Cat’s Meat

How is it, I sometimes wonder, that a dog person like myself writes so many stories that feature cats?

I really don’t have an answer to that. While dogs have dominated my life as companions, I’ve had a fair number of cat companions as well. The first that was mine, really all mine, was Loki, a long-haired black tom when I was a young teenager. He was fearless and as much dog as cat it sometimes seemed. Sometimes I’d find him outside in the dead of a Fairbanks winter, curled up snug between a couple of huskies.

When I was newly married in Kodiak, we enjoyed the company of my husband’s childhood cat, Chlorophyll. As an unspayed female, she contributed quite a bit to the gene pool of cats on Kodiak Island and was fondly known as “Cat Factory” by the neighbors.

Today, I am owned by Pi, a black-and-white tuxedo cat who is currently nineteen years old. She has been the most faithful of writing cats, sitting on my lap for long hours while I typed over and around her. Sam, a junior cat at only eighteen years old, is the table-walking, snack-stealing bane of my husband’s existence. And despite my resolution not to acquire any more cats, in December of 2009 both Princess and Fatty were added to our household. Grown littermates, they’ve proven remarkably adaptable to our dogs, kids, and senior cats.

Fatty is orange. With blue eyes. And full of tales to tell.

I made a mistake and I’m still paying for it.” Rosemary tried to sound stronger than she felt. Less forlorn and more matter-of-fact.

“You’ve already paid enough for that mistake,” Hilia responded stoutly. Her best friend since childhood, Hilia always took her part. She might be tactless sometimes, but she was loyal. Loyalty had come to mean a great deal to her.

Rosemary picked up little Gillam and bounced him gently. The toddler had been clutching at her knees and wailing since she set him down. The moment she picked him up, he stopped.

“You’re spoiling him,” Hilia pointed out.

“No, I’m just holding him,” Rosemary replied. “Besides, I don’t think he’s the mistake. If anything, he’s the only good thing I got out of my mistake.”

“Oh, I don’t mean him!” Hilia responded instantly. Her own baby, only a month old, was at her breast, eyes shut, all but asleep as she nursed. Gillam arranged himself in Rosemary’s lap and then leaned over to look down curiously at the baby. He reached a hand toward her.

“Let her sleep, Gillam. Don’t poke her.”

“You paid enough for your mistake,” Hilia went on, as if there’d been no interruption. “You’ve suffered for close to three years. It’s not fair he should come back and try to start it all up again.”

“It’s his house,” Rosemary pointed out. “Left him by his grandfather. His bit of land. And Gillam is his son, as he bragged yesterday at the tavern. He has rights to all of them.”

“This is not his house! Don’t you dare say that! Don’t you dare defend that wretch! His grandfather said it was for Gillam when he deeded it over. Not Pell. His own grandfather knew he couldn’t trust Pell to do the right thing by you and his child! And you are Gillam’s mother, so you have just as much right to be here as Pell does. More, because you’re the one who did all the work on it. What was this place when he left you here, with your belly out to there while he went traipsing off with that Morrany girl? A shack! A leaky-roofed shack, with the chimney half fallen down, and the yard full of thistles and milkweed. Now look at it!” Hilia’s angry words rattled like hail on frozen ground as she gestured around the tiny but tidy room. It was a simple cottage, with a flagged floor and stone walls and a single door and one window. On the sill of that window, an orange cat slept, slack as melted honey in the spring sun.

“Look at those curtains and the coverlet on the bed! Look at that hearth, neat as a pin. Look up! That roof’s tight! Well, it needs a new thatch, but where you patched it, it held! Look out the window! Rows of vegetables sprouting in the garden, half a dozen chickens scratching, and a cow with a calf in her belly! Who did that, who did all that? You, that’s who! Not that lazy, good-for-nothing Pell! That stupid little slut winked an eye and wriggled her rump at him, and off he went, to live off her and her parents. And now that she’s done with him, now that her father sees what a bent coin he is and has turned him out, what makes him think he can come back here and just take over everything you’ve built? What right does he have to it?”

“As much right as I do, Hilia. Legally, we are both Gillam’s parents. We both have the right to manage his inheritance for him until he’s a man. As Gillam’s mother, I can claim that right, but I can’t deny it to Pell, too. And that is how it is.” She spoke sadly, but a smile had come to her face to hear her friend defend her so stoutly.

“Legally.” Hilia all but spat the word. “I’m talking about what is right and real, not what is legal! Has that wretch actually dared to come here?”

Rosemary bit down on her rising fear and hoped none of it showed on her face. “No. Not yet. But I heard yesterday that he’d come back to town and was talking in the tavern, saying it was time he went home and took up his duties as a father and landowner. I think he’s working up the courage to confront me. I heard he was staying up at his father’s house. I don’t think his mother has any more use for Pell than I do. Her life is hard enough, with the way Pell’s father knocks her around, without having another man to wait on. So I don’t know how long she’ll tolerate him under her roof. They’ll both lean on him to leave, and I suspect his father will push him in this direction. He’s always resented me living here. He’s always said that the cottage and land should have come to him first, not gone directly to Pell.”

“Didn’t his grandfather offer it to Pell when he got you pregnant?”

From anyone else, such a blunt reminder might have stung. But this was Hilia, her oldest, truest friend. Rosemary sighed. “Yes. He actually brought us both out here, with a minstrel to witness the vows. He told Pell it was time he stood up and acted like a man and took care of the child that he’d caused and the woman he’d ruined.” It was still hard to say the phrase aloud. She sighed and looked at the wall. “Pell refused then. He said we were both too young, that one mistake shouldn’t cause another. And a month or two later, he proved he was right on that. He left me. But at least I’m not married to him. He gave me that much freedom.”

“Freedom!” scoffed Hilia. “No woman with a babe on her hip is free of anything. What did his grandfather say when Pell said no?”

Rosemary forced her mind back to her tale. “Soader was a good man. He tried to help Pell do what he thought was right. When Pell said he wouldn’t wed me, Soader said he wouldn’t waste the minstrel’s fee. He willed the cottage and land to my unborn child, boy or girl, right then. It made Pell angry but he dared say nothing. He was already out of favor with the rest of his family. Our baby owning a cottage at least gave us a place to live. It made Pell’s father furious, I heard later. He felt that the cottage should have gone to Soader’s daughter, his wife, so that he could have the good of the land. Not that there was much good to it when we got it.

“But Soader meant well. He said that a couple that works together takes the true measure of each other.” Rosemary sighed again. “Well, I guess that when I was here alone, I got Pell’s true measure. I was sad when Soader died last year. He was Pell’s mother’s father, and the only one of Pell’s family who came to see Gillam at all after Pell left. Right up until he took the lung cough, he came every month.”

“He gave you money, then?”

Rosemary shook her head. “No. But he brought food sometimes, and other things. He gave me a rhubarb start, and walking onion bulbs that spread. Things I could use to better my life, if I were willing to work with them. He was a good man.”

“Good man or not, letting Pell refuse to marry you was not the ‘right’ thing for him to do.”

“Actually, it was. Hearing him refuse to speak the marriage oath before a minstrel was important. Up until then, I was sure he would marry me, right after the baby was born. Not that he’d ever asked me or I’d ever asked him. I guess I was afraid to ask. Soader wasn’t. I didn’t want to hear what he made Pell say, but it was a good thing for me to know sooner rather than later.”

Rosemary sipped at her cooling tea. It loosened her throat that had closed tight as she recalled that humiliation. Kendra the minstrel had looked aside from her shame, but Soader had met her gaze steadily and quietly observed, “So that is how it will be.”

“Of course, later, when we were alone, Pell had all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t be angry at him.” Rosemary forced the words out, trying to keep her tone light. “And I believed them. I believed that he was ‘married to me in his heart’ and that there would ‘never be another woman.’ I was so foolish.”

For the past three years, she’d been pushing herself to take responsibility for the mess she’d made of her life. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes she looked around and thought, If I can make that big a mistake, I can make just as big of a correction. And she’d thought she’d done so. She’d worked hard. The repairs to the cottage had been done by her own hand or paid for by barter. She’d turned the old garden over, one shovelful of earth at a time. She’d barrowed in manure dropped on the roadside by passing horses and worked it into the soil herself. She’d traded labor for seed and starts, and she and Gillam lived cheap and stingy to save up the coins for a spindly, worm-plagued yearling cow. That cow, healthy now, was soon to drop her first calf. The chickens had been eggs, kept warm near the hearth and turned daily, a dozen eggs to hatch a mere two pullets and a cockerel. But they had multiplied to a decent flock now. Her daily gathering kept a stack of wood by the side of the house and a neat pile of split and ready kindling beside it. She could do things, make things, and cause change to happen.

She looked away from the window to find Hilia staring at her, eyes full of tears and sympathy. “You deserved better, Rosemary.”

But, “I can’t run away from what I did, Hilia. I made a bad choice when I let that man into my bed. My mother warned me about him. I didn’t listen. Let’s admit the truth. There were two of us in that bed. And I’m going to have to deal with him the rest of my life. Pell will never be my husband, but he will always be Gillam’s father.”

“You were scarcely more than a girl and your father had just died. Pell took advantage of you.”

Rosemary shook her head at her friend. “Don’t. It took me six months to come out of wallowing in self-pity. I won’t go back to that.”

Hilia sighed. “Well. I won’t argue that you’re a lot more pleasant to be around now that you’re not constantly weeping. You’re tougher than you think, girl. When that man shows up here, I think you ought to bar the door and pick up the poker. Don’t you let him under this roof!”

Rosemary looked down at Gillam in her lap. His lids were heavy; the fuss had only been because he was tired. “The boy has a right to know his father,” she said. She wondered if that were true.

Hilia snorted. “The boy has the right to grow up in a peaceful home. And if Pell is here, you won’t have that.” She stood with a sigh, closing her blouse and shifting her dozing baby to her shoulder. “I have to go home. There’s butter to churn and the house to tidy. Two of our cows are with calf and will drop any day now. I need to stay home for the next week or so. But you listen to me. If Pell is drunk or even unpleasant when he gets here, you just take Gillam and walk away. You know the way to my house.”

Rosemary managed a smile. “Weren’t you telling me to stand my ground just a few minutes ago?”

Hilia pushed a straggling black curl back from her face. “I suppose I was. In truth, Rosie, I don’t know what to advise you to do, so maybe I’d better shut my mouth. Except to say that I’m always your friend. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

“I know that,” Rosemary assured her.

Hilia stood up to leave. She paused by the window and stroked the sleeping cat. He lifted his head and regarded her with cobalt eyes. “Now is not the time to be lazy, Marmalade. I’m counting on you to look after Rosemary and Gillam,” she cautioned the cat aloud.

The cat sat up slowly and yawned, curling a pink tongue at her. She scratched him under the chin and he closed his eyes in pleasure. “I mean it, now! You’d have gone right into the river in a sack if I hadn’t saved you! You owe me, cat. I saved your life.” He returned Hilia’s gaze with narrowed eyes.

Cats do not enjoy being reminded of debts. Cats do not incur debts. You did what you wanted to do. My being alive as a result of it is something you caused, not something I owe you.

Rosemary stood up from her chair. She deposited her sleeping boy on the bed and came to join her friend by the window. She put out a hand toward Marmalade, and the tom butted his head against it. “Don’t say mean things to Marmalade, Hilia. He is the best thing that anyone ever gave me. In those days before Gillam was born, when I felt I was all alone, little Marmy was always with me.” She moved her fingers to tickle the white triangle at his throat. A grudging purr ground its way out of the big tom.

Hilia narrowed her eyes and spoke to him. “Well, even if you don’t owe me, cat, you owe Rosemary. You’d better take care of her.”

The orange tom closed his eyes and curled his front paws toward his chest. I have no idea what you think I can do against a human male.

Hilia cocked her head at him. You’re a cat. You’ll think of something. Or you’ll help Rosemary think of something.

She doesn’t have the Wit to listen to me. He tucked his head to his chest and apparently sank into sleep.

I’m not stupid, cat. No one needs the Wit magic to hear a cat. Cats talk to whomever they please.

Obviously true. But I didn’t say she couldn’t hear me. I said she doesn’t listen to what I tell her.

Hilia reached over to tug at one of his orange ears, demanding his attention. Then you’d better make her. Pell is not kind to beasts of any kind. If you’re used to being fed and sleeping inside, you’ll find a way to help her. Or your life will be just as miserable as hers will be. “Rotten cat,” she added aloud. “I should have let Pell’s father drown you.”

“Pell’s father was the man with the sack of kittens? You never told me that!” Rosemary was horrified.

“Not a pretty thing to tell at any time, and right then you didn’t need any cause to add any more people to your hate list.” Hilia leaned over to kiss Rosemary on the cheek. “You take care of yourself and Gillam, now. And at the first sign of any trouble, you come running to my house.”

“Oh, I don’t think there will be any trouble I need to run from.”

“Um. Well, I’m not sure I agree with you about that. But just remember that my door is open.”

“I will.”

Rosemary watched her friend climb the little hill in front of her cottage and disappear over the rim of it. There was a cliff-top path that followed the line of the bay, but Hilia would probably take the steeper path down to the beach itself. When the tide was out and the rocky beach was bare, the quickest route back to the village was to cut across the exposed tide flat. Idly, Rosemary wished they lived closer to each other. The dell that sheltered her home from the worst of the winter storms off the water also shaded it for much of the day. The holding for Gillam’s cottage was small, a crescent strip of sloping but arable land between the sea cliffs and the salt marsh that reached around the back of it. An odd bit of land, too small to be a real farm, but enough, perhaps, for a woman and a child. “It could have been enough for all three of us, Pell. If you’d wanted us.”

The shadows of evening were already reaching toward her home. She gave a small shiver and glanced over at her sleeping child. “Well. I don’t think your father will be coming to see you tonight. And I have chores to do.” She took up her shawl before she left the house. The day had been warm, a promise of summer, but now the cool winds were sweeping in from the coast. She brought in her cow and shut her up in her rough byre. It was a rude structure, scarcely more than four poles holding up a slanted thatched roof. Perhaps this summer she’d have the time and resources to close in the sides of it. Come winter, the cow would welcome at least a break from the wet winds.

The chickens were aware of the westering sun and were already coming home to roost. She counted her precious flock and found all nine were there. Soon, as the days lengthened, they’d resume laying. Picky the rooster had been energetic about mating with his harem. She looked forward to fresh eggs again, and to the possibility of letting one hen set a batch for chicks. She’d be willing to forgo eggs for a time if it meant she could put roast chicken on the table later. She wished she had a coop for the chickens. Right now, they roosted on the wall of the cow’s byre. A coop would keep them safer from foxes and hawks and owls.

There was always more to do, always something more to build. That was good, really. What would her life have been without something more to do each day?

As was her ritual, her next stop was the garden. The rhubarb had thrust up tightly curled leaves, and the early peas had sprouted. Most of the other furrows were bare brown earth. Or were they? She crouched down low and then smiled. Tiny seedlings were breaking from the earth in two other rows. Cabbages. She didn’t much like cabbage, but it grew well for her, and the tight-leaved heads kept well in the small root cellar she had dug. She sighed and hoped that next winter would not be another endless round of cabbage and potato soups. Well, if it was, perhaps a few of them would have a little bit of chicken in them.

She was coming to her feet when she heard his voice behind her. Startled, she stumbled away from him, trampling her own seedlings. “Damn!” she cried, and then spun to face him.

“All I said was hello.” Pell smiled at her. The expression was uneasy on his face, as if it clung to his mouth despite his eyes. He was as tall as she remembered him, and as handsome. He’d grown a beard, and it was as curly as his dark hair. His shirt was blue with embroidery on the sleeves, and his shining knee boots were black. His belt was heavy black leather, and he wore an ivory-handled knife in a fine sheath at his hip. Dressed like a merchant’s son, and as always, aware of just how good he looked. Handsome, handsome Pell, the dandy of the village. She stared at him, and his smile grew broader. He had once been hers. How amazed she had been at that, when he chose her. How grateful and how accommodating she had been, in her astonishment. She should have known she couldn’t hold him. Not even with his baby in her belly. He had left her, just as her mother had warned her he would.

And now he had come back. She found herself gripping her old anger, telling herself that she felt no attraction to him at all. She reminded herself of all the nights of weeping over how he had left her, heavy with child, to chase after lovely Meddalee Morrany and her father’s wealth. All those nights of anguish and longing for his presence in her bed, for a man to protect her and help her. She recalled all the doubts that had plagued her; she’d been too homely to hold him, too fat with her pregnancy, too undesirable. And now she looked at him, her long-strayed lover, and felt not one jot of desire for him. Beautiful Pell meant only sorrow to her. She would not be a fool for him again.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” he asked her. He tilted his head, his soft brown hair dancing in the evening wind and aimed his smile at her. Once that smile had been deadly to her willpower. Had it changed, or was it weakened by the brown beard that masked it? Had she changed that much?

