The Wicked and the Just (12 page)

I would we had better shutters.

He is now Officer of the Town Mills. He is charged to regularly visit the two mills, the one on the Cadnant and the one at Porth Mawr. He's to survey the grindstones and ensure that the millers take no more than their due and that the quality of the flour is acceptable. The Officer of the Town Mills is also required to regularly ride through both the castlery and the Welshry to ensure that no man has a handmill, and if any man is grinding his own grain, to bring him before borough court for amercement.

My father is very proud of his office of charge. We have a haunch of mutton and sage wine to celebrate. His office will give him something to do and keep him out of trouble. And hopefully out of my workroom, too.

 

Mistress Tipley and I are heading home with the day's bread when we hear an earsplitting shriek near the gate. I fling the bread at Mistress Tipley and fly toward the clamor.

Just within the gate is Mistress Glover—hugging Nessy!

Townspeople crowd around, cheering, blessing the baby, patting both Glovers as they hug and squeeze their errant child. I can barely see Nessy through the welter of arms and bodies, but her cheeks are pink and she's squealing merrily just as I remember.

I grin big as market day. God is merciful to sinners.

Nearby, three serjeants form a well-armed ring around an elderly couple, who cringe and glance about uncertainly. One of the serjeants clears his throat and says, “Master Glover?”

Mistress Glover looks up over Nessy's blond head. Her eyes are streaming and cold like a wolf's. “They'll hang with Black Reese.”

I frown. If Nessy is safe, surely the burgesses will let Black Reese go.

The old woman says something in Welsh angled like a question. Her voice is a panicky stutter. The old man chimes in with a protest, calm but desperate. But the serjeants pay them no mind and jerk them toward the gatehouse.

Nessy appeared in my rearyard and tore up my garden. No one marched me off to be hanged when I brought her home.

I press close to Mistress Glover. “Mayhap we should ask them how they came to have Nessy.”

“They
took
my Nessy,” Mistress Glover growls. “When you're a mother, you'll understand.”

“Look at her,” I insist. “Nessy has been gone a fortnight and there's not a scratch on her. It wouldn't be right to hang them with no cause. What if they
helped
Nessy?”

Mistress Glover looks down at her pink, healthy child for a long moment, then nods reluctantly. The elderly couple are manhandled before her and both begin a frantic chatter in Welsh.

“Speak properly!” Mistress Glover shrieks, and both of them cringe and fall silent and gesture with gnarled hands.

“I don't think they can,” I say into the quiet that's descended.

“Then they hang!”

Mistress Tipley pushes to my elbow and bobs her head to Mistress Glover. “They're saying they found the baby eating turnips in their garden. They live all the way out in Llanrug and none of their neighbors recognized her. They had no idea she belonged within the walls or they would have brought her sooner. They beg you to show mercy.”

I stare openmouthed at Mistress Tipley. She can understand Welsh!

“Nessy looks well fed,” Mistress Tipley adds, “and look how clean her face and feet are.”

Mistress Glover scrubs at her wet cheeks. “Oh, you lot deal with them!” And she turns on her heel and bustles up High Street with Nessy peeking over her shoulder.

I turn a pleading gaze on Master Glover while Mistress Tipley glowers at him, hands on hips, and at length he bids the serjeants to release the couple. The two poor souls lean on each other, faint with relief, then fly through the city gate as if the Adversary is seeking them.

If it had been my baby returned hale and plump, all but back from the dead, I would have at least thanked the people who fed and tended her.

Even if they were Welsh.

 

 

I
T'S
all over the Welshry. Gwladys and Cadwallon of Llanrug were as good as dead, accosted at the city gate with the baby they'd been wringing their hands over. The baby they'd been tending with the last of their milk and borrowed oatbread.

The
honesti
baby that castle English have been threshing the Welshry to find.

Gwladys and Cadwallon of Llanrug were as good as dead, sent to their fate by naught less than my foolish belief that English would celebrate the baby's safe return more than they'd demand vengeance for her disappearance.

But Gwladys and Cadwallon were spared because of an English girl who spoke for them brassy as you please right before castle English who would have strung them up then and there.

Mayhap they helped Nessy, she said. It wouldn't be right to hang them without cause.

And castle English stayed their hands.

They're saying it was the brat.
My
brat. Brattily Bratly of Shire Hall Street.

Gwladys and Cadwallon live. Their home intact. Limbs aright. Not even a bruise. For no other reason than the kindness of the brat.

Wait for her to crow and preen. But all she does is wrap a honey cake and bid me take it to the
honesti
baby next door.

The brat wraps the cake so carefully that it's hard to recognize her work.

 

 

F
OR THE SECOND TIME
in a year's worth of saints, my father has ruined my life.

“I've had the most joyous tidings!” he crows at supper over his plate of trout.

“Uncle Roger has died and we can go home to Edgeley?”

My father serves me a dark look. “No. Mind your tongue.”

I bow my head and try to look sorry.

He brightens as he reaches for the nef. “The good news is that the lady de Coucy will be helping you learn to get along among the ladies of Caernarvon. On the morrow, you're to present yourself at her door at the ringing of Sext. Be sure your chores are done in the morning.”

“Papa, no! I don't want to!”

