Arbor laughed again, only now there were tears in her eyes.
“Take it—really—you’d be doing me a favor. I do need the space.” She held out the dress. Arbor reached toward it and gasped at the sight of her hands. She ran off and scrubbed them red before taking the dress in her quivering arms, cradling it as if it were a child.
“I promise to keep it safe for you. Come back and pick it up anytime, all right?”
“Of course,” Arista replied, smiling. “Oh, and one more thing.” Arista handed her the corset. “If you would be so kind, I never wish to see this thing again.”
Arbor carefully laid the dress down and put her arms around Arista, hugging her close as she whispered, “Thank you.”
When Arista stepped out of the bakery into the sleepy village, her head throbbed, jolted by the brilliant sunlight. She shaded her eyes and spotted Armigil working in front of her shop, stoking logs under her massive cooker.
“Morning, Erma,” Armigil called to her. “Yer looking a mite pale, lassie.”
“It’s your fault,” Arista growled.
Armigil chuckled. “I try my best. I do indeed.”
Arista shuffled over. “Can you direct me to the well?”
“Up the road four houses. You’ll find it in front of the smithy.”
“Thank you.”
Following the unmistakable clanging of a metal hammer, Arista found Royce and Hadrian under the sun canopy in the smithy’s yard, watching another man beating a bit of molten metal on an anvil. He was muscular and completely bald-headed, with a bushy brown mustache. If he had been in the bakery the previous night, Arista did not remember. Beside him was a barrel of water, and not far away was the well, a full bucket resting on its edge.
The bald man dropped the hot metal into his barrel, where it hissed. “Your father taught me that,” the man said. “He was a fine smith—the finest.”
Hadrian nodded and recited, “Choke the hammer after stroke, grip it high when drilling die.”
This brought laughter from the smith. “I learned that one too. Mr. Blackwater was always making up rhymes.”
“So this is where you were born?” Arista asked, dipping a community cup into the bucket of water and taking a seat on the bench beside the well.
“Not exactly,” Hadrian replied. “I lived and worked here. I was actually born across the street there at Gerty and Abelard’s home.” He pointed at a tiny wattle-and-daub hovel without even a chimney. “Gerty was the midwife back then. My father kept pestering her so much that she took Mum to her house and Da had to wait outside in the rain during a terrible thunderstorm, or so I was told.”
Hadrian motioned to the smith. “This is Grimbald. He apprenticed with my father after I left—does a good job too.”
“You inherited the smithy from Danbury?” Royce asked.
“No, Lord Baldwin owns the smithy. Danbury rented from him, just as I do. I pay ten pieces of silver a year, and in return for charcoal, I do work for the manor at no cost.”
Royce nodded. “What about personal belongings? What became of Danbury’s things?”
Grimbald raised a suspicious eyebrow. “He left me his tools and if’n you’re after them, you’ll have to fight me before the steward in the manor court.”
Hadrian raised his hands and shook his head, calming the burly man. “No, no, I’m not here after anything. His tools are in good hands.”
Grimbald relaxed a bit. “Ah, okay, good, then. I do have something for you, though. When Danbury died, he made a list of all his things and who they should go to. Almost everyone in the village got a little something. I didn’t even know the man could write until I saw him scribbling it. There was a letter and instructions to give it to his son, if he ever returned. I read it, but it didn’t make much sense. I kept it, though.”
Grimbald set down his hammer and ducked inside the shop, then emerged a few minutes later with the letter.
Hadrian took the folded parchment and, without opening it, stuffed the note into his shirt pocket and walked away.
“What’s going on?” Arista asked Royce. “He didn’t even read it.”
“He’s in one of his moods,” Royce told her. “He’ll mope for a while. Maybe get drunk. He’ll be fine tomorrow.”
“But why?”
Royce shrugged. “Just the way he is lately. It’s nothing, really.”
Arista watched Hadrian disappear around the side of the candlemaker’s shop. Picking up the hem of her dress, she chased after him. When she rounded the corner, she found him seated on a fence rail, his head in his hands. He glanced up.
Is that annoyance or embarrassment on his face?
Biting her lip, she hesitated, then walked over and sat beside him. “Are you all right?” she asked.
He nodded in reply but said nothing. They sat in silence for a while.
“I used to hate this village,” he offered at length, his tone distant and his eyes searching the side of the shop. “It was always so small.” He lowered his head again.
She waited.