Rhiannon (21 page)

Strange place for such activity, Rhia thought, with all the sooty dust. In fact, the young woman looked fairly well grimed from kerchief to boots, and the ash on her face appeared tracked through with tears.

Rhia dared walk closer. “If you're in distress, may I help?”

The woman looked up. “Help? What could ye do?” she asked bluntly.

Rhiannon shrugged. “I just thought, well, this seems a dismal place for resting. If you're stranger to Woethersly, I might show you greener space and water for drinking.”

So quietly Rhia barely heard, the woman said, “Oh, I know Woethersly well enough.”

There'd been bitterness in her voice, and she suddenly glared hard at Rhia, anger burning bright behind the tears in her eyes. “If you'd help, pray tell me how fair Woethersly's come to this,” she whispered miserably. “Tell me how a daughter may wed and move but a three-day ride from her own birthplace, then return widowed two years later to find things tangled to a snarl! My father for certain is become dimwit, and my mother lies asleep in yon churchyard. All I'd dreamed of was her joy in seeing this babe, her grandson. Even our house has turned to ashes!
All
is ashes! How can this
be
?”

She clutched her child more tightly, her red cheek pressed against his head and her tears flowing freely into his downy orange hair. She stared at the sooty traces of what had been her homely neighborhood last she'd seen it, or imagined it.

Rhia watched helplessly. “I'm sorry for your loss,” was all she could think to say. “I . . . I have a friend whose home, like yours, was burned when they cleared this lot. They told him nothing of it, either, and he had to arrive and find it gone, just as you have.” She sighed. “At least he has no child to bear the shock of it as well.” Though Jim had said if he
had
had a child to give week-work to the lord, his cottage might have stood.

“Rhiannon! Rhia, fine friend, I've found you at last! Don't move, I'm coming!”

Rhia winced and whirled round to see a girl running toward her down the path from town. Everyone Maddy passed seemed knocked off-kilter a bit by the sheer energy of such a lively runner. Rhia felt off-kilter at the sight of Maddy as well, especially at remembrance of the trap she'd set and sprung for her regarding Beltane Eve.

“I'm sorry,” Rhia whispered to the weeping woman, who wasn't paying the slightest attention anyhow, so lost was she in her world of woe. “My friend comes and I fear when she reaches me I'll have no choice but to—”

“There, I've thrown a fine lasso around ye!” Maddy yipped. Indeed, she'd come up close and tossed a beautiful bandanna of blue silk over Rhia's head. It settled loose and glimmering around Rhia's neck, then Maddy pulled the center knot tight at Rhia's throat. Clutching the trailing ends of it, she made ready to playfully pull her friend toward town.

“Come along, then, captive!” Maddy sang with glee.

As Maddy laughingly jerked her along by the ends of that silk scarf, all Rhiannon could do was steal a last helpless glance over her shoulder at the woman and her babe.

 
Rhiannon liked not this means of journeying as captive toward market, and liked it less and less as Maddy sped them right recklessly through the narrow gamut of craftsmen's booths edging the green. Maddy tripped right over the glassmaker's bellows, in fact, keeping her own balance but very nearly tipping Rhia right onto the red-hot kiln! Rhiannon smelled the singe of some threads of her skirt and it made her some angry. She wished, after that, to become even
more
angry, as in such a state she might possibly have the moxie to go against headstrong Maddy about Beltane Eve.

Around the potter's wheel and the cartwright's shed Maddy zigged and zagged them, never letting that bandanna go slack. She maneuvered them close to a huge pig carcass hanging outside the butcher's stall. It swayed as Maddy gave it a hard sideways bounce with her muscled shoulder as they passed.

Hard to say how many ox took alarum as Maddy went lunging along past carts and stalls and around all manner of walkers, both on two feet and upon four. “Look sharp!” she'd yell if there was time for such crude warning, though there was usually not. Three small children sitting at innocent play together along the verge of the road bawled in fright as Maddy leapt clean over their heads, her skirts toppling two of them right over into the dust!

“Pay the piper!” Maddy demanded, stopping abruptly when they'd finally got past the houses and craftsmen and near to the center of the busy green.

