Tale of Gwyn (27 page)

“I have no wish to harm you,” she said. Relief washed over his face, and a little rush of air came squeaking out of his mouth. She let him enjoy that feeling briefly, then added, “I would not hesitate to do so.”

He nodded, not so worried now. “What is it you want of me?”

Distant birds sang to one another and her horse moved quietly. “I want you to bring three men to justice. I know that they are thieves and murderers, and they may be much else besides.”

“Are they soldiers?”

“Three of the people.”

“But I can't do that. The law doesn't—unless—did they attack a Messenger?”

“No, they attacked a holding.”

“But you know as well as I do that—”

“You will have these men taken, and you will hang them for their crimes.”

“I can't. I really can't. You have to see that. There is no law for that.”

Gwyn's temper rose. “Steward, you will do this.”

He shook his head slowly.

“And why not?” The heat was in her voice.

“Because I serve the Earl only as his Steward. I have no power to—”

Gwyn hadn't thought of that. “Who has the power?” She cut him off.

“The Earl, if he wanted. I'm afraid what you ask is impossible for me to do.”

“The people are hungry and afraid. They fear famine and the Lord's taxes, they fear the soldiers and the rumors of war. Now they fear one another. Does the Earl know what men filled with fear and with little to lose might do?”

Of course the Earl knew this. Why else did he guard his own with so many soldiers?

The Steward's light eyes assessed her masked face. “Yes, he knows.”

“Then, Steward, you will have to convince him. The people will remain quiet under a Lord who protects them.”

He couldn't argue the truth of that.

“Will you convince them?” Gwyn asked.

“I will try. I give you my word.”

Gwyn didn't care to rely on his word. Cold again, and scornful of his cowardice—he feared her, he feared his master, who did he not fear?—she made a suggestion. “The Earl will be grateful to the man who put into his hands such a means of quieting the unrest in his land.”

His face showed how he was calculating that. “Yes,” he finally agreed, “and especially if that man sought no fame for himself in the deed.” He considered the whole thing, and then nodded his head, once again himself, Steward to Earl Northgate. “You have proof?”

“The proof of my eyes.”

“I doubt somehow that you will be allowed an audience with the Earl.”

Gywn didn't care for his sarcasm. She didn't respond, but stared icily down at the man sitting cross-legged in his finery on the ground, until the Steward remembered his own situation.

“Then, sir, can you give me a description of the men?” he asked her.

“One has a gimpy leg, and one has a scar like a crescent on his cheek. The third—has no such mark on him. All are unshorn, unkempt, filthy. They live together half a day's journey to the west from the waterfall that begins the river that runs to the west of the High City. Their hut has no fireplace and no bed. There is a shed nearby, a three-sided shed. The holding sits on the eastern side of a rocky hill.”

The Steward opened his long book and wrote in it with charcoal. Gwyn looked down on him, watching his hands move. She held the sword steady.

“And if they say they are innocent? Which is what they will most probably say.”

“Put the book before me,” she said. He placed it open at her feet. She crouched down, shifting the sword to her left hand. He dragged himself back several paces, to show that he would not try to attack her. And no wonder, Gwyn thought; if he could gain favor with the Earl, that would be worth more to him than capturing Jackaroo.

She turned to a fresh page. THESE ARE THE MEN, she wrote. Underneath, she wrote her name, JACKAROO.

She stood up, and he crept over to read what she had written. “It's not—”

“Men have been hanged for less,” she told him. “The birds have had their eyes while the people danced below.”

That silenced him.

“My word is good,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Now, I will have your ring,” she said.

“But—”

“Give it to me.” She spaced the words well apart, so that his heart would fail. He slipped the Earl's signet off his finger. She leaned down to take it from him.

“This will come back to you when the three have been taken,” she promised him. “You will know by that that you have taken the guilty men. The Earl would not want to hang innocent men.” The Earl, as Gwyn well knew, cared little about hanging innocent men, and neither did his Steward. This was the only safeguard Gwyn could think of, and she hoped that it would make the Steward careful to take the right men. It would be all too easy for a troop of soldiers to ride out of the city gates and take up the first three men they saw and hang them. But if the Steward had lost his master's ring, he would be eager to get it back before the loss was noticed. Eager enough, Gwyn hoped, to see that the job was done properly, and quickly too.

The interview was over. She planted her feet apart and held the sword out straight at him, its hilt in both her hands. “You may go.”

He scrambled up. He gathered into his arms the soldiers' clothing and his long book. He stared hard at her. “I will know you again, sir,” he said, bold enough now.

Gwyn did not respond. She waited where she was until his footsteps had faded and then turned quickly to mount her horse and ride off. One of the first things the Steward would do, if she read the man correctly, was return to this place with a troop of soldiers.

With Da's cloak flung over the front of the saddle, she rode for open fields, skirting the edge of the woods. She dared not take the King's Way. It was too crowded in those days.

Gwyn scarcely recognized the field she rode beside until she turned her head to the left and saw the log house there, its chimney smoking only a little on the warm day, and the three figures outside in the sunlight. Hap leaned his back against the side of the house and Granny walked slowly, bent over, to pour out a bowl of dirty water. The goat was grazing peacefully.

The goat lifted her little head at the sound of hoofbeats. Granny saw it and looked up. Gwyn reined in the horse. She lifted her hat from her masked head and waved it in the air. The old woman's hand rose in answer. Gwyn rode off.

There was a smile on her face as she rode on east, but it soon faded. As the horse cantered along underneath her, she wondered where the gladness had gone.

But she knew the answer: Because ride as she might, all the days and nights of her life, she could never do all that might be done. The Kingdom was too large. It needed more than Jackaroo to safeguard the people.

