“And many other swine besides,” I reply. “The master was decent enough, but the Officer of the Town Mills deserved worse than the nice clean hanging he got.”
Her grip tightens on the bucket rim. She isn’t moving.
“Do what you’re told or it’ll go hard for you.” I point to the door and she follows my finger with the round eyes of prey. “I can make things go very hard for you.”
The brat swallows. She gets ten steps into the yard ere she asks, where is the water?
I stare her down from my doorway. She is within my walls now. I will show her what it is to be mistress.
All at once she falls, shoulders and back, scowl and teeth, and she shrinks like a helpless child. Then she shuffles around, stumbles downhill, and disappears in the brush.
When I return to the fire, I take the bread Gruffydd offers and say firmly, “No harm.”
Gruffydd smiles. “God’s honest truth? I enjoyed every moment of that.”
The brat does not return till well past midday. Brambles in her hair and gown soaking wet, a gash across her forearm and muddy to the knees. But the bucket is full and she drops it at the fireside, jaw clenched, gallows-defiant.
I wait till she collapses by the fire and pries a crust of burned oatbread from the bakestone. Then I pour the water into the cooking pot and hand the bucket back.
“Go fetch water,” I tell her in Welsh.
The brat trembles to her feet. Staying upright is costing her, but every line of her is mutinous, furious.
She is coming undone slowly. First her arms, then her hands, then her eyes.
She would strike me.
Do it. I’ve been waiting for this moment longer than you know.
But she masters it. She closes her eyes and bites it back. Hard through the arms, stiff like a fence-rail. The brat throws the crust down, takes the bucket, and sweeps out the door.
This will not last. She will break. And I will laugh till I weep while the brat nurses bruises and a split lip with naught to look forward to but more of the same. Day in and day out. Because the vale will give her ten times worse just for being English.
Because I’m her only hope.
And she knows it.
The brat sleeps heavy, like sodden wool. Day after day, I kick her awake and work her. From bleak not-dawn till long past sunset, she fetches and carries. Cuts firewood. Bears water. Tends Mam. Dirties her hands with pitch and shit and ash and mud. Day after day.
There’s no spinning. No embroidery or hemming.
The brat does not break.
She looks bad, though. Her skin is gray. Even her lips. She keeps wrapping her hair behind her ears as if her fingers need busying.
One day I catch her idle in the clearing, the bucket at her side, staring at the soot-smudged walls and crumbling towers of what was once the king’s borough of Caernarvon. There’s no fear about her, though. No anger. It’s more as though she would reach down and embrace it, gather it together and rebuild it as a child might a castle of stones.
Her father still hangs from the window. Like Da once, from the walls.
The next day, I find the priest’s boy and send him for the brat’s kin.
SHE CALLS me lazy. At least I think she does. What she doesn’t know is that I cannot sleep with my cheek against dirt and I cannot close my eyes without fire and blood and smoke and the red-raw terror of his last moments of life.
Nicholas is coming.
I don’t sleep, exactly. Betimes I close my eyes, then blink awake to Gwinny shoving the leather bucket into my hands and barking something in Welsh. The hempen handle digs into my palms so hard that I don’t think about how the rope must have roughed up his neck as they shoved him toward the window. I close my eyes and picture the market on a bright blue day. I’m meeting Mistress Sandys at the well, letting her lanky half-grown son draw my water. Trading Mistress Glover a handful of thyme for a length of thread.
I’ll startle awake when Gwinny piles my hands with slimy privy rags and growls more commands I cannot understand. When I’m wringing the rags out in water so cold it reddens my knuckles, I don’t think about crisp autumn air against his bare flesh, the terrible weightless instant ere the drop. I’m walking home from Mass in my best kirtle, holding one of Nessy Glover’s hands while Emmaline holds the other, and betimes we swing her, squealing, high in the air.
Nicholas will come. I know he will.
Gwinny piles on task after task, then watches me like she might a limping horse. Or mayhap a colt in the breaking pasture, mouthing the bit.