“Can’t think of anything to say.” She stooped and carefully plucked at a cabbage seedling to coax it upright again. She gently patted earth back around it. When she looked up, he was still smiling down on her. Fondly. She gritted her teeth. “What do you want?”

“I’m home,” he said simply, as if that explained everything, excused everything. “I’ve come back to you, Rosemary.” He sighed and softened the smile a bit. “I know what you’re thinking, girl. But it was a boy who ran away and left you. It’s a man who has come back to you, and a wiser man, now. I’ve been out in the world and seen how things are.” His voice seemed to firm. “I know what I’ve got to do now to set my life right. I’m ready to do it, no matter how hard.”

That was all he offered, she noticed. That he was wiser. That coming back to her and her son was hard. No apology for what he’d done to her, how he’d humiliated her before the whole village. No thought for what she’d been through, how she’d managed the birth of his child and the raising of the boy since then. No questions on how she had survived while he was “out in the world.” Nothing like that. Only that he was wiser for the experience.

“I think I’m wiser, too,” she said. She dusted her hands on her skirts as she rose. Dirt clung to the rough skin of her palm and had packed under her nails. Why did she notice that now? Was it only because he was back? She circled wide of him and then was annoyed that she had to wait for him to leave the garden patch before she could shut the gate behind him. If she didn’t gate it shut, the chickens would be up at dawn to scratch and peck every seed and seedling from the earth. Even with the fence, she had to keep an eye on them. Often it was only Marmalade sleeping on the warm dry earth of the garden that kept the birds out.

“We were too young, Rosemary. We made a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes trapped me. I got scared. I should have been stronger. I wasn’t. But I don’t think they should shape the rest of my life. I’m going to face up to my tasks and make things right. I’m ready to build the life I was meant to live.” He looked so earnest. He never looked away from her. Once she would have fallen into that dark gaze. Once she had believed she could read his heart in that gaze. She shook her head and looked away from it.

“I’ve built my life, Pell. And there’s no room in it for you. Gillam fills it up completely.”

He stiffened at that. “Gillam?” He sounded puzzled.

It took her a moment to realize the cause. “Your son,” she replied crisply. “I named him Gillam.”

“Gillam? But I said we’d name him Will, if the baby was a boy. After my friend, Will the tailor. Remember?”

“I remember.” She dragged the stubborn gate into place. “I changed my mind when he was born. I changed my mind about a lot of things in those days.” She looped the tie around the gate. “Gillam is a name from my family line. My mother’s father was named Gillam. I decided I’d give Gillam my family’s heritage.”

She stood still, staring at him. The day was growing cooler. She gathered her shawl around her. She wanted to go back to the cottage, to poke up the banked embers and warm the soup and toast some bread for supper. Gillam would wake soon. He was a good little fellow, but she didn’t like to leave him alone when he was awake. Yet as much as she wanted to do those things, she didn’t move. If she went back to the cottage, she was certain he would follow her. And she didn’t want to see him go inside, didn’t want to see him look at her son. She didn’t want his praise for all she’d done, or his disdain that it was, still, a little run-down cottage on the farthest outskirts of the village. He’d never liked the place, not since the first day his grandfather had given it to him. He’d never wanted to live in it, with its smoky chimney and leaky roof. Yet now she feared that he would want it, if he saw it tidy and cozy.

Worse, she feared he would want his son. And Gillam was all she had. He belonged to her, every bit of him. It was why she had named him to anchor him to her lineage, not Pell’s. There would be no sharing of Gillam. Pell had missed his chance for that.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” he said quietly. “You have to listen to what I have to say to you.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she replied.

“Well, perhaps I have things to say to you. And it’s getting cold. I’m going inside. Follow me.”

And he turned and walked away from her, toward the cottage, knowing that she must follow him. It galled her. It reminded her too sharply of the last time she’d had to obey him.

It had been winter, with the rain coming down in sheets as it always did along the Buck coast. They’d gone to town, to spend most of the few coins they had on a sack of potatoes and three pieces of salt cod. She’d been carrying the cod, wrapped in a piece of greased paper, and he’d had the sack of potatoes on his shoulder. A sudden rain squall had caught them just at the edge of town. Her head had been bent to the wind, and the rain had been running down into her eyes. When he spoke sharply to her, she knew that he must have said her name before. “Rosemary! Take the potatoes, I said!”

She turned back to him, wondering why he wanted her to carry them. They were not a large load, but her belly was big with the baby, and the mud sucking at her old shoes made her so tired she already wanted to cry. “Why?” she asked, blinking rain away as he put the mesh bag into her arms.

“Can’t you see I’ve got to help her? She’s trapped, poor thing!”

She had not had a hand free to wipe her eyes. She blinked her lashes quickly and saw that a child in a yellow dress was standing under a tree at the side of the road. Her arms were wrapped around her, her shoulders hunched to the rain. Her flimsy cloak of lace was no protection against the sudden storm.

Rosemary had blinked again as Pell broke into a run toward the girl. No, it wasn’t a child. It was a young woman, as slender as a child, with rippling waves of black hair blowing in the wind with the edges of her silly little cloak. Her garments made her look younger than she probably was. And more foolish. Who would go out dressed so lightly on a day at the end of autumn? Rosemary shook rain from her eyelashes and recognized her. Meddalee Morrany. The sea trader’s daughter. She lived across the bay, but sometimes came to visit her cousins. Always well dressed was she; even as a child, she had flaunted embroidery on her skirts and ribbons in her hair. Well, she wasn’t a child anymore, but her father’s wealth still wrapped her.

“She just needs to stay there until the squall passes,” she called after him. She hefted the sack in her arms. Damp had penetrated her shoes, and her toes were icy.

He’d already greeted the shivering girl. They were speaking, the girl smiling, but the rising wind swept their words away from her. He turned to call to her, “I’m going to help her get to town. You take the potatoes home. I’ll be along in a bit.”

She’d stood in the rain in shocked disbelief as he opened his black cloak as if it were a raven’s wing, smiling and gesturing to Meddalee to take shelter under it. And the girl laughed and did.

“What about her?” Meddalee Morrany’s question had blown to her on the wind. She was smiling as she pointed at Rosemary.

“Oh, she’ll be fine. She can deal with the rain. I’ll see you later, Rosie!”

She’d had no choice then. She’d been cold and wet, weighted with the potatoes and fish and her unborn child and the hurt he’d loaded onto her. He hadn’t offered to put his cloak around her when the storm had blown up. No. He’d saved that for a stranger. For a pretty girl in a pretty dress, with a slender waist and rings on her fingers. Not for the girl who was pregnant with his bastard. She’d watched them walk away from her and could not think what to do. Then the wind blew stronger, pushing her toward home, and she’d gone.

She’d staggered home, arrived soaked to the bone and made their supper and waited for him. And waited. Waited for all that night, and the next day and night, and through the weeks and then months that followed. She’d wept and hoped and waited past the birth of the boy, waited for him to come back to his senses and come home to his new family, waited for the girl’s family to see how worthless he was and drive him off, waited even after his grandfather had come, shamefaced, to see his great-grandson.

By then, the gossip was known to all. Pell had followed Meddalee that day, right onto the boat that was to take her back across the bay to her father’s big house in Dorytown. The gossips of the village had taken great pains to see that she knew all the details. Her father had taken a liking to Pell. Everyone always took a liking to Pell, with his handsome face, his wide smile, and his easy ways. He’d given Pell a job in one of his warehouses. For a short time, she tried to believe he had done it for both of them. She pretended that he’d gone off to make a fortune for them. Soon he’d come home, his pockets full of his wages, to make things right for them. Perhaps he’d carry her and Gillam off to a cozy little house in Dorytown. Perhaps he’d stride into the cottage one night, his arms laden with toys and warm clothing for his son. Then wouldn’t the villagers have to swallow their mocking words! Then wouldn’t they see that he had loved her all along.

But Pell never came. The days passed, she struggled on, and her boy grew, day by hard day. Her foolish dreams had turned to bitterness. She’d mourned and wept and cursed her fate. She’d hated him and longed for revenge. She’d blamed Pell, and then Meddalee, and then herself and Meddalee and finally Pell again. She had, as Hilia told her bluntly, been a bit mad. Impossible to reason with. And then, sometime in the last year or so, she’d stopped feeling anything about Pell, except to hope that he’d never come back and disturb the peace that she’d finally found.

“I’ll see you later,” he’d said all those years ago. She bit back the impulse to ask him if this was “later.” She watched him as he walked toward her door. His hair was as glossy and well kept as ever, his boots were new, and the coat he wore must have been tailored to display his broad shoulders so well. Had Meddalee chosen it for him? She glanced down at her mended skirt, soiled where she had knelt to inspect her plants. Her shoes were worn and stuffed inside with dry grass, not stockings. She brushed her rough hands against her skirt again and felt grubby and angry. She’d been a pretty girl once, if a poor one. Now she was only a poor woman in worn clothing with a growing child.

That was another thing he’d taken from her. There would never be a suitor knocking at her door, never be a man courting her. There would never be a partner for her, only her son sharing her life.

He didn’t even hesitate as he opened her door. Did he notice that she’d repaired the leather hinges, that it no longer scraped against the ground or gapped at the top and let the wind in? If he did, he made no comment. He paused only an instant on the threshold, and then stepped inside. She found herself hurrying after him. She didn’t want him to wake Gillam, didn’t want the boy’s first sight of his father to be as a frightening stranger looming over him.

She found Pell gazing around the room and felt a hot pulse of satisfaction at how surprised he looked. It wasn’t the cobwebby hovel that his grandfather had first given them, nor the shoddy cottage it had been during the few months they’d lived here together. Her gaze followed his and she found herself almost as surprised as he must have been. Not at the changes she’d made; she’d become accustomed to the blue curtains at the window, the moss and clay chinking in the walls and the neatly swept hearth and kindling box and Gillam’s little three-legged stool beside it. No, what surprised her was to realize that when Pell had lived there, she had accepted the hovel as it had been, thinking that surely if it could be made better, he would know how and would do it. It was only after he had left her, only after she had roused herself from the torpor of despair and become angry that she had decided that whatever she could fix, she would. She’d decided then that whatever she did to the place didn’t have to be perfect, only better than it had been. And it was.

“He’s big!”

Pell’s words brought her back to the present with a jolt. He was looking at Gillam in shock. Emotions struggled on his face—pride, guilt, and something else perhaps. Dismay?

“He’s nearly three,” she pointed out briskly. “He’s not a baby anymore.”

“Three,” he breathed, as if the number were astonishing. He continued to stare.

“You were gone three years,” she enumerated for him. “Children grow.”

“He’s a little boy. It didn’t seem that long,” he said, and then, as if he realized that perhaps that was a tactless thing to say, “I never meant for it to happen that way, Rosie. It was just, well, you were pregnant, and we were huddled in this place with next to nothing and my parents were furious with me. I felt so trapped. I was a young man and there was no fun left in my life. The idea of having a wife and a baby both, and I hadn’t intended to have either, not for a long time. I couldn’t stand it.”

“And she was pretty and her family was wealthy and for whatever reason, they let you move in on them like a tick on a hound. And then she threw you off and here you are, back here because you can’t think of any other place to go.”

She spoke flatly, in a low voice, but without anger. It surprised her. She didn’t feel angry, just impatient for him to leave. Let him look around and see how humbly they lived and then be gone. She had to wake Gillam soon and give him some supper, or he’d not want to go to sleep until late. And she had planned to work on a quilt tonight, fine meticulous work after Gillam had gone to sleep. The last quilt she’d made carefully, she’d traded for a ham. This one, if she were fortunate, might get her a piglet. She wanted to sit by the fire tonight, hunched over her work, sewing carefully, and think about how she would build a pen for the pig and feed him garden waste and take him to the beach to scavenge. She wanted Pell to be gone. Once he’d been a future full of golden dreams and promises. Now he was a past that stung whenever she thought of him. She didn’t want to look at him and wonder how it might have gone if he’d truly been the man she’d thought he was. She wanted to be alone and dreaming about her own plans, the plans that she could make real.

“All I wanted was a chance to do what I wanted to do, to do things I enjoyed doing. To make a try for the life I should have had before it was all ruined. Is that so much to ask?” He stopped talking abruptly, taking a sharp breath. Then he said, as if promising something to himself, “Things are going to be different.” He clipped his words off as if she were the one who had hurt him. He added firmly, “And now, we’re done talking about it.”

His words struck her dumb. He spoke as if he had authority over her. A wave of dread rose up in her, followed by a pitiful hope that sickened her. She suddenly knew that he intended to stay. Right now. From now on.

Why?

Gillam stirred on the bed and opened his eyes. For a moment, his big dark eyes, so like his father’s, were full of dreams still. Then he blinked and focused his gaze on the stranger. “Mama?” he asked with some trepidation.

“It’s all right, Gillam. I’m right here.”

He crawled quickly across the bed to her, and she scooped him up in her arms. He hugged her tight around her neck, tucking his face into her shoulder.

“And I’m here, too, boy.” Pell spoke with a heartiness that did not ring true to her. “Your papa. Come here and let me look at you.”

In response, the boy tightened his grip on her neck. He didn’t look up at Pell. The man’s face darkened. “Give him time. He’s never seen you before. He doesn’t know you,” she pointed out.

“I said we were done talking about that,” he replied abruptly. He came toward her. “Let me see the boy.”

She didn’t think about it but backed away toward the door. “Give him some time to get used to your being here,” she countered. It wasn’t a direct refusal. Once she had adored Pell’s assertiveness and how he made decisions for them. It had seemed manly and sheltering. Now she found herself remembering how quickly he’d move to anger when his will was thwarted. Hilia’s advice to her suddenly came to mind. Run. Run to Hilia’s house. She shook her head to the stray thought. Gillam was heavy. If she tried to run, she’d be out of breath before she got to the top of the hill. And she didn’t want to give Pell any reason to run after her. She feared where that sort of confrontation might lead.

“Let me see him.” He insisted as he advanced on her. His voice became contemptuous. “You’ve made him into a timid little mouse. When I was his age, I wasn’t afraid to stand and face a man and offer my hand. What sort of sniveling whelp are you raising under my name? What sort of a mama’s little titmouse is he?”

She recognized the mockery in his voice as he aimed his words at Gillam. If he hoped to rouse the boy to defy him, he failed. Gillam only clutched more tightly at her neck. She held her ground until Pell was almost an arm’s length away and then, despite her resolve, backed up. “Let me calm him. You don’t want his first memory of you to be that you frightened him.”

“First memory, last memory, what does it matter? Let’s see this boy that bears my name. Can he stand up to something that frightens him? Is there anything of me in him at all? Will. Look at me. Come to me. Right now.”

She had not seen the cat underfoot. He must have been right behind her. She didn’t feel her foot tread on him, but she must have, for suddenly, with a furious yowl and a spattering of hisses, the tomcat exploded from the floor. He leaped into the air between them and then clawed his way up Pell, literally running up his face and then leaping from his head into the low rafters. There he crouched, yowling and growling low as he lashed his abused tail back and forth.

Pell held his scratched face with both hands and cursed shrilly through his fingers Obtusely, Gillam had popped up his head at the cat explosion and now giggled wildly at the big man squeaking through his peekaboo fingers. Rosemary’s breath caught and she choked back a fear-strangled giggle of her own. Pell dropped his hands from his face. “It’s not funny!” he roared at them both.

Gillam turned astonished eyes on his mother. Rosemary managed to keep her expression calm. “See,” she told the child. “You don’t need to be afraid of Pell.”

In response to her remark, the boy gazed at his father, staring intently at the long stripe of red that crossed the top of his cheek above his beard. Fear had left him to be replaced by fascination.

“Where’d that damned beast come from?” Pell demanded. He dabbed at his face with his fingers, scowled at the blood, and then peered up into the dim space above the rafters. Marmalade had already vanished into the shadows. He was probably outside by now, having left via the eaves.

“Hilia gave him to me. He keeps rats out of the cottage and away from the chicken yard.” She tried to keep her voice calm for Gillam’s sake. The boy was now peering at his father with curiosity. There was tension in his little body, and she knew from experience that he would either dissolve into wails or decide to explore the situation, depending on what happened in the next few moments. She desperately wanted him to stay calm.

“Hilia? Hilia Borse? Everyone knows her family is Wit tainted. They do the beast magic in their home. They talk to animals. You let her put an animal into this house? Are you mad?”

She bounced Gillam a time or two, then set him down on the taller stool at the table. There were only two places to sit; she wondered if Pell had noticed that. As if Pell were any other inconvenient visitor, she decided she would simply go on with her routine. She pulled the simmering pot of soup back from the fire and crouched down to ladle a portion into Gillam’s shallow bowl. “You know who Hilia is,” she said, trying not to sound confrontational. “She has been my best friend since we were girls.”

“Yes, I know who she is! And I know what she is! Everyone in the village knows her family has the Wit. Her mother talks to sheep!”

