The Wicked and the Just

by J. Anderson Coats

  The brat wraps the cake so carefully that it’s hard to recognize her work.

  FOR THE SECOND TIME in a year’s worth of saints, my father has ruined my life.

  “I’ve had the most joyous tidings!” he crows at supper over his plate of trout.

  “Uncle Roger has died and we can go home to Edgeley?”

  My father serves me a dark look. “No. Mind your tongue.”

  I bow my head and try to look sorry.

  He brightens as he reaches for the nef. “The good news is that the lady de Coucy will be helping you learn to get along among the ladies of Caernarvon. On the morrow, you’re to present yourself at her door at the ringing of Sext. Be sure your chores are done in the morning.”

  “Papa, no! I don’t want to!”

  My father pinches two fingers of salt from the bow of the small wooden ship and dumps it in his visorye. “Your opinion on the matter is acknowledged. The ringing of Sext. Don’t tarry.”

  “I know all about how to run a household!”

  “It’s got naught to do with running a household, sweeting,” my father says. “I might have taken the privileges, but there is more to being a burgess than I realized. I’ll not have you at a disadvantage. Since you get on so well with Emmaline de Coucy, her mother has agreed to take you under her wing. So you will be attentive.” His voice sharpens. “And well-mannered.”

  I nod miserably and push my trencher away. I’m not hungry anymore. “It’ll serve no purpose. When we go home to Edgeley, I’ll need none of these foolish town customs.”

  My father blinks rapidly and chokes. He must have taken too large a bite.

  As Sext rings, off I dutifully go. A servant answers the door and directs me to the solar, where Emmaline is ruining linen with her disastrous needlework and the lady de Coucy is spinning. When she sees me, the lady sets aside her work with a faint jingle of keys. She’s blinking rapidly, as if a dairymaid has entered the solar, or mayhap her cow.

  “Saints,” the lady mutters, eyeing me up and down. At length she puts together a smile and gestures me in.

  My father did not raise a cow. I lift my chin. I straighten my shoulders. I walk like a queen through the solar to stand before her, and I regard her steadily.

  “Emmaline,” the lady says, “what did this girl do wrong?”

  Emmaline bites her lip, toys with a trailing stitch. She meets my eye and shrugs the tiniest helpless shrug ere saying, “The walk . . . and the look.”

  “Dare I hope you’ve even been to a town ere this one?” the lady asks wearily.

  I unclamp my teeth from my bottom lip. “Coventry, my lady. We spent a year there. We were waiting to go back to Edgeley Hall, but—”

  “Right, yes. That grubby little manor in the midlands.” She wrinkles her nose as if she’s caught a whiff of manure. “Your father is a burgess of Caernarvon now. For good or ill, you’re one of us, and by all that’s holy you will not bring shame on this town.”

  I nod because I’m to be attentive and well-mannered, but may God Almighty strike me down ere I become anything like the ladies of Caernarvon.

  The lady de Coucy puts me through my paces as though I’m a mastiff whelp. Walk. Speak. Roll over. Not like that! Bad girl! Nones is ringing when she finally lets me leave. It’s all I can do to incline my head ere fleeing from her solar like a loosed felon.

  I stomp up High Street, kicking rocks and hating everything because I’ll be at her mercy every wretched Monday and there’s naught to be done for it thanks to my father’s conniving.

  I look up and see him. The miserable Welsh vagrant who looks. He’s driving a timber-laden cart toward the city gate. The horse strains against its collar and the load lists dangerously beneath the tethers.

  I’m sweeping past, nose in the air, when a cart wheel hits a puddle and a curtain of filth sluices up and drenches my gown and it’s too much and I whirl on him like a soaked cat.

  “Saints above, look what you’ve done!”

  He barely spares me a glance, harried as he is and tangled to the elbow in reins. “Demoiselle?”

  “As if it isn’t bad enough that—How dare you?”

  He manages to still the horse, but the load slides drunkenly with each jerk of the cart. “Beg pardon, demoiselle. Bad roads.”

  He certes doesn’t look sorry. And there’s naught I can do for it. There’s naught I can do for a lot of things.

