Magic Can Be Murder (18 page)

"It's not them," the husband murmured. What was this uncharacteristic meekness? Then Nola realized: He didn't want trouble; he didn't want anyone looking too closely at the story he had told his wife.

And to think how much time I spent worrying about him!
Nola thought.
Big-talking coward who knows he can fool his wife but doesn't want to take on the authorities or be face-to-face with the accused.

"I reported it to the town magistrate," the woman said in a self-satisfied tone, as though that was proof of guilt. "And these men have been sent to arrest you, you lazy, good-for-nothing thieves."

Surely Galvin wouldn't believe this, Nola assured herself.

But, then, why shouldn't he?

Still, so far neither Galvin nor Halig had reacted. They were just watching and listening.

"We didn't break that jug," Nola told them. "And we cook no basket of berries."
They don't know it's you,
she told herself. They wouldn't know to be on the lookout for lies. All she'd ever done was lie to them, and now the truth sounded false to her ears. To the woman, she said, "We didn't even eat your stingy little lunch, because we had to run away to be rid of your groping husband."

The woman gave a cry of disbelief that anyone could say such a thing. "We've been bringing blackberries here for the blackberry wine for eleven years," she said. "And nobody yet has called us liars. Edris, tell how you know us."

"I...," Edris said, then tactfully finished, "wouldn't call any of you liars. "

Finally Galvin was getting to his feet, and the woman from Low Beck, obviously unsatisfied with Edris's answer, pointed at Nola and her mother and said, "1'hese women took advantage of our hospitality."

Galvin barely glanced at Nola, which surely was a bad sign. "You hired these two women to work for you picking berries?" he asked the woman.

"Yes, and they broke—"

"And you paid them before they did the work?"

"Yes, Well, I made them lunch."

Galvin glanced back at Nola with his customary unreadable expression. He asked the woman, "So they were to work all day picking berries in exchange for lunch."

"Well, the morning was half gone before they even showed up at my doorstep, begging."

"But you just said your husband went to check on them halfway through the morning."

For the first time, Nola thought maybe Galvin wasn't as disinterested as he acted. She glanced at Halig, who was still sitting at their table, looking as though he was enjoying this.

The woman flapped her hand in a nervous, dismissive gesture. "I didn't mean
exactly
midmorning."

"I see," Galvin said. He looked at the man, "Do you agree with all your wife has said—barring, of course, the exactness of midmorning?"

The farmer shuffled his feet. "They said they'd work, and they didn't." A definite shift from "It's not them."

Once more Galvin turned his attention to Nola. "But you say the man tried to force his attention on you. And that you don't know anything about the broken jug."

"I said we didn't break the jug," Nola corrected him. "He himself dropped the jug when I kicked him to get away from him."

Galvin looked at her foot, at the walking stick she held. "That would be before you injured yourself?" he observed, just as the woman was sputtering, "That's absurd."

Nola nodded to indicate Galvin was right: She had hurt her ankle
after
kicking the former. And surely he must be thinking of Brinna now, remembering her injured leg, remembering...

Galvin held up a hand to command silence from the farmers wife. "And what do you say?" he asked Nola's mother.

"None of us liked the way he was looking at our Nola," her mother said.

"Look at her!" the woman protested. "She's a skinny little nothing! My husband would have nothing to do with her."

Far from being upset that she had talked out of turn, Galvin asked pensively, "So, you're saying he might have forced his attention on her if she was ... more attractive?"

Galvin's turning the woman's own words on herself was a relief to Nola, but the comment still stung.

"No!" the woman said. She jabbed her elbow at her husband. "Tell him."

But before the man could tell anything, Nola cook a chance, for she had nothing to lose. She said, "The sister-in-law was attractive. You might ask her."

The man's jaw worked a bit before he could get out a single, strangled "I...," and then gave up.

His wife looked ac him in horror.

Galvin studied the man appraisingly, then asked Nola, "Where did you kick him?"

"Left knee," Nola said.