She sighed, blew on Gillam’s soup to cool it a bit, and then set it on the table. Gillam grinned happily. The stranger in the house was eclipsed by the prospect of hot food. The boy was always hungry. His constant hunger both pleased her and frightened her. He would eat and grow strong, as long as she had food to feed him. From the mantel shelf, she took down half a loaf of bread wrapped in a clean cloth. She broke off a piece for him and set it beside his bowl with a spoon. “Eat nicely,” she warned the boy.

She marked how Pell was eyeing the food. She clenched her jaw. She wasn’t going to offer him any. Let him ask, if he had the nerve. She ignored his interest in the food as she filled her own bowl. “No one knows for certain the family is Witted,” she pointed out. “And if they are, well, no ill has ever come of them having that magic that I know. The wool from their flock is the best in Buck Duchy. They are respected in town. Hilia and her husband have always been kind to me. And Marmalade is my cat.”

“And for all you know, he could be her Wit beast, spying on you from dawn to dusk. I wouldn’t allow a Wit beast in my house. Don’t you care about your own child? Don’t you fear he’ll be tainted with that magic?’

She took her bowl, a spoon, and another piece of the bread to the table. She sat down with her back to him and stirred the soup thoughtfully. Potato and cabbage and onion. Sometimes she dreamed of meat. Rich brown broth with hunks of beef in it. Greasy pork cooked on skewers. Don’t think about what you don’t have. She spoke over her shoulder. “The Wit is not contagious. You are born with it or you don’t have it. I think if you could just go get that magic for yourself, a lot of people who look down on Witted ones would have gone out and done it by now. I think half the hatred of the Witted is jealousy, pure and simple.” She took a spoonful of her soup and a bite of her bread.

Pell made a sound between derision and disbelief. “That’s what they’d have you believe,” he said in a thick voice. “But if you’d seen half of what I’ve seen, you’d know better.”

She had to turn to look back at him. That was when she discovered that he had taken the remaining chunk of the loaf and was dipping it into the soup pot and eating it. She knew a flash of anger. She put her eyes back on her food and forced herself to eat. Gillam had been watching his father and now he dipped his bread in his soup and took an exploratory bite of it. She looked back at Pell and managed to say calmly, “What you’re eating? That was to be Gillam’s breakfast tomorrow.”

“This?” He was incredulous. “You should be feeding him meat by now. Meat and eggs and hot porridge for breakfast. Not soup. No wonder he’s so timid.”

“I feed him what I have,” she retorted. The implied criticism stung. She had worried, often enough, that Gillam was not as well fed as other children. She had compared his size and his alertness to other boys of his age and told herself that he did not suffer in that comparison. But there had been times when he had asked for “more” and there was no more to give him. “Soon enough, the chickens will start to lay, and then he can have eggs. And after Tessie drops her calf, I hope there will be milk for him as well.” She finished her food; it had not taken her long to eat it. If not for Pell, she might have allowed herself and Gillam another break of the bread.

But Pell was wiping out her pot with the last crust of her bread. She would have to make Gillam hearth cakes in the morning if he was to have anything to eat. When Pell set the pot down, she asked him directly. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

He looked surprised. “I told you. I’ve come home. My grandfather left me this house.”

She stared at him silently. She wouldn’t ask him if he meant to stay, because then he might think she wanted him to. Instead, she said bluntly, “No, Pell. Your grandfather left his house to Gillam, not you. It’s our home, not yours. There’s no room in my life for you, Pell. You shamed me and you abandoned your son. I don’t love you and I don’t want you here.”

She’d expected at least one flicker of hurt at her words. She didn’t want to admit to herself how much satisfaction that would have given her. Instead, he just set his jaw. After a moment he said, “Well, none of that has anything to do with the fact that you’re living in my son’s house. I’ve as much a right to be here as you do. I’m back, and that’s that.” He thudded the empty pot back onto the table. “I thought you might be smart enough to make the best of it. I thought I should give you another chance to do that. To be fair.”

Fair? She tried to shape her thoughts about Pell around that word. He waited for her to say something. No words came to her and despite how tight her throat went, she refused to cry. She would not weep over this. Weeping, she knew, solved nothing. She looked at Gillam. He was regarding his father with a small scowl. He thrust his jaw out, and Pell suddenly laughed. She looked back at him incredulously.

“Look at him. He looks just like my little brother when he got angry.” He sobered suddenly. “I never expected him to look so much like my family.”

“Everyone says he looks more like you than he does me,” she admitted stiffly. Then she asked, “Why wouldn’t you expect your son to look like you?”

“Well,” he said and shrugged one shoulder. “There was talk, you know. Back then. That perhaps he wasn’t mine.”

She stared at him, cold rushing through her. “Talk? There was never any talk. Everyone knew he was yours.” She dragged in an outraged breath. “Who ever said he wasn’t? Because that person was a liar!”

“Don’t shout! It was a long time ago, and it scarcely matters now. He looks like me, so that’s done with, eh?”

“You just said that because perhaps you hoped it was true. But there was never any talk, Pell. You were my first and if you must know, my only. I’ve never been with another man than you, before or since. He’s yours. There was never any talk otherwise.”

“Have it your way, if it matters to you so much. Yes. He’s mine.”

And when he claimed the boy, she could have bitten the tongue out of her own mouth. Why had she said that, why had she herself admitted what she wished were not true? Pell was watching her face, smiling slightly, knowing well he’d won. She looked away from him.

“I’m tired,” he said. The bed was only three steps away in the little house. He sat down on the edge of it and bent over to tug off his fine boots. He set them side by side and followed them with his thick wool socks. Next he dragged off his shirt and dropped it on the floor. His trousers followed it. He stood, almost inviting her to look at him. He’d always been proud of his body. He was lean and muscled still, but no longer boyish. She hadn’t wanted to see him; his mean little smile showed that he knew she had looked at him. Naked, he rucked his way into her clean bed and drew the covers up nearly over his head. “Brr. Blankets are chilly.” He laughed a small laugh. “I could use some company under here to warm me.”

“You won’t get any.”

“As you will, Rosie. And you will when you will, and it will be soon enough for me.”

“I won’t.”

“We’ll see,” he said and yawned as if bored. Then he was still.

She stared at him. There was only one bed. Since Gillam had been born, they had shared it. “He go my bed,” Gillam exclaimed between wonder and dismay.

“Yes he did,” she confirmed for him. She pulled her gaze away from the sight. “Finish your food, Gillam.”

She doubted that Pell was really asleep. Could he have been that relaxed about all of this? She doubted it. If she had been alone, she would have hit him with the pan and told him to get out of her house. No, she realized. If she were alone, she would have left here long ago. The only reason she had stayed was that her child needed a roof over his head and regular meals on the table. He still did. And that, she told herself, was the only reason she wasn’t confronting Pell now. She didn’t wish to frighten Gillam.

Or provoke Pell.

She did not want him to stay. She was clear with herself on that. It was too late for the old dreams that had once sustained her. He’d hurt her too badly, humiliated her too deeply. She could never feel about him as she once had. Never.

She tried to go about her evening tasks as if Pell did not exist. She tidied away the dishes and brushed off the table. She gave Gillam a tin cup, three broken buttons, an empty spool, and a spoon to play with and set out her sewing on the table. She faced a real challenge with this quilt. She had no rags of her own to quilt from, but her friends saved her the pieces of cloth that they judged too small or oddly colored to work into their own piecework. She worked painstakingly with scissors and pins. She did not have many pins, and sometimes had to resort to a quick loop of thread to hold a bit in place. And she dared not sew any of it permanently until she had enough bits to make an entire quilt top, for who knew what colors and textures might come her way the next time she went begging for fabric scraps? She was glad to lose herself in the detailed work, glad to push her present problem out of her mind.

Gillam was content at her feet, and she was so engrossed in her work that she didn’t notice when he disappeared. When her eyes grew weary with squinting through the dimness, she rolled up her work and looked about for her son. She caught her breath at what she saw. With the pragmatism of small children, he had put himself to bed, on his side of the bed where he always slept. He was a smaller lump under the covers next to Pell.

That forced her to confront her next decision. Did she sleep on the hard flagged floor, as a message to Pell that she’d rather be cold than sleep beside him? If she claimed a spot in the bed, would he understand she wasn’t surrendering territory, or would it make him think she would willingly come back to his bed? She did her nightly chores as she pondered it. Was she a coward? Should she have flown at him, kicking and scratching and screaming the moment he showed up? She felt her pulse quicken with enthusiasm at the idea, and as quickly she refused it. He would have been delighted. They had quarreled once, violently, before she was pregnant with Gillam. He had slapped her, hard, to “bring her to her senses” as he put it then. And then apologized so abjectly and made love to her so earnestly that she’d accepted his behavior. Stupid girl. What if she’d run away from him then? What if he’d never got her with child, never lived with her, never left her, never returned? What life would she have now? Would she be like Hilia, with a husband and a home and a legitimate baby in her arms? Would she be in safe harbor? Useless to wonder.

She built up the fire for the night after she put her sewing away. As she went to pull in the latchstring to secure the cottage for the night, she wondered what she feared out there. Her worst fear was already inside the door and in her bed. She blew out her candle and undressed under her worn flannel nightgown. Then she crept in beside Gillam, balancing almost on the edge of the bed. The blanket didn’t quite cover her. She tugged a bit more of it free, and then lost it when Marmalade thudded into place between her and Gillam. He settled in, surrounded by warmth, and began his loud purr. She stroked him. “Go to sleep now,” she told him, and he gently bit her hand to say that she had petted him enough.

She awoke, as she always did, to Picky the rooster’s crowing. She slipped out of the bed and took Gillam with her, taking him to the back house before he could wet the bedding. They hurried back, shivering, through the dew wet grasses and dressed hastily in the dimness of the cabin. Pell slept on. She let out the chickens and picketed the cow in a fresh spot. With her hatchet, she split kindling to wake the flames. She brought in firewood and built up the fire. The chickens had produced two eggs, and Gillam was terribly excited about that. He had wanted to carry the warm, brown eggs, but she feared to trust him with the precious bounty. He sat at the table and stared at them as she began to stir together ground oats and water.

“We’ll put the eggs in the hearth cakes and they’ll taste wonderful,” she told him, and he wriggled with excitement. Marmalade came and perched on her chair to watch the process. His whiskers were pricked forward with interest. “You can have a corner of mine,” she promised the cat. “Even if you didn’t give me any of the mouse you caught this morning!”

“Mama eat mouse!” Gillam exclaimed and dissolved into giggles. For that moment, they were as happy as they had ever been.

Then Pell spoke from the dim corner where the bed was. “What’s for breakfast?”

Her stirring slowed. She admitted to herself that she’d hoped to feed both of them and be out the door and doing chores before Pell awoke. “I’m making meal cakes for Gillam,” she told him.

For a time, there was only the sound of her spoon against the bowl. She tried not to feel Pell watching her from the bed. Then he spoke again. His voice was softer, considering. “You’d look younger if you let your hair down, like you used to wear it. I remember it well. All loose around your face and bare shoulders.”

“I’m not younger. I’m older,” she said brusquely.

He laughed.

She formed two hearth cakes in the pan and set it by the fire to cook. Gillam pulled his little stool over and sat down on it, watching intently. It was just a slice of log with three legs pegged into it, but he had helped make it and was inordinately proud of it. When he had settled himself, she tried to follow the pattern she’d established for herself, telling them both the shape of their day. “After we eat and wash up, we’ll take a basket and go looking for spring greens, shall we? Maybe we’ll find some mushrooms, too. And we need to visit the beach and find more firewood and bring it home. Then we’ll go to Serran’s house and do washing for her, and maybe we’ll bring a fish home for dinner.”

“Fish!” Gillam exclaimed happily and clapped his hands. She had noticed that when words were related to food, he learned them very quickly. She hoped that Serran’s husband had made a good catch that week and that Serran would feel generous in barter. Today was wash day at Serran’s house. Next week, she’d help Widow Lees plant her garden. And sheep shearing time was not far away. The widow had said she might help with that, and that she’d pay her in hard coin for her work. She could barter for most of her needs, but hard coin was needed for some things. She turned the cakes in the pan, and Gillam sighed in happy anticipation. “Soon,” she told him.

“Damn!” Pell roared. “Damn him! I’ll kill him!”

He kicked his clothes across the floor at her, and Gillam shrieked in terror at the explosion of violence as Pell lunged wildly at Marmalade. But the cat had been in motion at the man’s first exclamation. He leaped from chair to table to shelf and up to the rafters in a motion as smooth as water flowing. He vanished.

Pell cursed loudly, kicked over the chair, and stood glowering. Gillam had pressed up against her so suddenly as she crouched by the hearth that Rosemary had sat down hard on the floor. Now the boy clambered into her arms, and she held him protectively as he whimpered in fear. Her own heart was racing as he stared at Pell. The muscles were knotted under his bared skin, and his eyes were wild.

“That damn cat pissed all over my good clothes! They’re soaked with piss!”

She didn’t laugh. Something inside her rejoiced at his misfortune and took pleasure in his anger, but a wiser part of her held still. She could have told him that the tom saw him as an intruder and that he should have hung up his clothes. A mousy part of her wanted to stammer apologies and offer to launder his clothes for him. Instead she looked away from his naked body. She’d been alone for a long time, but not so long that she’d want him again.

“What are you crying about?” Pell barked at Gillam, which turned his whimper into a wail. Pell turned his anger on her. “Shut him up! And do something about my clothes! That damn animal has to go. He’s infected with Wit, that’s what he is.”

Don’t answer. Don’t defend. She managed to get to her feet with the wailing Gillam on one hip. She didn’t look at Pell as she stooped down and took the pan off the fire. It was hard to get the door open with her arms full, but she managed, and she carried her boy and their breakfast outside.

“Rosemary? Rosemary!”

Pell bellowed her name after her, but she ignored him. She carried Gillam over to the garden and they sat down together on the firewood pile in the brisk morning air. “Let’s eat here near our garden. Eat your cake quickly, while it’s hot and nice.”

The cakes were not quite done in the middle, and too hot to eat easily. She scooped them both out of the pan and set them down on the clean cut side of a piece of wood. She blew on them hastily.

“ROSEMARY!”

She looked up to see Pell naked in the door. He had draped her blanket across his shoulders. In another moment, he’d come out.

She wolfed down half a hearth cake without enjoyment of the precious food. She breathed in air through her mouth to cool it as she chewed and swallowed quickly. “You stay here, Gillam, and eat the rest of that. It’s good. Okay?”

He was still crying, but the permission to eat diverted his attention from the angry man in the door of his home. He sniffed and nodded once and then poked a finger at the cake. “Ow!”

“It will cool fast out here. Break it up in pieces. And don’t let the chickens steal it from you!” For the curious flock already had come running to see what the boy had.

“Mine!” he said decisively, and she almost smiled. She rose, pan in hand, and turned back to the door as Pell bellowed her name again.

“What do you want?” she asked him calmly. She stood at a safe distance.

“That damn cat pissed all over my clothes!” He tried to gather the blanket closer. He was shivering.

His fine clothes, cut and sewn to fit him, soaked with cat piss. She didn’t let herself smile. “So you’ve told us. Why are you yelling my name?”

“What are you going to do about it?”

She gripped the pan in her hand and found herself marching up to the door. “Nothing,” she said, and she actually shouldered past him. “It’s your problem, not mine.”

He stared as she hung the empty pan on its hook. “Where’s my breakfast?”

“I really don’t know.” She rounded on him with a quizzical stare. “Did you bring something for your breakfast? If so, I haven’t seen it. If you brought any food into this house in the last three years, I haven’t seen it.” She caught up her basket and shawl and managed to get out the door before he could decide how to react to that.

As she started down the path, he shouted after her, “What did you do with my other clothes?”

Did he mean the ones he’d left behind when he abandoned them? “I used them for rags and quilting,” she said. She didn’t lift her voice. He’d either hear her or not.

“If I see that damn cat again, I’ll kill him.”

She knew Marmalade and had no fear for him. But, “Kill Marm? Kill my Marmy?” Gillam came toward her at a trot, his face full of childish concern.

She stooped down to speak quietly to him. “No, Gillam. Marmalade is too smart for him. Don’t worry. I tell you what. Let’s go to Serran’s house and do washing first and hang it up in the nice wind to dry. Then we’ll look for greens on the way home.”

“With fish?” he asked her hopefully.

“Maybe with fish. Let’s see how far the tide is out. Perhaps we can cut across the beach.”

“Beach!” he exclaimed, and she smiled. Gillam loved the beach, and exploring it would add time to their journey, not reduce it. Usually she didn’t take him down the steep rocky path, but today she wished to get as far away from Pell as fast as she could, and stay away as long as she could.

“You had no right!” Pell bellowed after her when he realized she was leaving. “Those clothes belonged to me!”

She didn’t look back.

“You can’t take a man’s rightful possessions! What is mine is mine, and I will take it back!”

Cold clutched at her heart. He meant Gillam. His son. Her son. Her most precious of all things precious. That was why he had come back, she suddenly knew. Not for her or the cottage. To take Gillam.

“Let’s run!” she suggested, as she seized her boy’s hand and set off at a trot with Gillam jogging beside her.

