Defiant

by Kennedy, Kris

  “You may go speak with them,” Jamie said quietly.

  The boy whipped his head around, bright red spots on his cheeks.

  “Nay, sir,” he croaked.

  An older matron came hurrying up the street, scolding the girls in fond tones, and the small group passed on, down the cobbled street, into the deeper shadows of encroaching evening. One peeked back, green eyes bright, then she turned the corner and disappeared.

  Roger turned back to the silks, and Jamie returned to watching Eva. “Do you know what she’s doing?”

  The boy briefly glanced at the spill of golden light coming out of the jeweler’s. “Finding out where Father Peter is, sir.”

  “How?”

  Roger looked confused. “However it must be done.”

  “Do you know the man?”

  Roger peered hard this time, eyeing up the burly man inside, then shook his head. “Nay.” He looked at Jamie. “If Eva wished away from you, away she would be. Sir.”

  Jamie took measure of Gog’s guileless but savvy eyes. He’d seen as much brutality and had as little security as Eva, and from a younger age. As Eva said, he was indeed of a good and generous spirit, but that was only because of her tutelage. Jamie was certain of this, for Roger carried an edge of hardness like a tempered blade. He could not be pushed, or he would turn and slash. Eva, for all her light-handed officiousness, did not push him. She owned him.

  “Aye,” Jamie replied lightly. “I suspect Eva could slip through a mousehole, should the need arise. But, then, you are with me. So she will not go anywhere, will she?”

  They were speaking plainly now, the beginning of the alliance, and Roger considered him for a long moment.

  “I am with you now, sir, for I think ’tis the right place to be.”

  “So you could slip away too?”

  The boy nodded. “Aye, sir. In a heartbeat.” No arrogance, not even pride. A simple statement of a truth. “But Eva and I cannot do this thing alone. Father Peter is worth some risk, for what he’s done for us. And, I believe”—Roger fumbled for a moment—“I think you are an honorable man.”

  A side of Jamie’s mouth curved up in a faint, weary smile. “Your mistress would carve out my heart if she heard you say that.”

  Gog grinned. “Assuredly.”

  Jamie could see Eva now, stepping around the tall wooden workbench, her curving back to the road, her hands moving in that animated chatter of hers. The jeweler seemed entranced. “But my thanks for your trust, Roger.”

  “’Tisn’t trust, sir.”

  Jamie touched the end of a swaying green ribbon, his gaze on Eva.

  “You’ve done nothing to make me trust you.”

  That brought Jamie’s gaze around.

  “Sooth, sir, you’re hunting Father Peter. You’ve bound Eva and me in ropes, and even now, I do not know what you are truly about. You know Eva and me to a much greater depth, yet I’ve no idea how you will make use of that knowledge. ’Tisn’t trust; how could it be? You’ve done nothing to make me trust you. ’Tis faith. I have faith you one day will. Sir.”

  Jamie laughed, but it was short-lived and tempered by a kind of grimness. “Roger, I am indebted. Plain-speaking men are hard to find, and most are horses’ asses. But in this, I would counsel you suchly: Follow Eva’s lead. ’Tisn’t wise to put your faith in men like me. I have not earned it.”

  Nor do I wish to, Jamie thought grimly. Vulnerable creatures had faith. Fools believed in honor. Such people were masticated in the jaws of the world, for God was hardly better than a romance, King John but a scrape on the battered knee of the world going down.

  Better to leave off hope and faith and other useless things. Stick to missions and vengeance and hard, simple things, elsewise, people grew to need you, and should you one day be taken away, murdered on the streets of London so the cobbles were rimmed in red, the ones left behind might feel as though their hearts had been ripped out by nails and shredded beneath a plough.

  Jamie was not fertilizer. Not anymore.

  Roger looked at him, brow wrinkled, as if Jamie were misunderstanding something simple, such as how to drink water. “’Tis faith, sir. You don’t earn it.”

  “No, Roger, you do not,” Jamie agreed grimly, and met the boy’s gaze square on. “You are aware we are about danger here? There is not a safe step to be taken from here on out.”

  Roger straightened. “I know, my lord.”

