The Wicked and the Just (15 page)

Then I remember June. What that moment will cost.

So I kneel. Pry up the hearthstone. They're hovering. Crowding in. Hot and sweaty and damp.

Se'ennights of scrubbing and burned forearms. Fingers like bones from cold water, scaly and red as the Adversary's.

Hand over the packet of coin. Se'ennights, and it's gone in an eyeblink. Tucked into a fine wool tunic and bound for the English king's coffers. From him it came and to him it goes.

“Tell your man he'll have a chance to get his cow again when what's due the king has been paid,” English tells me. Then they swing up on their horses and disappear, the cow trundling peaceably behind.

Tomorrow she'll be in some Watched field. She and all the other cattle taken against their king's tax. Past her I'll walk to the brat's, barely looking, for even intent is enough to land you on the gatehouse floor.

All that coin still owed, and back they'll come at Easter.

God only knows what they'll see fit to take next.

 

 

 

 

E
VEN
ere I open my eyes, I know what day it is. Despite the dim light, I can make out the plinking of a lute and the high, shrill notes of a whistle beyond my window, and the whole house smells like roasting goose. It's Michaelmas!

I leap out of bed and wash, then I slide through the curtain into my father's chamber and check the bunting hanging from his window.

This far up, I can see over the rooftops of Caernarvon, row after row, all the way to the city wall and into the green beyond. The first hints of gold morning are broaching Saint Mary's, and the thatch roofs light up like firebrands.

Heavens, but for all its barbarism, this place is not without beauty.

Down below, in the yard out front, Mistress Tipley and Gwinny have laid out our largesse already. There are trestles with rows of steaming custards and piles of small birds in pasty crust for the fairgoers to help themselves. It will all be gone by Tierce, but we'll be the talk of Shire Hall Street for the sheer volume of food we've provided.

I go belowstairs and into the yard. At the trestle, Gwinny arranges fried lamprey in neat rows. Her cheekbones leap out of her face and her hand lingers over the meat, almost a caress.

No tenant at Edgeley ever looked so raw.

I comb my hair behind my ears. “Have something, Gwinny. Whatever you want. It's Michaelmas.”

Gwinny hovers a hand over the pasties stuffed with spiced meat, easily the costliest and richest dish on the trestle. Then she cuts her eyes to me.

I nod cheerfully.

Without ceremony, Gwinny eats the pasty in two bites and licks her fingers. It's gone so fast I almost bid her take a second one. When I turn toward the house, her hand flashes between the table and her apron, but I say naught and head inside.

My father is rosy with ale and it isn't even Tierce. He bids me perch on his knee and pours pennies into my hand.

“Take Gwinny and go have fun, sweeting,” he slurs, “but stay out of trouble.”

I plow outside and grab Gwinny by the sleeve ere he sobers up enough to realize just how much coin he gave me.

In the street, I loose Gwinny's sleeve and we regard one another. Her bad humor will completely ruin my Michaelmas, but if she goes back to the house, my father will notice. He'll be upset that I'm roaming the city alone. And he'll come find me, drunk as Noah, and make a scene that will leave me twice humiliated before the
honesti
girls and him before Court Baron for disturbing the king's peace.

I sigh and gesture toward the road, and Gwinny looks as pleased to go as I must look to bear her company.

In High Street, we enter the fair proper, a solid wall of liveliness that chokes the wide street with stalls, carts, beasts, and children. There are baskets and woolen elbows and horse's rumps and glory but it's the Michaelmas fair!

And I have a handful of silver burning a hole in my palm.

I am in a better humor already.

I buy a big wedge of pandemain and slurp down mulled wine, giving Gwinny whatever I cannot finish. The treat seems to put her in a better mood, which cheers me all the more. I pet the silks and fondle the brocades and watch a trained monkey mimic a knight, a bishop, and a fine lady. I buy a new needle and a tiny packet of cloves and I'm eyeing a fine copper cloak pin for my father when I catch sight of a wretch I'd hoped never to see again.

