Jackaroo Read online

  Gwyn pushed him—hard, harder than necessary—to get him moving. Sometimes she hated him. It was such a cruel thought, that he would do such a thing to those the stories said he protected. “That’s not funny at all.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” he told her. Her hands were occupied with the heavy basket, and if she kicked at him she would likely slip and fall, even though kicking him would make her feel better. “It’s very funny,” he told her, unable to stop laughing.

  Then he burst into tears. “I’m going home,” his voice wailed over his shoulder as he ran off ahead, the hood dropping back from his head.

  Tad was managing not to carry the basket, Gwyn noticed, watching him run ahead. She hefted its weight and began to move along at a steady pace. The heaviness pushed out at her chest, and Tad’s reaction just made her feel more helpless. Tad had no sympathy for the troubles of others. Gwyn almost wished she had his cold heart, as she tried not to remember, trying to think ahead to the safety of home. But how could Tad have such a terrible thought and laugh? As if he would ever do something like that, even if he were real, Jackaroo.

  Chapter 3

  JACKAROO IT WAS WHO SLIT the bag of the greedy Bailiff, so that every coin the Bailiff put into it slipped out as he rode away, his leather bag bouncing on his saddle. That was an old story, from the times before the Earls swore fealty to the King, times when the people served only the Lord and the Lord served only himself. As the story told, there was a greedy Bailiff who put the coins for his Lord into one hand and the coins for himself into the other. Jackaroo emptied the Bailiff’s bag, returning to each man just that which he had unjustly paid, no more nor less. At the last, the Bailiff’s greed was his own undoing, for he put his hand into the Lord’s gold to make up for himself what he had lost. That was a hanging day where the sun shown bright, as the story told.

  Gwyn walked along, the snow crisp under her feet, a few flakes now blown down from the sky. She should, perhaps, hurry to catch Tad; anybody else would have, to ask what the matter was, to keep him safe in sight. But Tad was old enough to follow the roadway home, if he was too silly to know that two traveling together were safer than one traveling alone. And she already knew what the matter was: He had no stomach for poverty, he feared the ugly hunger and the dead animal outside the door.

  Her brother could do as he wanted, but she would go along at her own pace, thinking her own thoughts. What trouble would greet her at her own door when Tad had arrived alone, she could predict. What trouble lay behind her she had seen. But for now, she had only her own company, and the snow falling sparsely over the frozen hills.

  Jackaroo it was who cut the hangman’s rope from the neck of the man falsely convicted and pulled the man onto the saddle behind him, where he bounced and clung on the unaccustomed mount, and he was never seen again. The Lord’s verdict was on him, even though the people knew it was his jealous brother who had done the murder. That time, especially, the story told, the Lords had sought Jackaroo and tried to take him. But they never could. They named him outlaw, but he was too quick and clever for them.

  Jackaroo it was who put beside a poor man’s fire the coins that would pay his tithes, or the grain that would feed his family in the days before the Doling Rooms, or sometimes just the bitter drink that would ease the pains of dying. And Jackaroo it was who wove for the poor girl a wedding skirt, delicate green vines twisted together and their flowers scattered over it like stars scattering the sky, so that she could marry her love proudly, even though she had no dowry to bring to him.

  It was all old stories, Gwyn knew. She didn’t mind old stories. When she was a child, and listening to the other children tell one another the tales, she believed they were true. She even dreamed once or twice of Jackaroo. In her dreams, as in the stories, he wore a short cape, like a soldier’s, only his was red as cherries. His tunic, over the fine cambric shirt he wore, glowed blue as a midsummer sky and fastened with silver buckles all down the front. His high boots folded over at the thighs, the leather soft and silent as a Lady’s gloves. His face was hidden by a silken mask that fitted down over his nose, concealed his chin, and muffled his voice. Only his eyes could be seen under the plumed hat. Even in her dreams, Jackaroo had no face.

  The wind rose up strong from the west, behind her. It was a wind that blew her homeward, making it easy to walk ahead. Snowflakes fell more thickly, and Gwyn spared a thought for Tad, telling herself that the Way was clear, that if at nine years he didn’t have the sense to keep a hand on the rail fence he would be a poor dunce.