  “Do not call me that. You additionally know Eva cannot so much as spit an arrow from a bow?”

  “True, sir, she cannot fire an arrow. But even so, she is hardly without defense.”

  Jamie met Roger’s eye. “Has she ever been hurt? In an attack? In the way of an injury.”

  Roger looked uneasy. “Indeed, sir, she has. Once in the neck.” He touched his own. “Almost bled to death, she did. I stitched it up, but rather clumsily. You can see the scars still, by her ear.” Yes, he’d seen them. He’d seen them last night, touched the edge with his tongue as he licked down her neck. “And once, here,” Gog went on, pressing the side of a fist against his abdomen. Their eyes met.

  Jamie hadn’t known he had this sort of reservoir inside him. He’d thought himself nothing more than shallow earth, a hard, mineral, impervious layer of dark intent and waiting vengeance. You couldn’t have grown weeds in him.

  And now came Eva, so that the thought of her being hurt made his breath stop.

  “Ah,” he said, and kept it short like that.

  The proprietress came up, smiling. “How good to see you, sir. We are just about to close up, my lord, but if you’ve something you see for your mistress, sir, you’ve only to let me know.”

  Jamie nodded absently, barely noticing the urge to warn her off calling him “my lord.” He was staring into the shop with renewed focus. Eva had taken a step closer to the jeweler inside.

  “Is she for the fair on the morrow?” the shopkeep inquired.

  Jamie gave some monosyllabic reply. Gog said something slightly more informative, something about “aye,” and “a wedding.”

  The woman beamed. “Well, ye’ll have to send her here, for we’ve the best silks around, and that’s not a whit of exaggeration. Has she a preference for shade?”

  Even from this distance, Jamie saw Eva begin to smile at the jeweler. It expanded to fairly expansive proportions, the sort of smile he’d never received from her. Which made perfect sense.

  “. . . blue, then?”

  Jamie looked down. “My apologies, madam. What were you saying?”

  The proprietress clucked her tongue in tolerant way. “I see she likes blue, but I think a fine red would contrast quite finely now, don’t you, my lord?”

  “Blue?” Jamie looked at the woman blankly. “Red?”

  “Her tunic.” She gestured toward Eva, where she was visible through the doorway. The firelight in the darkened shop backlit Eva and the burly man she was smiling at. Her hair flowed down her back like that damned river.

  “And red, for the ribbons,” the proprietress went on. “Nay. Perhaps the darker crimson.”

  She squinted critically at the bright red one, then tossed it aside and slid her fat fingers under an entire row of rainbowed ribbons suspended from a nail and lifted the strands of silk into the air so they looked like toy ponies, tails lifted in the breeze.

  “The dusky one, perhaps,” she said triumphantly. “For her dark hair.”

  Yes, he thought vaguely. Yes. The dusky red, for her dark hair.

  He dragged his eyes away from the ribbons and back to Eva, where she now stood, much closer to the burly jeweler with the appreciative eyes. She was very near him, smiling up at him . . . laughing. She was laughing with him. She touched his arm.

  Jamie heard Gog say dimly, as if from a distance, “Eva doesn’t wear ribbons, sir,” and heard himself say, “I’ll take five.”

  Forty-two

  Eva smiled at Pauly, the one person in the town she recalled from years past whom she also trusted. Or had trusted, yea
rs ago. He’d been apprenticed here in his father’s shop, barely five years older than she. She wasn’t so certain she ought to trust him now, but one had to take chances.

  “Aye, I saw the man you’re describing, with a priest. Came in not a bell ring ago,” he said, and so Eva knew it had been mayhap an hour. Not so long.

  “They passed by here. Everyone does,” Pauly said proudly, gesturing to the main thoroughfare leading in from the gates, but of course Eva already knew this. It was partly why she’d cultivated his friendship when she was fourteen, and why she’d come back now. Far too often, fortune was simply a matter of being in the right place, not at all being the right person.

  But she’d also loved the small, cloudy gems and vinelike wires he and his father had worked with, making jewelry for those who could afford it.

