Tale of Gwyn (31 page)

Gwyn's temper rose. He looked, for once, as if he meant exactly what he said. She didn't know how to answer him, how to spare his feelings as she acknowledged that she would have said no.

“For I've need of gold,” he said, and laughed aloud.

Gywn didn't speak the words burning on her tongue, because at that moment a single soldier led three men across the front of the crowd. The soldier's cape was travel stained, and his boots were covered with mud. The three men he led were tied together along a single length of rope. They were filthy, hairy, and defeated. They moved slowly, their pace held back by the third man, who dragged his lame leg painfully behind him, trying to keep up.

Gwyn knew them, although she masked her recognition. The Lords and Ladies leaning over the battlement watched the motley parade with interest. The Steward stepped forward to greet the lone soldier, while those who had formed the highwayman's guard arranged themselves now around the three prisoners.

Whispers spread around behind Gwyn, voices trying to identify the men, wondering what the Steward was up to, commenting humorously on the fact that one soldier had captured and brought in all three. The three stood huddled together, eyes glaring at the soldiers, at the Steward, at the crowd, at one another.

The Steward turned to claim the crowd's attention. He held up his gloved hands for silence. When he spoke, his voice was round and solemn, like a priest at the marriages.

“These three have raided and burned your holdings. They have killed men—and women too—in their thieving.” The crowd uttered low angry noises. The three men huddled closer to the soldiers. Their leader raised his scarred face and spat in the direction of the crowd. The people rumbled.

“Hearing of this,” the Steward continued, his voice carrying strong up to the battlements, “Earl Northgate sent to find out and take these men, who preyed upon his people.”

He lifted one arm and held it out toward the Lords and Ladies above. One man stood forward, his white shirt gleaming under a blue tunic, his silver hair gleaming on his head, his head ringed by a golden coronet. The people behind Gwyn broke into cheers of approval and thanks. Voices rang out. “Aye, and that's a Lord who will care for his people.”

When the cheering was done, and the Earl had left the battlements, the crowd turned its attention back to the prisoners. “Will they be hanged, Steward?” a man called out.

The Steward's head turned to find out who it was, but he was too slow to see.

“Hanged they will be. The Earl has put his law on them.”

“Hanging's too quick,” a woman cried.

“Osh aye, hush now. The Earl will see to it,” someone answered her.

Gwyn's first fierce rush of joy had given way to the worry she now faced. She had given her word, Jackaroo had given his word, that the ring would be returned. The Steward and his soldiers lingered, but paid little attention to the prisoners. It was as if they were waiting for something. The crowd sensed that and waited with them. They were waiting for Jackaroo to ride in, Gwyn thought. Aye, and that was canny of them, and they were prepared for him.

She had no choice, and at that moment she didn't much care. At that moment, her only thought was to return the ring to the Steward. She could take it up boldly herself and lie, saying she had found it on the roadside. She could lie more convincingly and say she had it from Jackaroo himself, who had sought her out and given her instructions. She could lie and say she had it from a strange man, and she could pretend to search the crowd for him. But all of those lies would bring questions upon her, and once more the Inn would be dangerously close to the Steward's attention.

Gwyn took the ring from her purse and closed her fingers around it. The crowd was beginning to break apart. She would have to do something quickly, if she were going to do anything now. Perhaps she wouldn't bother—surely the Earl would be so pleased with the Steward that he wouldn't question the loss of a ring.

Except that Jackaroo had given his word.

Without any more thought, Gwyn pulled her arm free at her side and tossed the ring up, into the air. It soared in a high arc, glistening in the sunlight, before it hit the Steward on his chest and fell in the dirt at his feet.

He had been looking over the heads of the crowd to the King's Way, expecting a rider from the east, so he was slow to recognize the ring. His face was momentarily puzzled, and then his eyes found it lying at his feet and he bent swiftly to pick it up. By then, many of the crowd had seen it and those standing at the front were close enough to identify what it was.

