“Of course it is,” she replied brightly, and, Piers thought, a bit loudly. He frowned and brought his finger to his lips. She complied by speaking next in an exaggerated whisper. “We’re nearly upon the village of Pilings. Were we to continue on, we’d run straight into the butcher. He’s at the river’s edge.”
“Pilings?” he asked. At her game nod, he winced. “Terrible name for a village, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But they are known for their pork.”
“I see.” Piers squatted down next to the packed surface of the road, both to stretch his tight muscles and to listen a moment longer. He heard nothing but the hollow wind, the rush of nearby water, the whisper and creak of the winter trees. He stood. “I hope for their sake that they’ve brought their pigs in to shelter for the night, for if I see one rooting about the leaves, I shall have his side meat for my supper. Come on.”
They crossed the road at a run. Once they were safely to the other side and into the wood proper once more, Alys spoke.
“We could wait for nightfall then go into the village and steal one.”
He looked sideways at her, and couldn’t help his snort of laughter. “Steal a pig? Have you any idea how difficult they are to catch?”
“The piglets, yes. But a full grown one is a bit harder to miss.”
Then he truly laughed. “I’d like to see you try to steal a six hundred pound pig. They’d find your little flattened body under one the next morn and then throw you in a beggar’s grave for a thief.”
“Is that so?” she said haughtily.
“It is.” He stopped at the broken edge of earth that capped a steep ravine down to the churning water. No getting down this way lest he wished to be drowned. Piers turned to his right and began to walk south once more, Alys following him, obviously quite offended.
“You underestimate me, husband. You think I can’t do anything save for lie about and be waited on.”
“Stop calling me husband. And I do believe you can do more than lie about and be waited on.”
“You do?” He heard the shock in her voice.
“Yes. Well, not useful things, such as outfitting yourself properly for a journey, or listening to reason, but you’re actually quite good at walking.”
A clod of wet dirt whisked past his left ear to sail harmlessly into the ravine below.
“You certainly have terrible aim, so no future at all in archery.” Piers felt his spirits lifting merely through the act of speaking aloud. It was rather enjoyable to spar with Alys Foxe. He spied a path down the ravine wall. “Here we are.” And he dropped down over the side with what he himself even thought of as a rather spry hop, leaving Alys to get down through her own devices.
“Ooph! Oh, hold on, Layla! Why are we going to the river again?”
“I need water,” was all Piers was willing to disclose as his feet touched the wet and pebbled strip of ground at the river’s edge. His spirits lifted even further when he spotted the rocky overhang ahead of them, perhaps a third of the way back up the ravine. It would be a perfect shelter for the night—no one looking down from the road would be able to see them. The clouds blanketing the whole of the dark gray sky looked heavy—‘twas likely to rain, or perhaps even snow should it grow colder. They would at least stay dry, if not completely warm.
“We’ll camp up there,” he called to Alys over his shoulder, and pointed toward the overhang as he walked past.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.”
“Oh, I think not,” he heard her mutter. He glanced behind him and saw her hurrying along the river bank at his heels.
He stopped. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going with you.”
“No, you’re not. You can’t.”
“Yes, I can. You’re not leaving me here alone. I’m not a complete idiot, Piers.”
“What are you talking about? I said I’d be back.”
“The oldest trick in the history of trickery!” she cried. “Don’t think I haven’t realized how early in the day it is to be making camp. You think to abandon me here while you go on your merry way with enough daylight to get as much distance between us as possible. Voila! No more Alys.”
“That isn’t my plan at all,” Piers said, and he meant it. But actually, her idea was a rather good one, and Piers wondered why he hadn’t come up with it himself. What better way to be rid of her than to just walk away into the woods on other pretenses and never return? She’d not realize she’d been abandoned for a good hour, and Piers knew he could run a fair distance in that amount of time, even with his whole hand now aching and itching.
“You can’t follow me,” he continued. “It’s a … private matter.”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment and then she flushed as she caught his meaning. Or the meaning he meant for her to catch. Let her think he meant to go find a nice comfortable log over which to move his bowels.
