15. Laurel
LAUREL
The moment I re-entered the castle, Walter ran up to me.
He was panting heavily, one gloved hand pressed to a stitch in his side, and his face had gone so pale beneath the flush of exertion that for one terrible moment I thought something must be wrong. “Are you all right?” he gasped. “I heard what happened. I was scared that… that…”
He looked so wildly panicked that my own heart gave a small, uneasy jump. “I’m fine now,” I assured him, lowering my voice so the servants passing behind us would not hear too much. “What did you hear?”
I wanted to know exactly what rumors were being spread. Servants’ quarters were faster than any royal messenger when it came to gossip.
“They said the new sheriff took you.” Walter looked me over, his eyes lingering on my hands, wrists, and neck as though searching for injuries. When he seemed to find nothing alarming, he let out a long breath of relief. “I thought… I just know he can be brutal. I was worried about you.”
“Thank you, Walter. You’re so sweet.” I patted his arm, careful to make my hand tremble just enough to be convincing. “It was pretty terrifying. He interrogated me for hours about what happened to the duke’s son. I couldn’t think straight by the end.”
“Was the duke’s son the one you were with yesterday?” Walter asked. His breathing was finally returning to normal, though concern still pinched his brow. “He looked like trouble. What happened?”
I gave a quick glance down the corridor, then leaned closer. “He was just drunk,” I whispered. “He could hardly walk straight and I tried to leave, but he followed me then he stumbled and fell down the stairs.”
Walter’s eyes widened.
“Anyway,” I finished with a helpless little shrug, “the duke claimed that I pushed him, so they put me in the stocks.”
“A girl like you push the duke’s son down the stairs?” Walter said incredulously.
I shook my head. “That’s what he said. I didn’t push him down the stairs, I promise, but the sheriff wasn’t going to believe a servant girl when a duke said something else. Just my rotten luck.” I gave a hearty sniff and lowered my gaze. “I never want to go back to the pillory. I was so scared.”
Walter’s face softened at once. “Don’t you fret. You just stay away from the sheriff and you will be all right. He’s a dangerous man.”
I nodded solemnly. “He does seem cruel, doesn’t he?”
“He is,” Walter said, and there was something in his voice that made me look at him a little more closely. His fear had not been the ordinary sort of fear servants had of their superiors. There was a note of certainty beneath it. “I know. He’s the kind of person who enjoys hurting others.”
My curiosity piqued. How was Walter so certain of Baron’s character? Had he heard stories about the former sheriff and assumed Baron was the same, or had something happened that Baron had never mentioned to me? “What do you mean?”
Walter glanced away, his mouth tightening. “Never you mind. It’s not for a lady’s ears. A nice girl like you doesn’t need to know.”
That was exactly the sort of answer that made me want to know everything, but before I could press him further, Aalis and her friend Gwendolyn came sprinting toward us.
Whatever rumors had spread through the servants’ quarters must have been horrific, because both girls looked positively terrified.
Aalis’s hair had come loose from its pins, and Gwendolyn was still clutching a cleaning cloth in one hand as if she had dropped everything and run the moment she heard I had returned.
“Izzy!” Aalis gasped. “Are you all right?”
“No, I died,” I said sarcastically. “Can’t you tell?”
Walter sniggered, but Aalis planted her hands on her hips and glared at me. “It’s no joking matter. The sheriff took you last night and put you in the stocks this morning. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “The duke fell down the stairs last night when he was drunk, and I was the only one who saw. But they couldn’t have visiting nobility getting injured with no punishment, so the sheriff put me in the stocks while the Austrians left. That was it.”
“What was he like?” Aalis asked anxiously.
I shuddered and hugged my arms around myself. “Horrible. He’s so big and I was worried he’d hurt me.”
Gwendolyn, a plump, cheery girl with curly blonde hair and kind blue eyes, gave me an encouraging smile. “You were so brave. When we heard about what happened, we all chipped in and did your work for today.”
I hadn’t expected that. For a moment, I could only stare at her. “Th… thank you,” I stammered.
The girls smiled at me, and Gwendolyn reached out to squeeze my hand. “We servants need to stick together.”