A rustling sound, of voices spreading backward and muffled laughter, sounded behind Gwyn where she stood. She made her face blank and dull, and she turned her eyes as if trying to hear what was being said behind her.

With anger in his face, the Steward peeled off his glove and put the ring back on his right hand. He could not be secret about it. His eyes slewed over the faces of the people. Gwyn felt them come to her face, and she tried to wrinkle her brows in confusion. The eyes moved on, to Cam, where they rested: Cam had burst out into loud laughter, which he quickly smothered. But he could not conceal the mocking humor on his face and he did not try to. The Steward stared at him for a long minute before he turned abruptly away from the crowd and strode back through the gatehouses into the City. Gwyn finally heard Tad's urgent voice: “Come
on
, we've got to get
home
—please, Gwyn, quickly.”

He was pulling at her hand again and there was fear on his face as he pushed their way through the milling crowd, with Gwyn following. He moved urgently, as if trouble might be on his heels.

Da, Mother, and Burl waited for them at the top of the first hill. They stood with the wheelbarrow and its load. They stood with their backs to the King's Way, not to see the people moving along it. Those who passed by averted their eyes from the people of the Ram's Head.

Tad led Gwyn up the hill, constantly at her to hurry. She obeyed him mechanically. Mother didn't give him a chance to speak. “So there you are. I don't know why you had to disappear like that. You're young, but I'd think Gwyn would have had enough sense to stay with us. I don't know, I just don't know—I've tried to teach you to be responsible—” She pulled Tad into a close embrace, and glared at Gwyn over his head.

Gwyn barely registered her mother's anger. She couldn't think, and she needed to sit down.

“It's all your fault, Innkeeper, for making us come to see—”

Da looked like Gwyn felt, dazed and unhappy.

“And who knows what mischief's happened at the Inn, and us all gone from it,” Mother insisted. Then she burst into sudden tears and turned abruptly away, holding on to Tad's hand, dragging him along at her side. Da hurried off after her. Tad turned back and saw that Gwyn still stood there, with Burl. But he could do nothing against Mother's insistence.

Gwyn's legs collapsed underneath her and she sat down. Her head felt dizzy, so she buried her face in the dark skirt over her knees. She heard the voices of the people walking along the King's Way. The voices grew quiet as they saw the wheelbarrow, then mounted again as they moved past and away. After a while, there were fewer voices passing, and she heard the music of Burl's pipe. She did not raise her head, although the sun was hot on her neck and back and she was no longer dizzy.

It was almost as if she had wished the Steward to know who she was, she thought, or else why should she return the ring to him in such a way. She had acted without any thought at all. She had acted dangerously.

Ever since that conversation with Win, her thoughts had been closing in on her, like a circling fire. She had beaten the thoughts back, held them off, as she would beat out a fire with blankets. But then she had tossed the ring to the Steward just as if she were throwing herself into the fire, tired of waiting for it to slowly creep up on her and take her.

It would have been easy to ride up to Hap's old woman, as Jackaroo, and put the ring into her hands, to be returned to the Steward at the next Doling Day. But she hadn't even thought of that. The sheer stupidity of what she had so boldly done frightened her.

And Cam, laughing into the Steward's face as if he wished to claim the deed for his own—didn't he know what would happen if the Steward decided that Cam was the man? The music played around her ears, quietly. She had not known how deep Cam's vanity ran. Da was right about Cam: He could never be trusted with anything of value.

That thought lifted Gwyn's face from her knees. She had been lucky. If Cam had asked for her, at any time before—up until this winter—she knew how she would have answered him. After that time, she was not sure. She could not be sure of anything about herself, after that time. But if he had asked her, she would have wed a man not to be trusted. Gwyn felt her face flame with shame—she had not known how foolish she could be. She did not like remembering how she had longed for those mocking, empty eyes to look with approval on her.

Gwyn shook her head and started to rise from the long grass. The music ceased and Burl asked her, “Are you ready to go home?”

At the word, Gwyn almost laughed aloud, but she was so frightened by the impulse that the laughter froze in her throat. “Aye, thank you.”

