Tale of Gwyn (3 page)

Following the trail with her eyes, Gwyn could see a low hut backed up under the first of the trees. “Let us come with you,” she offered.

“Gwyn!” Tad exploded.

“You can wait here if you like,” she snapped at him. If he couldn't see how tired the old woman was, she could. “I don't think there's much danger of wolves this close to the city,” she added, as if she were seriously considering that question.

“There's no need. You've helped me along the worst of it.” The old woman tried to make peace.

“It's cold,” Tad added.

Gwyn just started to move onto the track. “Granny? You had better hold onto my arm,” she said.

“Can't we even rest?” Tad demanded.

If it had been just the two of them, Gwyn would have ignored him. But the old woman was breathing hard and looked near the end of her strength. It was probably a quarter mile through deep snow ahead of them. So they dusted the snow off some large rocks and sat down. Tad huddled close to Gwyn, for warmth not affection.

The odd woman looked toward the dark forest, spreading like a cloak up over the hills. “We have two apple trees,” she said, “and that's good fortune. And a little nanny who gives us milk. Old people”—she smiled at Tad—“are like babies when it comes to milk. So we keep alive through the winter, and it's easier the rest of the year.”

“You have no neighbors?”

She shook her head, quickly pulling her hood close again against a rising wind. “Nor children living. Just Hap and me and the dog.”

“What do you watch the forest path for?” Gwyn wondered.

“We watch the deer, if they start to come out foraging, rabbits and foxes, grouse and duck. We listen for the wolves, should they start moving down into the forest. We give shelter to soldiers, should need arise, and we know the travelers and hunters who come out and we watch for—anyone who should not be in the forest.” She hesitated and looked at the Innkeeper's children and then lowered her voice even though they were alone in the white landscape: “Will he be Jackaroo then, think you?”

“That's a story,” Tad told her. “Just an old story.”

The old woman didn't argue with him. She looked quickly at Gwyn, whose only thought was of pity for those whose lives were so hard they needed such stories for hope.

“There's no one then, bold enough, brave enough, to stand for the poor when the Lords get greedy, or when times are bad?” the old woman asked them.

Gwyn shrugged.

“And if I told you I had seen him once?”

Gwyn didn't know what to say. She didn't want to hurt the old woman's feelings.

“Osh aye, then, and maybe I didn't; it was so long ago I wasn't even as old as yourself. I never know what's memory and what's dreams, not anymore.”

“We'd best be on, or it'll be dark before we get back.” Gwyn changed the subject. “My mother worries,” she explained.

“She always was a worrier, that I remember clearly,” the crone said. “And you'll have eight more miles along the Way for her to worry about, and she'll be right to worry, these days.”

They trudged through the snow, Tad behind and the old woman on Gwyn's arm. “You'll have a mug of nanny's warm milk before you go on again,” the old woman said to Gwyn. “You'll warm your hands at our fire. And I could find an apple for a boy, even in this winter.” She turned to look at Tad, sulking along behind them.

He opened his mouth to tell her that they had baskets of apples in their cellar and bins filled with potatoes and onions, but Gwyn glared at him. He snapped his mouth shut, but he might as well have spoken, Gwyn saw, looking down at the old lady's wrinkled face.

She didn't know what had happened to Tad, to make him the way he was. He was as bad as a Lord, the way he acted. He hadn't been whipped enough, he hadn't been given enough work—but her mother had been so afraid to lose him and Da had given way to her in everything concerning Tad. Well, her father had waited so long for a son and had suffered the loss of two before Tad had been born. Her mother too, although neither of them spoke of it, had watched anxiously over Tad during his first years, keeping him in during bad weather, keeping him away from other children when there was contagion nearby, nursing him night after night when his little body wracked with the cough that brought up any food he got down. And Tad, unlike his two brothers, had turned three, then four, and on. Gwyn's hand often itched to smack him as he rested beside a fire while others worked, but she knew why her parents cherished him so. She had lain awake for the three nights her mother keened over the last, dead within a week of being born, dead in the morning who had been alive the night before. She had seen Da's helplessness before her mother's grief, and his own grief, too, with no son to inherit the Inn.