But then her face went suspicious again. “I don’t believe you.”
“I give you my word, I shall return.”
“Not good enough,” she said. He noted her eyes roving over his body and then she smiled. “Leave your bag as ransom.”
“What?”
“Your pack. Leave it with me so that I will be certain of your return.”
He rolled his eyes but then began to shrug out of his shoulder straps. He swung the bag in front of him and thrust his hand under the flap to find his only other clothing, the rough linen shirt he’d been wearing when Bevan had attacked him. Although the tears had been inexpertly mended by his savior, the old monk, the raggedy thing was stained a horrible brown from Piers’s own blood, even after being boiled at the abbey.
“Oh, no,” she said and then before he could stop her, she had snatched the bag from his grasp, his shirt stretched between his fist and the pack. “If whatever you’re searching for is that important, you’ll return for it.”
He frowned at her and considered taking the bag back by force. He also considered strangling her. But the first would only assure him that he would be followed and have an audience for his bath, and he was not capable of the second, although right at that moment he was quite willing. So he simply jerked his shirt free.
“‘Tis naught but a clean shirt,” he said, shaking it at her before turning and beginning to walk along the riverbank, and continuing to rail at her. “I’m not going to ride it to London, for Christ’s sake! Just afford me a bit of privacy, would you? And take care with my pack.”
“Gladly!” she called after him. “Don’t miss me too much! Enjoy your ‘private moment!’”
Piers winced and turned to shout back at her, “You’re quite crude for a girl, do you know?”
She smiled and waved and then turned to scramble up the bank to the rock overhang.
“I might be a bit,” he called loudly. “Don’t worry.”
She threw up a careless hand, indicating that she had heard him, but didn’t bother to look at him this time.
Piers missed her already.
It didn’t take Alys long to set up her part of the primitive camp. She had nothing to unpack. The sounds of the river below swirled inside the mock cave with a hollow echo, and she dropped her bag near the back of the overhang, where the dirt was bone dry and soft like flour. She tossed Piers’s pack next to hers, and then a moment later fell upon it, ripping at the ties. She leaned back once, looking down the river for sight of him. She saw none, so she turned her attention back to the pack, jerking it open fully.
She tried simply rifling through the contents, but they were jumbled together in the shadows of the deep leather bag, and so she finally resigned to pulling them out one by one and setting them on the ground.
A small roll of what looked like old, clean but stained, bandages. His brown jug—she shook it, and at the watery rattle, uncorked it and turned it up. The droplets tasted faintly of soured wine, and Alys wondered how long it had been since the jug had contained proper fruit. Her tongue was barely moistene
d, but the jug was now emptied of all but air, and so she recorked it and set it in the dirt.
The remaining items were of even less interest: a small pouch containing a flint and steel; a pair of woolen hose that looked at if they had been half eaten by a wolf, and stained the same terrible brown as the bandages. Those she dropped into a pile with a wrinkle of her nose. Two sheathed blades emerged next—one large and serrated, the other slender and fine-edged, but both looked potentially deadly. A piece of oilcloth that contained naught but the strong smell of herring and a few pebbles of old, brown bread. Alys quickly popped the crumbs into her mouth.
A small, carved wooden bowl, and a crudely fashioned cross on a string of rough wooden beads rounded out the contents. Alys grinned at the cross—it must be a part of his poorly executed costume that he’d elected to forgo. Perhaps Piers feared God would strike him dead should he wear it, the liar.
Alys looked around her at the meager collection of items from the pack. Nothing. Not one piece of anything that gave her the tiniest insight to the enigmatic man she traveled with. She knew that her sister, Cecily, would be horrified to learn that Alys had gone through another’s belongings without their permission, but Piers was obviously in a desperate situation, and Alys meant to help him, whether he wanted her to or nay.
She paused as the thought reminded her of something Sybilla might say, but then Alys pushed the uncomfortable idea away, reassuring herself that she was nothing like her eldest sister.
