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When asked if she had nowhere else to go, little Cecilia said she was orphaned. She came from a village not far from Lincoln, but there had been no one to take her in when her mother died. She had come to town to look for work, and found it here in the brothel. Nan sat silently through the child’s explanations that she knew she should be grateful, and was. Bettie kept a good house and never beat her, and she didn’t want to be disobedient. She was sorry, she said. Over and over again, she said she was sorry that she was too frightened to do her duty, until Nan could bear it no more.
“Don’t you never be sorry for it.” She was surprised by the sob that almost escaped her. She felt scraped-out and hollow, incapable of so much feeling. “Don’t you never let no one say it’s your duty. Nor will I let it be your fate.”
She bade the girl lie down and sleep now, and sent Fuss to curl up beside her. She had to look away from them, because the sight almost caused the sob inside her to come loose again. When asked if she wanted Nan to find her a new place, somewhere she might do hard but respectable work, Cecilia had readily agreed.
Nan stared at the battered door of the room for hours, trying to think of a suitable place that would accept the child. Somewhere safe and protected. But every thought skittered away from her, impossible to hold on to. Her mind was a wasteland. There was only this door and the night. There was only waiting for the morn, when she must open the door to face her sister.
A footfall made her heart jump. She drew her dagger and looked quickly to Fuss, who was so deep in sleep he did not even twitch when a soft voice called, “Do you wake?”
She stretched out a staying hand in Fuss’ direction in case he should wake, and opened the door a crack. It was Rosy, her red hair reflecting the light from the candle she held.
“Will you be staying with Cissy, then?” she whispered with a glance toward the pallet where the girl lay. “Only the tanner – him as has been wanting her – he went off to the tavern. He was cursing all the way and saying he will return for what he was promised.”
Nan nodded, and wondered if she should say anything more about her plans, what little she had of them. It was so strange, to be looked at in this way by these girls – as though she knew what to do, or had any kind of authority.
From her memory rose a vision of the woman who had put herself between Nan and that lustful lord so long ago, how she stood so proud and tall and unyielding. And then she thought of her lady, burning with conviction and radiating power as she carried Nan away to safety. They had seemed avenging angels to her, the women who had saved her. Had they felt this way, deep inside? Uncertain and fearful and small?
“She’s a good girl,” said Rosy, her eyes on the sleeping child. “It’s not a bad place here, truly. But I do remember well how I had dreams of escaping this life once. It’s a hard thing for a girl to accustom herself to.”
Nan looked at this young woman who looked no more than sixteen years old, who was already so jaded and yet still wistful. “Where did you dream you would go,” she asked, “if ever you escaped?”
“To the sisters of the Magdalene,” she replied promptly. “I will go someday, if ever I find a way to manage it.”
A convent. It might be a solution, if there were no other way.
Nan pulled her inside the room so they could speak in the assurance that none would hear them. She questioned the girl, and learned how as a child Rosy had hoped to live with Benedictine sisters. But having no dowry to give the Church, she fell into working life instead, and then into a whore’s life a year ago. She had never intended to stray so far from decency, she said, but then no one did. There were few options when circumstances were dire.
All the while she spoke, Nan looked between these two girls and thanked God, over and over again. Good fortune and unexpected kindness and unearned mercy, that’s all that had kept her from a place like this. She was painfully aware that the only real difference between her and her sister was their luck.
That was what she had told herself these last few days. Now she knew there was something more than circumstance, something fundamental in their natures. You are so different none would believe you were sisters, Aunt Mary had said. She had tried to warn her, but Nan had not wanted to believe it. She still did not want to believe it.
But what she wanted did not matter. It did not matter at all.
“If you would leave this house and this life,” she heard herself say, “I will see you safe away. But it must be now, when morning comes.”
Rosy sat up straight from her slump against the wall, near to dozing off. “But...I’ve nowhere to go, nor coin to give the sisters to take me in. And there are the customers, Bettie won’t want me going off with no warn–”
“I will see you safe away from here.” She looked the girl straight in the eye. She spoke it as an oath, a vow between them, certain and steady and true. “I will let no evil befall you.”
As the words fell from her lips, she was suddenly sure of herself and her course again. If only just for a day, she would take these lives under her protection. The enormity of it pressed on her. This was the debt she owed, one that she would happily repay a thousand times over. But now she understood, as the girl stared at her with hopeful eyes, how heavy was the weight of a life, a soul. Two of them.
She saw the moment when Rosy believed her, the threshold where doubt dissolved into certainty. The girl nodded and said, “I will take these hours to think on it, then.”
They turned down the lamp and sat in silence, waiting for the dawn.
Nan listened to the girls’ fragile breath in the dark, and took her time with her prayers. She asked God to bless and care for those who had protected her when she was vulnerable. She began, as she always did, with her Aunt Mary who had shouted that she’d not let Nan be sold to a filthy lecher. She ended with Gwenllian, her teacher and friend, who had given her the gift of knowing how to protect herself.
