Tale of Gwyn (28 page)

Burl had a slow, easy smile. “Content enough, if you are.”

Whatever that might mean. “Da wants to name me his heir.” Gwyn surprised herself by saying that aloud. She thought she had learned to govern her tongue.

“Will he do that, now,” Burl wondered.

“I don't know. I don't know if he should.”

“Until it is decided, I don't think you should tell anyone else,” he advised her.

“How stupid do you think I am?” she snapped at him, turning abruptly on her heels and leaving him behind. But she heard him laughing quietly behind her as she strode across the yard with her head high.

T
HEY KNEW, ALMOST TO THE
hour, when the highwayman and his escort of soldiers would journey along the King's Way. By early afternoon the Inn was crowded with those who had come from fields and hills. The day shone with early summer sunlight, and the people were merry, as if it were a fair. Gwyn served cider to the women, who waited in the Inn yard with the children. Tad helped Da inside, among the men. When the time was right, they all went to take their places alongside the King's Way, basking in afternoon sunlight and holiday conversation.

The Innkeeper and his family, Rose and Wes with them, stood in a little group together. No hint of a wind moved the sign under which they stood. Burl waited nearby, his pipe playing quietly until he took it from his mouth at the sound of hoofs.

Two soldiers on horseback came first, their green capes bright and their faces tanned. Behind walked two more soldiers, high boots dusty and short swords at their sides. Between them walked the third man.

The highwayman's clothes were brown and torn, stained with dirt and sweat. Two ropes circled his neck before leading like reins, one to each of the soldiers walking guard. His hands were tied behind his bent back. His feet, the soles of the felt shoes flapping, dragged with exhaustion. As he came up to the pathway to the Inn, he lifted his face and squared his shoulders. He looked about him.

The people stared at him, even the children silent. His faded hair hung lank and uncut down to his shoulders; his beard hung gray and greasy over his chest. His eyes scanned the watching people without interest.

The little procession halted, so that the people could look their fill.

His face was lean and pale. His nose jutted out. His eyes moved listlessly over the faces and then toward the land beyond them, where the Inn stood invisible. He breathed in, as a thirsty man drinks water. Gwyn could not look at him and turned her eyes to the dirt at her feet; but she could still see him—a tall, thin, exhausted figure, with the ropes leading off as if he were a dangerous animal.

She heard her mother draw in a hissing breath. When she looked to see what was wrong, she saw that her mother stared at the highwayman with a stony face.

“Innkeeper”—the highwayman broke the silence—“I could swallow a glass of ale.” His voice was cracked and ragged, but still bold.

Da answered slowly. “Highwayman, it is not permitted.”

The highwayman shrugged thin shoulders and then smiled right at Da. His teeth were rough and yellow, where they were not black with rot. When he smiled he looked like a wolf.

“Come on, you,” one of the soldiers said. The procession moved along, took the turning to the village, and headed north. Some of the people followed, joining others who walked along behind; others turned back to the Inn while the rest returned home. There was an air of excitement. “Aye, he'll not hang easy.” “He's been kept hungry, and whipped too, I don't doubt, in the cells.” “Osh, if that's all they've done to him he'll count himself lucky.”

Da had an arm around Mother's shoulder and she walked close up next to him. He told Burl to serve with Tad in the barroom and went with his wife into the kitchen, sitting down beside her at the table. Their shoulders touched as they sat there, but they did not speak to one another. Both stared unseeing at the table.

Gwyn waited for several minutes before she opened her mouth to ask them what was the matter. But she never got to ask the question, because Blithe marched into the kitchen at that moment, her black hair shining and her shoulders high. In her arms, she carried a baby, wrapped around with a soft blanket. She sat down facing her parents, her expression defiant, the baby close to her chest.

Da and Mother looked at one another, but Blithe was already talking.

“Guy has gone to see the man at the village. We were late leaving the holding, but I wanted to visit with you. How have you been keeping, Mother?”

This was the old Blithe, her lips biting back a smile, her chin stubborn as she waited to hear what her mother would ask about the child.

