Jimmy the Hand (36 page)

The man himself
was in patched and faded homespun breeches and shirt, barefoot, and
no longer young, but tough as an old root from his looks.

Jarvis Coe bowed
slightly in the saddle. ‘We’re travellers,’ he
said, and gave their names. ‘We’d appreciate a place to
stop for the night, for we’ve seen no inn, and would be glad to
repay hospitality with a silver or so.’

The cottager’s
eyes went wide, then narrowed: that was a great deal of money for an
overnight stay. Jarvis flipped the coin, and the man caught it,
examined it and tucked it away.

‘That’s
generous of you, sir,’ the man said.

Jimmy found his
accent thicker than Lorrie’s had been, a yokel burr that
swallowed the last syllable of every word.

‘And it
will help pay the tax on my cot. We’ve room for two on the
floor—my sons are living out, working for Farmer Swidden—and
I’ve some comforters with clean straw, and there’s the
paddock for your horses. My Meg has some bean soup on the hob, and
she baked today.’

The top half of
the cottage’s door opened, and a woman looked out—late in
middle age, as brown and nondescript as her husband, with lips fallen
in on a mouth mostly toothless, and shrewd dark eyes. She nodded and
went back inside as the men unsaddled, watered and rubbed down their
mounts—Jimmy carefully copying what his companion did—and
turned the horses into the small paddock.

The cottager
came up with a big load of hay on the end of a wooden-tined pitchfork
and tossed it to the horses, giving the nanny-goat a thump in the
ribs when she tried to snatch some.

‘I’ve
oats,’ he said. ‘Get some from Farmer Settin over there
for helping with the reaping.’

Jimmy looked
around as they ducked into the cottage. It was a single room, not
overly large, with a tick bed on a frame of lashed poles in one
corner, the hearth in the other, and a floor of beaten earth—which
Jimmy would have minded less if there hadn’t been evidence that
his hosts neither wore shoes nor scraped their feet before coming in
from the yard. A ladder ran up into the loft, where the vanished sons
had probably slept.

For the rest,
there were a few tools on pegs—a sickle, two hoes, a scythe—and
a few garments, along with the iron pot that bubbled over the low
fire in the hearth. It was warm enough, and not so small they’d
feel cramped. It was better than sleeping outside, Jimmy decided,
even if the food didn’t look particularly inviting.

The cottager
leaned the billhook against the inside wall beside the door; Jarvis
and the young thief took the hint, and propped their swords beside
it.

‘Let me
see if I understand,’ Bram said uncertainly.

He felt
intimidated by the tall stone house in town, and by the two—well,
ladies—who were sitting across from him.

Mind you,
they look friendly enough,
he thought.

One, who
everyone seemed to call Aunt Cleora, was dressed as finely as a
lord’s wife, although not in quite the same style; she was
probably about the same age as his mother, but looked a decade
younger to peasant eyes. Miss Flora, her niece—newly arrived
from Krondor—was a pretty enough lass, although not a patch on
Lorrie. Lorrie looked strange herself, in one of Miss Flora’s
dresses, with her bandaged leg up on a settle.

Even the cook,
who looked to be right brutal when she wanted, had been sweet as
candy to him; but then, he supposed she felt motherly.

Serenely
unconscious of his tall, fresh-faced blond good looks, brought out by
a bath and clean clothes, Bram finished the last pastry and wiped his
hand on the napkin provided, remembering not to lick his fingers.
Which seemed a pity, since they were covered with fine clover honey.
The kitchen was about the size of the ground floor of his parents’
farmhouse, but more homely than the rest of the fine house: flagstone
floor, copper pots and pans on the walls, a long board table, and
sacks of onions and hams and strings of sausage and bundles of garlic
and herbs hanging from the rafters.

He could eat in
comfort here, and was glad that Miss Flora had suggested it. He was
still overwhelmed by the reaction he had received upon presenting
himself at the house; Lorrie had nearly cried for joy at seeing
him—which had caused his chest almost to burst at the feelings
he was just beginning to confront—and that had caused Flora to
treat him as a long lost-friend. Her aunt had instantly taken the
young man under her wing, insisting he bathe and refresh himself,
providing clothing belonging to one of her male kinsmen—he was
vague as to who, exactly—and then set to feeding him.
Apparently Aunt Cleora liked to see a man eat.

‘So Miss
Flora’s brother here—’ he said around a mouth full
of food.

