Chapter 4
Several weeks later York’s Sunday market was an organized muddle beneath a cloud swept sky.
Vendors raucously called out their wares, children squealed, buyers bargained, and farmers’ animals lowed, squawked, and squealed.
Stalls and tables, some sheltered by canvas, jostled for space with penned animals and pushing, gaping townsfolk.
Two fellows, who had obviously overimbibed at the ale- seller’s stall, were shouting insults at each other.
An enterprising housewife was selling hot broth to keep out the cold, and the cabbagy smell of it mingled with that of bread baking and meat roasting, and the underlying earthy odor of livestock.
The market opened every Sunday, selling the necessaries of life to the townsfolk and those who had traveled in from the countryside. For a time after William’s harrowing of the north, the market had been a sorry place indeed, but gradually, like York itself, it was rebuilding.
When Briar and Mary first arrived in York, they were two of the many performers who came here every Sunday to sing and play, and hopefully be thrown enough coins to buy their supper.
Briar smiled now at the memory, and felt her spirits lift for the first time in weeks.
She had been like a ghost, knowing she was worrying Mary and Jocelyn with her wane state, but refusing to discuss with them what ailed her.
Her pride prevented her, as well as the knowledge that she was being foolish.
And the niggling doubt that she may have imagined the whole thing.
He was in the north, fighting the Scots.
But at least he was alive!
Briar had overheard a conversation while performing in a York merchant’s home the night before.
“Radulf has put to flight the rebels who thought to make merry on his land,” one large and important- looking man announced, “and without the loss of even one of his own men!”
“The rebels were mainly Scots,” put in another, not willing to be thought less well informed.
“Then these Scots are either very brave or very foolish!”
Laughter erupted, but the merriment was soured by envy. Radulf was a great man, but not everyone liked a man who zoos greater than they.
Briar had not cared to dwell on the problems of being a great man.
She was too elated by what she had heard.
Ivo had told her he would return—she remembered his mouth on hers with an ache in her heart—but her experience with Filby had made her doubt him, and as time passed, she had doubted her memories of him more.
Besides, her hasty words as they parted had weighed heavily upon her.
There were nights since, when she had woken from bloody, fearsome dreams, where Ivo de Vessey lay dead upon the ground, his wonderful eyes dulled, his smile gone, his voice silent.
And then, her heart pounding, Briar would stare wide-eyed into the darkness, until dawn came to comfort her.
How could he have gotten into her mind so quickly, and yet so completely?
You are mine.
Even while she fought against such an arrogant belief on his part, Briar wondered whether it was not, in some way, so.
Perhaps the pleasure she had felt in the joining of their bodies, that hot, burning, bone-deep pleasure, had given him a special power over her? A power that no other man had ever had.
She wanted him back. It was an endless, aching yearning. And Briar knew she would do almost anything to see him again.
He had been right in that, too.
Her prayers since he left had been all for his safe return.
Briar and Mary wandered freely through the busy, noisy crowd, enjoying the fact that they had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sometimes, thought Briar, ‘twas a blessing to be poor. Because you didn’t matter, you became almost invisible, and being invisible certainly had its uses.
A nearby table was set out with leather goods, each carefully tooled.
A villainous-looking woman fixed her eyes on them, and instinctively Briar moved closer to her sister and urged her on to a fruit vendor’s stall.
Always a shy and timid girl, Mary had naturally leaned heavily upon Briar since their father’s death and their fall from grace.
Briar had gotten used to the role of Mary’s protector, of standing between her youngest sister and a harsh world.
She never complained of the burden. She loved her sister, and she did not for a moment consider Mary should do more to lighten the load. Without Mary, and the need to care for her, Briar was not sure she would have survived, even with her dark dream of vengeance.
Briar frowned and fingered a basket of very ripe wild plums, lifted a skeptical brow when the vendor named his price. “They are rotten,” she said flatly.
Five minutes later, she had haggled the price down considerably, and the two girls moved off with their bounty. Briar bit into one of the plums, and the juice spurted out and ran down her chin. With a giggle, Mary did the same.
“You drove a hard bargain with that man,” she ventured, but her dark eyes were sparkling.