They walked slowly, with the clumsy wheelbarrow, which had to be held back from rolling too swiftly down hills and had to be pushed laboriously up hills. All around them fields flowed over the hills, the crops growing tall. In some places you could look to the side and see how the fields melted into the forests, where the forest lay like a massed cloud of green lying close over the land's surface. Overhead, the sky shone blue. In her imagination, Gwyn's eye moved ahead and afield, tracing the land's slow rise upward into the mountains. It was so beautiful, this country, the rich valleys and the steep hillsides where gray rocks cropped out. The tall wall of mountains: They were beautiful, the mountains, in all their seasons, but especially in the fall when shivering gold aspen leaves striped the mountainsides.

If she had understood him correctly, Win—dead now, now a body whose head lolled against the wooden sides of the barrow—had meant to tell her that she would inevitably be stopped. That Jackaroo must cease to ride. She would not have believed him had she not seen her own arm toss the ring into the air at such needless risk. For the first time, Gwyn did not know what she would do with her life. No, that wasn't true. She didn't know, for the first time, what she
could
do.

The King's Way curled ahead of her and behind her, its fence flowing beside. The land spread out all around her, with the beauties she could see and those only her imagination remembered. Gwyn sighed, as her feet moved slowly along.

“There were three men?” Burl asked her.

“Aye. The three from that hut, in the winter. Do you remember them?”

“I do.”

“The Steward said,” Gwyn told him carefully, “that they had been robbers and murderers, that they robbed the people.”

“I'm not surprised,” Burl said. “Are you?”

“No,” Gwyn said.

“But what made the Earl concern himself with crimes done to the people,” Burl wondered.

Gwyn shrugged.

“Well, whatever, it might be a good thing.” The wheelbarrow creaked as he shouldered it up a steep rise.

“How did you know?” Gwyn suddenly wondered.

“I heard the talk, as people walked along the Way. They said the Steward's ring—”

“No, about him.” Gwyn pointed to the body in the wheelbarrow.

Burl halted at the crest, to catch his breath and to look down into her face. “I didn't know anything. I guessed that might be Win, your father's brother, when he looked around him—like a man who is measuring changes in something familiar. I could think of no other reason why he should ask for a drink. I thought that—if he was Win—I owe your father much, and this was something I could do for him, without putting him at risk. I thought that if I was wrong, it would do no harm to take the man for burning. Whoever he was, he died bravely.”

Burl's beard grew dark and thick, concealing much of his face. His dark eyes studied hers without any question in them. He was only a little taller than she was, but he felt as sturdy and deeply rooted as a tree.

“It was Win,” she told him. “Da will thank you.”

“Osh, and I don't look for thanks,” Burl said. He picked up the handles and moved on again. “I am in his debt.”

In his debt when Burl's work at the Inn occupied every hour of every one of his days?

Burl answered the question she didn't ask. “A boy alone—the priests don't care who takes boys, as long as he is off their hands and they have his price in their purses. Your father makes a good master, and I am lucky to be serving him.”

Gwyn was disappointed in Burl. “Is there any reason,” she asked, “why any one man should serve another?”

At that Burl laughed. “No reason I can think of. Only we do, each one of us.”

“Except the King,” Gwyn said.

“Aye, even the King. I'd wager if you could ask him, he'd say he serves the land.”

“And the land serves the people.” Gwyn smiled reluctantly. “It's like a child's rhyme, Burl. The land serves the people, the people serve the Lords, the Lords serve the Earls, the Earls serve the King, and the King serves the land.”

“Aye, like a child's rhyme.”

Even Jackaroo, Gwyn thought to herself, fit into that circle. He served the people. He served them outside of the law, but within the turning of the wheel.

T
HEY SET WIN'S BODY ON
the pyre early the next morning. It was only those from the Inn who stood watching as the flames licked upward. None from the village came to grieve with them. Even Rose stayed away, as now she must because she was the wife of the Blacksmith's heir.