Chapter Seven
Alys wondered if she would ever see daylight again.
It was hard traveling through the seemingly eternally dark forest, even in the wide wake of Piers’s crashing passage.
Each score of steps found one or both of them tripping, stumbling, or completely falling over some unseen obstacle.
Although the moon was still largely ripe, the thickness of the bare branches of the deciduous trees as well as the full and towering evergreens threw deceptive shadows on the tangle of forest floor, disguising downed limbs and rocks and burrows.
They had been walking for hours, and Alys’s feet and knees and buttocks ached.
Layla was an additional liability, riding atop Alys’s shoulder once more, but the monkey had refused in quite an impolite manner to continue the journey in the relative safety of Alys’s bag.
Even though the terrain was nearly impossible, she was glad they were not on the open road—the silent man she followed would have already left her far behind by now.
Alys Foxe had no desire to become separated from Piers, the dairy hand, or whatever he was, and she thought mayhap it had little to do with them being in the thickness of a dangerous forest.
He’d nearly kissed her in the briars near Fallstowe.
The way he had held her, his breathing going shallow and ragged, his arm tightening almost imperceptibly around her middle.
Alys had only been truly kissed once, by a lad from the village this past May Day, so it wasn’t as if she had much experience at it, but she had known when the young village man had been about to kiss her, and she had known tonight with Piers, although the two sensations had been worlds apart.
She’d wanted Piers to kiss her, and so in hindsight she thought that perhaps she should not have commented that he smelled like a farm animal.
But Alys had been honest when she’d said his scent was nice.
She spent much of her free time in the company of Fallstowe’s beasts and so the fragrances of barn and stable were comfortable friends to her.
Cows and horses did not stare at you coldly like Sybilla, or lecture you on brazen behavior like Cecily.
They were warm and calm and happy just to have someone nearby for company.
They didn’t mock you for wishing for adventure and variety outside of the stifling gray stones of Fallstowe, where the sad, empty space left by your mother’s death screamed at you.
They didn’t care that you were a Foxe. They didn’t care that you were a girl.
All they cared about was the stiff brush in your hand, or the oats in your apron pocket.
So now Alys knew that Piers worked a dairy. He was “mostly” common—whatever that could mean—and he was running away from Judith Angwedd of Gillwick Manor to see the king on a highly secretive mission.
Alys was completely charmed by her new husband.
And, with each tripping step, Layla bobbing along contentedly on her shoulder, Alys moved farther away from Sybilla, from Fallstowe, and from Clement Cobb. She could not have been happier.
Ahead of her, Piers stopped abruptly, and seemed to scrutinize the small clearing they had passed into.
A thick, naturally curved wall of briars footed by two large stones shielded the clearing from the north.
The ground sloped gently to the south, eventually rolling off in a shoulder into a black nothing. Alys assumed it was a ravine.
“This will do,” he said, and shrugged out of his pack.
“Thanks be to God,” Alys sighed and dropped her own bag.
Layla hopped down gamely and began worrying at the ties of the sack.
“I know, love. You’ll eat in just a moment.
” Alys took the time to stretch her arms above her head with a groan.
Her back was in knots. “Will we have a fire?” she asked Piers.
“No,” he said curtly. He pulled a long piece of cloth from his pack and wound it around his forearm to fashion a pillow of sorts, which he tossed against the seam of the boulders and ground. He sat, and began digging through his bag.
“Of course not.” Alys sighed and dropped to her knees, rescuing her own sack from Layla before the monkey had the drawstring in a hopeless snarl.
She reached inside and withdrew the last piece of fruit, an only slightly bruised pomegranate.
She held it for a long moment, thinking wistfully of the figs she’d handed up one at a time to the monkey while they had been on their way back to Fallstowe.
Her stomach gurgled and twisted around its emptiness, and Alys considered digging her thumbs into the fruit and dividing it in half.
But in the end she surrendered the juicy treat over to Layla, who sat back on her haunches and began to turn the fruit rapidly against her teeth.
Alys’s mouth watered at the slurping sounds, and so she moved her attention once more to Piers, who was tearing into a piece of foodstuffs of his own.
By the way his fist jerked away from his mouth, it was quite possibly saddle leather he was eating.