On the corner, oozing among hawkers and dirty-footed shepherds, is Levelooker Pluver. The one who seized Nicholas and made me infamous before Court Baron with false charges.

Pluver wears a fine orange surcote and a tall floppy hat wrought in yellow. It looks like turds of butter. He's tormenting a ragpicker, rooting through the poor wretch's rags and dumping them into the mud.

“That filthy swine,” I mutter as Pluver seizes the ragpicker's mangy hood and grinds it underfoot with one elegant boot. “Someone ought to teach him to study his lessons.”

At my elbow, Gwinny snorts softly. “Will not happen.”

I turn to her, chin high. “It should.”

“What do you care?” Her voice is bitter like wine too soon from the cask.

“Justice,” I say firmly.

Gwinny squints at me for a long moment ere she snorts again. “Mayhap. But given by who? You?”

I match her cool tone. “Mayhap.”

She's fighting a smile, and it makes me want to slap her senseless. “You. Right. We'll see.”

And Gwinny's off through the crowd like a hearthcat on the hunt, past shoulders and bundles toward Pluver, who is upending the poor ragpicker's cart. She glances over her shoulder and smirks as if she's caught me playing with dolls. Then she puts herself before Pluver and asks loudly if he's yet amerced a one-eyed brewster whose ale is watered and not up to scratch, and worse, has no license from the borough.

And it hits me—Gwinny is distracting him. She's daring me to teach him a lesson, as I said I would.

My father does not want to see the inside of Justice Court again.

But there's no filthy swine who deserves justice more than Pluver, and Gwinny will have to swallow that smirk.

I know just how to do it.

I circle wide, darting through the crowd and craning my neck, pretending to hunt for someone. Gwinny slants only one glance at me, then fixes her eyes on Pluver and raises her voice. Soon I'm behind Pluver, and his yellow-turd hat slides back on his greasy head as he aims gestures at Gwinny.

It won't really be stealing. He'll get his foolish hat back. Eventually.

In one motion, I rise on tiptoe, wick the hat from the filthy swine's fat head, and whirl it beneath my cloak as if I'm adjusting the drape. Then I move away as though I'm still hunting for someone, craning my neck and seeming peeved.

It's a few moments ere Pluver realizes he's bareheaded in a crowd of fairgoers, but by that time I'm watching from a good stone's throw.

Gwinny flings her hands up as if she's lost patience with Pluver, then stomps into the crowd. Pluver is patting his head and glancing around like a chicken with too much seed. He kicks at the mud and peers behind baskets and carts, all the while touching his head as if the hat will reappear through sorcery.

The ragman grins like a schoolboy as he rights his cart and scoops up sopping rags.

When Gwinny appears at my elbow, I move my cloak just enough that she can see the hat's fat yellow crown. She barely looks at it, though. She's staring at the ground, brow in knots, jaw working.

“You did it,” she finally murmurs, as if I gave her a month off with double wages. “One of your own. And you did it.”

“Not one of
mine.
” I nod us toward the city gates, away from the scene Pluver's making. “Justice for those who deserve it.”

When we pass a massive dull-eyed hog tethered to a cart, I jam the levelooker's hat over the hog's ears and keep walking.

“Right enough,” Gwinny mutters, “but how will anyone know the difference?”

I laugh outright. “Not by the smell!”

We move through every single handswidth of the fair. Gwinny isn't afraid to walk past the shady stalls that abut the city wall, the ones with goods of dubious provenance and therefore the best prices. She isn't even shocked that I suggest it. She doesn't protest that it isn't safe.

I suspect she wouldn't be afraid of climbing the city walls, either.

The sun is burnished and falling ere Gwinny and I return to the townhouse. Our shadows run out before us, tall and wispy like the banners of an invading army. Two faceless girl-shapes, heads lumpy from piled plaits, gowns fluttering about their feet like massive butterflies. They are so alike that betimes I must glance to be sure it's still Gwinny at my elbow, and not Alice or Agnes or Emmaline de Coucy.