But every bucket of water I haul is one less whiff of soot, one less flash of steel to wake me gasping. Every armload of wood I gather is one less reason for Gwinny to put me out of her house and leave me at the mercy of men who will not be trifled with.
That’s a lesson I’ve no need to study.
Get out, he said.
This is the only way out.
I’M in the yard picking tiny rocks out of a bucket of barley when there’s a crunch of brush and Dafydd angles out of the greenwood. Gruffydd slings the leather tunic he’s working over his shoulder and nods a greeting.
“Give me another day or two,” Gruffydd says, holding up a corner of the garment. “They’re heading east, so they should be easy to find.”
Dafydd shakes his head. “I came to tell you to go ahead of me. I’ve some things I must do ere I join Madog’s lads.”
My mouth falls open. “You? Joining the revolt?”
“If this is the only way to get the king’s attention, so be it.” Dafydd must mark my disbelief, for he smiles and adds, “I’m not afraid to fight, Gwenhwyfar. It just has to be the right fight.”
There’s a tiny flicker of motion just inside the doorway. The brat, disappearing into the shadows. She’s still convinced I’m going to beat her senseless or Gruffydd’s going to have his way with her. She regards us as if we’re capable of anything.
“Who’s that?” Dafydd asks.
“She’s the heiress to your townhouse.” I smile, blade-sharp. “It would be a shame should anything befall her. Shall I turn my back?”
Dafydd shrugs. “Should anything befall her, they’ll just give the house to another Englishman. This doesn’t work if we profit at their expense. It only works if we’re granted what they already have—and the Crown enforces it.”
Gruffydd busies himself with his tunic, the coward, so I face Dafydd steady on and reply, “I want no part of what they have.”
“I do,” he says. “I would be a subject. Not one of a subject people.”
This is why, Dafydd. Because you’re so damn sure it’s even possible.
“And you believe that rising in revolt against their king is the way to gain that?”
“The king will be wroth, true enough,” Dafydd replies, “but not just at us. He’ll demand a reckoning from Havering and Whetenhale and it’ll all come out. How they weren’t governing according to the king’s laws, but for their own profit. How their abuses were what turned us to such extremes. Once the king learns all this, he’ll be forced to act.”
I swallow. “And how do you know that the result won’t be ten times worse than it was ere this?”
Dafydd smiles sadly. “I don’t. One way or another, though, Caernarvon will never be the same.”
“And given all this, you’d still see us married?”
“Tomorrow. If not sooner.”
“Why?” I fling a hand. “It would change nothing!”
Dafydd meets my eyes and whispers, “It would change everything.”
I don’t reply. And don’t reply. And don’t dare look at him again.
Know not when Dafydd leaves. Too blurry. Only know when I look beyond the bucket and his feet are no longer there.
A FAINT LIGHT filters through the doorway. It’s not yet dawn but the curtain is pulled back. Gwinny and Griffith stand in the doorway, murmuring intensely in Welsh. Griffith wears one of Gwinny’s plundered cloaks and shoulders a weathered spear.
&
nbsp; He’s leaving. I catch enough words in Welsh to realize Griffith is going somewhere. Somewhere dangerous.
I catch words in Welsh.
They embrace, fiercely. Then Griffith pulls away and disappears. Gwinny snaps the curtain shut and slumps against the wall. In the stillness, her tiny sobs fill every corner.
It’s blood and fire and they’re all dead and I cannot keep the tears down.
Gwinny turns on me like a Fury and snaps in English, “Shut up! Don’t you dare weep or by God I’ll put you out of my house this moment!”
I picture Anglesey out my window, the silky band of green held at arm’s length by the shimmering strait busy with boats. I’m in my chamber and the gulls are crying and daylight is just beginning to seep in and it’s going to be a lovely brisk day.
At length I master myself, steady my breathing. Gwinny’s shoulders relax bit by bit, but she still glares damnation at me. “You will not weep for my brother. I will not have it.”
I don’t tell her I wasn’t weeping for him. There’s no way those words will come out properly.
