“He showed me great mercy,” Ira admitted quietly. “He could have had me put to death, but he only banished me from the town. He showed me mercy, but my daughter did not. She was much aggrieved with me that I had tried to kill the man she loved, the father of her unborn babe. I begged her to leave with me, but she would not.”
“She stayed?”
Ira nodded. “She didn’t care that she had been put to the village in shame. It was enough for her to be close to him, the little fool. He gave her a cottage, sent care for her when the child came. A lad. My grandson.”
“How do you know this if you were banned from the town?” Piers asked.
Ira frowned. “I had my friends, those who would look after her and send word. She was angry at me still for what I had tried to do. Mayhap she thought that if I had only held my temper … I don’t know what she thought. The lord had her this ring made when the lad was born.” He touched his chest again. “As much as I know, she wore it until the day she died.”
“How did she die?”
Ira shrugged. “Illness. I was told the lad caught it too,and so ‘twas the end of both of them at once. And the end to my fancy that one day I would have them both back. Likely the bitch that ruled there was mightily pleased, though.”
“I’m quite certain she was.”
Ira looked up at Piers as if just now realizing he spoke to a man in the present. His face, which had grown haggard and sad during his tale, hardened into its previously callous façade.
“So that’s my tale, although what good the telling of it is to you, I cannot say.” He stared at him. “So now, tell me the name you promised—who gave you my daughter’s ring? I would have thought she took it to her grave.”
Piers tried to take a deep breath, but he couldn’t force his lungs to fill. His chest seemed cut in two with anger, and sorrow, and longing …
And hope.
“My”—he had to clear his throat—“my father. He gave it to me.”
“Did he steal it?” Ira accused suspiciously. “Want you to sell it in London?”
Piers shook his head. “No. He gave it to me the night he died. Told me to take it to the king, to prove what was due me. What I have been wrongfully denied all the thirty years of my life.”
Ira grew still, and Piers thought the wind beyond the hut’s leather walls seemed very loud. The old man waited, waited.
Piers swallowed, but it did little to smooth the hoarseness of his next words. “My father, the man who gave me that ring …”
Ira started to shake his head.
“His name was Warin Mallory.”
Chapter 17
Alys and Piers had been in the woodland town for six days, and in that time a thick snow had steadily fallen—more snow than even Ira said he could ever recall seeing in his long life. Piers’s health had steadily improved, almost it seemed, with each depth of snow that built on the ground and huts and tree houses. If the village had been hard to see before, now it was nearly invisible unless you looked up. The trees seemed pregnant with large, snowy nests, and smoke from the necessary braziers within the sleeping quarters seemed to mingle with the cold fog.
Alys thought it must truly be a magical place, filled with magical people. It was the only explanation for the change in Piers, both physically and mentally. He had called to her as he’d promised he would, after meeting with the old man, Ira. And although he’d had little to say about what the two had discussed, he’d held Alys’s hand for a long time, the two of them only sitting quietly together high in the tree. It had seemed to Alys to be a threshold, a turning point in her relationship with Piers, in which she had changed from an unwelcome burden tovalued companion. Alys could not lay finger to the exact moment or cause for it to happen, but happened it had and she would not question it.
As for Ira’s attitude toward her, he made no move to throw her from the town again, which was a great improvement, although he seemed to treat her with an even greater sense of distrust than before. He spent many hours with Piers, alone in the tree house during and after his treatments with Linny, but he rarely spoke directly to Alys. Sometimes she caught him watching her from across a fire or from the heights of Piers’s sleeping quarters. He stared at her intently, and with a hostility that was almost palpable.
Alys put the old man from her mind, and turned her attention fully once more to the dough she was kneading. Ella and Tiny flanked her at the narrow workbench inside of one of the ground huts, and the little shelter was humid with the musky smell of yeast and spice. Layla was occupied on a high shelf and worrying at a ball of twine Tiny had knotted into a piece of old cloth. Tonight there would be a feast—Piers would join Alys and the rest of the town in the celebration. She knew it was to be his own test, to see if he was strong enough to leave the town and carry on to London. They would have supplies this time, and be rested as they could be. Piers had guessed with Ira’s direction that they could reach the king in two days.
As if reading her mind, Ella spoke. “You’ll be leaving us on the morrow, then?”
Alys nodded and then smiled at Tiny’s sad whimper. “I shall miss you all so. I feel as if I’ve lived here for years.”
“You don’t have to go,” Tiny said. “You could stay here with us. No one would ever find you, and you’d never have to marry that ghastly lord.”
Alys reached out her arm and stroked Tiny’s cheekwith the back of her wrist—the only part of her hand not completely covered with dough and flour. “I can’t, love. Piers has something important he must do in London, and then I must return home, at least for a little while. I have worried my family terribly, I’m afraid. As much as I would love to pretend that the betrothal never happened, my sister gave her word, and I must try to help her find a solution that will please everyone involved. I only hope it does not cost her as dearly as I fear it will.”
“Will you marry Piers instead?” Tiny asked with a mischievous grin.
Alys dropped her eyes back to the workbench and shrugged, trying to contain her smile. “One can never know.”
