Desire Lines

by Elizabeth Kingston

  “We leave now,” Nan said, and turned to Rosy. “Do you join us?”

  At the girl’s nod, she stood and gathered her few possessions. At her belt she tied the purse of nails, strings loosened so she might reach them easily if needed. Every blade was put into place – at the front of her belt, in the back, her boot, her garter, the braces on her arms. Her fingers pressed briefly against the dagger in her bodice, her heart’s protection, and she prayed today would not be the day she must draw it.

  They need only walk out. The house typically did not rouse until midmorning, and all was quiet at this early hour. Still, she felt a foreboding that caused her to clutch hard at the small bag of belongings over her shoulder while she rested a hand on the knife at her belt. When she asked the girls if there was aught they would take with them, only Rosy nodded and said she would gather her cloak from her room.

  Just as they neared the end of the corridor, Fuss let out a bark. He had followed Rosy around the corner into her room and now there were voices shouting, all while Fuss made enough noise to wake the dead.

  In an instant, Nan had a blade in one hand and a nail in the other. She pulled little Cecilia around the corner with her by instinct, not wanting to let the girl out of her sight. The smell that greeted her told her it was the tanner come back, as promised. In the room she saw him – a tall, thin man shouting drunkenly as he fell onto a small bed. Then she saw a flame of red hair flick out from beneath him and heard Rosy cry out.

  Nan only made the nail graze his ear because she did not want him to keel over onto the girl. When he reached up to clap a hand to the side of his bleeding head, Rosy darted out. She was clutching her cloak to her, and she wasted no time getting away from him. But he snatched at her dress and yanked her back, so Nan stepped forward and drew her blade across the back of his leg, just above the knee, to sever the sinew. He dropped like a stone.

  “Fuss!” she said sharply, with a stamp of her foot, and he settled down to a growl. The drunken man was howling, though, and the girls were staring at the blood, so there was no hope of a quiet exit now.

  She would feel no guilt for crippling a man who would bed a child, but it meant that trouble was more likely to follow them. They must move swiftly now and without hesitation, for she was a stranger in this town and the might of Morency was far away.

  She hastily slung her bag crossways over Rosy’s shoulder, so she could move unencumbered. After a bare instant of thought, she chose the dagger from the back of her belt to put in the older girl’s hand, then pulled the small silver knife from the garter at her knee to give to the younger girl.

  There were voices in the corridor now, moving toward them. The drunken man on the bed was trying to rise and come at her but his leg collapsed beneath him. His bellow followed them as they moved past sleepy women emerging from their rooms, and down the stairs until they reached the place where she had left Bea last night.

  Her sister was not there, but her man Fergus was. He was rising from a bench by the door, the noise having woken him, scowling in confusion at the stairs.

  “What’s amiss?” he asked, looking from Nan to the girls beside her.

  Nan let silence serve, as she ever did, but Rosy offered, “Someone’s done the tanner a terrible hurt.” She did not even pause in her step as she said it, the clever girl. Fergus ran to the stairs and they exited the house, stepping into a gray morning.

  There. They were out. They paused outside the door while, at Nan’s bidding, Rosy put on her cloak and pulled the hood up to hide her bright hair. The small market up the street was only just beginning to stir, and there were few people to witness them leaving the brothel. She was leading them in the direction of the market, back toward the walls of Lincoln, when she heard her name.

  “Nan! Nan!”

  There was a desperation in it, a panicked fear that Nan could not ignore. She turned around to face her sister, and felt a similar terror rising in her breast, scrabbling like a frantic animal to get out.

  She had been taught how to fight despite fear, how to find and keep her balance through it. You will fear no man, Gwenllian had promised. They will fear you. So she had said and so it was, but nothing a man could threaten was like this.

  Bea was red-faced and running, relief washing over her features when she reached Nan.

  “There’s no hurt on you? Oh, I’ll take the hide off Fergus for letting him in after so much drink, falling asleep at the door, the great useless lump. Tell me it’s none of your blood I seen back there.”