  They had told themselves the old tales, the children, because at the sound of the name their parents’ faces grew hard and forbidding. The children told themselves the tales of how Jackaroo was once a poor man, his family lost to famine and fever, gone mad with grief; and he had been found by the elves in the forest, who took pity on him, even though he was a mortal man, and gave him power. They told the tales of a Prince, kidnapped for ransom, who was taken out through the land and saw how things were for his people; and some said the kidnappers were his own Lords who wanted his rich lands for themselves, but proved their own undoing because the Prince rode out at night as Jackaroo, to right the wrongs done upon the people. The story Gwyn liked best was the one that told how Jackaroo was a mighty king who could not rest after his lawless and cruel life, but must ride the land he had tyrannized until the weight of his good deeds measured equal with the heaviness of his evil deeds.

  Behind the mask Jackaroo wore, there could be a face of bone, its flesh long since eaten away. Jackaroo could fight as a trained soldier, with swords and shield; he could ride a horse like a Lord; and he had the knowledge of letters which only the Lords held. For hadn’t he once posted at the gates of every castle, sending each of the three Lords that served each Earl, each of the two Earls, and even the King himself in his high city, the same message, bravely written and cunningly argued as the story told, to show the Lords the profit they could make if the people walked without hunger and slept without fear for their holdings. Or so the story told.

  False, they were all of them false, the stories; as false as the stories of fairies dancing in the moonlight glades on Midsummer Night. But they were stories to warm the heart by, to give hope where no other hope existed, and so they had their use. They had also their believers, but that did not concern her.

  Falling snow whispered down. It coated the bags of grain and the turnips in her basket and made a cold ridge along her shoulders. She shrugged that off. Unbidden, from behind the Jackaroo stories she had been whispering down into her head, came the picture of the two old people in the hut beside the forest, huddled together on the bed. Tomorrow, the old woman would probably drag the dog into the forest, and then there would be the waiting time while the old man came to understand that the dog would not return. Better, Gwyn knew, than knowing that whoever had broken in and taken the goat had also killed the dog. If the people would do that to one another, she thought, then times were worse than any she had known—if the poor were not safe from one another. How long had it been that each year was harder than the one before? Since she was Tad’s age, she thought.

  At last Gwyn saw through the veil of snow the dark shape of the hills that marked the last mile before home. One more long rise to go, then she would see the Inn and, beyond the trees stretching off along the rise behind the Inn, the smoke from the few houses that made their village. Tad would be safe home by now, she thought, and soon she herself would be kicking snow from her boots at the kitchen door and stepping into the bright warmth. Her feet were cold, and she would welcome the fire on her toes, let her mother say what she would.

  But Tad moved forward to greet her from the top of the rise, where he sat waiting on top of the fence. He had let his hood be blown back so his hair was dusted with snow. He stamped his feet on the ground to keep them warm. Gwyn’s temper rose. “You should be in the house by now,” she told him. She increased her speed. “It’s almost dark. Mother’ll be wondering.”

 
Tad fell into step with her, unconcerned. He had no sense at all. “You should have gone in,” she repeated. Just like him not to offer to take the basket from her. “At least put your hood up.” Or was he trying to get her a scolding? “Mother’ll have my skin if you come down with a chill.”

  Maybe he was just slow-witted. Maybe he’d forgotten the way a cough racked his body. It had been two winters now since he’d been kept to bed, coughing through the night while they fed him hot watered wine to give him rest. Maybe he thought it couldn’t happen again. “Honestly Tad,” she scolded.

  “They’d have asked me where you were,” he muttered. At least he had the sense to pull his hood up, but nothing would disguise his wet hair.

  “So?”

  “You’d have told them I ran off.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I’m supposed to—we’re supposed to stick together—in case . . .”

  Gwyn laughed aloud. “You’d protect me?”

  “I wouldn’t even want to,” Tad told her, angry. “But Da would tell me I should; you know what he’d say.”

