By Design (10 page)

“I did not come to buy tiles.”

“Not tiles, eh? Odd you should want to come in here, then, if what you want to bargain for is out there. Or maybe you already know which one you favor?”

So George did a little whoremongering on the side. Rhys resisted the urge to end the conversation at once by breaking the man in two.

“I did not come to buy a woman, but to speak about one. Four days ago one of them spent the day in London's stocks with your tiles at her feet.”

“She fired them wrong, and tried to hide the results in among good ones. I assure you that my goods can be trusted. It was a rare occurrence that will not happen again. When she returned, I chastised her soundly.”

Rhys's temper snapped. He reached for the neck of the tunic in front of him. With a sweeping swing, he crashed the stunned tiler up against the door. Holding George by his neck, he forced his face into the planks.

“If you beat her—”

“Nay! Not beat… I did not.…” George's squashed face twisted with fear. “I spoke with her is all.”

“Even that took gall. You sent her in to take your punishment, you bastard. You did not even come for her when it was over.”

“I didn't know! She didn't come back, and I figured she'd run off, to escape her debt to me. Had my wagon, didn't she, and all those tiles. I thought she'd stolen it all, not ended up in the stocks.”

“If you thought that you would have looked for her.” Rhys pulled George away from the door and held him up by his tunic's collar. “What debt? You spoke of her debt to you.”

“I have her mark. She signed an indenture. Five years.”

He threw George aside. “Find it. I want to see this mark.”

George nodded nervously and poked and dug in a trunk. Finally a stained folded parchment emerged. He offered it with a shaking hand.

Rhys held the document to the window's light. It looked legal. The little fool had indeed put her name to it. It bound her to the tiler for five years in return for ten shillings and the use of a cottage.

He hated indentures, and the way they took advantage of the desperate. A person should not have to choose between freedom and survival. It was not an apprenticeship that Joan had acquired with her mark, as was the decent use of such things. She had signed herself into slavery for little more than shelter.

Fury sliced through his head. He truly wanted to punch George's face in. The tiler cringed, as though he could see it was coming.

“A handsome bargain for you, George. She is more skilled than most master tilers, certainly more skilled than you.”

George looked insulted despite his cowering pose. “She is skilled, but hardly like me. She is useful to the works, but not so much more than the others.”

“I think that she runs the works, while you sit and get drunk and leer at her. And let other pigs leer, too.”

“I run the works. It is my craft, like my father's. She is useful, but not necessary.”

“Than you will not mind losing her.” It was out before he even knew he was thinking it.

George frowned with confusion. Rhys put an iron grip on his shoulder and waved the indenture in front of his face. “You gave her ten shillings and a hut. I say that is worth no more than one pound altogether. Don't you agree?”

George appeared ready to agree to anything if it kept him alive. Rhys hadn't decided that part yet.

“I will send you that much. A man will come with the money tomorrow, and you will sign this over to me. Do you accept?”

“I accept.”

“One more thing.”

“Whatever you want. Just don't—”

“Did you ever force her, or sell her to some man? While she lived on this property and slaved for you, did you hurt her?” He pictured that as he asked, saw her fear and helplessness, and almost moved his grip to George's neck.

“Never! I swear to God and all the saints that I never once ever—”

“You told me that you sell these women.”

“She wouldn't have it, for coin or not. She hates men, she does. Why, once I just suggested, friendly like, that we might share some ale, and that night I woke up to find her in here with a knife at my throat telling me to get no ideas. She can be ill-tempered and ornery that way. Hell of a thing, if you think about it. It's my property, isn't it? Who's she to—”

“If I find out that you did, if you ever insulted her or let others do so, I am going to come back.”

“If she says that happened, she is lying. I never—”

“Stay here. Do not come out until we are gone.”

George sank into a resentful sulk. “Aye, but for a man who claimed he didn't want to buy a woman, you've done so a bit too thoroughly to my sense of trade,” he muttered.

Rhys stepped out of the cottage, into the sun. There, with George out of sight, the fury began to thin, making some room in his mind for other things.

Like the stark realization of what he had just done.

He looked toward the tile works. Joan noticed him. She strode toward George's shack, but stopped halfway down the path. She stood there, regarding him curiously, with
her hands on her hips, looking as ill-tempered as George had warned she could be.

He stared down at the dirty parchment in his hand. He could not believe he had just bought this. It had been a mindless impulse born of anger. In one moment he had been condemning such things, and in the next…

The rash act stunned him. Not just because he did not believe in freedom being bought and sold, but because of the responsibility and ties it entailed for him. He had avoided such chains. They interfered with a man living as he chose and doing what he must.

He should turn around and undo this. Now. At once.

Joan crossed her arms over her chest. She appeared very curious now, and a little suspicious.

He pictured her in the market and the stocks. He imagined her fending off George and his drunken friends. He saw images of her brave and broken.

He tasted her lips again, and the softness of her breast, and felt her body snuggled against him in the bed and pressed to his chest in an artless embrace.

He walked down the finger of land toward her, knowing he made the choice for many reasons, and that only half of them were rational and honorable. Nor did all of them have to do with protecting her.

Then again, the urge to protect was often coupled with the desire to possess.

She watched him come. She managed to be very lovely even when garbed in a clay-encrusted shift and a dirty kerchief. The peevish expression on her face did not strike him as especially becoming, however. He suspected it would not get friendlier very soon.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded when he drew near her.

