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FEW THINGS ARE AS DECEPTIVE as appearances.
—The Pauper King
* * *
STARING BACK AT THEM was an unlikely pair—Thomlin Frank, the miller’s son, and Rolf Rosenkranz, a rough-and-tumble son of a local hunter. Gwen hadn’t seen either of the Rosenkranzes in years. Rolf had left lessons when he was ten, and like his father, he’d avoided Vasterberg and its citizens.
“Umm. We mean you no harm.” Rolf was the one who spoke, his hands raised in the air. His bow, slung over a shoulder beside a quiver full of arrows, still rocked side to side from the rapid lifting of his arms.
“What are you doing in these woods? Why were you spying on us?” Gwen demanded, her heart still pounding hard from the startle she’d just had. She avoided eye contact with Rolf, but even his presence made her all the more nervous.
He slowly lowered his hands and flashed a broad smile. “We were just hunting.”
“Hunting for what?” Gwen pressed.
“Food,” said Rolf. “Squirrels, rabbits.” He held up a rope, the end of which looped around the ankle of a wide-eyed hare.
“Eww,” Gilly said. Gwen wanted to smack her for showing any weakness to these dullards.
“It won’t hurt you. It’s dead.” Rolf gave a little laugh as he shook the rope and made the dead hare bounce. His other hand secured behind his ear wavy locks escaping the ponytail at the nape of his neck.
“Rolf!” Thomlin scolded. “Be nice.”
“Do you have permission to hunt in these woods?” Gwen asked, one hand moving to her hip.
“Gwen! What’s wrong with you? They haven’t done anything wrong,” Gilly squeaked.
Rolf gave a knowing nod and grinned, again his fingers taming stray locks. “Ah, so that’s who you are. I wasn’t sure. You’ve . . . changed.”
An awkward silence followed, during which Gwen acknowledged the confusion this dark-haired boy made her feel. He was an arrogant little twit. At the same time, his grin was devastatingly cute, and his dimples made it impossible not to look at cheekbones chiseled by too few and lean meals, sun-darkened skin that she couldn’t help but think would glisten after a much-needed steamy bath, and shoulder-length waves of hair the color of oak barrels. His hair betrayed a tendency toward orderliness every time he reached up and pushed an escaped lock behind an ear. It made Gwen want to smile. He’d definitely changed since she’d seen him last.
“And you, fair lady, by what name go you?” asked Rolf, sweeping his arm across his stomach and bending into an exaggerated, low bow.
“Her name is none of your business,” Gwen replied. “Be on your way.”
“Gilly! Short for Gillian, named after my great-great-great-great grandmother.”
“It’s a beautiful name,” said Thomlin. He whispered to Rolf, but the breeze caught it. He may as well have said the words aloud. “She’s the Gilly I was telling you about.”
Gilly giggled and Gwen wanted to smack her atop her curly hair. “Come on, Gilly. We have to go. We are expected.”
“We are?”
The boys chuckled in unison.
“We are.” She held up the bucket of chives. “My father will want his bucket back before he closes the shop for the day.” She smirked at Rolf. “He knows where we are and what we’re doing. He’ll come looking for us if we don’t return soon.”
Rolf shrugged. “Like your friend said, we haven’t done anything wrong.”
Thomlin stretched out a hand in front of Rolf, as if he were holding him back from stepping forward. “You should get back before it gets much later. I’ll see you again when Mistress Bourgogne returns, I hope.” The way he smiled at Gilly made it apparent his kind words were meant for her and not for Gwen. “And I’m sorry if we frightened you.”
Gwen grabbed Gilly’s hand and turned back toward Vasterberg, her skirt flapping so hard from the abruptness of her movement that it snapped with a sting against her legs. She managed not to wince until her back was to the two boys. She fought the urge to turn around, in part because she didn’t want them to know she cared if they followed and in part because she didn’t want to be disappointed if they weren’t behind her and Gilly. Instead, she listened for their footsteps, and when she was sure she’d heard none and they’d gone far enough to be out of earshot, she shook off Gilly’s hand.
“What’s the matter?”
“You shouldn’t have told them my name or yours. We don’t know anything about Rolf anymore. He’s been gone from lessons a long time,” Gwen said.
“But we know Thomlin, and we kind of know Rolf.” Gilly giggled. “And aren’t they handsome?”
Gwen rounded on her friend. “Gilly Bastwick. What would your mother say?”
“Since when do you care what any adult has to say? What’s wrong with you? You were rude to those boys. They were just looking for food. Didn’t you see how gaunt Rolf has become? He looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week. You should be ashamed of yourself, Gwen.”