My father pinches two fingers of salt from the bow of the small wooden ship and dumps it in his visorye. “Your opinion on the matter is acknowledged. The ringing of Sext. Don't tarry.”

“I know all about how to run a household!”

“It's got naught to do with running a household, sweeting,” my father says. “I might have taken the privileges, but there is more to being a burgess than I realized. I'll not have you at a disadvantage. Since you get on so well with Emmaline de Coucy, her mother has agreed to take you under her wing. So you will be attentive.” His voice sharpens. “And well-mannered.”

I nod miserably and push my trencher away. I'm not hungry anymore. “It'll serve no purpose. When we go home to Edgeley, I'll need none of these foolish town customs.”

My father blinks rapidly and chokes. He must have taken too large a bite.

 

As Sext rings, off I dutifully go. A servant answers the door and directs me to the solar, where Emmaline is ruining linen with her disastrous needlework and the lady de Coucy is spinning. When she sees me, the lady sets aside her work with a faint jingle of keys. She's blinking rapidly, as if a dairymaid has entered the solar, or mayhap her cow.

“Saints,” the lady mutters, eyeing me up and down. At length she puts together a smile and gestures me in.

My father did not raise a cow. I lift my chin. I straighten my shoulders. I walk like a queen through the solar to stand before her, and I regard her steadily.

“Emmaline,” the lady says, “what did this girl do wrong?”

Emmaline bites her lip, toys with a trailing stitch. She meets my eye and shrugs the tiniest helpless shrug ere saying, “The walk . . . and the look.”

“Dare I hope you've even been to a town ere this one?” the lady asks wearily.

I unclamp my teeth from my bottom lip. “Coventry, my lady. We spent a year there. We were waiting to go back to Edgeley Hall, but—”

“Right, yes. That grubby little manor in the midlands.” She wrinkles her nose as if she's caught a whiff of manure. “Your father is a burgess of Caernarvon now. For good or ill, you're one of us, and by all that's holy you will not bring shame on this town.”

I nod because I'm to be attentive and well-mannered, but may God Almighty strike me down ere I become anything like the ladies of Caernarvon.

The lady de Coucy puts me through my paces as though I'm a mastiff whelp. Walk. Speak. Roll over. Not like that! Bad girl! Nones is ringing when she finally lets me leave. It's all I can do to incline my head ere fleeing from her solar like a loosed felon.

I stomp up High Street, kicking rocks and hating everything because I'll be at her mercy every wretched Monday and there's naught to be done for it thanks to my father's conniving.

I look up and see
him.
The miserable Welsh vagrant who
looks
. He's driving a timber-laden cart toward the city gate. The horse strains against its collar and the load lists dangerously beneath the tethers.

I'm sweeping past, nose in the air, when a cart wheel hits a puddle and a curtain of filth sluices up and drenches my gown and it's too much and I whirl on him like a soaked cat.

“Saints above, look what you've done!”

He barely spares me a glance, harried as he is and tangled to the elbow in reins. “Demoiselle?”

“As if it isn't bad enough that—How
dare
you?”

He manages to still the horse, but the load slides drunkenly with each jerk of the cart. “Beg pardon, demoiselle. Bad roads.”

He certes doesn't look sorry. And there's naught I can do for it. There's naught I can do for a lot of things.

I glare at him with all my hating, trying to kill him where he stands, but it isn't working. He's waiting like some halfwitted hound, not seeming to notice how much I'm hating him.

Waiting. And shifting uncomfortably and glancing at the castle every few moments as if it's a boot poised to kick. “Er, by your leave, demoiselle?”

He's a head taller than I and strong enough to break my neck with one throttle, but he cannot leave till I say he can.

An English person has spoken to him and now he must await his dismissal. Like any dog.

And there's naught he can do for it.

“Demoiselle?” He tries that smile, but something in my face must stay him because he squares up and fixes his eyes over my shoulder as if I'm my father. “By your leave?”

I put a finger to my chin and hold it there, pretending to consider. Then I stare back at him, right in the eye, till he looks at his bare feet and not at me. Not anymore.

“Mayhap,” I drawl, “if you ask nicely.”

“
Please,
then, demoiselle.” There's an edge to his voice, no hint of plea. “I'll certes be thrashed as it is.”

Good. May it cut to the marrow.

“Very well, off with you,” I say, and it's not out of my mouth ere he's whipping the horse into a smart trot. He does not look back.

I breathe in deep and smile for the first time since Sext.

I'm holding the reins of the whole world.

 

Going to Mass is now a critical part of my day, since I can walk past Ned's townhouse twice without it seeming untoward. From without, Ned's house smells of bread and woodsmoke. Betimes the shutters are open and I can peek inside.

What slivers of workroom I can see are clear and tidy; floors shining, walls wiped, the trestle clear and waiting. Nothing like Edgeley when my mother came to live there. Despite the passage of years, she'd tease my father about the bench she'd had to peel her backside from and the pewterware with dregs caked at the bottom those many years ago, and he'd gallantly sweep a hand over Edgeley's hall, now clean and humming and cheerful, all the better for its lady.

When I peek in the windows of Ned's townhouse, I must admit I'm a little disappointed. There wouldn't be much for me to do. I would gain a house like Edgeley was. There would be no need to make this house into Edgeley.