Three
Like any worthy royal concubine, she was a warrior, for a king’s fealty could only be won by battling the certitude that goes hand in hand with unfettered power.
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
“Arrrgh!”
Susannah swung her scythe, and the slithering serpent-sorcerer hissed and died. She kept moving forward as hot, green blood burst out of the horrible thing.
“Arrrgh!”
Now she was clearing away the evil fiend’s minions who kept popping up to plague her.
“Arrrgh!”
Making the sound gave more strength to the slash of her scythe and helped her forget her arms and waist ached, her throat burned with thirst, her skin dripped with sweat.
She stopped, panting. She was near one of the ancient standing stones in the churchyard and might hit the scythe onthe stone if she kept on. She had worked too hard at sharpening the blade this morning to risk putting a nick in it now. Yes, she was out of breath, but that was not the reason she needed to stop. Not at all.
She leaned the scythe against the stone and dropped to her knees and started cutting the clumps of grass with her sickle.
“Pardon, madam.”
It was an unfamiliar voice, cool and flat and clipped. She looked up and into brightness. She shaded her eyes with her hand, but, even with that and the brim of her bonnet, she couldn’t see anyone.
A tall figure moved and blocked the sun.
Still partly blinded, she could make out only the silhouette of a man. Tall, yes, but not outrageously so. Certainly not so tall as her brother Dando. Admirable shoulders and a tidy waist. A beaver in his hand at his side. She squinted and saw buff breeches, gleaming riding boots.
Again came the cool voice, the precise words. “I seek the parson. Or someone who can show me the church register.”
She stood, determined not to use the stone to help pull herself up. Oof. Every year, it was a little more difficult to get off the ground.
This was what she had to look forward to—a slow decline in her powers. It was funny how one started out getting stronger and more skillful with each passing year until there was some invisible turning point, and then one became weaker and weaker, less and less capable.
No, it wasn’t funny. But it wasn’t sad, either. It justwas. The old had to make way for the young, and it did no good to resent becoming old.
Even though she wasn’t nearly done being young.
Susannah noticed then that the stranger with the beautiful boots and the admirable shoulders had extended a gloved hand to help her. How kind. But she was already up, so she shookher head and bobbed a curtsy and twisted her own filthy hands into her apron. She’d forgotten her gloves, as usual.
He tilted his head down in a small bow of acknowledgement, and she saw his hair was golden and unfashionably short. But fashion might have chopped and changed in far-off places like London, and Susannah would have no way of knowing, not ever having been to London herself. In Much Wemby, men still wore their hair long, perhaps not long enough for the queues of the last century, but still longish, curling around their ears, and her own brother’s hair was almost leonine in its fullness and length, touching his shoulders.
Perhaps Susannah should cut Dando’s hair shorter.
The man standing before her raised his cropped, golden head and replaced his beaver, and, as he did so, he revealed himself to be a startlingly handsome man of middle age.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
What else could one say when faced with a startlingly handsome man? She had no business being tongue-tied, having spent her whole life around Ned Greenway, but she was accustomed to Ned’s beauty, and this man’s handsomeness was new and . . . startling.
“The parson,” the man said.
“I . . .”
His blue eyes jinked around the churchyard, likely looking for some sensible person to come and rescue him. He had almost certainly decided she was simple, and she couldn’t blame him as she had done nothing to show him she wasn’t.
“No parson,” she blurted and started walking rapidly towards the far end of the churchyard. She beckoned at the man to follow her because what he would see there would explain things far better than she seemed able to do right now.
