Jackaroo Page 5

  “No, he won’t,” Burl said. Gwyn looked questioningly at him, but he said no more.

  “Why not? From the distance how could he tell?”

  “You don’t walk in the same way,” Burl answered. “Besides, Rose would be wearing a cloak, with the hood up.”

  “What do you mean we don’t walk in the same way? There’s only one way to walk, you put one foot ahead of the other.” But she didn’t expect an answer because she did know what he meant. Whatever Rose did, whatever gesture she used, there was something dainty to it. Gwyn had never seen herself, but she felt inside herself a strength that flowed down her arms and legs, she could feel it especially in her shoulders. Gwyn was more like their oldest sister, Blithe, married two years this spring, and her first child died last winter.

  Cam had spoken for Blithe, even though he had no holding of his own. It was his mother who had sold Da the vineyard and used the purchase money to buy a weaver’s holding in the village, from Lord Hildebrand’s Steward, when the Weaver and his only remaining daughter had died of a fever and the holding was empty. Cam’s mother wove cloths, all the year round, on the loom set up in their main room; his two sisters wove also and their hands would be their dowries; but Cam didn’t like sitting down to work. He said he had no need of roots chaining him to any single place. When Cam asked for Blithe, Da had answered with scorn in his voice. “I wouldn’t give a field into your hands, much less my daughter.” Cam turned it into a joke: “I take it then your answer is no,” he had mocked, but Gwyn had heard the humiliation beneath his laughter and wished him better luck in life.

  Wes moved heavily through the snow. Gwyn put down her basket while they waited for him to regain his breath. She planted the thick staff in the snow and leaned on it, hearing Wes’s heavy breathing and the echo of Burl’s melody against the silence of the snowy hills and the overlooking mountains. The sun shone warm on her head.

  Wes she liked and thought Rose had done well to say yes to him. He was big and slow, and work at the forge put thick muscles onto his shoulders and legs. Like Da, he trimmed his beard short. His head was large, his hair brown and curly, his broad face frank and open—a face that concealed nothing.

  “You didn’t have to rush, we’d have waited for you,” Gwyn told him. He had taken time to put on a wrap, and a scarf to keep his neck from cold.

  “Good day to you,” he said, greeting them both. His voice was as deep and rich as Mother’s stew, and his words came out as slowly as thick gravy boiling upward over the fire. “Gwyn. Burl.”

  Gwyn grinned at him. Wes’s way of doing things was slow and deliberate. He had been so slow and deliberate in his courting of Rose that sometimes—she told Gwyn later—she had felt like taking him by his shoulders and shaking him. She would have had to climb up onto a stool to do that, and even so Gwyn doubted the tiny Rose could budge Wes in the slightest. “Good day,” she greeted him. He had come up to say something. He would say what he intended to say in his own time.

  “It’s a pleasant morning,” he said.

  “But cold,” she reminded him. She waited. “Especially standing still,” she hinted.

  “Aye, it’s that,” he agreed. “I was thinking of coming to the Inn to see Rose, some afternoon. Do you think she would welcome a call?”

  Gwyn shook her head solemnly at him. “I don’t know.” His face fell. “Rose was saying just the other night that she thought there was something—or someone—she ought to be remembering. Isn’t that so, Burl?” She turned to draw him into the joke but he didn’t follow her lead. “There was someone, and Rose knew she ought to know who it was, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember who. Something to do,” Gwyn improvised, “with horseshoes, but she wasn’t sure if it was good luck or bad luck—”

  Wes finally caught on. He clapped her on the shoulder. “Get away with you,” he said.

  “I could take a message,” Gwyn offered.

  “What I have to say I’ll say myself, not trust to your quick tongue. Just tell her that I asked after her.”

  “Not that you’ll be calling?”

  Wes refused to be drawn in. “That too. But no more.”

  “Not a word more,” Gwyn promised. “I won’t tell her how you looked, or that the forge was working, or whether or not you seemed eager to hear news of her.”

  “Aye, and if I know you you’ll tell her whatever you’ve a mind to,” Wes answered. “Does the girl keep you good company, Burl?”

  “Da sent Burl to protect me,” Gwyn said quickly.

  “That’s a good thought,” Wes said, serious again. “So the Innkeeper thinks there’s danger.”

  Gwyn shrugged.

