The Wicked and the Just (21 page)

Shuff-shuff. He's back to flailing. Shuff-shuff. The master has all kinds of work. Shuff-shuff. Say them nay and reap the whirlwind.

By the time the stairs fall silent, I'm on the bed facing the wall. Feigning sleep despite the agony spreading through my back. And praying to any saint who's listening.

Shuff-shuff. Go pick up your spinning. Your sewing. Shuff-shuff. For Christ's sake, leave him be.

The stairs begin to creak again, growing softer as she descends. She tells the master she's going to check on the laborer's progress.

Oh, little one. I tried.

Shuff—

How dare you look at me like that? Her voice is a whipcrack, like leather against tender skin. You'll study your lessons or you'll be very sorry.

Grip the brat's bed linens. Bury my face in them, so I cannot hear her bait my brother. Press tighter, so no one can hear me weep.

 

 

M
Y FATHER
storms into the house bareheaded and reeking of smoke. His tunic is singed and his face is blackened with what seems to be soot. As he grumbles through the hall, what he mutters is not fit for my ears, so I try to catch every black word of it.

“Water,” he growls over his shoulder as he clumps abovestairs. “Hot.”

Charming. I get Mistress Tipley to haul up a basin of steaming water.

At suppertime, my father huffs into the hall wearing a clean tunic and surcote. His face and hands are pinkscrubbed, but he still smells faintly of smoke.

I don't tell him this. Instead I pour him some ale and ask, “Do you think it might rain?”

“Hope not. There's to be a hanging.”

Just my fortune. Finally something interesting happens, and I haven't a thing to wear.

My father has a faint ring of purple shadowing his right eye. He obviously did not scrub his face as thoroughly as he thought.

 

The gallows stands on the market common, and it'll be nearly impossible to get a good view. All of Caernarvon has turned out to see two poor devils hang.

On the mill bridge, there's a man in a trencher-shaped helm wearing a white tunic crossed in red. He rests one hand on the pommel of the sword displayed plainly at his hip. At the end of the bridge, I can see two more men in white tunics, and another few near the gallows. It's easy to spot them because people skirt them like they've got the pox.

Even the castle garrison have come to watch the hanging. I'm pleased the king saw fit to grant them leave.

In Coventry they hanged a thief once, and the crowd bawled loud enough to deafen a post. But this hanging is curiously silent. There's no baying and howling, despite the size of the crowd. Every soul in the Welshry must be on the market common.

I draw closer to my father.

When we reach the end of the mill bridge, two men-at-arms fall into step on either side of us. My father opens his mouth, but one of them shakes his head curtly.

“Save your breath. Captain's orders.”

My father cuts his eyes over the crowd. “Surely they wouldn't dare. Not in the very shadow of the walls.”

The man-at-arms shrugs. “Best not to tempt them. Besides, it's not just you, is it?” And he tips his chin toward me.

My father grunts something like agreement, and now the crowds part for us as the men-at-arms lead us to the foot of the gallows, to the place usually reserved for victims of the condemned.

I brought some rotten cabbage from the shed wrapped in old sackcloth, but now I'm not sure I want to throw it. Not up here. Not in front of every soul in the Welshry. Not even with men-at-arms at my elbows.

There's a crunch of wheels on dirt as the condemned are rolled toward the green on a cart. I hop and weave, but it's no use. All I can see are two dirty hoods.

I let the cabbage roll off my fingertips and stomp it into the mud.

“What did they do, Papa?” I ask, wiping my hands on the sackcloth.

My father does not answer, but one of the men-at-arms mutters, “Crimes against the borough, demoiselle. Don't worry, though. You're perfectly safe.”

He says this as he grips and regrips his sword-hilt and runs his eyes over the crowd.

The cart heaves to a halt before the gallows. The condemned stumble out and drag themselves up the steps, closely flanked by more men-at-arms. Both prisoners' faces are streaked with soot, as if they escaped a house fire on the breath of God.

Two nooses stand out against the crisp sky. The condemned stand beneath the dangling ropes.

The crowd is buzzing now. Not hollering. Not baying for blood. Muttering. Fidgeting. And though those gathered keep a healthy distance from the men-at-arms, I can feel thousands of eyes on us up here, in the very shadow of the gallows.

Two men-at-arms no longer seems like a lot, even though they're built like mastiffs and armed with daggers and broadswords.

The hangman cinches a noose tight over the neck of the first man, then the second. The first one says something in Welsh, something calm and bold, something that redoubles the crowd's murmur and turns more eyes to us than ever.

I grip my father's elbow.

The hangman puts a hood over each man's head, then steps back to the tether. There's a drawn-out swiff of rope and both men sail into the air, wriggling like worms on a fishhook.

The crowd falls utterly still, as if they're deep in prayer.

My father insists we stay till the bodies cease swaying. When we finally leave, much of the crowd remains. Some are kneeling as if it's a vigil.

The men-at-arms escort us to our dooryard. One offers to stand post outside for a few days, but my father thanks him and says him nay.

“This,” my father says, gesturing to the house, “I know they wouldn't dare.”

The man-at-arms shifts beneath his leather armor. “I've been here long enough to know better than to guess at what the Welsh will and will not dare.”

My father laughs and sends him and his fellows on their way. I watch the men-at-arms disappear around the top of Shire Hall Street, then I go into the rearyard and put both hands on the walls that keep things like sooty felons and the need for armed guards safely without.