From the rafters, the tom watched the man below him. The intruder kicked his wet clothes again, cursed some more, and then began to rummage through the sparse contents of the shelves. The cat watched him; there was no meat there, but he found a turnip and ate it. While he chewed, he took the lids off several other containers, grumbling all the while, and then abandoned his search for easy food. The cat could have told him there was nothing in the cupboard worth eating. All it was good for was attracting meaty little mice, which the cat had no intention of sharing.

Hilia was right. The big male human was going to be a problem. He took up too much of the bed, he smelled as if he might try to claim the territory, and he’d caused the cat to miss out on a nice eggy bit of cake this morning. And he’d made the boy wail, and the cat detested that awful sound. And he’d driven the woman away before she had built up the fire for the day. The cottage was rapidly cooling.

He glared down at the man. You need to leave. This is my territory and you are not welcome.

The man paused in his turnip chewing and looked up into the rafters. He had that stubborn look that people got when they knew that a cat was thinking about them but they didn’t want to accept it. “Cat? You up there? I’m going to kill you, you little bastard!”

I doubt it. You’re clumsy and heavy and slow. Everything that I’m not. The cat dug his claws into the beam and noisily sharpened them. When the man turned to peer up at him, he deliberately strolled across the rafter over the man’s head. He leaped up at the cat, batting futilely at him while roaring angrily. The cat sat down and wrapped his tail neatly around his feet. The man threw things, a vegetable, then a cup that shattered when it hit the wall, and then his boot, which landed in the fire. None of the objects hit the cat. The man was throwing them too hastily.

When he dragged a stool over and began to climb up on it, the cat stood, stretched, and then strolled along the beam until he reached the eaves. From there it was easy to push his way out through the storm-worn thatch. With a quick twist of his body he was up on the roof. He climbed quickly to the peak and sat down. He caught a glimpse of Rosemary and Gillam just as they turned and took the path that would take them down to the beach. He wondered if they would come back. The big human male was making an obvious claim to the territory. The female might be wise to take her kit and move on. He knew the ways of rogue males. He might very well kill the kit in the hopes of taking her as his mate again.

He didn’t like that idea. The female brought home food and shared it. She kept the shelter warm, and she was comfortable to sleep with. He doubted that the male human would provide any of that for him. So. How to be rid of him? He settled on the roof, folding his paws neatly under his chest and tucking his tail around him. He stared out to the horizon and pondered. How did one kill game that size?

Rosemary had to take the long way home. The tide was in, and that meant she had to follow the meandering path on top of the sea cliffs rather than cut across the bared beach. She paused for a moment to stare across the wide blue bay. On the opposite tooth of the land, she could just see the hazy buildings of Dorytown. Meddalee’s home. She wished Pell would just go back there. Let him chase his pretty girl with the fancy clothes and rich father. Just let him go away.

The wind blew harshly, pushing against her. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Come on, Gillam. Let’s get home and get warm.”

“Too tired. Too cold.” He sat down on the beaten earth of the path. His nose and cheeks were bright red, as were the tips of his ears. What had become of spring? And would she have warmer clothes for him before winter returned? He was growing so fast. She refused to think that far ahead. With a sigh she stooped down, hoisted him to her hip, and fashioned her shawl into a sling to take some of his weight. He’d already eaten more than half the smoked fish that Serran had given them for doing the wash. Rosemary had eaten some of it and concealed the rest in her bag for later. Damned if she would share it with Pell! But she might give the cat a bite or two.

Something in her had hardened. She was weary and Gillam was heavy, but heavier still were the words that Serran and Tarsha Wells had loaded onto her. “You should run, girl,” Serran had said bluntly after Rosemary had admitted that Pell had come back to the house and spent the night there. “Run while you can. Today. Don’t wait until he gets another child on you. Everyone knows what a charmer that man is. He’ll talk you into his bed, plant a baby in your belly, and then be off again. Don’t let him. Don’t even go back there.”

“But everything I own is there, and not much of it is portable! And the cottage rightfully belongs to Gillam, not him.”

“The cottage will still be there when he is a man grown and he can come back to claim it then.” Tarsha was emphatic. “Run, girl.”

“I can’t. I won’t! Should I run off and leave the cow? The chickens? Everything I’ve worked so hard to build up in the last three years? Just take Gillam and set off into the world without a coin to my name?”

Tarsha had been visiting Serran when Rosemary arrived. They’d all been washing together, for Serran had decided her house needed a spring cleaning that included laundering all the bedding. It had been a companionable time, with Gillam playing with little Marsh and the women all chatting together. It would have been fun if the topic hadn’t been her personal danger.

“Better a live beggar than . . . well, than anything else you might become.” Serran’s words were ominous.

“What are you saying?” Rosemary demanded.

“I know why Pell has come back here,” Tarsha had said suddenly.

Both women had turned to stare at her. Serran shook her head as if to warn her against indiscretion. Tarsha had looked down at her hands and spoken anyway. “I heard it from my cousin. It started a couple of months ago, with little things. A push in the market, calling her a bitch after a squabble in a tavern. But about a month ago, Pell put hands on Meddalee and not in a kind way. He’d pushed her before and once he knocked her down right in the market. But this was his hands on her throat. Her father saw the marks and he threatened to kill Pell. But he came, all tears and apologies, and knelt outside her father’s house and begged pardon. So she took him back. But then he actually hit her, a week ago. Loosened a tooth, and that was it. Her father’s servants put Pell out of the house and told him never to come back, that he no longer worked for her father or had permission to see Meddalee. Said Pell had no prospects and no right to touch his daughter. I heard Pell lingered for a time, hoping he could make it up, but when he couldn’t and he ran out of coin, he came home.” Tarsha looked up from her washing and said bluntly, “You should leave him, Rosemary. Take Gillam and go. If he hit one woman, he’ll hit another.”

Shame flushed her face. She’d never admitted to anyone that Pell had struck her. She wouldn’t admit it now. “I’ve got nowhere to go,” she said bluntly. Both women looked away from her. Times were hard. No one could afford to take in a woman and her child, while risking the displeasure of Pell and his family. It wasn’t fair of her to ask it, and so she didn’t. “The cottage belongs to Gillam. He has a right to live there. And I can take care of myself.” She said it, but no one really believed it. And when Tarsha hugged her good-bye, she slipped a coin into her hand, a small silver one.

“Just go!” she whispered. “Run. Don’t you have cousins in Forge? Go there.”

Rosemary had nodded grimly and then started the long walk home. Home. Was it really her home anymore? Could she run off to Forge? Her father’s sister had settled there; she barely remembered the woman. She had cousins there, yes, cousins she’d never met. No. There was no easy sanctuary. But it was her problem, not her friends’. It was up to her to solve it for herself.

She saw the smoke from her chimney long before she could see her house. And when she stood looking down on it, her heart nearly broke. She’d put so much into it, and Gillam was so heavy as he slept in the sling. She tried to imagine running away, taking him off down the long road to somewhere. Buckkeep Town? She could probably find some kind of work in a big city like that. But the journey would be hard. Sleeping by the road with little more than her shawl to cover them, eating what they could find. There were dangerous men on the road; there always were and always had been. They might do worse to her and her son than Pell would even imagine. Bad as Pell was, there was worse out there. And Gillam was his only son. He wouldn’t hurt him. She’d face him and see what came next.

Her washing tub was in the front yard, full of dirty water. The scatter of feathers in the front yard was a grim warning. With a sinking heart, she saw the long, shining feathers of a rooster’s tail among them. “Picky-pick,” she whispered to herself. Her hatchet was sunk deep into the stump where she split kindling. Feathers were trapped around the embedded blade. As she opened the door, the smell of scorched meat greeted her. The carcass of a bird was on the spit over the fire with Pell crouching nearby. Feathers were everywhere.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a stricken voice, but she knew. He’d killed the rooster and with him, every generation of birds to come. He hadn’t even salvaged the feathers.

Pell turned round to smile up at her with his disarming grin. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cooking dinner for us. Thought I’d show you that I’m a useful sort to have around the house.”

“You idiot!”

His eyes narrowed, the smile gone. “I’d think you’d show a little gratitude, after you left me here with no breakfast and dirty clothes. I had to wash them out myself. And put them on when they were still wet.”

She’d already seen that. His fine shirt was wrinkled, and the damp still showed in every seam of his trousers. She didn’t care.

“You killed Picky-pick. Without asking me. Without thinking about it at all.”

“Rosemary. Is that what’s troubling you?” A wealth of disbelief in his uttering of her name, and then he smiled indulgently as he explained it to her. “It wasn’t a hen, but a rooster. Doesn’t lay eggs, Rosie. I have no idea why you were wasting feed on him.”

“So he could father a batch of chicks! So we could raise extra chickens this summer for meat next winter, you idiot!”

The bed was a rumpled mess. She twitched a blanket flat and set Gillam down on it. He stirred and sat up. He looked around sleepily, and then took in the scorched carcass. “Cook meat?” he asked hopefully.

Pell had been glaring at her. He turned to the boy when he spoke. “There. You see. The boy needs meat. I told you so. A father has to take care of his son, and that’s all I’m trying to do. If it’s so important to you, I can get another rooster for you. Later. But tonight, little Will gets to eat his fill of nice roast chicken. Right, son?”

He smiled at her boy. It seemed a false smile to her, but the boy was taken in. Gillam nodded eagerly and bounced on the bed.

She stared at her smiling son, suddenly so like his father. Some terrible being inside her wanted to tell Gillam that it was Picky-pick on the fire, the rooster he’d seen raised from a chick and named himself, wanted to make her son dissolve in howls of sorrow. Perhaps that would chase the smug smile from Pell’s face. Perhaps that would keep her son’s heart as hers alone. But a stronger part of her could not do that to her boy. Soon enough, when there was no crowing in the morning, the boy would realize the bird was gone. Then was soon enough for him to mourn. And dead, the bird might as well be eaten as not.

She gritted her teeth and silently cleaned the feathers from the room, trying to gather what she could of them. She’d thought that if Picky sired enough chicks, there might have been not just meat for the winter, but feathers for stuffing a small comforter. All gone in an idiot’s impulse. And he’d expected her to thank him for destroying a year’s work! The idiot. She watched him crouched by the fire, turning the spit this way and that. Gillam had come to crouch beside him, studying the man as much as the cooking bird. She couldn’t stand it. She took herself outside.

There was worse to discover. In his pursuit of the rooster, Pell had trampled two rows of her garden. The wilted seedlings with their wisps of roots were drying on the disturbed rows. Without much hope, she hoed the earth back into place, pushed the plants back into the soil and gave them a sprinkle of water. The green things lay flat and limp on the wet soil. They would not rise again. And that was another food source gone. The cold wind whipped her hair across her face.

Gillam had stayed in the house watching his father. She hadn’t liked that but could think of no way to lure him away. And it had been easier to tidy up his father’s mess without the toddler at her heels, asking a dozen questions and sometimes undoing half her work as she did it. As she hung up her tools and wiped her hands on her apron, she allowed herself to wonder what her life would have been like if she’d had a husband for the last three years. What if there had been someone who had brought home food, helped to dig the garden, and sometimes watched the child? Would the garden be twice the size it was now? Would the worn thatch of the roof have been completely replaced last year instead of patched? Perhaps, she thought to herself, and then shook her head. Perhaps, but not if Pell were the man involved.

Inside the house, she found them at the table, eating meat that was scorched on the outside and bloody within. “Chimney doesn’t draw right,” Pell excused it. “And the firewood is too small. You need good chunks for coals to cook meat over, not a bunch of little sticks.”

“You used up all my kindling,” she replied. “The pile of larger wood is over in the shelter of the spruce tree, to keep it dry.” Both of her bowls and chairs were in use. It didn’t matter. She didn’t think she could have faced eating Picky anyway. She wondered if she would still wake in the dawn tomorrow without his raucous crowing. Set it aside. Too late to fix it. She just had to go on. His gleaming knife lay on the table beside the butchered bird. He picked it up and sawed on the butchered bird. To her surprise the knife slid through the tough bird as if it were butter. It was only when he put the meat in his mouth that he had to chew and chew. She tried not to take satisfaction in how tough the meat was.

“That must be a sharp knife, to shear through that meat so easily,” she observed, and he started as if she had jabbed him with it. He hastily returned it to his sheath, uncleaned.

“It was a gift,” he said, and then, as if he couldn’t resist the urge to brag, “Chalcedean steel. The best money can buy.”

She made no answer to that. He hadn’t heard the hidden mockery in her comment. The fool hadn’t even known that a grown rooster was not fit for roasting but only the stew pot. How had he managed to live in the village all his life and not know such simple things? How had he kept himself above and apart from the simple work that could have put food on the table? She forced herself to think back through the years. Rory, the carter’s boy, had fancied her once. He’d been a hard worker, but his plain face and callused hands had not charmed her. No. She had fallen to the boy with the soft hair and fine clothes. He was never dirty, she told herself, because he never worked. Did she think he was an idiot for not knowing how to work? What did that make her? How could she have taken up with a man who did no more than smile and be handsome and sing tavern songs well?

She barely stopped him in time when he gathered what was left and began to throw it on the fire. “That will stink if you burn bones in the house. Besides, I can make a soup of the bones and what’s left on them. I have a couple of turnips and an onion . . .” and she glanced at her cupboard to see that was a lie. The turnips were gone.

“You can’t just eat everything you see around here!” she exclaimed angrily. “I have to plan what we use and be sparing of it.”

“Well, if you think I’m going to go hungry while there are chickens running around in the yard, think again. I’m not that helpless. Or foolish.”

A thousand responses came to her mind. But only one clear thought formed. That handsome fool would destroy everything she had built up in the last three years before he was finished here. He would not listen to her. He would do as he pleased with her things. She was speechless. She gathered the rags she had used to clean up his butchering mess and went outside.

She dumped the dirty water from her washtub, rinsed it, and filled it again. She was washing out her cleaning rags when he came out of the house. He was walking softly but she heard him. He came up behind her. “You work so hard,” he said gently. “Rosie, I never meant for you to live like this.”

Simple words in a kind voice. They stabbed her. Three years ago, even two years ago and they would have won her heart.

“It’s work and it has to be done,” she said and hated how her voice was choked with tears.

She started when his hands settled on her shoulders. She twitched but he did not lift them. They were so warm, and he gently squeezed just where her shoulders ached most.

“Don’t,” she said sharply and twisted away from his touch. He let her go.

“I’m going to stay, Rosie,” he said. “I know you don’t believe it. I know you don’t want to give me another chance. You’re still angry at me, and who could blame you? I’ve thought about it. For me, it seems like something I did a long time ago, three years ago. I left you, and for me, that was the end of it. But you stayed here, and I suppose that every single day you’ve missed me. Every single night, you’ve been alone, and I suppose that’s why the hurt is so fresh for you.

“But I’m back now. You can stop being angry, and there’s nothing to be hurt about any more. I’m here, ready to be husband to you and father to your child.”

“You’re not my husband. You never married me. You wouldn’t. Not even when your grandfather asked you to.”

“I told you, Rosie. A scared boy ran away from you and the baby. But a man has come back. Give me a chance.”

“No.”

She heard him take a deep breath through his nose. “You will,” he said confidently. Then, as if he were changing the subject to indulge her, he asked her, “What are you doing?”

“Washing out bloody rags,” she told him savagely.

He was silent for a time and she thought he’d finally read her mood. But then he asked in a voice between dismay and disgust, “It’s your blood time?”

“Yes.” She heard herself lie promptly, and he abruptly stepped back from her. She wondered what instinct had made her protect herself.

He’d always expressed a disdain for touching her or even being around her during her menses. And now he retreated from her in a way that did not reassure her. Retreated because . . . why? Because he had been preparing to advance on her in some way? Tonight, after the boy was asleep? A cold dread rose in her, but something else twisted inside her along with it. She had the same hungers that any woman had, hungers that had nothing to do with food. Hungers that paid no attention to sensible thoughts, hungers that wanted his warm hands on her aching shoulders, hungers that recalled well how once they had warmed a bed together.

But what if? Her thoughts wriggled out of her control and ran off on a sunlit path. What if Pell were sincere in his return? He’d said, more than once, now, that he wished to make his life what it should have been, to be a father to the boy and a husband to her. What if he meant it and was groping his way toward that path? Could he change? Could they find the love they’d once felt for each other and build something with it? What if she gave ground to him and tried to awaken that in him again? Would it be so terrible a thing? Could that old dream be called to life again?

Unbidden, she recalled the passion she had once felt for Pell, the physical arousal his touch had created and their joyous unions. For one moment, heat surged through her. Then it faded. Her memories of their joinings were eroded, like a wooden carving that had weathered away, leaving only lumps where it had once had a face. She’d been wild about him, uncontrollably drawn to him. But now she could not think of him without recalling how he had humiliated and abandoned her. Those memories abraded any joy she had felt in him to expose the foolishness beneath it. No. No girlish silliness. She would force herself to see Pell only as he was, not as she had once dreamed him to be.

