by Barbara Howe
“Thank you, Your Wisdom,” she said. “The brother—the blacksmith that’s on the run—had never been in serious trouble before. He’s a good man, sir.”
“One of the best,” Master Walter said.
“Is there anything you can do for him?”
“No,” Jean said. “That is the Water Guild’s domain, not the Fire Guild’s. Given the circumstances you have described, they will make no more than a token show of searching for the fugitive. If we attempt to help we will draw attention to him, forcing them to take action. It galls me to say so, but his chances are better without our help.”
Hazel’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
“I don’t,” I said. “If these Archers are such sensible people, why did the brother start a fight? He had to have known he’d come out the loser. It’s stupid to risk being whipped within an inch of his life, or being crippled, or God-knows-what, to keep somebody from groping your sister. I mean, getting pawed isn’t any fun for the sister, but some other things are a lot worse.”
Master Walter came out of his corner, glaring. Hazel looked like I’d slapped her. Jean frowned at me. “Be careful about jumping to conclusions over events you have not witnessed.”
I was taken aback. “Yes, sir, but—”
“And now, we must deal with Abertee’s troubles. Thank you, Master Walter, Granny Hazel, for bringing this news.” He bowed to them. “You have surely saved a life today, perhaps many.” The smith nodded, mollified.
Hazel said, “And if we ever need to reach the Fire Warlock again, we’ll come here first.”
Jean shot a questioning glance at me. I said, “The clerk at the Guild Hall sent her to Flint. He told her to go away, they would get what they deserved.”
“This is insupportable,” he grated. “I will—”
“No, you won’t.” I jammed on my hat. “I will.”
He frowned. “You are unlikely to have more success in changing Flint’s mind than I have ever had.”
I grinned. “I won’t try. I’ll tell the clerk and the manager at the Guild Hall what happened, and that you’re furious.” I waved at the maps I’d carried home. “And yes, the Fire Warlock is keeping me busy, dealing with exactly this sort of problem. If they direct visitors here to keep from angering the Fire Warlock, even Flint will have a hard time arguing with that, won’t he?”
When I returned, Jean was scowling at images he had conjured up in the flames. I caught no more than a glimpse, not even enough to determine if the figures I saw were male or female, as he waved them away with a snap of his wrist.
I said, “I thought you were going to see the White Duke.”
“I was acquainting myself with the earl’s son, before approaching the duke. Forewarned is forearmed, as the adage goes, but I cannot say I am glad I did so.” He grimaced. “Rarely have I had the misfortune of examining such an odious life, for all he was not yet twenty-one.”
“Why? Show me what he was like.”
“No. I cannot stomach it again. You would not stomach it even once.”
“What could he have done that’s worse than some things we saw in our travels? If you don’t want to examine his life again, summarise it for me.”
His eyes were cold. “It is unwise to do even that. Perhaps you are not yet mature enough.”
Was he joking? His expression was distant and unreadable, without a hint of humour.
I set my jaw. “Beorn wants me to help him spot trouble brewing. It would help to know what a troublemaker could do that’s so bad. Why won’t you tell me?”
He shoved his chair backward and stalked into the fire. “Girl, you ask too many questions,” he snapped, and vanished.
I stared into the fire with my jaw hanging open and my wand rolling on the floor. Jean Rehsavvy, the great Flame Mage, who encouraged curiosity and scholarship, thought I asked too many questions?
What could have led to such an uncharacteristic outburst? Some elusive memory nagged at me, but I could not drag it into the light. On the fourth or fifth time through the conversation with Hazel and Jean, the memory, triggered by Jean’s comment I was not mature enough, finally surfaced.
Two years before, the Frost Maiden had refused to tell me the nobles’ dirty little secret. My fists clenched of their own accord. I forced my hands open and wiped them on my skirt. Getting my breathing under control took a little longer.
Odd I should have forgotten. That unpleasant episode was the kind one tends to revisit, like picking at a scab, but I hadn’t thought about it since… Since when?
