by Alison Adare
Steel met steel again, skidded apart. Janet dodged past him into the deep patch of shade by the wall, feeling the mud still there slide beneath her feet. Tom followed, forcing her back. Swords locked, and she strained to hold him off her, feeling him use the full advantage of his greater strength and weight against her. “Leave it,” he said, low and fierce. “It’s no sweet memory for her. Stop harping on it.”
Janet let her shoulder drop, as if she no longer had the strength to hold him off, and his sword followed hers down as he pressed the advantage and sought to disarm her.
As soon as the blades were clear, she drove her head forward, aiming for his nose.
He jerked back instinctively, balance shifting with the movement, and she rammed her shoulder hard into his chest. For a moment, she had the advantage, as his heel slipped in the mud, and then he twisted as he fell and swept her feet from under her.
They landed together, Janet on top. She strove to keep Tom’s sword-arm pinned as he struggled to heave her off. If it had been a real fight, she would have used her elbow to drive his head back into the ground. If it had been a real fight, the exposed length of her throat would have been vulnerable to his teeth.
If it had been a real fight, they would have been rolling through mud churned by horses’ hooves and red with the blood of people they knew, panting and gasping and blind to everything but the need to live one second, one more second, one single fleeting second —
“Yield!” Tom cried, and Janet found herself staring down at him, the point of her belt-knife pinking his throat. “Yield, Jack, yield!”
She eased the blade away from his neck, very carefully, rolled off him and sat up.
“Jack?” Tom said cautiously.
She raised a hand to let him know she’d heard him, unable to summon words. Reflections shivered along the dagger in her hand with the tremor in her hand and she dropped it into the mud between her feet, lacing her fingers together.
Tom rose to his feet and retrieved their swords, wiped hers clean of mud on his sleeve and offered it to her across his arm. The ironic gesture — squire to knight — cut her as sharply as her knife had almost cut his windpipe, and she took the sword without looking at him, ramming it home to its scabbard as she rose to her feet.
“I still think I could take you, if we were both mounted,” Tom said.
Janet took a deep breath, and was pleased with how even her voice was when she spoke. “If we were both mounted, yes. But I’ll still bet on myself, you astride, me afoot. I still remember how to plant a pike. If we’re ever put to it here, I’ll be most use with Glyn’s men.”
Tom lowered his voice. “If we’re put to it here, it’ll be Glyn’s men who do it. Watch him, Jack. Lady Modron says he’s not a man to be certain of.”
It was close to her own thoughts about the close-mouthed master of guard, who still watched Janet with dour mistrust and took any excuse of a mispronunciation on her part to pretend he didn’t understand a word she’d said. Still, hearing Lady Modron’s accusation slip so readily from Tom’s lips, she bristled defensively on Glyn’s behalf. “Perhaps she’s a poor judge of character.” She took a breath, aware she was less than logical where Lady Modron was concerned. Seeing malice in every casual remark. “I’ll watch him. I’ve your back, Tom, never fear it.”
“I never do,” he said, and draped an arm around her shoulders a moment. “And now I’ve to wash this muck off me before half of Brinday sees their lord looking like he’s been wrestling the pigs.”
~o~
The next day Janet woke with a grinding pain in her gut. For a little while she lay curled around it, thinking it was a bout of flux brought on by drinking water, until she realized that if she stayed abed much longer someone would come and search for her.
She rolled out of bed, yanked down her breeches to use the chamber pot — saw them stained with blood.
Oh, Saint Sebastian’s shins … But Saint Sebastian might be the saint for soldiers, even for girls pretending to be soldiers, but she was not a solider now. Saint Eugenia … Saint Thecla … Saint Theodora … But they had abandoned her now, after so long helping her keep her secret, a sure sign that her disguise might have met with heavenly approval when it was in the service of family and country, but did no longer. She’d told herself she was here in Brinday, telling this long and elaborate lie, for Tom’s benefit, but the withdrawal of the saints’ aid told her they knew the truth as well as she herself did: it was for her own selfish benefit, her own foolish longing to be near him, her own futile and shameful feelings.