But Mother was slow to speak, so Da said, “We have been well. We have soldiers quartered here.”

“Soldiers are quartered everywhere, in all the nearby villages,” Blithe said. “So I hear. Aye, and there's need of them. One of our neighbors, Am, the pigman, was attacked in his own house. Beaten and robbed.”

“Am robbed?” Mother asked. “But what could he have to take?”

“Nothing now, but he had two gold coins. He'd been boasting about what he'd do with them; he'd talked carelessly—he said Jackaroo—”

“He always was a fool,” Mother snapped. She seemed to have regained her spirit, Gwyn noticed.

“Still, it would be hard.” Da tried to make peace.

“And what is that baby doing?” Mother demanded.

Blithe unwrapped the blanket to display the sleeping child. “What do you think?” she asked. “Isn't he handsome?”

“He's not yours,” Mother announced.

“Aye, he is.”

Mother snorted.

“He was given to me to raise. His parents were killed.”

“Who were his parents?”

“That, I don't know,” Blithe said. “I've named him Joss.”

Mother stood up abruptly. “You've given him the name of your own son?”

“Aye, he is my own son now, Mother,” Blithe said.

“Is Guy letting you take in some—foundling—and who knows who his parents were?”

“Aye, he is,” Blithe answered.

“That somebody dropped into your cowshed at night, I don't doubt,” Mother said.

“No. He was brought to me and I will raise him. He'll be your grandson, Mother,” Blithe insisted.

Gwyn kept her face like a mask. She had thought Blithe would prove stubborn.

Mother was doubtful. “Brought to you, and by who then?”

“Jackaroo,” Blithe told her.

There was a moment's silence.

“You know better than to believe those old tales,” Mother scolded, her voice scornful. “Or to expect me to believe them.” Then she burst into tears and fled from the room.

Gwyn didn't have to pretend surprise. They all listened to the sound of Mother running up the stairs.

“You shouldn't vex your mother,” Da told Blithe. “And I wouldn't quarrel with her myself, daughter, but you look as you should, with the child in your arms, I'll not deny it.”

“It's true, Da. It's really true. Guy's mother was there, she saw. He came into the house, just the way he does in the stories. Just the way we used to talk about it, Gwyn. He was there, suddenly in the room, and tall and—lordly. Da? He didn't say anything, except about raising Joss, but I could see—he had high boots and silver buckles, and his voice rang out. I couldn't say no, Da.”

Lordly? Gwyn felt her cheeks burning. And tall? People saw what they wanted to see. She could keep herself from smiling but she knew her eyes were shining. Just like in the stories, Blithe said, and lordly.

Da had eyes only for his eldest daughter. “Take the boy up to your mother, Blithe, and sit with her. She—remembers the past too clearly, sometimes, and she loved your Joss.”

“So did I,” Blithe answered. “As I love my Joss here.”

“She will too,” Da promised. “You know your mother.”

It was Tad, Gwyn realized, reminded by Mother's sudden tears, who was most like Mother. She hadn't realized before how like the two were.

She did realize, however, that something was troubling Da, who had sat down to his own thoughts before Blithe had even left the room. “Are you worried about Mother?”

“A man can expect his fair measure of worry,” Da answered her, telling her nothing.

“Da—he shouldn't have asked you for a drink. Why did he ask you? Did you know him?”

“Aye, I knew him once, long ago,” Da said. “I'll hear no more questions, daughter. Have you nothing to do?”

If Gwyn had stopped to think, she would not have said what she did. But she did not stop to think. “If I am to be your heir,” she said, “then I should have the truth of it.”

Da looked tired, worn down, and sad. “Aye, perhaps. You might find the truth not welcome though. The truth is, that man is my brother.”

“Your
brother
? I didn't know you had a brother.”

“Aye, you did know. It's Win.”

“But he's dead.”

“No, daughter. Not yet.”

Gwyn thought. “And you refused him a drink.”

“It isn't permitted, you know that. As he knew, too.”

“Oh, Da, I'm sorry,” Gwyn said, although precisely what for she could not have said. She sat down with her father. “He doesn't look at all the way I imagined Uncle Win.”

