Piers closed his eyes for a long moment.
“Buying time until you can think of some way to trick me out of my girl’s ring?” Ira accused in a pained, growling voice from beyond Piers’s eyelids. The old man’s words grew louder, as if he leaned toward Piers. “My verylifewas stolen from me! All I can hope for now is a bit of peace in these woods in which we hide, and now this—the only thing that is left of the girl I loved so. One whom I betrayed and never had chance to make amends to.”
Piers opened his eyes. Ira was in the process of leaning back on his stool. His rapidly rising and falling chest and the steely glint in his eyes the only evidence of his fury.
“Would you tell me about her?”
Ira’s busy eyebrows drew downward, and his gaze flicked away to the floor.
“You have the ring,” Piers reasoned, trying to keep his raspy voice neutral. Nothing was certain yet. “You have said yourself that I am in no condition to take it from you. Tell me the story of this daughter you betrayed, and sayno names, no places. I must know the tale of a ring such as that one, which I thought to be mine by rights, less than a month ago, when it was given to me.”
“So now someonegaveyou the ring, and that’s how it came to be in your possession?” the man mocked.
“That’s right,” Piers said levelly.
“Who gave it to you?” Ira demanded.
“Tell your tale, old man. And at the end of it, I will answer you what you have asked me.”
“You only seek information so that you might justify your thievery.”
“You will tell me no names,” Piers reiterated. “Not even that of your daughter. ButIwill answeryouwith a name, and that is my solemn vow.”
Ira seemed to be debating Piers’s bargain in his head, and so Piers asked, “Does any other know this tale?”
“Not the whole of it,” Ira admitted quietly.
“Tell it,” Piers said.
Ira was quiet for a very long time before he finally began to speak.
“I came with … my girl, to”—he paused for a moment—“to a new manor with our village’s mistress. The lady was to marry the lord of the manor, and I was part of the bargain.” Ira tapped his gray temple. “My knowledge, for the farm. I was the best in the land. All the houses sought me, tried to buy me. My learning was worth more than this.” He patted his vest, and Piers suspected the signet ring lay inside, over the man’s tired old heart.
Ira clasped his hands in a loose fist and let them dangle between his knees as he stared at the floor and continued. “The new marriage was not a good one. The lady was a shrew, demanding—never content with all she had. The lord regretted his pact with her father before a moon had ripened over their marriage bed.
“I recall so clearly the day he saw … my daughter. We were in the barn, and she—not quite seventeen yet—was helping me with an animal what had took sick.” Ira’s eyes had flicked to Piers’s. “We thought we’d have to put the animal down, that mayhap the disease was a catching one, and so the lord come down to see himself. She was a beautiful girl.”
Ira was quiet for a moment. “The lord saw her comeliness right away, of course. He coaxed her into speaking to him—she was a shy one. Wouldn’t say geddoff to a flea. And she was taken by him, his title, his money, his attention to her, a poor man’s daughter.
“The lord gave her a position in the house, to attend his wife who had only just borne a child. I should have known then. I should have, and maybe I did, although I denied it to myself for far too long. By the time I realized what was going on beneath my very nose—and the lady’s nose, too—it was too late. My daughter was carrying his babe.”
“What happened?” Piers pressed.
“My daughter confessed. Came to me in tears because the lady had found out and banished her back to the village. My girl told me that she’d stood up to the woman, for two reasons: one, the lady was still in her childbed and unable to attack her, and two, my daughter was certain that the child her mistress had borne was not of her lover’s issue.”
“How could she know that?”
“While she was tending the woman in her childbed, my girl saw the babe had a mark on his chest,” Ira said bitterly. “One that neither the dam nor the lord shared. The lady bragged once that the babe’s sire might have signed him with ink, so surely was the child his issue.”
“Did the lord himself suspect that he’d been cuckolded?”
“My daughter never said. And she held her own opinion from him, not wishing to overstep her place.”
Piers winced. This tale was more painful than he had anticipated. “Go on.”
“I confronted the lord. I was mad with anger. I felt betrayed. Here was my girl, so young, so innocent, ruined by one of his station. He couldn’t have truly cared for her to have spoiled her for any other man who might have taken her for his wife.” Ira paused for a breath. “I tried to kill him. Would have probably succeeded too, had I not been drunk.”
“What did he do to you? The lord?”