Gilly’s outburst came as a surprise. Her friend had never spoken a cross word to her in all the years they’d known each other, and now she had, and Gwen felt ashamed for scolding her and for not noticing the boys approaching. It was unlike her not to be observant. She took her best friend’s hand in hers again. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I guess I’m angry with myself for not hearing them sooner. They surprised me. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“Just that it reminded me of what happened to my mother.”
Compassion filled Gilly’s tone when she spoke. “But that was a sick wolf, Gwen, not two hungry boys.”
Gwen felt even more ashamed. She’d heard rumors that Rolf’s father was cruel to him and that his withdrawal from lessons was because his father insisted he was needed to help with hunting. “I know. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
The two friends resumed the walk to Vasterberg hand in hand, Gilly’s bubbling excitement about the circus infecting Gwen and taking her mind off what had just happened. In exchange for a bucket brimming with chive plants, the widow Crookstaff paid Gilly the bronze coin the stablemaster had given her. Once they’d left the baker’s cottage, Gilly handed the coin to Gwen. “There. We can go to one of two performances. Noon or afternoon on Rest Day. Which shall it be?”
“Noon. Let’s be the first to see it.”
“Ooh. Good idea, Gwen. Tomorrow, I’ll show you where they’re camped. They’re magnificent.”
“You said that.”
“Because they are! You’ll see.”
Gwen felt less upset about their earlier spat when Gilly smiled and shared her natural enthusiasm. That was the Gilly she’d come to think of as her only close friend, her best friend, a girl as close to her as any sister could have been. Gwen squeezed Gilly’s hand. “Thank you for finding a way we can go together. It will be magnificent.”
“It will!”
The two laughed as they wove through a thinning crowd to the market street. They finally reached the butcher shop, where they vigorously scrubbed the bucket and spade while Gwen’s father put away his own tools. After he closed and locked the shop door, Gilly headed for home, and Gwen walked back to the farm with her father.
“Grandmother will probably be angry with me.”
“Oh? Why?”
“I didn’t tell her I was leaving.”
Her father sighed. “Gwen. She worries about you because she loves you.”
“I know, Father. It’s just that she is so stern and never lets me have any fun or see or do anything new. Mother wasn’t like her at all. She let me play with friends and took me with her everywhere.” Gwen stopped speaking, overwhelmed by sadness as she remembered a time her mother hadn’t taken her along—her mother’s last day. Maybe she would be alive if Gwen had been with her that day. Guilt stabbed at her in the silence.
“Tell her you came to the shop . . . which is true.” His tone and careful word selection Gwen knew to mean he was going to cover for her once again. “And don’t mention trotting off with Gilly.”
“Thank you, Father.”
* * *
SUPPERTIME WENT ALMOST as Gwen had expected. Her grandmother scowled through the meal and glared at her every time she contributed to the conversation. After several attempts at idle chitchat, Gwen fell silent and listened as her father recounted the news his customers had shared with him. Master Narth had come in for pork and said he’d heard from a cousin in the east that the Zjhon were building their forces again, that they’d conscripted a few boys from the outskirts of the Lankland capital and moved them to the Southland coast to train on great ships. Mistress Theron, the wife of Farmer Theron, had reported that a troupe of wagons had set up camp on the western edge of Vasterberg. She was sure it was they who had stolen her chickens. After picking up her sausages, she headed straight to the constable’s office to file a complaint. That tidbit knotted Gwen’s stomach. She hoped the circus wouldn’t be forced to leave before the Day of Rest performances.
“The widow Crookstaff came in and placed a large order for venison. Seems she’s going to bake her famous meat pies for a welcoming party Councilman Grayston’s wife will be holding for a visitor from Sutherhold, the daughter of a dear friend from her childhood. I told her I didn’t have that much venison, and she was beside herself, I tell you, beside herself.”
“That’s a pity, Jacob. We could have used the gains from a sale that large. Why, the curtains in Gwen’s room are threadbare.” She shot a glare at Gwen, and it irked the girl that her grandmother had such an underhanded way of chiding her father for making a meager livelihood. Part of her wanted to smirk and say that the curtains had been thick enough to obscure her grandmother’s view before she’d sneaked away.
“Not to worry, Mother. I calmed her down. Told her I could fill the order by the date she needs it.”
“But how, Jacob? Who will run your shop while you’re hunting?”
Her father grinned and winked at Gwen. “Early this morning, Thomlin Frank came into the shop with another boy. Turns out he’s the son of Rastof Rosenkranz. I think his name’s Roland or Randall or something like that. The boy seems to be an excellent hunter.”
Rolf, thought Gwen, as she choked on her food. Her father slapped her on the back, and she swallowed the piece of potato that had lodged in her throat. She took a drink of water to wash it down.
