by Alison Adare
It was an overwhelming temptation — to be out in the clean, clear air, away from the smells and the noise of the fort. With Tom.
Janet remembered the flowers shoved in her doublet. “There’s something I need to do, first,” she said. “If you don’t mind waiting?”
He looked, for a moment, almost sad. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t mind waiting.”
She jogged up the stairs to the tower’s entrance, and stopped just inside the door to extract the flowers. They were a little crushed and bedraggled, but Janet judged that the worst of the damage could be nipped away and the rest of the blooms would recover with water. As she stood there studying them, one of the boys who did double duty both in the kitchen and carrying water up from the well for the chambers — Gryvith, Janet remembered — came hurrying from the direction of Lady Modron’s chambers with two empty ewers dangling from his hands. He eyed the flowers, and then gave a small chuckle, and met Janet’s eyes with sympathy. She couldn’t understand his remark, but the tone was wryly humorous, and then he was gone.
Wonderful. She climbed the stairs to Tom’s chambers. It’ll be all over Brinday by tomorrow that I’m courting someone.
At least the language barrier would spare her from coming up with appropriate responses to any ribald inquiries, from all but Father Donnic. As she put the flowers in a cup and poured water from Tom’s ewer over them, careful to position them where he’d see them when he returned, it occurred to Janet that her position as steward would likely help there, as well. The common soldiers in the army were free to tease each other over which of the camp followers had caught the attention of their hearts — or their cods — but rank has its privileges …
She froze. Rank did have its privileges, and one of them was the income and the security to support a wife. God’s blood, I’m probably the most eligible man in Brinday, after Tom. And he’s spoken for.
At least none of the local women had worked that out yet. Or have they? Had she missed, or misread, subtle glances and coy smiles? And what on earth was she to do if one of them set their cap at Jack Cooper in earnest? How long could she pretend shyness, or excessive choosiness, or sheer unobservance, before Steward Cooper’s lack of interest in female companionship became itself the subject of gossip?
She put the ewer down with a thump as the cup threatened to overflow. Saint Theodosia’s teats, how did I fail to think of it? Because she’d been wholly concentrated on the unexpected gift of more time with Tom, was why, and then with negotiating the hazards of her disguise in a strange place, among strange people, and then thoroughly absorbed in Brinday and its doings. The change in her status had barely made an impact on her thoughts, except that it allowed her to sleep privately. She had been used to living as a man when the only women around were either following husbands through the campaign or selling their affections — and gleet. The difference between that, and living as a marriageable man when single women were about had simply not occurred to her.
She scrubbed her hands over her face. Perhaps I can come up with a convincing enough story about a lost love, to whom I remain true … no, a sad and tragic past would make Jack Cooper all the more attractive to some young women. A wound to my non-existent pin, something that makes me incapable … Tom will know it’s a lie, as far as he knows I took no wounds. A vow, then, of chastity, until some impossible condition is met …
Mind still whirling, she clattered back down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Tom was up on Nightfoot already, clearly eager to be off. Janet hastened into the stables, where Lew had Masie ready for her. She took the mare’s reins to lead her out, but Lew held on to them. When she looked at him in puzzlement, carefully and deliberately he offered her the spray of wild rose she had earlier dislodged from her sleeve.
Of course. Thorns, on the stable floor. “Sorry,” she said, taking it.
“Thank you,” Lew said very slowly and seriously.
God’s blood, I am making ten kinds of fool of myself today. Falling down a hill, giving Gryvith reason to tell tales in the kitchen of my secret lady love, and being so frightened of a child’s tales of dragons that I risk laming a horse.
Face blazing with embarrassment, Janet crushed the spray of flowers in her hand, ignoring the thorns, and led Masie out.
No sooner was she mounted than Tom turned Nightfoot to the gates and sent him through at a gallop.
He rode hard, leaving Janet to follow. She urged Masie on with hands and heels, but the mare was no match for Nightfoot, and it was not until they’d rounded the long bend of the hill and were well into the valley below that Tom reined back to a walk and let Janet catch him.
