The Wicked and the Just (24 page)

Send that mongrel out of doors, Mother snaps.

The brat pets the dog's gray head and says, The poor creature is as old as the hills. The damp's not good for his bones.

Put him out, says Mother firmly, and the brat squares up like a toll-table serjeant.

We are nowhere near your grubby little manor, Mother goes on in a blade-cold voice. Those who think to become
honesti
will do well to remember where they are and whose favor they need.

The brat blinks hard, kneels, puts her arms around the dog's neck. Forgive me, she whispers to the beast, then walks it at its shambling pace into the rearyard.

She's gone for many long moments. Slip into the rear chamber, peek into the yard. The brat idles near the kitchen, knotting, reknotting, and unknotting a length of rope around the dog's neck.

Mother and Daughter in the hall discuss whether the brat's table linen ought to be replaced or mended.

The brat brings a pan of water to the dog, pets its head, picks at tangles in its hair.

Daughter Shrewcy comes to the rear door and tells the brat that Mother Shrewcy is waiting and it's time to show the master her walking.

The brat heaves herself up and scowls murder at the kitchen. Then she fixes that false, pained smile and trudges inside.

Have seen that look ere this. Know it, down to my white-hot core.

She walks the way they tell her. She holds her feet, her shoulders, her hands just as they do. The master looks on as if she's made of gold. The brat's smile does not change, unless it grows sharper. As if anyone within an armslength would end up bloodied should that look leave her face and flow through her fists.

She could be one of them. Townhouse lady, servants all around.

It's what everyone wants but her.

 

 

B
ECAUSE THERE
is the off chance I might enjoy myself, my father has forbidden me from Midsummer porch vigil at Saint Mary's.

“Midnight is too late for you to be out alone,” my father says. “If I didn't have Watch and Ward, I'd be happy to escort you.”

“You're
always
on Watch and Ward.” I sulk.

“They've stepped up the guard. The whole castlery is a tinderbox since the murrain, to say naught of the Welshry. And then there's the October collection of the tax of the fifteenth drawing nearer. I'm sorry about porch vigil, sweeting. Mayhap next year.”

“But Emmaline de Coucy is going to porch vigil!” This is a lie, but it's a lie square in the pride.

My father straightens his cloak. “I believe I said you nay. Don't make me repeat myself.”

I put on my best air of offended but obedient dignity, for I have every intention of sneaking out after Vespers and sitting on the church porch until the souls pass by. I want to know right away if my uncle Roger will die in the coming year.

I can barely believe my fortune when my cousin Henry rides up in a splatter of mud a whole month early. I sail out to greet my dearest cousin, call for a Glover lad to take his horse to the common stable and for Gwinny to bring him the coldest buttermilk in the house. When Henry is resting in the big chair with his feet up and his throat wet, I ask him pretty as you please if he plans to attend the Midsummer festivities in our fair town.

“Would that I could, Cesspool,” Henry replies, “but the foremost
honesti
will be here tonight to discuss my prospects for taking the privileges.”

Thimbles and pins! Not even Fortune will take my side.

My father leaves explicit instructions to me in Henry's presence that under no circumstances am I to leave the house for porch vigil and that it'll be Henry's hide as well as mine if he is disobeyed.

Henry warns me with a single look, then bids Mistress Tipley fetch our second-to-last cask of ale from the cellar.

I defy my father by sitting in the rearyard and throwing hempseed into the mud. It's supposed to grow and my future husband is supposed to come rake it behind me. All it's doing is giving the pigling something to root for.

At dusk, Henry calls me inside and banishes me to my chamber with an awkward but genuine apology and the assurance that the hall will be no place for me tonight. And judging by the houndlike singing and hallooing and laughing that fills the house as the pillars of Caernarvon arrive to discuss Henry's prospects, he may be right.

Exiled, I throw my shutters open and lean out my window as far as I dare. I can see only a shade of the rear wall of Saint Mary's, but mayhap I'll catch sight of the souls on their way to the porch. Mayhap my uncle's soul will be among them. Then my father will be back in possession of Edgeley. By Christmas I could be walking the same floorplanks my mother once trod, and Salvo could be buried at her feet when his time comes.

In an Ave, I'm bored.

So I sit at the top of the stairs and listen to the goings-on in the hall, trying to piece together how Henry is doing, how the burgesses are taking to him.

How good a chance there is that he will become our neighbor.

 

Apparently they took quite well to him. The
honesti
have extended an official invitation to my cousin Henry to consider the privileges of Caernarvon. He has accepted. He will take the oath at Christmas and move into the townhouse on Palace Street.

Henry goes on at length about how envious Nicholas is and how Nicholas swears as soon as he gets his spurs he'll come to Wales and take so much of that twopenny land that he won't be able to ride its boundaries in a day. Baby Henry has finally beaten Nicholas to something, but I'm still trying to catch them both.

Now that Henry will be our neighbor come Christmas, I cannot wait to show him the market and the Water Gate, Saint Mary's and the wellheads and the place where the Seiont pools cold and quiet, where small fish come to nibble your toes.

 

The evening ere he leaves for Coventry, Henry clears his throat and casts about and does worse than ruin my life.

He ends it.

Henry ends my life with the black news that Thomas d'Edgeley was born to my wretched uncle Roger and his worthless slip of a wife on May Eve.