  Gwyn remembered the quarrel that morning. Da and Burl were going out to find trees, to replenish the woodpile, and Mother would not let Tad go with them, because the work was too hard. Rose was at her time of the month so couldn’t be sent to the Doling Room, which was why Gwyn was going. Tad had to walk with Gwyn, when what he really wanted was to stay inside watching the loaves of bread rise or the stew bubble. But at the thought of Tad protecting her from whatever danger might arise on the road, Gwyn laughed again. She carried a dagger and knew how to use it.

  The thought of how he had stayed out in the snow, with dark and the temperature both falling, just to keep himself from a scolding, cut her laughter off short, and she hurried the last distance to home, feeling no pity for her brother who, with his shorter legs, had to half-run to keep up with her.

  The sign that marked the Inn clanked in the wind, a dark shape in the snowy dusk. Tad and Gwyn hurried into the protection of the Inn yard.

  From the yard the Inn looked empty. The main section, two stories at its center, two wings built off the ends, was shuttered against the weather. Only the three big chimneys, their smoke barely rising above the high central roof before low clouds forced it downward again, gave signs of life within. Seeing smoke rising from the third chimney, on the west wing, which held the parlor and the two bedrooms that were almost never occupied in winter, Gwyn wondered if one of the Messengers was abroad, and if so, why.

  Tad ran ahead of her to the kitchen doorway, ignoring Burl who was hauling up water from the well. Gwyn stopped to greet him. “Not frozen?” she asked.

  “It’ll freeze over in the night,” he promised her, without breaking the rhythm of his work, lowering the bucket down on its rope, hauling it up and emptying it into the four wooden buckets at his feet. He wore no mittens, and his dark hair was layered with snow. “Once the wind blows these clouds away, it’ll freeze.”

  She left Burl to the job and pushed open the door to follow Tad into the kitchen. There, her mother fussed over Tad, pushing him into a seat at the table. “. . . so late, I don’t know what kept you so long. Take off those boots before you step onto my floor, Gwyn.” Gwyn obeyed, removing the heavy boots and slipping her feet into the felt shoes waiting there, while her mother talked on. “We’ve long since eaten and I don’t know why you couldn’t get back before dark. And you with your head wet—How did your hair get so wet and will you get him a spoon, Gwyn? We have to feed him and get him to bed, and with this extra work to do—don’t sit down, Gwyn, there’s a tray to carry into the parlor. Don’t just stand there, bring down a loaf and slice it.”

  A tray with two wooden bowls on it lay on the table. Two pewter mugs stood filled with wine. Gwyn added a platter of bread, some cut into thick slices and the rest waiting with a knife beside it, then a cup of butter. Impatiently, her mother took two of the cut slices to put in front of Tad, to whom she served a bowl of stew before she ladled helpings into the bowls on the tray.

  “Guests?” Gwyn asked. She took a fresh apron from the pile on the shelf and wrapped it around her.

  “Take the tray to Da, he’ll serve them, and you get on back here before all this food in your basket gets wet with melted snow.” As Gwyn left the kitchen, she saw her mother start hanging out cotton sheets on the line before the fire. The guests were staying the night then, and the rooms would have to be got ready. The aroma of stew filled her mouth, making her aware of how hungry she was.

  Her father waited in the barroom, where six trestle tables ran the length of the empty room. “You’re back now,” he greeted her, then turned to serve the men in the parlor while Gwyn went back to the kitchen where her mother told her to dry Old Megg’s food, build up the fires for the guests, and see that Burl had the wood box filled. “I’ll make up the beds,” she told Gwyn. “You fetch logs for the night, then help Burl with their horses.”

  “Who are—” Gwyn started to ask.

  “No chatter.” Her mother cut her off before turning to Tad to say, “Out to the privy, then off to bed with you. Like as not you’ve given yourself a chill and why”—she turned back to Gwyn—“you couldn’t see that he kept his hood up is—” Gwyn quickly unpacked the basket, then picked up four thick logs from the stack by the fire and shouldered open the door into the barroom.