“You’ve no right to even think his name. Should you be so bold as to utter it, I’ll douse you in blood ere I turn you out.”
I don’t remind her that Griffith told me that I could stay, that I shouldn’t try to leave if I valued my life. He’s not here to say her nay. He’s not here to seize her hand.
He’s gone somewhere dangerous, and he’s all she’s got.
I lick my lips and say, “I know that . . .”
Gwinny fixes me with a venomous look.
“I thought to . . .” That’s when I hold my tongue, for Gwinny’s jaw is grinding like a millwheel and what I thought to do cannot erase what I did.
“Is it true?” Her voice is gravelly. “About the timber gang?”
Mayhap she’s trying to trap me, but I haven’t the strength to lie. “Yes. It’s true.”
Gwinny grunts. “Had I known, I would have told you where you could shove your pity.”
“Not pity. Justice.”
Gwinny draws back as if I’ve struck her. She repeats the word in English as though she’s never heard it ere this. And she regards me so intently that I swipe up the water bucket and hurry toward the stream, trembling every step of the way.
THEY come at night. I tell them that Gruffydd has already gone, and I give them the knives I plundered from Caernarvon in memory of Peredur ap Goronwy, who once stood with men like them.
They don’t loot the house. Out of respect, they say. I bid them Godspeed and they disappear into a vale that’s bracing for the worst.
I return to the fire, sit with Mam. She does not move. Her flesh is still warm. Her chest still rises. But she takes only tiny mouthfuls of breath. She drinks less every day.
Once they’ve been gone for some time, the brat creeps out of the byre where she had the good sense to hide. She’s panting like a lathered hound as she edges toward the fire.
I thought they were going to kill you, she says. Right in your own house.
“The rebels are only ravaging,” I reply. “There’s not much to take, so we’ll be rid of them soon.”
The brat blinks rapidly, whispers, r-rebels?
“The rebels, fool. The men of Gwynedd who follow Madog ap Llywelyn to finish what they started at Caernarvon.” I even out my voice. “Men like my brother.”
The brat gapes like a fish.
I say it in English so there’ll be no mistake. Rebellion. Welshmen have taken and trampled your worthless borough and even now reduce it to rubble. They’ll take their spears and blades to the Perfeddwlad, where they’ll run roughshod over your worthless king and with God’s help send him to Hell where he belongs.
Whether any of it is true beyond the sack of Caernarvon I have no notion, but it puts such a panic on the brat that I press down.
More men gather every day. Ere long, all Wales will be in revolt and not a single English man, woman, or child will be safe. We’ll be rid of you ere Christmas. Every last damn one of you. And then we’ll take apart your castles and boroughs brick by cursed brick until the very land forgets you were ever here.
Rebellion, echoes the brat. But that means that Nicholas . . . mayhap he won’t . . .
I smile all teeth. “Well then, best pray hard for my continuing good health.”
He’ll come, she whispers. I know he will.
The brat speaks clear and sure, a voice that does not match her slumped shoulders, her clenched jaw, her hard stare at the fire.
The same voice I use to say that Gruffydd will return alive. Clear and sure, the way Mam once spoke of Da.
Fanwra’s baby is stillborn. I wrap half a plundered cheese and bid the brat ready herself. The brat watches the cheese disappear beneath cloth. Hunger is not a ghost she knew within the walls.
I ready Mam. Firewood, linen, a rag soaked in liquid porridge. Then I pet her hair and nod to the brat.
The brat gestures to Mam and asks, what of your mother? Who’ll care for her?
“The saints. Come.”
She follows me outside while saying, any manner of man or creature could come through that flimsy curtain. How can you leave her?
“Where shall I start? The part where your lot dictates what jobs of work lads like Gruffydd can do for how much coin, or the part where they tax us so heavily that girls like me have to take up work to keep breath in body?”
The brat rakes her hair behind her ears thrice, glances over her shoulder toward what’s left of Caernarvon. At length she says, I’ll stay with her.
“You’ll not. You’ll come see the piteous creature my neighbor bore.”
