Chapter V

Wren

Of all the days to resume wearing a dress, this was the worst. I looked up into the spreading branches of an apple tree and grimaced. If I still wore my trousers, climbing up to fetch the unblemished fruit from the branches would be easy work. However, I wasn’t able to do that decently in a skirt. Even if I tucked up the skirt, I would show off a lot of bare leg to anyone who happened to walk under my tree. I looked down at my empty bushel basket and debated doing just that.

“Need some help?” Arthus called as he strode down the row toward me. Under one arm, his good one, he carried a ladder. “Tourth sent me to assist you. He said I might find you up the tree already with your skirt about your knees.”

“It is a tempting thought,” I agreed. “However, I do have some sense of decorum.”

Arthus laughed as he lowered the ladder awkwardly to the ground. “I am sorry I have to say this, but it needs to be said. I can’t lift the ladder for you.” He pointed with his chin to his still bandaged shoulder. “I might have over done it with that demonstration of strength this morning.”

He had fetched the water for breakfast to prove that he was well enough to come with us on our next harvesting trip. It was the only way he was going to get out from under Kat’s watchful eye.

“I think I can manage it for you,” I offered. “Are you going to attempt to climb and pick as well?”

“Oh, no, the ladder is for you. I am here for the ladder, to make sure it doesn’t shift beneath you.”

“The others are not using ladders?”

“They are. They just don’t get a ladder assistant.”

I couldn’t hold back the smile that wanted out. “I thank you then.”

Together, we leaned the ladder up against the nearest tree. Arthus held it steady as I climbed. Once I reached the bottom branch and the first batch of apples, I gathered my apron end, looping it into the apron ties to make a temporary sack to carry my harvest. Arthus watched all of this with great interest.

“You have done this before?”

“Yes, many times.” I reached for the first fruit. As my fingers closed around the firm red orb, I smiled. “And you?”

“First time.” He shifted his hold on the ladder, securing it in the curve of his good shoulder and glanced down the way toward the caretaker’s cottage. “If you had told me five years ago that I would be playing the farmer, I would have called you a fool. I was convinced I was destined for greater things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I would have told you that by thirty, I would have attended university, graduated with honors, and published at least one book of poetry.”

I almost dropped the apple in my hand. “Poetry?” I shifted on the ladder in order to look down at his tousled head.

“Aye. I thought I had a gift.”

“What stopped you?”

He sighed and replied, “The harsh truth that I have no talent for poetry. Although, I can analyze, savor, explain, and completely adore a beautifully formed verse of the stuff, I cannot write any worth selling if my life depended on it. And, at the time it did. I was literally starving for lack of decent words.”

“Coming down,” I warned and began to descend the ladder with my laden apron.

“So,” he continued, “I did what any starving man who has just realized his life dream is unattainable. I joined the army.”

I straightened from unloading my apples to scrutinize him seriously. Although he had the soulful look of a poet, standing there with his rumbled shirt, tussled hair, roughly shaven cheek, and languishing attitude, I found myself pretty convinced that he was playing a joke on me.

“You don’t believe me. See, I told Dardon that it wouldn’t work. He didn’t believe me.”

“So, how much of what you just told me is false?”

He looked genuinely ashamed. “About half. I do love the written word, I can’t turn a phrase, and I was starving before I enlisted.”

“You were doing pretty well just now,” I pointed out as I moved back up the ladder.

“Ah, but you haven’t seen it on paper. All I have to do is try to write the words onto the page and they turn wooden, clumsy, and awkward. I am much more skillful with the sword.”

“So I would guess considering you are still alive.” I reached for a particularly farfetched prize and asked the question that I had been mulling for a while. “How did you, Svhen, and Dardon get involved with living here?”

Arthus laughed a mirthless bark. “It was all the doing of Orac, if you must know. Not just the war, but Orac himself.” I shot him a look under my arm. “Although I enlisted in the army because I needed food, clothing and a way to earn my keep, Dardon and Svhen were two different stories. Dardon was a silversmith before the war, and a…” Arthus bit off the swear word before it left his tongue. “Pardon. He was quite a master. That is, he was until Orac’s men came through his village, killed his partner, and burned down his forge. That was why he joined up, to get even. Then when we lost, he had nothing.”

I brought down another load and remounted the ladder before he finally got to Svhen’s tale. “Old Svhen is an old master at war. Do you know how many wars he has fought in? Seven. Mercenary by trade, he decided that this war was going to be his last. Informed Tourth that he intended to go out fighting, and then our side surrendered. It took a pretty bit of fast and persuasive work on Tourth’s part, but he convinced him that life in the Mynth family’s employ was better than charging Orac’s castle.

“Of course, that all changed when we got here. The keep gone, the lord and his wife murdered, and Kat living on the charity of friends, it nearly broke Tourth. I had no where to go, but even if I had, I wouldn’t have left him like that.” Arthus cleared his throat uncomfortably and coughed. After an uncomfortable silence, he asked, “So, what brings you here?”

“Winter,” I replied as I descended with another load. “I didn’t fancy the thought of spending it out in the open this year. I wanted a roof over my head on snowy nights.”