No saint would help her now. She would have to help herself.
Janet changed her breeches, shoving the stained ones between her legs, under her cod-piece, as a make-shift measure. What do I do? She needed, most immediately, cloths, and then, second order of importance, some way to wash them in secret.
She managed to get through breakfast despite the cramping pain in her belly, and then went searching through the linen closet for something that would not be missed.
As she was searching a hand touched her shoulder and she turned fast.
It was Caris. “Good, you?” the housekeeper said, slowly and carefully.
“I, ah —” All her local words deserted her. Christ’s cod, I don’t know what to say, let alone how to say it in a language that’s not my own!
Caris reached out and put her hand on Janet’s stomach. “Bad?” she asked. “Braelyn?”
“No!” Janet seized her hand and pushed it away. “Ah — no. Good. Um.”
“Ah.” Caris nodded. She turned Janet around and pushed her down the corridor, toward the tower and her chamber.
Janet went, in a sweat of fear and panic. She was so unnerved that she thought she saw movement from the corner of her eye as she put her foot on the first stair, whirled with heart pounding and realized she had startled herself at the sight of a closed cupboard. She wiped her palms on her shirt, went upstairs, sat down on her bed and waited to be discovered.
When Caris joined her, she was carrying soft rags, familiar to Janet from her years before the army, before Saint Sebastian had answered her prayers. For a moment, Janet considered pretending ignorance, considered sending Caris away. But that would still leave her with the problem of finding exactly the sort of rags that Caris was offering her … and did not guarantee that she would convince Caris the other woman’s guess was wrong.
“Why are you helping me?” Janet asked.
Caris looked at her uncomprehendingly, and offered the rags again.
Janet sighed, not sure whether the weight in her gut was resignation or despair, and took them. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you,” Caris said echoed. She went to Janet’s chest, opened it, and gestured from it to the rags in Janet’s hands, and then pointed to herself.
“If I leave them in there, you’ll wash them?” Janet guessed.
“Wash, yes,” Caris said. “Wash.”
Janet nodded. Needs must as the devil dances.
When Caris had left, Janet secured the rags between her legs and hid her stained breeches in the chest. She had the sense of events spinning out of control — first Emlyn, now Caris … Emlyn she’d persuaded to keep her secret, Caris seemed inclined to for reasons of her own. How long before someone finds out who won’t be so inclined? Someone who sees a way to perhaps become Brinday’s steward when Steward Cooper is disgraced?
Janet sat down on the bed, head in her hands. Her best option would be to leave. Leave now, immediately, take Masie and her belongings and forget about any wages, get away on the road before anyone else discovered her secret or winter trapped her here.
But God’s breath, she couldn’t leave Tom here alone, hearing whispers that seeped from his dreams, his hold on Brinday tenuous, the whole manor precarious …
If I have to leave sooner or later, does it really matter if I leave later, in disgrace, all my secrets laid bare?
The selfish answer was yes: yes, it mattered to her how Tom thought o
f her, after she’d left, yes it mattered that she be able to warm herself with the thought of his respect and regard in the dreary years ahead when she’d resigned herself to skirts and sewing. Respect and regard, if not for me exactly, at least for the man he thinks I am.
But the real answer, Janet knew, had to be no. However selfish her motivations had been, to come to Brinday, however much her head had been filled and her heart lifted with the idea of seeing him, every day, of hearing his voice raised in command or lowered in a private joke ... Tom had asked Jack Cooper to come with him to help him, and he needed Jack Cooper’s help now as much, more than ever.
She raked her fingers one more time through her hair, and went to go about Jack Cooper’s duties.
~o~
It was the next day before Janet had the opportunity to speak to Emlyn without being overhead. She was at the desk in the steward’s office off the great hall, working her way through the manor’s accounts. They were a morass of debt owed by the tenants and to the tenants, and which Davith seemed to carry in his head. Occasionally she posed a question from them to Emlyn, and the girl scratched away on her slate until she had an answer.