Since Jean had worked magic on me to make me forget.
I ground my teeth and pulled my chair closer to the fire. Jean agreed with the Frost Maiden that I was too immature to handle some secrets, did he? Drown her. Drown him. I snapped my wand at the fire, and flames shot into the study. I snuffed fires in the hearthrug and nearest shelf, and forced myself to concentrate. Once I had the fire under control, I settled down in furious determination to uncover the secret they didn’t want me to know.
Secrets
Three men on horseback, two wearing the White Duke’s livery, trotted along a muddy path. The third man, Lord Edmund, looked ridiculous next to the two servants in their functional clothing. His fine garments had caught and torn in the gorse, and the mud the horses kicked up spattered his fashionable white trousers. I sighed, once again, over the idiocy of our ruling class.
Then I took a closer look, and was jolted out of the scene in the fire. I had seen Lord Edmund before. Two years earlier, in Gastòn, I had watched from the needlework shop where I waited for Claire, a palpable sense of menace growing with each step bringing him closer. I had grabbed the first excuse at hand to keep Claire from leaving the shop; I would have used her own embroidery to tie her up if I’d had to.
This menace had been Claire’s brother-in-law? Oh, dear God.
Careful. I didn’t know what he had done that could be so bad. Jean considered him loathsome, and if he came home and found me poring over Lord Edmund’s life after he warned me away…
After locking myself in a guest bedroom, I wrapped the room in all the spells I knew against eavesdroppers before sitting down before the fire. And then I got up and went back to the library to collect the notes I’d made during our travels on locks against conspiracy magic. If a conspiracy was at work, I intended to not be part of it.
On a July day, the village in the Abertee hills should have been bustling with women doing chores or gossiping, and children playing, but not a woman or child was in sight. The only visible inhabitants were several men who drew together and glowered in silence as the three horsemen passed. The riders ignored them.
One of the lackeys pointed towards a farmstead a quarter mile from the village edge. “That’s it. The Archer place.”
Behind them, one of the village men said, “I’m going to fetch Granny Mildred. Somebody’s going to need a healer soon.”
The farm the riders approached was tidy and prosperous, with flowers in pots under the windows of an ancient stone house, and a yard hemmed in by a well-kept stone wall. On reaching a corner of the wall, Lord Edmund shouted, “Farmer!”
A mountain of a man walked out of an outbuilding, carrying a pitchfork, as the horsemen rode into the yard. Muscles bulged under the man’s work shirt. I didn’t need a description to guess this was a blacksmith.
Lord Edmund delivered his message. The smith, although obviously angry, made no aggressive move, only questioning the nobleman’s authority to deliver the eviction notice. A grudging respect grew in me; he kept a better grip on his temper than I might have under similar circumstances.
Lord Edmund walked his horse around the yard, taking his time looking the place over. The smith watched him, with one cannonball fist clenching and unclenching on the pitchfork handle. Lord Edmund must have had the wit of a turnip. Even if the Fire Offic
e had still shielded him, the blacksmith could have hit him hard enough to knock out all his teeth and make him see stars.
Lord Edmund said, “I hear you have a pretty sister. Where is she?”
The smith shifted to a two-handed grip on the pitchfork. “Gone fishing.”
Lord Edmund dismounted and walked towards the house. “You’re lying.”
The smith bellowed, “You gave us the message, now get out. You’ve no right to do anything else.”
Lord Edmund stopped with his hand on the door. “I will do as I please. You have no power to stop me.” The smith, his path blocked by the two mounted servants, glared.
Lord Edmund said, “Don’t you understand, simpleton? Or don’t you know how to speak to your betters? Say ‘Yes, sir.’”
“I know how to speak to my betters. You’re not one.”
