Even Tess’s self-pitying heart found itself a little bit moved.
The cathedral spires of Trowebridge, the biggest town in Ducana province, rose to the southwest. That had struck Tess as the logical place to go first; she might buy supplies there, and then take the main road south. As soon as she descended this hilltop, the town would disappear from view. The direct route passed by Cragmarog Castle (which she could make out, coiled like a snake in the midst of trees), and that was no good. Her parents—or, more humiliatingly, Jeanne’s in-laws—might be encountered upon that road at any time.
Tess, having studied the map, knew the other landmark to look for in this landscape. Directly south was a hilltop ruin, Pentrach’s Dun, which she could reach via footpaths, ancient right-of-ways leading straight through farmers’ fields. From that hilltop, she should be able to see another road, running westerly to Trowebridge.
She had to go the long way, two sides of the triangle, because the hypotenuse was forbidden her. This struck her as perfectly symbolic of her entire life.
The sun shone; she put on her gardening hat against it. Her satchel straps dug into her shoulders, and the hedgerows snatched at her skirts as she passed. A great cloud of blackbirds ascended, screaming, and scared her. The wind slapped her cheeks, damp soil clogged her boot soles, and the hem of her kirtle grew steadily dirtier.
In spite of all this—in spite of herself, really—her heart began to lift as she walked, or maybe a weight began to fall away. She’d done it. She’d gotten free of her family (for now, a voice at the back of her mind nagged). Dirt and discomfort and uncertainty were nothing to her.
She was almost smiling to herself as she passed a gang of peasants, red-handed men in smocks and clogs. They were in the next pasture over, shouting and whipping the cows with willow switches, driving them away from their hapless calves. Two men would then grab a lone calf by its knobby legs, bucking and kicking, upside down in their arms, and haul it into another enclosure. The cows mooed, low and despairing, their udders heavy with milk for their babies, and the babies cried for their mothers—an inhuman cry, but unmistakable to Tess.
Tess didn’t understand what mysterious agricultural purpose required tearing bovine families apart. She watched with one hand to her heart and the other to her lips, and she was struck by both the cruelty of the men and the realization that she was a woman, walking alone.
She started walking faster, hoping none of them would look her way.
As if they could read her thoughts, one of the men began to sing:
A little pretty bonny lass
Went forth upon the dewy grass
I followed her down to the dell
She snubbed me with a fare-ye-well
Whereupon the rest of the farmhands took up the chorus:
Upon the heath, the holt, the hill,
My girl, I’ll do whate’er I will.
Tess’s face puckered at these lyrics and fell at the next verse (which was too bawdy for general consumption). She hunched her shoulders and kept walking. She thought she heard someone whistle after her, but maybe it was merely the call of the hedge shrike.
No, that was a whistle. Tess didn’t look back.
The world was full of men. She’d been so desperate to get gone that she hadn’t given that consideration the weight it deserved. All unbidden, Mama’s voice spoke in her head: Men are scoundrels, and they only ever want one thing. They will try every trick in the book to seduce you, and if you won’t go willingly, they’ll find a way to take you anyway.
She shuddered. Mama hadn’t said such things often—preferring to focus on Tess’s own inadequacies—but of course they were the corollary to everything St. Vitt had always said. Why should women avert their eyes and dress modestly and suppress their desires, if not for the sake of men? How was the wolf to blame, if the sheep were roaming free?
Thou shalt not tempt wasn’t a commandment of any Saint she knew, but it could’ve been.
Maybe she could find a way to live alone and support herself—she still believed that—but walking across the entire Southlands, with no protector, to get there? Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a clever idea. She wasn’t going to last out here.
She paused in the shade of a hedgerow, out of sight of prying eyes, to peel a cheese and munch an oatcake. It was a filling enough lunch, but fast walking and the warm spring sunshine had made Tess powerfully thirsty. Salty cheese and dry bannock didn’t help.
All she’d brought was wine. She held the bottle up to the light; the sun shone enticingly through green glass and liquid dark as night. It wouldn’t quench her thirst particularly well. The sensible thing to do would be to go looking for water. Every little farmstead surely had a well…and a red-handed cowherd, or a lecherous shepherd, or any other sort of man with a bawdy song in his head and a gleam in his eye as he realized she was at his mercy.
Some of them were surely fine—most of them probably were—but you couldn’t tell by looking, and that was the problem. She drank about half her wine, staggered to her feet, and carried on, trying to stay out of sight now, keeping to the shadows of hedgerows.
As she sneaked, her mother’s voice came to her: You can’t tell if a man might be good or evil, but do you know what they can tell by looking at you? That you’re not where you should be, and therefore not what you should be. You aren’t at home, so you must be public property. No one’s taking care of you, therefore anyone might claim you.
A gang of men with rakes suddenly crossed the road in front of her, moving from one meadow to another. Tess pressed herself into a hedgerow to avoid them. One of the younger ones winked at her; nobody was fooled.
They know, said her mother. You’re an old shoe that might fit any foot. A sucked marrow bone. A gob of chewed honeycomb, its sweetness long gone. No wonder Will left you; he knew what you really were.
“Stop it,” Tess muttered, wiping her eyes. She pulled the bottle back out of her pack and glared at it accusingly. She’d had an agreement with wine: it would be a good friend to her and mute these kinds of voices, but it wasn’t doing the trick today. It had ceded the floor to them and stripped her naked of defenses.
She drank the rest, still hoping it would do what it was supposed to.
Her mother’s voice followed her the rest of the way to Trowebridge. Tess felt it like hot breath at the nape of her neck, smelled it in wafts of woodsmoke and manure. It wrapped around her ankles like a vine, making her stumble, and snagged the hem of her skirt as she climbed over stiles. The voice told her to hide whenever masculine farmhands came into view, called her a contemptible insect for hiding, and then flew above her like a flag to make sure everyone knew.
Tess missed the ancient beauty of Pentrach’s Dun, missed a salmon sunset and the aching curve of the river, so wholly occupied was she with wrestling the unseen.
She reached Trowebridge at dusk and stood on the eponymous stone bridge staring at the shadowy buildings, her heart in her boots. Even if she had enough money for lodgings, which she very much doubted, she didn’t have the wherewithal to knock on strange doors and ask.
Running away was the worst idea she’d ever had. She regretted everything.
An idea bubbled up from her sludgy mind—didn’t storybook trolls live under bridges? It would provide shelter enough for one night, anyway. She picked her way through the weeds and crawled under the bridge. It was humid, but more spacious than she would have guessed. Tess exhaled, finally feeling safe. Like a cockroach in a crevasse, her mother said, unable to resist one last kick while Tess was down. The wine bottle was long empty (she checked one last time, to be absolutely sure), so Tess chucked it toward the river, where it shattered on unseen rocks.
The earth under the bridge was cool against her cheek, at least.
* * *