Ravenwood (18 page)

Frank’s mouth twitched in a smile. “You mind what Mother Fairport tells ya, boy. She’s a rare one.”

Tanyth considered the ravens and wondered if Frank knew the half of it, but she nodded to him in acknowledgement of the compliment.

“What’cha doin’ now?” Riley eyed the bucket in her hand.

“Fetching some water and I’ll need to refill my woodbox, too.” She looked down at him. “You don’t know of a strong young man who might help a poor old woman out, do you, Riley?”

Frank snorted in what sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh and she shot him a wounded look. “What? You don’t think I’m a poor old woman?”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Mum? You’re the least poor old woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

His amused tone carried an undercurrent of admiration that Tanyth found both unexpected and warming. “Do I need to hobble more?” She teased him playfully. “Perhaps I need to be bent over a bit?”

He turned to her with a grin. “Well, mum, if you think it needful, but I’m not sure anybody over the age of twelve would believe it.” He leaned forward and eyed Riley as they walked.

The boy saw him looking and, not quite following the conversation, announced. “I’m gonna be ’leven this winter!”

The two adults were careful not to laugh.

At the pump, Tanyth put her bucket under the spigot and Riley helped Frank work the long lever to fill it. In a few moments the splashing water overflowed the rim with a cheerful slosh. She reached for the bale but Frank’s strong hand was there before hers and he hefted the heavy bucket easily.

“I’ll get that for you, mum.” He smiled and arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t want a poor old woman to hurt herself luggin’ water back from the well.”

“Thank you, Frank. Most kind.” She smiled and bent over in a mock hobble, shuffling her feet through the grass.

Riley eyed them both with a skeptical look in his eye, but offered no commentary.

Frank laughed and started out for her hut at a brisk pace, the bucket swinging easily at the end of his arm.

She straightened and picked up her stride to catch up with him.

Riley’s short legs meant he practically had to run to keep up.

At the hut, she swung the door open and Frank took the bucket in and placed it near the hearth and slipped the cover on it.

“Thank you, kind sir. It’s most appreciated.”

He smiled and headed for the door again. “You’re welcome, mum. Any time.”

She followed him out onto the grass and looked at the shadows beginning to reach across the village. The peeled sticks marking the corners of the future inn’s location showed up whitely in the gathering dusk.

“Will you dig another well, do you think?” She asked it idly, the question popping out of her mouth without thought.

He looked where she was looking and caught the meaning at once. His expression turned thoughtful and she could see him measuring the distance from the pump to where the inn would go. “That’s a good question, mum.” He considered the location of the inn and then turned back to look at the well. He snorted. “Much work as diggin’ a second well would be, and getting’ another pump working, might be easier to just take down those two houses and put the inn over the well.”

She turned to look at the area in question and then at the markings on the ground. He was right. There were only two huts near enough to matter, Sadie’s and Megan’s. “Where would Sadie and Megan go? You’d have to build new huts for them.”

Frank shook his head. “There’s four or five standing empty now, mum. When we built ’em, we built enough for 20 families. We’re down to less than 12 now and some of the single boys have moved into individual houses. They really should be doublin’ or even triplin’ up just to save the fuel in winter. Takes a lot less wood to heat one house than it does three.”

She nodded. “Would they mind movin’, d’ya think?

He shrugged. “Could ask, but I suspect it don’t matter to them.” He nodded his head to indicate the various houses. “Case you haven’t noticed, they’re all the same. Only difference is where they sit. There’s a couple of nice private spots on the far side of the village, might suit Sadie and Thomas better anyway.”

They stood there long enough that Riley got side tracked and ran off on some important boy business.

As he scampered off, Frank spoke softly. “You haven’t seen anybody else hanging about, have you, mum?”

She shook her head and glanced at him. “Have you?”

He shook his head and gave her a sideways look. “We should tell Thomas and William about it.”

She nodded her agreement. “Right now, I want my tea. The water should be hot.” She looked at him shyly. “Can I offer you a cup?”

