Tale of Gwyn (34 page)

“Thank you,” Gwyn said. “Tad?” she asked him.

He shrugged.

“How did you know?”

“I watched where they held Win that night. I didn't know what you were thinking of, why you had brought food and wine to the soldiers, what you might try. I saw you go into the prison house.”

“But I was—”

“Osh, and you think I don't know how you walk? And didn't you recognize me?”

“But how did you?”

“You've been in a fever these five days. I have come, when I could. Tad too, but they keep him close. They say,” and his eyes stayed quiet on her face, “that the Weaver's son has gone to be a soldier.”

Gwyn didn't know why he told her that as if it mattered.

“They say that the Innkeeper's daughter ran off to be with him. It's certain that she hasn't been seen nor heard of since that day. She has taken her gold with her, they say.”

Gwyn swallowed that information. Then she sputtered with weak laughter. “There's not much gold left. Aye, Mother'll not be pleased. Does Da—?”

“They say it serves him right. They say it's time he had some bad luck to bring him even with others, after he spoiled the girl so.”

“He doesn't know?”

Burl shook his head. “If you had died,” he explained, “it would have made no difference. I don't know now what you want him to know.”

“I would not have him think I ran off with Cam.”

“He's sent for the men to pick the grapes,” Burl told her.

“Then I have to get out of here.” Alarm gave her energy.

“We have a day or two yet. You should sleep again now. I have to return before I'm missed.”

She didn't argue. Besides, she was exhausted, and sleep was welcome.

Someone who was not Burl entered the hut, waking her, late in the afternoon, stepping out of golden sunlight. Gwyn felt her helplessness sharply.

“It's only me,” Tad said. “How are you?” He too carried a bowl. He too pulled the stool over to her bedside, as if he were accustomed to do so.

Surprise opened Gwyn's mouth, and he put a piece of bread, soaked in lukewarm broth, into it. She chewed and swallowed impatiently. “I can feed myself,” she told him.

Tad grinned at her. “Burl said you were much better. Aye, you frightened me, Gwyn. And why did you do that, anyway?” he asked, switching to anger.

“I don't know what you mean,” she mumbled.

“I saw you throw that ring. I'm not as stupid as you think.”

Gwyn ate with her fingers and considered her little brother. “I've never thought you stupid,” she told him at last. “It's good to see you, Tad.”

“And you, Gwyn. It's good to see you. I thought—we were afraid—”

“That I'd run off with Cam? Well, I can understand why you would,” she finished his sentence for him.

“No, I knew you wouldn't do that. Da only thinks so because Mother wants him to.”

“She dotes on you.”

“Aye, she does. Well, that needn't ruin my life, think you?”

“No.”

“What we thought was that you'd die.”

“Without you, I might have, as I understand it. But I didn't, did I? What I'll do now, since I haven't died, I don't know—except I think I need to go to the privy.”

“Oh good,” Tad said, then he blushed red. “No, I mean, you've been so sick, and we couldn't stay with you. They'd know, if I left the Inn at night. Burl's making you a crutch to walk with; he'll bring it here tonight. Use my shoulder,” he offered.

They hobbled together down to the privy, and then back again. Gwyn's forehead was cold with sweat when she finally lay back down on the bed. “Are you all right?” Tad asked.

“Weak. I didn't know I'd be so weak. Tad—” Her hands flew to her ears and then to the rest of her head, where there were no braids. “Where's my hair?”

“We had to cut it off. You were twisting and it was hot, you said.”

Gwyn's fingers found where her hair stopped, just below her ears.

“I'm sorry, Gwyn. We had to.”

“That's all right. It just felt so strange for a minute. How do I look?”

“Pretty terrible,” Tad told her. “Burl will think of something,” he promised her.

Gwyn was asleep again before she could answer that.

Gwyn's strength came back rapidly, with food. Burl brought her an awkward crutch. They talked about what she might do, where she might go, as she made slow progress around the little room, her skirt clumsy around her leg. “Don't tire yourself,” he warned her.