I could sense Arthus’ unspoken questions as he sorted through them to decide which to ask next. I also suspected that Tourth had supplied some of them himself. My ladder-holder was just getting up the courage to try another one on me when a voice made us both pause.

“Ho, there, man.” A large armed man appeared strolling through the trees, his chain mail glinting in the sun speckled shadows. “I am looking for a man named Joanor, the man who works this orchard. Orac’s Enforcer wishes to speak with him.”

“I believe he is up at the cottage at the far end of the field,” Arthus offered quickly.

The soldier strode off in the direction Arthus had indicated with barely a glance in my direction. I watched him through the tree branches until he was out of sight.

“I don’t know about you,” Arthus said, “but this looks mighty suspicious. Isn’t this the second time that the Enforcer’s men stopped while we were working in for a farmer?”

I nodded. “Perhaps we should speak with Tourth.”

“I think we should.”

I descended the ladder and picked up the bushel of apples I had already picked. Arthus managed to lower and carry the ladder. Switching rows, we started off toward where Arthus said he had last seen Tourth.

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Tourth

I was working on my second bushel when I heard someone approach the tree. I looked down to find both Arthus and Wren looking up at me. I half expected Arthus to announce that Wren had miraculously finished her assignment.

“Orac’s Enforcer and his men have showed up again,” he announced. “We are wondering if we should make ourselves scarce. Do you think Joanor will give us away?”

I scrambled down, jumping to the ground, and deposited my current load in the bushel bin. “I would prefer speaking to Joanor or his son first.”

“You can’t be thinking to walk right up to the house and asking,” Arthus protested. “What if the Enforcer is there? What if he sees you?”

He had a point. I was about to suggest that Arthus go and investigate when Wren spoke up.

“Let me go,” she volunteered. “I am not known around here.”

“But the Enforcer’s deputy spoke with you yesterday.”

She shrugged. “Then he won’t think anything amiss in seeing me again today. I am a common laborer, hardly worth his notice.”

“You don’t look like a common laborer,” Arthus pointed out. “You walk like a woman accustomed to a different life. And,” he indicated her squared shoulders, “You don’t carry yourself like a woman.”

“Let me deal with that,” she retorted, and then turned to me. “So, shall I investigate for you?”

I nodded. There was no harm in it. She had a good point about her anonymity. She had nothing to fear from the Enforcer and his men except the usual things women feared about a man’s attention. Wren of all the women I had met was the most equipped to handle that kind of interest. Unlike Arthus, I had witnessed her performance yesterday.

“What do you need to know?”

“Just what the men wanted with Joanor.”

She nodded, propped her bushel on her hip, and started to walk toward the orchard keeper’s cottage. With each step, her gait and manner changed, slowly fading into the image one would expect to see in any field laborer or farmer’s daughter. Arthus watched in amazement until she disappeared from view.

“You knew that she could do that,” he accused. “You let me make a fool of myself pointing out how she didn’t fit the role.”

I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my mouth. “Of course I knew. You should have seen the act she put on for the enforcer’s men yesterday when they called her over for wearing trousers.”

“So, that is why she has the dress today.”

I nodded. “If any of us can do it, I am quite confident she will.”

When she returned, two hours later, the humble manner of a servant was gone. She strode down the lane between the trees, her skirt whipping her legs, and planted her feet at the foot of my tree. Crossing her arms over her chest, she waited in silence while I climbed down to meet her.

“The Enforcer is raising the tax due at the end of the quarter and demanding another day’s work from every man this winter. The Joanor’s wife is beside herself with hysterics. It took me a good hour to calm her down before it was safe to leave her alone.”

“What do you mean, leave her alone. Where is Joanor?”

The Enforcer’s demand begins today. His deputy came to escort him to the work site and informed Joanor’s wife that he won’t return until tomorrow morning. He mentioned something about a curfew and Joanor being released too late to make it home before it.”

A curfew. I frowned. It wasn’t as though we went about much after dark anyway, but when we did, we were going to have to be more cautious than ever. It was also going to make shopping in the village riskier. I was used to slipping in under the cover of darkness to visit the storekeeper. But now, I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to manage it. Kat would still need flour and oil for her bread and there were other basics we would need.

“I thought these people were your tenants?”

I nodded absently. “They were my father’s tenants, and thus mine. I have been trying to help them anyway I can.”

“So, if you were to claim your rightful place as Lord Mynth, Orac’s Enforcer would have no authority to tax and demand work from these men?” She was frowning up at me, every inch of her small frame held in check and anger glinting in her eyes.

“That is not an option. It is too complicated to explain why, but it is.”

Her strange changing eyes, now more gold than anything else, studied me carefully. I actually felt a little uncomfortable under their concentrated gaze. “If you don’t mind, I would love to understand. Could you explain it to me sometime?” Her voice was calm and sounded almost friendly despite the obvious anger of a moment before.

I blinked and nodded. “I have no problem explain it for you. We just don’t have the time now.”

She nodded. “Did you see where Arthus went with the ladder?”

I pointed in the direction I had last seen him, and she strode off that way. I watched her go. She was a strange puzzled of control and spirit. But the question that burned in my mind was whether or not I could trust her.

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Wren Romany - © 2009 Rachel Rossano