The Wicked and the Just (18 page)

 

 

A
FORTNIGHT
ere Christmas, Nicholas comes roaring up before the house. He's brought a packet of royal missives for the mayor of Caernarvon, and he's permitted to remain until Epiphany.

There's a young man with him, and it's several moments ere I recognize my younger cousin. Henry actually looks like a man, furry across the cheeks and broad through the shoulders. Not the hare-toothed oaf with tousled hair and dirt beneath his nails who told one too many landlord's-daughter jokes.

I embrace them both twice and bring each a mug of hot cider while my father bids them come near the fire to tell the news.

“Mother's piles are acting up again,” says Nicholas, as if my aunt Eleanor would like this information made public. “The miller's wife bore twins and had to swear her fidelity on the gospels. Agnes got married. I reckon there's some hope yet for you to unload this minx of yours, Uncle Robert. Someone saw the Adversary in the wheat field. Oh, and Father's brand-new bay mare went lame. I warned him not to buy from that . . .”

Agnes got married.

I slip out of the hall and drift into my workroom even though it's withering cold, and I sink down before my empty embroidery frame.

They're both wives now. When they'd merely been far away, they seemed within reach. Now that they're married, they're gone for good, no matter what we promised.

Bootsteps behind me. Nicholas clumps into the workroom and shudders dramatically. “Brrr! Why do you not come by the fire, Cesspool?”

“That's all right. I like it here.”

Nicholas kneels at my elbow and studies my empty frame. “She's happy, you know. Agnes. Alice, too. They live just around the corner from each other. In and out of each other's kitchens all day.”

Just like a man to say the wrong thing and not know it's the wrong thing.

But Nicholas seems to realize something is amiss. “Mayhap this will cheer you.”

He offers a small parcel of grubby linen. Within are skeins of embroidery thread. A whole fistful, every color I could want. Even gold and silver. Good thread, too, not that coarseweave that bloodies your fingers. I squeal and clap and throw my arms about him.

“I know you were deprived of an altar cloth,” Nicholas says with a smile. “Nothing could replace that, of course. But this will help you with another one.”

Nicholas pulls plaits and laughs too loud and blames farts on Salvo, but he'll be here to hang the holly and ivy and light candles and offer me his elbow when we walk to Christ's Mass.

 

Henry has come to see Caernarvon. Nicholas has told him of the liberties and privileges given to burgesses, and Henry is weary of waiting for the chance to become a master goldsmith in the Coventry guild.

My father decides to show Henry the sights. After a little pleading on my part, my father relents and permits me to join them. We pass the Justice Court, the Boar's Head, and the murage trestle, my father rattling on about no tolls and cheap labor, until at last we find ourselves without the walls at the endowed cropland.

Henry stands openmouthed at the neat furrows of icy clods. “All this is yours?”

“Twelvepence a year,” my father says. “No service owed. Held by simple burghal tenure.”

Henry whistles low, shakes his head.

From somewhere nearby I hear a small noise I cannot place, so I move into the furrows and seek it. It sounds like a lost puppy, mournful and urgent. Mayhap my father would allow me to keep it. Salvo might enjoy a little company.

I top a small rise and stop short. Lying in the dirt, bound wrist and ankle, is the boy whose task it is to ward away crows. There's a filthy gag in his mouth and he struggles against his bonds. His hair has been so harshly shorn that his scalp is half torn away. Even his eyebrows are gone.

“Hey, Papa.” I force my voice even. “Papa, Henry, I think you should see this.”

My father and Henry cut the ropes in a trice and help the poor lad to his feet. He scowls at them and shakes off their hands, muttering in Welsh.

“Who did this to you?” my father demands.

The boy stares mutely, defiantly.

“It was those whoresons with blackened faces, wasn't it?” My father mutters another foul swear that unfortunately I don't quite catch. “Bastards think they can wreak violence on the few of you with half a measure of loyalty, do they? I shall see them punished, mark me.”

“He will,” I assure the boy. “He helped put all three of those women in the stocks last month, the ones who tried to sneak into the market without paying the toll. And those lads that sank that barge at the Grandison wharf. The bailiffs are still tracking down whoever carved those, er, offensive pictures into the city gates, but my father thinks the Porth Mawr miller knows who did it, so he's being questioned even now. Whoever it was, though, God help him. I doubt there'll be much left of him to hang.”

The boy squints at my father and mutters something that sounds like
tooth-dee-din,
which I take to mean thank you.

“Back to your labor, then,” my father says in a gentler tone. “Not your fault, lad. Mind yourself, though. Watchers are hard to come by.”

The boy stumbles away through the furrows. Just looking at his clotted scalp makes my head throb, but soon the poor lad will have justice. My father will see to it.

 

My father needs some sacks of grain moved into the shed. I know just the man for the job.

I send one of the Glover boys for Griffith, and as always, he comes trudging up Shire Hall as if being led to the gallows. As he passes the house, Griffith looks up at it as if it will eat him bone and toenail, and when he sees me at my father's window he quickly drops his gaze.

I flutter my fingers and stare him into the rearyard. He does not look up anymore.

Gwinny is sweeping my chamber. I can hear the scratch of broomstraws on the floor as I sail down the stairs, tying my cloak and pulling on gloves.

