69. Then Courtship
THEN: COURTSHIP
The old blacksmith had only gotten daughters on his wife.
And when he retired in his old age, Sheridan needed a new blacksmith.
He had not owned the smithy. That was the lord’s.
It was a keep-paid position as his guards were outfitted and armed by it.
It was in the center of town, though, and the only smithy in the lord’s lands, so all Sheridan folk used it.
The old blacksmith had taken on an apprentice, but the boy abandoned the post and was never replaced. Torm Sheridan sent a letter to Eccleston’s smiths’ guild, promising lodging and good pay to come to the low country lands and be his holding’s blacksmith.
And that was how Avery Finch, my husband, came to me.
I was four winters past twenty, still brewing a bitterness in me towards my sister and my first love.
I tried to swallow it. My sister never seemed to sense it when I visited.
She never noticed the way Thane made himself scarce if I was in their home.
Rowena and Thane’s marriage had settled into a companionable happiness that centered around Adelaide.
I had taken lovers here and there and had felt nothing but an itch scratched.
I was convinced no one could ever have my heart the way Thane had it.
And when the new blacksmith tried his luck with me, forward, brash, and fleshly, I was not ready for courtship let alone love. I spurned his every advance for some time before I let him in my bed.
It was on such a visit to dote on my niece that I first met him.
I began the day early, delivering comfrey and feverfew to my sister.
I spent an hour with her taking tea, noting down what plants she needed, and kissing the sticky cheeks of my niece who had gotten into my jam and toast. While Rowena fussed over her, I gathered myself and left.
I was outfitted in my boys’ breeches, a loose braid over my shoulder.
Before I returned back to the farm, I was setting out for the copse bordering the castle keep for mushrooms. Clusters of Tallowgill, a white growth that helped with tremors, could be found there.
Rowena would dry them and grind them down to a powder to be mixed with drink.
I stepped out on the main street, crossing the town square, aware of the sidelong glances at my breeches.
I did not care. Foraging in a dress resulted in frayed hems, and I was vain and poor enough to want to keep my dresses neat.
And the town was nearly used to me, the profane Miller girl, the older twin and her scandals.
“My gods, they grow them ripely in the low country, don’t they?”
The man’s voice was new to me. It was saucy and full of mirth.
I did not recognize it nor its accent. My teeth gritted as I turned to confront him.
Surely, they had not sent yet another unit of Perpatane infantry to Sheridan.
We were overrun with them. It repulsed me that these supposed holy men could so often be found drinking and leering.
“I thought your god said such lechery was a sin,” I said, spinning around. I planted my hands on my hips under the loose short-sleeved tunic that fell to my natural waist.
But the man leaning against the smithy’s front door was not clad in the Perpatanian gray uniform with its armband of scarlet.
He was in leather breeches and boots, a similar short tunic on his large figure, muscles flexed as his arms crossed over his chest. A long, thick apron covered him from chest to mid-thigh.
His hair was dark and wild, tucked behind his ears.
His beard was long, reaching his collarbone.
He was perhaps ten winters my senior and a stranger to me.
“I could never serve a god that hated my prick that much,” he replied.
“Hated your—What?” I asked, struck stupid by his ease.
“Hated my prick. I don’t understand this Rodwin. He seems to loathe the idea of a man dipping his prick into anything unless it is to make a child.”
The sun was not yet at the midday apex, and something about his saying such ribald words in the earlier part of the day was astounding to me.
“What did you say?” I breathed.
He smiled, not at me but at my middle, eyes drifting from my chest to the place where my thighs met the rest of me. “I suppose you should know my name before we discuss things like coupling and religion. I am called Avery.”
I still did not know what to say. So I said, “You cannot comment on a woman’s body like that. It isn’t done here.”
“Because of the church?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And furthermore, it is rude. My body is not meant for your perusal or opinion.”
His head cocked to one side. “Then tell me, my trouser-wearing lady, what is it meant for? I am a blacksmith. That is the very nature of my work. I shape iron to its intent. I know that all shapes have purpose, and I must know what yours is. That and your name. I must know your name.”
“You have offended me,” I responded. “That is not how you address a woman in these parts. I don’t know where you hail from, but this is a town of—”
“Don’t bother,” he interrupted, still smiling. “I know you are not a believer.”
“And how do you know that?” I asked before I could stop myself, stepping even closer to the smithy’s door and the stranger.
A look of gratification fell across his features at this.
I was a fish being reeled in on his dragging net.
“Because of the trousers. No Rodwin woman, no pious lady, would show the whole damn world the shape of her fat, sweet little sex like that.”
My face was red. I was consumed by wrath and something else I could not name. My hands fell from my hips to become fisted at my sides. I fought the urge to cross them over the part of me he had just so lewdly described. Unable to speak, I could only stand there, aghast and incensed.
“Now,” he went on, shifting in his lean against the doorway, “I do not condemn you for this. I follow no faith and would last pick one that kept a woman from being proud of her finer qualities. I just wonder at your endorsement of it if you insist on parading yours around the town square.” He removed one of his big hands from where it was tucked against his arm and flicked his forefinger from the height of my neck to where my knees were, my fitted boys’ breeches tucked into old boots.
“I shall tell the lord and the priest of your speeches,” I whispered, barely trusting my voice. “You’ll not last long in this place if you behave like this to the women of Sheridan.” I would of course do no such thing as I heartily hated both men. But I was appalled and infuriated.
