The Wicked and the Just Page 3

  “Come,” Mistress Tipley says over her shoulder. “There’s no toll for us.” To the serjeant she says, “Edgeley of Shire Hall Street.”

  The serjeant nods and stands aside. As we move past the trestle and onto the market common, the first Welshman in line drops something in the strongbox. It clinks like metal. One of the men at the trestle marks the Welshman’s shoulder with chalk and the serjeant steps aside to let him pass.

  How sensible. A toll to keep the riffraff out.

  So the Welsh are only permitted near the walls once a se’ennight and they must pay for the privilege.

  Mayhap I will not be murdered after all.

  On the market common, the Welsh kneel before their wares spread out on homespun. Mostly they offer milk and meat, but some have cured hides and rolled fleeces and wool in skeins. The wool is rough and grainy, hardly fit for monks. Our wool at Edgeley was ten times better.

  It’s a charitable thing indeed for the burgesses of Caernarvon to allow these folk and their pitiable goods near the walls in the first place. The Welsh ought to thank the burgesses on bent knee for the opportunity to trade with the English in the shadow of their walled town.

  Mistress Tipley buys a sack of oats and a big wedge of cheese, then she says we must go to the wharves to get the best fish. She leads me past all the lambs and cattle to the edge of the common, to a board straining beneath baskets of fish.

  The fishmonger scrambles to his feet and pushes back his hood. “A health to you, mistress.” He speaks properly, but barely so, for his words are made singsong by tongue-pull.

  “Five of your best sparling,” says Mistress Tipley.

  He fumbles through a big covered basket and pulls out fish by the tail. Three are shiny and gray-green, but the others are stiff like planking. And they smell.

  Mistress Tipley had better not think I will be carrying those fish.

  She shakes her head. “Your best.”

  “They’re the best I’ve got,” he grumbles. Then he straightens and adds, “If it pleases you, mistress.”

  “Half price, then,” Mistress Tipley says. “Those two aren’t fit for anything save a stew.”

  I’m sure as anything not eating them. I’ll give them to Salvo. He likes foul dead things.

  “Naught wrong with them,” the fishmonger insists. “Just listless from being at the bottom of the basket.”

  “Then a levelooker shall decide,” Mistress Tipley says firmly. “The judges at Piepowder Court won’t mind settling the matter.”

  I giggle. Piepowder. Mayhap the judge is a baker and you’re amerced in sacks of flour.

  The fishmonger growls something in tongue-pull, then sighs. “Very well. What’ll you give for them?”

  Mistress Tipley squints. “Twopence.”

  “I’d rather have the sack of oats that your daughter there is holding.”

  I jerk back as though he hit me. That he could even think such a thing, much less speak it!

  “Twopence,” repeats Mistress Tipley.

  The fishmonger looks bellysick. “Please, mistress. Lastage is the worst tax of the lot, so there are no costers out here.”

  Let him rot. That’ll teach him some manners.

  “Twopence or nothing.”

  The fishmonger closes his eyes for a long moment. His jaw is working. Then he deliberately pushes back his ratty cloak and drops a hand to a knife-hilt.

  I choke. I freeze. I cannot even stumble out of his reach.

  “Don’t.” Mistress Tipley’s voice is steady, her posture rigid. “That’s trouble you don’t want.”

  I garble out a prayer in an undertone. I will stand before my Maker ere my Ave is done.

  “What you want is to finish this trade,” she goes on in a voice even I can tell is too calm. “Then there’ll be no trouble.”

  The fishmonger’s wrath falters and his shoulders slump. At length he drags his cloak over the knife-hilt. “I . . . I just haven’t the coin . . .”

  Now that the knife is out of sight, I manage to tumble behind Mistress Tipley like a days-old puppy.

  “. . . it’ll be county court because of the blade . . .”

  Mistress Tipley regards him steadily. “What blade? I’ve come for fish. Twopence for sparling.”

  The fishmonger gapes like a pardoned man on the gallows. At length he pleads, “Half the oats, then. Half for all five sparling, plus a handful of herring. Your handful.”