“I thought you were going to race me all the way back home,” she said as she came alongside.
His mouth turned down a little. “I’m half tempted.”
“It’s not so bad here, surely?” She waved an arm at the rich green pastures around them, studded with the white outcrops of rock that made so much of the land impossible to plow. “Mutton palls, I’ll grant you, but we’ve eaten worse, and neither of us is sleeping under canvas. There was a time you’d have given one of your ballocks to sleep warm and dry and fed every night.”
“It’s not so bad here,” Tom said, looking out over the grass, and then turning in his saddle to look back at the fort. “With a sweet breeze and without a crowd of people all smiling at me and saying who-knows-what to each other.” He glanced at her. “Do you never wonder what they’re saying to each other, safely certain we have no idea?”
“Every day,” Janet said. “But would it be so different if they all spoke our language? They’d just say those things in the corridor, or behind a door, instead of in front of us.” She grinned at him. “The burden of command, Sir Thomas. You never knew what the men of your Company were saying behind your back, either.”
He shook Nightfoot’s reins and picked up the pace a little. “Then I knew you’d bring it to me if I needed to know. Now I can rely only on Father Donnic.” He paused, and said so quietly Janet almost didn’t hear him, “I hear them whispering, Jack.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make out the voices.” He ran the fingers of his free hand furiously through his hair. “And of course I can’t make out the words. It seems to go on all night, sometimes.”
Oh, Tom. The stairs to his rooms passed Janet’s own door, and it had been a long time since she slept soundly enough at night to miss a footfall on the stairs. And any voice whispering outside Tom’s door would be audible from her own. He’s dreaming again. “I’ll have a watch set outside your door,” she said neutrally.
“Oh, one of the locals?” he said. “One of those charms you put such faith in will tell you which ones you can trust?”
“You were the one who said I was here because I knew how to get the best from a horse, or a man,” Janet pointed out. “It doesn’t take a charm, or a common language, to read honesty in someone’s eyes.” She pushed Masie a little ahead of Nightfoot and turned her into the stallion’s shoulder to force Tom to slow. “Tom. Trust me. I’ll see to all.”
He let Nightfoot stop. “I know,” he said.
“I’ve got your flowers, even.” She grinned at him. “And you’d better give them to your lady-love before they wilt, because I’m not falling off any more cliffs for the sake of your wooing.”
That won her a lightening of the chill in his eyes. “Or braving any more dragons?”
“Don’t worry,” Janet said. “I’ll protect you from the dragon.” At his chuckle, she ventured onto thinner ice. “If you’ll protect me, in turn, should any of the local women form amorous intentions.”
It was the perfect opening for him to make a joke at her expense, and she fully expected him to. Instead he nodded, quite seriously. “If you ask it. I’ve no need to lose my steward to local entanglements.”
“The, uh … it would be a distraction. And this isn’t the time for it.”
“I’ll let it be known I won’t give my permission for
you to take a wife until Brinday turns clear profit, if you like,” Tom said. The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Dooming you to a life of celibacy, given the state of the accounts.”
“Well,” Janet said, turning Masie back toward the fort, “I’m not the one who needs to give Brinday an heir, am I?”
Her tone was lighter than she felt, for his words had brought a new truth home to her: it was not just the sort of liaison that Jack Cooper might seek out that she must avoid, but the relationship Janet Cooper might want, as well. Not that any man could compare to Sir Thomas Lynhurst, but should she meet one, or find herself so lonely as to settle for one, her only future would lie in putting on skirts again, in spinning and sewing and tending house …
The road back to the fort had no branches but as Janet kicked Masie to a gallop she felt as if she saw two roads ahead of her, both of them steep and rocky, without shelter, or place to rest, or any end.
As they passed the woods below Brinday, she heard the wind rustling dry leaves again, but it no longer sounded like scales on rock.
Now she heard it as evil laughter.
