I bite my tongue, though. If I’m hungry, someone else isn’t, and I’m that much closer to her.
Rain and cold have killed the winter crop. Not just here, but on Anglesey, too. The barges have stopped poling in after Nones.
The prices at the market jump to twice and thrice the summer rates. On one Saturday alone, there are three knifepoint robberies and a whole rash of petty thefts.
Even though no victims were English and none of the assaults were carried out on market grounds, my father assigns one of his mill enforcers to escort Mistress Tipley and me when we market. He is called Geraint, and he has curls that beg to have hands run through them. He is the tallest of the mill enforcers by a head and muscled like a bulldog.
I must admit I like having Geraint along. Not only is he fair to look upon, the toll-table queue falls away like meat from a bone when we approach. So do the poor who still crowd the market path. The ones strong enough to crawl there.
I pray for them, then I thank God Almighty and my father and the millers of Caernarvon for the modest surplus in our rearyard shed.
Not long after Prime, Gwinny comes into the workroom, where I’m mending a massive tear in one of my father’s tunics. “The lady de Coucy sent for you.”
I groan. “But it isn’t Monday! Why in thimbles does she want to see me now?”
Gwinny shrugs, but I don’t expect an answer from her. And the good Lord knows my father will raise Cain should I ignore a summons from the oh-so-important Coucys, so I put on my cloak and head up the road.
A mousy servant answers my knock and shows me to the solar. The lady de Coucy is spinning, so I discreetly clear my throat. She looks up and startles.
“Saints! Child, what are you doing here?”
I bite down on the smart-mouthed retort that will make its way back to my father and end in trouble I don’t want. “You sent for me.”
The lady de Coucy slowly shakes her head as if I’m a babbling halfwit or speaking Welsh or both. “Why under Heaven would I send for you? Now be gone. I’m busy.”
“But . . . you . . .” I stifle a grin and nod politely and hustle out of the room ere she changes her mind. I’m so delighted that I’ve been spared an afternoon of harangue that I’m halfway up High Street ere I reckon why Gwinny would tell me the lady de Coucy wanted to see me when she obviously didn’t.
When I get to the townhouse, Gwinny is shivering in the gutter out front. I approach her, but ere I can speak she says, “You’re wanted at the Glover house. Mistress Glover hopes you’ll mind the baby while she sleeps.”
“Mayhap in a moment,” I tell her, “because first I’ll know why you . . . told me . . . What is that sound?”
Shuff-shuff. Shuff-shuff.
I crane my neck to peer down the greenway at the garden shed, but Gwinny puts herself firmly in my path.
“I must have been mistaken. Mistress Glover said to hurry.”
It’s a flail against the shed floor. And that can mean only one thing.
“How do I know you’re not, er, mistaken again?” I ask in a voice of honey. “Mayhap you should run over there and be sure.”
Gwinny shakes her head. “I’m not. Just go.”
She’s standing like a mastiff between me and the greenway. I move to pass her and she puts herself in my path. I slide to one side and she matches me, smooth and even, as if we’re dancing.
And it dawns on me.
“You don’t want me in the rearyard, do you?” I fold my arms and smile. “That’s why you sent me to the Coucy house. And that’s why you’d trap me under the Glover baby.”
Gwinny lifts her chin. She makes no reply, but she’s girding herself as if she’ll tackle me if need be.
I smile again, slyly. “You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?”
“No! I—I—”
Gwinny is usually so calm and deliberate. It’s amusing to watch her redden and stammer in a mix of Welsh and English.
At length she closes her mouth, draws a few long breaths. “To think you almost had me hoodwinked. With your pitiful nod to justice and your feeding the poor. More fool I, thinking you were any different from the rest. Especially the likes of that shrew in the gilded townhouse you cannot complain of enough.”
I stiffen. “I am nothing like her!”
“You will be.” Gwinny narrows her eyes. “You’re already well on your way.”
“Name one thing she does that I do!”
“Murder!”
“I—What? Are you mad?”
