The Wicked and the Just (27 page)

“Papaaaaaaaa!”

I screech and pound and kick the oaken slab and they're going to cut me up for the pigs and it's forever ere the door opens a crack and a slice of my father's face floats beyond. His eyes are wild. I throw my shoulder into the crack, trying to cram inside, but a massive palm slams into the door a handswidth from my ear. The door flies open and my father staggers back from the force of the blow. Welshmen crowd through, one after another, pushing me ahead of them.

I hit the wall hard. Black pain over my eyes, then I'm blinking and the wall is holding me up.

My father is in the middle of a crowd of Welshmen, all elbows and fists and knees, flailing like a drowning man.

They're going to kill him. They're going to beat him to pulp right before my eyes.

Even in my own house, I can still hear the screaming.

“Papa!” They're killing my father. And I'm standing here.

“Get out!” His voice is raspy, as if he's swallowed ground glass.

I cannot move.

Gwinny appears from the rear chamber and points through the hall, jabbering in Welsh. Men troop past with grain sacks from our shed on their shoulders, and she directs them to the door with stabs of her finger.

The Welshmen are dragging my father toward the stairs, but he's fighting them knuckle and jab, tooth and backhand. He's bleeding from nose and mouth, and clumps of his hair are missing.

I stagger across the room and fall into Gwinny. “He's going to die! They're going to kill my father!”

She snorts. “Aye. They are.”

“Stop them!”

Gwinny shrugs. “I couldn't even if I wanted to. He's been digging his own grave with every fistful of barley, every handmill fine, every door kicked in, every word in the bailiffs' ears.”

They've got him halfway up the stairs. All I can see of my father are his boots, catching winks of hearthfire as he kicks and struggles. Another Welshman follows with a length of rope.

I'm weeping at Gwinny's feet and clutching her hem and I can still hear the screaming above my own shuddering breath.

“Help me, Gwinny,” I sob, “please, for the love of God. They'll come for me next. Help me. Do something.”

The hem jerks from my hands and swishes away. I look up at Gwinny, up and up and into her bird-black eyes.

“Justice,” she hisses, “for those who deserve it.”

Then Gwinny swings a quartermeasure sack over her shoulder and follows the men out the gaping front door.

There's no more scuffle abovestairs, no thumping or scraping or dragging. Only cheering and hooting.

Get out, he said. He cannot mean alone.

 

I stand up. My legs are watery. Heavy footfalls drum on the stairs. Toward me.

I stumble through the storage chamber and out the rear door. The rearyard is a shambles. The henhouse is tipped over and kicked in. The pig and goat are missing. The rain barrel has a foot-shaped hole in the side.

I totter through the wreckage and peek through the kitchen door. No sign of Mistress Tipley. Pots and kettles and spoons and paddles lie scattered like driftwood. The shelves are bare.

I slip through the greenway toward the street. This time I do not run. Running draws their attention. Welshmen heave past, toting lengths of wool and quartermeasure sacks. They storm along Shire Hall bloody to the knees with blades drawn. The screaming is louder here. The whole town is screaming for mercy.

In front of my house, I search the street for someone to help me. Anyone. Master Glover. Sir John de Coucy. Even Edward Mercer. But there are only Welshmen, smoke, and blood.

Something creaks. Something behind me, in what's left of my house.

It's my father. Hanging from his chamber window. Stripped naked. A handmill dangling from his neck, strung on the cord of his bedrobe. Neck awry, eyes bulging, blank.

I'm running. The ground flashes past my feet in smears of brown and green. My stomach is hot and stabby and I land in dirt as I retch and retch but nothing comes up.

My garden. I'm in my garden. I'm crushing tansy and borage.

The shed door has been torn off. I grapple my way inside and sink into the corner nearest the door, pull knees to chin, and weep.

 

I'm little. Not more than three or four summers, because I'm small enough that my father can throw me high in the air in Edgeley's sunny yard. He catches me in strong, sure arms and I crow
again again again
because I know he will never let me fall. A wooden top with a red plaited pull-string skitters over Edgeley's trestle and clatters to a stop and I squeal and my father smiles and pets my hair and oh Christ he's gone he cannot be gone because I was going to buy him some gingerbread with one of the pennies because I did not think to tell him farewell.