“Emlyn,” Janet said casually as the stylus scratched, without looking up from her columns of numbers, “remember the thing I asked you not to tell anyone?”
“Yes!” Emlyn said.
“And did you tell anyone?”
“No!” Emlyn said. “I wouldn’t! I’m your squire.”
“You are, yes. It’s just … Caris knows.”
“Mam probably told her,” Emlyn said. “In case you needed help, with the disguise.”
Braelyn. Another person who knew; another nail in the coffin of any future she might have hoped for at Brinday. “And how does your mother know?”
“I told her!”
“Emlyn!” Janet put down her quill and pinched the bridge of her nose. “You just said you didn’t tell anyone.”
“She’s not anyone,” the girl said reasonably. “She’s my mam.”
Saint Scholastica give me strength. “So, your mam, and Caris. Anyone else?”
Emlyn shrugged.
“And why did your mam think I might need help? And why would she want to help me?”
The girl shrugged again. “Because you’re a hero?”
Janet snorted. “A hero of the account books and the counting house.”
“It takes all sorts,” Emlyn said wisely. “My mam says.”
“Will she tell anyone else, do you think?”
Emlyn shrugged. “I don’t know, do I? She’ll do what’s best.”
Saint Theodosia’s teats. I’m at the mercy of what a village wise-woman thinks is best. “It’s just … I can’t be in disguise, can I, if everyone knows? So will you ask her from me, not to tell anyone else?”
Emlyn nodded. “I’ll ask her.”
With that, Janet had to be content.
She could not escape a crawling sense of unease, though, as she went about the fort, wondering every time she spoke to someone, or even passed them, Does he know? Does she? Every glance, every pause, every intonation, she parsed for secret meaning, every smile she scrutinized for hidden mockery. By the afternoon her nerves were wound tight to screaming point, and despite the thin drizzle she flung her wolf-skin trimmed cloak over her shoulders and sought a little space to breathe outside the walls.
She gave the side of the fort that looked down over the woods a wide berth. As much as she knew it was likely Tom was right, and she’d spooked herself with a child’s version of a local legend, the darkness of the dense undergrowth beneath the twisted trees still made her uncomfortable.
Janet shivered, and wrapped the cloak more tightly around herself. Legend it might be, but knowing that Emlyn’s father, who’d burned to death in those woods one autumn night, was quite possibly the son of the old lord … aye, it explains how a huntsman could come to have such an accident.
He could easily come to have such an accident with the assistance of someone else.
Had the old lord been going to leave his illegitimate son part of his personal property? Possible. If he was known as ap Bryn, it was no shameful secret.
But who, then, would benefit from Edwal ap Bryn’s death? The old Lord’s own son had died, long years earlier — that fall from the walls. It was neither usual nor uncomplicated for an unmarried daughter, even one already widowed, to inherit land or title in her own right, and indeed Lady Modron had not done so, but a bastard had no claim at law to either. Although the laws here are different … would he have a claim, had he lived? Better than a legitimate child, if she be a girl? Tom would know, but he’d bite my head off for raising it again. But Lady Modron had been made a Crown ward on her father’s death, although she was a grown woman and a widow. As far as the King’s council, and now the Protector, are concerned, it’s not local law that runs here. And if the Protector had chosen to set aside her rights in favor of a relative, instead of tying this cat’s cradle of local loyalty and Crown law to marriage, it would have been some cousin, not an illegitimate half-brother. Did old Lord Bryn have some great treasure, then? Something to make murder worthwhile?
She would have liked to think that it was murder, and by Modron’s hand. She’d hang. Tom would still have to marry, of course, but perhaps not for years …
Fairness forced her to admit the unlikelihood of it. She could not, no matter how she wished to, imagine Modron making her way down through those tangled trees in the black of night, let alone overpowering a fit, strong man. She could have plotted with someone … but no, it was just as unlikely that Modron would put herself so completely in the power of another as to share such a lethal secret with them.
