Spinning around, I came face-to-face with the rheumy-eyed crone and her yellow grin.
“Changeling eyes, that’s what the girl saw,” the woman croaked, as if there had been not a hitch in our previous conversation. “But a sturdy good frock and boots only mended the one time. Soft hands. Not a maid’s hands.” That one eye focused to a slit. “A runaway, eh? An orphan on the run. I can see it. The life of a governess wouldn’t be for you.”
“What does that matter?” I spat out breathlessly. There was no time for idle chitchat. “So you do what I do—you’re a traveler. You tell fortunes and the like, so what?”
“I do, and with more discretion than you, girl,” the woman said with a croak of a laugh. The laughter made the echo of her lost beauty glimmer, almost truly visible. Still gripping my shoulder, she dragged me to the opposite end of the alley and pointed. I looked toward the church she indicated and the crowd meant to come for the thief, for me. A mob. By now the girl I had told the fortune to would have repeated the story, and they would be hunting not just a cutpurse but a witch, too. It would be her father and her brothers, the priest, and whoever else felt like driving a starving girl out of the village and into the menacing cold.
I had suffered and survived this banishment before. Perhaps this time they sought graver punishment.
“Repent,” the old woman hissed.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what they want from you, surely. Oh, they’ll take you in,” she said, laughing again, the sound whistling through her broken teeth. “Show a little contrition. Works, doesn’t it?”
The mob expanded. It wouldn’t be long now before they felt bold enough for a confrontation. Thief. Witch. No, it wouldn’t be long now. The crone had conjured gold to give me, and if she gave it so freely, then there was more where that came from. She might be clever, but I could be cleverer. I could make that gold mine.
“I know a place, girl,” the crone said. She paid no heed to the riot forming just down the street. She only had eyes—one eye—for me. “Soft hands now can be hard hands soon. I can find you work. Dry. Safe. Plenty of food. Got a spot of pottage and a hunk or two of pork in my wagon. It will last us the ride, if you’re keen to ride, that is.”
Not the choice I had hoped to make that day. Rather, I simply wanted to decide where to spend a few coins for a hot meal and a bed for the night. But that dream was dashed for the moment. A new dream formed in its place—me with pockets full of gold and a way to start a new life. The crowd spilling out from the church, however, was a vastly different story.
She latched on to my fidgeting. “Hanging is no end for such a pretty, pale neck.”
“How far?” I asked, but I had already turned to follow her, and she led me away from the view of the church, toward another muddy alley running between an alehouse and a butcher’s. “And what would the work be like? Are there any children to teach? My French is passable. My Latin . . . Well, I know a bit of Latin.”
“Nothing like that, girl. Just scrubbing, sweeping, seeing to some easy guests. It can be hard work but honest, and you won’t want for a thing.”
Not ideal, perhaps, but better than begging or thieving, or spending a full morning at work only to come up with a few lousy pennies.
Or swinging from a noose.
And the gold, I reminded myself; there could be more gold.
“Where is this place?” I asked, hit by the smell of the butcher’s and the sourness of a fresh kill being gutted somewhere inside.
“North, just north. Coldthistle House, they call it, a place for boarders, my girl, and a place for the wayward and lost.”
Chapter Two
We followed the road north as long as daylight persisted. My rump ached from the bouncing of the wagon wheels over broken cobbles. The crone spoke of comfort at this Coldthistle House, but there was none so far to be found on the journey.
The horses began to plod as the last orange ribbons of dusk faded on the horizon. I sat huddled next to the old woman on the driving bench, soaked through from the leaky canvas roof of the wagon. Shivering, I listened to her singing a nonsense song, random snatches of words put to a familiar tune.
“My mother sang a song like that, but those are not the words,” I told her through chattering teeth. “Are you from the island, too?”
“Sometimes,” she said. The cold and the rain did nothing to drive the odd twinkle out of her good eye, and she flashed it at me now.
“What could that possibly mean? One is either from a place or not.”
“So sure of that,” she whispered, giggling. “You like to be sure of things, don’t you? What else are you decided on, girl? That there is a God in the heavens and a Devil down below?”
I turned away from her, staring straight ahead as the road climbed, a steep hill carrying us higher and higher, as if we could reach those last golden bands of daylight. “Of course.”
“For a teller of fortunes and fates, you are not a very convincing liar.”
“I was taught the Bible,” I said shortly. “That should be answer enough.”
“It’s not as simple as that. Nothing is. I thought you were cleverer than this, child. I only take clever children to Coldthistle House now.”
“Now?”
She giggled again, but it was not a mirthful laugh. “The dull ones never lasted all that long.”
“What does that have to do with God or any of it? No, forget I asked at all. You’ll only offer more riddles and half-speak.” That drew another gurgle of laughter from the crone.
“Lighter talk, then, to make the journey less bitter and damp,” she said. A sudden squawk from behind us drew my mind from the cold. It came again, louder, and then another bird chirped, and another, until an entire chorus of tweets and chirps and calls erupted from the covered wagon bed.
“Is this . . .” I swiveled, drawing up one of the tethered corners of the canvas, tugging until the hooks in the wood gave. Behind the sodden covering were a dozen cages or more, all roped together, a different bird in each home, perched and alert, filling the road with song. “Birds? What are you doing with them all?”
“Why, eating them. What else would they be for?”
Yet I spied a finch and a pleasantly rotund little wren, and exotic creatures with feather plumes that I couldn’t possibly name. “Monstrous. How could you eat such lovely things?”
“It’s all meat and gristle under the finest wrappings,” she replied. “We’re no different.”
“So you wish to eat me, too?”
Her nose wrinkled up at that and she shook her head, snorting. “They are pets, child. I am delivering them to their new master, who—I assure you—has no intention of doing them harm.”