‘Jimmy,’
Flora said helpfully.

‘Rescued
you from thief-takers, and found you a place to stay, and then he and
she bound up your leg, and he’s gone to look for Rip?’

Lorrie nodded
vigorously. ‘And then you came after me. Thank you, Bram!’

Bram felt
himself blush, and at the same time swell with pride; he was as ready
as the next man to bask in feminine admiration.

‘Well, I
couldn’t leave you to sort this out alone,’ he said.
‘Whatever that bunch of greybeards back home thinks. Wild
beasts don’t burn down farms, or attack men in the light of
day. Why they couldn’t believe you, Astalon alone knows,’
he observed, invoking the God of Justice. ‘Lorrie’s no
bubblehead, like some I could name but won’t, like Merrybet
Glidden.’

Lorrie’s
eyes filled with tears, which made him feel bad and good at the same
time. Flora sighed at him, and Aunt Cleora clasped her hands together
beneath her slight double chin.

‘This is
as good as a minstrel’s tale!’ said the older woman.
‘Young men setting out to rescue folks! Why, it’s
downright heroic!’

Bram blushed
even more. ‘I’m no hero,’ he said softly. ‘Only
a farmer’s son. But I’m still going to head after Rip, to
help your brother, Miss Flora.’ He yawned enormously. ‘Best
start early, too. On foot, it’s going to be a fair old chase,
they being mounted.’

Flora nodded
decisively. ‘You’ll have to get a horse, then,’ she
said.

Bram laughed.
‘Miss Flora, I’d like nothing better. But I can no more
afford a horse than I could dance north on my hands.’

Lorrie reached
into the pocket of her borrowed skirt. ‘But Bram, I’ve
got the price I got for Horace!’ she said. ‘Surely you
can get something for that.’

Bram fixed
Lorrie with a wry look, and both knew he was intentionally ignoring
the coins she had filched from his room. It wasn’t much, but it
was all he had.

‘And if
you can’t, I’ll top it up,’ Flora said.

‘And you
can take what you need from the kitchen for supplies on the way,’
Aunt Cleora said. ‘Best take my cousin Josh’s rain gear,
too, by the look of things.’

Overwhelmed,
Bram looked down at his toes in their home-cobbled shoes. That
reminded him of something. ‘At least I’ll be able to
track your foster-brother, Miss Flora,’ he said. At their
wide-eyed look: ‘Well, seems he bought Lorrie’s Horace.
And there’s a nick in his left off shoe that I’d know
anywhere.’ Then softly he added, ‘If the rain doesn’t
wash away everything, that is.’

Jimmy looked out
at the pouring rain and sighed. Why Jarvis couldn’t just ask
what he wanted to know was beyond him. But by now he knew a great
deal more about the family who had agreed to give them shelter than
he did about some of his friends.

‘I was
midwife to the Baroness,’ the old woman said proudly. ‘A
tiny thing she was, poor lass.’ She shook her head. ‘Bled
to death I’m sorry to say. The Baron was never the same after,’
she confided.

‘T’Baron
was never the same as anyone else his best day,’ her husband
said sourly.

Jimmy turned
around and went back to the fire. This was more like it.

‘Used to
be if a tenant had a complaint he could go up t’ the house when
the lord was there and get the thing straightened out. Even cottars
like us! Not no more ye can’t.’

‘The Baron
sent all the servants and guards away after his lady’s death,’
his wife said. ‘The very day after she died.’

‘And hired
those, those . . .’

‘Mercenaries,’
his wife said firmly, giving her husband a stiff-lipped warning
glare.

‘Mercenaries,’
the old man said, pulling his lips away from the word as though it
was filthy. ‘Neighbour went up t’ see the lord one time
he was there and those . . .’ he gave his wife a look, ‘fellows
near beat the poor man t’ death. I ask you, is that any way for
a lord t’ behave?’

From what Jimmy
had seen and heard in his life that was the way a lot of lords
behaved. Wisely, he didn’t say so.

‘There’s
a strange feeling about the place,’ Coe observed.

Husband and wife
glanced at one another.

‘Aye,’
the old man agreed. ‘Year by year it’s got worse. Nobody
goes there now ‘cept those bully-boys he hires now and again,
and they don’t stay long if they can help it.’

Coe raised his
brows and said, ‘Mmph.’ He puffed his pipe for a
contemplative moment or two. ‘Must have been a grand funeral,’
he said.