 

When I arrive at the Coucy house for my se'ennight's bad-mouthing, I find the lady de Coucy arranging strips of linen and foul-smelling pottles in a basket.

“Oh, you're leaving.” I clasp my hands and study the floor so she cannot see my good cheer. “Beg your pardon. I'll just be off.”

She pulls a bright cloth over the basket and reaches for her cloak. “You'll be coming with me. Emmaline, too. It's nearing Mistress Glover's time.”

“Time for what?”

“For her child to be born, silly girl.”

I step back. “I—I'll just be in the way.”

“Nonsense, Cecily. Helping at a birth is one of the most important things a good woman of Caernarvon does.”

It's Mistress Glover's hundredth child. Like as not she just has to sneeze for the baby to come out.

Emmaline takes my elbow. “Mayhap we'll be allowed to hold the baby!”

Mayhap I'll be allowed to hide in the garden shed.

Mistress Sandys is already at the Glover house when we arrive, as is Mistress Pole. They're fluttering up and down the stairs bearing lengths of linen and basins of water. Someone has brought a relic to aid in the birth—a girdle that Emmaline swears belonged to Saint Margaret—and draped it reverently over the mantel.

The moment the lady de Coucy walks into the Glover house, she takes charge of everything. She sends Emmaline abovestairs with some rosewater for Mistress Glover's brow, and she gives me the task of opening and untying. Leaving even a single knot tied might tangle up the baby or wrap the cord about its neck, and a closed door or shutter could stop up the birth canal. It would be all my fault. So I throw open every shutter and untie every knot in the house, down to the laces in Saint Margaret's girdle on the mantel.

After I finish, I edge into the shadows of the hearth corner. Borough ladies wick by me, eyes to their footing or their burdens. Betimes they mutter in hushed voices that put me too much in mind of a sickroom for my liking.

I haven't a paternoster, but I whisper a prayer for Mistress Glover.

Then there's a thin, spindly cry from abovestairs. A baby's cry.

Emmaline appears at the bottom of the stairs. Her hands are clasped and she's bouncing like a wagon on the low road. “Oh, come and see, Cecily. He's just the sweetest baby in all of Christendom!”

Babies ruin your garden, even when they aren't yours. They get lost and worry you ill, even when they aren't yours.

But I follow Emmaline abovestairs and into the bedchamber, where Mistress Sandys has just lifted the tiny baby dripping from a basin. She dries him off and wraps him tightly in crisp white linen, then tucks him into his mother's elbow.

The baby is a deep glowing pink. He isn't stinky or screamy. He looks weary but content.

Emmaline shyly asks if she can hold the baby. Mistress Glover hands him up and Emmaline settles him in the crook of her arm as if he's wine from water.

“Would you like to hold him next, Cecily?” Mistress Glover asks.

I shake my head violently and the women laugh, but not in a mocking way. Then Mistress Pole says she'd never even held a baby until the moment her eldest was placed in her arms, and Mistress Pannel cackles when she says she tiptoed around her eldest's cradle for a whole fortnight after he was born, afraid to wake him. She'd have to pick him up then, she explains, and she was sure she'd drop him and break every bone in his body.

The good borough ladies laugh and brag and best one another with outlandish stories, and it isn't long ere we've all drawn stools around Mistress Glover's bed. Someone produces a flask of claret and starts it around. Mistress Glover smiles and closes her eyes while Emmaline hums a lullaby and sways the baby like a dancing partner.

Mistress Pole places the flask in my hand without thinking twice. She does not seem to notice that I'm a
novi
who will never be one of them. The wine is strong and sweet. Not bitter at all.

 

I've saved what I can of my tattered wardrobe. I manage to piece together two shifts, two pairs of hose, and my bedrobe. What's left is a mass of fibers that cannot even be unraveled, tied together, rerolled into a skein, and rewoven. They are finely spun, expensive rags.

So I do what you do with rags. I bundle them up for the ragman.

I find him at the market one Saturday, the same wizened ruffian whom Gwinny and I avenged when Levelooker Pluver was plying his odious trade. We surely got the best of Pluver that day. I laughed like a madman when Pluver finally found his hat crushed beneath that hog's filthy trotters.

Neither Alice nor Agnes would ever have done anything so clever and brave. They would have pressed hands to mouths and fretted about being caught.

The ragman offers me a penny for my bundle. I tell him I cannot take less than five, and show him the quality of the rags.

He chitters like a jay, rubs them, then asks toothlessly, “What possessed you to stove up such fineries?”

I pet the rose wool. I could be
wearing
this gown, and thinking about it still makes me want to kick something.

But I toe a line in the dirt and quietly reply, “I know not what I was thinking.”

 

Gwinny is finally well enough to leave. Mistress Tipley tries to persuade her that it's too late for her to walk home, that the men with blackened faces do terrible things to collaborators, but Gwinny shakes her head firmly.

She totters into the hall, stiff like a lance. I'm grinding bits of beechnut hull for dyestuff. She nods to me as she fumbles with her cloakstrings.

“Gwinny.”

She's halfway out the door, hands already balled in her cloak against the cold, and she winces as she sidles back into the hall.

I put aside the beechnuts and approach her. She lifts her chin. She does not cringe, but she seems to be bracing for a blow.

I untangle her hand from her cloak and lay her wages in her palm. Three pennies that catch firelight.

Gwinny gapes at the coins. The bird-look falters and she begins blinking rapidly.

Then she inclines her head, fists a hand about the pennies, and disappears into the deepening winter twilight.