Gwinny’s words are clipped and haggard. “Your hands won’t be on the rope, but mark me, his blood will be on your hands. A fine little game. You just love your little game. To Hell with you and your Goddamn game!”
The blasphemy is shocking enough that I step away, into the gutter. Gwinny looks a heartbeat away from weeping or throwing a fist, but one wrong word and she’ll do much worse.
“Whose blood?” I gesture toward the rearyard. “His?”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t have to.
“What is he to you?” I ask quietly, because she’s crying now, but by no means is she getting out of my way.
“My brother,” she chokes, “and he’s all I’ve got, rot you! He’s all I’ve got and he’s going to end up dead because of you!”
We’re in the churchyard, my father and I, and before us is her grave, freshly mounded with dark damp earth. My little white hand is tight in his big brown one, and he’s holding it hard enough to crunch my bones to powder. He whispers, mayhap to me and mayhap to himself, “Just you and me now, sweeting. You’re all I’ve got.”
I draw back, pull my cloak about my shoulders. Gwinny’s stance relaxes but she never takes her eyes off me. “What did my brother ever do to you, to deserve death?”
“But he doesn’t deserve death!”
“Then why are you doing this to him?”
I toe the mud that’s caked on my shoe. “Er . . . he needed to . . . I . . . well . . .”
Gwinny presses a hand to her forehead. “So it’s true. You’d call down the wrath of Caernarvon on an innocent man just for the sport of it. Jesus wept. You should be grateful all I could do was rip up your worthless clothes.”
For an instant I see scraps all over my chamber. Scraps, when once I had gowns.
Gwinny took the whipping of her life—for vengeance.
“I—I never would have let it go that far!” I protest. “You must believe that! I would have put a stop to it ere they killed him!”
Gwinny swipes at her streaming eyes and cries, “How?”
“Well, I’d just—just—”
And I shut my mouth. Because I am too old for nutting. Not old enough for Catherning. Girls do not go mumming. Walk this way your Grace my lord—
I turn on my heel and hurry into the townhouse, down the corridor and abovestairs and onto my bed and under the bedclothes. The window is shuttered, but I can still hear the muffled shuff-shuff of the flail hitting the shed floor.
ONE of the tenscore Glover lads appears in my garden unannounced at dawn and spades the whole thing up. He is sullen and grumbly, but he makes a good shift of it. It’s early for planting, but I take a chance and sow the fresh cold earth with seeds and cuttings. Ere midmorning, there are neat rows marked with stakes and tiny linen flags.
It’s hard to make things grow here, harder than Coventry and twice as hard as Edgeley, where everything green sprang up even where it wasn’t wanted. But there’s something about coaxing life from ground that shrugs at you, that makes you tend it with fish guts and holy water, coddling it as if it’s an old sick hound. It matters more. You harvest every blade and seed and grain. You cherish what the earth bestows.
Soon I will have tansy, rue, and coltsfoot.
This year, I will put up a baby fence.
It’s Easter. I’ve been a whole year in the king’s borough of Caernarvon.
My wretched uncle Roger is still hale and still lord of Edgeley. The Crusader sun has not yet finished him off
. There’s still hope, though, for there’s been no smug announcement of a birth or even a quickening. My new aunt is not much older than I, but may she remain childless till she’s gray as a mule’s back-end.
My father offers frankpledge for our street every month and never misses Court Baron. He says he finds borough service most rewarding. He swaggers down Shire Hall like lord of the manor. It’s as if he’s forgotten Edgeley even exists.
That cur Edward Mercer has kept his distance, but he hasn’t taken an interest in another girl. Mayhap he is pining for me. None of the honesti girls looks twice at him, and their fathers are never far away when he’s about.
Edward Mercer is still shivery-fair to look upon, especially when he flashes that carefree smile, but the shivery only lasts a moment and does not blur my vision.
Mistress Tipley still holds the keys and directs the kitchen. I’ve not given up, though.
