Tale of Gwyn

by Cynthia Voigt

  “What’s that? It must have been left in the purse; they must have used this purse for something else before, but what do you think it is? Do we have to take it after them?”

  “I thought you were going to count the coins for me,” Gwyn reminded him. “And if you don’t stop pushing at me and shoving and grabbing, I won’t let you.”

  “Do you need to speak to your brother like that?” her mother asked. “You can’t blame him for being curious, can you?”

  Tad’s attention was now on the coins, which he stacked up before him. Gwyn opened the paper. Her eyes moved slowly over the letters. GWYNIDONOTFORGETYOUDONOTFORGETMEGADERIAN.

  He had written them out without spaces, without marks for the end or to separate, but she could read the message. She kept her face a mask, even as her heart rose.

  “What have you got there?” her mother demanded.

  Gwyn spread the paper down on the table, for all to see. None of them could possibly read it, she knew. “Some message, I guess,” she said, trying to sound bored. Then she began to enjoy her secret. She touched the letters with her fingers. She could surprise them—what they would say if she read it to them and showed them her own name spelled out there. “They’re careless with paper, aren’t they. Tad, do you want to keep it for drawing?”

  Inside herself she was laughing. They did not know, and she did.

  Tad looked at her curiously, then shook his head, his attention going back to the coins.

  “Well, then,” Gwyn said, crumpling the paper up in her hands. She turned around to toss it into the fire, where it lay for a minute, round as a tiny snowball, before the flames took it. As it burned, it opened up and she saw the black letters standing out, before a sheet of flame took the whole paper and turned it to ash.

  Gwyn looked at the people gathered around the table, staring at the pile of coins. “I hope it wasn’t anything important,” she said, pretending ignorance. “I hope they won’t ride back for it.”

  “If it had been important they wouldn’t have left it in an empty purse,” Da told her. “The Lords keep important messages in the long books.”

  Gwyn mimed relief. She tried to think of some way to drag out the play, but there was the danger of going too far with it and giving herself away, so she let it go.

  “Don’t you want to know how much it is, Gwyn?” Tad asked. His bounciness had left him, but she didn’t care about that, not even enough to wonder.

  “How much what is?”

  “The gold, stupid.”

  Tad’s voice held hurt feelings, and jealousy too. She wondered how it was that he was still such a child, when Gaderian, who was only a little older, was so much more grown up. She wondered why her stocky, redheaded brother had to be the whiny, sulky one. “Well, how much? Since you’ve been so busy counting.”

  He almost told her he wasn’t going to tell her, but then he saw that she didn’t care what he said, so he answered, “Twelve. Twelve gold pieces.”

  “Oh, Gwyn,” Rose said. “That’s one for each day. I’m sure you deserve the luck.”

  Gwyn gathered the gold pieces together and dropped them back into the bag one by one.

  “You’d better give it to Da to keep,” her mother said.

  “I’ll keep it myself. I’ll keep it safe.” Gwyn kept her voice level. It was not as if she wished to have a quarrel, and she knew if she sounded calm they would not oppose her. They would not dare oppose her and start a quarrel in which truths might be told. If the note had not been in the bag, she knew, she would have given it to Da for his own use, she would not have taken anything from the Lord. But from Gaderian, she thought, holding the bag in her hand, she would take it gratefully.

  “With twelve gold pieces,” Rose suggested, “if there were a man spoke for you who had nothing, you could bring him a holding for his own.”

  One of the things she would do with this gold, Gwyn thought, looking back to her sister, was to buy a wedding gift at the Spring Fair. She remembered some skeins of fine wool she had seen last fall, at a table where many Ladies gathered. The wool had been spun so delicately that it was soft as new grass. Traders from the south had brought it up to sell, and Gwyn had stood nearby, not daring to touch it, but wondering at the fingers that could spin such softness from the hair of sheep. She would get some of that for Rose, for the babies she and Wes would have, to make blankets to wrap them in while they slept.