  She was running her hands over Nan’s shoulders and arms, patting her gently as she looked for injury. Nan only shook her head wordlessly. Gradually, a crease of confusion appeared in Bea’s brow. She looked at the girls, then back at Nan.

  “Where do you go, Nan?”

  They looked at each other a long moment, Nan breathing unevenly and Bea not breathing at all. She thought of their mother. Look after your brother and sister.

  “I take Cecilia to find different work,” she said simply. “And Rosy would come too.”

  Bea’s brows raised in surprise and skepticism. Her hands dropped from Nan’s shoulders and she shook her head, rejecting it. She spoke past Nan, to the girls. “And who will pay what ye owe? It’s another year for you, Rosy, and three for you, Cissy. Nor do I know what they’ve told you, Nan, but –”

  “There is naught they could say to stop me taking them from here, when they do not wish to stay.”

  Her sister’s expression soured at this, eyes narrowing. Some of the women were at the door of the brothel, peering out at them. Fergus appeared too, starting up the street toward them slowly, and more people coming to the market now. Bea set her hands on her hips, her face hard as she looked at Nan.

  “Oh, you are so good, are you not? Better than me and better than a whore’s life, and you think they are so much better too!” She gestured a hand toward the girls. “And who cared for them before you came along, eh? It’s me that feeds them, and me that puts the clothes on their backs and gives them beds to sleep in, or they’d be in the street. What have you to say to that?”

  Nan had nothing to say to it. Or perhaps she had too much to say, all of it tangled and throbbing at the back of her throat. Words were so useless. They never managed to say anything that mattered, no matter how many were heaped on top of each other.

  “Their debt will be paid,” she finally choked out. “I will send it to you.”

  “Send it?” Bea’s combative pose wavered, her face softening in uncertainty. “You...you’ll not return?”

  Fuss was growling. A cart had stopped just behind Bea on its way to the market, the owner watching them curiously. Nan could see a tiny hole starting at the seam of Bea’s bodice, and imagined taking a needle and thread to it. Three quick stitches and it would be mended, good as new. Until it frayed again.

  She looked in her sister’s eyes – a look with no beginning or end, full of the deep recognition that only came with family – and they knew. They both knew she would never return, and they both knew why.

  “Fare you well, little Bea,” she said barely above a whisper. The memory of her sister’s arm tightened around her, the feel of her face pressed against her as she wept in the night.

  “Nan,” she began, but then there was a noise behind her and Nan turned to see Fergus reaching for Cecilia. He was telling her she would not be going anywhere as he caught her around the waist.

  The nail went into his shoe, just enough to nick the side of his foot. It was what she did to poachers or anyone she did not wish to truly harm; it was meant to startle and to serve as warning. He only cried out and looked down, but did not let the girl go. Nan pulled a blade from her arm brace and in one uninterrupted motion, she let it fly, the tip of it slicing open his shoulder on its way to the ground. Another warning, because she did not want to kill a man in the street where everyone watched. The next would land true if he did not let go, no matter the consequence, but as she drew it he cried out again and dropped the
girl.

  Little Cecilia held the silver knife in her fist, eyes wide but determined as she backed away from him. She had pricked his hand well enough to draw blood, and now Bea was shrieking, cursing the girl, an ugly look on her face as she strode forward with hand outstretched to grab the child.

  The blade caught her sister’s sleeve, aimed precisely to land in the two inches of loose fabric near the elbow, and pinned her arm to the wagon next to her. It halted Bea in her tracks, stopped her cursing with a gasp as she looked bewildered at her suddenly immobilized arm. Arrogant flourish, Gwenllian would call it, but Lord Ranulf would smile with approval and say arrogance could prove useful in a fight. And so it had.

  Nan picked up the blade that had dropped to the dirt and held it tight between her fingers. She would leave the other behind in the wagon, a memento for her sister. They must go and quickly. More people were in the street now, gawking, and there was the man inside the brothel who might any moment call the law on her.