My father cheerfully throws on his cloak, seizes Henry by the elbow, and calls over his shoulder that they're off to the Boar's Head to drink to the babe's good health.

I sit at the empty table and stare into the dying hearthfire.

It's gone.

The snug little hall with its brand-new chimney, the glowing garden, the dovecote, the turn of stream where quiet fish would gather in a silvery cloud. The pasturage where goats would crowd their necks through the fence for a handful of clover. The churchyard with its ancient yews and graves. The swing, swaying from an oak limb, that my father made from a length of hemp and an old cart-slat.

Edgeley was to be mine. My mother promised all of it to me on my saint day when I turned seven and she let me carry the keys on a piece of twine tied about my waist from Prime till Compline. I could open every chest and door and lock. I spent every moment of that day at her side, hurrying to match her calm, swishing stride, and Salvo followed us both.

At Vespers I was hiding from her in the dovecote, clutching the keys together to keep them from clanking. She had the grooms combing the yard for me, as it was long past my bedtime. The poor lads called and called, but they were grown and had forgotten the best places to hide. I could have stayed where I was till the Last Trumpet, and I planned to. I could not bear for the day to end.

My father came out as far as the trough and promised me the whipping of my life should I not immediately present myself before him, but I held the keys tighter and moved not a margin.

My mother finally came into the yard herself, holding up the horn-paned lantern. “Cecily, sweeting, one day it will all be yours. Every post and barrel, and there won't be a day that goes by that those keys aren't at your belt. You must be patient.”

One day
felt like the morrow when she said it. I came out and put the big ring of keys in her keeping. And I did get the whipping of my life.

And ere the season turned, we buried her.

Edgeley is his now. The rotten usurper mewling at his girl-mother's breast. It's all his, every post and barrel.

Now we're stuck in Caernarvon. We're stuck here for good, and my father doesn't even seem to care.

 

 

H
YWEL
shuffles to the steading door. For a moment I'm wroth, Dafydd sending his cousin to ply me with more fruitless talk of marriage. But Hywel looks hagridden, his eyes red and his face blotchy. He's been weeping.

“All of them,” he whispers.

He loves them like children. He names them and weaves crowns of flowers for their horns.

Step away from the fire. “You had them up high. How could they have caught it?”

Hywel shrugs, scrubs a wrist over his eyes. “I know not. They're all dead. Sweating and staggering. Yours. Mine. Every beast in the vale.”

They're all dead. Cattle. Goats. Sheep. The murrain leaves nothing on the hoof untouched. No meat. No milk. No butter. No cheese.

No food left but what's doled out in Crown measures for ten times its worth.

“Forgive me,” Hywel whispers, as if it's his fault. Tears slide down his cheeks, winding through bristly beard-fuzz. “They all had to burn.”

Beckon him in. Give him some mead. He refuses half an oatcake. Cannot eat, he mutters.

Best eat now. Soon enough we'll all be too hungry to care about the morrow.

 

A thrash. The stumble of feet. Something being dragged.

Awake. Instantly. The door-curtain wicks back to reveal a square of deep night-blue and a harsh silver wash of moonlight.

They've come. As they did for Dafydd. Cudgels and thatch everywhere.

On my feet, grappling for something heavy.

“Gwen, it's me!” Gruffydd's voice is strained, as if he's winded or bearing something heavy. “Help me. Right now.”

Cannot move. Can barely breathe. The cooking pot slides out of my hand.

From the dark comes gasping. Harsh bursts of sound a man would make were he drowning.

Or hanging from an English rope.

“Gwenhwyfar!”

Kneel to stir up the coals. By the raft of sickly orange light, I can make out Gruffydd on his knees. Covered in blood.

Sweet. Merciful. Christ.

“Hssst! No fire! They'll be looking for light!”

Swipe up Mam's water and douse the struggling coals. A great billow of smoke rises with a hiss of steam and the stench of burn.

“No.” Whisper is choked. “Oh, Christ, no.”

“It's not my blood, Gwen. Please. He's dying. Help me.”

For a long moment, all I can do is tremble.

Not his blood.

Then I feel my way across the steading, moving toward Gruffydd's voice. The disembodied gasps dry up as I near.

“What happened?” Even as the words come out, I bite my lip. The less I know, the better for all. “To him, I mean.”

“Cut,” Gruffydd replies tersely. “And never mind. He's gone. God rest his soul.”

Bump into Gruffydd and kneel at his side. Press my shoulder against his.

“They got Cadwgan and Rhodri ap Tudur. Naught we could do. Bastards will hang them on the morrow. God
damn
those English sons of whores!”

Stickiness spreading over my shoulder, soaking in. Not Gruffydd's blood.

Reckoning the fire now. Lackwitted of me to cast water on the coals. Somehow I'll have to get the fire started again ere I leave for the brat's.

“Someone will have to tell their wives. And their mother.”

This is why. Because I cannot bear to lose them both.

Gruffydd beside me still draws his breath unsteadily.

One day, a shadow will come to my door. He will push his hood back and scuff the dirt with one heel, and he will tell me to go to the market common should I want to say farewell ere the hangman does his work. Or that my brother died well in some anonymous way, calling down the only kind of justice the likes of us have recourse to.