As they came nearer to the little house, Gwyn heard the old woman take in a sharp breath and felt her stumble as she tried to rush forward. Gwyn looked up from the snow underfoot to see a dark shape flat on the snow, motionless. The door of the hut stood open. Smoke rose in a scrawny curl from the chimney. They hurried forward, ignoring Tad's protests.

The dark shape was a dog, a brown and black dog with bones jutting out under his coat and his blood dried on the snow around him. The snow near the door was trampled with footprints. The old woman didn't look twice at the dog, but stumbled up to the door and through it. Gwyn hesitated, looking down at the dead animal while Tad caught up to her.

“Let's go home, Gwyn,” he asked, pleading.

Gwyn just stood there. It was a skinny, scruffy dog, and it was hungry before it died.

“Something bad has happened, Gwyn,” Tad whispered at her. “We can't go in there.”

Gwyn nodded her head, then followed the old woman into the house. She didn't know, really, why she did that. She could have put the basket down on the doorstep and fled. Whatever had happened, there was nothing she could do now.

Inside, the air was chilly. Gwyn saw, in the one room, a fire burned down to bright ashes, a rough table with two stools beside it, a shelf for dishes and mugs, a shelf for food, a ladder leading up to the narrow loft, and a bed beside one wall on which two old people huddled together like children.

Gwyn went to the door and grabbed Tad's arm, pulling him inside. “Just be quiet,” she told him. He knew better than to argue with her.

Without looking at the couple on the bed, the old man mumbling into his beard and the old woman rubbing helplessly at his shoulder, Gwyn took some wood from the box and put it over the coals. Calling Tad to help, she blew on it, gently at first and then, when the little flames licked upward around the logs, more strongly. “You watch that,” she told her brother. He didn't answer, but he obeyed her.

Gwyn unpacked the old woman's basket onto the table. As she took out the last turnip, the old woman called her name. She went to stand by the bed.

“Hap?” the old woman croaked.

Gwyn looked into an aged face. The man's hair was whitened, like snow-bearing clouds, and his beard was as tangled as the hair on his head. His eyes were red with weeping and his lips rolled into his mouth the way lips did on the toothless old. He sat hunched forward on the bed, covered by a worn quilt that was as dirty as his hair. His head swung back and forth.

“Gwyn, the Innkeeper's daughter, at the Ram's Head,” the old woman said.

The eyes focused on her.

“She walked me home.”

The man coughed and wiped his sleeve across his eyes and nose.

“I thank you,” he said. He started to move on the bed, to sit up straighter.

“But what happened?” Gwyn asked.

“They came, three of them, and took our nanny—it was just after you had gone.” He coughed again. “And the dog followed them out, but he hasn't come back yet. I couldn't close the door against the dog, could I?”

“No, of course not,” his wife soothed him.

Gwyn asked, “The soldiers came?”

“I didn't know them,” the old man said to his wife. His withered hand moved up to indicate the bottom half of his face, “but they were bearded.” They spoke to one another, ignoring Gwyn. “I'm worried about the dog.” His voice was rough, like unplaned wood, and he coughed as if his words irritated his throat.

The crone's eyes met Gwyn's and the old head gave a shake. She didn't want him to know yet.

“And how will we live, without the milk nanny gave,” he asked, his voice shaking.

“Osh aye,” the old woman crooned, nodding her head and getting up, as if that question told her what she waited to hear. “We'll live on the Earl's Dole and apples, and when the thaws come the snares will fill.”

“We'll never be able to buy another goat,” he reminded her.

“No, we won't. So maybe we'll die, this winter or next, and that'll be together like everything else we've had from life, good or ill.” She moved clumsily around the room, hanging up her cloak on a hook behind the door. “They'll try to eat her, as I think, and they'll find her tough. They'll lose teeth on our nanny. She'll have her revenge,” she told him, her laughter creaking like an ill-hung door.

“You're a terrible old woman,” he said to her, but a smile washed over his face.

“These children have built up the fire again. Isn't that nice?”

“We have to be going now,” Gwyn said. “But I wanted to ask you where—” She came close to the old woman who stood at the table, her hands moving among the turnips. Gwyn lowered her voice and picked up a turnip, standing with her back to the bed so that her low words would be muffled. “—I could move the dog?” she asked softly.

