“Ah, she was the hag’s girl,” said a third man. “You weren’t here then. The lord and the father nearly burned her with the old Tintarian.”
“Spell craft? Pagan worship?” asked the first man.
“She and the hag both have practiced a witch’s way. The hag more so. But Father Starling will find that woman out one day. You watch. He just needs evidence enough to convince the lord. She and the old woman used to kill babes, take them right from women’s wombs.”
“Surely not. Such evil. Is she favored by the lord? Does he swive her?”
I blanched, crouching in the dark a few horse lengths away, eyes roaming the ground where the torchlight was cast, looking for a direction that would be safest to leave by. I just needed to get away from the keep before I righted my paths. I had several tins of mother’s moss on me, and I could not be found with them.
“No, but the younger son used to bed her, they say,” the third man said.
“And he’s married to the sister now,” added the second man.
“Good for him, I say,” jested the third man. “They’re both comely.”
“But the darker-haired one is a witch,” the first man protested.
The other two men laughed and the third man said, “You can always burn a witchafteryou’ve had some fun with her.”
Their laughter covered the sound of my retreating steps.
“They called you Sibbereen, but they don’t know you’re onlyhalf,” I said to Zara when I had returned to the farmhouse and visited her in the stable. “Your dam must have been very pretty, though.”
She blinked.
I imagined she felt a little put out when I left the farm without her. “And I appreciate how you help me be identified as something that isn’t rude,” I continued. “Better ‘woman with the big white Sibbereen’ than just ‘that forager woman,’ and certainly better than ‘the heathen Miller twin,’ ‘the hag’s girl,’ or that other name they like to use.”
Murderer.
V
DANGER
55
NOW: GRISTON
Our place in the caravan was closer to the back than the front. From nearly a season’s worth of being on the road, we ascertained that the larger portion of the infantry and cavalry traveled up front, with the last of them guarding the rear. In between were about six hundred wagons carrying Carver and Sheridan families. As wagon four hundred and twenty-three, we were towards the end of the caravan, though there were still a lot of the pilgrims and soldiers behind us.
Which was why the constant appearance of the lord’s oldest son and the captain of the entire traveling army was not only concerning, but easily noticed. Either Bertram or Gerard now rode by with regularity, their eyes cast on our wagon.
“It chaps Gerard’s ass that I am dead but still alive and here on this expedition of insanity,” Ilsit proclaimed over her half a potato one night.
“It chapsmyass that either of them fixates on us,” Tessa said.
“Thank the gods for Evangeline,” said Jade. “It gives me peace of mind to know she will visit each day.”
“Except it’s not each day,” said Ilsit, winking at Jade and then me. “Those brothers, the two scouts—what are their names again?” Her question was not asked in seriousness. She knew their names. “Oh, yes, Keir with the braid and Reed with the eye patch. They visit too.”
Jade smiled and refused to react to Ilsit’s taunt.
As does the big, tattooed Helmsman, signed Fox.I like him.
“He’s very pleasant and often funny,” I agreed.
Tessa made ahmmnoise while she stoked the small campfire and smiled at Ilsit. “You know who Robbie really thinks is funny? The one-eyed man. She laughs like she’s Fox’s age around him.”
Fox shot her a dark look.
