Chapter Forty-Five. Only One of Me.
Forty-Five
Only One of Me.
“No, no, you stay with your Lena and the baby. We will be all right.”
I’m standing by the shop’s exit, and I’m in a set of red felt women’s clothes. The bell skirt and jacket are surprisingly soft and lightweight, but the warmth I expected. There’s even an inner pocket for the gold.
With all the blood on my own clothes—Julion’s, rather—I couldn’t go back to the lodging house without attracting unwanted attention, and we’ve bundled everything in a sack. The hospitality doesn’t want to end there, however. Ronl is worrying over us, trying to press food in our hands.
“No more,” Merc tells him as he puts a hand on that shoulder in a very different way. “Worry after your wife and daughter.”
It’s the same gesture we started with, but the four of us have become intimates of a sort.
I will say that Ronl’s obvious gratitude is nothing I’m used to, and my guarded heart reminds me that tomorrow, neither he nor his wife will know me again.
That’s always the way with my efforts, whether I use my illicit gifts or not.
So I drink this favorable regard up, and hold it close.
“Wait, wait, you needed something.” Ronl motions about his shop. “You came here for a reason, you asked for things. You must take whatever you require. Please.”
I cradle my injured forearm to my chest, and take a last glance around. I used all of the purpa and turtine on Lena, and the roships does nothing if not in concert with the other two. The rest of what’s on offer I’m not sufficiently sure of, and I can’t take risks of poisoning myself.
“What may I get you?” Ronl goes to the folded paper bags by the register of cash. “There is much here—I could ask Lena—”
“No, no, you let her rest.” Then something occurs to me. “Although … I don’t suppose you have any soap—”
“Yes! Yes, for to clean the skin?”
Ronl wheels away and all but runs back for his kitchen. He returns in a moment with a full bar that smells like the poultice I was going to make.
“Lena uses this on wounds.” At the main counter, he puts the soap in a wax bag and folds the top over. “Please, take it. She washes times three a day—I wish she could advise you. She’s a healer of some note—are you all right? How badly are you hurt?”
“I’ll be fine,” I lie. “Thank you.”
Ronl presses the fragrant gift into my hands, and holds his own palms to my own. “If you hadn’t come in—”
“It was meant to be.” I pull the hood of the felt jacket up over my head, and not just because of the storm. “Now worry no longer and go be with your family.”
“And lock the door behind us.” Merc steps over to the bolt and points at it as if the shopkeeper might forget it’s there. “I won’t leave until you do.”
My eyes prickle with emotion, and I lower my voice. “He’s like that.”
Merc opens the door, and we’re quick about the exit. The storm’s only gotten stronger somehow, the rain riding the gusts of wind and lashing at us with such ferocity, he puts an arm around my waist to hold me on the ground lest I be swept off.
And he waits. Until the bolt is thrown.
Then we are off, into the horizontal rain, the bracing gale, the deep muddy puddles. Merc is undaunted. The way he moves against the fury, how solid he is, how strong, is a reminder that both sexes have their utility in the harsh world. Without him, I would become a tumble that is carried away.
I also stay dry. So this is the why of the felt, I reflect, as the water beads off as it would the back of waterfowl.
When we get to the first of the entries into the pub and lodging house, Merc tries the doors and they’re locked.
He goes to the second set, with the same result—and I begin to worry.
At the final entry, he releases me, and puts both hands on the grips, clearly prepared to rip open the panels if necessary—
They open just fine. And he all but throws me inside. As he jumps in behind me, he shuts things—
So many eyes upon us.
Though most of the chatter in the pub continues, and I avoid all the gazes, I can feel the attention like I’m too close to a fire.
Hide.
Except I would have hunkered down anyway.
Merc, at my side, does the opposite. Instead of skirting the edges and ducking the pub’s patrons as we head for the stairs, he tucks me into him with an arm around my shoulders, and he walks us right through the center of it all, as if there aren’t easily a hundred or more roughheads, ne’er-do-wells, and gamblers measuring us for opportunities and weaknesses.
He doesn’t care. Then again, he’s used to this, no doubt. Me? I look around furtively, assessing the place for spots to take cover behind—which is more reflex than anything I’m going to act upon.
Staying with him is the very best course.
Similar to the Gauntlet, a bar runs down the far side, the difference being this establishment and everything in it is three to four times the size of Mr. Lewis’s ale emporium.