  Mistress Tipley puts a thoughtful finger to her chin, and it’s obvious now that she’s not fit to do the marketing. There’s naught to consider with such a bargain. He’s offering easily fivepence worth of fish for a piddling halfpenny’s worth of oats. And after the fright he put on me, the wretched brute deserves to come up short.

  “Very well,” she says. “Half.”

  The fishmonger piles the fish into a cloth she holds out, penitent now, babbling like a lackwit. “A blessing on your kindness, mistress, for I’ve two little ones to feed, and with all the tolls it’s enough to drive a man to—”

  “Shhh!” snaps Mistress Tipley, and she jerks her chin at me.

  The fishmonger bobs his head, smiles, cringes like a whipped hound. “You are kind indeed, demoiselle, and God Almighty and all the saints will reward you for it.”

  An Ave ago, this wretch was ready to gut me like a fish. Now he’s heaping blessings on me. And pulling his cloak firmly over the knife-hilt, hoping I’ll forget.

  I don’t, though. When we pass the toll table on our way out, I tug on a serjeant’s sleeve and whisper in his ear.

  “He had what?” The serjeant draws back, startled. “Where?”

  I gesture toward the wharves, trying to look frightened. It isn’t hard.

  “Good work, lass.” The serjeant nods to his fellow and they peel away from the toll line, pawing through Welsh people and drawing their weapons as they go.

  Soon there’s shouting and commotion and the slushy sound of fish dumped on the ground. More shouting, then a cry of terror and the thrash of struggle.

  I smile as I follow Mistress Tipley back toward Caernarvon, despite the black look she’s giving me. Somehow I’m not as frightened anymore.

  THE brat never looses me ere sunset. Most days it matters little.

  On market day, it means we starve.

  The last few shopkeepers will be drawing down their awnings and folding up their counters by the time I reach the market common.

  Only one thing to do.

  Promised Gruffydd I would not. But we must eat, and this is what they’ve left us.

  Down the road, beneath the dark grave of a gate, toward the mill, bracing myself. Deep breaths. Steady on.

  Knuckles against the weathered rearyard door. The Cadnant laps quietly below.

  A face, doughy and wroth, peers through a cracked door. “Whaddaya want?”

  “Oats.”

  The doughball’s eyes flick up and down. Then he gives a greasy smile. “Threepence.”

  Open my hand. There he is. Staring out, hair like the waves, becrowned. Bastard has the gall to smirk, even cast in silver.

  He is why.

  It is he who reduced us so.

  Turn the penny over. The cross is better. Must think of the saints, though. Not the churchmen.

  “How much for a penny?”

  “A curse,” the doughball spits. “Filthy whore. I’ve been amerced enough today.”

  Turn. Walk away. Won’t limp here. Not beneath walls of bone and stone.

  “Unless . . .”

  Keep walking. Already know what he’ll want for a miserable half-sack. Back along the path, head down, feet raising dust.

  Squeeze the penny tight. Mayhap hurt him whose likeness is stamped here, can men of silver hurt.

  Toward Porth Mawr. With luck it’s not too late and he’ll have something left. Sun isn’t completely down yet. Mayhap, since the Porth Mawr mill is farther from the walls. But English watch him more closely for that very reason.

  “Three measures,” whisp
ers the miller through the crack in his rearyard door. “And you did not get it from me.”

  “Crown measures?”

  “Christ, yes. What else?”

  Stuff the sack through the crack. A rustling, and the sack returns dangling from a grizzled hand. It looks empty still. Weak and limp. The levelookers must have been here today.

  Peer in. Oats at the bottom, a finger’s depth.

  Crown measures.

  It’s all I can do to keep from stuffing them in my mouth. Handful after handful, oats clinging to my lips. Feel full. Just for a moment.

  Give the penny one last squeeze, my thumb over his face. Press hard. Hurt, silver king. Die.

  “Now get gone,” the miller hisses, “ere I’m amerced again.”

  Hug the sack. Hug it close.

  The lot of them should burn.

  The path unfolds, some last hints of sun at my right. Skirt fields, fine greening swaths of oats and barley. Mustn’t tread there. Watchers are about. Traitors all. Like their miserable fathers.