She held the vision of Gwenllian in her mind, the first time she’d ever seen her with blade in hand – so beautiful and fierce – as daylight filtered into the little room. Fuss was looking at her, expectant, and little Cecilia opened her eyes.
“We leave now,” Nan said, and turned to Rosy. “Do you join us?”
At the girl’s nod, she stood and gathered her few possessions. At her belt she tied the purse of nails, strings loosened so she might reach them easily if needed. Every blade was put into place – at the front of her belt, in the back, her boot, her garter, the braces on her arms. Her fingers pressed briefly against the dagger in her bodice, her heart’s protection, and she prayed today would not be the day she must draw it.
They need only walk out. The house typically did not rouse until midmorning, and all was quiet at this early hour. Still, she felt a foreboding that caused her to clutch hard at the small bag of belongings over her shoulder while she rested a hand on the knife at her belt. When she asked the girls if there was aught they would take with them, only Rosy nodded and said she would gather her cloak from her room.
Just as they neared the end of the corridor, Fuss let out a bark. He had followed Rosy around the corner into her room and now there were voices shouting, all while Fuss made enough noise to wake the dead.
In an instant, Nan had a blade in one hand and a nail in the other. She pulled little Cecilia around the corner with her by instinct, not wanting to let the girl out of her sight. The smell that greeted her told her it was the tanner come back, as promised. In the room she saw him – a tall, thin man shouting drunkenly as he fell onto a small bed. Then she saw a flame of red hair flick out from beneath him and heard Rosy cry out.
Nan only made the nail graze his ear because she did not want him to keel over onto the girl. When he reached up to clap a hand to the side of his bleeding head, Rosy darted out. She was clutching her cloak to her, and she wasted no time getting away from him. But he snatched at her dress and yanked her back, so Nan stepped forward and drew her blade across the back of his leg, just above the knee, to sever the sinew. He dropped like a stone.
“Fuss!” she said sharply, with a stamp of her foot, and he settled down to a growl. The drunken man was howling, though, and the girls were staring at the blood, so there was no hope of a quiet exit now.
She would feel no guilt for crippling a man who would bed a child, but it meant that trouble was more likely to follow them. They must move swiftly now and without hesitation, for she was a stranger in this town and the might of Morency was far away.
She hastily slung her bag crossways over Rosy’s shoulder, so she could move unencumbered. After a bare instant of thought, she chose the dagger from the back of her belt to put in the older girl’s hand, then pulled the small silver knife from the garter at her knee to give to the younger girl.
There were voices in the corridor now, moving toward them. The drunken man on the bed was trying to rise and come at her but his leg collapsed beneath him. His bellow followed them as they moved past sleepy women emerging from their rooms, and down the stairs until they reached the place where she had left Bea last night.
Her sister was not there, but her man Fergus was. He was rising from a bench by the door, the noise having woken him, scowling in confusion at the stairs.
“What’s amiss?” he asked, looking from Nan to the girls beside her.
Nan let silence serve, as she ever did, but Rosy offered, “Someone’s done the tanner a terrible hurt.” She did not even pause in her step as she said it, the clever girl. Fergus ran to the stairs and they exited the house, stepping into a gray morning.
There. They were out. They paused outside the door while, at Nan’s bidding, Rosy put on her cloak and pulled the hood up to hide her bright hair. The small market up the street was only just beginning to stir, and there were few people to witness them leaving the brothel. She was leading them in the direction of the market, back toward the walls of Lincoln, when she heard her name.
“Nan! Nan!”
There was a desperation in it, a panicked fear that Nan could not ignore. She turned around to face her sister, and felt a similar terror rising in her breast, scrabbling like a frantic animal to get out.
She had been taught how to fight despite fear, how to find and keep her balance through it. You will fear no man, Gwenllian had promised. They will fear you. So she had said and so it was, but nothing a man could threaten was like this.
Bea was red-faced and running, relief washing over her features when she reached Nan.
“There’s no hurt on you? Oh, I’ll take the hide off Fergus for letting him in after so much drink, falling asleep at the door, the great useless lump. Tell me it’s none of your blood I seen back there.”
She was running her hands over Nan’s shoulders and arms, patting her gently as she looked for injury. Nan only shook her head wordlessly. Gradually, a crease of confusion appeared in Bea’s brow. She looked at the girls, then back at Nan.
“Where do you go, Nan?”
They looked at each other a long moment, Nan breathing unevenly and Bea not breathing at all. She thought of their mother. Look after your brother and sister.
“I take Cecilia to find different work,” she said simply. “And Rosy would come too.”
Bea’s brows raised in surprise and skepticism. Her hands dropped from Nan’s shoulders and she shook her head, rejecting it. She spoke past Nan, to the girls. “And who will pay what ye owe? It’s another year for you, Rosy, and three for you, Cissy. Nor do I know what they’ve told you, Nan, but –”
“There is naught they could say to stop me taking them from here, when they do not wish to stay.”