  “It’s a bad winter,” Burl said then. He stated this quietly, as was his way, but his very quietness gave his words more meaning.

  “It’s been five days since we had need to light the forge,” Wes agreed. “There was scant to be had at Lord Hildebrand’s Doling Room yesterday. My mother went with the Weaver’s daughter, and they say the Steward questioned them closely before he gave anything. They were gone all day. You’ll be safe enough between here and Old Megg’s though, I should think.”

  Gwyn agreed with him. In this village, with the Inn to give the Weaver work, and the Blacksmith’s shop, and Da’s holdings to employ the people, hunger didn’t gnaw so hard.

  “I must go back,” Wes said. “You’ll tell Rose?”

  “Rose would welcome a visit.” Gwyn answered him at last what he wanted to hear.

  “Would she then? It’ll be good to set eyes on her.” At this embarrassing declaration, he turned away quickly and hurried down the hill. Gwyn and Burl walked on, their heavy leather boots making deep footprints into the snow.

  Burl had never before spoken of the hardness of times; he never seemed uneasy. “Are times worse than ever before, think you?” Gwyn asked him. She wanted him to deny it.

  “The worst I’ve seen. The men who come to the barroom are troubled,” he told her. “Afraid. When men are afraid, they’re dangerous, that’s what I’ve found.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “The Inn’s safer than most, lass,” he comforted her. “The Innkeeper has stores, and the Lords need to keep the Inns safe for the Messengers and the soldiers.”

  “Do you think there’s trouble coming?”

  “Trouble’s here, Innkeeper’s daughter.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but oddly enough he had comforted her. “Do you never wonder? Burl, why should we have so much when others have so little.”

  He laughed then. “And if I could answer that question, I’d be a wise man.”

  “Just because you can’t answer a question doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask it,” she snapped. She didn’t like being laughed at.

  “No, it doesn’t. I won’t quarrel with that,” he told her in his calm voice.

  Gwyn moved ahead, to walk alone again.

  In the land around the village there were few trees. This land had been cleared for fields of turnips, potatoes, onions. As they went higher, the hillsides grew steeper, difficult to plow and plant, better for grazing. Old Megg’s hut was beyond the vineyard, over the crest of the hill, invisible until you came upon it. The snow had blown up against the low fences over which they trained the vines in the growing season, so that the hillside was crossed along with dark lines, like charcoal marks across the snow paper. Once again, Burl piped their arrival.

  There were only a dozen goats in the herd at this time of year. The goats had a long open shed and fenced pen to keep them safe and give them some shelter. The one-room house sat close beside this. But the pen held only three goats and one kid. The gate to the pen hung open. Gwyn didn’t hesitate—she ran through the trampled snow as fast as her long skirts would permit.

  Burl was there before her, and she saw immediately the figure of Old Megg, sitting with her back to the stones of the fireplace, where a small fire burned steadily. Old Megg sat stiff, her legs covered over with blankets. Her white hair, th
e coiled braids slicked into place with grease, looked tidy, but her face was gray and exhausted. When she spoke, her voice had none of its usual energy. Gwyn had heard that voice all of her life, telling stories, telling her briskly to build a fire, instructing her how to mix pastry dough or gut a chicken while Old Megg’s hands acted out the instructions. Now that voice spoke in broken phrases, as if each phrase had to be squeezed out of her throat.

  “Thought someone’d come. Sometime soon. Goats are out.” Her eyelids closed.

  “I’ll shut the gate to keep in whatever’s left,” Burl told Gwyn.

  “I’ll put on porridge. Can you bring wood?”

  Old Megg seemed to be breathing all right, so Gwyn assumed she was asleep and set about stirring up the fire and putting on a spot of watery meal, made from the grain kept on the shelf by the fire. She looked around at the tidy room, where nothing seemed out of place. Half a dozen cheeses, each covered with thick wax, waited on the shelf. Opening the cupboards built into the walls of the house, Gwyn saw shawls and blankets in folded piles. The bedclothes hadn’t been straightened.

  “Four of them,” the unfamiliar voice said from behind her.

  Gwyn crouched by the fire, stirring the pot. “Don’t try to talk. I’ll have food for you soon.”

  “Hungry.”

  “Are you warm enough?”