The Steward's ring hung heavy on her thumb, rolling loosely around. It was cast of gold, with the bear cut deeply into it. As Gwyn walked back from Old Megg's, leading the horse, she held the ring heavy in her hand. She would hide it with her few remaining coins. How she would return it to the Steward, she had not thought. If Jackaroo rode in to give it back, they would be waiting for him.

First, she would see those three men brought in, then she would worry about the ring. In the meantime, there was her father to be answered.

It was not only Da, but Mother and Tad as well, in the kitchen when she entered. She hung Da's cloak back up where it belonged. Burl had taken the horse from her without a word and told her they wanted her inside. He had no question for her.

Mother started in while Gwyn's back was still to the room. “Well, Gwyn. And what do you have to say? Aye, don't try to make excuses. I don't know what you've been up to, where you've gone—who you've met with. Leaving your day's work for other people is bad enough. And the worry—Just look at her, husband, walking in here as if she—as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. It's a thrashing she needs, and I say so to her face.”

Tad's eyes danced. Gwyn thought she'd like to clip him one, just to take the smugness off his face.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Mother continued. “Where have you been?”

Gwyn didn't speak.

“She's no better than she ought to be, I'll tell you that,” Mother warned Da.

“Was it a man?” Da asked.

Gwyn didn't answer. It would be better if they thought she had been meeting a man.

“It'll be that Cam, I'll wager,” Mother muttered. “She's just about that much sense. Well, you can try to talk to her. I've no interest in her. I've sheets to hang out and no time to waste on a girl who doesn't care how her family worries, or what people say. You should have made her marry, husband, and I told you so at the time. If the fancy strikes you, daughter,” she said bitterly, “you might make some pastry. Tad—you come with me.”

“But, Mother,” Tad protested.

“You heard me. Don't you start giving me trouble too. You see how it is, husband?”

When they were alone, Da told Gwyn to sit down. She obeyed, holding her hands folded together in her lap, to conceal the ring she wore on her thumb.

“Well, daughter?” Da asked. He stood by the fire, looking down at her. Gwyn met his eyes, but said nothing.

Da looked unhappy, and she was sorry for that. But there was nothing she could do about it.

“Were you with a man?”

Gwyn did not answer.

Da sighed and sat down facing her. His neat beard was redder than his head, which dimmed as he grew older. His eyes studied Gwyn's face. “Is it that you are regretting your choice?” he asked gently. “Because if you are, I would say you had changed your mind. Let people talk; I would say that for you.”

His gentleness almost undid Gwyn. “You know you can't do that,” she reminded him.

“Aye, and I don't. I know that nobody has done it.” He was angry. “I know also that I would want you to have a husband, to govern you. It's almost my birthday.”

Gwyn didn't know why he should mention that.

“I'll be naming my heir. I would name you my heir.”

He had utterly surprised her. She opened her mouth, but could find no words to put into it.

“It would be better if you had a husband.”

Gwyn had never thought she would be named the heir. Not when he had a son to inherit. She didn't know he thought so well of her, or so little of Tad. She was pleased and she was sorry, and she didn't know what she might say to him. “Aye, perhaps it would. But it is too late for that now.”

He shook his head impatiently. “I would say you had persuaded me against my better judgement. Let people talk—they could do nothing.”

Gwyn shook her head. If she had known he was thinking of this, there
were
perhaps men . . . If, if, again if. She remembered her thought on the day of the fair: If there were a man who also saw the body hanging above the walls, then that man she might make her life with. But there was no such man and now it was too late. The announcement had been made.

“You might take a widower,” Da suggested.

“No,” Gwyn said. She had made her choice and she would abide by it. She had put Jackaroo's mask on and worn his clothes. She had become him and he had become her. There was no going back now.

“Then I will name you even without a man.”

“Da, you must let me think.” She could be the Innkeeper, and she would husband the holdings and take care of her family; she would do it well, she knew that, and she could do it easily. “You must say nothing until I think,” she told him. There was steel in her voice.

Da recognized it, and she knew she had routed him just as much as she had routed her mother. There was no one but herself, now, that she would follow. Others might try to impose their ways on her, but they could not now move her, any more than the winds could move the mountains. She felt sorry for Da, though, and glad of his faith in her. “You think too little of Tad,” she said.

“Think you?” he asked, without real interest. “Perhaps there is only so much second best that a man will take for his fair measure.”

That puzzled Gwyn and she could not answer it, so she held her tongue.

“You've changed, daughter.”

She didn't deny it.

“I think I should never have sent you north with the Lords. Did something happen, while you were away—?”

She couldn't tell him that what had happened had happened when she returned, and that it was he himself who had done it. There would be no profit to telling him that. So she smiled at him, her face a bright mask, and said no, nothing happened. “But something will happen if I don't start the pastry.” She laughed.

“Aye,” he said, giving up, giving way. “We've had word that the highwayman will journey by here in two days, so there'll be an extra lot of baking to be done.” He left her then.

Gwyn hid the ring away in her purse with the remaining five gold pieces. Before she set out to work measuring flour and lard, she went into the stables to see if Burl needed help with the horse she had ridden. She found him currying the animal. “Have you time for this?” she asked.

“Osh aye, I do,” he answered quietly. “But we must be more careful with these beasts. Too many get away when they are in our care.”

“Did the Captain ask for it?”

“Aye, and he'll be pleased to learn that you have caught it.”

So now Gwyn knew what to answer should anyone question her.

“Gwyn, are you content?”

What an odd question, of all the questions he might have asked. Gwyn thought for a bit before she answered. Burl asked questions even as the land grew grass, as if he would wait easily for the answer. She was, she thought, happy enough, and proud, yes, that; she was fearful, and with some reason. “I'm content,” she told him. The question was so like Burl, it was so like him to think to ask that question, that her spirits eased a little. “Are you?” she asked.