She turned and teasingly jerked the lasso tighter so's Rhia near gagged.

“Maddy, have a care!” Rhia squeezed her fingers under the silken knot to jerk it some loose.

“Pay the piper, then!” Maddy smiled so the dimple in her left cheek deepened. “Pay for the ride with your solemn promise to join us in our revels on Beltane! You
must
!”

Why was it that with all the mischance Maddy had just then exposed Rhia to, still Rhia could not put her foot down to firmly naysay Maddy? When faced by Maddy in such direct fashion, Rhia could not even summon that bright anger she'd planned would help her out when this very promise was required of her.

Alas, the will of a bold girl like Maddy will oft prove too much for a less audacious girl like Rhiannon. All flustered Rhia could think to do was to look down and stall for time by unknotting the bright scarf, but Maddy quickly stopped Rhia's fumbling fingers, catching them in her own.

“Don't loosen the scarf, but rather wear it always, Rhiannon! It's for you, a token sent from Leonard to tell how he longs to meet you as his partner on Beltane Eve! Now, quick, tell me your decision. Shall I meet you on the green at dusk and together we'll join Frederique's party at the dragon's chamber, or shall we come up to your private chapel for our romp? One or the other, say which!”

Rhia's ears rang. “I . . . I shall meet you down here, near the manor house.”

Maddy hugged her right quick, then danced away backward, blowing a kiss. “Adieu until then, Rhia! That's what they say in Francia, you know. Adieu! Braid your hair all jaunty like that when you come, and don't forget to wear Leonard's scarf! A lady wears a knight's colors when she would show her true love! Isn't that romantic? My Fred's colors are red and gold.”

With a giggle and a blush, Maddy pulled down one corner of her bodice to expose a bit of the red bandanna she safekept there. And then she turned round and was off at a run toward the manor, where she had doubtless been expected some time ago.

Rhiannon was left in her usual state upon being caught up in Maddy's whirlwind, then tossed from it without warning right back to the ground. On the one hand she felt gloomed by her own endless cowardice around her friend. On the other, she couldn't quit glancing down at the gorgeous scarf that now swathed her neck. She'd never thought to own such a glorious thing, and had never especially wanted to. But now she did, she found she couldn't regret its possession.

And wrongheaded though she knew it was, she also felt a strong prick of curiosity about this Leonard as she trekked back to the churchyard to reclaim the two valuable packs of goods she'd had no choice but to helplessly abandon there when Maddy snatched her into that cavort to town.

But when she reached the grassy lot this side of the churchyard, Rhia's usual flighty imaginings instantly gave way to a true and solid problem of the first order.

For where she'd left two packs upon the grass, now there was but one.

Rhiannon sped to the single pack and dropped to her knees to dump its contents onto the grass, praying mightily that nothing was lost, though that was a foolish hope since certainly a pack's worth of contents had gone missing. There upon the grass spilled the seeds, the wax figures, some combs of the honey, most of the beeswax candles. She missed one of the loaves, a honeycomb, a single wax figure, and two or three candles. Was that all? Rhia could not think, and dropped to sit there upon the grass with her head in her hands, all shame and misery. She snatched at the blue scarf where it draped upon her chest and untied it in a fury, growling in frustration. That gaudy scarf seemed the very cause of her slipup, though a
thing
will not of itself cause a slipup, and that's that.

In truth only a
person
will be the fine cause of a dire slipup. Rhia remembered that in time to stash the scarf into her waist pouch, when she'd meant to tear it to pieces, or almost meant to. Though, honestly, she wouldn't have. She thought the scarf too fine, that's how vain and shameful she truly was. Shameful!

“I'm hopeless, and
shameful
!” She knocked at her forehead with her knuckles.

“How now, Rhia! Hold up!”

Thaddeus was approaching at a lope from the church. Her heart rose to her throat. How much of her churchyard hysterics had he witnessed
this
time? And how doubly shameful to worry about such a paltry thing as your own humiliation when you'd
best
worry that you'd just lost your mother's prized pack!