  I glare at him with all my hating, trying to kill him where he stands, but it isn’t working. He’s waiting like some halfwitted hound, not seeming to notice how much I’m hating him.

  Waiting. And shifting uncomfortably and glancing at the castle every few moments as if it’s a boot poised to kick. “Er, by your leave, demoiselle?”

  He’s a head taller than I and strong enough to break my neck with one throttle, but he cannot leave till I say he can.

  An English person has spoken to him and now he must await his dismissal. Like any dog.

  And there’s naught he can do for it.

  “Demoiselle?” He tries that smile, but something in my face must stay him because he squares up and fixes his eyes over my shoulder as if I’m my father. “By your leave?”

  I put a finger to my chin and hold it there, pretending to consider. Then I stare back at him, right in the eye, till he looks at his bare feet and not at me. Not anymore.

  “Mayhap,” I drawl, “if you ask nicely.”

  “Please, then, demoiselle.” There’s an edge to his voice, no hint of plea. “I’ll certes be thrashed as it is.”

  Good. May it cut to the marrow.

  “Very well, off with you,” I say, and it’s not out of my mouth ere he’s whipping the horse into a smart trot. He does not look back.

  I breathe in deep and smile for the first time since Sext.

  I’m holding the reins of the whole world.

  Going to Mass is now a critical part of my day, since I can walk past Ned’s townhouse twice without it seeming untoward. From without, Ned’s house smells of bread and woodsmoke. Betimes the shutters are open and I can peek inside.

  What slivers of workroom I can see are clear and tidy; floors shining, walls wiped, the trestle clear and waiting. Nothing like Edgeley when my mother came to live there. Despite the passage of years, she’d tease my father about the bench she’d had to peel her backside from and the pewterware with dregs caked at the bottom those many years ago, and he’d gallantly sweep a hand over Edgeley’s hall, now clean and humming and cheerful, all the better for its lady.

  When I peek in the windows of Ned’s townhouse, I must admit I’m a little disappointed. There wouldn’t be much for me to do. I would gain a house like Edgeley was. There would be no need to make this house into Edgeley.

  RHYS Ddu of Trecastell has still not been released from the gatehouse. It’s hard to know whether to curse or cheer. Fewer men deserve hanging more.

  But the gallows on the market common cannot tell felon from hero. They both hang the same and end up just as dead, especially when the hand on the rope does not change.

  Know not when I first notice. Watched burgess land no longer opens up with endless nodding furrows of oats and barley. The crops are shriveled now, poor things, sodden and pulpy and twisted, as if the Adversary himself whispered in their little ears. Field after field. The ravens circle overhead, searching in vain for a stray kernel or grain. Betimes a priest walks among the furrows, flicking holy water and begging the Virgin to have mercy and intercede with the Almighty to lift the damp.

  They’ll still have to bring the harvest in. Some of it must be salvageable.

  Gruffydd waits for me at the wood-edge long after twilight, thumbs hooked over his rope-belt, kicking dust.

  Fall into step beside him. “They’ll be hiring for harvest work any day now. You’ll be at the front of the queue, right?”

  He nods. His cheekbones stand out like fence rails.

  English fret and mutter. The master spends days at a time at his stolen land, comes back pale
and drawn like a corpse. The barges pole in from Môn with fewer sacks every day, and they pass the common wharves that stand idle to tie up at the Havering wharf, the Whetenhale wharf, the Grandison wharf. Grain that lands on private wharves, burgess wharves, might as well not even be.

  And still Gruffydd meets me when day is dying slowly over the stone-and-mortar eyesore. Every day. Bite my tongue and bite my tongue until finally I demand, “You stood aside, didn’t you? For one of those blasted toady—”

  “They’re not hiring for harvest work.”

  Stop. Close my mouth. Stammer, “Wh-what?”

  “No harvest work.” He gestures helplessly at the pulpy fields, the crumbly, damp furrows. “I’ll try the wharves. The burgesses import most of their grain from Môn anyway.”

  Gape at him. “The wharves? Jesus wept, we haven’t the silver for a bribe that big! Especially not when there’s no harvest!”

  Gruffydd hitches a shoulder. “Have you a better idea?”

  Burn them. Burn every last damn one of them.