“I came to purchase some of your crockery.”

Her expression softened. “You did?”

“Aye.”

“What did you want with George, then? I think that you also came to browbeat him about me, about what happened.” She did not sound as if she welcomed the interference.

“That is true. I also came for that. But things got a little tangled there.”

“How so?”

“I truly came to purchase some crockery.” He held up the parchment. “But as it happened, I bought you instead.”

C
HAPTER
7

“Y
OU BOUGHT ME
?”

“Not you, in truth. Only your indenture.”

“You can not do that.”

“I can, and I have.”

“Then go back there and undo it.”

“Nay. The bargain is struck.”

She thought that her head would split. She pushed past him, hotly eyeing George's cottage. “When I am finished with that lazyboned, besotted weakling, there will be no bargain.”

He caught her arm and set her back a few paces.

She shook his grasp off and faced him. He returned a hard gaze that said she would not pass.

“Surely you did this as a jest.”

“Nay.”

“Then why?”

“I did not like the idea of you indebted to such a man in any way, let alone with your freedom.”

“A chivalrous impulse. How generous. Since you interfered
fered to protect my freedom, give me my mark. When it is mine, I will make George pay me the wages he should.”

“I am not leaving you here. George sells these woman as whores. Eventually he would sell you that way, too.”

“He would not dare—”

“He has no scruples.”

“And your scruples are very confused, if you buy me to prevent my being bought by another.”

A vague acknowledgment of that passed in his eyes, but his firm expression did not soften. “Let us get your property. You are coming with me. My horse is behind the cottage.”

Vision half blurred with anger, she looked from him to the cottage. A terrible thought entered her fevered mind.

He had come here intending to take her away. It had been his real purpose. The indenture had only made it easier, and prevented her from having a choice. He had brought a horse to make the trip back to the city with her more convenient.

Why? He had recently been summoned by Mortimer. What if, in talking as men do, Rhys had mentioned the tiler named Joan. …

She forced down the fear that rose in a nauseous wave. What if he had? There were many Joans, and a poor one had no consequence. There was no reason for Mortimer to suspect that Joan the tiler was the same Joan who could bear witness to his worst crimes, and give substance to the rumors about them. Maybe he assumed that other Joan was dead anyway, and had forgotten about her.

She hoped that was so, but she could not count on it.

“Is your brother here?” Rhys asked.

Her heart skipped a beat. Many Joans, but fewer who had a brother named Mark. Fewer still who had walked here from the Welsh marches three years ago.

“Why did you come today? Who sent you?”

“I am beginning to think that the devil sent me. We will get your things now. If your brother is not here, we will leave word for him to follow when he returns.”

“I will not go with you.”

“Would you rather slave and whore for George?”

“If a woman whores, it does not matter who the man is. Do not expect my gratitude that it will be you instead.”

“I do not intend that.”

“Then perhaps you expect some other benefit from this? To gain favor with someone?”

“I expect nothing but trouble from this. I will gain favor with no one, and only get lectures from the wardens of my guild and the priest of my parish. Now, let us be gone from this place. The sun and your hot mood are burning away what little good humor I have left.”

He strode forward, pulling her along. She shook off his grasp again and marched alongside, barely containing her worry. Even if this had happened as he said, she and Mark would be much more vulnerable living inside London's walls.

And she would be gone from the tile yard. She would not miss the work, but she would sorely feel the loss of the kiln. How could she earn coin if she could not make her wares?

The other workers watched as she and Rhys headed to her hut.

“Only women labor here?” he asked.

“We are cheaper. He pays almost nothing. The women who come here have no other choice, except the brothels.”

“Except that this serves as a brothel at night.”

“They tell themselves it is different. They all think that they will leave someday.”

“Like you thought it, no doubt. But you are still here, aren't you? Does he pay you? Even with the indenture? Even though you refuse to work at night?”

“Just enough for food. The indenture is of no value if I starve to death.”

He muttered a curse. “Why did you sign such a thing?”

“To survive.” She pulled open the flimsy door of the shack. “When Nick died, I was desperate. Nick had let us live here for free, but George would not. We needed a roof over our heads, and some coin. It had been my hope to buy the parchment back in a year, but …”

But
. Just like
maybe
, it had thwarted her again and again. Her life had been a series of both words for three years.

She pulled on the green gown. It did not take her long to pack her property in one homespun sack. A few shifts, dull and brown from the washed-out clay. The tattered rag of grey fabric. Two crockery cups and bowls. The crude tools she had made to work details into her statues.

She reached under her pallet for her hidden coins, and for her eating knife. She carefully lifted a wooden board from under the only bench. It held her new statues. She carried over the box that contained what was left of her wrapped crockery, and contemplated the little saints.

“Roll them in the grey gown and shifts,” Rhys said.

“There is no point. I will have no way to fire them.”

“There are other kilns. Use all your garments if you need to. We will leave word for your brother to carry the box when he comes.”

She halfheartedly tried to protect them, knowing it was useless. He crouched and helped, rewrapping the one she had begun.

“You should not have done this,” she muttered. “I have always dealt with George. He needs me here. The works will fail without me.”

“The day will come when he needs coin more than you. Then you would have found a strange man entering this shack, and no recourse but submission or a beating.” He
rose and held out his hand. “Come. You are done with this place.”