A Time of Justice

‘Now here, Mam, that was kind of you.’

‘Well, the poor child!’ Slaecca said. ‘She looks naught but sixteen, and it was probably some handsome lout of a rider, pressing her with compliments and little gifts from the day she entered service.’

‘And the compliments stopped,’ Jill remarked. ‘As soon as her belly began to swell.’

Dwaen had no doubt of that. In a few minutes the women rose to go upstairs and leave the men to their drinking. Dwaen and Rhodry settled in over flagons of mead and seriously discussed the possible identity of the traitor in the dun.

‘It has to be someone good with a bow,’ Dwaen said.

‘Well, more like he’s just running messages out. If this Lord Beryn hates you so much, he’s probably salting men round the countryside.’

One at a time the tieryn considered the men in his warband and his noble-born servitors, even though the very wondering ached his heart. That one of his own men, someone who’d pledged his life to him in return for his shelter would turn against him was worse than a physical blow. Although he wanted to believe the traitor a servant, there he was at a decided disadvantage, because he barely knew one servant from another.

‘We’ll have to question your chamberlain. Your Grace,’ Rhodry said at last. ‘Can he be trusted?’

‘By the gods, I always thought so! Brocyl served my father for twenty long years.’

‘Then there’s no reason for him to turn against you now.’

‘So one wants to believe, silver dagger. I’ll talk to him in the morning; I see he’s left the hall already tonight, and he’s getting on in years.’ Dwaen drained the last drops in his goblet and got up. ‘I want to talk to my sister. I suppose you’d best come with me, much as I hate feeling like I’ve got a nursemaid.’

‘I can always wait outside the women’s hall, but I’d best be along on the stairs, Your Grace.’

Yet when Ylaena opened the door she automatically ushered Rhodry in with her brother. Slaecca was sitting on a cushioned chair near the hearth while Jill sat on a footstool at the lady’s side. The tight lines round his mother’s mouth spoke of tears hastily stifled.

‘Ylaena my sweet, there’s somewhat I’ve got to settle before I ride to the gwerbret, just in case I don’t come back.’

Ylaena drew herself up straight with a flash of worried eyes.

‘It’s time we discussed your betrothal. What would you say to Lord Cadlew?’

His sister’s smile was as bright and sharp as a flash of sun dancing on water, but it faded as she cast a nervous glance her mother’s way.

‘Do you have somewhat against him, Mother?’ Dwaen said.

‘Naught, except his rank. He’s an ordinary lord, for all that his lands are rich enough.’ Absently she looked away into the fire. ‘These are no times for joy, Dwaen, but if your sister can find a little in her betrothal, I won’t say her nay.’

‘My thanks.’ Ylaena turned to her with her eyes spilling tears. ‘And my thanks to you, brother.’

Dwaen realized then that she and his mother had doubtless discussed possible suitors for many a long hour already. He was about to try to make some jest to lighten the mood of things when someone knocked with a timid little rap on the door. Jill was up so fast that it seemed she’d been waiting for this and ran to open it. Outside stood the kitchen lass who had the bastard.

‘Oh, his grace is here!’ The lass looked genuinely terrified. ‘I’ll come back.’

‘Don’t run now.’ Jill grabbed her wrist and hauled her inside. ‘Come along, Vyna. I swear that no one will harm you, even if I have to fight them off myself. Come tell our lady whatever it was you wanted to say.’

Trembling, on the edge of tears, Vyna walked over and knelt at Slaecca’s side, bringing with her the scent of roasted meat and soapy water.

‘Come now, child,’ the dowager said. ‘Is it somewhat about your baby?’

Vyna wept with a shaking of her whole body.

‘My lady, I’m so sorry. I’m so frightened, but I can’t lie any more. I never thought they’d try to hurt the Lady Ylaena, truly I didn’t.’ She began to sob, the words bursting in little spurts. ‘They said they’d kill my baby. Don’t let them kill my baby. I didn’t want to. Don’t let them kill my baby. I swear it, they made me do all those things. I can’t do it any more, you’re too good and kind, but please by the Goddess herself, don’t let them kill my baby.’