  Let out a long breath, then dredge up a smirk. “At least we’ll get to watch the bastards starve.”

  Gruffydd squints at the horizon. “If anyone starves in the Principality, it won’t be them.”

  “We don’t need their wretched barley. There’s the cow. Milk and butter and cheese.”

  “For now.” He smiles sadly. “Until the taxmen come. Then back she’ll go to Pencoed. Or mayhap Plas Newydd. All the old estates are filling up with distrained beasts.”

  The old estates. Your estate, Gruffydd. And men like you.

  “We’ll buy her out of lien ere winter.” Say it forcefully, as if force will make it so.

  “Dafydd had a horse distrained against tenpence at the Easter collection,” Gruffydd replies. “When he went to redeem it, Whetenhale told him fifteen.”

  Roll my eyes. “But that’s Dafydd. He may as well brand himself and spare them the trouble.”

  “Go ask Fanwra down the vale how much they demand for her cow. Or Maelgwn ap Tudur, or Llywelyn ab Owain, or—”

  Fling a gesture, and Gruffydd falls silent.

  “Very well,” he says at length, “if we cannot afford a workboon for the wharves, I’ll . . . I’ll find something. I just . . . I cannot bear to take work from any man with little ones to feed.”

  Da went out. Da never came back. Little ones learn to feed themselves. Little ones learn to fight.

  “We need the silver, too.” Speak quietly, because he means it. “We have Mam.”

  Gruffydd nods. “I’ll find something.”

  Little ones look after the littler ones.

  Take my brother’s arm. It’s warm and rough and dusty, his elbow bound with a ragged, blood-smeared cloth. He places his hand over mine for a long moment ere he pulls away.

  MY FATHER has learned about the outing Emmaline de Coucy invited me on after Mass. He leaps around my workroom like a mad fool, crowing with joy. Right before the big windows for all the neighbors to see.

  My father can be such a trial betimes.

  “And you’ll invite her here, of course,” he says. “You mustn’t slight her by not returning the courtesy. You’ll invite her, along with her cousin and sister-by-marriage and—”

  “What? No!” My whorl clatters to the floor. “Please don’t make me!”

  My father frowns. He’s going to insist because they’re the Coucys. I cast about for something with half a chance of staying his hand.

  “The linen is stained, the walls are plain white, the floor wants a scrubbing with sand, and there isn’t a candle in the place.” Square in the pride. “What would I even serve them? I would shame you, Papa, offering turnip broth and blackberry wine to daughters of the honesti.”

  My father folds his arms. “Honey, for wafers. And a mazer of good wine. But the walls stay white and we’ll keep using pine knots and you can help Mistress Tipley scrub the floor and wash the linen.”

  Splendid. They’ll take one look around this miserable hole and mutter how presumptuous the novi are, placing themselves beside those who built the borough. Emmaline’s coming would be bad enough. Aline and Evilbeth will split their girdles laughing, and their maids will snicker in chorus like chantry.

  Oh, thimbles—the maids!

  They’ll know I lied about having a maid the moment they arrive, regardless of whatever perjury I come up with. And they’ll laugh till they cry ere ensuring that every soul in this town knows of my airs.

  Gwinny shuffles into the workroom with the broom. Her gray smock is stained with God knows what and tattery at the hem. She smells like goat.

  No. There’s no way.

  My other choice is to stand humiliated before the sly and blackhearted daughters of the honesti.

  All Gwinny has to do is hoodwink them for a single afternoon, but she must look the part.

  I hurry abovestairs and rummage through my coffer till I find a moss-green kirtle given me last New Years by Alice’s mother. The wretched gown bunches strangely beneath the arms and the color makes me look like a sick frog, but the cut is stylish and there are no patches and it doesn’t smell of goat.

  Even now, Saint Peter is recording this act of charity to my credit in his book.

  I skip into the workroom waving the kirtle like a battle standard. “Gwinny!”

  She sweeps around Salvo, long and even, and chuffs dirt out of the corner.

  “Gwinny. Gwin-ny!”

  She pulls the mound of debris into a pile, then looks me right in the eye as if we’re the same.