  “He was coming for the midwife, aye?” Pauly said, setting down a fine steel strip he’d been working on. It was thin as a thread, the same used for armor, only not ringed and linked, so instead of staving off swords, it was like a twisted nest for dusky gems. A hot fire burned in a covered pit, for heating the metal he hammered into thin, precise settings for the jewels someone else could afford.

  “The midwife? Why do you say that?”

  “I recognized the man riding in with your priest. Used to come into town fast regular to visit the mad midwife, Magda. Swiving her, he was.”

  “I see.”

  “But I’d say they went for the physic,” he mused.

  “The physic? Why?” Eva said, affecting mild interest. She ran her fingertips along the graveyard of skeletal-like wires scattered across the high table, like a graveyard in the moonlight, bones unearthed.

  Pauly’s gaze was riveted on her hand for a moment. “Why, for we’ve the best physic west of London and south of Chester,” he said, once again with pride in his voice for things he had neither made nor owned. “And not a moment too soon, for the priest looked right sickly.”

  “But, yes, that is just so, he was ill,” she agreed, her calm voice belying no tension. But her fingers tightened around the trestle table in front of her.

  Pauly’s eye fell to her hand again. She let it drop, but that only drew his eye to her skirts.

  “Are you here alone, Eva?” he asked, a certain depth to his tone alerting her to potential trouble. She did not wish for Jamie to come charging through the doorway like a bull and frighten Pauly out of talking.

  Although why he would, over some silly jealousy, eluded her.

  “But, no, I am here with my partners.”

  “Partners?”

  “Shippers.”

  His gaze moved to the dark doorway, outside of which stood Jamie, armored and silent, somewhere in the nighttime, watching, waiting for her.

  She stepped around the table, closer, distracting him. “And you, Pauly, over the years, have you done so well with all these things?” She gestured to the bits of metal across the tabletops, the tiny links for affixing gemstones. Some were woven together like iron wickerwork.

  “Well enough. But no wife, no family. You, Eva?”

  “Oh, aye, I am wed to an old dog,” she said, laughing. “He barks and I jump.”

  “That is too bad.”

  “Indeed, it is most terrible.”

  “I do not recall you that way. Jumping for a man.”

  “Oh, Pauly, we all change. And which physic were they going to, do you think?”

  “The only the one who’s worth his salt. As I said, the best west of London and south of Chester, and the whole town goes to him.” His gaze fell to her chest, and she saw a ripple of tension move through his jaw. “Where is your husband, Eva?”

  She took a deep breath, stepped closer, and opened her mouth.

  “He is here,” said a rumbling voice behind her.

  She closed her eyes, aghast at the relief rushing through her body from the sound of Jamie’s voice. She turned.

  He stood in the doorway, wide-shouldered, lean-hipped, caped and dark, his eyes fixed on Pauly’s burly figure. With Jamie’s dark hair banded at the base of his neck, with his unmarked tunic, dark gauntlets, tight hose, and muddy boots, the only thing that shone about him was his sword hilt, etched with those curling silver vines, and his eyes, deep blue, glittering and unmoving on Pauly.

  Pauly backed up three steps and bumped the edge of another trestle table.

  “Pauly was just going to tell us where to find the best physic in the west country,” she announced brightly.

  “Good.”

  Pauly cleared his throat. “Eva and I are friends from times past.”

  “How friendly?”

  Pauly’s face fell, and he said in a slightly high-pitched voice, “Jakob Doctor is the one you want, up the High, past the goldsmith’s.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, patting his arm. Jamie’s eyes snapped to the movement. Pauly swallowed and took a step away from Eva.

  “He’s got one of them right tall buildings,” he said quickly, eager to add to his store of information. He lifted a flattened hand above his head. “Slate on his roof, if ye can countenance the cost. But then, he’s a fycking Jew,” he spat the last words out.

  Jamie, who had been still the entire time, went motionless. Everyone else stilled as well, including Pauly, who looked ready to do something drastic, such as urinate on himself.

  Jamie’s head tipped slightly to the side. “Is this where you live, jeweler?” he asked, his voice low.

  Pauly’s face went white. Absolutely white, like a wall that has had a bucket of wash thrown on its face. Like a lamb in spring. Like a man who’s just realized he has made a terrible mistake.