“He sold me a whole boar, and every bit of the meat was good. A single hole in the head, right above its snout.” Her father placed his fingertip between his eyes then removed it and laughed. “Imagine that. A boy who can kill a boar with a single arrow. Well, don’t you know I hired those two on the spot. Told them I needed some wild hare and squirrel. They’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll see if Rosenkranz is as good as Thomlin says he is. If Thomlin’s right, I’ll send them out to bring down a buck or a couple of fawnless older does if the herd’s too large. A single shot.” He laughed again and dipped his spoon into the stew.
Gwen rose from the table and started clearing the dirty dishes. She didn’t want any questions from her grandmother, who had seen her come home with her father and hadn’t pressed either of them about Gwen’s disappearance. She didn’t want to have to lie. But most of all, she didn’t want to tell her family about the scare they’d given her and Gilly. Any reminder of her mother’s death usually resulted in a tighter rein for a while, and a tighter rein might stop her from being able to attend the circus with Gilly.
After she’d cleaned up the table and cooking utensils, Gwen’s father called her to come sit beside him near the hearth. Her grandmother had already picked up her sewing basket and was busy darning one of Jacob’s wool socks. Gwen settled onto a low stool and put her own sewing basket in her lap. It held an array of minor projects, none of which she’d completed—a handkerchief awaiting embroidery on one of its edges, a kitchen cloth with rough hem, a cotton shift with a sleeve that needed mending.
“Your grandmother and I want to talk with you about Mistress Bourgogne’s visit. She’ll be here in a few days if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, Father. Soon after Rest Day.”
“Someday, you may need to care for yourself. I won’t live forever,” her grandmother said.
As cross and coarse as her grandmother could be, Gwen did love her, and she didn’t like to think about her dying.
“What your grandmother is saying is that we’d like you to choose one of two paths for your education moving forward, something that will give both of us peace of mind that no matter what happens to either of us, you’ll get along well and want for nothing.”
“Oh, spit it out, Jacob. You treat her like the tender shoot of a frail flower.”
Her father frowned at his mother-in-law, but his look softened when he gazed back down at Gwen. “I’ve not done too badly as a butcher.”
“But I don’t want to be a butcher, Father.”
Jacob let out an unreserved laugh. “Of course not, my sweet girl, but having a shop is a stable way to earn a living, whether it be butcher or baker. The widow Crookstaff won’t live forever, and she has no children to keep her bakery once she’s gone. Aged as she is, I’m sure she’d be happy for the help of an apprentice.”
Gwen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did her father really believe her talents would be best suited for baking? Hadn’t he noticed that every meal she ever cooked ended up burned or raw, every loaf of bread hard and dry?
“That or the monastery,” said her grandmother.
“What?! The monastery?” shrieked Gwen, jumping up off the stool in such a fluster that she dumped the contents of her sewing basket onto the aged wood-plank floor, sending her pin cushion rolling toward the fire.
Her grandmother stuck out a foot and stopped the hay-filled ball from certain destruction. “Yes, the monastery. You need discipline, child. You are lazy, disobedient, and keep the worst of company.”
Gwen fumed at the slander of Gilly, who was sweet, kind, and polite to everyone she met, even Gwen’s grandmother. “If you’re talking about Gilly, you take that back. She’s never done anything to you or anyone else.”
“She’s the daughter of a hedge witch. Nothing but a ragamuffin whose loathsome mother allows her to consort with—”
Jacob raised his voice to intervene. “That will be enough, Mother. You aren’t helping.”
But there was no consoling or quieting Gwen. Her grandmother had pushed her beyond the point of self-control. “Consort with whom, Grandmother? With me? The daughter of a poor butcher with worn-out socks and the grandchild of a bitter old hag?”
As soon as she’d spoken the words, Gwen regretted them, but it was too late to take them back.
Her father’s voice boomed, “Go to your room at once, Gwendolin Ahlgren, and don’t come out until you are prepared to apologize to your grandmother.”
Her vision blurred, Gwen stumbled to her bed and threw herself onto it. She struggled to hold back the tears, intent on not crying, but the tears came of their own accord. She couldn’t believe her father had conceded to her grandmother’s wishes. Gilly’s mother’s talk with them so many years ago clearly hadn’t been enough. Her grandmother controlled her life, and if she had her way, Gwen would be either a frumpy housewife who baked for people richer than she or an old maid nun who walked the grounds of a drafty monastery in silence. How could her father have wanted that for her? She would never forgive either of them. Through sheer will and one thought, she managed not to sob. I will do what I want and have what I want, you hateful old woman and spineless man.