Rain ticked through three old faults in the roof of the Ash and Lantern. Mara Venn had set bowls beneath two before the first supper pot came off the hook. The third leak fell behind the settle near the western wall, where the rushes had gone dark in a circle and old Brannick kept moving his boots whenever the damp reached them.
Nobody complained. The barley had needed rain for a month, and most of the room had barley in the ground somewhere beyond the shuttered windows. Rain capes and open cloaks steamed from pegs beside the hearth. Loose trouser legs dried dark around field boots; short work vests and crossed wraps left shoulders, arms, and stomachs bare to the warmth. The smell of damp linen and oiled canvas lay thick over onion broth, woodsmoke, horse, and the sharp yeast of the small beer Mara had drawn before dusk. Outside, wheels ground through the road mud at long intervals. Each wagon announced itself first in the cups, a faint trembling along the shelves, then passed the inn in a wash of rain unless the driver saw the lanterns and decided there were worse places to lose an hour.
The Ash and Lantern had stood beside the Blackmere road longer than anyone in the village could prove. One end of the common room had settled low enough that a round cup would creep toward the hearth if set carelessly on the table. The oldest beam bore the notches of five generations of Venn children, though Mara's grandfather had planed away the uppermost names during an argument about smoke damage. Travelers sometimes called the place crooked. The village men sat with one boot hooked around a table leg and let them. The young gentleman in the blue coat had taken the driest chair.
He'd been in it since the middle of the afternoon, when he'd returned out of the rain alone and put a silver round on the counter before Mara could ask whether he wanted food or lodging. His long blue traveling coat was too fine for the road. It had no sleeves and fell open from shoulder to thigh, split at the sides for riding. Water had darkened it almost to black across the shoulders, but the silver stitching along its edges had not run. Beneath it, a short ivory vest lay open over his chest, its edges held by two fine silver chains and his stomach bare above loose dark trousers. His road boots were soft leather despite the mud. He wore no badge, livery, or stamped clasp that told Mara whose silver he was spending.
He had the face of a church-window saint after the painter had learned spite. Pale skin, fine bones, long black hair tied at the nape with a ribbon that cost more than Tobin's best rain cape. The open cut of his clothes showed a lean, carefully trained body, and he carried it with the easy straight-backed balance of a boy taught from childhood that every room would make space for him.
The room had made space. By supper, nobody shared the long table with him.
Tobin came through the kitchen door carrying four bowls along his left arm and a fifth in his hand. He was eighteen that spring, tall enough to look older until somebody spoke quickly to him. A sleeveless linen wrap crossed his chest and tied beneath his ribs. Loose work trousers ended midway down his calves, and a broad apron covered their front without hiding the narrow strip of stomach above its knot. Orders stayed in his head when they were given one at a time. He knew which carters wanted salt before their stew and which old men had to soak their bread. When the room grew loud, he returned to the kitchen and stood beside the flour chest until the voices separated again.
His mother had done the same work before the fever took her. For the month since the burial, Tobin had worn her old key cord looped twice around his wrist. There were no keys on it. Mara had watched him check for them each morning and had never told him to put the cord away.
He set Brannick's bowl before him, then crossed to the two brothers from the south farm. The last bowl went to the young gentleman. Tobin placed it carefully in the clear space beside the man's wine cup.
The gentleman examined the stew. "Is this the meat portion?"
"Yes, sir. Lamb."
"I can see that it's lamb. I asked whether this was the meat portion."
Tobin turned toward Mara. She was drawing ale for a cooper at the bar, close enough to hear and too far to save him without making the saving plain.
"There's meat in all the bowls," Tobin said. "Yours has more."
The gentleman moved one piece with his spoon. "Then your more is disappointing. Bring bread."
Tobin fetched half a loaf from the board beside the hearth. He had turned away again when the gentleman caught the end of his apron between two fingers.
"You can bring yourself upstairs after the kitchen closes," he said. His voice carried cleanly to the rafters. "Washed, without this sack tied around you. I have coin enough to improve your evening."
The dice stopped under Brannick's cup. At the south table, one of the farm brothers lowered his spoon without taking his eyes from it.
Tobin freed the apron with a short pull. "I don't go upstairs with guests."
"You haven't gone upstairs with me. That was the invitation."
"No, sir."
Tobin returned to the kitchen. His pace stayed even until the door swung shut behind him. A stack of wooden trenchers clattered on the other side, followed by Cook Ressa's low voice and the knock of a ladle against the pot.