PART TWO
Summer
Chapter 7
Janet arranged for a guard outside Tom’s chambers from then on, thankful for once for the language barrier that meant Glyn couldn’t ask why. Janet took the post herself a few times a week, until she was sure there was no whispering to be heard anywhere outside Tom’s nightmares.
In the army, when his nights were bad, she’d found reasons to sleep on a pallet in his tent. It hadn’t been hard. When the alternative was the cold and lousy shared accommodation for common soldiers, Janet could pretend she was taking advantage of her position to sleep more comfortably and Tom could pretend to believe her. That she was there to rouse when he thrashed in his sleep, there to touch his shoulder and murmur Tom, you’re dreaming until he was still, was something neither of them had mentioned as more than fortunate coincidence.
She had no such excuses here in Brinday. On the nights when she stood guard outside his door, she kept an ear out for any sound within his room, ready with excuses to spare them both embarrassment if she should need to slip inside and wake him, but he slept soundly, as far as she could judge. According to Father Donnic, none of the others who stood that watch reported anything unusual.
Still, his eyes were shadowed, and even that small twitch of a smile she’d been able to win from him in the worst of the war was less frequent.
If he’d given the flowers to Lady Modron, he didn’t mention it, and Janet found herself unable to ask — or, rather, unwilling to hear his answer. It seemed to her that Lady Modron smiled at Tom more readily at the dinner table, and that he spent more time with her than before, so she supposed he had, and that they had had at least some effect.
She had more immediate problems than Tom’s slowness in advancing his suit, even than his troubled sleep. Rain set in again, unseasonably according to the locals. Water dripped from the ceilings in the corridors, in the great hall, in Tom’s chambers.
At least Davith ap Owelth reported that the crops were not suffering, and would not, if there was enough dry weather before harvest. Which is as well, Janet thought at she surveyed what was left in the storeroom. It might see them through the summer, but it certainly wouldn’t last another year. And the tenants will be in even worse case. They could not, they absolutely could not afford, a second failed harvest in a year.
“What are you doing?” a thin little voice asked behind her.
Janet turned to see Emlyn peering around the door-frame. “Counting sheaves. Shouldn’t you be … somewhere?”
“Church,” Emlyn said matter-of-factly. “But for learning, not praying, so I won’t go to hell for not being there.”
“You might wish you had if your mother finds out you’re not where you should be.” If I assume the worst, and we cut rations now … we can probably last until the new year. And then?
“Mam won’t care.” Emlyn swung around the edge of the door-frame slowly, then swung back. “She says it’s a waste of time. She wants me to follow her around digging roots.”
“Well, when you’re seeking your fortune, knowing which roots to dig will come in handy. There’s been a time or two I would have given every coin I had for a nice tasty root.” And there may well be a time or two ahead, as well.
“You can’t eat these.” Emlyn let go of the door-frame and skipped over to stand beside Janet. “They’re medicine.”
Of course they were. Witch’s brat. For a moment, in the shadows of the storeroom, Emlyn’s narrow face looked eldritch and strange in the cloud of her dark hair, and then with a shift of the light, suddenly strangely familiar, although Janet couldn’t think why.
Then the light changed again and she was just a small, grubby-faced child with her hair in a sloppy knot and patches in her smock.
Janet knew she should say go back to your mother and behave. But Emlyn was one of four people in Brinday who spoke well enough for Janet to carry on a conversation. And a child might be more honest than Donnic, or Modron. At least, less tactful. She said nothing. For the rest of the day Emlyn skipped along behind Janet, stood grave and silent as Janet checked counts of barrels and sacks, knocked on walls that Janet suspected of structural flaws with a tiny fist, echoed Christ’s cod in a piping voice when they discovered an entire colony of mice in the small linen store. She chattered cheerfully about the tenants and the village, too, albeit from the perspective of a child, and Janet learned as much about the family relationships, the friendships and feuds, of those she lived among in one day as in months of Donnic’s careful, tactful phrases.