We walk the liberty stones, every burgess and his family. The mayor leads the procession bearing his big mace, the priest at his elbow flicks holy water, and we all tromp dutifully after, trying to keep the mud from our finest clothes.
Up rise the city walls, steep and solid and grand like holy Jerusalem. The view from down here is so different from that atop the walls. Down here there are no glowing rooftops, no endless fields. Down here there is only mud and stone. Up there is utterly out of reach.
Not till I pass through the gates do I feel like myself again.
***
Just after Compline, my father calls, “Come here, sweeting. Come look at this.”
My chamber is dark and I’m just about to undress for bed. I put my obviously restitched bedrobe over my shift and slip through the curtain to my father’s chamber.
He’s at the window. The shutters are flung wide and the sky beyond is a rich, deep blue, nearly fallen to black. The land is black, though, and across it lie hundreds of flickering sparks. The tiny dots of orange cover the ridge and spread like pinpricks into the dark distant hills.
I lean against my father’s shoulder. He’s warm and solid and smells faintly of horse. “It’s pretty. What is it?”
“The Welsh herdsmen are burning carcasses,” my father replies. “Every beast that has murrain must be killed and its body burned.”
“So much fire for one little animal.”
“We would not see one beast burning, sweeting. Those are bonfires. Dozens of animals must be destroyed. Hundreds.”
My father puts his arm about me and I lay my cheek against his shoulder while the hills glitter and twinkle as if all the stars have fallen.
When time comes to hire a man to clean out the shed, I send one of the Glover lads for Griffith. The poor wretch comes up Shire Hall Street like a soul into Purgatory.
He knows what happens to him here. And yet he comes anyway. He dares not cross me. The cost is too high.
The cost of many things in Caernarvon is too high. That’s a lesson both of us have studied.
I bid Mistress Tipley give Griffith his instructions, then I spy on him from my chamber window as he carries crates and sacks from the shed.
At first Griffith cringes with every snap and rustle. He even drops a crate when Salvo lurches outside to drink from the rain barrel. But after a time his whole body loosens. He ceases looking over his shoulder and lingering within the shelter of the shed. He shoulders his burdens with an easy grace that’s lovely to watch. He even whistles. When he sweeps the shed floor, he twirls the broom like a dancing partner and flourishes his ratty cloak.
I withdraw two pennies from my father’s strongbox and bid Mistress Tipley give them to Griffith for his labor.
Her eyes get big. “Twopence? For merely cleaning the shed?”
“And whatever bread that’s idle in the kitchen,” I tell her firmly.
“There isn’t—”
“Give him mine. I’ll go without.”
When the old cow trundles outside, I hurry abovestairs and watch from the window. Mistress Tipley hands the coin to Griffith along with a linen-wrapped parcel. Griffith glances about furtively as if something’s going to pounce, then takes a whiff of the parcel. He says something disbelieving to Mistress Tipley and she shrugs.
Then Griffith inclines his head and departs through the greenway, carefully stepping over my garden.
I’m curiously warm. As if there’s something sweet and delicious baking deep in my vitals.
As if I’m holding the reins of the whole world.
It’s raining. Again. Little wonder naught grows here. We ought to sow the fields with fish.
I’m finally ready to stitch. It took innumerable sharpenings of my charcoal stick and three washings, but the design is right at last.
It’s the Holy Family. They’re on their way to Nazareth. Saint Joseph is holding the Christ Child while the Virgin prays at the roadside. The road winds through a stand of thick woods, and beyond the woods is the sea. High in one corner is Caernarvon, castle and town.
It took us a whole winter, but we turned out an altar cloth that all but marched off the linen. Three of us, shoulder to shoulder before a single frame, giggling, pushing, drinking cider till we lined up for the privy. All three of us together for the last time, not knowing to cherish it, thinking we’d be together forever.
But they’re lost to me, and Emmaline de Coucy cannot sew a straight seam to keep her soul from Purgatory. A pity I cannot ask Gwinny. My undergarments are stitched as tight as wine casks.
