did so. The old woman's basket pulled Gwyn's shoulders, but she ignored that. The work of the Inn, from currying the horses at the stables to hefting bags of flour up from the cellars, from helping to turn the straw mattresses on the beds to stirring the vats of ale as they brewed, had made her strong and had taught her how to use her strength.

The crone did not speak while she was pulling herself up a slope or creeping cautiously down one. When the ground was level, she talked to them.

“I don't know your name,” she asked.

“Gwyn, and this is my brother Tad.”

“You'll be eight?” the old woman asked Tad.

“Almost ten,” he told her, angry that she had thought him younger than he was.

Gwyn sighed at his rudeness and at his way of resenting truths he did not like. “I'm sixteen.”

“Osh aye, you'd better marry soon. With your rich dowry, you'll marry well. Have you been spoken for?”

Gwyn's cheeks flushed. She shook her head. Before Tad could say anything, she asked, “Have you a husband waiting?”

The crone nodded but did not answer, because the Way rose up under their feet again. When she saw how much their companion's steps pained her, Gwyn couldn't be sorry that they were with her, however much time was added to their journey. Sparse trees, bare in winter, marked the hillsides between which they walked. Their branches were mounded with snow, while the pines and spruces held out their white burden, as if offering it from dark, feathery arms. Occasionally, rising smoke showed where a house lay under its heavy snow mantle, or little clusters of houses. The few women still moving along the Way passed them, at a hasty, uneasy pace, looking back, peering ahead.

“Hap was one of the Earl's gamekeepers,” the crone told her as the Way leveled. “Before his accident. Now we watch the southern pathway into the Earl's forests, and Hap has permission to set snares so we can live. Come winter, Hap stays abed.”

“Granny,” Gwyn said, “my father had a brother had a friend . . .”

“That's Hap. Aye, that's my Hap.”

“They say—my mother says—he could dance the legs off a rabbit.”

“And he could,” the old woman said. “Not anymore, not for years now, longer than you've been alive.”

“There was an accident?”

“He was beating out the birds during one of the hunts and a horse rode over him—they say the beast panicked. They brought him home to me, over their shoulders, as soon as they could, but his knee would never mend right again. Winters, the cold pains him.”

The Way went down, then, into a little dell where the forest edge made a dark smudge on the smooth white landscape. At the bottom of the slope the old woman stopped. “I go off here.”

BOOK: Tale of Gwyn
4.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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