  Her mother’s voice cut across her dreaming. “With the gold, Gwyn will wed a man with his own holding to inherit, a rich holding. I don’t doubt Raff will ask for you now, Gwyn, and you know how broad his father’s holdings are.”

  Da moved impatiently to the fire, to kick at the logs with his boot.

  “You know that’s true, husband,” Gwyn’s mother said.

  Gwyn took a deep breath. “I will not marry.”

  For a long time, nobody said anything. Their faces were frozen with surprise. She waited for the arguments to begin, and she knew already that she would not answer them. She understood herself.

  “Don’t be a goose, daughter. You’ll marry. You’ll have your choice of the men now. You don’t want to live like Old Megg, do you?” her mother asked.

  Gwyn shook her head. “I will not marry,” she repeated. Maybe she would live out her days alone like Old Megg, but she would not throw her days away caring for the comfort of some man who asked for a bag of twelve gold pieces, never mind the girl who came with it.

  “But Gwyn,” Rose started to ask.

  “It’s foolishness and she knows it,” Gwyn’s mother announced. “This gold has gone to her head, I don’t doubt.”

  For a wonder, Tad had nothing to say.

  “It’s just some mood she’s in,” Gwyn’s mother continued. Rarely had Gwyn seen her mother so angry. “It’s all your fault, Innkeeper; it’s all because she wants that boy, the Weaver’s boy, and he’ll never ask. Just to get even with you. You think you’re better than the rest of us,” she told Gwyn, her voice vinegar. “But you’ll find out where the stubbornness gets you. She doesn’t mean it,” she said to her husband. “You’ll see. Ask her again.”

  Gwyn stood up, her own temper rising. “I will not marry,” she told her mother. “If Da does not make the announcement, I will.”

  Da looked from his wife to his daughter. Gwyn was too angry to feel sorry for him.

  “I’ll make the announcement, if I am sure it’s what she really wants,” he told his wife. Then he looked at Gwyn. “If I am sure, I will make it.”

  That was good enough for her. She left the room. They could talk about her now, in peace and at length. She put the bag of gold under her mattress and then went out through the barroom door, to clean out the empty stalls so that they would be ready when next they were needed.

  Chapter 14

  GWYN WENT UP TO THE village the next day, to talk with Old Megg. She told no one she was going and no one asked her, as she took her cloak from the hook and left through the garden door, what she might be doing. At the Weaver’s house, the loom was working and the shutters were open to let in the sunlight. Gwyn watched the work for a few minutes: the rising and falling of the combs, the shuttle moving through the threads like a mouse bolting for its hold, the finished cloth slowly rolling up at the end, the Weaver’s bent head and her clever hands. Then Gwyn went to sit beside Old Megg, who kept to her bed alone in a darkened room. Gwyn opened the shutters to let in light.

  The old woman had been dozing. She was surprised to see Gwyn. “They said you were dead. Lost in the storm,” she greeted her.

  “Only trapped,” Gwyn answered. She built up the fire and prodded it into life. “How is your ankle?”

  “I’ll never mend, you know that as well as I do. And you’ll live to wish you’d died, Innkeeper’s daughter. When you’re old and helpless and in the care of such people. They grudge me every bite of food that goes into my mouth, every minute of care.”

  “Osh aye,” Gwyn said, pulling a small stool up to sit by the bed. “And
I wonder if you know what saved me.”

  “Saved you for what, that’s what you ought to be asking.”

  “It was your own house where I stayed. We ate your cheeses and your meat, we burned up your wood you have stored, we slept under your blankets.” At that last, Gwyn watched the aged face closely, to see if the eyes became secretive, or the mouth fearful. But she could see no change.

  “I cleaned the house out properly,” Gwyn told Old Megg.

  “Gwyn, listen to me. It’s been a terrible life, unwed. I’d have taken anyone who asked, and I was pretty enough. I was. Nobody asks for a girl with no dowry, no holding, and her only family a brother who goes off for a soldier.”

  “Aired the bedclothes, and those deep cupboards too,” Gwyn hinted.

  “Do you want to end your days in the care of such as she?” Old Megg’s eye went to the open door in the kitchen.