“Are you going to tell me why you are frightened of Judith Angwedd?” she asked.
“I’m not frightened of Judith Angwedd,” he said while he chewed. He fished a jug from his bag, released the cork with his teeth, and took a long, noisy drink.
“Then why are you running from her?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I simply need to reach London before she or Bevan does.”
“Why?”
He stopped chewing and stared hard at her, likely thinking to intimidate her into silence. Little did he know that Alys was well accustomed to hard stares, and they no longer affected her in the least.
She stared back, making her eyes wide and pulling her mouth down at the corners—a silly attempt to disrupt his solemnity. It failed, and she gave a frustrated huff. “If we are to be in this together, I would know exactly the danger we face.”
“We don’t face it. They’re behind us, for the time being.”
“Piers …”
“I don’t wish to talk about it tonight, Alys. I’m beyond tired and my head pains me, as does my hand, thanks to your idiotic monkey.”
“Must you be such a boor about the whole thing?” she exclaimed. He offered neither comment nor apology. “Alright then. Fine. I won’t ask you again.”
There was silence between them for several moments.
“You’d better eat if you’re going to,” he said at last, his tone carrying a bit of unease, as if he was not used to making conversation.
“I’m not very hungry,” she lied. “I had quite a large meal last night, remember?” Alys would have rather married Clement Cobb on the spot than remind Piers that the pomegranate Layla was now polishing off was the last piece of food she had.
He had already made it clear that he thought her a stupid girl and that he would not take responsibility for her. Alys would not ask him for food.
She chose not to think about what would become of her resolve in a day or more.
“How could I forget?” Piers said snidely. “It is beyond me still why you would choose to run away from a home and inheritance such as Fallstowe.”
“Of course it is beyond you, because you don’t know what it is like there,” Alys said, rummaging through her bag now for some sort of pillow of her own.
The only thing large enough to give her any comfort was the blue perse gown.
She wound it around her arm with a vengeful smile, thinking of the extravagant amount of money Sybilla had paid for it. “The castle is horrid; Sybilla, worse.”
“Oh, come now,” Piers scoffed, re-corking his jug and shoving it down in his bag. Alys wondered briefly if it contained wine. “What was it? Too much money? You couldn’t walk the corridors without tripping over a pile of it?”
Alys went still. “Don’t mock me, Piers. Everyone envies Fallstowe, and they think Sybilla the epitome of beauty, power, wealth, charm.
But my sister cares for no one save herself, her own advancement.
The retainment of her station as ruler of Fallstowe.
She would do anything, crush anyone, to keep hold of all she now has.
She would even deny our king. You can’t possibly know how vicious she is.
” She was horrified to hear her words thickening.
“I consider myself lucky to have escaped.”
He was quiet for a moment, and when next he spoke, his voice had changed, gentled. “It was bad for you?”
She nodded. “She … Sybilla tried to smother me.”
“My God,” Piers breathed. He was intent on her now, and Alys felt his appraisal like a warm wash of water. Gooseflesh sprang on her arms as he continued. “It was the same with me, with … with my stepbrother.”
Her eyes widened, and hope burst into her chest. “Is that why you work a dairy? Why you say you are only mostly common? Did you leave to escape your family?”
“No. My father sent me there,” he admitted.
“Oh!” Alys gasped. “That’s outrageous!”
“It was the best thing,” Piers assured her. “It likely saved my life. But what of you? I had no idea the Foxe family was such a den of treachery.”
He was not mocking her now, and so Alys was happy to continue the conversation.
“Sybilla has always been cool natured, from what I can remember of my earliest memories of her. But when mother fell ill some four years ago—stricken so that her right side was completely without use—Sybilla began receiving instruction to take our mother’s place.
‘Twas then that her evil found its head.”
“Power?” Piers guessed, sounding more interested in Alys than he had the entire time of their strange acquaintance.
“Indeed. Power and status. And she exercises both well.” Alys dropped her eyes to her lap, picking at the folds of her gown. “After Mother died … Sybilla became less than human. Bitter. Demanding. I was a trouble to her, and so she sought a way to put end to me disrupting her cool order of things.”
“Jesus. Little wonder you were so eager to escape.” He leaned forward a bit. “What did she use?”