The Penwyth Bride (The Witch's Daughter Book 1) (15 page)

Nanny cast a longing look at the fuggan.

There was a table devoted to jellies and breads, along with a firkin of Lady Penwyth’s pickled rinds, spicy-sour to place atop a jelly-slathered slice. A bench groaned under bottles of parsnip wine and sloe gin, with a cup of treacle handy for those wishing to make mahogany. Many empty bottles already piled high behind the bench, disconsolately guarded by one of the under-gardeners. The field was already strewn with insensibly drunken men along with several women.

Nanny scurried away after a snapped order from the harassed cook, who had emerged from the kitchen with a red face and dotted apron. I picked up a biscuit from a heaped platter, and continued to wander among the multitude, sadly eyeing my paper garlands torn by frantic poor creatures seething around the food, stuffing themselves as if they’d never known the sensation of satiety.

With a faint feeling of disgust and pity I turned away, avoiding the eye of a tattered crone scanning the sky anxiously, her air affinity awakened.

Rain hovers on the horizon, unseen yet
.

We moved past each other with no sign of acknowledgment between us. My mother taught me long ago that this must be so for safety’s sake. Earlier I caught sight of a dairymaid struggling with her fire affinity, trying to block out the lusts and yearnings flaming in the hearts of men and women, for all emotion ran strong due to the excitement caused by the Revel.

They’ve kept themselves lowly as we are taught
, I thought with approval. If only Ioanthe had heeded her own instruction instead of letting the fire of her affinity burn her with ambition.

I pushed aside unhappy musings as I idly watched a bent man shuffle toward me. I stared at him, frowning, until I suddenly realized that it was Tom Pyder. I had not seen the old gardener since the day he bade me look after the walled garden.

“Good day to you, Tom Pyder,” I called to him as he passed me by, my voice upraised over the reedy strains of fiddle and hornpipe.

The old man paused, and focused on me with difficulty. “And who be you?”

“Miss Eames. Do you not remember me? I am visiting the Penwyths.”

He continued to gaze at me in bemusement.

A gust of air raced over the moor, a sudden and welcome draft scything through the September heat. Tom swayed, looking confused and lost. I reached out to steady him. “Shouldn’t you wish to rest, perhaps?” I suggested gently. “Find a cool spot to sit?”

He looked down at my hand on his arm. “Now I remember ye,” he said. “Come with me.”

He turned away and began to thread through the throng. After a moment’s hesitation, I limped after the caul-born twin. We passed by a knot of children sitting in a semi-circle around an old man, his white hair lank under a greasy moleskin cap. Patches and stains dotted his full-skirted coat out of fashion twenty years gone.

My footsteps faltered. The old passing stories down to the young was a potent arcane tradition.

“So Mathey Trewhale be droll-telling,” Tom remarked. “He be the best of all of them. Sir Grover will not like it.”

Tom stopped me with a raised hand when I would have moved on. “Mathey be telling an early tale now, a Cornovii yarn. The Albion would have us swallowed up. They breached the Great River to take our lands, but they will never scratch us out. We will always remember.”

I shook my head, bewildered by his talk. Snatches of the droll-teller’s story could be heard over the gasps of the children:
Llyr. Lady of The Praa
.

Names I heard before from someone else’s story. And one I hadn’t.

The bucca
.

Inexplicably, I began to tremble.

Tom watched me with sudden keenness. “Aye, the affect will be strong upon women like ye, for Cornish ways be the earliest and most unchanged.”

“I . . . don’t know what you mean.”

Tom’s unfocused eyes shifted with impatience.

“Ye don’t, eh? Well then, look ye over there, mistress.” He gestured to a group of men gathered under a sycamore tree.

“What is happening?” I asked, following him eagerly toward the group and away from the droll-teller, hoping the distraction would help me with my equilibrium. Hearty cheering blended with the scent of ale, horse sweat, and pipe tobacco.

“Why, the oldest thing of all,” Tom said.