Deep in thought, Janet strode further up the hill than she’d planned. About to turn back, she saw movement at the crest of the hill. Narrowing her eyes, she made out Nightfoot’s distinctive size and coloring, Tom on his back, Lew and the other hunters following.
She stopped, and waited for them to reach her. “Luck?” she said, though she could already see the long brown body of a deer slung behind one of the hunters.
“Aye.” Tom reigned Nightfoot back, and swung down. “Go on ahead, Lew,” he said in the local language, with a wave of his arm toward the fort. “I’ll walk a little.”
As the other hunters passed them, Janet eyed Tom. “Your language is coming along, then.”
“And you’re beginning to sound like a local yourself, then,” he said, and though his expression was sober there was a glint of mischief in his eye that Janet rejoiced to see.
“No wonder, since I spend all my days listening to various stories about whose grandfather left which whetstone to whose cousin.”
“Comfortable, dry, and warm, while I slog over the hills and down the valleys in all weather, trying to fill your quotas of game to be laid by for the winter.”
“Maybe we can arrange to trade,” Janet said as they both turned towards the fort. “I’d certainly rather be out riding than getting writer’s cramp and eye-strain over all the bits of paperwork the young lord is too important to deal with.”
“I’m sorry,” Tom said immediately. “I know how much you do, and I … well. I appreciate it.”
“It’s fine,” Janet said. “It’s the job, just as it’s yours to ride around looking handsome and lordly. I just need to complain every now and again so you don’t get the idea I actually like it.”
“I should do more,” Tom said. “It’s just …” He shrugged slightly. “When you do it, I know it’s been done properly.”
They had almost reached the gates. “I should go in,” Janet said. “The paperwork breeds, you know, if you leave it alone too long. Like rabbits.” She slapped his arm. “It’s about the only thing around here that is breeding.”
Tom blushed. “Jack, you’re coarse beyond belief.”
“Yes, well, I have no breeding, you’re doing no breeding ..”
The corner of his mouth turned up, despite the embarrassment that brought colo
r to his cheeks. “A matched pair, then,” he said. “Take Nightfoot in for me, will you? I’m off down to the village. Lew tells me, that is, Owen ap Davith tells me Lew tells me, that Hugh ap Glyn knows more about the growing of turnips than anyone else in Brinday.”
Janet took Nightfoot’s reins. “Well, you’d best hurry, then. Given your grasp of the local tongue, you’ll need a good few months to grasp what he’s saying.”
“Weeks, I hope,” Tom said mildly, and left Nightfoot to her as he strode away.
Janet stood still a moment longer, despite the rain, watching him walk toward the village. Even the weak, watery light drew glints from his fair hair and his cloak swung around him with his easy, graceful stride.
Janet took a deep breath. When Lady Modron’s willing to wed, Christ’s cod. If she can’t see what she’s got in him, she’s blind or a fool or both.
Then she turned and led his horse in through the gate, turning him over to Lew before she splashed and slid her way across the muddy courtyard, back to her office, her accounts, and Brinday’s problems.
Chapter 9
The horse rears above her, screaming, blood pouring from the deep gash in its side. Janet staggers back, stumbles over something soft on the ground and sits down hard. Iron-shod hooves beat the air, a wide white-rimmed rolling eye, and then the horse collapses backwards as one leg gives way. It thrashes and tries to roll, still screaming. Janet struggles to get her feet under her in the muck of the battlefield, slips, tries again. Her hand is in something warm and wet and she looks down to see …
She jerked awake, throat raw as if she’d been the one screaming.
Perhaps I was.
But the warm summer night was still and silent. When she slipped from her bed and padded across to the window and opened the shutters there were no signs of alarm, such as there should have been at howls of terror from the steward’s chamber. The sky above was dull with cloud, the night dark as a witch’s heart beyond the pools of light cast by the torches in the courtyard. Hours before dawn.
But Janet knew she would not sleep again tonight. She closed the shutters and leaned her forehead against the cool stone of the wall. It wasn’t real. Not real.