  Should be Gruffydd’s. And men like him. Every handswidth. Instead it belongs to burgesses. Given by a king who had it to give because he took it. Sown with blood. Every handswidth.

  Woods are nearing. Stumps and holes in waves where the timber gangs have been. English always need wood. Firewood. Castle scaffolding. Townhouses.

  Gallows.

  Timber gangers never want for coin. Smug bastards with their steady wages and their woodboon and their wretched quarter-day feasts on the borough’s penny. Handpicked by the English, every man, to keep the rest of us jealous and compliant.

  At the top of the rise is a dull bulk of shadows. Hidden. They’d have to care to find us.

  Shoulder through the curtain. The fire is down to embers, and next to it Mam lies on her pallet. She looks dead. Just a pile of threadbare blankets. The one I got from the porter for showing my tits. The one Gruffydd got for spading up and sowing the first mayor’s curtilage garden. And the one that smelled like Da for almost a year till the dirt crept up from the floor and the mold crept down from the walls to take him away from us one last time.

  Go to her. Kneel. Her eyes are clenched closed. Her face is lines all cracked like thirsty ground. Her bone fingers pick at the blankets. She is never warm.

  Rise. Legs throb all the way up, throb and ache and feel wobbly inside, bones of water. Turn from her, quiet. Mustn’t wake her. Feed the fire enough ill-gotten sticks to keep it sputtering. Mash a small handful of oats into gruel. She’ll be hungry when she wakes.

  Lift the gruel spoon, watch the liquid oats dribble. Almost more than I can bear, empty as I am. When I’m at the brat’s, the chatelaine does what she can—a wedge of bread at midday, a covert mug of ale—but there’s naught to do for Crown measures and market penny.

  Drink some watered mead. Tricks my belly into feeling full.

  “Babies.”

  Crawl to Mam’s side. “I’m here. Please be still.”

  “They’re coming.” Mam’s eyes are flat like coins. They have not looked in years. “They’ll take everything. The herds. The pewter. They’ll kill my babies. They’ll kill my poor little lambs.”

  Mam’s eyelids flutter and her limbs begin to thrash. Slide a bit of wood between her teeth and press her shoulders against the pallet till the shaking dies away.

  “Your babies are alive.” Pitch my voice calming. “Sleep now. They’re alive.”

  Mam’s face is bloodless. Tug the stick from her sagging jaws. Cover her with blankets. Spoon some gruel into her mouth.

  Your babies are alive. Every time, I lie. We are alive in body, my brother and I. English should have put us to the sword, though. Spared us this.

  Muck out the byre, toss the leavings on the midden, then haul bucket after bucket of water. It’s long past dark when everything is set. A bucket of water at Mam’s right hand. Her knife carefully sharpened and cleaned. Chips for kindling the fire and wood enough to keep it burning all day. Her privy rags and bucket, dumped and squeezed and scrubbed. A pottle of mead, nigh empty.

  Now, with God Almighty’s help, Mam might live another day.

  Drink mug after mug of water. In the blackest part of night, I will rise so I can be at the brat’s house by dawn to haul water and cook pottage and listen to the lackwit prattle on about how unfair it is that she must sit so still while the buttermilk bleaches her freckles.

  I’VE DRAGGED one of the hall benches into the frontmost chamber, the one with the big windows that open onto Shire Hall Street. Most likely it’s meant to be a shop of some kind, or a workroom. It’s the only place I can spin or sew in peace. If the pack train ever arrives, I’ll set up my embroidery frame here. It’d be perfect but for the flies and the smell of the road out front.

  My father clumps in crowing like a cock. “Oh, my girl, get dressed! They’re waiting on us even now.”

  “A moment, Papa.” I’m squinting at a particularly tricky curl of a peacock’s tail. “Let me finish this stitch.”

  My linen is jerked from my hands. My father tosses it onto the bench and pulls me up by both wrists, grinning like a fool.

  “Hey! Papa—”

  “Hay is for horses, sweeting. Now go put on your surcote. Quickly now.”

  I weave my needle into the corner of my linen and bundle the lot into my workbasket. “What’s the hurry?”