She began returning the items to the pack with a sigh. She would have to depend on what Piers deigned to tell her. At the rate they were going, she might know his surname by London.
Alys was reaching for the only thing left—the roll of bandages—when Layla scampered over and snatched up the old ball of cloth and began to worry at it.
“It’s no toy, Layla, give it over.” Alys leaned forward and swiped at the monkey’s hands, snagging the end of the bandage in her fingertips. “Give it, before he comes back and we’re both caught.”
Layla chattered indignantly and threw the ball forcefully at Alys. It bounced off of her cheek and to the ground, unrolling like a skinny rug as she held on to its end. As the last bit unfurled, it spit a small golden object onto the dirt.
After an instant of disbelief, Alys raced the monkey to the piece and snatched it up just as Layla screamed with frustration.
“Oh, stop,” she muttered, holding the golden thing between her thumb and forefinger and peering at it.
It was a ring, made of thick, hammered gold. At its center was a dark, oval carnelian stone, engraved with a bold letter M.
“Em,” Alys mused aloud. “Mallory, perhaps? But why would Piers have the Mallory signet ring? Bevan was Warin Mallory’s only son.”
Don’t be so certain.
Alys frowned at Layla, working out the riddle aloud. “Judith Angwedd is not Piers’s mother. Bevan is his stepbrother, and Bevan tried to kill Piers. Piers alluded to the fact that Bevan was not Warin Mallory’s only—oh!” Alys gasped and Layla chattered nervously. “Piers is Mallory’s son, as well! But, then Bevan would be his half brother, not step. And ‘tis obvious that ugly oaf is of Judith Angwedd’s issue. Bevan would only be Pier’s stepbrother if Piers was Warin Mallory’s son and … and Bevan was not!”
Alys let her hand holding the ring drop to her lap as her mouth hung open. She continued to advise Layla, who was now sitting on her heels with both small hands over her eyes.
“Piers is on his way to see the king, and Judith Angwedd and Bevan are desperate to stop him, even to see him dead. It all makes sense now! Piers is trying to take Gillwick from Bevan! Piers is the rightful lord of Gillwick Manor!”
Alys’s breath huffed out of her disbelievingly as Layla scampered away to sit atop their bag and worry at the fur over one knee, as if the monkey was trying to ignore her. Alys looked down at the ring once more.
“He is noble,” she whispered. “Sybilla would allow it.” Her head turned, and she stared down the river where Piers had disappeared. “I knew the Foxe Ring couldn’t be wrong.”
Then she hurriedly gathered up the string of bandage and rewrapped the ring, shoving it deep into the bottom of the pack once more. She retied the flap closed and placed the pack in what she hoped was a nonchalant position against her own limp bag. She adjusted its slouch twice for effect.
Her thoughts tumbled, like the river over the rocks below. She couldn’t be certain of what she suspected of course, not until Piers confirmed it. But she was just certain enough now to not give up on him.
“A celebration is in order,” Alys said to Layla. She patted her thigh while she gained her feet, and the monkey came scampering, climbing her skirt in a blink to sit on her shoulder. She picked up her bag and untied the drawstring, holding the bag open by its edges.
“Go on,” she said to Layla, and shrugged her shoulder. “I know you don’t like it, but I can’t leave you behind and you’ll have a great treat once we’re through.”
Once Layla was safely—albeit resentfully—confined, Alys drew the strap across her body. She paused in thought for only an instant before seizing and then shrugging into Piers’s too-big pack. Then she left the rock shelter and began to climb the bank.
Alys knew she was taking a grave risk by following the road into Pilings, even though she didn’t let her shoes so much as touch the packed dirt. She skipped-ran along the fringe of trees in her haste, one arm around the warm lump that was Layla, to keep from offending the monkey too much with her hurried passage. But she had to find some way to be of use to Piers, to get him to trust her. Perhaps by gaining them some much-needed supplies, he would feel her more worthy as a traveling companion, and even a friend.
