He frowned at her and considered taking the bag back by force. He also considered strangling her. But the first would only assure him that he would be followed and have an audience for his bath, and he was not capable ofthe second, although right at that moment he was quite willing. So he simply jerked his shirt free.
“‘Tis naught but a clean shirt,” he said, shaking it at her before turning and beginning to walk along the riverbank, and continuing to rail at her. “I’m not going to ride it to London, for Christ’s sake! Just afford me a bit of privacy, would you? And take care with my pack.”
“Gladly!” she called after him. “Don’t miss me too much! Enjoy your ‘private moment!’”
Piers winced and turned to shout back at her, “You’re quite crude for a girl, do you know?”
She smiled and waved and then turned to scramble up the bank to the rock overhang.
“I might be a bit,” he called loudly. “Don’t worry.”
She threw up a careless hand, indicating that she had heard him, but didn’t bother to look at him this time.
Piers missed her already.
It didn’t take Alys long to set up her part of the primitive camp. She had nothing to unpack. The sounds of the river below swirled inside the mock cave with a hollow echo, and she dropped her bag near the back of the overhang, where the dirt was bone dry and soft like flour. She tossed Piers’s pack next to hers, and then a moment later fell upon it, ripping at the ties. She leaned back once, looking down the river for sight of him. She saw none, so she turned her attention back to the pack, jerking it open fully.
She tried simply rifling through the contents, but they were jumbled together in the shadows of the deep leather bag, and so she finally resigned to pulling them out one by one and setting them on the ground.
A small roll of what looked like old, clean but stained,bandages. His brown jug—she shook it, and at the watery rattle, uncorked it and turned it up. The droplets tasted faintly of soured wine, and Alys wondered how long it had been since the jug had contained proper fruit. Her tongue was barely moistened, but the jug was now emptied of all but air, and so she recorked it and set it in the dirt.
The remaining items were of even less interest: a small pouch containing a flint and steel; a pair of woolen hose that looked at if they had been half eaten by a wolf, and stained the same terrible brown as the bandages. Those she dropped into a pile with a wrinkle of her nose. Two sheathed blades emerged next—one large and serrated, the other slender and fine-edged, but both looked potentially deadly. A piece of oilcloth that contained naught but the strong smell of herring and a few pebbles of old, brown bread. Alys quickly popped the crumbs into her mouth.
A small, carved wooden bowl, and a crudely fashioned cross on a string of rough wooden beads rounded out the contents. Alys grinned at the cross—it must be a part of his poorly executed costume that he’d elected to forgo. Perhaps Piers feared God would strike him dead should he wear it, the liar.
Alys looked around her at the meager collection of items from the pack. Nothing. Not one piece of anything that gave her the tiniest insight to the enigmatic man she traveled with. She knew that her sister, Cecily, would be horrified to learn that Alys had gone through another’s belongings without their permission, but Piers was obviously in a desperate situation, and Alys meant to help him, whether he wanted her to or nay.
She paused as the thought reminded her of something Sybilla might say, but then Alys pushed the uncomfortableidea away, reassuring herself that she was nothing like her eldest sister.
She began returning the items to the pack with a sigh. She would have to depend on what Piers deigned to tell her. At the rate they were going, she might know his surname by London.
Alys was reaching for the only thing left—the roll of bandages—when Layla scampered over and snatched up the old ball of cloth and began to worry at it.
“It’s no toy, Layla, give it over.” Alys leaned forward and swiped at the monkey’s hands, snagging the end of the bandage in her fingertips. “Give it, before he comes back and we’re both caught.”
Layla chattered indignantly and threw the ball forcefully at Alys. It bounced off of her cheek and to the ground, unrolling like a skinny rug as she held on to its end. As the last bit unfurled, it spit a small golden object onto the dirt.
After an instant of disbelief, Alys raced the monkey to the piece and snatched it up just as Layla screamed with frustration.
“Oh, stop,” she muttered, holding the golden thing between her thumb and forefinger and peering at it.
It was a ring, made of thick, hammered gold. At its center was a dark, oval carnelian stone, engraved with a bold letter M.
“Em,” Alys mused aloud. “Mallory, perhaps? But why would Piers have the Mallory signet ring? Bevan was Warin Mallory’s only son.”
Don’t be so certain.
Alys frowned at Layla, working out the riddle aloud. “Judith Angwedd is not Piers’s mother. Bevan is his stepbrother, and Bevan tried to kill Piers. Piers alluded to the fact that Bevan was not Warin Mallory’s only—oh!” Alysgasped and Layla chattered nervously. “Piers is Mallory’s son, as well! But, then Bevan would be his half brother, not step. And ‘tis obvious that ugly oaf is of Judith Angwedd’s issue. Bevan would only be Pier’s stepbrother if Piers was Warin Mallory’s son and …and Bevan was not!”
Alys let her hand holding the ring drop to her lap as her mouth hung open. She continued to advise Layla, who was now sitting on her heels with both small hands over her eyes.
“Piers is on his way to see the king, and Judith Angwedd and Bevan are desperate to stop him, even to see him dead. It all makes sense now! Piers is trying to take Gillwick from Bevan!Piers is the rightful lord of Gillwick Manor!”
Alys’s breath huffed out of her disbelievingly as Layla scampered away to sit atop their bag and worry at the fur over one knee, as if the monkey was trying to ignore her. Alys looked down at the ring once more.
“He is noble,” she whispered. “Sybillawouldallow it.” Her head turned, and she stared down the river where Piers had disappeared. “I knew the Foxe Ring couldn’t be wrong.”
Then she hurriedly gathered up the string of bandage and rewrapped the ring, shoving it deep into the bottom of the pack once more. She retied the flap closed and placed the pack in what she hoped was a nonchalant position against her own limp bag. She adjusted its slouch twice for effect.