“There'll be an empty holding I know of, north of Hildebrand's City, but the house is burned,” Gwyn said. “Or that one we went to in the winter, where the three men—”

“Aye, Gwyn, you cannot stay nearby.”

“But that's not near, and I don't ever need to . . .” she started to argue. But he was right. It was only what Win had told her. “Then I'll go to the mountains,” she said. She would live high in the mountains, in a cave the first winter, but she should be able to build some kind of shelter, later. She would live high and solitary in the mountains. The idea pleased her.

“That's foolishness,” Burl told her. “How could you live there?”

“There will be a way.”

Burl shook his head. “No, you can't do that.”

A house of stone, a little house, and when the aspens shivered gold in the fall she would stand among them. She didn't bother to answer Burl.

“You will not do that,” he told her.

Who was he to tell her what to do? As if she were his servant.

“You're not a foolish girl, Gwyn; you've got a good head, better than most. Use it.”

She wouldn't answer him, when he spoke to her so.

“If you go to the mountains you'll only die. What would you eat? Where would you shelter? You know nothing of how to trap animals, if there are any about. You know nothing of how to protect yourself there, or how to build a house.”

Just because he was right didn't mean she wouldn't do as she wished.

“We'll have to think of something else, Innkeeper's daughter.”

“Do you think I haven't tried?” she demanded.

“Aye, that's just what I do think,” he told her calmly.

Well, he was right. But she would have liked to live among the mountains. It would have suited her.

“South, then—and—I know the work of an inn, there'll be inns to the south. Or if I could find entertainers from the fair? Do you think they would ever take someone in to work for them?” Her shoulders sagged, and the rough crutch, which forced her to bend over painfully, bit into her armpit. But it was no good regretting. “Or the Lords, our Lords from the winter, I could find them out to go into service.” That would at least keep her fed. She was not sure, otherwise, how she might keep herself fed. She had never understood before how much it was to be sure of your roof or your dinner.

“They came from the south,” Burl said thoughtfully. “There was the falcon on their saddles,” he explained.

“I saw it.”

“We don't know how they will have fared during the war.”

Gwyn had never thought about that. She hoped that both of them had come through it alive. “He was with the King,” she said. That at least was hopeful.

“Aye, he was the King's man, first.”

Gwyn sat on the bed, the strain of moving having used up her strength. “I couldn't travel far, as I am.”

“No, you'll come with me tomorrow,” Burl told her. “I will tell them I bought you from the priests in Hildebrand's City. Until you're strong again,” he said to her astounded expression. “Aye, Gwyn, we have no choice,” he apologized, as weak tears slid down her cheeks. “The pickers will arrive, and you can't be seen. I can think of no other way.”

He didn't know at all why she was weeping, and neither did she, really, except at the wonder of having such a friend.

“It won't be long, I promise you,” he comforted her.

THEY WERE MAKING THEIR SLOW
way down to the Inn, avoiding all the hills they could, Gwyn bent over the crutch, hidden beneath Burl's long winter cloak, when they heard the bell summon the people to the village. The notes of the bell rang out, calling them where they stood, just within the woods that separated the village from the Inn.

Gwyn felt the same alarm she saw on Burl's face. “You go ahead, I'll catch up.”

“No, we must be seen together.” She had learned better than to question him. They retraced their path until they stood at the edge of the village, next to the house where Win had been held.

It was Jackaroo who rang the bell, standing tall in his stirrups to pull on the rope. The villagers had gathered back near the Blacksmith's house—Gwyn saw Rose where she stood within Wes's arms. A few men hurried down from the fields. Still the tall figure on horseback, his face hidden by a red silk mask, his long boots folded down to his knees, rang the bell.

It was not until Da and Mother, with Tad behind them, hurried down the path into the village that he ceased his clamorous call and sat easily back on the saddle, keeping the horse motionless with one gloved hand on the reins.

Gwyn was transfixed at the sight of him. He sat the horse as if he had been born to it. He was a man of purpose and authority, with or without a mask. He was Jackaroo himself. His silence, waiting for the Innkeeper's family to approach, had the patient certainty of mountains.