 

Even though it's frigid in the workroom, I'm spinning before the window and ignoring my father. He's being completely unreasonable, denying me permission to go nutting. He says it's too wet and I might fall ill, but he says it while glancing at the blackthorn cudgel that's still propped in a corner.

Honestly, you'd think he's forgotten that the sheriff gave the ringleaders of that scene in county court a se'ennight on the gatehouse floor to study their lessons.

“
Iiiiiiit's of a fair young maaaaaaaiden who's walking in the wood,
” I sing, badly, at the top of my voice so it will echo into the hall where my father is. “
Her voice was so mel-o-di-ous, it charmed him where he—
Oh, hey, Papa.”

“Hay is for horses,” he growls, gripping the doorframe. “What are you doing?”

“Singing.” I smile and let my whorl spin. “Like Paul and Silas did while they were in gaol.”

“They also prayed,” my father replies through his teeth. “Try that. And you're not in gaol.”

“Am I not? Can I go nutting, then?”

My father is growing steadily redder. “You're leagues too old to be fooling with such childish things.”

“Fine.” I tease out more woolen fibers. In a fortnight he will tell me I'm not old enough to go Catherning with the women, even though Mistress Glover already said over the fence and ten thousand bobbing blond heads that I could join her and Mistress Sandys and Mistress Pole.

My father's bootsteps clump down the corridor. I give him time to pour some ale and settle before the fire and let Salvo curl against his feet.

Then I warble, “
For if you stay too laaaaaaate to hear the plowboy siiiiiiiiing, you may have a young faaaaaaarmer to nurse up in the
—”

The front door slams hard enough to shake the shutters. My father storms past, and by the look of him he's heading to the Boar's Head.

“
Spring,
” I finish softly, and I let the whorl twist back and forth like a hanged man.

 

I enter the lady de Coucy's solar and drop my backside on the uncushioned bench reserved for me, but the lady drags me up by the wrist. She cannot believe I just shuffled into her presence like a plow horse after everything she's been trying to teach me.

“On my first day, you said my walk was wrong,” I protest, and immediately wish I could have it back because it's not well-mannered in the slightest and the last thing I need is my father wroth with me when I'm trying to get him to buy me a new gown and all he can speak of is how we're going to eat this winter.

The lady puts one hand to her temple as if pained. At length she snaps her eyes up and demands, “What would you do if John de Havering walked through that door right now?”

She's regarding me so intently that I know she means to trap me. Should you behave toward a Crown official as if he's a borough official, God help you. Should you address someone as “my lord” instead of “your Grace,” you may as well dump a privy bucket over his head.

Behind her mother's back, Emmaline catches my eye, then inclines her head and makes a tiny curtsey.

“Er . . . curtsey?”

The lady de Coucy's brows come down. “Do you even know who John de Havering is?”

I parse and parse. Surely my father has talked about him, mayhap even invited him to our house. Is he the sheriff? One of the other officers of charge? Surely not the constable of the castle—

“Oh, saints!” The lady groans and flings her arms wide. “He's only the justiciar of the Principality of North Wales, you ignorant girl! By the Virgin, I know not how you'll ever manage this if you're such a lackwit that you cannot even remember the simplest things.”

“Mother, please!” Emmaline tugs on the lady's sleeve. “She's really trying! Mayhap all she needs is a little more help. I can go to her house and—”

“No!” The lady de Coucy rounds on her like a mastiff. “No, you'll not be seen . . . Sit down, sweeting. And
you
.” She turns to me with knuckles upraised, but at length she lowers her arm and regards me as if I'm a sodden kitten that's just been sick in her lap. “No. It's not your fault. Poor motherless thing. It's not your fault you were raised in a byre by a ham-handed oaf.”