The gentleman broke the loaf at its middle. He dipped the softer half into his broth and ate while the room recovered around him. Brannick rattled the dice again. The cooper asked Mara whether the rain would hold through morning, though he had spent sixty years beneath the same sky and knew she couldn't answer. Conversation returned by pieces, each voice pitched lower than before. Near the hearth, the thin boy watched the gentleman eat.
He had arrived before noon on a grain cart and paid for a place in the stable loft with two copper bits worn almost smooth. Straw-colored hair hung into his eyes. His hands showed beyond the edges of a patched cloak, the wrists narrow enough that Mara could have closed a hand around either with room left over. Beneath the cloak he wore only frayed shorts and worn sandals. He had eaten every scrap of his first bowl, then wiped the wood with his thumb and licked it clean. When Mara gave him a second, he accepted it without thanks and carried both bowls back to the kitchen afterward.
She hadn't asked where he was going. Boys traveling alone gave true answers rarely. His eyes had gone to every door before he chose the chair beside the hearth, where he'd kept a patched cloak around his shoulders all afternoon. Heat brought no color into his face. The young gentleman raised two fingers for wine.
Mara left the cooper with his mug and crossed the room. "You've had the last of the red, and there isn't another bottle."
His gaze moved past her to the shelf. "I can see three."
"Spiced cordial, pear brandy, and lamp oil."
"The cordial."
"It's dear."
He placed another silver round beside the empty bottle. "Then we have found a use for my money."
Mara took the coin. A man could become worse on wine without becoming better sober, and refusing him now would leave the silver on his side of the counter. She brought the cordial with a clean cup. The bottle was meant to last through Harvest Week. He filled to the rim and drank half before tasting it.
The outer door opened on a gust that bent the candle flames. Orren Hale filled the doorway, rain running from his beard onto an oil-darkened mantle worn open over a short work vest. The mantle left his broad arms and much of his chest bare. Mud covered his loose trousers to the knee and his boots past the ankle; his right hand was bare, though the left still wore a work glove. Mara set the cordial down.
Orren searched out Tobin's empty place by the kitchen door. Then he saw the blue coat.
The young gentleman had visited the Ash and Lantern before. On an earlier visit, he drank through an afternoon and left with a merchant's purse that nobody saw him take. When he returned, he asked after Arlen Hale.
Arlen had served tables for Mara in the years before his marriage. He was quick with figures, strong through the shoulders, and too ready to answer mockery with better mockery. By noon on the day after the gentleman's last visit, Arlen was dead.
The magistrate called it a properly witnessed duel. Arlen had carried a borrowed sword and accepted before six men. His widow took their daughter back to Orren's house before the blood had dried between the paving stones.
Orren crossed to the hearth and pulled off his remaining glove. He held both hands toward the fire. Neither trembled. The thin boy shifted farther along the settle to give him room, but Orren remained standing.
"Ale," he said.
Mara drew it. Orren drank at the bar with his back to the room. His mantle dripped steadily onto the boards. The gentleman finished the cordial in his cup and filled it again.
For the next hour, the inn did what inns did when nobody wished to leave and one man had made staying difficult. Supper bowls came back. Ressa banked the kitchen fire. The south farmers argued over a boundary stone with such grave attention that neither had to look toward the blue coat. A wool factor from Briartown tried to begin a song, reached the second verse alone, and took refuge in his beer.
Tobin worked the room. Mara kept him to the tables near the kitchen, but empty cups migrated toward the gentleman until only his remained. When Tobin collected the cordial bottle, the gentleman held it down with two fingers.
"Bring another."
"Mara said there isn't another."
"Mara was mistaken."
"She owns the bottles."
A few people laughed before they could stop. Tobin hadn't made a joke. The sound startled him, and he turned over his shoulder to see what had happened.
The gentleman smiled. "Does she own you too?"
Tobin pulled at the bottle. The gentleman kept two fingers on its neck. "Answer me."
"No."
"Good. We return to my earlier proposal."
Tobin's face tightened. "I told you no."
"You repeated a word. I allowed you time to reconsider it."
He released the bottle, then caught Tobin by the wrist when the boy lifted it. His thumb pressed into the cords beneath Tobin's palm. Tobin stood very still, his empty hand opening and closing beside his apron.
Mara came around the bar. "Take your hand off him."
The gentleman drew Tobin one step closer. "He can answer for himself. Slowly, if that helps." Tobin struck him across the face.
The sound carried farther than the earlier invitation. The gentleman's head turned with it. A red mark rose along his cheek, narrow at the jaw and broad where Tobin's fingers had landed.
