The Black Hill

by Alison Adare

  She struggled up the stairs to her bed and slept like the dead.

  Slept like Davith.

  In the morning she felt stronger, more certain on her feet. The selected jurors arrived in the great hall early, before she and Tom had finished their meal. Men used to rising to the habits and patterns of nature.

  In the end the court took less time than she’d expected, although she wished, as Donnic explained what she and Tom said to the jury, explained what the witnesses said to them, that she could be certain for herself of all the words.

  Though it might not be strictly according to the law, the court dealt with both Davith’s death and his wife’s. The neighbors who had found her body, with Davith insensible beside her, told their stories. Glyn described the marks on Davith’s face, the blood beneath his wife’s nails, and he and Donnic both told the jurors about Davith’s lack of memory of the incident.

  Then Janet gave a clear, simple account of finding Davith’s body. Donnic’s translation seemed to her to be longer than it need be, and she could understand enough to catch I and me among the words. Adding his own account as well. The two guards spoke briefly — they’d seen and heard nothing. Glyn could not account for how Davith got the rope, but admitted it might have been missed somewhere in the room before he had been shut in. They had searched for weapons, but Janet guessed less-than-thoroughly, given their understandable assumption there were none to find. And given that it was their friend, accused of a crime which was an act of fevered madness, and the fever past.

  Glyn accepted the blame for the oversight. Tom spoke kindly, excusing him, but looking at the master of guard’s set face, Janet guessed that Lord Brinday’s forgiveness was not the absolution Glyn sought.

  They all crossed the courtyard to look at the bodies, laid out in the church. There was no surgeon or apothecary to describe the injuries and interpret the physical marks to the jury — it would have been Davith’s job, as bailiff. Instead, it fell to Steward Cooper, and Janet pointed out the small, clear bruises on the woman’s neck, the scratches on Davith’s face, the congested faces and bulging eyes of both. She’d seen men hang before, and seen them choked to death in war, she told them, and seen them look thus. The jurors crossed themselves. One asked a long question which Donnic translated extremely briefly: was there a difference between a man hanged and a man who’d hanged himself? Janet had to admit she didn’t know. They examined the rope that had been cut from Davith’s neck, one by one testing the knot. One went so far as to lay it against Davith’s neck, nodding when it matched the groove that ran all the way around.

  And then it was over. The men discussed briefly among themselves, nodding, and then spoke to Donnic.

  “They agree that Davith took his own life in the delirium of fever,” Donnic said. “And that he caused his wife’s death in the same state.”

  “Then so let it be recorded,” Tom said. “Her death was a tragic misadventure. His was caused, in the end, by this pestilence that has afflicted so many.”

  Satisfied nods when that was translated. Davith could be laid properly to rest, and both he and his wife could be mourned as victims of a horrifying illness.

  Tom offered the jurors small beer in the great hall, to refresh them from their difficult task. As they followed him out of the church, Janet hung back.

  “Glyn, we will need the guards to lend their strength to the manor’s work until those ill have recovered,” she said. Glyn gave her a blank look, and Donnic opened his mouth to translate. Janet held up her hand. “That’s fine, Father Donnic. Glyn ap Evan understands me very well. Don’t you?”

  A flicker in his eyes, the movement of a muscle along his jaw, betrayed that she was right. She held his gaze, refusing to look away despite the dour hostility in his expression, refusing to speak, until the silence between them thickened and grew and seemed to fill the whole church.

  “I do,” Glyn admitted at last.

  “You kept the pretense up very well,” Janet said. “If you hadn’t been so angry over the idea Davith was fevered when he hung himself, I still wouldn’t know.”

  “Are you going to tell Lord Brinday?” Glyn asked.

  I should. But Tom, already mistrustful of the master of guard, would take this long-performed lie as a betrayal that couldn’t be forgiven. Just as he would mine. “No,” she said at last. “No, but I suggest you start making much of how you’re learning to understand us, and astonish all with your rapid progress.”

  “Understood,” Glyn said. He studied her curiously. “You’re less angry than I’d expect, then.”

  Janet smiled a little. “I imagine it started as an easy way to make the invaders’ lives more difficult, didn’t it? Something to laugh about afterward, to take the sting out of talking about your fortifications with the representatives of those who had them torn down?” Glyn nodded slowly. “And then there was never the right time to explain it, was there? And the longer it went on, with that right time never coming, the harder and harder it became.”

  “Yes,” Glyn said. He looked down, and then, setting his jaw, straight at her. “I owe you my sorrow for that. I should have remembered that the only weapon we have against truth is truth. But you and the young lord, prancing in here, I wasn’t best pleased. And it was in my mind, and not just mine, that you’d both be gone before the year was out. But the young lord cares for the place, and the people, and not just what he can squeeze from them, that’s plain to see. And you’re not one to stand idle and haughty when there’s work to be done. Lew said from the beginning you might be the one to hold fast, and Davith came to that way of thinking, and it begins to seem to me they might have the right of it.”

  “They do,” Janet said. “Sir Thomas has no lands of his own to go back to, and if he fails the task set him by the Protector, well — that’s a man with a famously long memory and little patience with human frailty. Sir Thomas’ll hold Brinday, or nowhere.”

  “And yourself, then?” Glyn asked.

  “Oh, where he stands, I do,” Janet said. It came out more seriously than she’d meant, and she smiled to lighten it. “At least until he pays what’s owed on my wages.”

  “That won’t be this year,” Glyn said. “You know that, then? Even if we had the men to take the fleeces down to market, we’ll have missed the first fair by the time they get there. It’s been a while since prices were good. After the first fair, they’ll be worse.”

  She would have realized it, if she’d thought — but still, it was a blow. “Saint Theodisia’s teats — sorry, Father Donnic, but with just the harvest from the spring planting, and if we’ve no coin to buy grain …” And if the weather’s as bad elsewhere as it has been here, we’d need a better than decent price for the wool to afford to feed ourselves over the winter, Tom’s turnips and all, unless it’s very mild …

  “It’s the worst year in a while, yes,” Donnic said. “But would the young lord not spend his own coin to feed the tenants? He doesn’t seem like the sort to let men starve.”

  “He isn’t,” Janet said, and relief showed on the two men’s faces. She was sorry to crush it. “But he has no coin, at least, not enough to make more than a few day’s difference. Not everyone from the east is rich.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Perhaps he can borrow. Prices must go up again, surely? At some point?”

  “We’ve waited for that nearly forty years,” Donnic said, and Glyn nodded. “There are men dandling their grandsons on their knees who aren’t old enough to remember when Brinday was rich. Nor, for that matter, remember a year as bad as this’ll be, although it’s just us three who know it for truth, yet.”

  “But Brinday was rich, once,” Janet said. “And not so very long ago as that, either. My lady’s gowns aren’t that worn, and those are fine colors and fine weave.”

  “And the women in the village still waiting to see coin for their work,” Glyn said sourly.

  “Wait, what?” Janet stared at him. “That cloth is local work? How do you afford the dyes?”
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  “Nothing to afford,” Glyn said. “Braelyn brews them, when needed. And a foul smell it makes too.”

  “Braelyn brews them,” Janet said flatly. Those rich greens and deep blues, clear and clean as a meadow of grass beneath a summer sky. “And the women here spin and weave the cloth.” When he nodded, Janet began to laugh. “Glyn ap Evan, you are forgiven every broken sentence you made me stumble through.”

  “I’m glad of that,” he said, brow furrowed, “but might I know why?”

  She clapped him on the shoulder. “Because, my dear master of guard — I think you’ve just saved Brinday.”

  About to race across the courtyard and tell Tom what she’d learned, Janet stopped. Best to be sure.

  Instead, she went down to the village, hurrying so much she arrived breathless and trembling and sharply reminded that she’d been abed for four days. She only realized how wild her appearance must be when one of the women hastened towards her and, at her gasped Braelyn, hiked up her skirts and set off at a run. Thinking there’s more sickness at the fort. Perhaps even that Tom is stricken down.

  Braelyn came back with the woman, her basket over her arm, Emlyn close at her heels.

  “Emlyn, tell your mother there’s nothing wrong,” Janet said quickly. “I’m sorry to have alarmed her.”

  Both adult women looked relieved to hear Emlyn’s translation.

  “I wanted to ask her about dyes,” Janet went on, and when Emlyn frowned, “Paint for cloth, Emlyn. For wool. Glyn ap Evan told me that she mixes dyes, that she made the ones for Lady Brinday’s gowns.” She paused as Emlyn asked the question, and when Braelyn nodded, “Ask her if she can make more. Enough for a lot of cloth. For all the wool from the shearing.”

  That got a doubtful look, a long reply. “She says,” Emlyn said, “that it would be hard. Not just finding the roots and the plants, but the rest of it. You have to boil, and dry, and card again, and —”

  “I understand,” Janet said. “But if everyone helped. If we all helped. Could it be done?”

  A frown. A slow, hesitant nod.

  “Thank you,” Janet said fervently, taking Braelyn’s hands in hers. “Thank you, Braelyn. How many people are still sick? How long will she be needed to care for them?”

  A few days, at least, which was longer than Janet had hoped, but she could use that time to prepare what would be needed. “Emlyn, can you come up to the fort with me? I’ll need you to talk to people for me.”

  Emlyn asked her mother, and then nodded. “I can. Do you have a plan, then? You look like you have a plan.”

  “I have a plan,” Janet said. “And it’s a good one. Come on, now. First we have to tell Tom — Sir Thomas.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I need you to help me find every tub and pot in Brinday.”

  ~o~

  It took more than Janet had thought to persuade Tom.

  “And you think these local dyes would sell?” he asked, frowning.

  “Yes. They’re good enough, Tom.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “And we’ve missed the first sale for the wool, anyway. But if we get dyed wool to the market in time, we’ll still profit, perhaps enough to get us through the winter. And some cloth, as much as can be woven.” She touched his arm. “Trust me, Tom. I know markets.”

  He still looked dubious. “The wool market?”

  “A market’s a market. First is scarce, best price. Last is least, unless you’ve quality to make up for tardiness. And Lady Brinday’s gowns are quality, Tom, the cloth is good, the color’s better. Christ’s cod —”

  “Your language,” he murmured.

  “— it’s our best chance. If the winter’s a cold one, our only chance. Try it, at least.”

  He studied her, considered, and then finally nodded.

  And then it was all hands, all hours. Janet had every able-bodied woman searching out every sound pot in Brinday in whatever time they had spare from their work. Those men who could be spared from the fields, where the rye stubble was being plowed under and turnips sown, scrambled over the countryside with Braelyn, gathering herbs and roots at her direction. Yellow, she explained through Emlyn, would not be possible: the flowers needed had passed their prime. Green and blue and a rich reddish brown, however, were possible.

  Women and the older girls spun and spun, until the sound of spindles dropping hissing to the floor seemed to fill every room in the fort and every house in the village. The younger children wound the fine yarn into skeins until their arms ached, slept in piles like puppies by their mothers’ skirts, woke and started again.

  The courtyard stank with boiling dye — stank even more once the first pots of wool were dyed and set with hot urine. The rain started again, and every fireplace had its pile of drying, dyed wool. Caris swore she’d hung sweet herbs throughout the kitchen and burned them daily to keep the smell from polluting the food, but everything Janet ate tasted of dye and piss, and Lady Modron ceased taking her meals in the great hall altogether.

  There were not sufficient hand-looms in the village to turn all the wool into cloth. The women who could weave did what they could, sitting by the open doors of the cottages to work in the thin, rain-streaked light.

  A second outbreak of pestilence, though milder than the first, slowed their progress. Janet was spared the second time, but there were days when, rising before dawn to take her turn in the stables before lending her strength to hauling water, chopping wood, feeding the pigs or threshing and winnowing grain, she began to think that they would never be done: that, like the army had been, Brinday was now an unending series of repetitive tasks with no discernible outcome.

  In the army, she had simply assumed that the higher command were fools or incompetents, and resigned herself to digging holes and building earthworks and then striking camp and marching away from them, defending a position and then abandoning it. Here in Brinday, she was all too aware that it was her own decisions that had got them all into this. Saint Sebastian, let me have been right.

  Woven cloth was dyed again, and then washed and washed and washed again, each of them except Janet taking their turn in the hot tubs, tunics or skirts hiked high, bare feet trampling the cloth.

  Eventually, though, it was done. Janet had crawled over every inch of the wagons and checked each and every spoke and peg. Tom and Lew had checked every horse, hoof and leg, run every inch of the harness between their fingers searching for weak points. The wool was loaded: fewer wagons were needed for spun wool than fleece, and there was one wagon with several folded piles of woven cloth, colors as rich and fine as Janet had hoped.

  In past years, it would have been Davith’s role to take the fleeces to market. That fell to Janet, now, and she saddled up Masie and rode out with the wagons and the carters and the two of Glyn’s men who’d discourage bandits along the way.

  Tom and Lady Modron saw them off from the steps of the fort, despite the rain.

  “Sharp bargains and dull merchants,” Tom called, getting a laugh from those who understood.

  Lady Modron smiled and said nothing at all.

  Chapter 14

  The weather stayed foul all the way down the coast to the nearest port town, but Janet found it an easy journey nonetheless. The rain and the cold meant she had no need to find excuses to stay well-covered, and the carters and guards themselves went well away from the camp to relieve themselves and saw nothing odd in her doing the same. She had prepared a leather bag of mixed ash and grease for her cheeks and chin before leaving Brinday and stowed it in her pack, and made a show of shaving before the others each day.

  Despite how little Janet understood what they said, and how hard it was for her to make herself understood to them in turn, they were easy, familiar company, men bound together in a common effort against a common enemy. The weather, this time, not a foreign army, but a common enemy all the same. They cursed in the same tone, although in different languages, when a gust of wind sent cold rain trickling down their necks. When a cart bogg
ed, they sweated and heaved and grunted shoulder-to-shoulder as they struggled to free it. By the campfire in the evening Janet stretched her boots out to the warmth with a sigh of satisfaction, looked up and saw the man across from her, his face mirroring her enjoyment of that small comfort.

  She was almost sorry when they rounded the last bend and saw the port ahead.

  It could be called a town, if the speaker was charitable. The streets, even the market, were dirt, and the grass on many of them showed how little traffic came through. One of the older carters explained to Janet — mostly through gestures — that once, this town had held five wool merchants.

  There were two left.

  That brought home to Janet, more than anything else had, that Brinday’s dance along the knife-edge of disaster was not just one poor manor with poor land, but the abiding and enduring consequence of a devastating defeat. Christ’s cod, no wonder they hate me, hate Tom!

  In their place, I’d have a knife in my sleeve, ready and waiting, as long as I lived.

  With only two buyers to play off against each other, and every chance they connived together for mutual profit, Janet knew she had to be smart. She sent one of the carters down to the harbor to ask after transport down the coast, sent another to bargain for the supplies their party would need to travel on into the south. By the time she walked into the first merchant’s store, the town was alive with the gossip that Brinday’s new steward was taking Brinday’s wool all the way to the mills for direct sale.

  She was hampered in her bargaining by the gap in language between herself and the buyers, but more than made up for it in sheer stubbornness and a well-feigned willingness to walk away. As she’d expected, the richness of the colors of Braelyn’s dyes were not something the merchants were willing to let go, and the fineness of the cloth the women of Brinday had woven lit their eyes with an avarice they couldn’t disguise.