Page 29

Her sister was not there, but her man Fergus was. He was rising from a bench by the door, the noise having woken him, scowling in confusion at the stairs.

“What’s amiss?” he asked, looking from Nan to the girls beside her.

Nan let silence serve, as she ever did, but Rosy offered, “Someone’s done the tanner a terrible hurt.” She did not even pause in her step as she said it, the clever girl. Fergus ran to the stairs and they exited the house, stepping into a gray morning.

There. They were out. They paused outside the door while, at Nan’s bidding, Rosy put on her cloak and pulled the hood up to hide her bright hair.

The small market up the street was only just beginning to stir, and there were few people to witness them leaving the brothel.

She was leading them in the direction of the market, back toward the walls of Lincoln, when she heard her name.

“Nan! Nan!”

There was a desperation in it, a panicked fear that Nan could not ignore. She turned around to face her sister, and felt a similar terror rising in her breast, scrabbling like a frantic animal to get out.

She had been taught how to fight despite fear, how to find and keep her balance through it. You will fear no man, Gwenllian had promised. They will fear you . So she had said and so it was, but nothing a man could threaten was like this.

Bea was red-faced and running, relief washing over her features when she reached Nan.

“There’s no hurt on you? Oh, I’ll take the hide off Fergus for letting him in after so much drink, falling asleep at the door, the great useless lump. Tell me it’s none of your blood I seen back there.”

She was running her hands over Nan’s shoulders and arms, patting her gently as she looked for injury. Nan only shook her head wordlessly. Gradually, a crease of confusion appeared in Bea’s brow. She looked at the girls, then back at Nan.

“Where do you go, Nan?”

They looked at each other a long moment, Nan breathing unevenly and Bea not breathing at all. She thought of their mother. Look after your brother and sister.

“I take Cecilia to find different work,” she said simply. “And Rosy would come too.”

Bea’s brows raised in surprise and skepticism. Her hands dropped from Nan’s shoulders and she shook her head, rejecting it. She spoke past Nan, to the girls. “And who will pay what ye owe? It’s another year for you, Rosy, and three for you, Cissy. Nor do I know what they’ve told you, Nan, but –”

“There is naught they could say to stop me taking them from here, when they do not wish to stay.”

Her sister’s expression soured at this, eyes narrowing.

Some of the women were at the door of the brothel, peering out at them.

Fergus appeared too, starting up the street toward them slowly, and more people coming to the market now.

Bea set her hands on her hips, her face hard as she looked at Nan.

“Oh, you are so good , are you not? Better than me and better than a whore’s life, and you think they are so much better too!

” She gestured a hand toward the girls. “And who cared for them before you came along, eh? It’s me that feeds them, and me that puts the clothes on their backs and gives them beds to sleep in, or they’d be in the street. What have you to say to that?”

Nan had nothing to say to it. Or perhaps she had too much to say, all of it tangled and throbbing at the back of her throat. Words were so useless. They never managed to say anything that mattered, no matter how many were heaped on top of each other.

“Their debt will be paid,” she finally choked out. “I will send it to you.”

“Send it?” Bea’s combative pose wavered, her face softening in uncertainty. “You...you’ll not return?”

Fuss was growling. A cart had stopped just behind Bea on its way to the market, the owner watching them curiously.

Nan could see a tiny hole starting at the seam of Bea’s bodice, and imagined taking a needle and thread to it.

Three quick stitches and it would be mended, good as new. Until it frayed again.

She looked in her sister’s eyes – a look with no beginning or end, full of the deep recognition that only came with family – and they knew. They both knew she would never return, and they both knew why.

“Fare you well, little Bea,” she said barely above a whisper. The memory of her sister’s arm tightened around her, the feel of her face pressed against her as she wept in the night.

“Nan,” she began, but then there was a noise behind her and Nan turned to see Fergus reaching for Cecilia. He was telling her she would not be going anywhere as he caught her around the waist.

The nail went into his shoe, just enough to nick the side of his foot.

It was what she did to poachers or anyone she did not wish to truly harm; it was meant to startle and to serve as warning.

He only cried out and looked down, but did not let the girl go.

Nan pulled a blade from her arm brace and in one uninterrupted motion, she let it fly, the tip of it slicing open his shoulder on its way to the ground.

Another warning, because she did not want to kill a man in the street where everyone watched.

The next would land true if he did not let go, no matter the consequence, but as she drew it he cried out again and dropped the girl.

Little Cecilia held the silver knife in her fist, eyes wide but determined as she backed away from him. She had pricked his hand well enough to draw blood, and now Bea was shrieking, cursing the girl, an ugly look on her face as she strode forward with hand outstretched to grab the child.

The blade caught her sister’s sleeve, aimed precisely to land in the two inches of loose fabric near the elbow, and pinned her arm to the wagon next to her.

It halted Bea in her tracks, stopped her cursing with a gasp as she looked bewildered at her suddenly immobilized arm.

Arrogant flourish , Gwenllian would call it, but Lord Ranulf would smile with approval and say arrogance could prove useful in a fight. And so it had.

Nan picked up the blade that had dropped to the dirt and held it tight between her fingers.

She would leave the other behind in the wagon, a memento for her sister.

They must go and quickly. More people were in the street now, gawking, and there was the man inside the brothel who might any moment call the law on her.

She looked to the girls and gave a jerk of her chin, and they moved readily in the direction of the market. Her sister’s shouting followed them.

“Nan! Nan! Will you leave me again?” There was such anger in it, and such despair. Bea let out a sob that would wrench the hardest heart. “Have you only come to show me how well you’ve done, and now you’re finished with me? You said there’s no one can never take you away from me again. Nan!”

She turned and saw Bea ripping her sleeve in an attempt to free it, cheeks wet with tears. Disgust and love and rage rose up at the sight, a wave that threatened to drown her.

“I searched for you!” It burst from her, filled with a fury that could no longer be confined to the path of a blade.

There was a burning in her lungs, a sharp and painful ache that formed itself into words.

“I searched years for you. I prayed and I hoped and I found you, and I swore to myself there is naught I would not do for you, naught .” Already her throat was raw.

“Nan –”

“And you would make a whore of a child! You would let her starve did she not obey, though she cries out in terror of it. Starve .” She would not weep.

She must keep her eyes dry and clear, so her aim stayed true if she must fight.

“Foul and corrupt. That is what you are become. That is who you are.”

Bea clutched her torn sleeve and stared at her, tears trickling down, jaw working angrily.

“And I am your sister,” she said. “I am that, too.”

Nan looked at the face so like her own, the only other person left on earth with their father’s eyes and their mother’s smile.

“Nay,” she answered. “You are Bargate Bettie. And she is no sister of mine.”

She turned away. They might have been children again, so much was it like the last time she had left her family. Just as then, she walked away with purpose and a heavy heart. Like then, the sound of her sister’s weeping followed her.

But this time she did not look back. This time, she did not want to.