Читать книгу A Time of Justice - Katharine Kerr - Страница 9

This tirade was attracting quite a crowd. The cheese seller strolled over, the egg woman hurried up – everywhere folk stopped and turned to listen. When a scarlet-faced Rhodry tried to stammer out some excuse, the crowd snickered and grinned. A couple of stout older men, one of them quite well-dressed in the checked brigga of a merchant, trotted over and made the old woman bows.

‘Now what’s this, Gwedda?’ the merchant said. ‘Has this lad dishonoured this poor lass?’

‘He has, and now she’s with child. You men! A rotten pack, all of you.’

‘I’m going to marry her!’ Rhodry squealed. ‘I swear it! Come on, Jill!’

Rhodry grabbed her arm and dragged her along as he shoved their way through the snickering crowd. Once they got clear of the market square, they ran all the way back to their inn. As soon as they got into the refuge of the dark smoky tavern room, Rhodry grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

‘You and your ideas! You might have warned me!’

‘I figured you wouldn’t have gone along with it if you’d known.’

‘Cursed right! All I want now is to get out of here. Everyone’s going to be smirking every time we walk out on the streets.’

‘There’s still the bounty. We can’t just ride away from it.’

Rhodry groaned. Jill was about to say somewhat soothing when she noticed a little boy wearing torn brigga and the sleeveless remains of a shirt hovering in the doorway. Thinking he was a hungry beggar child, she went over to offer him a copper. He took it tight in one grubby fist and looked her over with solemn dark eyes.

‘Be you that lass who was in the market? The one they was laughing at?’

‘I am. What do you think about that?’

‘Naught. My Gram said that she wagers she could help you.’

‘Oh, does she now?’ Jill knelt down to look him in the face. ‘And who is your Gram?’

‘Just my Gram. She lives on our farm. She said I should find you, like, and tell you.’

‘An, I see. And where is your farm?’

‘Not far. She’s gone back with the wagon. Do you want to come back with me?’

‘I do, and here, I’ve got a horse. You can ride it, too.’

The boy grinned to reveal missing front teeth. Jill supposed that he was too young to even know what kind of errand he was running. She told him to wait and hurried back to Rhodry, who was less than pleased at the thought of her going off alone.

‘I don’t want to alarm old Gram,’ Jill said. ‘Besides, usually this kind of woman won’t speak in front of a man. Let’s not put her off. She’s the only clue we’ve got so far.’

‘Oh, well and good, then. But don’t drink whatever it is that she brews up for you, will you? The Lord of Hell only knows what it’ll do to you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ve a plan in mind.’

Jill saddled up her horse, lifted the boy up to sit behind the saddle, then mounted, following his direction to go to the north gate of the city. He was so entranced with getting to ride on a real warhorse that she had to keep reminding him to tell her the right road, but they finally found the farm, about three miles to the northeast. In the middle of fields of wheat and vegetables stood a sprawling compound behind a low earthen wall, the family house, the cow barn, the well and pigsty all jumbled up together among the dung heaps and the haystacks. When they rode in the gate, a pair of mangy yellow hounds ran up barking to greet them. Jill dismounted and set the boy down.

‘Mam and Da are still out in the fields,’ he said. ‘That’s why Gram said to bring you now.’

Gram herself came strolling out of the house. A stout hard-muscled woman with gnarled hands, she was wearing a black headscarf and a brown dress, pulled up into her dirty kirtle to leave her ankles and muddy bare feet free. She gave Jill a look of honest sympathy and turned to the boy.

‘Bucket of slops and greens by the hearth,’ she announced. ‘Them chickens is hungry.’

When the boy ran into the house, she gestured at Jill to follow and led her down to the gate where he couldn’t overhear. Flies buzzed round them, and distant chickens cackled.

‘Now what’s all this, lass? Gwedda’s a nasty sort with her tongue. Hah! Mincing round with her nose in the air over you, and here she’s buried two husbands and so eager to get another you’d swear she was a bitch in heat, you would, and at her age!’

‘She was wrong, too. I’m not with child. I was trying to tell her, but all she did was natter on and on at me, and I couldn’t say much with my man right there.’ Jill glanced round as if expecting Rhodry to pop up and spy on her. ‘It’s about him, you see. Here I gave up my family and everything when he asked me to go with him, and every town we ride to, he’s looking over the lasses. I can’t say a thing about it. What if he just left me? Oh, by the Goddess herself, it aches my heart.’

‘Ah. Them handsome men, all face and no heart, truly.’

‘So I’m finding out.’ Jill did her best to sound bitter. ‘So I thought, well, maybe Aranrhodda could help me keep him faithful. You hear about things, charms and suchlike, to keep your man in your bed and nowhere else.’

‘So you do. Now how long are you going to be in Lughcarn? You can’t make up a powerful spell like this one in between baking your bread and cutting your dinner meat.’