 

Get out, he said. Ere a handful of whooping devils put a rope round his neck and pushed him out his chamber window.

I heave myself up. The screaming is muffled here, but somehow that's worse. If I go through the streets, they'll see me. I'll have to follow the walls through rearyards till I get to the gate.

I check my rearyard. Empty. So I make myself walk. Running draws their attention and they're in the houses, tipping coffers and seizing garments by the handful. They'll see me through shutterless windows and sweep down.

Near the fence, I step on something furry. It's Salvo, lying peacefully on his side as if he's asleep on his gorse bed. But he's not. His throat has been cut. A collar of shiny red from ear to ear. Bleeding a scarlet fan into the mud.

I cross myself and keep walking.

Next door's rearyard is torn up like a byre. My shoe sucks into the mud. Then the other. So I leave them. The mud squishes cold and gritty around my ankles.

At the corner, I peer down High Street. What's left of the Michaelmas fair is strewn and thrashed. Broken carts and dead sheep and ragged scraps of bunting still clinging to smoldering buildings. And Welshmen bearing plunder, sacks and crates and bundles. Welshmen with torches, setting townhouses afire. Welshmen everywhere, armed and wroth as demons loosed from Hell.

It's about a stone's throw across High Street to Church. And I must cross High in plain view of these butchers.

I'll never make it. They'll descend on me like a pack of dogs.

I take a deep breath and step into the road. Chin up, eyes forward. The walk that earned me penance from the lady de Coucy.

Over my shoulder is the castle's gray profile. The cross of Saint George does not fly above the Eagle Tower, nor the arms of the constable. There's another banner, one I don't recognize. A red and gold banner, quartered.

The Welsh have taken the castle.

All dead. The castle garrison. The porters at the city gate. No one's left. They'll spare none of us.

Cannot stop. Welshmen everywhere. One foot before the other, slipping in blood.

An apron drifts across the Sandyses' greenway. A shift, too. Three adjoining townhouses are ablaze, smoke pouring from the windows. A baby cries somewhere in a pathetic, straggling wail.

If I survive this I will confess my sins like an anchoress, for if Hell is anything like the fall of Caernarvon, I want to be perfectly certain of my soul.

***

Follow the wall. Drag my hand against it. Don't look too closely at limp shapes in corners or furtive movement behind sheds. Stand still as a hare when Welshmen pour out of townhouses, smearing sooty handprints on doorframes. Count towers till I reach the Penny Tower, then the city gate.

At the gate, Welshmen stream in and out weighed down with plunder, making a great din with their shouting, singing, roaring. Somehow I must get through that gate. It's the only way out of Caernarvon.

I lean against a shed. Suck in trembling breaths. My feet are raw. My legs are like cooked parsnips and I cannot go on. Not another step. Not through that gate.

Get out, he said to his only living child, the light of his otherwise meaningless life.

Grip my muddy gown. Let out a shuddery breath. Then I plunge around the shed corner and plow through the alley toward the city gates.

One gate has been torn from the hinges and trampled to splinters. I fix my eyes on the bridge that spans the river beyond the dark arch. Welshmen stagger and storm through the gate-hole. I look through them as I pass. They do not exist.

There are scrape marks on the ground where the toll trestle stood. Not even a splinter remains.

Outside the gate, I choke on acrid smoke. The wharves are burning. Every last boat sends diagonal flames to the heavens and the canals are crammed with charred flotsam.

Chin up, stride even. Running draws their attention. I pray to every saint who's listening to surround me with angels bearing swords.

Something snares my plait.

The saints are elsewhere today.

I reel backward and twist, but whatever has me jerks my hair downward and slings me hard against the bridgehouse. The whole world is naught but purple stars and agony from scalp to backside.

Then a Welshman appears before me and pins me by the neck to the bridgehouse with one big hand. His other hand pushes my gown up in scrabbly grips and grabs. He's grinning. He's missing teeth.

The sky behind him is glowing blue while all the world burns.

No one is coming to help me. They're all dead.