Laborers mixed with fishermen and gentry squires parted reluctantly as Tom pushed his way through, dragging me behind him.

In the center of the semi-circle, two men stripped naked to the waist grappled in a confusion of arms.

“Wrestling,” Tom said. Then he laughed.

Fascinated, my eyes locked onto the two tangling men. Their arms had entwined in a bulge of muscle while their heads were buried into the necks of their opponent so that I could not see their faces. The first wrestler, a thick-torsoed man with a mat of dark hair furring his back, grunted as he made a great effort to push his opponent onto the ground. But his slimmer adversary ducked down at the right moment, sending the bigger man whirling away. The crowd erupted.

“It be our way of remembering battles long fought,” Tom said in my ear.

I hardly heard him. The slender man had turned, sweat trickling in rivulets down his chest into the waistband of his breeches. Unbound gold hair, dark as caramel, hung stringily over shoulders and face.

Through the matted hair, Roger Penwyth’s green eyes stared at me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Blood-lust pounded through Roger’s expression as he registered my presence. A slow grin split his face. He took a step toward me, wiping the sweat streaming into his mouth away with a macerated hand, which left tracks of blood over his cheek.

Aroused anticipation prickled my skin.

Roger’s opponent had recovered his feet and stood blowing like a bull within the circle of cheering men. He called out to Roger in Cornish.

The lust on Roger’s face dissolved into murderous glee, and he spun back to answer with a taunt I could not understand.

The crowd roared again.

“Tha’s it, Toddy, you show yon Penwyth how dirt’ll taste,” someone bellowed over the uproar.

“Ten to one says The Penwyth lays Toddy down,” another yelled.

“I’ll take that wager,” cried another. “Everyone knows Jack Toddy’ll never be bested. He be playing The Penwyth for a fool.”

“Ha! Toddy was damn near kissin’ rock.”

“The Penwyth be too fancy and soft to go another round.”

“Back that up with silver!”

Bets were frantically exchanged as Roger and his opponent stalked each other within the circle. The one they called Toddy scowled as his eyes darted over Roger’s gleaming chest, while Roger grinned viciously, moving with the fluidity of a cat around a bulldog.

I did not like the look of Roger’s opponent; he possessed a crafty brutishness. Suddenly I remembered where I had heard Jack Toddy’s name before: in an eavesdropped conversation whispered over the sound of my pounding heart. It was the day I was hiding in the walled garden. Damon Penwyth had identified Jack Toddy as his sister’s secret lover.

Toddy struck first.

His meat-like hand clapped on the back of Roger’s neck while Roger snaked his arms under Toddy’s armpits. The crowd roared as the two grappled furiously.

“They be seeking weaknesses in the other,” Tom explained.

Toddy again tried to push Roger down, but instead of heaving him back, Roger shifted his shoulder, using Toddy’s own weight to throw him off-balance. Toddy stumbled. Instantly Roger ground the side of his head into Toddy’s cheek. Toddy let out a roar of pain and anger, which was drowned out by the shrieks of the spectators.

“Oh, that Penwyth be clever,” Tom said admiringly.

I found little to admire in the ritual-like brutality, and much to be anxious over. And yet . . .

Something stirred as I watched the two men struggle: avidity, and desire to see blood spilled. The feeling was foreign, repelling, but I could not tear my eyes away.

Toddy now tried another tactic. He managed to thrust his thick fingers through Roger’s hair, pulling his head back to deliver a vicious head-butt to Roger’s brow. Blood spattered over the dust between their feet. Roger staggered under the punishing blow, his lips parting silently with pain.

The screaming pitched into frenzy.

My hands crept up to my throat. I clutched them together as Roger wiped the blood oozing into his eye onto Toddy’s shoulder. With a massive effort Toddy tried to throw Roger aside, but despite the blood and sweat slicking their bodies, Roger stolidly held his ground.