The enraged nobleman ordered one of his flunkies to horsewhip the insubordinate cur. While they scuffled with the smith, Lord Edmund entered the house. I was still gasping at the wretch’s barefaced cheek when he re-emerged, dragging a young woman by the arm. The smith pushed past the flunkies and charged for the house. Lord Edmund jerked the girl around and shoved her up against the wall, bringing the point of the sword to her throat. She stopped fighting. Her brother, an arm’s length away, froze.
Tall and shapely, the girl would have been gorgeous if not for her expression of naked fear. Lord Edmund ogled her as if she was a tasty morsel instead of a decent girl from a respectable family, and sneered, “Perhaps this God-forsaken backwater is worth my time, after all.” Lowering his sword, he stepped closer to her, and grabbed her breast with his other hand.
The blacksmith yanked him backwards. He fell in the mud, completing the ruin of his flamboyant clothes. He rolled to his feet and aimed a vicious, two-handed swing of the sword at the blacksmith’s neck. The smith parried with the pitchfork, but the sword caught his arm and cut a long gash. As Lord Edmund came around for a second swing, the smith hit him, and he went down.
I blanked out the vision in the fire, and sat with my hands over my mouth, fighting down nausea. The fight was over. One punch, and Lord Edmund’s head looked like a broken melon.
In spite of logic, I had been in total agreement with the smith and the terrified girl. I would have cheered the smith on if I’d been there in person. Lord Edmund had had no right to touch the girl as he had. Landing in the mud had served him right. There was no doubt in my mind either, that when he swung his sword at the smith, he’d intended murder. The Water Office might not agree, but the smith had fought back in simple self-defence.
But why had Lord Edmund said the visit might be worth his time? Groping the girl, as outrageous as that was, seemed insufficient compensation, and anything worse would have gotten him in trouble with the Water Guild.
After a few minutes, I picked up my wand again, to search for other episodes in Lord Edmund’s life.
Lord Edmund and a servant rode into the yard of a small croft. The sweating servant said, “Ain’t nobody there, milord. Ought we ride on?”
Lord Edmund said, “There is somebody here, or nearby. Look at the smoke from the chimney.”
He dismounted and walked into the croft, which appeared deserted. He yanked a cloth off the table, sending crockery smashing on the floor, and revealing a young woman hiding underneath. He pulled her up by her hair and dragged her toward the bed. She screamed and fought, but he twisted her arm behind her and forced her down on the bed. I screamed with her, my body accepting what my conscious mind refused to acknowledge.
She clawed at his face. He beat her with his fists until she lay stunned, unable to fight back. As stunned as the girl, I watched as he yanked at her skirt, ripping it, and had his way with her.
I waved away the vision and vomited onto the hearth. After I got my stomach under control and cleaned up the mess, I curled into a ball on the guest bed, and lay there, trembling, while my disbelieving intellect reeled.
Only criminals and fugitives whose lives were already forfeit would dare take a woman, any woman, by force. For a man of wealth and position to commit rape? Unthinkable. That happened in less civilized countries, which didn’t have the Fire Warlock protecting their women and children.
What a lie that was.
But Frankland didn’t need the Fire Warlock for this. The Water Office handed out swift and severe penalties for rape, in one of the few times it sided with commoners. Everyone knew the tales from Frankland’s early days where the Frost Maiden castrated noblemen, even dukes and princes, who had raped innocent young women. The penalties were less extreme for raping married women and widows, a fact that annoyed me, but even those were harsh enough to discourage all but the insane and desperate.
Why was Lord Edmund still aggressive enough to be groping the Archer girl?
I dragged myself back to the fire, certain there was more about Lord Edmund I needed to know.
Lord Edmund had been a snake of the worst sort, taking pleasure in other people’s pain. He had bullied and tormented everyone he outranked, and had committed at least five rapes. Not all of young women either—in one case, when he couldn’t find his intended victim, he’d abused her younger brother. By noon I had had all I could take of the wretched swine. I leaned against the footboard of the bed, heaving and retching, although my stomach had long since emptied.