Alys wondered with a wry lift of her mouth if all wives struggled so to gain their husbands’ confidence.
He was rough, she admitted readily. Like a field dressed side of meat, rolled around in the dirt. Show him a bit of washing up though, expose his toughened hide to a generous warmth, and he could very possibly be quite delicious. Never in her life had she been responsible for another person’s wants or needs—not even her own, really, and Alys was determined to win this challenge. If she had to steal, she would steal. But she would not return to the little camp by the river without the booty she set out for.
And besides, she was starving. She hadn’t eaten a morsel in two days; Layla, since the night before. She already knew that Piers’s bag was devoid of anything to eat. So unless he came back from his toilette with a feral chicken, they were all in desperate need of food.
As she hurried, looking around her all the time for sign of him or anyone else following her, she was also taking stock of her appearance. Both her fine cloak and the worn woolen gown beneath it were filthy from sleeping on the ground, full of bits of leaves and winter nettle. She held out one hand to inspect her fingers—disgusting. The creases of her knuckles and undersides of her nails were packed with black dirt. She turned her hand over and saw a thick layer of dried mud—likely from when she had thrown the clod of dirt at Piers. Should she wipe her hands on her skirt, ‘twould only serve to worsen her appearance. She frowned. She could see the dwellings just ahead through the last bend of trees. With the awkward burdens of Piers’s pack and her own bag, her cloak could only conceal a portion of her common skirt. Anyone happening upon her in the village would indeed take her for a thief or a—
“A beggar!” Alys said aloud with a grin. Of course! Should she scamper in to town, a clean and tidy woman walking along the road alone in a sable-lined cloak, it would only serve to raise suspicion and interest. She came to an abrupt halt.
Alys slid out of the pack and eased Layla’s confinement to the ground, then took off her cloak and hid it away in Piers’s pack. She looked fondly at her filthy palm once more before scrubbing the crumbly dirt all over her cheeks and forehead, while Layla chattered and writhed and fought within the bag on the side of the road.
“Fear not, noble Layla—your captivity will be short. A b
eggar, they will want to be rid of rather quickly.” She paused suddenly as another idea came into her head. She quickly jerked the tie out of her hair, wincing as several strands went with it, and then bent to the ground, swiping up a large handful of the forest floor. She raked the molding leaves and twigs through her hair, tangling and snarling her locks until they stood out from her face in crazy, dirty lumps.
“There! A mad beggar, they will wish gone immediately!” She reclaimed Piers’s pack and hitched her sack over her head to seat the strap across her chest. “Sorry, girl. Ow! Don’t pinch!” She gave the bundled monkey a light pat through the bag and then she skittered around the curve of forest and breached Pilings behind the farthest row of cottages.
The settlement was largely quiet, save for the honking of some goose across the town and the sharp ringing sound of perhaps someone banging a spoon against the side of a pot. A dog barked twice, from a safe distance away, and then all was silent.
Alys stepped carefully along the narrow avenue of daubed wall and wood, her crunching footsteps making her wince. She pulled a face as she realized there was no rear window on the north wall of this particular cottage. She came to the corner of the house and slowly, slowly peered around it. The village center was straight ahead, and empty. She bolted across the twenty or so feet to duck behind the next cottage backing the wood. She reckoned in this manner, she could make her way around the entire town without being seen.
The rear of the next cottage was also devoid of anything useful, as was the one after. She was coming upon the far corner of her current cover, growing more cross with each impatient step, when she ran full body into the woman coming around the side of the house.
The woman, matronly and kind-faced, cried out and threw up her hands, dropping her shallow basket of kitchen scraps. Alys stepped back quickly, and then, remembering her ruse, dropped into a crouch.
“Halloo, halloo! Don’t ‘urt me, milady, I beg of ye!” Alys was rather proud of her put-on accent.
“Good gracious, child!” the woman gasped, and took in Alys’s appearance with a look of distrust. “Just who might you be, and what business have you sneaking about the backside of my house?”
Never Kiss A Stranger Page 9