“I told Agnes I sent you for water when she came looking for you,” Walter added.
“And Aalis and I worked on your assigned barracks room,” Gwendolyn said. “You can rest today and recover.”
Something warm and uncomfortable pressed behind my ribs.
I was accustomed to loyalty from the Merry Men.
It had been earned through shared danger, shared hunger, and the knowledge that if one of us fell, the others had our back.
But this was different. These people barely knew me.
They thought I was just some frightened servant girl who had been caught in the path of a powerful man’s bad temper, and without being asked, they had protected me in the only ways they could.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said, and for once, it was true. “Thank you, everyone. You’re all good friends.” I had judged them all too harshly in the past. Even if they weren’t exactly like me, they were kind.
“You were a good friend to help me with Conrad yesterday,” Aalis said, her worry finally giving way to a shy smile. “It’s the least I can do.”
After the three of them returned to their duties, I stood in the corridor and considered what I wanted to do with the rest of my day.
There was no way I would be able to sneak into Prince John’s quarters after everything that had happened.
There would be too many eyes watching me, and the last thing I needed was for Isabella the punished servant girl to be found wandering where she had no business being.
Though now that I thought about it, I should have offered to help Gwendolyn with her work.
If I remembered correctly, she was the maid in charge of cleaning Prince John’s personal apartments.
That opportunity was lost for now, and I certainly didn’t want to spend the day hiding in the servants’ living quarters while everyone whispered about me.
The coin purse I had taken from Baron weighed heavily around my neck where I had tied it beneath my clothing.
The thought of it lifted my spirits at once.
I could take the ruined dress into the village to get it repaired or replaced, and if I happened to spend a little of the sheriff’s money while I was there, then so be it.
When Agnes came around the corner, I ducked out of sight, waited until she passed, then set off toward the village.
Being free from the musty castle was a blissful relief.
The air inside the walls always felt stale but outside, the warm spring breeze moved across my face, carrying the scent of grass, fresh mud, and cookfires from the village ahead.
I inhaled deeply and let my shoulders ease.
After the pillory, the shouting, the pretending to be broken, and the constant press of people watching me, it felt good to walk under the open sky.
A pointed, thatched roof came into view halfway along the walk, and I smiled at the memory of Sam and Tildy nursing my father and the rest of the Merry Men back to health.
Their cottage looked much the same as it had before, with herbs drying near the door and smoke curling up from the chimney.
However fond my memories were of the place, I had no desire to talk to Sam.
Or rather, I had no desire to listen to Sam prattle on for hours while I nodded politely and tried to escape.
Besides, it was safer if the few people who knew my real identity were kept in the dark.
The village center was bustling by the time I reached it.
Shops lined the main street, and shopkeepers called out eagerly, each one determined to convince passersby that their wares were the finest in all of England.
A woman sold ribbons from a basket looped over her arm while a young boy pushed through the crowd with a tray of small pies.
Chickens scattered beneath a cart, and somewhere nearby, a blacksmith’s hammer rang steadily against metal.
Most of the items held no interest for me. I had no use for silly things like tapestries or jewelry, but a rather impressive display of knives, however, caught my eye.
I wandered over and inspected them closely.
The blades were laid out on a cloth, some plain and practical while others had carved handles clearly meant to impress people who knew more about decoration than throwing.
Whereas the other shopkeepers had been trying to attract customers, the man whose stall I approached seemed distinctly unimpressed by my presence.
He glanced at my servant’s dress, then my face, then back to his knives with a look that made it painfully clear he didn’t think I had either the money to purchase his merchandise nor the skill to handle it.
“These are real weapons, miss, not toys,” he said grumpily.
I picked up one of the blades and turned it between my fingers, testing the weight.
“Careful,” he barked. “You could hurt yourself.”
I raised an eyebrow and set the knife back down. “The balance is off anyway.”
The shopkeeper rolled his eyes at me.
Annoyance pricked beneath my skin. Who was he to decide who should or shouldn’t have weapons? Men were always so quick to decide that sharp things belonged in their own hands and nowhere else.
“You’ve had your fun,” he said, making little shooing motions at me as if driving off a stray cat. “Now move along there.”