Tobin dropped the bottle. It struck the boards without breaking and rolled beneath the table. He pulled against the hand on his wrist.
The gentleman released him. "There. You understood that quickly enough."
Tobin backed toward Mara. His breath came through his mouth, hard enough to lift the linen crossed over his chest.
"Your keeper made excuses for you last time," the gentleman said. "Said your mother had died, as though grief explained the slowness. I asked if she'd been slow too. Mara didn't answer me then either."
The thin boy rose from the settle. He left his cloak behind. His ribs showed beneath skin that had seen too little sun, and the frayed shorts hung from the points of his hips. He crossed the rushes with his hands low and stopped between Tobin and the long table.
"He said no," the thin boy said.
The gentleman touched his reddened cheek. "The room has produced a champion."
"Leave him alone."
"Or what? You'll turn sideways and disappear?"
The thin boy kicked him in the shin. It was a poor kick, delivered in a sandal with a split sole and no room behind it. The gentleman's chair scraped back. The thin boy shoved at his shoulder with both hands, putting his slight weight behind the effort.
The gentleman rose. He was taller by half a head and broader everywhere that mattered. He caught the thin boy by one upper arm and the waistband of his shorts and threw him aside. The boy struck the end of the settle, folded over it, then slid to his knees among the damp rushes. Orren set down his ale.
He crossed the room with the slow, heavy stride of a man accustomed to lifting things that couldn't help him. The gentleman watched him come. A pleased attention replaced the boredom in his face.
"You've put your hands on enough boys in this house," Orren said.
The gentleman's gaze traveled over Orren's wet mantle and broad chest. "I know you."
"You knew my son."
"Briefly."
Orren's hands curled at his sides. Mara saw the nails bite into his palms. He had promised his daughter-in-law he wouldn't seek this man. Mara had heard him make the promise beside Arlen's grave, with the baby's crying carrying over the wall from the house.
"He told you no," Orren said. "Again and again. You followed him to the market. You called him out before half the town."
"I offered him a fair sum for the service. More than fair, given what he was."
"My boy wasn't a whore to be bought. He had a wife and child at home."
The gentleman picked up his cup. "Well, he should have taken me up on my offer, then. Children are expensive to raise. Now you have to do it." Orren reached for him.
The gentleman moved inside his arms. One hand caught Orren above the elbow. He turned on the ball of his foot, drove his hip across Orren's path, then struck upward with the heel of his other hand. Orren's teeth clapped together. His boots left the floor for the width of a finger.
The gentleman released him at the end of the turn. Orren crashed through the nearest bench and struck the boards on his side. His head bounced once. A cup fell after him and broke against his shoulder.
Mara reached him first and put two fingers beneath Orren's jaw. His pulse beat hard against them. Blood showed along his lower lip, but his eyes remained closed when she called his name.
"Ressa," Mara said. "Blankets. Brannick, help me get him away from the table."
Brannick and the cooper lifted Orren beneath the arms. His heels dragged two clean lines through the rushes before they laid him beside the hearth. Ressa came from the kitchen with folded wool and the thin boy followed her, one arm clamped across his middle.
The gentleman straightened one of the silver chains across his vest. His breath hadn't changed.
"He'll wake," he said. "The floor did most of that."
Mara covered Orren and wiped the blood from his mouth. "Go upstairs."
"I paid for supper."
"You ate it. I gave you the best room. Use it. At first light, you leave."
He glanced toward Tobin. Ressa had put the boy behind her near the kitchen door. Tobin held his mother's key cord in one fist.
"Very well," the gentleman said. "I was going to bed in any case."
He climbed the stairs without touching the rail. Every step landed softly despite the drink in him. The door to the best room closed overhead.
Mara locked the cordial in the cupboard. Brannick righted the broken bench and found one leg split along the grain. The south farmers carried it to the wood store without being asked. Ressa made a paste of comfrey and cold ash for Orren's jaw, though there was little she could do until he woke. The thin boy returned to the settle with his cloak, moving carefully around the place where he'd struck his ribs. Tobin went into the kitchen and began washing bowls.
Mara found him bare-armed at the sink, scrubbing the same wooden bowl long after the grease had gone. Water had soaked the front of his apron and darkened the ties of the wrap across his chest. His mother's cord remained wound around his wrist, dark with dishwater.
"Leave those for morning," Mara said.
"There are six."
"Ressa can do six."
"She does the bread first."
Mara took the bowl from him and put it on the draining board. Tobin's fingers remained curled around the empty space.