Janet’s conscience forced her to sternly bid the girl to return to her lessons from then on. Days later, though, a flicker of movement caught her eye and she looked up to see Emlyn just darting back from the balustrade on the wall. Come down here right now, Janet bellowed in the voice that could cut through the hubbub of an army camp when Sir Thomas Lynhurst’s orders needed to be passed on, and marched the girl back to Donnic’s lessons herself.
But the next day she once again had a shadow, slipping from doorway to doorway behind her.
Saint Sebastian, give me strength. “I can see you, Emlyn.”
A small figure slid out into clear view, poised to run. “Are you going to make me go back to Father Donnic?”
“Will you stay there if I do?”
Emlyn shook her head, and Janet sighed. “Fine. Then if you’re going to dodge your lessons and your mother, you’ll have to pull your weight,” she said sternly. Emlyn looked down at her skinny frame with a puzzled frown. “Work,” Janet explained.
She found an old wax slate and a stylus for Emlyn, and handed them over with the admonition that if they were lost, Emlyn would be working off the cost until she was old enough to marry. Striding off at her best speed, Janet carefully made no allowance for Emlyn’s shorter legs. If she gets tired and bored enough, sitting still and learning will look much more attractive.
They found mold in the great hall tapestries, and Janet made Emlyn write mold on her slate until it was both legible and correctly spelled. Davith had an estimation of the number of cut stones needed to repair the worst of the walls, and Janet made Emlyn run to the carters and find out how many could be hauled in one load and then work out how many loads would be needed in all — though she knew very well they’d be hauling rocks from the hills and the valley rather than bringing stone from one of the quarries down south.
She dismissed Emlyn a bare quarter hour before dinner with the warning that if she wasn’t ready at her door first thing the next morning, she needn’t bother at all. Somewhat to her surprise, Emlyn was there in the thin light of dawn when Janet stepped out of her chamber the next morning, slate under her arm and stylus clutched firmly in her fist.
Janet eyed her. This half-hour or so first thing in the morning, talking over the day ahead over the breakfast meal with Tom, was a small, quiet space she cherished. It was a few moments when Tom,
focused entirely on the work they shared, was hers and hers alone. But, Christ’s cod, the girl looks like she could use a meal.
“Well, come on then,” she said, and led the way to the great hall.
Tom gave Janet one look of surprise, so brief that she doubted anyone else would have seen it, and stretched out an arm to hook an extra cup and set it on his left, at the place Lady Modron took in the evening.
Emlyn was on her best behavior. She did no more than gaze hungrily at Janet and Tom’s bowls after she’d polished her own clean, and politely sipped the milk Tom poured her. When the meal was done and Janet tested her on the work that lay before them, the girl repeated Tom’s instructions almost verbatim.
“All right,” Janet said. “You can come with me. Today.”
Today, and then the next day, and the one after, until it became a new habit. Emlyn was at Janet’s door each morning, and Tom made sure there was a cup and bowl for her, and directed some of his queries to Emlyn instead of Janet — with a sideways glance at Janet to be sure the answer was correct. He was adept at discovering mathematical questions in the problems of Brinday, and setting Emlyn to solve them as he and Janet pushed trickier questions back and forth between them. Questions that had no easy answers, like what do you think the wool price will be this year and how much grain can we afford to buy?
Tom was pinning his hopes on turnips, if the autumn harvest failed. It was not a terrible idea: they’d be able to start eating them long before the winter grain was ready for harvest, and they’d be less likely to be killed off if the winter was a cold one. It was not surefire salvation, either. When Donnic translated it for him, Davith agreed it was worth a try. He did not look particularly happy about it, but then, as Janet had learned, it took a great deal to get either a frown or a smile from the reeve and bailiff.
Certainly, Emlyn’s presence got neither — from any of them. Even Donnic simply shrugged, as if struck suddenly monolingual, and Davith, Lew and Glyn ignored her completely. Janet waited for complaints from Braelyn, or in worst case, a curse, but when she passed the other woman during the day, Braelyn greeted her as usual, sometimes with a fond touch to Emlyn’s hair.