“I assure you, lady of shapes,” he countered, “you are the only woman I have delivered such speech to. But you are also the only one who—”
“Enough,” I said, my voice firmer this time. I had regained some control. “I see that while you are without piety, you disappoint the same as any man here. Led around by your prick and not your mind. How dull.”
He straightened, something like worry in his manner. “Forgive me, madam. I meant no such—”
“Then what did you mean?” I fired.
The man shook his head. “I meant nothing because I had no reason in me when you crossed my line of sight. I had only lust. I grieve that I have offended you. As I grieve being lumped in with the rest of men who have disappointed you. For I think I wish to stand out in those beautiful eyes.”
I snorted, my eyes taking him in entirely now, seeing the old scorch marks on his hands and forearms, noting the building’s entrance he stood within.
He was the new blacksmith from the Eccleston guild, sent for by the lord.
“Never speak to me again, not of my sex or of my eyes. I don’t shoe my horse or have need of swords.
My pans and pots are old but in working order.
I see no need to ever darken the smithy door.
I will not tell you my name, for you won’t need to mark it in your ledger. ”
“Forgive me,” he repeated, eyes almost solemn now.
“No,” I pronounced and turned away, back to the original path I tread.
“Oh,” he sighed to himself. “That side is just as ripe isn’t it, though?”
My head whipped around, nose wrinkling. “Really and truly? Immediately after your groveling? I see it was meaningless.”
The man who called himself Avery covered his mouth with his hand, and I knew he hid a grin. “My tongue runs away from me at your every angle, lady. I need time to learn to curb it.”
I told him to screw himself and stalked away pretending not to hear him say, “Oh, I will have to now. After seeing all that round flesh before me.”
I spent the day grousing to myself, stomping around the lord’s copse, mangling more mushrooms than I collected. But I felt something akin to satiation that day. It was the most interesting exchange I had experienced in winters.
I still attended tenth-day services to avoid being fined.
I had never been given Magda’s freedom of being exempt.
The first, second, and third services after our new blacksmith’s appointment resulted in his sitting just behind me each time.
I did not know how he managed it, but when I stood from my stone pew, ready to leave before having to engage with any of the folk I knew gossiped about me, I would turn to find him grinning up at me from where he sat.
I would blink, pretending not to see him, and make my way outside to find Zara at the public hitching post, ready to leave town.
At the fourth service, he was unable to finagle the same position and I, furious with myself, was disappointed at not turning around to find that rugged countenance full of mischief and flirtation behind me.
I looked around and did not see him. I wondered if he knew these were mandatory services, thinking someone should warn him.
I found myself wondering also if I should mention it to my sister—the smithy only a short walk from her house in town—so she could warn her new neighbor.
“What is the matter with you?” I muttered to myself, weaving amongst the parishioners to make my way to the hitching post.
Avery was leaning against it, a hand under Zara’s snout as she snuffled into it. “Happy tenth day to you, Roberta,” he said, glancing up from the horse.
I stood a few paces from him, unsure. “What do you feed her?”
“Honey cake. My horse likes it, so I thought—”
“You will cause her teeth to rot,” I said.
“I would shoe her for you. At no cost to compensate for my poor manners.”
I shook my head. “I only ride her once or twice a week. Mostly she runs wild in the forest.”
He nodded. “Yes. The forager.”
And the abortionist, I thought. “How do you know my name?” I asked.
“I listened in church. Someone called you—”
“I prefer Robbie,” I interjected before I knew what I did.
“Robbie then,” he assented. He took a hesitant step forward and extended a single lily to me. “My apologies for our first encounter. I am an animal and undeserving of your forgiveness. I won’t ask for it again. You should not give it to me. You are right not to.”
I stared at the fresh flower, which was dwarfed by the size of his hand. It was the color of a lurid sunset, like a flame was trapped in its center.
Stepping past him, I put myself in between him and the horse and began to untie her from the public post. Before I could stop myself, I said, “You have to attend tenth-day services. You will be fined and eventually jailed if you do not. You are likely too big to box, but they may even call for that if you miss enough of them.”
Why did I concern myself with this rogue’s possible punishment?
“You worry for me?” he asked, his voice gentle.
My head went up. “No.” Then I avoided him while I placed the bit back in Zara’s mouth, mounted my horse, and guided her away from the hitch.
When I reached my home and took the saddle off of Zara, I found the lily tucked into one of the saddle bags.
Twice more Avery repeated his gift of a flower after church.
“I am steadfast in my contrition, madam,” he promised upon presenting a third lily. “I do not ask for your forgiveness, but I do hope for it. One day.”
I shrugged. “What would my forgiveness do? What would it change?”
“If you forgive me, I can begin to court you.”
“Court me?”
“Are you in want of a husband?”
“I am not.”
“Perhaps I can show you why one might be useful to you.” Another of his bold smiles began to creep across his face, but he pressed his lips together as if to smother it, as if to keep any hidden meaning from his words. “What would it take for me to earn just a bit of your forgiveness?”
“You should cut your hair and trim your beard,” I said on a whim. “You look half mad.”
He nodded. “Consider it done.”
“I may forgive you,” I offered. “But I prefer you be yourself around me if it is courting you want to do. I know you are not regularly this tame.”
“What if I offend you again?”
“Refrain from discussing the shape of me and you should be safe.”
“I can try—no, I can do that,” he swore.
I could not explain to myself why I wanted this man to court me, especially when all I wanted was to show him scorn.
At that time, I did not know that I was softened by him seeing me as something other than an outcast, an ungodly girl who lived in an old witch’s house and provided services no one wanted to name.
He simply saw me as a woman he wanted, and that was a reprieve from a town of folk who despised me.