  “The Coucys have invited us to dinner. Now go!”

  Right. Yes. There was someone by the name of Coucy at Mass. Bark like a mastiff and hands like a smith. I put on my yellow surcote with the vine stitchery around the collar and off we go.

  Up the road. Toward the High Street.

  We stop before a door twice my height that’s set in a building all in gray stone, four stories’ worth.

  The Coucys live on High Street in a house of gray stone.

  I suddenly realize my hair is a mess.

  A girl in a homespun apron lets us in. We’re led into a paneled hall and given hippocras. My father beams down at me and pets my plaits, putting them in further disarray.

  “Edgeley.” A sun-browned man fills the entryway.

  My father crosses the room with big strides and clasps the man’s wrist, then inclines his head. “My lord, you are kind to invite us. We are honored to take meat at the table of Sir John de Coucy.”

  Sir John nods. “You’re most welcome to Caernarvon.”

  “Thanks to the goodwill of honesti like yourself.”

  “Well, don’t think it comes cheap,” Sir John replies to the wall behind my father’s head. “You’ll take the oath as soon as we can convene. By quarter-day at the latest.”

  My father blinks. “B-but that’s midsummer.”

  “So it is. Sooner the better, eh?”

  A woman and a girl come through the doorway after Sir John. The girl is about my size and has hair that flutters about her waist. It’s the color of sunlit flax.

  My hair is plaited. It’s the color of wet sand.

  I hate this girl already.

  She is called Emmaline. When I’m presented, she smiles at me, and I mark that her teeth are more crooked than mine. This pleases me.

  At table, I’m seated next to Emmaline, so we must share a cup of wine. I manage to refrain from spitting in it since my father is watching me like an unpaid gaoler.

  We’re served stuffed pigling and gingerbread. Gingerbread! I eat two whole pieces and I’m reaching for a third when my father kicks me under the table. I reluctantly pull my hand into my lap.

  While the apron girl is clearing away the pewter and horn, Emmaline asks her mother, “May I show Cecily my embroidery?”

  “Of course you may,” says the harridan, so I’m obliged to follow Emmaline abovestairs.

  The walls of Emmaline’s chamber are tinted a delicate shade of orange. There’s a cushioned windowseat and a brazier that smells faintly of sandalwood. A small table stands near the bed, and on it are a brass bowl and ewer, some vials, a scattering of combs, and a bronze looking glass.r />
  At my house, I sleep on the floor.

  Emmaline goes to an embroidery frame beneath the window and unpins a length of linen. “I’m working this veil for my brother’s wife. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  She’s holding out the linen, hopeful as a dog with a stick, so I take it carefully in both hands and pretend to care. The stem stitches look loose, like gallows-rope, so I sneak a quick peek at the back. The knots are a mess, all tangled and lumpy.

  I grin outright. I can do better work with my feet in the dark.

  “I spent all winter on it,” Emmaline says proudly. “My brother and his wife live in Shrewsbury, but they’re coming to visit this summer.”

  “Ugh, why?”

  Emmaline looks puzzled. “Why not?”

  I gesture around. “Who would set foot in this town if they could avoid it?”

  “You mean Caernarvon?” Emmaline cocks her head. “But it’s a lovely place! You’ve come in spring, true enough, and it’s a bit gray now, but come summer you’ll fall in love with it.”

  “What about . . .” I grimace. “The people. Who live out there. Without the walls.”

  “The Welsh?” Emmaline smiles as if we’re sharing a secret. “Don’t be troubled by them. Most newcomers find them odd at first, but once you know them, they’re charming. They have the most beautiful children, and you should hear them sing.”

  Somehow I doubt that Emmaline has ever been within spitting distance of a Welsh person, much less been saddled with an ill-mannered one as a servant.

  The apron girl appears at the top of the stairs bearing a tray loaded with honey wafers.

  Honey wafers and gingerbread. Sir John ought to change his name to Croesus de Coucy.

  Emmaline sits on the bed and holds out the plate of wafers. I take a big handful and cram them in my mouth without anyone to say me nay, while Emmaline’s happy chatter about the Eden that is Caernarvon flows over me like rain over feathers.