Her sister’s expression soured at this, eyes narrowing. Some of the women were at the door of the brothel, peering out at them. Fergus appeared too, starting up the street toward them slowly, and more people coming to the market now. Bea set her hands on her hips, her face hard as she looked at Nan.
“Oh, you are so good, are you not? Better than me and better than a whore’s life, and you think they are so much better too!” She gestured a hand toward the girls. “And who cared for them before you came along, eh? It’s me that feeds them, and me that puts the clothes on their backs and gives them beds to sleep in, or they’d be in the street. What have you to say to that?”
Nan had nothing to say to it. Or perhaps she had too much to say, all of it tangled and throbbing at the back of her throat. Words were so useless. They never managed to say anything that mattered, no matter how many were heaped on top of each other.
“Their debt will be paid,” she finally choked out. “I will send it to you.”
“Send it?” Bea’s combative pose wavered, her face softening in uncertainty. “You...you’ll not return?”
Fuss was growling. A cart had stopped just behind Bea on its way to the market, the owner watching them curiously. Nan could see a tiny hole starting at the seam of Bea’s bodice, and imagined taking a needle and thread to it. Three quick stitches and it would be mended, good as new. Until it frayed again.
She looked in her sister’s eyes – a look with no beginning or end, full of the deep recognition that only came with family – and they knew. They both knew she would never return, and they both knew why.
“Fare you well, little Bea,” she said barely above a whisper. The memory of her sister’s arm tightened around her, the feel of her face pressed against her as she wept in the night.
“Nan,” she began, but then there was a noise behind her and Nan turned to see Fergus reaching for Cecilia. He was telling her she would not be going anywhere as he caught her around the waist.
The nail went into his shoe, just enough to nick the side of his foot. It was what she did to poachers or anyone she did not wish to truly harm; it was meant to startle and to serve as warning. He only cried out and looked down, but did not let the girl go. Nan pulled a blade from her arm brace and in one uninterrupted motion, she let it fly, the tip of it slicing open his shoulder on its way to the ground. Another warning, because she did not want to kill a man in the street where everyone watched. The next would land true if he did not let go, no matter the consequence, but as she drew it he cried out again and dropped the girl.
Little Cecilia held the silver knife in her fist, eyes wide but determined as she backed away from him. She had pricked his hand well enough to draw blood, and now Bea was shrieking, cursing the girl, an ugly look on her face as she strode forward with hand outstretched to grab the child.
The blade caught her sister’s sleeve, aimed precisely to land in the two inches of loose fabric near the elbow, and pinned her arm to the wagon next to her. It halted Bea in her tracks, stopped her cursing with a gasp as she looked bewildered at her suddenly immobilized arm. Arrogant flourish, Gwenllian would call it, but Lord Ranulf would smile with approval and say arrogance could prove useful in a fight. And so it had.
Nan picked up the blade that had dropped to the dirt and held it tight between her fingers. She would leave the other behind in the wagon, a memento for her sister. They must go and quickly. More people were in the street now, gawking, and there was the man inside the brothel who might any moment call the law on her.
She looked to the girls and gave a jerk of her chin, and they moved readily in the direction of the market. Her sister’s shouting followed them.
“Nan! Nan! Will you leave me again?” There was such anger in it, and such despair. Bea let out a sob that would wrench the hardest heart. “Have you only come to show me how well you’ve done, and now you’re finished with me? You said there’s no one can never take you away from me again. Nan!”
She turned and saw Bea ripping her sleeve in an attempt to free it, cheeks wet with tears. Disgust and love and rage rose up at the sight, a wave that threatened to drown her.
“I searched for you!” It burst from her, filled with a fury that could no longer be confined to the path of a blade. There was a burning in her lungs, a sharp and painful ache that formed itself into words. “I searched years for you. I prayed and I hoped and I found you, and I swore to myself there is naught I would not do for you, naught.” Already her throat was raw.
“Nan –”
“And you would make a whore of a child! You would let her starve did she not obey, though she cries out in terror of it. Starve.” She would not weep. She must keep her eyes dry and clear, so her aim stayed true if she must fight. “Foul and corrupt. That is what you are become. That is who you are.”
Bea clutched her torn sleeve and stared at her, tears trickling down, jaw working angrily.
“And I am your sister,” she said. “I am that, too.”
Nan looked at the face so like her own, the only other person left on earth with their father’s eyes and their mother’s smile.
“Nay,” she answered. “You are Bargate Bettie. And she is no sister of mine.”
She turned away. They might have been children again, so much was it like the last time she had left her family. Just as then, she walked away with purpose and a heavy heart. Like then, the sound of her sister’s weeping followed her.
But this time she did not look back. This time, she did not want to.