  The eyelids fell and rose, assenting. Old Megg sat so still under the blankets that Gwyn wondered if she could move. There was a pot of honey on the shelf and she dribbled some of that over the thin gruel, stirring it in before offering Old Megg a spoonful.

  “Feed myself,” the old woman protested, but Gwyn shook her head. Burl brought an armload of logs into the room. He put two onto the fire, then sat at the stool by the table, letting Gwyn do and say what she thought best.

  By the time the bowl of gruel was emptied, some color had come back into Old Megg’s cheeks. Gwyn took another bowl and went outside the door to scoop it full of fresh snow. This she melted by the fire. When it was liquid, she spooned that into Old Megg’s mouth, ignoring protests that were becoming more vigorous. At last, the old woman pulled her arms impatiently free from the blankets and took the bowl from Gwyn, drinking the water down. “And that’s enough coddling,” she declared.

  Gwyn sat back.

  “My ankle’s twisted. That’s why I’m sitting here.”

  “What happened?”

  “Four men came, thieves, to take the goats.”

  Somehow, Gwyn wasn’t surprised.

  “I knew I couldn’t fight them off, so I opened the gate. Shooed the creatures out.”

  “Were they bearded?” Gwyn asked.

  “They didn’t like that, they didn’t like that one little bit. They shoved me aside—and then set off chasing the goats.” Old Megg smiled then, remembering. “I don’t think they’ll have caught many.”

  “You fell,” Gwyn said.

  “Are many returned?”

  “When was this?” Gwyn asked.

  “I thought sure the ones with milk would come back, when it was time for milking. How many are in the pen, lad?”

  “Four,” Burl told her, his voice unworried.

  “I wouldn’t close that gate, there’s more. The others—” She turned to look at Gwyn again. “I don’t know where they’ll have got to.”

  “Unless those men were total fools, there’ll be some in their pot.”

  “Tell your Da I’m sorry.”

  “He’ll know.”

  “It was the night before last, unless my mind wandered. I could swallow down some cheese.”

  Gwyn cut her off a chunk. Old Megg gnawed at it. “I didn’t like to stand on the ankle. The cold has done me no good.”

  “What do we do now?” Burl asked Gwyn. She cut them each a chunk of cheese while she thought.

  “She can stay with the Weaver. Da will see to that.”

  “We’ll bring the goats down to the Inn,” he said.

  “This house will need to be closed up.”

  “I’ve my own blankets, and food to take,” Old Megg said. “That’ll ease the pain of her hospitality. But I’ll need your shoulder, lad.”

  “Both our shoulders,” Gwyn said. “And then we’ll return to see what’s to be done here. Things’ll be safe enough, I think, for a time.”

  “Not bearded,” Old Megg said. “They weren’t our people, they were soldiers. Their hair—”

  Gwyn understood. The soldiers had shorter hair than the people or the Lords, cut into a round circle over their ears. Probably so it couldn’t be pulled when they fought, she thought, although it might have been to prevent them from becoming vain. “Whose soldiers?” she asked.

  “They wore shirts and wraps, not the uniforms. I don’t know whose they were, Hildebrand’s or Northgate’s, or maybe even up from the south. It made no matter to me whose they were. They didn’t speak—except to curse me,” Old Megg added, “and that was like music to my ears.”

  “We’d best be going on, if you’ve got the strength,” Burl said.

  “I’ve the strength, lad,” Old Megg sighed. “It’s the bones for it I haven’t got. All I ask is that I don’t take a long time dying.”

  By the time they arrived back at the village, the sun was high in the sky and Old Megg’s breathing was ragged. She kept her eyes closed and didn’t respond while the Weaver made up the bed in her spare room and complained. One of the daughters built up a fire while the other put away the food and clothing Gwyn had carried down, and the Weaver complained.

  Cam sat by the kitchen fire, watching the activity, a lazy smile greeting his mother’s more petulant observations.

  “—why she couldn’t go to the Inn as I’m no nurse, and my own living to get,” the Weaver muttered.

  “We have guests,” Gwyn explained again.

  “Bringing her here to die. You have a stable too, unless I’m mistaken.”

  “It’s not warm enough for an old woman,” Gwyn repeated. “I’m sure Da will—”

  “Of course he will and ought to, but you know as well as I do it won’t repay us for the time lost at the loom.”