  The two bedrooms still had a chill in the air, although fires burned there and the stones of the fireplace were warm. Gwyn set logs down carefully on the fires. They would burn all night. By the time the men had finished their meal, the rooms would be warm enough. The beds were covered by thin blankets, to keep dust off. Gwyn removed those and folded them into the cupboards. The feather pillows smelled slightly dank, so she shook them out and lay them on the hearthstone. She shook out the comforters. In the kitchen, she changed back into her boots. She needed no cloak to cross the corner of the yard and enter the stable. The snow was already ceasing.

  The stable was a long building, half the size of the Doling Room, with four stalls at the far end. The end that shared a wall with the kitchen backed up to the stones of the kitchen fireplace, which kept it warm in winter and over-hot in summer. Two rooms occupied that end, a large tack room and the closet where Burl slept. Gwyn followed the light of a lantern and found Burl rubbing down a chestnut mare in one of the stalls.

  “Glad to see you,” he told her. Gwyn picked up a soft cloth from the pile he’d left and entered the next stall. When she saw the horse in there she grinned. It was a leggy stallion, his shaggy winter coat a dull dappled gray, his head moving nervously as he watched her. Burl would be glad indeed to see her in time to curry this animal. The stallion moved back away from her, his feet stirring the hay. “Osh aye,” she spoke to him, watching his ears, “it’s never me you need fear.” Talking steadily, she held the halter and rubbed the stallion’s nose until he quieted. Then she started rubbing him down, her hands calm on his coat, tracing the broad muscles over his shoulders and down his legs. Burl could handle horses but, like most, he didn’t trust them. Sheep, goats, cows, even pigs, he enjoyed, but horses were too large and nervous. Gwyn didn’t mind them and didn’t mind exercising them when they had been standing too long in the stable. She even sometimes walked them out away from the Inn and village and then climbed up to ride. This happened rarely, because the chance rarely came her way, but she liked sitting so high, with her legs clamped around the horse’s ribcage and the animal moving slowly underneath her. She had never dared go faster than a trot, not knowing if she could stick on at a faster gait, not sure the horse would still be obedient to the reins at that speed. Nobody knew she did this. Nobody even suspected. Nobody could imagine wanting to, she thought. “Great brutes,” Burl called horses. Even the little mare he curried would be a great brute to him.

  Gwyn got the brush and comb and began on the stallion’s mane, pulling through the thick hair, thinking about Burl. He was nineteen, and his heart, which broke for Rose, seemed to be he
aling. Burl could never have spoken for Rose. He was a servant bought from the Priests at the Hiring Fair, his price the cost of seven year’s labor. He’d been seven when his family died in a fever that swept through Lord Hildebrand’s City. Gwyn could just remember the thin, silent boy with sad, dark eyes Da had come home with. He’d been frightened, too, not knowing what waited for him at the Inn, knowing that most bought servants were worked or whipped to death long before their years were up and they could earn wages. Burl had been treated fairly, because that was Da’s way. He had stayed in their service. It would be good for the Inn to have a steady head like Burl’s under Tad when their father stepped aside. When he had saved enough, he could go to a Hiring Fair himself and find a girl who would be his wife when she grew old enough. With nothing but the work of his hands to offer, he couldn’t speak for Rose. Rose would marry Wes, the Blacksmith’s named heir, at the Spring Fair. Burl never said anything to indicate how he felt, and his work never faltered, but Gwyn had seen the way his eyes lingered on Rose’s face, and how a kind word from her could bring a smile.

  The stallion had the King’s mark in his ear, she saw, a lion rampant. Calling over to the sounds in the next stall, she asked, “Who are the guests?”

  “A man and a boy,” he answered. Gwyn waited, but he didn’t add anything.

  “Burl,” she protested.

  “His son. From the High City.” His voice in the darkness brought to Gwyn’s mind the fields in summer, it was so deep and slow. “That’s all I know.”

  Gwyn brushed down the long legs, stroking hard, the way the horse liked it. His muscles rippled in pleasure under the bristles.

  “How long do they stay?”

  Burl didn’t answer.

  “Why are they traveling in winter?”

  No answer again. That was reasonable, since he probably didn’t know. Gwyn would ask Da, later. She picked up the stallion’s feet, to check his iron shoes, poured water into the drinking bucket, mounded up hay at the far side of the stall, and stepped out, latching the half door behind him.