He was still standing behind her. It made the skin of her back and neck prickle, and she was torn between hoping he’d touch her again so she could reject him and praying he wouldn’t touch her again because she might turn into his embrace. Her heart was beating too fast. She risked a glance over her shoulder, but he wasn’t even looking at her anymore. Instead he was staring intently at the top of the hill.

“Is someone coming?” she asked him and followed his gaze just in time to see a lantern vanish from sight.

“No. Just someone passing by,” he said. Then he announced abruptly, “I might go into town tonight.” He turned and went back into the cottage. She welcomed his absence, but his hasty withdrawal surprised her. Obviously, he found her that disgusting. Odd, that his rejection could still sting. No. Not odd. Stupid that she could even care about him to that extent. He’d left her and their child for three years. How could she let herself crave his company, even if she only craved it for the chance to hurt him? She’d thought she’d gotten wiser than that.

She wrung out her cleaning rags and hung them to dry. The evening was closing in. Would he go to town or stay at the cottage? With that question, she realized that she dreaded another night confined with Pell. She could only tolerate it if she believed it would be the last one. Her mixed feelings, her emotional anger, and her physical need for a male were shredding her. She’d be better off to sleep with a wandering minstrel than to take a known traitor into her bed. Remember who he was, not what his body was like, she counseled herself. Protect herself and her child.

Slowly she went back into his house. The dishes were on the table as he had left them, and the hearth was spattered with grease and ash. Everywhere she looked in the cottage, she could see his marks, as if he were a cat who had to spray and scratch to claim his territory. He reclined on the bed, his boots on and a gleaming smudge of grease at one corner of his mouth from the meal. Gillam was on the bed beside him, playing with a handful of the rooster’s tail feathers. The rumpled bed, the dirty dishes, the ransacked cupboard . . . slowly she recalled that after Pell had left, there was actually less work for her to do. Less clothing to wash and less careless mess to tidy. She didn’t want this life back. With or without Pell’s touch on her at night, she didn’t want to live with him, clean up after him, and take his orders. She cleared her throat and tried to speak casually as she tidied the room.

“The cow will drop her calf soon. I’d best take her to Ben’s tomorrow.”

He turned his head and squinted at her. “Take the cow to Ben’s? Why?”

“When I bought her, he warned me that sometimes a cow’s first drop is difficult. He knows how to turn a calf if it needs doing. He said he’d help me when the time came, if I brought the cow to him.” More lies. He’d never said any such thing. She wouldn’t take the cow to Ben’s. She’d take the cow to Hilia. She and her husband were not wealthy, but they were solid. They’d give her what they could for the cow and the calf inside her.

“Best do it, then.” There was no suspicion in his voice. Plainly he cared nothing for the cow or the calf to come. “But leave the boy here with me. It’s time Will got to know his papa. Time I taught him a thing or two about being a man.” He poked the boy and Gillam giggled.

No. Never. She had been right. It was her son he was after; that was why he’d come back. Her beautiful, clever Gillam; that was what Pell would take and twist him into someone she didn’t know. Her fledgling plan sprouted wings. “I’ll go very early so I can be back in time to do my regular chores,” she said. And she’d take Gillam with her when she went. Pell had always been a heavy sleeper. Tomorrow, before dawn, she’d slip away. She’d have to go the long way; the tide would be in, and the heavy cow couldn’t go down the cliff-side path. By the time Pell woke and then eventually wondered where they were, she and Gillam would have left Hilia’s and be on their way. If he thought to look for them, he’d go to Ben’s first. She doubted that he’d make much real effort to find them and bring them back. He’d wait here and expect her to come cowering home. She wouldn’t. She’d leave it all behind and run.

She tried not to care about what would happen next. He’d kill her chickens, of course, one at a time and eat them. That couldn’t be helped. The garden, she knew, would go to weeds and vanish. There was only one other creature to worry about . . . Anxiety clutched at her heart as she realized that Marmalade hadn’t come to greet her when she returned. She hadn’t seen the cat at all.

“Odd. I haven’t seen the cat,” she said. Her heart was thudding sickly against her stomach.

Pell gave her a sideways glance. “Neither have I. But when I do, I’ll kill him.”

“Kill him,” Gillam repeated with no concept of the meaning. He jogged the end of the rooster feather against his own chin and giggled.

“That’s right, Willy,” his father said and leaned across the bed to tickle him. Gillam wriggled and shrieked with delight. It was all Rosemary could do to keep from leaping across the room, seizing her child, and fleeing with him. For a fleeting instant, the two of them looked so alike, the man grinning hard and the child flinging himself about and shrieking with laughter as he sought to escape his father’s touch. For a heart-stopping instant, she couldn’t love her son, not when he looked so like Pell. She turned away from both of them unable to abide that.

Tomorrow, she would run. Before things could become any worse.

Some things, you can’t run from. You have to deal with them and be done with them.

She wasn’t sure where the thought came from, but something not a sound made her glance up into the dimness under the rafters. A cat’s eyes glowed at her from the shadows. Don’t come down! she mentally begged him. She made a pretense of gathering garbage from around the cottage, added a handful of bones from around the chicken carcass, and carried them outside. She walked to the edge of the farmyard near the trash heap and set them down. In a heartbeat, Marmalade was there. He wound twice around her ankles, purring like a storm and then settled down to crunching the bones. She crouched down beside the cat in the gathering darkness. “I have to go away, Marmy. So do you. I wish I could tell you to run to Hilia’s house and live there. She’d take you in.”

He stopped his crunching and looked up at her, his eyes boring into hers. I live here, his gaze seemed to say.

“So did I,” she said, and sudden tears choked her. “But I can’t stay here any longer. He’s going to change too many things. He’s going to kill my chickens. And make Gillam into someone named Will, someone like him. And make me into . . . something.” She didn’t have a word for what she would become. Something he ordered about, something that cleaned up after him and gave her body over for his use, and never spoke about the things that had used to belong to her, never spoke of the ways he had hurt her and wronged her. “I can’t become that. So I can’t stay here.”

Marmalade rumbled a growl.

“I can’t defend my territory like you do. Not without risking that he’d hurt me. And if he hurt me badly enough, or killed me, then who would protect Gillam from him? Even if I stay here and battle him every day, he will change Gillam in ways I don’t want him to change. I have no choice, cat. I have to run.”

“Rosie! Rosie, where are you?” Pell sounded more annoyed than concerned at her absence. She hissed at the cat, startling him so that he dashed off into the darkness. She wiped her face on her apron and walked around the end of the byre.

“I was checking the cow,” she lied. “Truly, I’d best take her to Ben’s tomorrow.”

“Yes, I know, you told me.” He was impatient. “Come back to the house. I can’t find the money.”

Her heart lurched. The money? What did he mean by that? Then she knew. Her money. When he’d left, they’d already spent the last of his on the fish and potatoes. Every copper pence in the small cloth bag behind the kindling box was hers, earned by hard work, a shard at a time. Not that there was much. But he’d take it all. She knew it. She thought of the silver bit she’d earned today. That at least was still tied in her apron pocket. He had no way to know about it. She walked slowly back to the cottage, debating with herself. He would know she had at least some money. And once she’d shown him any of it, he’d take it all. Which was worth more, the silver in her pocket or the coppers in the pot?

“Rosemary!” His shout was angry, and she suddenly heard Gillam wail.

“No, no, no! You bweak it!” She broke into a run and burst through the door.

“What? What is it?”

Gillam sprawled in the corner, sobbing. He clutched the broken pieces of his three-legged stool to his chest. The bedding was in a heap on the floor. An angry Pell spun to face her. “Where have you hidden the money? It’s not in the pot on the rafter.”

“What did you do to him?” she demanded. Gillam was gasping as if he could not get his breath.

He gave his son a disdainful glance. “Nothing. I tried to use the stool to look for the money and it collapsed under me. Then he burst into tears about it.” He shook his head. “The boy wants toughening.”

“No.” Gillam wailed indignantly. “No, you bweak it and you push me down! You pushed me down! Pushing is wude! You bweak my stool.”

“It was badly built. It’s not my fault. And you are too big to cry about every little thing. None of this would have happened if the money pot were where it is supposed to be. Rosemary, what did you do with the money?”

She was shocked at how swiftly he descended to the level of a two-year-old, trying to shift blame for his idiocy onto someone else. A cold deadly calm suddenly flowed through her, as chilling as if her blood had turned to seawater as she realized what he had been about. The pot on the rafter. He’d stood on Gillam’s little stool to reach for the rafter.

“That’s where you used to keep the money. Out of my reach. Remember? So I couldn’t be ‘foolish’ with it.” She crossed the room and picked up Gillam. He clung to her tightly, bundling the pieces of his beloved stool between them, and she found herself returning that grip. “Don’t you cry, son. We’ll build another stool.”

Gillam took a shuddering breath and emboldened by his mother’s embrace, he peered around her neck and cried out, “I don’t wike you! You bweak my stool!”

“Oh, shut up. Rosie. I’m asking you something important. Ignore that brat for a moment. Where did you move the money? I need to go to town, and I can’t go without a penny to my name.”

A sudden vivid memory flooded her. She’d stood here and with a long stick had poked the money pot out of the rafters. Heavy with pregnancy, she’d not trusted the chair she’d stacked on the table to take her weight. And when the small pot fell and shattered, it had confirmed what she’d already known. Not even a copper shard was left in it. He’d left her penniless. She’d been hungry that night.

Gillam still in her arms, she strode across the room and snatched up the small bag from behind the kindling box. She opened the neck of it and dashed the contents to the floor. The scatter of small coins rang and rolled against the stones. She tossed the emptied bag onto the bedding. “Take it,” she said. “Take every penny that you never earned. Take every bit of it. And go away and never come back.”

“Stupid bitch,” he said with great feeling. “I am taking it.” Without shame, he dropped to his knees and went grubbing after the coins. He grunted as he crawled under the table and spoke as if short of breath. “I’m going to town. I have to meet someone there, to talk business. And I may have a beer or two with old friends. But I will be back. Because this is my house. My grandfather may have willed it to the boy, but everyone in town knows it should have come to me. That’s how it should be. And that’s how it’s going to be. Accept that, and things might be easier for you. Or get out. I don’t care which.”

With a louder grunt, he heaved himself to his feet. His face was red, and his fine shirt was so wrinkled it looked crumpled. He pulled his own empty purse from his belt and funneled her small collection of coins into it. His telling her to get out suddenly changed everything. “This is Gillam’s house and land, given him by his grandfather when you would do nothing for your son. I won’t let you take them from him.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” he warned her. He tied the purse at his belt and glared at her. She stood where she was, her foot firmly planted to cover two of the errant coins that had rolled toward her. She needed them, and so she stood her ground as he advanced on her. She met his gaze. She wasn’t quite brave enough to say anything more to the angry man, but her need to keep the money made her stand defiantly before his sudden charge.

As he lifted his hand, disbelief froze her. She turned her body, shifting Gillam away from the blow. He wouldn’t! her mind shrieked.

He will. He’ll kill you if he dares. It’s in his mind right now.

He can’t! Her argument with herself took less than a second. His hand was in motion and she still hadn’t moved, still covered the bits of money she hoped to keep for herself. Faster than his falling hand, the cat leaped down from the rafters. Claws out, he lit on Pell’s head and shoulder, raking his face and yowling. The blow Pell dealt Rosemary was a glancing one as he spun to confront the snarling, spitting cat. It still sent her to one knee as she sought to keep Gillam from hitting the floor. Pain shot through her leg, but she didn’t drop her child.

Pell seized Marmalade in both hands, and the cat sank his fangs into the soft meat between Pell’s thumb and fingers. Pell shouted wordlessly and flung the hapless cat. He struck the wall, fell to the floor, and then impossibly swift, shot out of the open door.

“MARMY!” Gillam shrieked.

Pell clutched his scored face with his bleeding hands and glared at them. “No howling,” he warned the boy. He pointed a shaking finger at Rosemary. “You clean this mess up before I get back.” A nasty smile showed his teeth as he glared at the white-faced child. “Kitty likes to fly,” he said and laughed.

Rosemary struggled to her feet, her child still in her arms. “No. My cat, my Marmy!” Gillam’s little body, she realized, was tight with anger, not fear. “You bad! Bad, bad, bad!”

“Mind your mouth, boy!” Anger flushed Pell’s face, and the cords on either side of his neck stood out. He advanced toward them, blood streaming down his clawed cheeks and fury in his eyes. “Mind your mouth or I’ll shut it for you, you little bastard!”

She stumbled back from him, and then turned and dashed out into the night, carrying Gillam with her. “Bad, bad!” the child shouted defiantly over her shoulder as she fled.

“Shush!” she warned him and covered the child’s roar with her hand. A panicky Gillam clutched and clawed at her stifling hand, but she ignored that as she ran and stumbled and ran again. Her knee wanted to fold under her. She couldn’t let it. She fled to the deep meadow grasses beyond the chicken yard and then dove to the earth and lay still. “Be quiet!” she hissed in the boy’s ear. “Be quiet. We’re hiding. We don’t want him to find us.”

She lifted her hand and a terrified Gillam hiccuped once and then clung to her silently. His breathing was harsh and loud; she feared Pell would find them. Her knee throbbed so badly that she thought she would not be able to stand again, let alone run. Pell appeared in the lamplit doorway, looking all around. He couldn’t see them.

“Rosemary!” he shouted.

She held her breath and Gillam huddled tight against her.

“Rosemary! Get in here, you stupid bitch. Clean up this damn mess. I want it all cleaned up before I come back!” He waited. She cowered silently. “Don’t think I’m going to forget this. I won’t. If you don’t come now, it will just be worse for you later!” He waited again. “You can’t stay out there forever.”

She watched him through a screen of grass stalks. He pulled his cloak up tight against the rising wind and threatened rain. He scowled helplessly at the vacant landscape around him. He wanted so badly to win this encounter. She feared he would stand there all night. But suddenly Pell strode away from the cottage, headed for the cliff-side road that went to town. She watched him as a darker figure against the evening twilight as he marched up the pathway. She suddenly felt another small warm body pressed against hers. She put her hand down and found Marmalade crouched in the grass beside her. She flinched with him when she set a hand on his ribs, and he cowered away from her touch with a rebuking growl.

“He nearly killed you, cat. I’m so sorry.” She barely breathed the words as she watched Pell hiking up the hill. She touched the cat and he rumbled again.

A thought slowly dawned on her. The cat had taken the blow to save her. “He was trying to hit me. He could have thrown me against the wall. Or Gillam.” She shook her head, trying to deny the thought. How had Gillam got into that sprawl in the corner? Had he already struck his own son? She heard again the word he’d flung, the one she sheltered Gillam from every day. Bastard. From his own father’s mouth. Their cottage was no longer a refuge, but a prison. Her defiance blew away with the wind.

“I have to run.” Rainy roads and no shelter. Unknown dangers for her and her boy. Hunger. What future could she possibly find? What would she have to do to feed them?

Marmalade stood and butted his head against her. Pell was nearly out of sight. She spoke slowly, scarcely daring to utter the thought aloud. “If I don’t run, I have to fight for my territory. Maybe to the death.” She shook her head at herself. Where had such an idea come from. “What am I thinking? I don’t know how to fight. He’s too big for me. I can’t win against him.”

The cat bumped his head against her hand and then slipped away. The grasses parted and swayed in his wake. He was headed up the hill, off on his night hunting. Pell had vanished.

She spoke aloud the thought that hung in the air. “Everything knows how to fight. Anyone with young knows how to protect them.”

Slowly she got to her feet. She reached down to touch her knee and felt the warmth. It was swelling. She picked up Gillam. He was still shaking and uncharacteristically silent. “Don’t worry. He’s gone. Let’s go back to our house.”

She tried to set him down to walk with her, but he just let his legs fold under him. He lay on his side, just as Marmalade had sprawled for that instant at the bottom of the wall. Her mind suddenly showed her a vision of her boy, flung against the wall and broken at the bottom of it. “No,” she said in a low voice. She wouldn’t wait for that to happen. She gathered him up, thinking how heavy he had grown, and tried not to think of taking him to the roads and how far she would have to carry him each day after he wearied. She didn’t try to bend her knee as she lurched along.

The cottage was a mess. Furniture and stores were the victims of Pell’s hasty search. She set Gillam down in a heap on the unswept hearth. He immediately began to wail. “Just a minute, son,” she told him as she put the bedding back on the roped bed frame. Already it stank of Pell. The whole house smelled of him, she thought to herself. She picked up her small money poke. She’d gripped the bottom of it when she shaken money out on the floor, and then tossed it onto the bed where the chink of the concealed coins would not be heard. She glanced inside. Five coppers. Not much but better than nothing.

Once the bed was back together and the blankets smooth on it, she scooped up Gillam and set him on it. He hadn’t stopped wailing, but his cries were becoming feebler. Terror and fury had exhausted him.

“I can’t tend you right now, son. Mama has to put some things together for us.”