  “I’ll fetch down the extra food,” Gwyn said, trying to appease her. “You’ll have use for some cheeses.”

  “Osh aye, and if we’re so generous, couldn’t it have come sooner,” the Weaver answered. She was thinking, Gwyn knew, of old bitterness; of the time when her husband had sickened and she had been left with the three children to raise.

  There was nothing Gwyn could say so she gave up trying. She looked up to meet Cam’s eyes, smoky blue, flecked with yellow.

  “It’s a hard life my mother has,” he said. As always, his voice sounded as if it had laughter just barely held back behind it, however serious his words.

  “And you, good-for-nothing”—the Weaver turned on him—“sitting by the fire spinning tales all day, telling us what a great man you would be, given a chance.” But her voice softened as she looked at her son, who went over to put an arm around her and ask her, “Would you have me desert my home, then? And my poor weak and helpless mother who cannot stand up for herself? In times like these?” The Weaver shoved him away, but her eyes watched him move back to the fire, and she didn’t look displeased.

  The Weaver put water on the fire to heat, for compresses to wrap around Old Megg’s ankle. “—and she shouldn’t have been walking on it all the way down here, if anyone had any sense—” Cam grinned at Gwyn behind his mother’s back.

  Gwyn wanted to close up Old Megg’s house. Burl insisted on staying with her. “They’ll have expected us back at the Inn by now,” she told him.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Burl said, his voice firm.

  Gwyn felt her temper rising. It was, after all, her decision to make. She caught Cam’s eye.

  “Not me, Innkeeper’s daughter.” Cam shook his head. “It’s bitter cold.” She knew his real reason. He wouldn’t go near the vineyard that once had been his father’s holding, and he wouldn’t stir to help the Innkee
per in any way.

  “But the goats,” Gwyn said. They had to do something about securing the goats that were left and trying to recapture any that were wandering about.

  “I’ll see to them,” Burl told her, “and put the fire to bed. Let Cam walk you back home.”

  “Oh no,” Cam said, stretching his feet toward the fire.

  “I’ll be all right,” Gwyn told Burl. “We’re wasting time arguing,” she pointed out.

  Burl was studying Cam.

  “The Innkeeper doesn’t like me keeping his daughter company,” Cam said easily, laughter rippling behind his words. Gwyn felt so sorry for him with his queer pride. . . . She turned around abruptly.

  “I’ve the staff, which I know how to use. It’s not far and I’d hear them coming. Da won’t blame you,” she promised Burl.

  “That’s not what my concern is.”

  “Then let’s get going,” Gwyn said roughly. Without looking back, she left the house and turned south. No, she told Burl, she wouldn’t wait for Wes, and no she wouldn’t wait for him to get back with the goats. Her mother would be making everybody miserable with her worrying. Gwyn thought, for a moment, Burl would insist on coming with her. She drew herself up tall and told him to “See to those goats.” It was an order. Burl obeyed it.

  It didn’t take Gwyn long to walk off her crossness, but there was a confusion inside her that neither the white woods nor silent sky could soothe. What kind of men would attack an old woman? Or an old man, for that matter, she thought, remembering the day before, and slaughter a dog, too. And if, in these two days—

  She thought she heard something . . . behind her? She turned to catch a glimpse, but the sound had ceased.

  If, in these two days, she had heard of two different bands of men . . .

  She heard it again. Stopped again and the sound stopped. Her heart beat loudly. Then she realized that it was only an echo of her own footsteps she heard and relaxed her grip on the staff.

  The Innkeeper’s goats didn’t distress her as much, somehow, as that old couple’s one goat, which gave them milk. Gwyn strode along, thinking. She would like to take them a goat to replace their lost nanny, but Da would never permit that. But if his herd was all wandering around loose, who would know about those that didn’t return? She could take one goat for the old couple, and nobody would know. But that would be stealing from Da. Except that, in a sense, some of his wealth was hers, for dowry. So it wasn’t really stealing from Da but from herself. No, she admitted, it wasn’t stealing from Da, it was stealing from Tad, who would inherit. She didn’t much mind taking from Tad, who managed to give so little. If she wanted to talk her father into it, she would have no trouble doing that, but it would take weeks and weeks, and the old couple would likely starve by then. It was the right thing to do, she thought, to give them a goat, just one goat out of the Inn’s whole herd.