  Eva went into motion. She turned for the doorway, sweeping up Jamie as she went, calling over her shoulder, “Pauly, I will be back tomorrow—”

  “No,” he seemed to call out weakly.

  “—and we can talk again of old times. It was most good to see you.” She waved, smiled, then yanked the door shut and moved out into the street, her hand on Jamie’s arm, practically pulling him after her.

  The four of them met in the middle of the slowly emptying streets.

  Jamie looked at her. Ry looked at Jamie. Gog looked between her and Jamie. Eva looked at everyone but Jamie.

  “So, we have found out Father Peter may be at the doctor’s,” she said in what even she considered a chirpy tone. “Or a midwife. An old hearthmate.”

  Ry said, “Very good,” but he said it slowly, his eyes not leaving Jamie’s face, which Eva had no intention of looking at herself. Watching Ry and Gog would be a sufficient indicator of what was passing over Jamie’s face. One did not always need to see such things firsthand.

  She began, “So, we ought to go up the hill—”

  “Are you mad?” Jamie’s question was dangerously low-pitched.

  She did turn to him then, slowly and with great dignity. “Indeed. I am past mad. I am standing here with you.”

  They all heard the deep breath he took through his nostrils, sucking them in with the force of it. A steadying breath, if Eva’s experience with deep breaths was any measure of how it went for others. She saw Ry’s eyes close momentarily, his lips move as if in silent prayer.

  “Eva,” Gog said uneasily, glancing at Jamie before he took a step her way. “Evening comes. Perhaps we ought find lodg—”

  “Aye.”

  They turned warily at the sound of Jamie’s clipped agreement. “Ry, take Roger and stable the horses, will you?”

  It was a question in everything but intent. Ry nodded. Roger nodded just as speedily. Eva scowled.

  Jamie stepped to Ry’s side, cloak hem swirling about his boots, spoke quietly into his ear, more of their secrets, then backed up and clapped Gog on the shoulder in an approving way.

  Gog glanced at her. “Shall I, Eva?” he said, even though really everyone knew this was not a question to be asked. Or, at least, answered.

  Yet Jamie shifted, stepped out from between her and Gog. “Aye, Eva, shall he go now?”


  She frowned at the faint undercurrent to his question, but as one could do little with undercurrents but swim along, she settled on a nod and a smile.

  “Indeed, Gog. It would not be so good to have four of us dirty people show up on Jakob Doctor’s doorstep. We will frighten him, and he will slam the door upon us. If ’tis just Jamie and I, then I can kick in his knee at some point along the way, and, voilà, we shall have our injury for the doctor to inspect, and our way in his door.”

  Jamie gave a minuscule, humorless smile. Well-nigh undetectable. Neither Gog or Ry seemed inclined even that far.

  Eva touched the hand Gog extended to her, gave it a squeeze, and said a few cautionary words about not drinking anything alelike that Ry might put in front of him. Gog rolled his eyes and squeezed her back.

  Jamie murmured another few words to Ry, then sent them on their way, into the shadowed streets.

  “Let’s go,” Jamie said grimly, and grabbed her hand.

  Forty-three

  We’re for the midwife’s,” he announced.

  “But—”

  “She is his woman.”

  Eva felt a little fluttering at that notion of his woman rolling off Jamie’s tongue. At the belief that this was the first place a man would go. It was nothing to take notice of, just a little shivering deep in her belly.

  As it happened, there was no need for flutterings or anything that harkened to excitement. The midwife was willing to share very little.

  She peered at them sullenly for a long minute after they rapped at her door, then glanced over their shoulders into the encroaching darkness and tried to slam the door shut in their faces.

  Jamie wedged his boot in just in time, then pressed a palm on the door and pushed it open, which was ridiculously easy, as Magda had given up her resistance and stepped back into the room.

  They stepped inside.

  She stood in front of a huge cauldron suspended above a roaring fire. Her face looked as if it had once been beautiful, but was now sunken and grayed by poor harvests and long late nights and scraping for coin from people who had none. Her hair hung down her back in a thick braid, but a great deal was frizzed around her face, framing her suspicious scowl in brown fuzz.