‘At least a few days. My man’s going to go up to the gwerbret’s dun and see if he can find a hire, but we’ve got money now, so he won’t be in any hurry.’ She noticed the mention of money bring a smile to the old woman’s face. ‘He spends every copper the minute he gets it, but I sneaked a bit for myself.’

‘Sensible lass, and if you’ll listen to an old woman, you’ll go on sneaking a coin here and there and laying it by, like, somewhere in your clothes where he won’t find it. Now our Lady of the Cauldron can help you keep him, sure enough, but the day’s going to come when you won’t want to keep him, and then what are you going to do?’ She fixed Jill with a stern look. ‘A woman with a bit put by can find herself a husband who’s got a cursed short memory for what she done before she met him. You remember that.’

‘I will, good dame, and my thanks, but I can’t imagine ever not loving my wonderful Rhodry.’

The old woman rolled her eyes heavenward at the follies of young lasses, then considered the problem, idly tracing a line in the dust with her big toe.

‘I’ll need a bit of his hair,’ she said at last. ‘Just a bit will do.’

‘I’ve got some. I was combing his hair last night, and I kept what was in the comb.’ She reached into her brigga pocket and took out the strands of Rhodry’s hair, carefully wrapped in a scrap of cloth.

‘Oho! You seem to know a bit about our Lady’s power.’

‘Well, my Mam knew a Wise Woman near our house. And sometimes I heard them talking when I was just a little lass.’

Smiling, the old woman tucked the bit of hair into a fold of her kirtle.

‘Now, tonight, when it’s good and dark, I’ll take this out to yonder copse. And I’ll bind it up around a charm that’ll bind him tight to you. But he’s a good-looking man, and we’ll do a bit more. I’ll make you up a pot of salve, and I’ll tell you how to mark him with it when he’s asleep. And then.’ She held one forefinger straight in the air. ‘If he tries to roll around with some other lass, well, then.’ She curled the forefinger slowly down. ‘He won’t get much fun out of it, and neither will the little slut.’

Jill gave the old woman a silver coin, then started riding back to town. She was idly hoping that the spell would do Rhodry no harm when she saw a trio of riders trotting across a cow pasture and heading for the farm. By shading her eyes with her hand, she could just make out the gwerbret’s daughters. There was no sign of either falconer or escort. Now isn’t this interesting? Jill thought, I wonder if old Gram’s going to do another bit of business today? She thought of going back on some pretext or another, then decided that it would be too obvious.

At the tavern, Jill found Rhodry waiting by the fire, where he was whittling a stick into nervous shreds with his silver dagger. The innkeep watched him with a scowl as if he were thinking he was lucky it wasn’t the furniture. Jill took Rhodry out to the stables on the excuse of helping with the horse.

‘It all went well. I’m supposed to ride back tomorrow and pick up a love charm.’

‘A love charm? Better than a dose of herbs, I suppose, but what are you going to do with that?’

‘Naught, of course, but I had to gain her confidence, didn’t I? Here, if you start feeling sick or suchlike, tell me.’

‘What? What have you done? Hired some daft old woman to put a spell on me?’

‘She’s far from daft, but don’t worry about the spell. I just told her some tale about fearing you’d stop loving me.’

Rhodry shrugged the problem away. Jill decided that she’d best not tell him about the pot of salve.

On the morrow morning, Jill rode out the north gate and headed in the direction of the farm until she found a stand of trees where she could dismount and stand hidden. Sure enough, in a little while the three young ladies from the gwerbret’s palace rode by, followed by their usual escort. Jill rode after, taking a roundabout way through the various dirt roads and tracks that ran from farm to farm. Finally she caught up with them again down by the riverbank. The escort had tethered their horses in the shade of a pair of big ash trees and were hunkering down to play dice; the falconer was talking earnestly with the girls, each of whom had a little merlin on her gloved and padded wrist. Jill trotted on by to the farm.

When she arrived, circumstances favoured her. Gram was busy kneading a batch of bread, a process that couldn’t be stopped in the middle. Jill sat down on a battered wooden bench and wondered how long it would take the girls to get away from their escort.

‘Now don’t worry, lass,’ Gram said abruptly. ‘That charm’s a good one, if I do say so myself. Just as I was finishing it up, the moon she rises, and the moonlight comes through the trees and falls right on it.’

‘That’s wonderful. I just worry so much.’

‘Course you do. Now I’ll just make this into loaves, and we’ll let it rise while we talk things over.’

Once the loaves of bread were formed and draped with a damp cloth on a wooden board, the old woman went into another chamber. Jill could hear her rustling about; then she came back with a small clay pot stoppered with a bit of old rag and a small object wrapped in black cloth. She handed Jill the wrapped object, then sat down next to her.