Minstrel's Staff by Joyce Holt

Author:Joyce Holt [Holt, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

24 – More Than Half Guilty

"Are there no girls in the village?" Gwen asked Orella the next morning in the smithy.

Brenna's mother knelt by the bellows, stitching a rip. "Girls? Of course."

"I didn't see a single one yesterday."

"They learn early to hide when strangers come around. There's safety in silence."

"But why—" Gwen cut off. The behavior of the Norman soldiers and the Flemish weavers gave a sure enough answer. "Even in childhood?" she asked.

Orella looked up, her gaze dark with resigned disgust. "Normans are not known for compassion to their serfs." She rubbed beeswax to seal her stitches.

Poor lasses, Gwen thought. To spend all their lives like bogans. Small and unseen. Unbearable.

Trystan lugged a clinking bucket from the barn. "All the scrap iron they could spare. Nails, harness bits, a couple worn horseshoes." He dumped his loot into a barrel of other iron oddments left in the smithy. "How is the training going?"

"Three with promise. I'll send the others off to work on the palisade today. Still no overlooked sword uncovered in the debris?"

At the shake of his head she showed him the wooden weft beater, now nicked and chipped on both edges.

He laughed. "Might last another day!"

As she strode down the hill to her waiting students, Gwen passed an ox-team trudging uphill, heading for the wooded ridge – fetching timber for the palisade. The thought of a Bryt-style hillfort brought a grin. Just what this world needed. A taste of the way things were.

Today during practice, Gwen caught sight of two Angul girls, skittish as bogans. Only one met her gaze. Gwen sent a quick wink and a grin.

The lass blushed and vanished behind a hut.

Gwen blinked at thought of Adele's blushes. Did even the Norman lasses need to hide from menfolk? How far downhill this world had slipped!

* * *

Three times that day and twice the next, their lookout came galloping back to Churngill from the Roman road, claiming the reeve's men were coming. Each time it turned out a false alarm. The serf had spotted no worse threat than tinkers and traveling monks.

Wilhelm the chamberlain berated the fool and sent him to help finish digging the trench for the palisade. He himself rode back out to keep watch on travelers.

The chamberlain had always served as the lady's voice in the village, it appeared. Now on the third day of preparations for defense she came out herself, making her stately way down the hill, hoisting her fine linen skirts clear of the lane's dust and mud.

Druet cried a summons, and the serfs gathered from their tasks to the heart of the village. Gwen sheathed her sword and stood shoulder to shoulder with her best pupil, Dudda. She had already learned that he had wits as sharp as his name was dull. Quick reflexes, nimble feet, a glint in his eye whenever she slipped a pun into her instructions.

By now she had also learned that Lady Matillis had dwelled here at Churngill more than half her life, minding her own lofty pursuits with hardly a glance down at the folk who labored to support her.

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