He smiled and didn’t look at her. “Actually, mum, that sounds real good, but I’ve got some things need seein’ to so maybe another time?”

She felt a pang of let down but nodded. “Of course. Kettle’s always on.” The old formulas of housekeeping were coming back to her. None of the teachers she’d had over the past twenty winters stood much on ceremony, but the rituals of hospitality were well ingrained.

With a nod of his head, he strode off in the direction of the barn.

She watched him go for a moment before turning back to her hut. The water was probably hot and she was ready for a cup. She would also have to talk with William and Thomas soon, but still had no clear idea what the riders wanted. She splashed a little hot water into her teapot to christen it but paused as she reached for her rapidly dwindling cache of black tea. She had no way to get more and decided to husband what she had for the moment. She rummaged in her pack and found a small parcel of dried, crushed rose hips and smiled. “This will do.” She crumbled a couple of the hips into her pot and pushed it a bit closer to the fire to steep. It would take a little longer to steep than the black, but the taste was one she enjoyed. She remembered the large rugosa in the forest and made a mental note to harvest as many of the rose hips as she could.

The crunch of wheel on gravel announced William’s return about the time she was finishing her tea but she didn’t hurry out. He’d need to deal with Bester and she suspected that Frank would meet him in the barn and fill him in on the details. She wasn’t sure what she could say about the raven episode. The less she needed to talk about it, the happier she’d be. She filled in the time by sorting out the chestnuts, groundnuts, and apples from where she’d dumped her gleaner’s bag earlier in the day. She left them in neat piles on the hearthstone and remembered that she needed some baskets to store things in. She reckoned that William had had time to care for the ox and get the highlights from Frank, so she grabbed her staff and hat and headed up to the barn. With luck, she’d be able to duck in and duck out again.

She opened the door and stepped out just as Frank with William and Thomas in tow, rounded the corner from the barn. Frank pushed a barrow of firewood in front of him and the other two waved as she stepped into view. She waved back and waited.

As they approached, Frank walked the barrow right up to the door and the three men proceeded to fill her woodbox from the barrow in next to no time at all. Thomas even hung a pair of dressed gamecocks on a hook beside her door to season. He smiled shyly and nodded his head. “Sadie thought you might like these, mum.”

“Thank you, Thomas, and thank Sadie for thinking of me.” She turned to include them all in her gaze. “And thank all of you for the wood delivery. I was going to need some soon.”

William nodded. “Any time you get low, mum, you let one of us know. We’ll see to it that you have wood.”

Frank grinned at her and winked conspiratorially but said nothing.

William went on. “Frank here tells me you saw one of those boyos in the wood this morning?”

She nodded. “Yes, I did. I thought I saw somebody in the edge of the wood so I went up to the barn and fetched Frank. He went with me while we looked it over.”

He nodded. “Do you mind going with us while we look the place over for ourselves before it gets any darker?”

“Not at all.” She started out across the village, making a bee line directly toward the large oak.

The three men fell in behind her and they walked in silence. When they got to the edge of the woods, Tanyth stopped and pointed with the head of her staff. “He was in there just after dawn and watching the village.”

Thomas gave her a long, sideways glance before he slipped almost noiselessly through the low brush and into the woods beyond. William turned to look back at the village, surveying the scope of the view.

Frank spoke into the growing silence. “I figger they musta sent one fella up to the quarry to see what we were doing up there, left another here to keep an eye on the home fires.”

William nodded. “Good assumption. Even if they didn’t, we’re probably better off thinkin’ they did.” He finished his survey of the village and shook his head. “The question is what do they want?”

Frank shrugged. “That’s the question, i’n’t it?” He nodded to Tanyth. “If Mother Fairport hadn’t seen it, we wouldn’ta known. As it is, we know but we don’t know what to do about it ’cause we don’t know what they want.”

From the darkness under the trees, Thomas’s voice seemed eerily unattached to any body. “We’re about to find out I think. There’s riders coming up the Pike.”

They stood silent for a moment and then heard what Thomas’s ears had already picked out–hoof beats on the hardpan surface of the road. Not moving fast, but more than one set.

