The Wicked and the Just (10 page)

William insists on seeing me to my door. Aline is one massive scowl and Evilbeth is drawn tighter than a bowstring. Emmaline squeezes my arm and thanks me for coming.

“We shall have to meet again,” Emmaline says cheerfully, as if William is not covered in filth and the rest of us skittish as colts. “When your maid has recovered, you'll come to my house and we'll spin.”

Yes. My maid. My nonexistent maid.

I try to seem pleased at the prospect as I hurry toward my door. When I look over my shoulder, I catch Evilbeth's cruel, knowing smile.

 

 

P
OOR
girl is almost dry. She lows as I milk her, but there's naught to be done for the heat that parches the soil.

There's even less to be done for Crown measures and market penny, and God help you should you seek redress. Fanwra from down the vale may never recover from that month on the gatehouse floor.

Almost a bucket of milk. Mayhap it will be enough. Silver in their palms and mayhap they'll leave us our cow. Part is better than naught. Even taxmen must know that.

Bucket in my hand sways like a hanged man as I set off toward that eyesore on the strait. Handle digs into my palm, gritty.

Take the long way. Fewer Watchers. And with any fortune, Dafydd will be waiting on the other path, the one the timber gangers use.

Saturday, and the roads are full of dusty feet and baskets on backs. Fall into step with them. Say naught. None of us do. Plod toward the castle. Toward the swarm of souls without the walls on the market common.

Horseback English ride, pressing horseflesh through the queue. Step away from hooves and heels. They watch, not us but our goods. They watch our hands to make sure naught passes between us. If we trade away from the walls, they're denied their share of our sweat.

If we trade away from the walls, they amerce us and take more.

English at the trestle looks me up and down. “Lastage, and market penny.”

“Half measure milk instead?” My words in their tongue are purposefully stumbling, purposefully broken. It's never good to let them know what you know.

“Silver,” says trestle English. “Or be gone.”

Could bribe him. Others do. A heaping Crown measure, and the need for silver is suddenly weaker. But betimes the “gift” disappears and still they demand silver.

Slam the coins down before him. The whole trestle shudders. Horseback English turn, poised like wolfhounds. Trestle English narrows his eyes as he slides the coins into his palm.

Brace for the blow, standing to like a foot soldier. Some take special pleasure if you beg or cower.

But trestle English merely reaches across to chalk me, to keep the levelookers off. Mustn't flinch. Not a hairsbreadth. The milk will spill, and part is better than naught.

He chalks me across my tit, cups it, squeezes, smiles. Stand to. Not a hairsbreadth. Stare through him.

Eyes are stinging. Must be the dust.

Sway past the trestle, into the market beneath the walls. Find the other dairy girls, chalked over the tits same as me, the cheeses and butter and endless buckets of milk already ripening in the sun.

Flies in my milk. Scoop them out, cover my pail with what's left of my cloak.

And he comes through the crowd, damn him, golden and glowing like a war-band chief. My penance for a lapse in judgment I'd have back at any price.

Pull my hood over my eyes and slump, but it's for naught. Dafydd is already heading toward the dairy row.

“They charged me double toll again,” he says cheerfully. “You can be sure it'll go in my next petition to the king. I'll tell him, ‘Your Grace, not only is it unlawful, but I'll be obliged to court my beloved in my smallclothes.'”

He means to make me smile, so I try for courtesy's sake. But the walls cut a harsh shadow across the market, even at midday.

Dafydd kneels, pretends to examine the milk. “If they're resorting to such petty tricks, the nerve I hit is raw. My petition will eventually be granted. They cannot keep me out forever.”

It isn't. It won't. They can.

“Caernarvon won't change unless we make it change,” he whispers. “There's naught in the king's law that says a Welshman cannot take a burgage. All this ill is just the burgesses guarding their privileges. Changing anything takes strength, and I know no one stronger than you. I need you.”

Choke on a sound, an animal sound. All the strength in the world did naught for Da. “Changing anything takes sacrifice, and that's a luxury I cannot afford.”

“When we're successful, you'll be able to afford all the luxuries to hand, and some you just dream up.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know.” Dafydd lifts my chin with two fingers. “I love you. I want you as my wife.”

Flinch. Remember despite myself. His gentle hand sliding up the small of my back, his warm breath against my neck.

Look down. My knees dig into sun-baked dust. A chalk gash over my tit.

Shake my head, curt, like a fist to the jaw.

“Why not?”

Two pennies poorer and naught to show, horseback English watch my hands, and above us all rise those purple-banded walls that can be seen for leagues.

He must notice how my eyes slice over the market, for he sobers and says, “It just wants one crack, Gwenhwyfar. Just one crack and then time will do its work.”

It does want a crack. One dealt with knives and fists and red, raw anger. One dealt with the gallows in plain view. English understand naught else.

Pull my hood over my eyes, stare into the milk. Dafydd takes the hint and rocks to his feet. “Right, then, I'm off. But you'll see me again. I don't give up easy, you know.” His voice softens. “Not for the things that matter.”

Linen shuffles, and he's gone. Risk a glance after him. Hate him for that square of shoulders, that proud, lovely stride.

This is why, Dafydd. Because you're a fool.