  Just as that mannerless wretch of a laborer did, the one who unloaded the pack train and looked at me right in my own yard. The one I cowed in the street. The one who’ll not soon look at me again, should he have wit enough to study his lessons.

  I wind my fists into my apron and make myself smile. “You’re a fortunate girl, Gwinny. I’m giving you this gown.”

  Her brows dip. Her lashes flutter. And then she smirks. She actually smirks, the ill-bred hound!

  At length she lowers her chin and the look is gone, replaced by the drum-tight mouth and blank birdlike eyes.

  “You’ll get your penny same as always.” I hold out the folds of pond-colored wool. “This isn’t payment. It’s a gift.”

  Gwinny eyes first the garment, then me. She reaches hesitantly for the gown. I thrust the lot into her arms and beam.

  “Good girl. Now put it on and let’s see how it looks.”

  Once on Gwinny’s back, the gown falls in graceful folds to the floor and the cuffs hang just over her wrists. And by all the saints if the color doesn’t make her eyes glow like fishponds just after the weirsman’s brush.

  “There!” I clap my hands and grin. “Splendid. Oh, saints, mayhap this’ll work. You hardly look Welsh at all!”

  Gwinny stiffens as if she got a cold-water drench. She skins the gown off, leaves it in a pile on the floor, and puts on her gray smock once more. Then she goes back to sweeping.

  I scoop up the kirtle and fling it at Gwinny. “Put that on! How dare you insult me so basely? Spurning a gift, a gift that’s worth what you earn in a year.”

  Gwinny makes no move to catch the gown. It hits her shoulder and slides to the floor. She toes the folds of wool and closes her eyes for a long moment.

  Then she retrieves it, strips off her filthy smock, and slides into the new garment slowly, as though it’s a shroud.

  “Good.” I fold my arms. “For shame, Gwinny. Treating me this way when I seek to help you.”

  She collects her old goaty smock, folds it, and places it near the rear storage chamber.

  “That new gown will be on your back tomorrow,” I tell her, “and the next day, and the day after that.”

  She nods without looking at me and retrieves the broom.

  I mutter a rapid prayer to any saint listening. Please let the honesti girls be fooled. Otherwise I will have to move house again or take up residence in the cellar.

  Mayhap they won’t come. Mayhap they w
on’t want to be seen with a novi. Mayhap Emmaline’s father will forbid her. Mayhap William will forbid Aline.

  If God Almighty has any mercy, none of them will come.

  They all come. They bring their embroidery. Now we’re sitting here in stifling silence while I try to think of things to say to daughters of the honesti, two of whom keep smirking and snorting and snickering whenever they glance my way.

  Even their maids brought needlework. Margery and Maudie and May. The three maids sit in a row like little poppets on a bench dragged in from the hall. They sew shifts for their mistresses while my “maid” stands in the shadows like an effigy, smelling vaguely of straw.

  Please don’t let Gwinny ruin this. All she has to do is be still.

  We’ve already spoken of the beastly weather. The way heat clings to floorplanks and leaves skin damp and sticky. We’ve spoken of William, Emmaline’s father, my father, and Evilbeth’s betrothed.

  Now it’s quiet. Sickly quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you stare at your needle and try to ignore the hair prickling at the back of your neck.

  I clear my throat. I cannot stand it. “So . . . what are you all doing for Michaelmas Eve?”

  Emmaline frowns. “Well, what else is there but—?”

  “Nothing,” Evilbeth cuts in. “That is, naught but silent prayer and contemplation. And fasting. We fast and pray to honor the saint. Alone.”

  “But, Bet, you’ve forgotten the bonfire!” Emmaline wriggles and grins like a child on her year-day. “Oh, you’ll love it, Cecily, there’s naught else like it all year! There’ll be cider and music and dancing, and if you’re brave, you can put chestnuts in the fire and divine who your future husband will be!”

  “As if that’s likely,” Aline mutters, squinting at a stitch.

  Evilbeth glares at Emmaline, but Emmaline doesn’t notice because she’s toying with her half-finished veil and gazing dreamily into the hearthfire as if it’s Michaelmas already.

  I dredge up a smile. “That sounds lovely. At Edgeley, we’d crack nuts in the church. We could do that here.”