Four familiar shapes rode into view and wheeled into the track to the village. With a grunt, William led the way across the sward to meet them before they got too close.

The sun wasn’t quite down, and spears of light worked across the village, through the trees and between the huts. The leader of the small band, the dapper fellow, reined in his horse so that one of the transient bands of light illuminated him dramatically. Tanyth almost snickered when he turned his body and practically posed in the beam of setting sun.

William took a few more steps and halted a few feet from the riders. He snorted and spit on the ground. “Hello, Andy. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

The leader flinched, losing his composure for a moment and peering out of the brilliant light into the dimmer evening all around him. “Who’s that?”

William stepped into the next band of brightness, casting himself in clear evening sunlight. “You don’t recognize me, Andy? I’m hurt.” William’s voice was anything but hurt.

The leader screwed up his face in a frown, trying to remember. He started to shake his head, but then the penny dropped and he frowned. “Pound me, but if it isn’t William Mapleton. Sakes alive.” The leader’s face was transformed by a smile of false camaraderie. “I had no idea this was where you were livin’ now, William.” He looked around at his men. “Did you boys know?”

They grinned without much humor and shook their heads, making a big show of it.

Andy turned back to William and flashed his coattails back in a flurry of red satin lining. The pommel of his sword gleamed as he leaned forward on the bow of his saddle. “This is a right pretty little place you got here, William.” He smiled with his teeth. “Be a right shame should anything happen to it.”

“Don’t even think it, Birchwood.” William fairly spat the name.

“Why, William!” The man sat back on his horse. “Is that any way to be? I come here to offer you and yours a perfectly legal business arrangement. There’s no need to be like that.”

“You came in here yesterday and rousted out my wife and my friends. You’ve had your boyos spyin’ on us today.” He spat again. “I know your perfectly legal business arrangement and I want no part of it.”

Andy shook his head with a sigh and several tsk, tsks. “You really should control that temper, William. You got that from your father, I know, and it really doesn’t become you.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward to whisper. “And it really would be tragic if something were to happen to this lovely little hideaway in the wood, now wouldn’t it?”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Birchwood.” William stood his ground calmly, but Tanyth could see his left fist clench and the muscles in his back tense from where she stood behind him.

“Now, how can you say that, William. Why, just any kind of troublemaker could ride down the Pike and decide that this delightful little hamlet would make a wonderful place to live. Now what would you say to that?”

“Anybody’s welcome to live here, so long as they do their share, tend their business, and respect the neighbors, Birchwood.”

Birchwood made a show of being aghast. “You can’t mean that, William! Surely, you’d not let murdering scum live next to your lovely wife and your two gorgeous children.”

“I didn’t say your kind was welcome, Birchwood. I said folks as was willing to do their share, tend their business, and respect the neighbors. I know you and your boyos, there, and you’re not that kind.”

“William, you wound me. I’m cut to the quick. You do me such disservice, and here I am just trying to help you hold on to what’s yours.” He sighed. “But I can see I’ve come at a bad time, end of the day and all. You must be tired after the day you’ve had cutting wood miles away in the forest.” He gathered his reins in one immaculately gloved hand. “I’ll just let you think about it for a bit. The boys and I will come back in a couple of days and you can tell me how much you think it’s worth to not have trouble with strangers.” He turned his horse and nodded to his men. The troop of them rode down the lane and turned south onto the Pike.

William stood still until the sound of their horses faded into the distance. Then he turned to the group arrayed behind him. “We’ll need to keep watch.”

Chapter 16
On Guard

Frank volunteered for the first watch. “I don’t have much to do tomorrow.” He looked at Thomas. “Wake you at midnight?”

Thomas shook his head. “I’ll be up with you. We’ll need to do this in pairs.”

William nodded his agreement. “Wake me at midnight. I’ll get one of Jakey’s boys to sit up with me.”

Frank agreed with a nod of his head. “They’re just wrapping up now at the quarry. Should be able to finish loading with one less hand, but what about the days?”