*
The second story I need to tell you took place two years ago, in Cheveran, one of the larger trade cities in the south of Tristia, and it began with a woman’s scream.
‘Monster! Give me my daughter!’ The woman was close to my age, perhaps thirty years old, with black hair and blue eyes like those of the little girl I was carrying in my arms. I imagined she was quite pretty when she wasn’t screaming.
‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’ the girl asked.
I had seen the child fall when her foot had got caught on the table-leg of a fruit-seller’s stand next to the alley that had apparently been her destination. Her eyes full of terror, she’d told me a man in Knight’s armour was pursuing her but when I looked for him he was gone. I’d carried the girl the entire way to her home, which wouldn’t have been very far except that she kept getting confused about the right way back.
‘Her ankle is sprained,’ I said, trying to shake the water from my hair to keep it from dripping into my eyes. It’s always raining in Cheveran.
The woman ran back inside her house – I’d assumed it was to get towels, but when she returned she was in fact brandishing a long kitchen knife. ‘Give me my daughter, Trattari,’ she cried.
‘Mummy!’ the girl screamed into my ear.
There’s a great deal of screaming in this story. Best get used to it now.
‘I told you, her ankle is sprained,’ I said. ‘Now kindly let me in so I can put her down. You can try and stab me afterwards.’
If the woman thought I was in the least bit clever she covered it up by yelling for help. ‘Trattari! Oh, help me! A tatter-cloak has my daughter!’
‘Oh, Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears, just let me put the girl down!’
With no apparent help coming, the woman eyed me warily and then backed away into the house, the knife still between us. I wasn’t worried for myself – my coat would blunt any impact from being stabbed – but there was a decent chance the woman would end up hitting her own daughter in the process.
In the central room of the house there was a small settee. I placed the girl on her side, but she immediately sat up, then winced when her foot touched the ground.
The woman ran to her daughter, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her before pulling back to look at every inch of her. ‘What have you done to her?’
‘Other than help her when she fell, carry her here and listen to you scream at me? Nothing.’
The girl looked up at us. ‘It’s true, Mummy; I was being chased by a Knight and then this man helped me.’
The mother kept an eye on me and her knife between us. ‘Oh, sweet Beatta, silly child, no Knight would ever harm you. He was probably trying to protect you.’
Beatta made a face. ‘That’s silly. I was just trying to buy an apple from the fruitman.’
At that moment, two men and a boy of about twelve ran into the house. ‘Saints, Merna, what’s the matter?’ the taller of the two men asked. All three were of a set: sandy-brown hair and square-jawed, dressed in the brown overalls of labourers. The two men were carrying hammers and the boy held a rock in his fist.
‘This Trattari had my daughter!’ Merna said.
I held up both my hands in a gesture of – well, please-don’t-attack-me. ‘There’s a misunderstanding, I—’
‘There’s a misunderstanding, all right,’ one of the men said, taking a step forward. ‘You seem to think a tatter-cloak is welcome to come here and attack our women.’
‘Aye,’ said the other. ‘Servants of the dead tyrant aren’t welcome here, Trattari.’
Despite my desire to calm the situation, I found that my rapier was in my right hand, its point close to the man’s neck. ‘Call the King that again, friend, and we’ll have a problem that your hammer won’t solve.’
Merna was doing her best to cover up Beatta with her body, but the child poked her head out. ‘Why do you call him that? What’s a Trattari?’
‘A Trattari is a tatter-cloak,’ Merna said, spitting the words. ‘One of bloody King Paelis’ so-called “magistrates”.’
‘Assassins, more like,’ the taller man said. ‘We should hold him and send Ty to fetch the constables.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I came here because the girl was hurt and scared – she believed herself in danger. She’s safe with you now, so just let me be on my way.’
The sight of my rapier made that suggestion sound sensible enough to the workmen, who began moving aside to let me pass.
‘Wait,’ the girl said.
‘What is it, Beatta?’ the woman asked.
‘I said I’d give him some of my supper. He dropped his apple when he came to help me and I said he could share my dinner.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, ‘I’m not—’
To my surprise, the girl’s mother rose from the settee. ‘Wait here,’ she said.
The two men and the boy did a remarkable job of looking like they were keeping me at bay despite the fact that nothing was actually happening.
‘Why do you call him “Trattari”?’ Beatta repeated, this time addressing the two men.
It was the boy who replied. ‘It means tatter-cloak,’ he said. ‘They called themselves the Greatcoats, and their coats were supposed to never show wear so long as their honour held.’
‘But of course, they had no honour,’ the shorter of the two men said.
‘Because they served the tyrant, Paelis?’ Beatta asked.
‘Oh, aye, they were bastards for interfering with the lawful rule of the Dukes. But no, child, the reason they’re called tatter-cloaks is because when the Dukes came with their armies to put a stop to the tyrant’s ways, these so-called Greatcoats stood aside and abandoned their King just to save their own skins.’
‘But if the King was bad, then wasn’t it good that they stepped aside?’ the girl asked.
Her mother returned from the kitchen carrying an apple and a piece of cheese, which she hastily stuffed into a small sack. ‘No, dear. You see, the Knights teach us that any man has honour, so long as he serves his Lord faithfully. But these traitors failed to do even that much. So we call them Trattari now – tatter-cloaks – because their coats are as torn as their honour.’
‘Keep the food,’ I said. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’
‘No.’ The woman stood her ground between me and the entryway, holding the sack out to me. ‘I want my daughter to learn right from wrong. She promised you food, and food you shall have. I’ll have no presumed debts to a traitor.’
I looked at her, and at the men. ‘What about the man?’
‘What man?’
‘The Knight. The one she said was chasing her. What if he seeks her out again?’
Merna laughed. It was a remarkably unpleasant sound. ‘As if one of the Ducal Knights would ever harm a child! If there was a Knight there, more than likely he saw you eyeing her and thought he needed to protect her.’ The mother looked at her child. ‘Beatta’s a silly girl. She was probably just confused.’
The situation bothered me. I didn’t think it likely that a child would confuse whether or not a Knight was chasing her. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a reason why Beatta might be pursued, but I didn’t want to take a chance. I turned to her. ‘Beatta, are you still afraid of this Knight? Do you want me to stand guard outside tonight in case the man comes here?’
One of the men started to speak, but Merna held up her hand. ‘Beatta, dear, tell the Trattari we don’t want his help.’
Beatta looked at her mother, then at me. With the innocent cruelty of a child she said, ‘Go away, dirty tatter-cloak. We don’t want you here. Evil King Paelis was a stupid pig and he’s dead and I hope you die too.’
The child had probably never seen King Paelis when he was alive. The Dukes had won, and history was already bearing the marks of their victory. Even if someone was after the girl, what could I do about it? The Greatcoats were disgraced and disbanded and it felt as if most people would rather see their child dead at the hand of a Knight than saved by that of a Trattari.
I reached out and took the small sack of food from the girl’s mother, if only because it was the fastest way to make her step out of the way. I walked out the door and away from their home.
*
A few days later, on my way out of the city, in the quiet of night I walked past Beatta’s house again. I knew there’d be Gods to pay if I was seen, but I felt a strange compulsion. The lights were out and there was red paint on one of the windows in the form of a bird, the sign used in Cheveran when a child has been lost.