“You will marry, come back to the village, and settle down like the good husbandman you will become,” the grim old man snapped.
“But I do not want to go home!” the girl wailed. “I want to go to Venarra!”
“The only way you will go there is if he goes ahead of you and finds work enough to support you both in decency! What, my lass, did you think there would be better than this for you in Venarra? You shall swear, too, or we’ll spit him like a pig!”
Alarm in her face, the girl scrambled to her feet. “Come, Williken! I would not see you dead!”
The boy climbed to his feet, face thunderous. Matt decided not to linger. As he went away, he heard the magistrate beginning to intone the ritual. He did notice that there was no mention of God-but at least there was no mention of the Devil, either. He looked about the field, noticing a few other groups of men carrying scythes and pitchforks. Some of them had found their quarry and were holding them while they waited for the magistrate; some of them were still hunting.
Matt wondered what kind of a life two kids could have if it began like this. Well, at least it would be legal… But there were no priests on hand, and he saw at least two parties digging graves. Some of the fights over women had gotten out of hand. Matt shuddered as he realized he could very easily have been one of the bodies being lowered into the ground, in hasty, improvised graves with nothing to mark them. He turned away from the sight, to look down at the sound of sobbing coming from nearby…
And almost tripped over Pascal. Pascal looked like the eked-out remains of a secondhand illness. His face was battered and bruised-either several small fights or one humdinger. His eyes were bloodshot, his hands trembled, and his face was the color of melted beeswax. He winced at the sound of Matt’s footsteps, and Matt could imagine the headache that produced such over-sensitivity. Pascal was hung over so far that he was about to fall in. His face was a container for misery, but even so, he sat with his arms about a young woman whose body was racked with sobs. His face was a study in consternation; he obviously didn’t have the faintest idea what to do, but felt the need to do something. “I know, Flaminia, I know,” he was murmuring. “It is the greatest of pains, to be scorned by one you love… Only two days ago-”
“Did she promise you marriage and bed you, then steal away when she thought you slept?” the young woman flared. “But no, if she had you would have rejoiced! It is different for men!”
“I would not,” Pascal said with full conviction. “But we did not share a bed, only a few minutes in a garden.”
“Ah, but if she had taken you to her bed, you would have found your ardor remarkably cooled in the morning!” At least the heat of the girl’s anger was drying her tears.
“I did not think so then,” Pascal said slowly, looking directly into her eyes. “No, I still think bedding her would not have changed me-but meeting you, hearing your voice, your mirth, your wit… It is strange, but Panegyra seems less than she did…”
Flaminia froze, staring at him. Then she recovered herself enough to snap, “So you would desert her!”
“I cannot,” Pascal said simply, “for she would not exchange promises with me, no matter how many I offered. No, she is to marry a man old enough to be her father, and has no interest in breaking off with him. She enjoyed flirting with me, aye…” His gaze strayed. “Yes, I see it now! She was toying with me, enjoying the game, tantalizing me! Why did I not see that before?”
“Why indeed?” the girl said, but her tone had lost its steel. “Do not be too hard on her-every woman enjoys that sort of play. But did she give you reason to think she might return your ardor some day?”
“Now that I think of it, Flaminia, no,” Pascal said slowly. “She told me that if I were a knight, and wealthy… Ah, friend Matthew,” he said, blushing. Flaminia looked up, horror-stricken. “Another who knows my shame,” the girl said bitterly, and scowled back down at the ground. “I could never go back to my village now, not in such disgrace.”
“None need know save yourself!” Pascal assured her.
“Two boys in three days? Be sure that one of them will tell, if the other does not! Gossip will travel back to my village, Pascal, and if you know it not, you have never lived in so small a place. Of course you have not, squire’s son,” she said with even more bitterness, “and you cannot know the petty cruelties of peasant women! But believe me, I do, and I shall not open myself to them! No, I cannot go home. I must go on to Venarra-but Heaven knows what the men there will make of me!” The tears overflowed again. Pascal reached out again to gather her in. She resisted for a second, then tumbled into his arms. “There, there, sweet chuck,” he soothed. “You may yet marry.”
“Marry!” she wailed. “What tailor would buy soiled goods? What groom would be wanting a wanton?”
“You are only a wanton if you choose to be,” Pascal said slowly. “There are men who can understand that a woman has made a mistake, has let herself believe gilded lies, but will never do so again.”
“I will not, be sure of it! Lies have been my undoing-I shall never heed them again!” She pushed him away, tears still streaming down her face. “So do not tell me any more of them! Where is the man who would wed a lass who is no virgin? Where could I find such a fool?‘
“I cannot be sure,” Pascal said, looking straight into her eyes, “but I might be such a fool-if I were in love with the woman.”
Flaminia froze, staring at him.
“ ‘Wise fool, brave fool,’ ” Matt quoted softly.
“May be,” Flaminia said in a flat tone.
“May.” Pascal nodded. “I have only known you one evening, Flaminia, and an hour this morning. But if I were to come to know such a woman as yourself, I might find myself in love, and-”
“To wed a wanton would be foolishness indeed!”
“ ‘Motley’s the only color,’ ” Matt quoted, “for fools wear motley, and I realized long ago that every man is a fool in some way. The only choice any of us poor males really has is to choose which kind of fool we’ll be.”
Flaminia looked up at him, as if startled to realize he was still there. “Do not bear word of my folly, I beg you!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Matt assured her, “and word just might not spread, because there’s so much of this sort of thing going on. You’re not exactly going to stand out in this crowd.”
Flaminia lowered her eyes. “I am scarcely one to speak about foolishness, am I?”
“You are,” Matt contradicted, “and so am I. Only those of us who have really been guilty of folly can know what we’re talking about when we say the word.”
Flaminia caught the trace of humor in his words and looked up with the ghost of a smile-sardonic, but a smile. “Then you, too, have been a fool?”
“Many times,” Matt assured her, “and worse, I was foolish enough to keep taking one more chance on being a fool again.”
He studied her face, wondering what Pascal saw in her. The nose was a little too thin, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes a little too closely set-but they were huge, those eyes, and the lashes swept across them like curtains! She certainly was not a beautiful woman, not even pretty. Handsome, maybe. It must have been her mind, her wit, and the fact that Pascal’s wizard grandfather still moved in his veins enough to make him appreciate words and honor the one who could craft them into sharpness. “Have you ever been a fool for a woman?” she went on. “Many times,” Matt assured her. “That was the chance I kept taking. The last chance was the biggest folly ever, for I fell in love with a woman far too good for me.”
Flaminia stiffened. “What did she do to you?”
“Married me,” Matt said, “finally-and that was her greatest folly. But maybe it will turn out to be as wise for her as mine was for me.”