So this piece will be my own. It will take me longer, but every stem stitch and knot, every curl and vine and wallstone, will be mine alone.
I sort through the thread Nicholas gave me and choose a deep brown for Saint Joseph’s robe.
THE brat is in an ill temper. She’s had me sweeping and tidying the hall since sunup, cleaning out corners I’ve cleaned thrice.
There’s a knock at midmorning, and in come the Shrewcys. Mother and daughter, and both have baskets over their arms.
The brat smiles and bids them enter, but she’s stiff as a days-old corpse and her smile is too cheerful.
Stand in the corner as she bade me.
Mother Shrewcy wrinkles her nose and asks has the brat never heard of garlands? The brat’s smile goes frozen. She opens her mouth in a way that makes me brace for the scolding. But the brat ducks her head and says she merely forgot and begs Mother Shrewcy’s pardon.
Saints, that I was fool enough to agree to your education, grumbles Mother. At least your boorish father knew enough to beg the right woman. You’d best not shame me, girl. I mean it.
As Daughter Shrewcy entreats the brat to try harder, the brat’s ancient dog limps into the hall and noses Daughter’s hand. Daughter shrieks and whips her hand away, pulls out a handkerchief, wipes her fingers.
Send that mongrel out of doors, Mother snaps.
The brat pets the dog’s gray head and says, The poor creature is as old as the hills. The damp’s not good for his bones.
Put him out, says Mother firmly, and the brat squares up like a toll-table serjeant.
We are nowhere near your grubby little manor, Mother goes on in a blade-cold voice. Those who think to become honesti will do well to remember where they are and whose favor they need.
The brat blinks hard, kneels, puts her arms around the dog’s neck. Forgive me, she whispers to the beast, then walks it at its shambling pace into the rearyard.
She’s gone for many long moments. Slip into the rear chamber, peek into the yard. The brat idles near the kitchen, knotting, reknotting, and unknotting a length of rope around the dog’s neck.
Mother and Daughter in the hall discuss whether the brat’s table linen ought to be replaced or mended.
The brat brings a pan of water to the dog, pets its head, picks at tangles in its hair.
Daughter Shrewcy comes to the rear door and tells the brat that Mother Shrewcy is waiting and it’s time to show the master her walking.
The brat heaves herself up and scowls murder at the kitchen. Then she f
ixes that false, pained smile and trudges inside.
Have seen that look ere this. Know it, down to my white-hot core.
She walks the way they tell her. She holds her feet, her shoulders, her hands just as they do. The master looks on as if she’s made of gold. The brat’s smile does not change, unless it grows sharper. As if anyone within an armslength would end up bloodied should that look leave her face and flow through her fists.
She could be one of them. Townhouse lady, servants all around.
It’s what everyone wants but her.
BECAUSE THERE is the off chance I might enjoy myself, my father has forbidden me from Midsummer porch vigil at Saint Mary’s.
“Midnight is too late for you to be out alone,” my father says. “If I didn’t have Watch and Ward, I’d be happy to escort you.”
“You’re always on Watch and Ward.” I sulk.
“They’ve stepped up the guard. The whole castlery is a tinderbox since the murrain, to say naught of the Welshry. And then there’s the October collection of the tax of the fifteenth drawing nearer. I’m sorry about porch vigil, sweeting. Mayhap next year.”
“But Emmaline de Coucy is going to porch vigil!” This is a lie, but it’s a lie square in the pride.
My father straightens his cloak. “I believe I said you nay. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
I put on my best air of offended but obedient dignity, for I have every intention of sneaking out after Vespers and sitting on the church porch until the souls pass by. I want to know right away if my uncle Roger will die in the coming year.
I can barely believe my fortune when my cousin Henry rides up in a splatter of mud a whole month early. I sail out to greet my dearest cousin, call for a Glover lad to take his horse to the common stable and for Gwinny to bring him the coldest buttermilk in the house. When Henry is resting in the big chair with his feet up and his throat wet, I ask him pretty as you please if he plans to attend the Midsummer festivities in our fair town.
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