Again he evaluated her injured leg, which, standing face-to-face, would have been the one she was most likely to use to kick someone's left leg. But instead of pressing her, he asked the man, "Care to show us your left knee?"

"It was all a misunderstanding," the farmer said.

His wife's expression of horror seemed to be set.

Galvin kept pressing. "But you told the magistrate. It's against the law to lodge false complaints with the magistrate."

"I'm sorry," the man said. "It wasn't exactly a false complaint—"

"Ah,
exactly,
again," Galvin said.

"It was a
misunderstanding,
" the man repeated lamely. "And it was my wife who reported it."

His wife gave him a good hard kick on the same knee Nola had kicked the previous week. "
That,
" she said, "you will pay for. A good, long time you will pay for it." She stamped out of the tavern.

"Speaking of paying...," Galvin said, and nothing more until the man drew a few coins from his pocket, which he placed in Nola's mother's hand.

Galvin made a show of looking, then said, as though surprised, "Hmm." He glanced at Halig, who shook his head dubiously. The farmer hastily added more.

"See you don't lodge another misunderstanding with the magistrate," Galvin warned him.

"No," the man assured him, obviously relieved that he was being let off easily. "Thank you. I won't." He fled after his wife, though his back must have scraped the wall in his attempt to stay clear of Nola.

Edris, beaming, told Nola and her mother, "Good for you! But I don't dare lose them as providers of blackberries for our wine. Let me just try to smooth things over."

Sergeant Halig drained the last of his drink. "I'll stand around and intimidate them a bit, shall 1?" he asked Galvin. But as he passed Nola's mother, who was trying to balance the coins on her fingertips, he smiled, nodded, and asked, "Feeling better, Mary?"

"Than what?" she asked. And while he paused over that, she added, "And my name is Cleopatra."

Halig sighed. "Never mind." And he went outdoors, leaving Nola and her mother alone with Galvin.

Galvin was giving her mother a wary look, but he had a smile for Nola. "I recognize you," he said.

There was no way he could.

"From the town of Hay market," he explained. "You rescued mc." And when she continued to gaze at him blankly, he said, "From Kirwyn, Innis's son. On the bank of the millpond."

"Oh," Nola said. She held up her walking stick, though it had been her previous stick with which she had struck Kirwyn. Just the mention of Haymarket, the memory that had to bring of the dead Brinna, made Galvin look drawn and strained, she thought.

She couldn't stand this any longer, knowing chat he had liked her only because she looked like Brinna, knowing that—even if he found her kind and brave and all those other nice things he had called her—he wouldn't have thought so if she hadn't temporarily been beautiful. "My mother and I were just leaving," she said.

"No, we weren't," her mother said. She dropped the coins down the front of her dress, even though several fell right back out again.

Galvin pretended not to notice. He said, "I have recommended to Lord Pendaran that since Innis the silversmith had no close kin beyond Kirwyn, the shop should be handed over to the assistant, Alan." He paused to consider, then added, "Just in case you know these people."

Nola's mother smacked Nola on the back of the head.

Galvin raised his eyebrows, waiting.

"Ahm...," Nola said. She realized that what her mother meant was,
Say something to him.
She would, if she could think of something. She said, "Thank you. For getting to the truth with..." She nodded her head vaguely outdoors.

Galvin shrugged. "I didn't think you looked like thieves."

Seeing her mother was about to say something, Nola clapped her hand over her mother's mouth.

Galvin looked from one of them to the other. By his expression, Nola judged that he considered at least several possible responses before finally answering, "Well, good-bye."

She would never see him again.

She had thought so twice before, but now she knew this was absolutely her last chance. She could go on living the way she had been, or she could try to hold on to Galvin.

But what it his comments to Halig in the garden weren't true? What if it wasn't
her
that he liked but Brinna's appearance?

Still, if she didn't trust him, she'd never know.

She said what she'd spent all her life hiding, what she'd been afraid a moment ago her mother would say. She said, "We're not thieves. We're witches."

Again Galvin gazed from one to the other. Steadily. He said, "Obviously."