The cold is searing outside the hall. I bounce on my heels in the storage chamber and rub my hands while my father gives Griffith his instructions. He speaks loud and slow and repeats himself thrice.

Then my father clumps back inside. He doesn't see me in the shadows, and I give him plenty of time to settle himself before the hearth with a mug ere I hitch my gown up just enough and stride into the rearyard.

“G'morn, Griffith,” I say sweetly, even though the cold is crippling and it's hard not to curl into myself and shudder.

He freezes, his back to me and a sack on his shoulder. It's heavy. I can tell by how he's listing. His whole body slumps like one great sob.

I smile. “I wonder how your lessons are coming today.”

Griffith's gloves have no fingers and he has no cloak, merely a tunic that's seen more than one winter. His cheeks are already burned red and his ears are twice wrapped in wool, but still his hair tangles out like ribbons.

“Demoiselle,” he finally says, “would you not rather be in by the fire? This weather is not fit for dogs.”

It's rising Tierce. It's cold enough to freeze the beard off an icon. Yet he stands with a hundredstone weight on his shoulder while his rag-wrapped feet sink ever deeper into mud clods because he dares not answer and dares not ignore.

“Doubtless no,” I purr. “I have
all
morning.”

Griffith grimaces as he shifts beneath the weight. “By your leave, then? Should I get this finished, I can—”

“Are you
looking
at me again?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Shakes his head once, curtly.

I perch on the kitchen stump and get on with my teaching.

 

 

I
T'S
better when she's gone. Can pretend this house is Pencoed and it's my floor to sweep. My linen to hem. My hearth to stoke.

Pencoed was taken, though. Bastards took everything.

Wouldn't have it different. Having now means kneeling then. Kneeling before them, taking their king's peace.

Da would not. So English took everything. Even his life.

Cold. Bone-biting cold. Must sweep for warmth. All the dim corners and forgotten places.

Must close those rotten shutters.

Lean out to seize the straps. And see them. Gruffydd and the brat.

It grieves me to say it, she says with a smile of pure venom, but you're just not learning anything at all. What
would
the king say, could he see us now? Mayhap you'll never learn, no matter how much you study your lessons. Mayhap you're just not capable of it. I wonder what we'd have to do with you then.

Gruffydd is red and sick and scuffing the icy ground and not looking at her and it's
her,
it's the brat, she's the one plaguing Gruffydd and it's worse again than he ever let on and God help me I'll kill her dead and go to the gallows and not a vile English soul in this Godforsaken town will hire Gruffydd's labor again and Mam will starve and freeze and die.

Lean against the wall. Gasping.

He was ready to kill them all with his toy spear when they came to seize Pencoed and Mam threw a blanket over us and told us to make no noise, not a sound, and I held my hand over his mouth and gripped him still while he fought to get free and things crashed beyond the wool and Mam wept and men shouted and I whispered over and over for him not to be afraid, that all would end up well.

Liar.

Rock away from the wall. Storm to the garment rod. Gowns hang there. Shifts. Hose and slippers and ribbons and surcotes.

Rose gown is on top. The one I put a thousand-thousand stitches into till my eyes hurt, and with no thanks. No notice of my bleeding fingers.

Seize that rag by the collar and rip. It tears in two with a satisfying groan and I laugh and sob and kill it some more, till it's dead in pieces on the floor. Sleeves like slain birds. Wrought hem like a gallows noose.

Throw its corpse down. Pick up the yellow gown and tear.

The lot of them should burn.

 

 

S
OMETHING'S HAPPENING
in the house. There's clunking and banging and the strangest other sound. Groaning?

Mayhap Ned has returned to try his luck against my father's rage.

Griffith is all but in tears. I've only permitted him to move three sacks. And I could easily stretch this work out all day. Whether I will or not I haven't decided. I sweetly promise to return as soon as I'm able and I swish all hips into the house.

The hall is quiet. My father is nowhere in sight, but Nicholas dozes before the fire in the big master's chair he's dragged from the trestle. Salvo sleeps on his feet.

The strange noise is clearer in the hall. It's not a groaning sound at all. It's a ripping sound.

Something is being torn abovestairs.

I take the stairs two at a time. At the curtain, I stop cold.

I cannot be seeing true.

There is clothing everywhere.

No. No, there are
pieces
of clothing everywhere. My garment rod is empty and there are skirts across the bed and sleeves on the floor and a leg of hose dangling from the shutter and scattered about are scraps that might have once been ties or hems or girdle lacings.

Gwinny stands in the middle of the wreckage, panting as if winded from a sprint. Her fists are stiff at her sides and both clutch handfuls of wool scraps. She looks poised to attack, like a mad dog or a boar.

Christ and all the saints but she will pay! And not just at Court Baron.

I seize her wrist and haul her from the room as hard as I can. She bangs an elbow on the doorframe and cries out.

“After all I've done for you, too!” I leap the last two stairs and heave her toward the hall. “My father will be furious and you will be
cartwhipped.
”

Nicholas blearily rocks into a sitting position and Salvo creaks aloft his gray head.

I throw Gwinny before Nicholas and howl, “I've had all I can bear from this servant my father won't let me get rid of. I'd have her punished for ruining my garments!”