"You'll sleep in my room tonight," she said. "I'll take the chair."
"My blanket is upstairs."
"We'll get another."
"Mam made that one."
The servants' rooms occupied the narrow end of the upper passage, beyond the guest rooms and beneath the steepest pitch of the roof. Tobin's door was the last. To reach it, he would have to pass the gentleman's room.
Through the kitchen doorway, Mara saw that the wool factor had left alone despite the rain. Brannick remained. So did the cooper, both south farmers, Ressa, and the thin boy. Orren breathed beneath the blankets by the hearth.
"I'll go with you," she said.
Tobin shook his head. "You have to close the shutters."
"They can wait."
"I can get it."
He picked up the kitchen candle before she could take it. Mara caught his shoulder at the door. Tobin glanced down at her hand, then faced the stairs.
"Straight there and back," she said. "If his door opens, you come down. Leave the blanket."
"Straight there and back," Tobin repeated.
The stair boards complained beneath his steps. He carried the candle close to his chest, lighting the worn plaster a few feet at a time. Mara watched until his feet passed above the beam and the upper darkness took him. She should have gone with him.
The thought arrived while his steps were still moving overhead. Mara put down the towel in her hand and crossed the common room. She had reached the foot of the stairs when the movement above stopped. The best-room door opened.
"No," Tobin said. The word came clearly through the boards.
Mara climbed. The candle struck the wall above her. Wax spattered the plaster, and Tobin made a sound through his teeth. Mara reached the turn in time to see him wrench free of the gentleman's doorway. The linen wrap had been dragged open at one side, one tie hanging loose against his bare stomach. The gentleman held one end of the empty key cord.
Tobin twisted his wrist. The cord slipped from the gentleman's fingers. He pushed with both hands against the blue coat, gained one step, then another. The gentleman caught at his waist. Tobin struck the hand away and ran.
"Help!" he shouted. "Mara! Help me!"
Mara flattened herself against the wall. Tobin came down past her, one hand sliding along the plaster because the stair was too narrow for speed. She caught his arm at the bottom and pulled him behind her.
The gentleman stood at the turn above them. His ribbon had come loose. Black hair lay over one shoulder, and a fresh scratch marked the side of his neck.
"He misunderstood me," he said.
The common room had risen. Brannick stood beside Orren with the broken bench leg in his hand. Ressa had come out of the kitchen carrying the iron stirring hook. One farmer held the wood axe he had used to split kindling after supper. His brother had nothing except the heavy clay pitcher from their table. The cooper pushed the outer door shut and laid the bar across it.
The thin boy stood nearest the stairs. His face had gone white around the mouth, but he planted both worn sandals on the floor and remained there.
Mara moved Tobin toward the kitchen. He caught the back of her apron.
"Stay behind me," she said.
The gentleman descended three steps. "You should consider what you're doing."
"I have friends who will ask where I am."
Brannick shifted the bench leg across both hands. Ressa lowered the hook until its iron point rested against the boards.
He came down another step. His gaze passed from Brannick to the axe, then settled on the barred door. He counted the space to the outer door and glanced once toward the kitchen.
"Move," he said.
The thin boy kicked him in the shin again. The gentleman struck downward. The boy turned his face and took the blow across his shoulder. He fell against the wall, carrying a framed tally board down with him. Brannick swung the bench leg.
The gentleman ducked. Wood broke against the stair post, showering splinters across the boards. He drove a fist into Brannick's stomach, then caught the back of his neck and sent him into the cooper. Both men went down among the stools.
The clay pitcher struck the gentleman's temple. It burst against his head and filled the stairwell with the smell of sour beer. He staggered, caught the rail, then tore it loose from its lower peg when the first farmer came at him.
Mara pushed Tobin through the kitchen door. "Bolt it."
"Mara..."
"Bolt it."
The door closed between them. The wooden bar dropped into place on the other side.
Mara turned back. The gentleman had the loose rail in both hands. He thrust its end into the first farmer's chest and knocked him across a table. The axe lay under the settle, kicked out of reach. Ressa hooked the iron around the rail and pulled. The cooper seized the other end. For a moment the three of them strained over it while boots slipped in beer and rainwater.
The second farmer hit the gentleman behind the knee with a stool. His leg folded. Brannick rose from the floor and caught him around the shoulders. They went down together.
Afterward, Mara could never put the next minute into order. Brannick lost the bench leg. The stirring hook scraped across the floor. Something sharp opened the gentleman's cheek from the bone beneath his eye almost to his jaw. He came up once with blood across his face and drove the cooper into the bar hard enough to shake every cup on its hooks. The thin boy clung to one of his legs until a heel caught him in the chest.