Which left Nola with nothing to say. He
knew?

Nola's mother said, "My husband likes the looks of you and thinks you can be trusted. Here. Listen." She put her head up close to his.

That,
at least, flustered him. He cast an anxious glance at Nola.

Her mother continued. "And
I
think you have possibility, too. I've always told Nola, 'Never underestimate someone who's willing to hold your head while you're being sick.'"

Maybe, Nola thought, he wouldn't remember.

But she could hear the breath he took in, and his face, which she'd already thought pale, went white.

Nola's mother caught hold of one of the chairs and moved it behind Galvin, who sat down heavily. "My husband said you looked a bit unsteady," she said.

Galvin looked at her, at Nola, back at her, before he started breaching again. "Perceptive fellow," he managed to whisper. He hardly had better control over his voice when he asked Nola, "Brinna?"

"No," she said. "Well..." She buried her face in her hands. "Sometimes."

So she told him.

Everything.

From picking blackberries in Low Beck, to accidentally looking in at Innis's murder, to returning to the house, co meeting him and Sergeant Halig, to bespelling Brinna, to falling down the stairs, to finally getting out of the house, to watching helplessly while he and the townsfolk tried to find Brinna's body in the millpond.

She didn't, of course, tell him that her heart had hurt worse than her ankle at the thought that she would never see him again.

"So it was you," he said softly, "all the while..."

"Not all the while," she corrected him. "You did meet the true Brinna first."

"But all the while..." He stopped himself.

Still she felt sure she knew what he'd been going to say.

And she was just as sure she knew why he wouldn't let himself say it.

She was an admitted witch. He would have to turn her in. She remembered the conversation she had overheard in the garden between Galvin and Halig, when Halig had suggested chat Galvin could ignore his suspicions about Brinna. Galvin had refused, because his sense of justice was stronger than whatever he felt for Brinna. Nola braced herself for his declaring that she and her mother were both under arrest.

But he didn't say that. Instead, he said, "I won't tell."

She said, "But..." She heard her mother give a groan of exasperation, but Nola couldn't leave it at that. "You refused to ignore that Brinna helped Kirwyn kill his father."

"It's not the same," he said.

She could see it wasn't. He hadn't been surprised to hear they were witches. He'd had his suspicions, at least from today, if not earlier, and he wasn't going to turn them in.

"I don't see," he told her, "that you cause harm to any."

"No," she agreed breathlessly. What more could she ask for? He was giving her her life and her mother's. That should be more than enough to satisfy a witch who had both a plain face and no reason to believe in luck.

And yet she remembered how he'd looked at her while she'd worn Brinna's face, and she started to say, "I could look like her again." But she knew that was wrong. For any one of several reasons. She bit back the offer before she got her mouth fully around the initial "I—," and ended with a sound like a strangled gasp.

Galvin stood, hurriedly, and took her arm as though to steady her. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"A bit light-headed," she said, which was only the smallest part of it. He was just being kind, she reminded herself.

Galvin gave that smile that made her knees weak. "If you're going to be sick," he told her, "I'll hold your head." Emphatically, he finished, "But I will not sing."

Even to her, it sounded like more than just being kind.

She wondered if he would have noticed her without Brinna's face. But the fact was, he
had
noticed her.

So why didn't he say so?

He wasn't sure, she suddenly realized. All this while—despite herself—she'd been growing to love him. But he couldn't know that. He didn't dare assume she felt anything foe him. So she told him. She said, "I was afraid I'd never see you again."

But he didn't put his arms around her and tell her that love would conquer all. He pulled away from her and narrowed his eyes suspiciously, putting together things she had said. "Were you watching me? Did you ever do this bespelling of water to see
me
?"

It was not a part of the story that had seemed to need to be cold. But she wouldn't lie to him. She had told enough lies for a lifetime. "Yes," she admitted.

"You
spied
on me?" She recognized the exact tone of outrage she had used while accusing her mother of the very same thing.

"Yes," she said. "Just once. While you were talking in the garden, with Sergeant Halig."