  She looked to the girls and gave a jerk of her chin, and they moved readily in the direction of the market. Her sister’s shouting followed them.

  “Nan! Nan! Will you leave me again?” There was such anger in it, and such despair. Bea let out a sob that would wrench the hardest heart. “Have you only come to show me how well you’ve done, and now you’re finished with me? You said there’s no one can never take you away from me again. Nan!”

  She turned and saw Bea ripping her sleeve in an attempt to free it, cheeks wet with tears. Disgust and love and rage rose up at the sight, a wave that threatened to drown her.

  “I searched for you!” It burst from her, filled with a fury that could no longer be confined to the path of a blade. There was a burning in her lungs, a sharp and painful ache that formed itself into words. “I searched years for you. I prayed and I hoped and I found you, and I swore to myself there is naught I would not do for you, naught.” Already her throat was raw.

  “Nan –”

  “And you would make a whore of a child! You would let her starve did she not obey, though she cries out in terror of it. Starve.” She would not weep. She must keep her eyes dry and clear, so her aim stayed true if she must fight. “Foul and corrupt. That is what you are become. That is who you are.”

  Bea clutched her torn sleeve and stared at her, tears trickling down, jaw working angrily.

  “And I am your sister,” she said. “I am that, too.”

  Nan looked at the face so like her own, the only other person left on earth with their father’s eyes and their mother’s smile.

  “Nay,” she answered. “You are Bargate Bettie. And she is no sister of mine.”

  She turned away. They might have been children again, so much was it like the last time she had left her family. Just as then, she walked away with purpose and a heavy heart. Like then, the sound of her sister’s weeping followed her.

  But this time she did not look back. This time, she did not want to.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They were in the yard training a newly arrived falcon when Hal was called to greet a visitor. Gryff wondered whether to hide himself in the mews in case it was a courtier who might recognize him, but in the end he only pulled up his hood and retreated to a far corner of the yard. It proved to be unnecessary, though, because Hal reappeared within moments.

  “Come,” he said, and gestured Gryff to follow him the front of the house. He had beckoned his wife as well, her arms free of the children that slept every day at midmorning.

  He did not know what to expect, but he would never have thought to see Nan there, her head bowed and eyes on the ground – a vision that sent happiness flooding through him. He barely had time to register it before her dog was bounding at him, barking joyously and turning circles, jumping up to greet him. Gryff knelt, unable to stifle the smile that took over his face as he scratched the dog’s head. She had returned. She was not lost to him forever.

  “There you are, mighty Bran,” he said, laughing. The dog whined and danced in answer. “Mighty Fuss, I mean to say. Did you miss me?”

  He was waiting for Nan to silence the dog, as she ever did when it was too loud for too long. When she did not, he looked to find her eyes on him, a bright blue shock that traveled along his spine. Her look lingered just long enough for him to see something was different in her. Something had happened.

  But then she looked away and he noticed the small figure just behind her, a very young girl with muddied feet and a threadbare dress. Nan gestured the girl forward and said, “This is Cecilia.”

  “It’s Erma,” the child said with a sheepish look upward at Nan. “Bettie thought it too plain. She made me be Cecilia instead.” The stricken look on Nan’s face dismayed the girl, and she hastily said, “But I will be Cecilia, I don’t mind it.”

  Gryff resisted a sudden and powerful urge to step forward and enfold Nan in an embrace. She looked so bewildered, like a child who had discovered she was lost in a dark wood. He bit his tongue against demanding to know what had happened, all his happiness at seeing her swallowed up in concern. But as he watched, she seemed to come to herself again. She looked down at the dog that had returned to her side, blinked, and shook her head slightly as though to clear it.

  “Erma, then.” She turned back to Hal and his wife, adopting her most deferential manner. “She looks for work, and I did remember as how you are without a maidservant.”