She had the smoked fish she’d hidden from Pell, and the silver coin. She built up the fire and searched the floor with the lamp, righting the chairs and putting the cloth back on the table as she did so. Pell had missed the two coins that she’d had her foot on, and she found another copper stuck in a crack. Scarcely a fortune, but she slid it back into the poke. She put the poke in the bottom of a canvas sack, save for two coppers that she slid into her pocket. Never show all your money when you travel.

She looked into her cupboards, but Pell had eaten whatever could be immediately eaten. Habit made her tidy as she went, putting the house back in order even though she intended to leave it forever tomorrow. When she thought of that, she was tempted to wreck the place, but only for an instant. No. She had come to love the little cottage. Putting it to rights now was her apology to it for what Pell would make it: a dingy, run-down hovel with garbage strewn around it.

Gillam had stopped wailing. He was sound asleep. She left him in his clothes. She packed all their extra clothing into the bag. It didn’t even fill it. She used her quilting rags to create two straps on the canvas bag, and then packed her needles, threads, and scraps. One pan for cooking. Flint and steel. A few other odds and ends. There would just be room for the blanket from the bed. She slipped quietly from the house lest she wake Gillam and went out to the cow’s byre. She hid the bag there; if Pell came back early, she didn’t want him catching a glimpse of it and asking any questions. She patted the wakeful cow and went back to the cottage.

Her decision to run made, she could find no peace. She longed to leave immediately and knew that would be stupid. In the dark, carrying Gillam and leading the gravid cow? No. She would go at dawn. Pell would come in drunk if he came in at all, and he’d sleep late. She’d be up by dawn and gone, with her boy rested and light to see by. It was the sensible thing to do, and she was a sensible woman. If he came back tonight, she’d pretend deference to him, no matter what he demanded of her. She was strong. She’d make her preparations.

That, she told herself, was why she sat down in her battered old chair, the one that was even more battered now that Pell had tossed it aside in his search for her money, and did her crying then. She wept for how stupid she had been, and then for how much work and love she had put into the ugly little hovel between the fens and the cliffs to make it her own little cottage. And when she was finished, she found she was done with tears. The foolish connection she had felt to a place that had never truly belonged to her was gone. It would be Pell’s. Let him have it. He could have the cabin; she’d never let him have the boy.

Marmalade trotted earnestly through the dark. His ribs ached, and his ears still rang from hitting the wall. He let a small rumble of anger emerge from his throat, then silenced himself sternly. Was he a kitten to betray himself to his prey with a yowl or a lashing tail? Of course not.

The female had a point. The man was large and very strong. And quicker than the cat had allowed for. He’d thought he could slip right though his hands, but he’d gotten a good grip on him. If he’d had the sense to break the cat in his hands instead of throwing him, he’d be dead now.

Which meant that if he didn’t get rid of the man, he’d be dead very soon. Marmalade understood territory. It could not be surrendered. His fight with the man was to the death.

But how did one kill so large a beast?

The man did not know the cliff-side path. Perhaps, once, it had been familiar territory for him, but no longer. The night was dark, with clouds taunting the moon. The man stumbled more than once, swore loudly, and went on. The cliffs were bare of trees; only brush and tall grasses carpeted them. There was no shelter from the wind. And little, the cat thought to himself, between the man and the land’s end. The shore below the cliffs was broken shale. When the tide came in, it came right to the cliff’s edge.

But the man stayed to the path, hurrying and sometimes tripping in his haste to reach town. Marmalade matched his pace but stayed well back. The man bumbled along in the near dark, keeping to the path along the winding cliff tops. The spring wind blew, warm and full of rain to come. The night was alive and it would have been good hunting for the cat, if only he hadn’t needed to kill this big fool first. He was invisible in the grasses as he slunk after the man. The wind on the tall dry stalks of last year’s grass and the whisper and hush of the waves against the rocky beach below covered the slight sounds the cat made as he stalked after him. It wasn’t hard to keep up. Light that was plenty for a cat was black night for the man. He was not walking fast. He muttered and cursed as he trudged along. He halted a moment to look back and down into the dell; in the distance, light shone still from the cottage window and through the battered thatch of the roof. The man spat out a vicious word and lurched on.

Marmalade watched him for a time, noting how high he lifted his feet and gauging his pace. Then, with a dart no mouse could have avoided, he dashed across the man’s path, yowling as he came. The man leaped in surprise, tangled his own feet, and came down hard on his hands and knees. Marmalade had already vanished himself. I want to kill you, he told the intruder.

The man got to his feet, wiping his skinned hands on his trousers. “Just a cat,” he said, and then, “Just that damned cat.” He considered for a moment, then shouted, “You can’t hurt me, cat! And if I get my hands on you, I’m going to kill you.”

He stood for a time, staring all around himself in the dimness. Marmalade had no fear. When the man set off again, he ghosted along behind him. When the man ceased glancing back over his shoulder, he waited a dozen steps more. Then, silent as the spring wind, he raced up behind him and shot up his back. He scratched the man’s face in passing, not as deeply as he would have liked, for he wouldn’t chance the man grabbing him again. The man shrieked and cursed and clutched at his face. Marmalade ran to the side of the path and crouched in the grasses.

“You damn Witted beast! Damn you! I’m going to kill you.”

Try. Marmalade invited him. Just try. He lashed his tail. He saw the man stoop and grope for stones. He wouldn’t find any on the grassy path. Marmalade growled in his throat. It was amusing to watch the intruder straighten up. It was even more amusing to watch him pretend he wasn’t sneaking up on the cat as he ventured closer.

When the man sprang, Marmalade leaped back, but only a dozen paces. He crouched again, growling and lashing his tail in unmistakable challenge. Go ahead. Catch me. Kill me.

The man was in a fury now. He sprang and fell on the place where the cat had been. Marmalade yowled victoriously and dashed away. The man scrabbled to his feet and followed, shouting threats.

Shout all you want! Words can’t hurt me!

“I’ll give you more than words when I catch you, you demon beast!”

Twice more the cat taunted him and twice more the man sprang. The third time, Marmalade darted into deep tussocks of grass and crouched. But he was not hidden. He saw the man spot him, and he tensed every muscle in a desperate need to be ready. The man sprang and Marmalade darted back to where Pell had been as the undercut edge of the grassy cliff gave way. The man roared and as the earth collapsed beneath him, he clutched desperately at the tussocks. They tore free and went down with him, falling toward the rocky beach and clutching waves below. He shouted as he fell.

Marmalade, heart thudding, ventured closer to the cliff and peered over. At first, not even his cat’s eyes could penetrate the deepening night. He could make out the white lace as the waves met the rocks.

“I’ll kill you, cat!” the man shouted from below. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

It hadn’t worked. The man hadn’t fallen far enough, and the earth collapsing with him had cushioned his fall. The intruder clung to the cliff face, glaring up. The cat was reasonably certain the man couldn’t see him. He poked his head out a bit farther to look directly into his face.

Perhaps you’ll kill me. But not tonight.

Then Marmalade turned and retreated into the deep grasses. He hunkered down to wait. He listened to the noises the man made as he climbed, slipped, and climbed again. The night was getting away from him; he’d have no time to hunt tonight. It was very irritating. He shouldn’t have to be doing this. The female should be defending her own territory. What was wrong with her?

It was some time before the man slithered up onto the top of the cliff. He lay there for a long time, just breathing, before he pulled himself to his hands and knees and then staggered to his feet. He brushed uselessly at the wet mud that streaked the front of his fine clothes. Then he gave it up. “Damn you, cat!” he shouted to the open night. Marmalade remained still, and the man resumed his journey to town. The cat followed.

The cat had been to town before. Sometimes he followed the woman when she went to do errands or work for others. She would turn and shake her apron at him and tell him to go home, but he simply hid and then followed her. Town was an interesting place. There were fat rats beneath the fishmonger’s shop. There were female cats, too, some sleek and some ragged, and all howling for him to come join in battle and then in mating with them. He’d made his share of kits for the village. And thus he knew that there were dogs, too. During the day, they roamed the streets, but at night, they stayed closer to their doorsteps, guarding their masters’ homes. As the man entered the village and the cat followed him, he became less than a shadow as he wound his way along the fronts of porches and through weedy alleys. Some of the homes and businesses of the village had wooden boardwalks in front of them, and they provided excellent shelter for a small animal seeking to remain unseen. The streets were mostly dark. Lamplight fingered its way between shutters to lie as bars across the street. But there were carts with empty traces and deep shadows under them, left in front of their owners’ homes. A drapery of fishing nets hanging and waiting to be mended offered him a long stretch of dappled shadow.

He was crossing a street to follow the human male when a yellow hound spotted him. With a snarl of delight, it sprang after him. Marmalade fled. A wooden porch beckoned. Another very large dog slept curled in front of the door it served. There was no help for it; it was the only shelter close enough and he darted under it, only to discover that it concealed an older, collapsed walkway that blocked his retreat. A moment later, the hound’s front shoulders collided with the porch step as he thrust his snapping jaws and head under the planks. Marmalade flattened himself against the collapsed structure and found himself just out of reach of the dog’s jaws. He leaned in with a slash of razor claws, scoring blood on the dog’s sensitive nose. The hound gave a loud yelp and withdrew.

An instant later, however, it was back and starting to dig. The stupid hound would not have to move much earth to be able to cram himself under the boardwalk and reach the cat. He was a large enough dog that Marmalade had no hope of winning against him in a fight. Yet fight he would. He stood his fur up proudly, fluffed his tail, and growl-yowled his defiance. He hated this, hated going into a fight he would lose, one that might even cost his life. Yet there was no help for it, just like his uneven combat against the intruding male. If one must die, one died fighting.

He danced forward to deal the dog a slash across his face. But before his claws could connect, the dog vanished with a startled yelp. A moment later, the sounds of a full-fledged dogfight greeted his ears. The cat wasted no time. He poked his head out of his hiding place and then streaked away at top speed. In passing, he observed that the watchdog from the porch had seized the hound by his hind leg and jerked him out. Mine, mine, mine was his sole brutish canine thought. The porch was his, whatever was under it was his, and he would kill the intruder before surrendering it. He was a huge dog with massive jaws; the hound had no more chance against him than the cat had had against the hound. Let him see how he liked such a fight!

He found a quiet spot in an alley and groomed all his fur straight again before he went on. The damn hound had put him off the man’s trail. Well, the night did not have to be entirely wasted. There were always the fat rats under the fishmonger’s shop to consider. He shuddered his coat all over, gave his shoulder one more lick to make one orange stripe match the next, and then trotted purposefully on.

There were rats aplenty creeping about under the fishmonger’s, and even more nudging through the trash heap of the tavern next to it. He had just killed his third one and was eating the tender belly out of it when he heard a voice he knew, raised in an anger that was also tediously familiar. Gripping what was left of the rat in his jaws, he padded through the darkness to the front of the tavern.

The intruder male was there, with a noisy woman at his side. “You have no right,” she was shrieking, but not at Pell. “I’m a woman grown and I can do as I please. You can’t make me go with you.” She was not the cat’s woman who fed and sheltered him, so he had little interest in her. Yet he dropped the rat and, under cover of the tall grasses along the side of the tavern, crept closer. He flattened his ears and paid no attention to the woman’s yammering. She was not what interested him; what fascinated him were the three men who stood in a half circle, almost ringing Pell and the shrieking woman. One was an older man, big but looking both tired and sad. He would fight, thought the cat, but without much heart. The men who flanked him, however, were hard muscled and narrow eyed. Their shoulders were up as if they were wild dogs putting up their hackles, and their feet were set wide. And they were glaring at Pell.

The cat sat down. He curled his tail neatly around his feet. Hello, bigger dogs, Marmalade greeted them. He watched.

There was shouting, but the woman remained defiant. It reminded him very much of a queen in season. There was the yowling female and the circle of males who wanted to claim her. But a true queen would have been slapping and slashing at them, daring them to prove themselves worthy of possessing her. This woman merely shrieked and shouted and stood defiantly behind her very poor choice of a male. The cat rumbled low and waited for the bigger dogs to attack.

The oldest male seemed to be the leader of the three. They would not charge Pell and pull him down unless he gave the signal. Pell was clearly overmatched, and yet the old man did not take action. He appeared to be listening to what the female was yowling rather than merely subduing her with his strength. Foolishness.

Don’t let her defy you. He tried the thought carefully against the man’s mental boundaries. In the dim light of the tavern lanterns, he saw the man scowl. He narrowed his eyes as if he’d just remembered something.

She is yours, the cat reminded him. Not his. Don’t let him take her away with him. He has no right to her!

The old man suddenly stepped forward and grabbed the woman by the upper arm. She turned on him, claws raised to scratch, but the man blocked her with the ease of experience. “Come with me, Meddalee. For your own good. You’re drunk right now. I’m taking you back to the boat so you can sleep it off. And tomorrow, when the tide changes, we’ll be going home. And by the time we get there, maybe you will have decided which you want more: this ass who has no future other than making more bastards, or an inheritance from your father. Because I promise you this, girly. You can’t have both. Ever.”

His words took something out of the girl. Her fight faded and she pushed the hair back from her face, to stare at her father in blurry disbelief. “You wouldn’t,” she slurred out, but she did not sound certain.

“I would,” her father asserted. He lifted his stare to the intruder. Pell was standing with his fists lifted, as if he only waited a reason to attack. But with his seizure of the female, the moment had come and gone and Pell had not acted. “I assure you, Pell. You may lead my Meddalee away from me and down a garden path, but my money won’t follow her. Not now, not ever. You’ve abandoned one woman and one child. And that for me is your measure, forever. I’m done with you. And if my daughter has even a fraction of her mother’s good sense, she’s done with you, too. Come along, Meddalee.”

And that was it. The cat hissed low to himself in dismay. They hadn’t attacked the intruder male, hadn’t killed him or even struck him. He lashed his tail in frustration, then stilled. Provocation. That might be the key.

She thinks you’re a coward. They all think you are a coward. They’re walking away and you’re doing nothing. Nothing. They’re right. You are a coward. You’ve always been a coward.

“Meddalee!” Pell suddenly bellowed and stumbled forward in a drunkard’s charge. Her father kept his grip on her arm and pushed her to keep walking. She looked over her shoulder and cried dramatically, “Pell, oh, Pell!” But by then her father’s men had closed on the hapless man. They pushed him down easily. Marmalade watched them from the shadows, big blue eyes wide. But they toyed with him as if he were a mouse. When he stood, they pushed him down, talking and laughing as they did so. But there was less good play in him than there had been in the rats Marmalade had caught earlier. The fifth time he was shoved into the dirt, he still muttered oaths but crawled off into the darkness on his hands and knees. At the edge of the tavern porch, he collapsed and rolled himself into a ball. The two men looked at each other.

“No,” one said. “He’s done, Bell. Let him go. He ain’t worth killing.”

The cat did not share their assessment. He remained where he was for a time, pondering his own chances against the man now. But he remembered that the man had been faster than he had first thought. He recalled too well the savage clutch of the man’s hands around his body. No. There had to be a better way.

He moved out of the sheltering shadows. The men were vanishing up the street. He went to where Pell was curled and sat down just out of reach. He yowled loudly until the man uncovered his head and stared at him.

Coward.

The man just stared at him, eyes wide.

Get up. Go after her. Fight them.

“Go away. Damn Wit beast!”

The cat stared at him for a moment longer. Then he sprang at him with a sharp hiss and was pleased to see Pell cover his face with his arms. No, he thought as he trotted away. That one was too cowardly to start what needed to be started. He’d have to find another way.

The woman was drunk and walking unsteadily. She was also weeping noisily. It was easy for the cat to catch up to them. Night was deeper, even the dogs were sleeping more soundly, and Marmalade trotted unseen down the very center of the road. He followed them as they walked down to the boat harbor. He did not like walking out on the wooden dock; the boards were spaced for a man’s stride, not a cat’s. But he was sure-footed and silent as a shadow. They came to a boat, one that smelled more of wheat than fish. One of the men lifted the woman and set her feet on the boat. She sank down bonelessly, bowing her head and sniveling miserably. A watchman came out of the dark to greet them.

“It’s just us. Bringing Meddalee back.”

There was some conferring, and someone was sent to wake someone else. Another female, stumbling with sleep, came out on the deck. The cat wondered if the males knew how annoyed she was to be given charge of the drunken girl. But she accepted the burden, dragging her to her feet and walking her into the boat’s house and down a short walkway. Unnoticed, the cat followed her.

She took the woman into a small room and sat her down on a narrow bed. She pulled the shoes from her feet, then pushed her back on the bed and spread a blanket over her. “Sleep it off,” she muttered to her, and then leaned across her to open a porthole. “Fresh air do you good,” she added, and then left, shutting the door behind her. For a time, there were other noises, the sounds of men’s boots, the mumble of conversation.

When all was still on the boat, the cat jumped lightly to the bunk. He poked the sleeping woman’s face. She did not stir. He leaned closer and bit her lightly on the cheek, as if he were rousing Rosemary to be fed. She muttered and turned her face away from him. Her graceful neck shone white in the lantern light that filtered in from the small window.

