She awoke with a start; the windows glowed with predawn twilight. Had Grandma not come out? Tess struggled to stand, pausing to catch her breath as her abdomen seized. The pain should have been frightening, but she had practice ignoring her body.
She tapped timidly on the bedroom door. No reply. She opened it a crack and listened for snoring. All was silent. It was too dark to see, so Tess crept through to open the heavy drapes. Grandma Therese had accumulated seventy years’ worth of souvenirs—vases, knickknacks, a bearskin rug, poufs, a globe, a suit of armor—and Tess bumped most of them crossing the room. Even a half-deaf old woman should have been awakened by the noise.
Tess whipped back the curtains, and wan half-light fell across an empty bed.
Grandma Therese must’ve sneaked out during the storm, without Tess hearing. “No, no, no,” Tess repeated down the corridor, down the stairs, through the house, into the grounds, waddling as fast as she could, pausing whenever shooting pelvic pain stole her breath away. It felt like her monthlies times a thousand. She’d have to remember to mention it to Chessey next week.
The gravel paths were riddled with puddles; Tess’s slippers were soon soaked, but she could only imagine how wet and cold her grandmother would be, out all night without shelter (unless she was in the gazebo; no, she was not). “Therese!” Tess shouted—the old woman rarely responded to “Grandma.” At the rose garden, her heart sank; the plants were only waist-high, so she should have seen anyone on the paths.
Anyone upright. Tess plodded the perimeter doing grim due diligence, her heart quailing.
Someone had dug a pit in the middle of the path at the far end of the garden. Not deep, but too wide to walk around. An old woman might not notice it in the dark. An old woman might fall and break her hip, or her neck. Whoever had dug it might or might not have anticipated that it would fill with water in the storm—only an inch, but an inch was enough.
Tess teetered at the edge of the pit, staring at her grandmother’s body, the pale hair like wet weeds, the soaked clinging chemise spattered with grit. Tess would have wept, but she was gripped by a terrible contraction at just that moment, so she screamed.
Sharing food with Reg and Rowan didn’t gain their goodwill. Tess’s supplies were gone by breakfast, and the two ruffians, their own packs still full, had not a morsel to spare for her. If they’d hoped to drive her off, though, they were sorely disappointed. Tess stayed on them like a tick, determined to free Griss.
Alas, she needed to eat. By the second morning, her stomach rumbled unbearably; she’d have to abandon them and go steal something for herself. She hit up a farmhouse for bread and cheese, but the farm wife spotted her and chased her with a rolling pin. Tess was forced a mile out of her way, and when she found the road again, the three men were nowhere to be seen.
They couldn’t have gotten far; Griss, in particular, shuffled slowly. Half a mile along, Tess and Pathka reached a village. Normally they would have skirted it, on the principle that Pathka was going to alarm people, but the village was nearly empty. It was a fine, warm day, and everyone was out on the surrounding hills doing farmwork.
In the middle of the village, Pathka abruptly veered toward a large, sturdy building, a public house, and Tess understood: the men had stopped for lunch. She found them in the taproom, Reg and Rowan drinking ale, Griss dozing with his chin on his chest.
Tess sat at their table, startling Griss awake. He smiled blearily. Reg and Rowan picked up their mugs and pointedly changed tables, which was ridiculous; the room was empty except for the four of them. Tess sighed, envying their ale a little bit, and then felt a tug on her sleeve.
“Johnny,” Griss whispered, “you can’t keep poaching. You’re going to get…” He mimed wringing a chicken’s neck.
“If you know some better way to feed myself, I’d like to hear it,” said Tess sulkily.
Griss kept worrying her sleeve until she looked up. He pointed out the window. Beyond the thatched houses sloped a field of tall grass. Upon the hillside, a line of village men mowed with scythes; behind them, the women raked and tossed cut grass into piles running the length of the meadow. Tess could just make out snatches of song.
“You don’t need to…to…There’s honest work to be done, Johnny,” whispered Griss. “The world is full of work, waiting for you. I’ve told you a hundred times.”
“Have you?” said Tess absently, entranced by the rhythm and efficiency of their movements. It was like a dance—cut, turn, rake, repeat.
And that was how old Griss, whom Tess had set out to save, may have saved her in turn. As inept as she was at stealing, she’d never given farm chores a second thought. Hitherto unconsidered possibilities now opened up before her.
She discovered that she loved turning hay, loved the feel and weight of the seven-tined pitchfork, loved the way fresh grass smelled green, demi-dry smelled sweet, and crackling-dry smelled good enough to eat. She loved the rip and swish of the scythes, the songs (she never stayed long enough to learn the words, alas), the way the women giggled at her preference for the feminine task of turning the piles (Tess wasn’t strong enough yet to keep up with the cutters). She loved the way her shoulders ached, and the way her skin felt when she finally scrubbed it free of dust in some secluded stream at the end of the day.
She’d walk into the dewy fields first thing and work all morning in exchange for a share of the midday meal. Aside from the unexpected pleasure of physical labor, she was glad to finally get along without stealing. Well, mostly. She did steal a leather jerkin that had been left on a stump, because the weather was getting unpleasantly warm for Florian’s jacket, and she needed something that would hide her breasts without giving her heatstroke. She left a small bouquet of field poppies as a thank-you but knew that didn’t make up for it.
After lunch Tess would hurry after Reg and Rowan. They never walked more than three or four miles and usually stopped for the night by midafternoon, so she caught them up easily. If she couldn’t tell which tavern was getting them drunk, Pathka would sniff them out.
Not without grumbling, however. “They’re going to kill you,” he’d say. “Who will help me call Anathuthia then? Not the oldster. Not your ghost.”
Reg and Rowan seemed determined to drink away the loot they’d stolen from the hunting lodge. Tess hoped they’d get so drunk that she could spirit Griss away, but it wasn’t that simple. They preferred inns to camping, and they barred their door at night.
Tess sat with them at tavern tables in the evenings, so they knew she still had her eye on them. They avoided speaking; Tess would listen to the village fiddler and nurse her single ale, if she’d been lucky enough to muck out the stable or perform some other chore for the tapmaster.
One memorable evening, a priest gave the news: a child was born unto Queen Glisselda! A girl, not yet named. The tapmaster, in a fit of celebratory generosity, proclaimed a round on the house, and Tess—who couldn’t hold it like she used to—found herself in conversation with Reg and Rowan at last. “What would you say if I told you the child wasn’t Glisselda’s at all?” said Tess ill-advisedly. “What if I told you it was Seraphina’s, being passed off as the Queen’s?”
Luckily, Reg was twice as drunk as she was. “I’d tell you to go drown yourself in St. Pandowdy’s Pond, because you’ve uttered the most serene blasphemy ever heard.”
“Blasphemy?” cried Tess. “It’s ‘disrespect to Her Majesty,’ not blapshemy. I mean phlasbemy. Damnation!” She couldn’t say it twice, which was embarrassing.
“Idiot,” said Reg, taking a superior air. “St. Seraphina couldn’t possibly get pregnant.”
“She’s half dragon,” offered Rowan. “She’d be infertile, like a mule.”