  “You ought to be grateful, old woman,” the Weaver’s voice answered.

  “I can’t remember how long you were there,” Gwyn asked. “How long were you there, Old Megg? Was I six when you left us?”

  “Osh no, it’s only been five years, you were starting to shoot up.”

  “I was wondering.” Gwyn took one of the rough hands in her own, to fix the old woman’s attention. “Who lived there before you.”

  “Lived where? You know full well, Innkeeper’s daughter, just whose house that was. Before your father gobbled it up.”

  Gwyn didn’t rise to the bait. “It was empty all those years?” she asked, putting as much surprise as she could into her voice.

  “I’m not the one to go back and dream over things I can’t have,” the voice told her, above the clacking of the loom.

  Gwyn drew the blanket up over Old Megg’s hands. “I’ll come again,” she said.

  “Bring me some ale, I’d enjoy a mug of ale,” the old woman whispered.

  Gwyn hesitated beside the loom. This cloth would be sold at the Spring Fair. The Weaver and her daughters worked all the year round, making cloth for the fairs. They made light cloth for the Spring Fair, then during the summer the woollen cloth for the Harvest Fair, both dyed brown.

  The Weaver, she thought, would speak more freely in anger. Gwyn considered how to phrase her question.

  “He’s over to the Blacksmith’s,” the Weaver said.

  “I was just thinking,” Gwyn said, “that it must be bitter to leave the house your husband gave you, and the vineyard that should belong to your son.”

  “Your pity is not welcome here. I can see to my family myself—and better without a man to get in my way. As I’ve done, with no thanks to anyone, all these years.”

  “But the land, that had been in his family for—” Gwyn put all the pity she could find into her voice and the Weaver cut her off quickly.

  “It was his father had it forced upon him by the Bailiff, because it had ruined the man before him. You think we wanted to be vineyarders? And live in that tiny hut so we could see the misery of those vines dying, all day long, day after day? You may have a fine spirit, Innkeeper’s daughter—if what they say is true—but you are mightily ignorant,” she concluded with satisfaction.

  “That I am,” Gwyn agreed. “I’ll be away then.”

  “Aye, go run him to earth.”

  Gwyn didn’t bother answering that last barb, but she didn’t go to the forge either. Instead, she went back to the Inn, where there was work to be done. The Inn had belonged to Granda’s father, and his father before him, and back out of memory. There were, she knew, cupboards and parts of the Inn cellar that nobody would have seen into the back of for maybe a hundred years.

  If Old Megg knew about the secret cupboard, and its contents, she would keep her secret. The Weaver knew nothing, of that Gwyn was sure. The Weaver’s tongue ran away with her in anger and she would have spoken. Besides, the Weaver would have sold the clothes if she’d found them. So Gwyn was no nearer an answer to her questions.

  And the snow, she noticed, was settling, so winter was drawing to its close. Soon the barroom would be busy, especially on market days, with the men taking their winter’s work to the cities to sell, so that they could pay the tithes and feed their families until the crops came in. They would have furs to sell, or stools and tables, carved boxes and shelves, or eggs, butter, and cheese. They would have day labor to offer to more fortunate farmers who needed the help to plow fields or to plant them. And the men would stop off at the Inn on their way home from Lord Hildebrand’s city, or the Earl’s city, to exchange news and boast of their sales, and to put off for an hour the return to their homes. The Inn would need to be ready for their custom.

  Getting the Inn ready meant washing down the floor of the barroom with buckets of water heated over the fire, waxing the heavy tables, sharpening knives, and hauling up sacks of flour and casks of ale from the cellars. Because Rose and her mother were busy finishing off the sheets and blankets, the nightgowns and chemises and underskirts that Rose would take to Wes, the work of readying the Inn fell mostly to Gwyn and her father, with Tad an unwilling extra hand and Burl there whenever his chores did not keep him elsewhere. It was late in the second afternoon when, her back aching and her belly nagged by the dull pain of her monthly courses, Gwyn blew up at Tad. She had her hands in the bowl of flour, working the lard into it to make pastry dough. It had rained heavily in the night, mists rose from the hills, and the barroom would be busy. Two casks of ale had to be brought up, the barroom floor had to be washed again and the water for that job steamed over the fire. Tad sat by the fireplace, scraping with his knife at a stick of wood, letting the shavings fall onto the stones. “You’ll wash the floor,” Gwyn decided.