Dwaen felt that he’d turned into an oak and put down roots. So this was their terrible traitor! Jill knelt down next to her and put an arm round her shoulders.

‘You met a man places and gave him information, didn’t you? Who was he?’

‘I don’t know. One of Lord Beryn’s riders. He came to the dun just as I got kicked out of it. I met him in town or down by the river. Everyone thought I had another man. You heard them, Jill, you heard them call me a slut.’

‘Of course. What do you think made me wonder about you? Now here, when do you meet him again?’

‘On the morrow, but I won’t go. Oh, Goddess, Goddess, Goddess, don’t let them kill my baby.’

‘No one’s going to harm him, because if his grace gives me permission, I’m riding tonight to fetch him.’

‘His grace will give you an escort of twenty men to make sure you bring him home safely,’ Dwaen said. ‘I’d go myself except I doubt that your Rhodry will let me.’

‘His grace is ever so correct.’ Rhodry bowed in his direction. ‘Not at night, Your Grace, when it’s easy for accidents to happen.’

The farm where Vyna’s son was in fosterage was twelve miles away on the edge of Lord Beryn’s lands. As the warband alternately trotted and walked their horses down the dark road, Jill was praying that the baby would still be there. It was possible that Beryn’s men had taken the child hostage just to make sure that its mother stayed under their control. Of course it was also possible that they had no intention of ever harming the baby but had merely counted on a young and ignorant lass believing that they would. Finally, after a long three hours and a last few minutes of confusion at a dark and unmarked crossroads, the warband found the farm. As they rode up, dogs began barking hysterically inside the earthen wall that surrounded the steading. When Lallyc pounded on the gate and shouted, in the tieryn’s name, a crack of light appeared around a shuttered window. After a short while, an old man came out with a tin lantern in his hand. Lallyc leaned down from his saddle.

‘Do you have a baby here in fosterage for a lass named Vyna?’

‘We do, sir, we do at that. What’s all this?’

‘We’ve come to fetch him to his mother in the tieryn’s name. Do you recognize the blazons on my shirt? You do? Splendid. Now go get the child, and wrap him in a blanket or suchlike, too.’

At the head of the line Jill waited beside the captain. She could hear the old man shouting inside the farmhouse, and a woman yelling in anger. Finally a youngish woman with a dirty, torn cloak thrown over her nightdress ran out to the gate.

‘Who are you?’ she snarled. ‘How do I know you won’t hurt the child?’

‘I’m the tieryn’s captain, and I’m here to keep the child from getting hurt. Now fetch him out or we’ll knock this gate down to come get him.’

‘Here, lass,’ Jill said and much more gently, ‘The tieryn sent a woman along to carry the baby home. Would he have done that if he were going to have it killed or suchlike?’

The woman raised the lantern and stared into Jill’s face; then she nodded agreement.

‘He’s a sweet baby. I’ll miss him.’

Jill supposed that the sweetness of babies was an acquired taste. On the long ride home she found the squirming, wailing bundle a nuisance and little else, even though one of the men led her horse to give her both hands free for the job. She tried singing to him, bouncing him, even kissing him, but the baby, torn out of his warm cradle into a cold night and the arms of a stranger, wept the whole way home until the poor little thing was hoarse and whimpering. By the time she could finally hand him over to his jubilant mother, she was praying to die Goddess that she’d never conceive.

Before she went to bed, Jill joined the tieryn and Rhodry at the table of honour for a well-earned flagon of mulled ale.

‘No trouble on the road, I take it?’ Dwaen said.

‘None, Your Grace. It gladdens my heart that you’ll forgive poor Vyna.’

‘She seems as much a victim as any of us. While you were gone, she described this fellow that she’s been meeting. The cook always sent her on errands into town, you see, because she was the oldest of the three kitchen lasses, so she could get a word with him when she needed to.’