The Welshman gets my gown over my knee and I kick. I kick as hard as I can between his legs and he roars as if I've killed him. I hope I have. He falls away bellowing like a poorly stuck pig and that's all I see because I run for the bridge, attention be damned.

There's a clamor of harsh noise behind me but I don't look back. I fly across the bridge through a crowd of Welshmen fighting over plunder and getting drunk off tuns of wine that must have come from those burning ships.

Mayhap they chase me. Mayhap they don't. They don't catch me. I stop running only when I'm deep in the greenwood gasping for breath and there's not a soul around save birds and insects and quiet, ancient trees.

No more screaming. No more smoke. Only riversong and the chirring of birds, the wet, woody smell of earth.

My legs give way. I collapse in the brush. Take breath after breath. My skin burns. My neck. My legs, where his damp eager hands dragged upward.

Caernarvon stands on its plain while a curtain of black smoke rises as if the Adversary himself has come to claim it.

I'm out.

I'm alone.

 

It'll be dark soon. Were there any bells left, they'd be ringing Nones.

My gown crackles, a stiff sheet of blood and muck and vomit. It reeks like a midden in August. My feet are laced with cuts and blistered from sun-baked ground, stinging as if full of pins.

Water murmurs somewhere nearby. As on the outing with Emmaline and her kin all those months ago. When angry Welshmen pelted William with rubbish because he was a
taxator.

And I was wroth because of my ruined gown.

We'd regret it, the poor wretch swore, sweltering at borough court as serjeants hauled him away. Every last act of it.

I crawl beneath a tree. Curl up. And tremble.

They murdered my father. They hold Caernarvon, seat of his Grace the king's government in the Principality of North Wales. My house will soon be char and timber if it isn't already. I am without the walls with naught in the world but the clothes on my back.

And it'll be dark soon.

Someone's coming. There's no time to hide, so I huddle as small as I can, a cat in January. No tromp of boots, so it's a Welshman.

Go past. You don't see me.

But he does. And his face darkens.

It's Griffith.

He's smudgy with soot and his tunic is torn. He squares up like a boar and looks me up and down, as if I'm something to scrape off a shoe.

Tremble and whimper and my breath comes in tiny gasps as if I'm pulling air through a reed.

Griffith snorts, shakes his head, and starts toward the ford, disappearing in margins over the hill.

Swipe at my wet cheeks again and again.

Then he stops. For a long moment he does naught, and I will him on his way with every bit of will I have.

But Griffith comes back up the rise, piece by piece, face, shoulders, torn tunic, till he's standing over me like an idol.

Get out, he said, ere they killed him in cold blood. He did not mean like this.

“No. It won't do.” Griffith sounds weary, as if he is a thousand years old. “The worst is coming. Here.”

He holds out a hand.

If whatever's coming is worse than the sack of Caernarvon, Hell must be opening its great maw.

“Go away.” I try to stand. If he knows I cannot fight back, I'm done for. But I cannot even climb to my knees.

Without fanfare, Griffith hauls me up like a wet pallet, looses me roughly, and leaves me swaying like a sapling on legs that won't make it ten steps.

“Wh-where are we going?” I whisper.

He makes no reply, merely fixes me with a look that shuts my gob very quickly and jerks his chin at the greenwood. So I make myself stumble behind him on colt-legs and feet burning like sulfur.

Mayhap it'll be quick. Please, God, let it be quick.

 

We walk. The sun sinks. One foot before the other. Days and se'ennights and years we walk.

Just when I cannot go another step, we come to the bottom of a wooded hill.

And I collapse.

So Griffith drags me step after staggering step toward a sagging hovel decaying amid thick brush. He shoulders the curtain aside and lowers me before a ring of embers. Next to me is a pile of moth-eaten blankets outlined faintly in orange light. He hangs the quartermeasure sack from a hook in the rafters, then approaches me.

Flinch. And flinch. Dear God, this is it.

But Griffith only kneels to build up the struggling fire. He's close enough that I can smell him, smoke and sweat and soot, but he does not so much as look at me. The coals glow like stars. At length, flame licks up the tinder and begins to crackle.