“I'm shameful and hopeless from all directions and that's the sum of it,” she whispered again, shaking her head.

Thaddeus dropped to the grass beside her. “What's the sum of what, Rhia?”

She covered her eyes with her fingers and would not look at him. “I've lost my mother's pack to some sneakthief, Thaddeus. I'm certain Mam will never, ever trust me again, such a hopeless fool am I!”

He said nothing. She waited. He still said nothing.

“Such a fool as I ne'er walked the earth,” she pointed out.

Still, Thaddeus didn't deny it. Finally, she'd had enough and took her hands from her face so that she might frown at him.

He was quietly fitting the spilled goods back into the single pack, looking some sheepish. “I'm afraid I witnessed the theft and knew it not for what it was, Rhia,” he admitted. “I was at the window, filling the prior's inkhorn in the good light. I happened to glance outside and saw Jim's daughter picking it up. I assumed it was her own.”

Rhiannon's eyes got wide and she shook her head quite firmly. “Jim's daughter? Thaddeus, Jim
has
no daughter. On that awful day he came to town with us, Jim said straight out that he should have expected his cot to be taken by Lord Claredemont since his wife was dead and he had no child to take over the week-work he owed as rent.”

Thaddeus narrowed his eyes. “Well, but it seems—”

“And a daughter would surely have come up the trail with him when he was so hurt by that cart! No, you must be mistaken, Thaddeus.”

Thaddeus shrugged. “I'm sure I'm
not
mistaken, Rhia. Since she arrived yesterday, Jim's daughter has spent all her time here in the yard, near where their cot used to stand. She may not speak with Jim under his rules of sanctuary, yet she feels that from within the church Jim might catch a glimpse of her and his little grandson and find comfort in the sight. I doubt she knew of his injury last year. She lives at a distance and knew nothing of her mother's death, which, I'm told, happened some months before Jim was hurt. And for his part, Jim knew not of his grandson, nor that his son-in-law had got a fever last winter and left his young wife widowed. Jim and his family are just now reunited, though the terms are hard and the circumstances sad.”

Rhia concentrated, thinking back to the morning before Jim's arrest. “I suppose Jim may have said he had no
son
,” she murmured. “No son to give the lord his week-work! Yes, that
is
what he said, Thaddeus!”

Thaddeus looked nervously over his shoulder. He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “The church has ears, Rhia. Later we'll speak more of this. When will you finish at the market, d'you think?”

“I must reach home before twilight or Mam'll skin me alive.”

He nodded. “I'll wait for you on the beach when the afternoon wanes, near where the trail begins. Now, if you will, wave to Jim as you stand. He may well see you from his station upon the frid stool near the altar, where he must stay most hours of his days.”

Rhia cringed imagining the awful cramp a person was bound to get from all those hours sitting upon the church's short and squat three-legged frid stool. It was purposely made that way for thinking of the Scriptures and your own immortal soul, as you'd never get comfortable enough to go to sleep or otherwise lollygag the time away.

She stood, shouldered the remaining pack, then turned toward the church and waved sadly to Jim, wherever inside those fine but fearsome walls he might be.

 
Granna's friends at the ale booth always found a space on their sales table for Rhia or Mam to display the things they had to sell at market, and the only rent those dames required was the gossip from atop the bluff.

“How does that dear little Daisy?” one after another of them asked Rhia that day, and she was glad to report on Daisy's quick and sunny smile, which clearly showed her soul to be intact, though she'd suffered so very much.

Three or four asked if Daisy's sister and mother had indeed gone along to God, and Rhia answered with a simple nod, then crossed herself as Granna's friends did likewise.

Then, without preamble, a right hefty barrel of a lady named Hilda Mopp sat down next to her on the makeshift wood bench behind the table, sagging it but not quite splitting it. “Here's a message for your granna,” she told Rhia. “Tell Moira that her bunions will be mightily eased if'n she swallows five spiders both morn and eve. That's five morning and five evening, don't forget, and it's to be done for three days running. That's six dose of spiders altogether. It worked like magic for my cousin Freeda.”