Back and forth, back and forth again, Roger moving like the ebb and flow of a tide to his opponent’s every move until Toddy roared in frustration and kicked out at Roger’s leg. Roger’s knee buckled under the blow.

The mob bawled ferociously: “Treachery! Devon treachery!”

“What happened?” I asked Tom anxiously as the old man shook his head, disappointed.

“Toddy never should have done it,” Tom said sadly.

“Done what?”

“Used his feet. A Cornishman don’t wrestle with his feet, that be a trick brought over the ocean. Toddy must want to win bad to use another’s ways.”

I saw nothing wrong with kicking; I wished Roger would do so too and end the contest that was butchering them both.

Roger rapidly regained his feet, but the mob still growled with displeasure and dark mutterings.

Toddy evidentially sensed that he was losing the crowd’s goodwill, for he stopped the kicks. Stentorian breathing from the two men wheezed over the tumult; the reek of blood and sweat became as heady as perfume. Behind my heart, I felt my affinity intensify. Whispers came up from the ground to thank Roger for his offering of blood.

“Oh no,” I whimpered.

Without warning, my vision blurred.

In a blink, Roger’s long hair was pulled into a topknot, and a belt of copper disks hung around his naked waist.

A moan broke from me.

“Mistress?” Tom Pyder said in my ear, eyeing me closely. “Be ye sickened?”

“I . . . I think I must be. . .”

I shook my head. My vision cleared just in time to see Toddy, maddened with rage and frustration, struggle to lift Roger bodily over his shoulder. Roger’s feet briefly left the ground. The crowd hushed in anticipation. But Toddy could not sustain the move; when Roger’s feet came back down, he unexpectedly dropped to one knee. Toddy, caught off balance, cartwheeled over Roger’s shoulder, landing with a thud on his back in the dust.

A frenzy of cheers burst over us.

“It be over,” Tom said, laughing and clapping me heartily. “The Penwyth won. He won.”

“Roger won,” I echoed.

Dizzying relief swept me. My feet began to propel me forward through the bubbling cauldron of excited onlookers. Torn wagering chits filled the air, accompanied by the clink of coin exchanging hands.

Clumsily, I shouldered my way through. “Roger!” I cried.

It took some minutes to work through the scuffle. In the midst of the melee, Roger stood calm. A respectful space had opened up around him as if the Cornishmen were loath to intrude upon the triumph of the winner, while Toddy’s figure was buried under a group of sympathetic friends. Over Roger’s eye, blood streamed from the cut down the side of his neck where it mixed with sweat; the pink wash trickled through the golden hair on his heaving chest. Bruises were beginning to purple over the swell of arm muscle, and red welts raked up by Toddy’s nails glowed angrily.

I broke through to his island. “Roger,” I said.

He looked up from where he had been contemplating his shredded and bleeding hands. One finger crooked out at an unnatural angle where it had been broken at the joint, and another was missing a nail.

Oh, he will not be able to sketch
, I thought automatically. I stopped short. Roger glared at me through hanks of sopping hair. Conquest pulsed in his eye; he regarded me as if I were a spoil of war, a just reward for the victor to ravage at will, to rend underneath him until I would forget from where I came.

The look lit something dark within. I felt my lips curve into a smile of invitation.

Down by my feet, the past murmured encouragement.
Take him to the corn fields. We will show you a bower . . .

“Well done, Roger,” a smooth voice undulated next to me. “Well done indeed.”

Sir Grover had parted the crowd.

The connection broke between Roger and me. I took a stumbling step backward.

“You win the purse,” Sir Grover said, and jubilant voices dwindled.

“Fifty guineas,” he continued, hefting the jingling red silk purse in his black gloved hand. It looked like a fresh-killed heart. “What a lucky lad you are. Not many of our rank possess the brute strength to beat a common Cornishman at his own game.”

“That ‘common man’ very nearly bested me,” Roger said, his voice cracking on the last word.

Sir Grover regarded Roger through hooded eyes. “Yes, he did. But
nearly
is not good enough in wrestling. Take the purse.”