Hands closed again. Boots struck the blue coat. The gentleman reached the long table and tried to pull himself over it, upsetting cups and the cordial bottle. A knife flashed low beneath somebody's arm. Mara saw the dark hilt and lost it among bodies and hanging cloth. The gentleman jerked, one hand clamping over his left hip as blood darkened the coat beneath it.
He tore free long enough to gain one backward step. His heel struck the raised border of the hearth. Brannick caught at his shoulders while the farmer still held his coat, turning him as he fell. The back of the gentleman's head struck the broad hearth flags.
The impact made one hard sound beneath the shouting. His right hand opened against the rushes. Brannick still held the front of his coat in both fists.
Mara touched Brannick's shoulder. He raised his head. One eye was swelling shut, and blood ran from his nose into his beard.
"Enough," she said.
Brannick released him. The gentleman's head settled against the stone.
The gentleman's chest remained still. Mara knelt and pressed two fingers beneath his jaw, as she had done for Orren. Warm skin. No pulse. Behind the kitchen door, Tobin called her name.
Mara rose and lifted the bar. Tobin came through with Ressa's bread knife in both hands. He saw the body by the hearth and stopped. Mara took the knife, set it on the nearest table, then put both arms around him. He stood rigid against her until his forehead came down onto her shoulder.
"He can't touch you," she said.
Tobin's fingers closed in the apron at her back. Across the room, the thin boy sat against the wall with one knee drawn up. Ressa crouched beside him and felt carefully along his collarbone.
The cooper faced the shuttered windows. "Someone will have heard."
"Everyone heard," Brannick said.
The rain beat harder on the roof. Water overflowed the bowl behind the settle and spread beneath Orren's boots. He slept through it, his breath rough but steady.
Mara released Tobin and surveyed her common room. No one had seen the whole fight. No one in it had remained untouched by what happened.
"He left," Mara said. "After Orren fell. He took the north road."
The cooper wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "In this rain?"
"He was drunk."
Ressa helped the thin boy stand. "He said he knew people in Briartown."
Mara met her eyes. Ressa's face was grey beneath the flour caught in her hair.
"Then perhaps they saw him," Mara said.
Brannick fetched the mop from the kitchen. The farmers lifted the dead man beneath the arms and carried him through to the stable while Ressa gathered the broken crockery. The cooper pulled the bar from the door, checked the rain, then barred it again.
Blood came out of the boards with cold water first. Hot water fixed it into the grain. Mara knew that from lambing, kitchen cuts, and Arlen Hale's clothes after the duel. She knelt beside Brannick with a bucket between them and scrubbed until the water turned pink instead of red.
In the stable, the farmers stripped the dead boy. His sleeveless blue coat, short vest, loose trousers, and fine road boots would carry his description farther than his face. They wrapped the clothing in an oat sack for the lime kiln. His pockets held loose silver, a narrow comb, and a square of clean linen without a stitched initial. Nothing carried a name.
The ring appeared when they pulled away his underthings. Dark metal fitted the base of his soft cock, tight against the pubic bone, with shallow symbols around its face. Brannick tried his fingers, lamp grease, and nippers from the tack wall. The band contracted when he pulled, and the nippers left no mark.
"Leave it," Mara said. "We need him off the road before dawn."
They loaded the naked body onto the cooper's low cart and covered it with the same sacking used for wet staves. The rain had emptied the road. Two lanterns showed only the nearest hedges, heavy with water, and the ruts ahead gleamed before the wheels reached them.
Mara rode beside the cooper. Brannick sat in back with one hand on the body when the cart tipped through the deeper holes. The thin boy came as far as the inn yard, his cloak pulled close around his ribs. Tobin stood behind him under the eaves.
At the edge of the Thornwood, the old road narrowed beneath trees that had broken the paving stones with their roots. The cooper stopped where a washout had carried half the shoulder into the ditch. Travelers slowed there even in daylight. A body below the bank would be found, though rain and animals would have time with it first.
Brannick took the shoulders. Mara and the cooper lifted the legs. They carried the gentleman past the ditch, laid him face-down in the road mud, then pulled the sacking free. Rain thinned the blood on his face and hip.
They returned to the cart. Brannick climbed in back, leaving the front bench to Mara and the cooper. Behind them, rain struck the leaves, filled the wheel ruts, and washed the young gentleman's blood toward the ditch.