That blacksmith had done the country a service. I would have executed Lord Edmund without qualms if he were not already dead. How had he gotten away with what he’d done?
Jean and the Frost Maiden were right. I wasn’t mature enough for this. Maybe I never would be.
Why hadn’t anyone Lord Edmund abused lodged a complaint with the Water Guild? I returned to the life of the young woman I had first observed him rape. Shortly after he left, the Archer girl arrived, and found her still huddled in the corner, sobbing. The Archer girl took her to an Earth Guild house, and while a wizened earth witch treated the woman’s injuries, the Archer girl said, “I stopped in to see Fiona on my way home from Crossroads. She hasn’t stopped crying long enough to tell me anything.”
“Fiona, stop that crying. Now,” the old woman snapped.
Fiona gasped. Her tears dried.
“Who did this to you?” the witch said.
“It was the earl’s son who’s friends with the duke’s son,” Fiona said. “I was in town a week ago visiting my cousin. I saw him and asked who he was. My cousin said he was a dog making life hell for the duke’s servants.”
The witch had sagged at the words ‘earl’s son.’ She mumbled, “I was afraid of that. The servants aren’t the only ones he’s making life hell for.”
The Archer girl said, “What’s his name?”
“Lord Edmund something-or-other.”
“That’ll do,” the Archer girl said. She went to the door. “It’s enough for the Water Guild to find him.”
“Stop,” the witch barked. “You can do that later. Right now, help me get Fiona into bed. She needs a good night’s sleep as much as anything.”
Fiona said, “I won’t be able to sleep, Granny Mildred.”
“Sure you will. When I tell you to sleep, you’ll sleep. Got that? Now let’s go.” Granny Mildred led the way down the hall with a firm grip on the younger woman’s elbow.
The witch and the Archer girl returned a few minutes later. The witch sat down by the fire and the girl went to the door.
“Come back here,” Granny Mildred said. “You can’t go to the Water Guild.”
The girl stopped in the doorway, but made no move to return.
“I mean it. Close the door. Sit down.”
The girl closed the door and sat down on the settle with her arms crossed, looking rebellious.
The witch said, “Now, then, Maggie, you think if you go to the Water Guild, they’ll freeze his balls off, right?”
“That’s what the
stories say.”
“That’s the way it used to work. Mostly, it still works that way. I’m going to tell you a secret. It doesn’t work that way anymore for nobles raping commoners. If Fiona goes to the Water Guild and accuses that louse of rape, he’ll turn right around and accuse her of defaming him. He’ll win, and every cent she and everybody else in her family makes for the rest of their lives will go to paying off the fine the Water Guild will slap on her.”
Maggie and I both stared at the old woman in horror.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Granny Mildred said. “Let me tell you about Baron D’Armond’s rape trial.”
Once again I was jolted out of the scene in the fire. The things I’d already seen had made me sick, but this news was a new kick in the gut. Baron D’Armond was Lesser Campton’s overlord. I remembered the gossip about the trial, and how everyone had laughed at the girl making the accusation.
I wouldn’t listen to this second hand. With a shaking wand, I went searching for Baron D’Armond.
It was as Granny Mildred said. Baron D’Armond’s history showed him raping the girl, but the rape was not shown at the trial; she was convicted of defamation and ordered to pay him one hundred franks for having the audacity to bring such a baseless charge. One hundred franks! An impossible sum for a family who counted their wealth in shillings and pence.
After the trial, the girl spent two days in a state of stupefied horror, seemingly oblivious to both her neighbours’ jeers and her family’s distress. On the third morning, she walked out of the house, through the fields, and straight into the river.
She didn’t come out.
I lay face down on the guest room bed. All the certainties of Frankish life had turned into will-o’-the-wisps. There was no solid ground under my feet, only quicksand.
What would I have done in that girl’s place? Of all the ways to kill oneself, drowning was the worst I could imagine.