Once again the
old couple exchanged glances.

‘I believe
she was buried in Land’s End,’ the old woman said.

‘Mebbe
even got shipped back to the court she came from,’ her husband
suggested.

‘What
about the baby?’ Jimmy asked. ‘What ever happened to it?’

The old couple
looked at him in surprise as though they’d forgotten his
presence. Jarvis looked enquiringly at them.

‘Well,’
the old woman spluttered, ‘we’ve, uh, we’ve never
seen him.’

‘Did the
child survive?’ Coe asked quietly.

‘We never
heard that he didn’t,’ the old man snarled, his eyes
flickering to his wife.

‘He’d
be about eighteen now,’ his wife said dreamily.

‘I ask
because no one in Land’s End ever mentioned him,’ Jarvis
said. ‘So I’m surprised to hear the Baron had a child.’

‘He must
have been sent away to be fostered,’ the elderly midwife
suggested. ‘The nobility do that you know.’ She gave an
authoritative nod.

Coe said,
‘Mmph,’ again. Then, ‘The house looked to be in
reasonable repair,’ he commented. ‘Though I was still on
the road when I saw it.’

The old man
grunted. ‘The lord must be having those bast—’ he
glanced at his wife, ‘—mercenaries look after the place.
Not one of us has been near there for near eighteen years. And I’ll
tell ye true,’ the old man stood and knocked his pipe out on
the fireplace, ‘ye couldn’t bribe me t’ go there
now.’

Me neither,
Jimmy thought.
But you could threaten to cry and wheedle and
appeal to my better nature.
He wondered bitterly if he would
always be so susceptible to the blandishments of women. Or was it
that he enjoyed making the occasional grand gesture?

I just hate
it when said grand gesture turns out to be bloody inconvenient and
more like suicide than heroism.

Rescuing the
Prince and his lady would have been a wonderful grand gesture, and a
bonus besides since his real purpose had been to rescue his friends.
But rescuing some sprat he’d never met because Flora expected
him to felt like being put upon and he didn’t like it a bit.

And yet, as soon
as he was certain his hosts and Coe were asleep he was going out to
that house of horrors to see if he could find the boy and get him
out. After all, if a load of low-life bashers could stand to be in
that place then so could he, by Ruthia.

Then the rain
started in earnest, and Jimmy muttered, ‘Maybe I’ll go
out tomorrow night.’

The Baron tossed
in his bed, clutching the soaking sheets as he did no less than one
night in three. The dreams were always the same, the hunt, the cliff,
the laughing face of the youth. The storm, the dark man arriving, all
came and went, in different order each time. Sometimes it was a
fleeting glimpse, sometimes he watched himself as if standing a short
distance away, while at other times he relived the past. Sometimes he
knew he was dreaming, while at other times it was as if he were
young, and trying to grapple again with the love and hate which
gripped his soul.

For days Bernarr
had sought an opportunity to deal with the young man privately. The
laughing jackanapes had preoccupied a disproportionate amount of
Elaine’s time. She seemed willing to suffer the fool’s
attentions, but not only was she shirking her responsibility to her
other guests, she had virtually ignored Bernarr since Zakry’s
arrival.

The opportunity
had finally presented itself in an unexpected fashion. He had
organized a hunt to entertain his guests, and all but Elaine joined
in with pleasure. She was once again ill. This time he sent the
chirurgeon to her with stern instructions to examine her and not take
‘no’ for an answer.

The rest of them
were quickly swept up in the excitement of the chase, the cool crisp
air of autumn, the raucous note of the horn. Beaters and hounds
flushed a magnificent buck and they tore through the woods with a
will. The hounds baying, the beaters sounding their ram’s-horn
instruments, the stylish riders dressed in every colour and flashing
with gold and jewels even brighter than the leaf-cloak of vineyard
and tree. It was a magnificent sight.

As they rode
Bernarr’s quick eye caught sight of a thrashing in a thicket.

Boar!
he
thought, catching a glimpse of the low-slung body, the massive
bristly shoulders and long curved tusks. And wily, too, to be heading
away at right-angles rather than attracting the attention of the
hounds by running.

The pack hadn’t
scented it; the wind was blowing in his direction. Bernarr knew the
forest pig’s ill-temper required little to turn it aggressive,
and only the presence of so many hounds and riders was causing it to
flee.