part to play, but it would not always be so. She was in no haste, she had a great deal of thinking to do before she took action.
On her knees in the yard, Rannilt scrubbed and pummelled, her hands sore from the lye. By mid-morning the last of the washing was wrung and folded and piled into a great wicker basket. