by Alison Adare
She heard Tom get to his feet. “Braelyn says you must rest.”
Tucking the sheet more securely around herself, Janet shook her head again. “I’m quite well. I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie to you, at least, I did, I did lie to you, and I did mean to, but it wasn’t you, it was the army, but then I had lied to you and I couldn’t see any way but to go on lying because of what you’d think of me if you found out, and —”
“Janet.”
“Yes,” she admitted. He came around the end of the bed towards her, his bare feet almost, but not quite, soundless on the stone flags. Janet kept her gaze riveted on the floor, even when he stood in front of her. “That was me you met, in the street.”
“I know. I knew.”
Knew. For the space of a breath, it made no sense at all to her. Knew. All her careful concealment, all her terror of exposure — all those times I tormented myself with thoughts of his horror and disgust if he discovered the truth — and he said, simply, I knew. “For how long?” she asked numbly.
“That your name was Janet? Since I saw you at your parent’s house.” Tom touched the scar on her neck, his fingers shockingly warm and soft. “Even without this, I would have known you. That your name wasn’t Jack? Since the first time I saw you.”
“What?” She was startled enough to look at him. With the bright sunlight of the window behind him his face was in shadow, but Janet could see him clearly enough to tell that he was smiling. Of course he’s smiling. What a fine jest, the locksmith’s daughter who thinks she’s carried off her disguise, the lord and knight laughing up his sleeve at her foolishness all the while. She wanted to say Christ’s cod, Tom, why didn’t you say so? but the words died on her tongue. Jack Cooper could curse, Jack Cooper could call the lord of Brinday by his first name, Jack Cooper could take him to task and set him straight when he needed it.
Janet Cooper had none of those privileges. And besides, you know very well why he didn’t say so, you dullard. Not only because it would spoil the joke, but because he far prefers his friend Jack to the poor substitute of Janet he’s now stuck with.
And to think she’d allowed herself to imagine Tom finding her in skirts back in the city, allowed herself to dream for a moment that he would be pleased to know her a woman, that he would want her as a woman. He knew me as a woman all along, and as a woman was exactly how he didn’t want me.
Oh, St Sebastian, if he knows, if he knows how I feel, I will die. But of course he knew. She’d admitted it to him herself, the only way to keep that last and best hidden truth being turned to Modron’s weapon, in the dark beneath the hill.
She dropped her eyes to the floor again. “I would like some clothes, if it can be arranged.”
“Will you please sit down, Janet Cooper?” He touched her elbow. “You should not be out of bed yet.”
She pulled away from him a little. “I am quite well, Sir Thomas, and I should not be here, like this.”
“Can you not call me Tom, still?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said. “And you know I can’t. Will you ask Caris to bring me some clothes?” Humiliatingly, she felt her eyes filling with tears. “Or am I to go down the stairs like this, so everyone can see what I really am?”
“No, of course not!” Tom strode to the door and yanked it open, spoke one curt sentence to whoever was beyond it, and closed it again. Janet knew she should tell him to leave it open, but at this point, her reputation was beyond saving. If any of this is heard back home, these few minutes behind a closed door will pale to insignificance next to months of sleeping in the same tent, weeks of sleeping in the same room … And it would be heard back home, sooner or later. This was a tale too good to keep to oneself. I’d think so myself, if it was about someone other than me. She was suddenly enormously weary at the thought of what lay ahead of her — not just the penance, which would doubtless be a heavy one, but her parents’ disapproval, which would be heavier. And then years of waiting for some man to be willing to overlook her past and ask for her hand. Years of knowing that she would have to take the first of any such offer in fear that no other would follow it, or else spend a lifetime beneath her father’s roof and then in the home of one of her brothers. A lifetime of being the scandalous spinster sister, never allowed to forget her sins until she died …
Tom’s arm came around her waist, warm and strong. As he took her weight Janet realized he thought she was trembling from physical weakness. She let him draw her to the bed and sat down, careful to keep her leg clear of the edge of the mattress. It did not hurt all that very much, but even a small sting, on top of the great weight of misery in her chest, would be enough to start her sobbing. She didn’t dare, either, to allow herself another second’s thought about what lay ahead, nor any further contemplation of the long lie her supposed friendship with Tom had been. Friendship! A foolish, hopeless infatuation on my part, a rich amusement on his!
“I’m sorry about your wife,” she said, to say something, to say anything. “I’m glad you, that — but I’m sorry that … oh, you know.”
Tom’s hand moved from her waist to her back, avoiding the patch of skin in the small of her back where a mild pain told Janet she was a little burned as well. “I know. A horrible death, and she, she was raised to all of it. Six months here, and her lies had me mazed. A lifetime? What chance did she have?”
Janet pleated the edge of the sheet between her fingers. “And you were in love with her.”
“I tried to be,” Tom said. “When we arrived … I thought it would be easier, if I could love her, since I had to marry her.”
Janet felt suddenly cold. Christ’s cod, what will they say of all this at court when they hear? “What will the Protector do to you?”
“The Protector sent me here to marry Modron Bryn, and I did. The accident on our wedding night was tragic, but there’s plenty of witnesses that it was an accident.”
Janet blinked. “There are?”
“Glyn. Lew. Caris. Braelyn. Paul. The swineherd —”
“Die,” Janet said. “Die ap Lew.”
“How do you know all their names?”
“It’s been my job to,” Janet said, and then remembered that it had been Jack Cooper’s job, and not hers.
“Well, Die ap Lew, Davith’s lad Glyn, five or six others. It was a terrible thing, they’ll never forget it, the way Lady Modron’s over-skirt caught fire from a candle, and in her blind panic she ran right over the edge of the wall and fell.”
“If there are so many of them,” Janet said, “I still don’t understand why they didn’t just drag her out of her chamber one night and burn her in the courtyard.”
“And how would you make such a plan, if anyone you spoke to might have been one of her people? Or take the tale to one who was? The only one anyone was certain of was Braelyn. Glyn says she cursed Modron the day they buried her husband, standing in the great hall in sight of everyone.”
“He told me she cursed her.” The linen was too tightly folded to take another bend and Janet smoothed it out again. “What did she say?”
“Her husband used to bring her flowers from the wood. Those wild roses. Braelyn swore that since Idwel would never bring her them again, the day a man gave roses to Modron she would die.”
Janet looked up, remembering. “And she did. She did, Tom — Sir Thomas.”
“Yes,” he said. “Her fear killed her. If she’d just taken the flower from my hand, she’d be alive still.” Tom ran his fingers through his hair. “And I’d still be wed to her, at least until she was tried and burned for her heresy. There’s a thought to trouble my sleep. Any rate, Davith spoke to Braelyn. Lew did. Glyn did. She was sure of none of them, but over time she dropped hints to them, one about another.”
“How did three men opposed to the Bryn family rise to those positions in Bryn Du?” Janet asked.
“I’m guessing the old lord. They’re all recent, in the last seven years. He was a stranger here, like me, though not a foreigner. I’m sur
e his wife had a hold on him, but she died. And after Modron killed his last son …”
Janet nodded understanding. “He couldn’t go against her, perhaps he didn’t want to, even. But he chose men he thought might at least … do as they did. Help you.”
“Help you, Jack.”
She dropped her gaze back to her hands in her lap. “My name isn’t Jack.”
“I know,” Tom said. “It’ll take me time to get used to Janet, though. Janet —” There was a knock on the door and he stopped. “Come in.”
It was Caris, arms filled with bundled cloth. “Your clothes, Steward Cooper,” she said, as if none of them knew the truth.
Glyn was just behind her. “M’lord, Lady Modron’s women are asking when they’re to be allowed out.”
“When it suits me,” Tom said shortly, and then amended that. “When I’ve the time to make certain of them.”
“Tegan ferch Lew is ferch Lew ab Gerwyn,” Glyn said. “Your neighbor, m’lord.”
“I do remember that,” Tom said. “Jack’s had the knock on the head, not me.”
“Well, Lew ab Gerwyn may not be young, but his soldiers are. You don’t want to give her cause to complain about her treatment to him, m’lord. You don’t want to give him a slight to avenge.”
“Gog’s hat,” Tom said. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Jack, can you face it? I’ve spent most evenings in those women’s company and they’re still ciphers to me. Your judgment —”
She cut him off. “No, Sir Thomas, I can’t help you in this.” It was madness for him to think she should, or could. If there is some reason to doubt Tegan … God’s blood, what a knot that would be, the woman steward mixed in to judgments about the neighbor lord’s daughter …
Tom sighed, and stood. “I’ll make an attempt, then,” he said. “Glyn, send for Donnic. And Braelyn, as well, she might know something of what they’ve been up to — if they’ve been up to anything.”
It was no longer Janet’s job, it was none of her concern, but she couldn’t help saying, as she took the clothes from Caris, “You should talk to them in the great hall, so someone can search Lady Modron’s rooms. Without them knowing.”
Tom nodded, and glanced at Glyn. “Who?” he asked.
“Caris,” Glyn said. “A woman knows where women hide things.” When Tom nodded again, Glyn explained what was needed to Caris. The housekeeper agreed, although she sounded reluctant to Janet. With one last glance back at Janet, she went with the two men as they left, closing the door behind the three of them.
Janet shook out the clothes Caris had brought. Unexpectedly, they were her own — were Jack Cooper’s own, anyway, shirt and breeches, one of the tunics Brinday’s needlewomen had made for her in the local style, trousers. Well, and where did you expect them to produce a dress for you from? She put on the shirt and tunic, finding it odd to be clothed so without the constriction of cloth bound tightly around her breasts, but there was nothing for her to use. It isn’t as if it matters anymore. It didn’t matter if she pretended to shave or not, didn’t matter if she could piss standing or curse the air blue or march and fight as well as any man in the army. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered.
When the tears came to her eyes, Janet told herself they were caused by the pain of drawing her trousers up past the sore red skin on her calf. She dashed them away with the back of her hand, wiped her nose on the sheet again and stood up.
Her boots were by the fireplace. The right one was scorched black at the back, but they’d both been cleaned, and she’d worn worse. She put them on. Her sword was, for all she knew, still stuck in a dead body in the cave beneath the fort, and besides, it was Jack Cooper’s sword, not Janet’s. She had no right to it. In truth, she was wearing Jack Cooper’s clothes and Jack Cooper’s boots and she had no right to them, either. But I can’t leave naked, and so necessity must make me a thief.
It was only then that she knew what she was doing. Leaving. Now, while Tom and Glyn and Caris and Braelyn were all occupied elsewhere. Now, before Tom could come back and make some merry joke about her panic at the thought of one of the local women settling on Steward Cooper as a prospective husband, about her avoiding all the tasks at Brinday that would have necessitated some state of undress, like ducking the sheep before shearing. Before he can say anything else that tells me just how much of a fool he knows me to be.
Hand on the door, Janet looked once more about the room. There was nothing in it, down to the clothes on her back, that was rightfully hers to take. Nothing at all — except the memories of evenings by the fire. Tom translating for her from his book of laws, or watching her decide which piece on the chessboard to move with that slightly smug expression that told her whatever she did, she was about to lose. Tom, muttering in a nightmare, quieting to a calmer sleep at the sound of her voice, the touch of her hand. Trying not to laugh when she invented a new oath, blushing when she teased him, dryly offering to find a ferocious sheep to fight to fit with her suggestions of courtly wooing …
She turned and went out, so blind with tears she could barely see the stairs.
Chapter 22
No-one stopped her. Janet went down the stairs, out through the door of the tower, across the courtyard and out through the gate. She could tell that she was seen, by the furtive looks and the sudden low buzz of conversation as she passed, but no-one stopped her, no-one spoke to her, no-one even approached her.
Her steps slowed at the sight of the wooded hillside beneath the fort. It was wild and forbidding no more. Much of the underbrush had burned to blackened stems, and a huge swathe of the trees were leafless, charcoaled trunks. Some still smoldered, and the smoke made her eyes water as she made her way down the road to the turn that led to the valley.
More of the trees had survived at the bottom of the hill, but enough had caught that Janet could see glimpses of the fort above through gaps in the foliage, could even make out the entrance to the black hill itself, high above her. She wondered if they had moved the bodies yet, or if Modron lay, unmourned by any except perhaps her women, somewhere in the trees.
The cold wind, already touched with winter, made her shiver. A tiny trace of Jack Cooper’s solid practicality pushed its way through the fog of misery wrapped around her. No food, no money, no cloak, and a long way home, it said.
But that wasn’t entirely true. The packs and gear she had unloaded from Masie were likely still there — the mare herself wouldn’t have gone far. It would be stealing from Tom, Janet argued with herself, and then found herself laughing. She clapped a hand over her mouth, startled at the ugly bitterness of the sound. I’ve stolen his trust and his friendship. He’s stolen my pride and my dignity.
What’s a horse and a few saddlebags in the mix?
It was quite likely enough to hang her for, was what it was, if she was caught and Tom was vindictive, and the jury and judge harsh ones. But she needed them, or she’d freeze and starve before she even got out of Camray, and she couldn’t believe that Tom would want to see her hanged. Laugh at her, yes, at how she’d thought she’d fooled him when all the time he was fooling her, but he hadn’t been angry at her. Not today, not even at the beginning.
She’d told him the truth, last night, in the cave and the dark and the smoke. She had been a true friend to him, aye, and he’s been one to me. He kept my secret all that time in the army, he kept it still afterward, he brought me here and gave me a higher place than I could ever have otherwise achieved, knowing all the time who I was.
No, Tom Lynhurst wouldn’t see her hanged. Janet thought he’d even be pleased to know her supplied and provisioned. When someone finally got around to remembering that she’d ridden Masie away from Brinday yesterday and turned up on foot in the fort last night, he’d put two and two together. He’d be glad.
She trudged on across the valley, arms folded against the chill, looking forward to the blanket rolled in the bedroll and perhaps an early camp, as soon as she was safely far enough away.
Hoof-beats
behind her, a horse at full gallop. Janet did not need to turn to know that it was not one of Lew’s sturdy little beasts, not with that length of stride, not coming so quickly. She did not turn, but stepped aside from the road to let the rider past.
To let Tom past, because it was Tom, on Nightfoot, it could be no other, and she could not face him, she could not speak to him, she could not see him laugh at her and her poor, foolish, errant heart.
The hoof-beats slowed to a canter and then, as the horse came level with Janet, to a walk. She looked sideways out of the corner of her eye and saw, as she expected, black fetlocks, fine bay legs. She did not look higher.
“Masie is safe in the stable,” Tom said from Nightfoot’s back. “Lew brought back your packs and gear as well.”
Janet took another step, then one more, and stopped. That, then, is that. No food, no money. No cloak. She could not bring herself to go forward, to walk towards death from cold and starvation somewhere in Camray’s hills. She could not bear to go back. She hugged her arms around herself and stood still.
Without even the small exertion of walking to warm her, the cold seeped through her tunic and her shirt until she began to shiver. The faint creak of stirrup leather taking a rider’s full weight told her Tom was swinging down from Nightfoot’s back. Janet sank to her knees, head bowed, hiding her face from him as if doing so would hide her entire self, as if so long as she didn’t look at him he would be unable to look at her and, unseeing, pass her by.
Weight settled around her shoulders, thick wool already warmed by the heat of the body it had wrapped. Janet closed her eyes as Tom knelt beside her and tucked the edges of his cloak more securely around her.
“Jack,” he said. “Tell me you’re all right, Jack.” She felt his fingers brush her cheek. “Jack?”
Janet kept her eyes shut tight. “I’m not Jack.”
“Janet.” She heard him take a short, hard breath. “Janet Cooper. Can you back Nightfoot or do I ride for help?”