The brat looks as if she’ll protest, then wisely closes her mouth and nods. As we walk through the greenwood, she flakes the biggest chunks of filth from her ratty gown. The stains remain. They will never wash clean.
THERE’S A SWEET, burny smell. Just ahead is a wide patch of blackened earth scattered with what look like tangled branches till I get closer and realize they’re bones. Scorched and melted and left to bleach.
Animal bones. Cows and sheep and goats. A twinkly star fallen to a black landscape. Ones and dozens and hundreds.
That’s bad enough. Then I see the bodies.
Three of them, two men and a woman, hanging from a tree not far from the path Gwinny forges. Purple faces. Crooked necks. Pecked-out holes where eyes once were.
The woman is Mistress Sandys.
I’m on my knees in mud and gasping and choking and they’re all dead and all I want is my father back even if he does his fool dancing before every window in Christendom.
A hand on my shoulder, and Gwinny is hauling me up by one arm. “Don’t look. Take my hand. Face ahead.”
I do as she tells me. My gown is heavy with clinging mud. We’re a hundred breaths away when she says, “It’ll get better. Not for a while, but it will.”
I want to ask Gwinny why. Why the Welsh of the countryside attacked Caernarvon with such sudden violence. Why they hanged and cut down the innocent. Why they tore up the market and looted the wharves and reduced the toll trestle to a pile of splinters.
I don’t, though. I think I already know.
FANWRA’S steading is damp and airless. There’s no fire. The brat hovers in the doorway and I jerk her in, stumbling. She does not twitch or gag as I expected. She bears up straight, despite her bloodless face.
I kneel at Fanwra’s head and smooth her sweaty hair. Then I tuck the cheese into her hands. I do not ask how she fares.
A bundle lies beside the door. The creature within is colorless and smooth, oddly calm. Like statuary, or a figure cast in wax.
I shove the bundle into the brat’s arms. She shudders and scrambles to hand it back.
“You’ll hold it,” I tell her. “You did this. So have a good look at what you wrought.”
Her eyes widen and she says, I did not do this.
I pinch the warm pink flesh of her upper arm. “This is hunger’s work.”
The brat rubs th
e reddening patch and says, your poor neighbor. Who will look after her? Where is her husband?
“Husband?” I snort. “She should be so lucky. I reckon you believe I gave Edward Mercer justice merely for your benefit.”
The brat swallows hard. She looks greensick. She whispers words in English I do not recognize.
Fanwra eats the cheese as if it will disappear.
Ave Maria gratia plena, whispers the brat, and she holds the bundle close as if it’s a live, breathing child.
The walk is the same as before, same tree-stump hillsides and stolen fields, but now I stride through those fields that by right should be Gruffydd’s. The Watchers have been scattered, the cattle loosed, the struggling barley thrice trampled. I grind my heel into the parched, prickly roots. Give me salt enough and I would sow every handswidth.
The market trestle is splinters, scattered like kindling. Even the walls don’t seem as high. The market common is torn up, littered with rubbish. No bodies, though. No bodies anywhere.
There are no more gates, only hinges clinging to the walls like broken spiders. I can look all the way up High Street to where it curves like a spine, obscuring the Water Gate and the strait beyond. Men on what’s left of the towers watch me enter the gravetown, blades shouldered, careful.
They must be Madog’s men, guarding their prize. As if there’s an English soul within a day’s ride who still breathed God’s air.
Already they’re taking Caernarvon down. Brick by brick, timber by timber, plank by miserable plank. By the time the English king arrives, this place will not be worth fighting for.
Farther up High, I pass men bearing long rolls of canvas slung between them. Little wonder there are no bodies. Madog’s men are disposing of them.
They must plan to be here for a while.
The master still hangs from the window, sightless, gray, withered. I pass beneath him and into the house, into the brat’s old demesne.
Not a stick of furniture remains. Not trestle nor coffer nor wall-cloth. There are only bare, battered floors and sooty walls. I put it to memory. I will tell her every spill and scorch, every last absence.
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