“He was a badling. I gave him a fair price.”
Mary finished the plum and fastidiously licked her sticky fingers, drying them off on her worn kirtle. “You call every made a badling these days, Briar. There are some good men among the bad.”
“Pooh! They are all badlings and fleshmongers. Name one who is not, sister.”
Mary wrinkled her brow. “Odo. He is... was a good man.”
Briar laughed. “That was because Jocelyn would not allow him to be otherwise. Name me another.”
“What of the man who came to see you at Lord Shelborne’s? The man you sang to, Briar. Was he a badling and a fleshmonger?”
Briar blinked, wondering for a surprised moment whether her sister’s expression was really as innocent as it appeared. The doubt shocked her. What was she thinking? Mary was a child.
“He is the worst badling and fleshmonger I have ever met,” she said uncomfortably.
But Mary did not hear her; her fickle attention had been captured by something far more interesting. “Look, sister!”
Briar looked, while the dark, sweet syrup from the plum trickled down her pointed chin and stained the front of her coarse brown gown.
With her chestnut hair loose about her shoulders, and her feet bare, Briar felt like a young girl.
Gone was the world-weary woman who often dwelt in her heart.
A sense of optimism filled her, and she smiled when she saw the direction of Mary’s interest.
Her younger sister was gazing in rapture at a clothseller’s stall.
The man was clearly no York native, but one of the foreign merchants who had taken the journey to England in the hope of making a fortune.
Bolts of beautiful materials spilled over the wooden board, some so exquisite they were surely only fit for the highest in the land—or the highest in York, anyway.
The rolls of cloth were complemented by trays of ribbons, beads, and other trimmings.
York’s matrons were already gathering, like crows at a feast, eagerly discussing styles and colors, shouldering out the dreamers.
Briar followed after her sister. In her opinion, ‘twas not always good sense to wish for luxuries it was no longer in their power to obtain, but Mary was so entranced. And besides, Briar reminded herself, he was alive and she was happy. Why not pretend, just this once?
And then a length of green wool caught her eye, and it was no longer pretense.
The cloth was very dark. The deep, deep green of a pond, when you look into its secret depths.
And it was so soft and so fine—her fingers itched to stroke.
If she had a gown made of such stuff, Briar told herself, she could do anything.
Radulf would beg her pardon, the king would return Castle Kenton, Filby would grovel at her feet.
Indeed, the whole of York would be at her feet, bare or otherwise!
Ivo among them. Aye, especially Ivo!
Unthinking, Briar stretched out her hand to touch.
.. and caught the baleful eye of the clothseller.
He scowled at her. Clearly he thought she had the plague, at the very least!
Aye, and so she did, to him. She was poor; what would such a poor creature as she want with fine wool, if it was not to spoil it for others, or steal it to sell?
Briar knew that he would not hesitate to shout for help, and she would be fined.
Her spirits, which had been on the rise, plummeted.
“Come, sister, we are not wanted here,” she said, more sharply than she meant.
Mary sighed. “Do you think, one day, Briar, we might wear fine clothes again? I know it is wrong of me to long for such petty nonsense, when our other needs are so great, but sometimes I just cannot help it. If we had not once lived very differently from this, then I would not feel the lack, I am sure. But we did, and I do.”
There were tears in the younger girl’s eyes and, forgetting her stern demeanor, Briar gave her a quick, fierce hug. “ ‘Tis not wrong, and one day we will dress better than queens, you will see. That clothmonger will be begging us to touch his wares then.”
Mary smiled, as Briar had meant her to.
Hand in hand, they continued on through the crowded market, until Mary’s excited cry stopped them once more.
“Oh, Briar, look!” A pair of acrobats were performing, twisting and turning their slim bodies into bizarre shapes.
“As if they have no bones!” Mary gasped, clapping her hands.
They stood and watched, and again Briar put aside their many troubles and lost herself in her sister’s simple joy.
We are still alive, she told herself, that is the miracle. Despite all Radulf and Filby and the king have done to destroy us, the daughters of Richard Kenton remain.
And as long as she, Briar, was alive, those great men best beware!