“And how would you look, do you think, after a winter in Sutherland's cells and that long journey through every village for the people to stare at and the hangman's noose all that awaited you at the end.”

They heard the tolling of the bell from the village, calling people to hear the highwayman do what he must. Gwyn sat silent with her father, hearing not the sounds nearby—the voices from the barroom and the Inn yard—but what she could not hear: The worn voice of the highwayman, inviting all who stood gawping at him to come to his hanging, that they might see what waited for such men as he.

After a while, she said, “They'll hang him at Northgate's City.”

Da didn't answer.

“I wonder what turned him to it,” Gwyn said. And why, she asked herself angrily, had they all been told that he was dead.

“He turned himself to it,” Da answered.

“It's not every man hanged who is guilty,” Gwyn answered.

“They do not journey a man unless they know what he is,” Da reminded her. His voice was low and ashamed.

“Do they hang women?” Gwyn wondered.

“If it suits them, I think they must. We will all go to this hanging then, think you, daughter? I would not have him die alone.”

“Aye, Da,” Gwyn agreed. But, she promised herself, he would not die at all if she could manage it. Highwayman or no, he was her father's brother, and her own blood. Surely the long winter in Sutherland's dungeons was punishment enough for whatever robbing he had done. “I'll weed the garden, since Tad is busy,” she told her father. She wanted to pull up the little green weeds and to think. Because what did she mean making herself such promises? Who did she think she was?

“See that all is well in the barroom first, if you will,” Da asked her. “I would—sit here awhile yet.”

Only Tad served in the barroom, and the men were leaving to go back to their holdings and their work. They had a hanging holiday ahead, so they stepped lightly back to their labors. Tad stood by the door, to wish them a fair journey home, his eyes going often to the few remaining men, ready to answer their calls should they need more. Gwyn saw Am sitting alone near the empty fireplace, his round head held low, his face bruised, and his mouth split by a deep cut. He held one arm painfully still in his lap while the other curled around his mug of ale. She went to him.

“I am sorry to hear of your trouble.”

“Trouble,” he mumbled. “It's not just a trouble, it's my downfall. It was two gold pieces they took, and with the one I could have paid the next year's taxes as well as this, and with the other I could have offered a woman a home and now—” His round eyes filled with tears as he looked up at her. “What will become of me now?”

Gwyn had no pity for him. It was his own loose tongue that had done this to him, and he felt only pity for himself. The man was spineless. The two coins had been wasted on him.

“Aye, well,” she murmured, turning away.

His hands grabbed at her skirt. “Innkeeper's daughter, could you not take my girl to work at the Inn here?”

“She's too young. Don't you need her to take care of the boys? What are you thinking of?”

“What is there for me to think of but trouble and more trouble. There were so many of them, seven of them and trained fighters; how could I fight them off? How can such a man as I am take care of his own? Aye, you have no idea.”

Gwyn had an idea that there were no more seven thieves than there were no thieves. Am was telling the story his own way, to wallow in his own bad luck.

“I'll take the children to the Hiring Fair, then,” he said. “Though it's hard. The priests will find places for them. The girl is pretty enough, she might be taken into a Lord's service, think you?”

“You should find a woman,” Gwyn told him, her voice cold.

“You're cruel, Innkeeper's daughter.”

Gwyn thought perhaps she was, but nonetheless she turned away from him. It was little use to give him gold. If she could find a fine, strong-tongued woman to drive him, that might be of use to him. She went back through the kitchen, where Da did not hear or see her, and out to the garden. There, she bent to the weeds.

Her strong fingers worked in the soil, pulling up the little shoots, and the sun poured down over her back. Was she then to put into Am's hands another pair of coins? All he would do would be to lose them, somehow. There were too many like Am among the people, too many who gave up the fight. But what could you expect, when all of life was so hard and hopeless? How could someone fight and know he never would win? And who was the enemy? Could a man fight off a long winter or a dry summer? No more than he could fight against the Lords. Aye, the people could not manage without the Lords, they were children unable to take care of themselves.