  The girl stepped forward at this and launched into a brief and practiced speech, detailing her experience in housework, her willingness to learn how to care for children, her prodigious skill in soapmaking, and her recently acquired but scant knowledge of cooking. As she spoke, Gryff noticed another, older girl standing at the edge of the street as though awaiting permission to come any closer.

  After establishing the child had no family and wanted no more than room and board as payment, Hal agreed to take her on – though he insisted she would have a penny every week for her work. The girl smiled in relief, but Nan set a staying hand on her shoulder and looked to Hal’s wife. Only when she nodded did Nan seem reassured, and spoke again, her words practiced and formal.

  “I go now to the priory at Broadholme,” she said, “and it’s there I’ll ask you to send her if ever ye wish her gone from your household for any reason. I hold myself responsible for her until she is grown, and I would not have her cast into the street if she does not please you.”

  When Hal assured her that, if needed, he would do as she asked, she nodded and lifted her hand from the child’s shoulder. She looked so very tired. She also looked like she was preparing to leave now, this very minute.

  “Where is it?” Gryff asked. “The priory?”

  “To the west, and not far,” said Hal, when Nan did not answer. “It is easily reached by nightfall, even do you stop and eat with us. Will you not share our meal, as thanks for delivering a servant so sorely needed?”

  Gryff could hear the warm persuasion in his friend’s voice, learned from his father. As hard to resist as it was, Nan did not readily agree. She seemed to consider it a moment, glancing over her shoulder to the girl who stood in the street. Gryff prayed for the heavy clouds to open up and make the prospect of travel more dismal.

  “If you take me in your home even for an hour,” she said quietly, “you must take also a whore who travels with me, and the risk that follows me for certain troubles I have lately caused. I know you cannot welcome either of those things.”

  Her face burned now, a flush along her cheeks and neck that spoke her shame as she kept her eyes downcast. Gryff did not want to look away from her even for an instant, but he made himself. He turned to Hal, only to see his friend had already decided.

  “There will not come an hour when you are not welcome here, no matter who or what accompanies you,” Hal answered, just as quietly. “I thought my friend lost to me forever. And so he would be, without you.”

  Her eyes came up at that, a startled look that landed on Gryff. He had told Hal some of it – how t
he villains had held him and what had happened when they attacked her party on the road. It was only the barest facts with few details, just enough to explain these last few months of his life. He had not said a word to his friend about the depth of his gratitude to Nan. There was no need.

  She turned back to Hal and seemed to consider his offer.

  “I would not wish to return your welcome with misfortune.” She looked squarely at him and took a deep breath before speaking bluntly. “I’ve done a grave injury to a man, because he would hold a girl when she wished to escape. He may come after me – or as he cannot walk, he’ll send the sheriff after me. And then you’ll be found to have me at your table, and a whore too. It’s better I leave Lincoln without delay than I bring such disrepute to your good name.”

  “Was the hue and cry sent up against you?” asked Hal.

  “Nay. But nor did I leave that place quietly.”

  At this, the little girl spoke up. “Bettie don’t call on the watchmen, and she told us we was never to do it,” said the child, eager to explain. “The tanner will have to go himself, when he is sober and able to stand on one leg.”

  While Gryff entered into wild speculation about what might have transpired, Hal only smiled at the little girl and gestured to the hooded figure who stood at the edge of the street, beckoning her to come closer. He acted as though the matter had been settled.

  “You are weary, and is better you take your ease now and journey to the priory when you are refreshed.” He spoke to Nan but was already turning toward the house, indicating they should all follow. “And will you deny us the story of this tanner who cannot yet stand on one leg?”

  He and his wife led the girls forward into the house, the distant wail of one of their children signaling a return to order and routine.

  Gryff stood looking at Nan, waiting as expectantly as her dog. She had that bewildered look again, softened only slightly by a vague relief. He thought of the moment when she had turned to him among the trees, when he had been frozen in fear at the mere twitch of a hare in the brush, and she had called him to his senses with only his name and a touch.