There would be no sport to this.

Rosemary lay down next to her boy but did not dare to sleep. Exhaustion buzzed her head, and she traversed the night in that state that is neither rest nor wakefulness. She arose before dawn, refusing to think about the crowing that did not happen. She had let the fire go out, and it felt very strange to rise and perceive her usual chores as useless things. Marmalade had not come back. Her heart smote her when she realized that; she hoped he had not gone off somewhere to die, and then she thought that perhaps that was for the best if he had. He had no home now, any more than she did, and no one to offer him kindness or shelter. “Eda take him into your heart,” she prayed to the goddess and did not think that she wasted a prayer on a mere cat.

She decided to ready the cow for travel before she woke Gillam. When she limped out to the cow’s byre, she could only stand and shake her head at the terrible trick fate had played on her. Two gleaming new calves, red and white as their mother, lay curled together in the straw beside the cow. She had dropped them both in the night without even a bellow. The cow looked at Rosemary with placid, trusting eyes. “Good cow,” Rosemary whispered, and then walked away, leaving the door of the byre open. Pell would not, she was sure, put the cow in and out and bring her buckets of fresh water or stake her on the best grass. All she could do for her was to leave the door open so she could come and go as she would. Her thoughts were bitter as she walked back to the cottage. Had Pell never come back into her life, she would have been shouting and dancing for joy at this multiplication of her wealth. Now she was just giving her good fortune to a man she despised, a man who would not treasure it, and losing whatever coin she might have gained from Hilia.

In the cottage, she rolled up one coverlet and stuffed it into her carry bag. She slung it from her shoulder and wished her goods were heavier even as she wondered how long she could carry them and Gillam. Her knee was swollen and thick. It didn’t matter. She didn’t try to wake the boy, but picked him up, settled him on her shoulder, and limped out. She left the door hanging open behind her. Clouds hung low, threatening rain. Not a good day to begin a journey, but her only choice.

Pell hadn’t come home. Was he sleeping it off in the tavern? Had he gone to his parents’ house? How long would it be before he came home and discovered she was gone, stealing his son? When would he see the cow and her calves and realize that she hadn’t taken the animal anywhere, that she had simply left? She contemplated the climb up the steep trail to the cliff-top path reluctantly, comforting herself that once she was there, the trail leveled out and the walking would be easier.

“Good-bye, cottage,” she said.

Gillam lifted his head. “Look. Marmy!”

It was the cat. He was coming down the path from the cliff’s edge at a dogged trot. He was wetter and more bedraggled than she’d ever seen him; he must have been out on the hills all night. Probably too afraid to come home after what Pell had done to him. Gillam suddenly struggled in her arms.

“Marmy! Marmy hurt!” He twisted out of her grasp, hit the ground, and darted up the path to the cat.

“Oh, Gillam,” she cried, and limped after him.

As soon as they reached the cat, Marmalade sat down and licked his shoulder. He purred when Gillam hugged him, then wriggled gently from his grip. She could tell his ribs were sore, but he hadn’t scratched the boy. The cat stood up on his hind legs against her, and she took him up, cradling him gently in her arms. He was wet and smelled musky and was uncharacteristically dirty. He’d been into something sticky, and it had clotted dirt onto his chest. “What am I going to do, Marmalade? I can’t leave you here, and I can’t take you with me.”

She set the cat down gently. He rumbled as if displeased and went to Gillam. The youngster sat down and the cat clambered into his lap. Purring, he rubbed his face against the boy’s. She watched them for a long moment, wishing this was the start of an ordinary day, and that she could leave them as they were and go about her chores. Then she glanced at the path up to the cliffs. At any moment now, Pell might return. The tide would be all the way out. Should she follow the cliff path or cut across the beach? Which way would Pell come home?

“Gillam, we have to leave now. We can’t stay here any longer.”

“Don’t weave. Stay here.”

The words came from Gillam. His child’s voice was at odds with the adult diction. He sat looking up at her, his dark eyes wide and confident. The cat sat beside him, his blue eyes echoing the boy’s stare. “No,” she said softly. She knew whose thoughts he was uttering. Her mind reeled with the idea that her child was Witted, blessed or cursed with that forbidden magic. It couldn’t be. Pell was not Witted, and there was no history of the blood magic in her family. She stared at him.

He isn’t. He’s no more Witted than you are. Cats talk to whomever they please, Witted or not. He can hear me because he has the sense to listen to me. Unlike you. You hear me, you know I’m telling the truth, but you keep trying to ignore me. You can’t run from him. You’ll have to stand and fight him. I did my best, but I fear it wasn’t enough.

The thoughts took shape in her mind, unwelcome and unavoidable.

“I can’t, cat. I can’t fight him. He’s too big and strong. He’ll hurt me, or kill me. I can’t fight him. I won’t.”

Gillam spoke again, a babyish inflection of adult words. “You have no choice. Here he comes.”

If you don’t fight him, he will hurt you or kill you. If you do fight him, he may hurt you or kill you. But at least you’ll have the satisfaction of hurting him first. It won’t be free for him. I saw him in the streets in town. I ran ahead of him, but he’s coming. Coming soon.

She turned to follow the cat’s stare. There, indeed, was Pell trudging down the path toward them. He looked much the worse for wear. She wondered what had befallen him; he looked much more bedraggled than an ordinary night at the tavern should have left him. He limped as he came down the hill toward them, and mud had smeared all the fineness from his clothes, just as anger had chased all the handsomeness from his face.

She gathered Gillam into her arms and stood up. If she could have, she would have fled, but it was too late now. There was nowhere she could run, no place to hide from him. The cat sat by her feet. He curled his tail neatly around his paws.

“He comes to kill,” Gillam said softly. The words chilled her. She knew the thought belonged to Marmalade, but to hear her son verbalize it made the truth ring louder. Today, he would kill the cat. Tomorrow, it might be her. Even if he did not take their lives, he would kill the life she had built here and with it the future she had imagined for herself and her boy. It wouldn’t matter if she were dead or alive; he would steal the boy from her and change him into someone she could not love.

“Go inside,” she instructed them both. “Gillam. After you shut the door, pull in the latchstring. You know how; you’ve seen me do it. And then go up in the loft and stay there.”

She didn’t wait to see if he would obey her. It was a stupid, useless precaution. The cottage was not so well made that Pell could not get into it, even with the latchstring drawn. There was no place inside that a boy or a cat could hide from him. But the orders might, she thought, at least keep the boy from seeing what was to come. As she heard the door thud shut, she went to the chopping block and wrenched her hatchet free of the stump. She turned to watch Pell come down the hill to her. Something bumped her ankle. She looked down to see Marmalade sitting calmly beside her. Wait until he’s closer, the cat cautioned her, and she was rattled by how clearly his thoughts reached her mind.

We think as one on this topic, the cat wryly agreed.

She hefted the hatchet in her hand, then clutched it to her chest, gripping it with both hands. Her heart was pounding. She had no chance. She could imagine how it would unfold; she would swing her weapon at him, he could catch her arm and twist it, disarming her. And then he would either beat her or kill her. Probably both.

And then Gillam would be alone with him. Brutalized into submission. Or worse. Raised to be just like his father. With no one to intervene, no one to suggest a different way to him.

“I can’t do this,” she said aloud. Sanity seemed to flow back through her veins. “He didn’t really hurt me, cat. He just pushed me aside. He left Gillam and me, but he didn’t try to kill us . . .”

No. He thought he didn’t have to. You had no leash on him, no proof the boy was his. Perhaps he hoped you would die in childbirth and free him from the burden of both of you. Perhaps he thought you’d both starve or catch your death of cold in this cottage. I wish I could say that he hadn’t tried to kill me. He nearly succeeded.

“But . . .”

I have to admit I don’t understand your strategy. You’re going to wait until he really hurts you or Gillam before you fight back? Doesn’t seem to put the odds in your favor. The cat’s thoughts were so calm in her mind. So dry of mirth and brittle with sarcasm. He sat beside her, calm as a king, his tail curled neatly around his front feet.

Pell was getting closer. He was limping; his clothes were muddy, wet, and torn; and his face was set in a rictus of fury.

Not a strategy I think he plans to use. I think he’s going to kill me and give you a severe beating first. Before he even talks to us.

She huffed out her breath and held the hatchet up in her shaking hand. There was no strength in her arms. Her ears were ringing and she wondered if she would collapse from terror. “Go away, Pell!” She tried to shout the words. Her heart was beating so fast that she had no strength to put into them. “You don’t live here anymore. I won’t let you come in. I won’t let you touch me or be around Gillam. Go away!”

In response to her words, the man broke into a lurching downhill run. “Bitch!” he shouted. “You and your Wit cat. You tried to kill me last night! You both deserve death. You trapped me! You ruined my life!” The cat vanished suddenly, streaking off behind her. She couldn’t blame him. She wished she could run away. But she was the only thing that stood between Pell and Gillam.

She brandished the hatchet. “I mean it!” she shouted, but her voice squeaked and then broke on the words. Did she? Did she mean it? Wasn’t this a huge mistake, one that would get her killed?

“You stole everything from me! My inheritance, the future I was meant to have, my grandfather’s regard for me. Everything! It was all your fault, Rosemary. You made me do this! You remember that! You made me do this!” Pell’s gaze met hers as he drew his knife from his sheath.

She gasped in disbelief. The cat was right. Flee!

At the last possible minute, she turned and ran. Where, where? Her frantic mind demanded of her, but she didn’t know. There was no place she could go to escape him. But she ran, over the fence and through her own garden, spurning her seedlings under her flying feet, then over the fence she had built, tearing her skirts and half knocking it down, and then through the tall dead weeds behind the cow’s byre.

“You stupid slut!” Pell shouted, only steps behind her. “I won’t let you ruin my life!”

And stupidly she spun and swung the hatchet, knowing he was still out of reach, knowing that she couldn’t win. In horror, she felt it slip from her sweaty grip, saw her only weapon fly away from her.

It struck him on the brow. Pell advanced two more staggering steps and then fell like a chopped tree. His outstretched hand struck her ankle and she shrieked, jumping backward as the knife tumbled from his grip. She spun, ran toward the house, and then, hooting and panting with fear, forced herself to turn back and dash for the dropped hatchet. She snatched it up and rounded on him, expecting him to come up from the earth and after her. But he didn’t move.

She paced around him anxiously, fearing it was a trick, fearing she had killed him, dreading that she had not. He sprawled unmoving in the crushed vegetation. Was he pretending, hoping to lure her closer? She lifted the hatchet threateningly and stood perfectly still. Was she breathing too loud? She closed her lips and breathed through her nose, feeling as if she were smothering herself. His face was turned away from her. How long would he lie there, hoping she’d come close enough that he could rise up and drag her down? She gritted her teeth, willing her body to be content with less air. She was still shaking all over. Was he breathing? She stared at him, saw the slow rise and fall of his back. He was alive. Stunned or faking.

She tightened her grip on the hatchet. This was her best chance to finish him off. One good hard smashing blow to the back of his head and he’d be all done. She lifted her weapon and willed herself to bring it down. Could not. Her fingers were made of grass, of yarn.

“Mama!” It was a long drawn cry of pure terror. Gillam! Cowardice prevailed. She turned and ran, hatchet in hand, leaving Pell facedown in the tall grass.

Gillam was standing in front of the cottage, and by the time she reached him, he was screaming uncontrollably. He held his arms out from his body, and his hands were shaking wildly. She flew to him and gathered him into her arms. His body was stiff, and he continued to scream as if not even her reappearance could comfort him. “Mama, mama, you were gone. Gone!”

The cat appeared suddenly, winding himself comfortingly around her ankles, and she sank down, the last of her strength spent. “We have to get out of here,” she whispered to them both. “Hush. Hush. We have to go now, right now. You, too, cat. Come on.”

“Where? Where we go, Mama?” Gillam barely choked out the words.

“We’re going to go visit. We’re going visiting, we’re going to see . . . On a visit. You’ll see, you’ll see.” Where could she go? Was there anywhere she could flee that Pell wouldn’t find her? She carried Gillam despite her throbbing knee. Odd. While she had been fleeing from Pell, she hadn’t even felt it. Now it kept time with the beating of her heart, sending surges of pain up her thigh. It would have to be borne, just like everything else.

She’d left her packed bag by the cow’s byre. She snatched it up and kept walking. She would not go see if he was sitting up yet or if he still sprawled there. Gillam did not need to see his father that way. Where to go, where to go? Which of her friends deserved the trouble that would go with her? Flee to Hilia, hope her husband would be home to keep Pell from killing her? Go to Serran’s? No, the old woman would be frightened to death if Pell came shouting and breaking things.

In the end she followed the cliff-edge road and limped all the way into town, Gillam on her hip and Marmalade trailing after her and the hatchet clutched in her hand against her child’s back. The promised rain began as she hiked, a gentle spring rain of small droplets. At the outskirts of town, the cat sat down. She glanced back at him. Rain glistened in drops on his whiskers. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

Dogs. Big dogs require bigger dogs. You won’t see me.

“I may not come back this way.”

I’ll follow. Or I won’t.

“Very well.” It was yet another thing she could not change. Eda bless and watch over him, she prayed silently. She paused to put the hatchet in her bag and then walked down the last hill and into the village. It seemed a quiet day. In the little harbor, only the small boats had set out to fish. The larger ones were waiting for a better tide. The little market was just starting to stir. She could smell the first bake of the day’s bread on the rising wind. She glanced back the way she had come, but the cat was not to be seen. She had to believe he could take care of himself.

Before she reached the market street, the rain began in earnest with the rising wind tugging at her skirts. Her boy shivered in her arms and huddled into her. “Hungry, Mama,” Gillam told her, and the fourth time he said it, he dissolved into helpless weeping. Her heart sank. She was hungry, too, but if she spent her coin on food now, what would they live on tomorrow? The rain was penetrating her clothing already.

She went to the tavern, the only one in the village, the one by the fishmonger’s where she had first met Pell and been courted by him. Those days seemed like a song she had once heard, something about a foolish girl infatuated with a heartless man. It had been months since she had passed those doors, years since she had sat by the fire with a mug of Tamman’s ale and sang choruses with a minstrel. For a moment, she recalled it all clearly. The fire was hot on her face and legs, and her back had been warm where she leaned on Pell. He didn’t sing but had seemed proud that she did. All those times when she had defied her mother to be there with Pell, creeping from her bed quietly and sneaking off; how often had she lied for the sake of being with him?

It hurt to remember that deception.

Her mother had been so right about everything. She wished she could tell her that now.

She could barely bring herself to push open the tavern door and carry her child inside. It was darker than she remembered, but it smelled the same, of fish chowder and wood smoke and spilled beer and pipe smoke and hearth bread. There were few customers at that hour and she took Gillam to a table near the fire and set him down. The innkeeper himself came over and stared down at her in a peculiar way. Tamman’s generous nature was reflected in his personal size. He looked from the door to her to the boy and then back again. His mouth moved as if he were chewing words, deciding to spit them out or swallow them. She spoke first.

“I’ve got a couple of copper shards. Can I have a bowl of chowder for the boy, and as much bread as that will buy?”

Tamman didn’t budge from where he stood or change his gaze. He only opened his mouth and bellowed, “Sasho, chowder and bread for two!” Then he abruptly dropped down on the bench across the table from her. “Pell coming in?” he asked somberly.

A shudder passed through her. She hoped he hadn’t seen it. “I . . . I don’t know.” She tried to sound calm.

Tamman nodded sagely. “Well, nothing against him or you, but I don’t want trouble here. He was here last night, you know. That cross-the-bay woman, that Meddalee Morrany? She was here last night, waiting for Pell. She got pretty angry, sitting and waiting, but he finally got here, looking like something the cat dragged in. It wasn’t coincidence, Rosemary. She was waiting for him.” The innkeeper who had known her since she was a child looked into her tearless eyes, trying to see what his words meant to her. There was no malice in his look, only measurement. She blinked, trying to contain her thoughts. Tamman nodded to himself. “Yes. Those two had planned to meet here. And they sat in the corner there, by the back door, away from the fire and the crowd, and they talked for a long time.” Tamman shook his head. “That woman’s crazy. Her face was still bruised blue from the last beating that damn Pell gave her. Why she would come seeking that cruel bastard . . . Sorry. Forgot the boy was here. Sorry.” He leaned his forearms on the table and it creaked.

“Never mind,” she said quietly. Gillam was watching the fire and not paying attention to them. Sasho appeared with the food then, two brimming bowls that were dribbling white chowder down the sides and a napkin with three brown-crusted rolls on it. Gillam snatched at the bread before the serving lad could even set the food down. Her boy stuffed the corner of the roll in his mouth. “Gillam!” she cried, mortified, but the innkeeper put a large hand on her arm.

“Let the boy eat. A child that hungry shames us all. Go on, boy. There’s a big bowl of chowder there for you, made this morning with fresh cream, fresh cod, and old onions. Go on.”