 

They come at night. Man-shaped shadows, sleek like wolves and faceless in the dark. By morning, something English will be in ashes or hamstrung or torn to pieces or just plain gone. They've come for Peredur's son, and Gruffydd ap Peredur goes to the door to give them his regrets.

“This is not the way.” Gruffydd glances over his shoulder at Mam and me. “Too much risk and naught to gain.”

“Your father thought otherwise.” The voice without the door is harsh, disparaging.

“Aye,” Gruffydd replies, equally cold. “Look what it got him.”

Somewhere in the rafters is Da's spear. Slid there to wait by some comrade lost to memory while Da still hung from the walls. But Gruffydd does not look up. He meets the gaze of the hooded shadow and does not flinch or beg pardon when he tells the men to go with God, that for everyone's sake they were never here.

Gruffydd's tread is heavy as he makes his way fireside and collapses on his pallet.

Lie back on my own pallet as the fire sputters its last orange breath. Mam next to me sleeps as if she's dead already. Stare hard into the thatch, trying to make out some stray wink of steel. Just so I know it's still there.

 

 

B
EASTLY-HOT AIR
drafts through my shutters. I'm in bed wide awake. My bare skin is damp, my bedclothes are damp, and Gwinny's going to have to air the linen again today because I'm sick to bleeding death of this sticky-foul cling of damp cloth.

I rise and open the shutters. The sky is a most lovely shade of deep blue. It was never this blue at Edgeley.

The house is silent. There are no thumpings in the rearyard, so no one has risen to prime the kitchen fire. It must be very early.

I should just go back to bed. But then I'll have to lie in mucky-damp linen.

I struggle into a shift and put on my bedrobe. I pad belowstairs into a hall that's much cooler than my chamber. By the rear door, there are two buckets full of water. Just as there should be.

Gwinny may be difficult, but at least she's a decent enough servant.

The rearyard is deliciously cool. Salvo sleeps against the kitchen wall, sprawled like a dogskin rug. I check his water pan, then lift my leaky watering bucket off its peg, dip it into the bigger bucket, and swing it dripping toward my garden.

That's when I see the child.

The little urchin is wearing naught but a sleeveless shift and she's standing smack amid my neat rows of herbs. Her fat fists are crammed with bright blue borage.

“Yook,” the herb-trampler tells me, “fow-ers.”

My garden is pulverized. Stalks crushed, smashed, pulped, uprooted. Chunky little footprints criss and cross through the disaster, and in case there is some doubt as to who the culprit might be, this little thing is filthy knees and elbows and—saints preserve me—mouth.

The urchin smiles. She holds out the crushed borage, dirt dangling from the roots.

“You must be one of those tenscore Glover creatures from next door,” I mutter. “Your rotten brothers throw mud at my laundry.”

She smiles and opens her hand. Mangled borage falls at her filthy feet.

“You need to go home. Go away. Shoo. Back where you belong.” So I can see what can be salvaged of this mess.

I point to the greenway that leads to the street out front, but the child makes no move to obey. Instead she stomps her stubby feet in what's left of my tansy.

God save me ere I have any babies. They are grabby, clingy little beasts who steal your figure and always want a ribbon or a wooden sword. And who sometimes make you die bearing them.

“Come with me, then.” I rise and unstick my shift from my backside, then head down the greenway. The child doesn't follow. She's uprooting fennel and flinging it and chortling.

I consider dragging her by the wrist, but then she'd squawk and bring not only the house but all of Shire Hall Street to gape and snicker at me in my sweaty underthings when I haven't even washed my face or put a comb to my hair.

Cringing, I hoist the urchin up, one hand beneath each armpit, and hold her at arm's length. She doesn't protest. In fact, she giggles as if we're playing some game. I stagger through the greenway into the Glovers' dooryard, lower her gritty little feet onto the hearthstone, dust off my hands, and head up the path.

There's a pattering and she's right behind me, treading on my heels, grabbing at my bedrobe.

“No. You stay here.” I shoo her back to the hearthstone as if she's a halfwit baby Salvo. “Stay. You stay.”

She sucks in a big sobby breath and lets it out as a throaty whine that steadily grows in volume.

The sky is still a deep night-blue and all the buildings are black. Caernarvon is utterly still, like we're the only souls within.

She is really quite small. Too small to know better than to throw mud at laundry.

“Very well.” I hold out a hand and she leaps at it. I am the most selfless Christian in all of Christendom. “Let's go back to my house. What are you called?”

The child doesn't answer. She's obviously not the sharpest little knife in the Glovers' brace.

As soon as we're back in my rearyard, she's tumbling away like a fat wobbly puppy. By turns she's carefree or intent on tiny things like dew on the greenery or the dregs in the pigling's trough. She giggles like a drunkard and spins like a whipping top.

I cannot imagine chasing a baby all day if this is what they're like, but whenever she runs up and hugs me, a sticky embrace made fierce and swift like an attack, I always hug her back.

The sky is still a deep sapphire when the row next door starts. There's a lot of thumping and the clatter of feet and someone shrieking like a lost soul. The Glovers must have risen and found themselves a child short, though how that's noticeable I know not.

I tighten my bedrobe. “Come, let's go find your mama.”

“Mama,” echoes the baby, and she takes my hand and toddles with me up the greenway, through the gutter, to her door.

No one answers my knock for several long moments, then a tousle-head boy peers out. He gives a great whoop and throws the door wide.