“Yes, I do see.” The old woman nodded her head, and her eyes filled with tears which she blinked back. “I won't try to keep this one long. You've a sharp eye as well as a good heart, Innkeeper's daughter.”

“Tad, come along,” Gwyn said. They left abruptly, pulling the door sharply closed behind them. Gwyn shoved their basket into Tad's hands again, with an expression so fierce he didn't dare question. She picked up the dog's hind legs and pulled it around the side of the hut, dragging it into the trees that crowded close to the little building. Only a patch of blood marked the snow where he had lain. This she kicked snow over, to conceal it, knowing that the wind—which had blown her hood back from her face—would finish the work.

From inside the house they heard the old man's rough voice rise up again. “But who could it have been to do such a thing to us?” His coughing drowned out whatever answer his wife gave.

Gwyn took the basket from Tad and they hurried away along the path. She didn't speak and neither did he. Their footsteps scrunched in the snow and the field flowed white up at them. They moved quickly, side by side. As they reached the Way, Gwyn realized that Tad was practically jumping beside her, and she shoved aside the heavy feeling that seemed to be pushing against her chest to look curiously at him.

Words burst out of him: “I bet I know who did it. Gwyn, listen. Gwyn? He broke into wild laughter. “Jackaroo!” He doubled over, slapping at his knees. “It must have been Jackaroo!”

Gwyn pushed him—hard, harder than necessary—to get him moving. Sometimes she hated him. It was such a cruel thought, that he would do such a thing to those the stories said he protected. “That's not funny at all.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” he told her. Her hands were occupied with the heavy basket, and if she kicked at him she would likely slip and fall, even though kicking him would make her feel better. “It's very funny,” he told her, unable to stop laughing.

Then he burst into tears. “I'm going home,” his voice wailed over his shoulder as he ran off ahead, the hood dropping back from his head.

Tad was managing not to carry the basket, Gwyn noticed, watching him run ahead. She hefted its weight and began to move along at a steady pace. The heaviness pushed out at her chest, and Tad's reaction just made her feel more helpless. Tad had no sympathy for the troubles of others. Gwyn almost wished she had his cold heart, as she tried not to remember, trying to think ahead to the safety of home. But how could Tad have such a terrible thought and laugh? As if he would ever do something like that, even if he were real, Jackaroo.

J
ACKAROO IT WAS WHO SLIT
the bag of the greedy Bailiff, so that every coin the Bailiff put into it slipped out as he rode away, his leather bag bouncing on his saddle. That was an old story, from the times before the Earls swore fealty to the King, times when the people served only the Lord and the Lord served only himself. As the story told, there was a greedy Bailiff who put the coins for his Lord into one hand and the coins for himself into the other. Jackaroo emptied the Bailiff's bag, returning to each man just that which he had unjustly paid, no more nor less. At the last, the Bailiff's greed was his own undoing, for he put his hand into the Lord's gold to make up for himself what he had lost. That was a hanging day where the sun shown bright, as the story told.

Gwyn walked along, the snow crisp under her feet, a few flakes now blown down from the sky. She should, perhaps, hurry to catch Tad; anybody else would have, to ask what the matter was, to keep him safe in sight. But Tad was old enough to follow the roadway home, if he was too silly to know that two traveling together were safer than one traveling alone. And she already knew what the matter was: He had no stomach for poverty, he feared the ugly hunger and the dead animal outside the door.

Her brother could do as he wanted, but she would go along at her own pace, thinking her own thoughts. What trouble would greet her at her own door when Tad had arrived alone, she could predict. What trouble lay behind her she had seen. But for now, she had only her own company, and the snow falling sparsely over the frozen hills.

Jackaroo it was who cut the hangman's rope from the neck of the man falsely convicted and pulled the man onto the saddle behind him, where he bounced and clung on the unaccustomed mount, and he was never seen again. The Lord's verdict was on him, even though the people knew it was his jealous brother who had done the murder. That time, especially, the story told, the Lords had sought Jackaroo and tried to take him. But they never could. They named him outlaw, but he was too quick and clever for them.