his father's apprentice on his fifteenth birthday had developed his body beyond anything she would have anticipated.
It hadn't done much for his mind, though. She whirled at a sound behind her, and saw that he had already moved several paces closer.
'What do you want, Jon?' she asked, trying to sound bored. 'I'm busy. I'm supposed to be delivering messages from Master Jeoff. I left one with your father,' she concluded pointedly.
'What's the matter?' he asked, scratching his behind with one sooty hand, and grinning still wider. 'You in a big hurry t' get back t' yer lo-o-over?' He laughed. 'What's Jib got, huh? Nothin', that's what.'
So, now it was out in the open, instead of being sniggered about, hinted at. Someone had finally said to her face what everyone in Westhaven had been telling each other for a year.
'He's not my lover,' she said as calmly as she could. 'I don't have any lover.'
'Then maybe it's time you got one,' said Hill, snickering. 'Little lovin' might do you some good, string bean. Teach you what a woman's for.'
'Aww, Hill, she just means she ain't got a real lover,' Jon said genially, flexing the muscles of his shoulders, presumably for her benefit. 'She just means she wants one, eh?'
'I meant what I said,' she told him defiantly.
'Ah, don't fool around, Rune. We know your Mam's been in ol' Jeoff's bed since Rose died. An' we know 'bout you. Your Mam wasn't any more married than m' Dad's anvil.' He advanced, and she backed up-into Hill's and Warran's hands. She suppressed a yelp as they grabbed her. 'You got no call pretendin' that you're all goody-good.' She struggled in the farm boys' hands; they simply tightened their grips.
She stopped fighting, holding very, very still, part of her mind planning every second of the next few minutes, the rest of her too scared to squeak. 'Let me go,' she said, slowly, clearly, and sounding amazingly calm even to herself.
'Yer Mam's a whore,' Jon said, his grin turning cruel, as he reached out for her. 'Yer Mam's a whore, an' yer a whore's daughter, an' if yer not a whore now, ye will be-'
He grabbed her breast, crushing it in his hand and hurting her, as he slammed his foul mouth down on hers, trying to force her lips open with his tongue.
She opened her mouth and let his tongue probe forward-and bit down on it, quick, and as hard as she could, tasting blood briefly.
At the same time, she slammed her knee up into his crotch.
As Jon screamed and fell away from her, she brought her heel down hard on Hill's instep, and slammed her head back against his teeth. That hurt, and she reckoned she'd cut her scalp a bit, but it surely hurt him worse.
Hill let out a hoarse cry and let go of her immediately, and bumbled into Warran. She pivoted as much as she could with Warran still holding onto her, and kicked Hill in the knee, toppling him; he went down, taking Warran with him. As Warran fell, she managed to pull free of the last boy's grip-and she pelted away as fast as her legs would carry her, never once looking back to see if she'd hurt them seriously or not.
She ran all the way out of the village, her side aching, her head hurting, half blinded with fright. No matter who might have been following her, she still had longer legs and better wind than any of them. When she slowed and finally paused, near where she'd been stopped by the girls earlier, she couldn't hear any pursuit.
That was when she started to shake.
She started to drop to her knees beside the path, then thought better of the idea. What if there was someone following? What if the boys recovered and decided to come after her?
But she had one place of shelter, one they wouldn't know about-one that was completely defensible.
She got off the path somehow, and fought her way through the brush some twenty or thirty feet into the forest. And there was her shelter, the biggest oak tree for miles around. She forced her shaking legs to carry her up the side of the forest giant, and into the huge fork, completely hidden from below by the new young leaves of lesser trees. There she curled up, and let her mind go blank, while she shook with reaction.
After a while, her heart stopped pounding in her ears, and she stopped feeling sick to her stomach. Mostly, anyway.
Her mind began to work again, if slowly.
She put her hand to the back of her head, but surprisingly, didn't come away with any blood on it, though she felt the hard lump of a rising goose egg back there. That, and a torn and dirty shirt were the worst she'd taken out of the encounter.
This time.
She chewed some young leaves to get the nasty taste of Jon out of her mouth, but she couldn't get the nasty feel of him out of her mind.
One thing was certain; her immunity had vanished with the snows of winter. The girls might leave her alone, but she was completely at the mercy of the boys, even in daylight. The girls might even have set their brothers on her; that would certainly fit Amanda and Joyse's personalities. And that this attack had taken place in daylight meant that they were not particularly worried about hiding their actions from their parents.
That meant their parents didn't care what they were doing to her. If anything happened to her, nothing would be done to punish her attackers. That had always been true-but the threat of attack had never included rape before.
The boys had said it all; her mother was a whore, she was the daughter of a whore, therefore she was a whore. No one would believe anything else. Anything that happened to her would be her own fault, brought on her own actions, or simply by being born of bad blood.
Not even the Priest would help, unless she took holy vows. And even then-he might not believe that she was an innocent, and he might refuse her the protection of the Church. She had nowhere to turn to for help, and no one to depend on but herself.
How long was it going to be before she was cornered by a gang she couldn't escape? It was only the purest luck, and the fact that they hadn't expected her to fight back, that had let her get away this time.
Next time she might not be so lucky.
Next time, they might win.
The realization made her start to shake all over again.
It felt like hours later that she managed to get herself under control, and climb down out of the tree-but when she made her way back to the inn, no one seemed to have missed her. At least, no one seemed to think she had taken an extraordinary amount of time to deliver her messages.
After much thought, she had decided to keep quiet about the attack; after all, what good would complaining about it do? None of this would have happened if the boys hadn't been sure they were safe from punishment. Jeoff wouldn't do anything to risk the anger of his customers, Stara and Annie Cook would be certain she'd brought it on herself, and Jib would only get himself into fights he couldn't hope to win. No one would care, at least, not enough to help protect her.
But she could protect herself, in clever ways. She could refuse to go into the village alone, or better still, she could send Jib to run errands for her, trading chore for chore. Even if it meant more of the kind of work that might stiffen her hands. . . .
Better that, than the little entertainments Jon and his friends had planned.
But she didn't have long to brood on her troubles, for despite the fact that she hadn't been able to deliver more than half her messages, word of the new minstrel had traveled all through the village, and the men and their wives were already beginning to take their places behind the rough wooden tables. There were three couples there already; the baker and his wife, and a couple of the nearer farmers and their spouses. The place would be full tonight, for certain.
She dashed upstairs to change her torn shirt for a clean, older one-a loose and baggy one that didn't show anything of her figure-making sure no one saw her to ask about what had happened to the first shirt.
She stripped off the shirt and frowned-more in anger now, than fear-at the bruises on her breast. She touched it gingerly; it was going to hurt more later than it did now, and it hurt bad enough now that she waited long enough to wrap her chest in a supporting and protecting-and concealing-band of cloth. She slipped the new shirt over her head, pledging herself that she'd find a way to make Jon hurt as much as he'd hurt her.
If he didn't already. She hoped, devoutly, that he did. He'd surely have a hard time explaining away his bitten