  Tad didn’t look up.

  “Or I’ll box your ears until they ring for three days,” she promised him. She had no patience for his laziness, no sympathy for his youth. “It’s past time for you to do your share.”

  He still didn’t move, but his eyes were on her face and his knife was still.

  “Unless you’d rather do the pastry,” Gwyn said, adding nastily, “but you know what it’ll taste like and Mother will be angry, even at you, if the pies prove bad.” Her fingers worked as she talked, rubbing against the chunks of lard, breaking them down and mixing them in with the fine flour.

  Tad shook his head.

  Gwyn wiped her hands on the cloth she had tied around her waist. She would have him do one piece of honest work, and if she had to club him to do it well, she’d do that too. He knew that, and he was frightened. She knew he was frightened and that pleased her. “There’s nobody to hear you if you cry, so you’d better make up your mind, Tad.”

  “But I can’t. You know that. I’ll spill and burn myself. I’m not big enough and you know it and if you make me . . .” He didn’t finish the threat.

  “If I make you—and make no mistake I plan to—what will you do? Yell for Mother?”

  “I’ll burn myself. I always slop water from the bucket, because I’m not big enough.”

  “I was carrying those buckets when I was much younger. You’re just soft.”

  “I can’t help it,” he said, his voice sulky. “It’s not my fault.”

  He sounded like he really would wail, so Gwyn put her hands back into the pastry and tried to explain things to him. “Look. You don’t fill the bucket to the top, that’s one thing. And you take off your boots and stockings, because it’s the way stockings hold the heat makes a bad burn, so you work barefooted.”

  “But Mother—”

  “Mother will know nothing about it. Honestly, Tad, anyone would think you didn’t have any brains at all. Anyone would think you were just a baby.”

  His cheeks flamed. “Am not.”

  “Then why do you act like one.”

  “Do not.”

  “Do too,” she told him, enjoying the quarrel, letting off her bad temper.

  He jumped up and removed his boots, then peeled down his stockings. He took a jug, to ladle steaming water into the waiting bucket.
Watching him, Gwyn saw that he really did think he would manage to spill boiling water on himself. How could he be so foolish? How could he think that something everybody else could do was beyond him?

  Just before he bent to pick up the bucket he told her, “It’ll be your fault.”

  “Roll up your trousers,” was Gwyn’s only response. She deliberately did not watch him go into the barroom. He’d yell loud enough if anything hurt him. She could count on that.

  The flour coated her hands and her fingers moved in it, sifting through to find the chunks of lard, her thumb rubbing the softening fat against her fingers. The quarrel with Tad had made her feel physically better, at least. The dough was almost fine enough, she thought, digging her hands down along the sides of the bowl, lifting them up to mix the dry pastry, letting her fingers do their quick work. You had to work quickly or the fat softened too much and the pastry would not bake up as flaky as it should. She heard no howls from the next room and felt a grim satisfaction at being proved right. That boy would just grab at the excuse to get out of work.

  She heard him sweeping for a while, then he came back for more water. He would cover the floor with water, then sweep the water and dirt off together, out the door to the yard. She watched him refill the bucket. This time, he picked it up without hesitation, and at his first quick step some water slipped over onto his leg. She waited. He waited. Nothing happened. The water ran down his leg. He looked quickly up at her, but she had her eyes on the flour by then. Of course, she thought, he would not say a word, to admit he had been wrong. She heard him begin sweeping again.

  Gwyn worked cold water into the dough and then let it rest while she set out the molds that she would line with pastry. The filling waited in another bowl—mixed pork and onions and potatoes, seasoned with salt and dried herbs. She took the rolling pin down from the shelf and started to roll out a handful of pastry. The texture felt just about right, she thought.