Had she ever appeared so to those who saw her? She could not believe that was true, but she knew it was. Because that was true, it was all worth it, whatever else might happen in her life.

“Innkeeper,” Jackaroo called Da forward. Da stepped out alone. He looked worn, but not frightened, as he stood before the mounted man.

“Innkeeper, would you be a Lord among the people?” Jackaroo asked, in a voice as cold and distant as the winds from the high mountains.

Da stepped back, as if Jackaroo had struck him. Then he shook his head slowly, no. He did not seem surprised at the question, Gwyn thought, her hand clenched tightly around the crutch.

“Then your holdings must go back to the men who first owned them. Will you do that, Innkeeper?”

Gwyn knew that voice, knew its cold authority. It was Gaderian's father.

“Hush, lass,” Burl said softly.

“You needn't warn me,” she whispered back. But she had not thought that the Lords, too, would go outside their own laws to ride as Jackaroo.

Da answered, “Aye, I will do that.” He spoke plain and clear, for all to hear.

Jackaroo reached under his cape to draw out, not a knife as Gwyn had unreasonably feared, but a rolled sheet of paper, tied around with a red silk ribbon. His clear voice spoke so that all might hear. “In four days' time, Earl Sutherland will ride from Northgate's City on this way to the High City. You will give him this, Innkeeper, for me. It asks that each Lord—each of the six Lords, each of the two Earls—set a day in every season when he will hear from the people themselves. It suggests that one man of the people take before his Lord the needs and requests of the people and any of their quarrels that the Lord must settle. It asks that the Innkeeper from the Ram's Head be the man for Hildebrand, and that all the men chosen be men of the Innkeeper's fair measure and men of substance who will understand the Lord's feeling for his land.”

He reached down the paper to Da, whose hand rose to take it.

“Will you deliver this to Earl Sutherland?”

“Aye, I will,” Da promised.

He had lost much and gained much, Gwyn thought. There was fair measure in that, too.

But if Win was right, what had Gaderian's father given up to ride as Jackaroo? Unless it was only the Lords who could ride outside of the law safely, and that was why any of the people who did must pay—for their high dreams, for taking a Lord's high place.

One among the villagers did not like what she had heard. The Weaver shoved her way out to the front, although she did not approach Jackaroo closely. “You give
him
honor,” she cried out bitterly. “But I won't let him take it. The vineyard must stay with him, let him remember. He's taken everything from me—everything—so he must keep it, and I hope it will be bitter to him. He's taken the vineyard—aye, years ago, and he must keep it, for he'll not force me to take it back and nor can you. And now his daughter has taken off with my son, my only son, with her twelve gold pieces to tempt him—”

“Osh and hush your face,” voices told her. “Thoughtless woman.” “This is
good
news.” She looked around at them and then stomped away, entering her own house and pulling the door closed behind her.

Jackaroo waited until her little surge of bitterness had died down before he spoke again. “If you will do this, Innkeeper, you may tell the Earl one thing for me. Tell him that if the Lords will be advised by me in this, then I will sleep once again in the old stories.”

Without waiting for any reply, he reined his horse sharply around and rode off at a gallop to the north, leaving behind him only the cold sound of his voice and the warning to anyone else who might think to ride as Jackaroo.

Gwyn looked at Burl's thoughtful face, but for a wonder could think of nothing to say.

I
T WAS NOON OF THE
fourth day that Tad, who had been watching along the King's Way, came running into the Inn yard, calling out to his father and mother that the Earl was on his way. Gwyn hid herself by the sheltering door to the stables. The sky overhead was gray, promising rain by evening. Rain or sunshine were the same to Gwyn. She saw neither, kept away in Burl's little box of a room. She had stood that first afternoon beneath Mother's bitter words, her exhausted body held up by the crutch, the cloak covering her face and her cropped head. Why Burl needed to bring such a useless creature to them, nothing but another mouth to feed, when he had gold pieces for someone strong. What had he intended, doing such a thing without first asking his master's permission? Whether he didn't intend some disservice to the Inn, and how could he be trusted now, she had wondered.