“Let me break the bread for you while you try your soup,” she suggested to her son quietly. Gillam did not wait to be urged again. Despite her anxiety, Rosemary’s stomach growled loudly at the sight and smell of the hot food.

Tamman heard it. “Go on. You, too. What I got to say isn’t pleasant, so you may as well hear it on a full stomach as not.”

She nodded slowly as she took another of the rolls and tore off a bite of bread. It was fragrant and warm. She chewed it slowly, waiting in dread for whatever disaster was to befall her.

“Just as I was about to close for the night, who should come storming in but Meddalee’s father. Morrany was furious with Pell for marking his daughter’s face, and even angrier that she’d caught the cross bay ferry to come running after him. Made him even hotter to see those two all cozy with their heads together. Morrany spoke loud and plainer than any father should, saying if Pell wants to visit his daughter’s bed, then he should marry her. And then he demanded to know where this grand fortune is that his grandfather was to bequeath to him, for he’d heard gossip the old man was dead for most of the winter, and if Pell was his chosen heir, well, where was his wealth, then?

“And you know Cham, who loves to sit and drink here more hours than he works in a day. Well, he was the one fool enough to stand and say that the old man had little enough, and most of what he had, he’d already left to Pell’s bastard son after Pell abandoned the boy and his mother.

“Well, turns out Pell and Meddalee had never seen fit to tell Meddalee’s father that bit of news. When her father started shouting at them both, saying he wouldn’t be grandfather to fortuneless bastards, she started weeping and squawking that it wouldn’t be like that, that Pell had come back to Cogsbay to fix things for them. And Rosemary?”

He cleared his throat and then said into her waiting silence, “That bastard as much as said, before everyone here, that he didn’t believe that one was really his.” The innkeeper tipped his head toward Gillam as if to be certain she understood his roundabout reference to her son. “When anyone who saw Pell grow up knows that the boy is an image of him when he was a lad.” Then he looked down at his big hands on the edge of the table for a few moments. Perhaps he expected Rosemary to be shocked at the news. Or shamed. She was neither. His words confused her. She had been so sure that Gillam was why Pell had returned, that her boy was what he wanted.

She took a spoonful of the cooling chowder. Not even the taste of the warm rich chowder could chase the bitterness from her mouth. She met Tamman’s gaze. “Pell’s lies are none of my doing,” she said quietly.

“More like what has been done to you,” the innkeeper conceded. He looked at the fire, allowing her a few moments of quiet in which to eat.

“Thank you for telling me all this,” she said at last. She had not asked him why, but he heard her question.

Tamman shifted on the bench. “Could be trouble is coming for you. That Meddalee is one determined woman. I’ve known her since she was a girl. Her parents used to send her here, clear across the bay, for her to stay with her cousins for the harvest. Rumor was that even then, they couldn’t handle her. She’s always been willful. She doesn’t seem to care what Pell is, only that she thinks he ought to be hers, even if he slaps her, even if he’s already got a son. Eda alone knows what Meddalee might do if she came out to your home. Be wary.”

“If she wants Pell, she’s welcome to him.”

The innkeeper shook his blunt head. “Rosemary, you aren’t hearing me. Her father was furious with her. Said that he wouldn’t let Pell come back, that Pell was a penniless cad who would use her and leave her with a bastard just as he did to you. Morrany is a wealthy man, across the bay. Owns two ships and three warehouses. He wants his daughter to marry well, someone with property for his grandchildren to inherit, alongside his own wealth. Pell can’t offer that. His father’s debts are such that when he goes, there won’t be two pence for his widow to rub together. His grandfather didn’t have much; Soader gave the cottage to your lad, and his little house here in town went to clear his debts after he was gone. Eda bless the man, he was a good soul and shared what he had while he was alive. Everyone in the village knew that he slipped Pell’s mother money whenever she asked; without him helping her, Pell’s father would have beggared them long ago. And when Soader was gone, well, there wasn’t anything left.

“So, think, girl. Your boy owns the only bit of land that might be an inheritance for Pell. Meddalee’s a determined woman. What would she have to do to make that cottage and land Pell’s?”

She furrowed her brow at him. The words came slowly. “Kill me? Kill . . .” She roved her glance over Gillam, unable to speak the words aloud.

Tamman nodded. “Now you understand.” He looked away from her. “They sat together, away from the fire but close to the back door. I made more than one trip out to the garbage heap last night, dumping dregs and garbage. I overheard things, Rosemary.” He looked at her directly. “Pell was talking, saying that he could fix it, that before summer was over, he’d have a place of his own and be free to marry her.”

Gillam had finished his food and was looking with unabashed interest at hers. She slid the half-full bowl across the table to him. Suddenly her hunger was gone; fear filled her belly. What had Pell been shouting as he came down the hill? That she had stolen his inheritance? She tried to think as Pell would. He’d come back home to them and tried to make them believe it was good. Tried to get her to trust him. If it had worked, what would he have done next? Get rid of her first. A tumble down the cliff, or perhaps he would say the cow had trampled her. And then, well, a month or so later, tragedy would strike him again. His boy would die “of a cough” in his sleep. Or fall from the cliffs. Or wander off into the fens, never to be seen again. And the cottage would pass to him.

She looked at her boy spooning up mouthfuls of thick, rich chowder. A slow, cold anger rose in her. She’d been a fool. So blind. Gillam was the most precious thing in her life and she thought Pell had come back to take him from her.

He’d come back to destroy him. She thought suddenly of his knife. A gift. A very sharp knife. She suddenly knew who had given it to him.

“Will you be safe, Rosemary?”

The innkeeper’s words called her gaze back to him. “I will,” she said. Pell would not. Time to finish what she had left undone. She set her two coins on the edge of the table, but Tamman shook his head.

“Not this time, my dear. It’s been too long since you patronized my place. And your coming here today saved me a hike around the cliffs to your cottage. Now. Where is Pell? Did he come home last night?”

She shook her head slowly and chose her words. “He never came into the cottage. I don’t know where he is now.” It was almost a truth. He had never reached the cottage door. And right now, he might have recovered and be on his way here. Or still lying behind the cow byre.

But the innkeeper only nodded as if that confirmed his guess. “Last night, Meddalee Morrany’s father dragged her out of here. She was kicking and spitting and shrieking and trying her claws on his face. Pell stood and shouted that she was a woman grown, that her father had no right to force her to go home, but Morrany had the captain and the mate of one of his ships with him, and Pell daren’t start a fight with any one of them, let alone three. He said, woman or no, she was acting like a spoiled child and so he would treat her. So, after a noisy shouting match outside, her father took her down to his ship. Said he was taking her back across the bay in the morning and that Pell would stay away if he knew what was good for him. But Pell’s never known what was good for him. So I suspected that he’d follow and try to steal her back.” Tamman nodded to himself and stood slowly. “Pell was pretty drunk when he left here. I didn’t think he’d make it as far as your cottage even if he headed that way.”

“He didn’t,” she said quietly. “Maybe he’s sleeping it off somewhere. Maybe he went to his father’s house.”

“Or maybe he’s looking for a way to get across the bay. Meddalee’s father’s boat is still tied up to the docks, waiting for the tide to be right. He might even be down there trying to weasel his way back into her father’s favor.”

“Maybe.” But she knew Pell better than Tamman did. Perhaps at first, run off by Meddalee’s father, he’d simply come home to her cottage as a place where he could go. But that wasn’t what he’d intended this morning. He’d come back to the cottage, thinking to get rid of his inconvenient son. He’d come to kill Gillam. The cat had been right. And knowing that changed everything.

Everything.

The cat was right. She’d been a fool. Resolution as cold as iron stiffened her spine. She smiled at Tamman, a small cat’s smile. “Well. We’ve errands to do, Gillam and I. Thank you for the chowder, Tamman, and for the warning. And you are right. It has been far too long since we’ve dropped in. Sometimes I forget that I do have friends.”

And enemies. Sometimes she forgot that she might have enemies.

She looked at Gillam. “Is that better? Shall we go now?”

He nodded emphatically.

“The market stalls will be opening soon. Shall we go have a look?”

The boy’s eyes flew wide. A trip to market was a rare thing for both of them. They lived mostly by barter and seldom used coin. He nodded avidly, and she bid Tamman farewell. Outside, the wind was blustering, but the rain had ceased. The clouds were being pushed aside from a bright blue sky.

The market in the little town was a tiny one, not more than a dozen shops and stalls and half of them seasonal. She was able to buy a short coil of sturdy line, a long slender boning knife, and then, because there was so little left of her money and life, she now knew, was an uncertain thing, a little packet of honey drops for the boy. He’d never had candy before and could scarcely bear to put even one of the bright-colored drops into his mouth. When she finally persuaded him to try a pale green one and saw his face light with surprise at the taste of honey and mint, she folded the packet up tight and put it into the bag. “Later, you can have more,” she promised him, her mind full of possible plans.

They walked the cliff-top path home again. A quarter of the way back to the cottage, the cat suddenly appeared and trotted along at her heels alongside the boy. “Well, where have you been, Marmalade?” she asked him.

Rousing the bigger dogs. They sleep later than I thought.

“Don’t the old wives tell us to let sleeping dogs lie?” she asked him and was rewarded only by a puzzled glance from Gillam. She said nothing to the cat of what she would do and felt no further brush of a feline mind against hers. That was just as well. What she would do, she would do, and it would be her own deed.

They reached the juncture in the path where a tiny trail wound down the grassy hillside to her cottage. She stood for a short time, looking down on it. Beyond it were the fens, a tapestry of grasses and ferns in a hundred different greens. No smoke rose from her cabin chimney. The cow had taken advantage of the open gate to lead her new calves out. The chickens scratched in the dooryard. All seemed calm.

Of Pell, there was no sign. He could be in hiding. He could be sleeping in the cabin. He might still be lying in the tall meadow grass behind the byre. She sighed. “I should have been certain of him when I had the chance,” she said to no one. The cat lifted a paw and swiped it across his face, almost as if hiding a smile.

Gillam started down the path ahead of her. She called him back. She reached into the bag and gave him another honey drop, a yellow one. “You and Marmalade stay right here,” she told him. “Sit down and see how long the candy lasts if you only suck on it.” The novelty of the candy was enough to win her instant obedience. She put the little cloth bag in his hands. “When it’s all gone, try a red one. When it’s all gone, have a pink one. Suck on each one slowly. And wait for me to come back and ask you which one you liked best.” Gillam’s eyes were big as saucers at his good fortune. He found a rock jutting up in the grass by the trail and perched on it, sucking thoughtfully. The cat sat down beside him and curled his tail around his feet.

Luck.

“Thank you.” She set her pack down beside them. She took only the rope and the skinning knife and the hatchet. She walked silently down the hill. It was impossible to disguise her approach to the cabin. It was a bare, broad hillside. She carried the bared knife gleaming in her hand.

She looked for him first in the cabin, but it was still and cold as a dead thing. She searched it well, even climbing up to peer into the loft and then looking under the bed. There was nowhere else in the cabin where a grown man could hide. She went out and about her small farmstead. The chickens scattered as she walked through the scratching, pecking flock but otherwise showed no alarm. The cow was grazing peacefully, her two red calves sleeping together. Pell was not hiding in her stall.

She glanced up the hillside. Gillam still perched on his rock. She could not see Marmalade. She waved at her son, and he waved back at her. Then, knife in one hand and hatchet in the other, she went behind the cowshed.

If Eda had blessed her, the man would be dead where he had fallen. But Eda was a goddess of light and life and fertility. One did not pray to her for a convenient death. Pell was not sprawled there. He was gone, and so was his knife.

And she suddenly saw her error. She lifted her skirts and ran, suddenly sure of her mistake. And as she rounded the byre, she saw Pell striding up to her boy.

“Well, what’s that you have there, Gillam? Candy? Why don’t you show me?”

His words just reached her ears. Pell was standing over the boy. “Gillam!” she shouted, a useless warning. What would she tell him to do? Run? He could not outrun a determined man. As Gillam turned, startled at her cry, Pell scooped him up. Scooped him up and began to run with him, up the path to the cliffs.

She screamed, a useless waste of her breath, and ran. Her heart was pounding so that it filled her ears, and then suddenly she realized that thundering sound was not her heart at all. Hoofbeats. Someone was riding a horse along the cliff trail. She lifted her panicked gaze and saw three mounted men galloping heedlessly on the cliff-side path.

“Stop him!” she shouted at them, helplessly, hopelessly. “Stop him! He means to kill the boy! Help me, please. Please!”

Did they even hear her breathless cries? She kept running and became aware of a tawny little shape that was leaping after Pell, catching at his legs and then falling back and racing after him again. Gillam had found his voice and was roaring with terror even as he clutched his bag of sweets. And Pell was getting ever closer to the cliff tops.

The three men all but rode him down. She cried out in horror as Pell flung her son at them and tried to run even as the men abandoned the stamping horses to chase after him. Gillam struck the ground hard and rolled away from them, and then lay, sprawled and still in the early spring sunlight.

“Gillam,” she shrieked and ran to him. The horses, spooked by her cries, wheeled and ran back the way they had come. She cared nothing for them or for the struggling men by the cliff’s edge. She reached her boy and scooped him up.

“Gillam, Gillam, are you all right?” she cried. She sank to the earth and gathered his little body into her arms. He seemed so small.

He took a shuddering breath and then sobbed out, “I wost my candy! I dwopped my candy!”

In her joy, she laughed aloud, and then, because of the hurt in his eyes that she laughed at his tragedy, she felt in the grass and came up with the little cloth sack. “No, you didn’t lose them. See, here they are and just fine. Just fine.”

He’s gone now.

Marmalade had found them. He clambered into her lap with Gillam, and he hugged the cat tightly.

“Gone?” she asked in wonder. “Gone where?”

Gillam spoke the cat’s thought aloud. “The bigger dogs chased him over the cliff’s edge.” He glanced back toward the returning men and observed sourly, “They took too long to get here. They were nearly too late.”

She let him keep the bag of candy and told him he might look at the new calves as long as he wanted if he sat on the top of the fence and did not go near them. The cat followed her as she walked toward the cottage. The three men were standing uncomfortably by the door. The oldest man leaned on a younger companion. “You are welcome to come in,” she said quietly as she walked through them and into her cottage. They followed her, awkward and silent. “Sit down,” she invited the older man. His face was grayish with sorrow. He sat on her chair heavily and then lowered his face into his hands.

“I thought I knew him,” he said quietly. “Three years he worked for me and courted my daughter. I thought I knew him. Never imagined he could do what he did.”

“Pell ran off the cliff himself,” one of the other men suddenly declared. “It was none of your doing, sir. He could have stood and explained himself and come back to town with us to tell his story to the council. He’s the one that ran right off the cliff. If the tide had been in, he might have survived. But not that fall onto the rocks.”

“It’s as much as he deserved,” the older man said quietly. “After what he did to my daughter. My pretty little Meddalee, flighty as a butterfly. She was thoughtless and willful true, but sweet Eda, she never deserved what he did to her.”

“You’re Meddalee’s father?” Rosemary asked him quietly. She kept to herself her opinion of what Meddalee might deserve.

“He is.” One of the other men answered for him. “And that bastard Pell killed his daughter last night. Must have crept on board and gone right to her room. Guess he thought that if he couldn’t have her, no one would! When we went to wake her this morning, her own father found her there in her bed. Face all slashed to ribbons and her throat cut, neat as pie.”

Light as a leaf, Marmalade floated to the sunny windowsill. He sank his claws deep into the wooden sill, stretched, and then sat. He lifted his paw to his mouth and began to wash.

“Shut up, Bell,” barked the other man, and the talker fell silent. Meddalee’s father groaned and hid his face deeper in his hands. “My little girl, my Meddalee,” he murmured. Rosemary stared silently at her cat.

“Are you all right, miss?” the other man asked her. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

She found her voice. She felt oddly calm as she gave them what he needed. “He threatened me. And came at me with that knife. It was a fancy one, made from Chalcedean steel, he said. He kept it sharp as a razor. But I think it was my boy he wanted to kill.”

“Crazy,” the first man muttered. “Man would have to be crazy to want to kill his own son.”

She nodded silently.

“We should get back to town,” the man named Bell suggested. “We need to tell the council what happened. And see to poor Meddalee.” He looked suddenly at Rosemary. “You seen what happened, didn’t you? How he broke from us and run right off the cliff?”

She hadn’t, but it was a small lie to pay for peace. “I did. It was no one’s fault, really.”

“Sir, you think you can walk that far? Sir?” Meddalee’s father slowly lifted his head. He nodded, and she almost felt sorry for the man as he left, leaning heavily on his captain’s arm. She watched them make the slow climb to the cliff top and then stood watching as they followed the cliff-top path back toward town. Marmalade came out and wound around her ankles. She watched Gillam sitting on the top rail of the fence, blissfully pulling another candy from the pouch. “Red!” he called, holding it up for her to see, and she nodded.

She looked down at the cat. “Don’t ever speak to me again. I don’t want to know.”

Marmalade didn’t answer her. He sat down and began to clean his claws more carefully.