Round tables fill this space, barmaids deliver food and drink, and ladies who make their money upstairs drift around and sing in low-cut gowns that are not made of felt, but rather of proper, colorful silks that are fitted beautifully to their bodies.
Lanterns hang from the low rafters, lighting it all—except for a stretch against the back wall, which is so dim, I can’t see what is there.
A warning tingles up my spine as I focus on that darkness, and as my eyes adjust, some details emerge.
It seems as though a single trestle table runs parallel to the rear of the building, and all its chairs face outward toward the open area with the patrons.
The group of men sitting along its far flank have arranged themselves such that their heads are secreted outside of the dim glow of a couple of black candles.
There’s a single man at the head of the group, and he’s in an armchair.
That’s when I see the hat. A top hat—
As if he senses my regard, the king of them all leans forward, only the bottom half of his visage entering into the flickering light, the rest hidden by the hat’s edge. It’s the rider, from the refreshing stream—and he’s looking in my direction.
Touching that brim, he gallantly tilts his head … and smiles in that way he did when he told me the water I was in was poisoned.
I look away quickly, and trip on something.
“Watch it, wench—” The angry patron shuts himself up as Merc stops short. “She—um, she hit my chair.”
The bearded man, who’s not in felt clothes, goes back to his mead with a wince as the two others sitting with him also stare down into their tankards. After a moment, Merc keeps going, although I suspect, were I not with him, there would have been conversation.
If not more.
All I want to do is make it to the stairs in one piece and get away from the crowd. There are too many chances already being taken here, and I don’t want to be rolling any more dice, literally or figuratively.
I’ve already won the pot tonight—
Fate is not done with me. We’re nearly to the steps when I see someone bursting out of what appears to be the kitchen. It’s the short-haired maid with the lovely singing voice—
“Oh, hello,” I call over to her.
She ignores me, dropping her head and putting an empty tray up on her shoulder like she wants to hide underneath it. And it’s then I see the man in a dirty butcher’s apron who props open that swinging panel.
My blood runs cold and my feet halt. The image of him raising that heavy iron skillet above his shoulder, with his sweaty, red face carved in rage and his swollen body shaking, explodes into my mind’s eye.
“Sorrel?”
I hear Merc say my name from a vast distance, and I’m too locked in to respond to him.
I can tell by the way the cook stays put and tracks the maid through the crowd that he’s staked possession of the girl.
It’s as if she’s a dog, not a person, and he’s checking to see if she follows her training.
On her side, she constantly refers back to him with her eyes as she gathers used plates and empty tankards from tables full of men who tug at her felt skirt and laugh too loud.
“Come on,” Merc says as he takes my elbow.
Abruptly, the man in the dirty apron stares at me with a glower on his ruddy face, and I imprint his appearance.
He’s ill-shaven, he has pockmark scars on his fleshy cheeks, and his thinning hair is combed over a bald spot.
I can’t tell whether he’s of twenty years or forty, and I do not meet his eyes. Not the place or time—
“What’re you lookin’ at,” he demands before spitting on the floor.
“You want to try that again.”
Merc’s voice cuts through the din, and the man looks up, way up.
His surprise suggests he was so busy tracking the maid and then glaring at me, he somehow failed to notice the man who’s with me, and I can tell the cook is going to fold and disappear back through that door even before he moves: It’s in the way his bluster crumbles, his shoulders cave, his posture sinks, nothing but a paper monster who nonetheless can kill.
Right before he ducks out, his nasty, beady eyes go to that girl, and I’m terrified she’ll pay for the mood he’s in and the interruption of my presence. The bastard. He’s the kind of man who only feels power when he makes someone smaller than him cower—
“Let’s go,” Merc says as the kitchen panel flaps shut.
As I’m drawn onto the steps, I look for the girl one last time. She’s all the way across the pub, balancing what should have been an impossible load of tankards and plates upon her frail shoulder. And then my view is obscured by the stairwell wall.
At the top landing, Merc glances at me. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you while you’re here, don’t worry.”
It’s the maid I’m concerned with, not me.
We start down the corridor to our room, passing by the doors of the working women.
Even though my body is beside him and I’m walking, I am far, far away, back in my own past. As I was an orphan, I’ve always felt like the women I’ve helped on the birthing bed are my family, my sisters, even though they never could or wanted to acknowledge me afterward—and I wish now, as I always have, that I’d be able to protect them all, the pregnant ones, those who toil under cruel masters, the sick, the infirm, the unfairly accused and the terribly abused.
But there are just too many … and only one of me.