To be this close… I could not lose him. Jumping up from the table, I dodged tables and benches, patrons and barmaids to follow the hurrying man. But when I pulled open the door, ready to dash into the night, I stood face to face with Graeme Rowan, Sheriff of Dunfarrie.
CHAPTER 9
Year 4 in the reign of King Evard —summer
“Are you sure you won’t go with us, little girl? Don’t like to leave you here alone.”
“I won’t starve, Jonah. Anne’s left me more than I could eat in the space of a week. I won’t set the house afire or ruin your garden or break anything. And the weather’s fine, so I won’t freeze, even if I can’t get a fire going.”
“You’ll learn the touch of flint, little girl,” said Anne as her dry kiss brushed my cheek. “Just as you’ve learned so much already.” She climbed up to the wagon seat. “You know the way down village if aught frights you. Jacopo will take you in.”
Five months with the old couple had taught me one thing for certain: No one had ever been so inept, so useless, as I. Fires were lit by servants, not coaxed grudging from bits of metal and chaff. Food was brought on trays from warm kitchens, not grubbed from the dirt with raw and bleeding hands. I had only played at gardening. I knew nothing of rocky soil, wire-like weeds, or cartloads of stinking manure hauled from the pigsties in the village to feed the impoverished earth. Clothes were always clean and never had to be mended in candlelight with dull needles that tormented raw fingers. And there was always plenty to eat, even in spring when winter stores were depleted, so your stomach never gnawed at you until you were ready to eat sticks and weeds. Indeed I had learned a great deal in five months. Now it was time for me to learn to be alone.
“Be safe,” I said and got on with my lesson.
Just past dawn on the third morning after Anne and Jonah’s departure, I lay abed, deciding whether a hot breakfast was worth the hour’s struggle with the fire, when I heard a hail from outside the door. “Jonah? Are you in?”
No one but Jacopo had visited the cottage since I’d come to live there, and the unusual stillness had the power to unnerve me. I pulled up the rag quilt and prayed the visitor would go away.
“Goodwife Anne? A word, if you would. And I’ve brought some oranges from Jaco. Washed up from the barge that wrecked upriver last week.”
I shoved back the quilt with a silent curse. If the man was a friend of Anne and Jonah, it wasn’t right to refuse him their hospitality. Hurriedly I pulled on the ill-fitting black dress Anne had given me, smoothed my ragged hair, and opened the door.
The man holding a splintered crate on his shoulder had sand-colored hair and green eyes and looked to be a few years older than me, perhaps as much as thirty. His face was serious, with regular features, a broad forehead, and the network of thin lines at the corners of his eyes that came from spending long hours in the sun. Unremarkable in height, dress, or manner. A ragged scar creased one side of his face from cheekbone to unshaven jaw.
He set the crate on the bench by the door. A dark blue jacket lay crumpled on the top of it, likely shed on the warm journey up the path. “Good morrow, miss.” He did not seem surprised to see me. “I’ve come to speak with Jonah if I may. Or Goodwife Anne.”
“They’ve gone to Montevial and won’t return for several days more.” Surely he would go now. “May I offer you ale or tea? I’m sure they’d wish it.”
“Ale, then, and I’d thank you for it. The day’s gone warm already.” He retrieved the jacket, straightened it a bit, and flopped it over one shoulder.
I snatched a mug from the shelf, filled it from Jonah’s little barrel, and shoved it into the man’s hand, remaining standing in the doorway lest he decide to stay a while.
He raised the mug slightly and nodded as if answering a question I’d not heard. “I’d be Graeme Rowan from Dunfarrie.” I couldn’t remember any mention of that name, but his provincial inflections were much thicker than Jonah’s or Anne’s, so I couldn’t be sure. He downed the ale quickly, but, to my distress, seemed in no hurry to go. “Perhaps I ought tell you why I’m here,” he said, propping one foot on the bench beside the sand-crusted crate. The rotting, fishy scent of river-wrack overpowered any smell from the battered green and yellow fruits. “Aye, it’s probably better I speak with you.”
I didn’t like the way he looked at me so intently, his expression revealing so little. And his slow speech, as if he weren’t quite sure he wanted to say anything, left my jaw tight with impatience.
“I’ve heard Anne and Jonah had a visitor these few months. Some in the village say it’s their granddaughter Jenny, come home after so many years lost.” The moment stretched. His gaze picked at my face. “Last night, three men come to the village. They’re the sort who look as if they’ll burn their shoes when they leave your town and think no one in a place the size of Dunfarrie can understand words of more than one syllable.”
The long pauses and his unreadable expression goaded me to speak. “And what did these men want?” The planed edge of the doorframe dug into my back.
“They were looking for someone, someone they badly want to find, though they vow they wish her no harm. Told me only that the one they hunted ran away from her family five months ago, that she’s five-and-twenty, tall for a woman, and has brown eyes and red-brown hair, cut shorter than the usual. They claim it be a matter of law. The time was the same as when Jonah and Anne came back from Montevial in the spring, so I thought to come up and ask what knowledge they might have of the question.”
As if an executioner’s hood had been dropped over my head, the brightness went out of the day. “What did you tell these men?” My voice came out no more than a whisper.
His gaze did not waver. “Naught as yet. But they didn’t know who I was. They’ll find that out this morning.”
“And who are you?”
“I’d be the Sheriff of Dunfarrie.”
Bile rose in my throat. No matter what claims were made about maintaining order or protecting the citizenry from theft and murder, a sheriff’s first duty, the very reason for his existence, was to exterminate sorcerers. And though he was appointed by his lord, a sheriff’s first allegiance was to his king. Evard’s man. Evard’s anointed killer.
Coldly, no longer in a whisper, I said, “So you’ll tell them about Anne and Jonah’s guest.”
“I’m god-sworn and king-sworn to uphold the law.”
I spat at his feet. “That for Evard’s law!”
The slight hardening of his mouth and eyes reflected his judgment of me. “You’ve no business here, madam.”
No matter that he was a damnable villain, he was right, of course. I couldn’t hide behind the old couple’s kindness, and I didn’t think I could run. Karon had told me about that kind of life, and I had neither the determination nor the skill for it. Survival was not that important to me. But Anne and Jonah were. “So you’ll hand me over?”
One might have thought I was some kind of dungworm. “I ought. But they’ve given me no warrant, no grounds, not even a name. For all I know this is just a game for ones like you and them—causing trouble for ordinary folk. But unless you give me some reason not, I’ll tell these men what I’m required to tell them, and they’ll have no such scruples.”
I stood mute. I would not tell a stranger—a sheriff—of my life. He snorted, slung his jacket over his shoulder, and started down the path.
The world was already cold and shadowed even before I stepped out of the sun. I straightened the quilt on the pallet that Jonah had crowded into the corner by the hearth, put away the cup I had used the previous night, and folded the mended towel I used for washing. When all was tidy, I sat on Jonah’s bench and stared at the sundrenched meadow long enough for the sheriff to be well on his way. Then I rose and walked down the path toward the village, expecting never to come back.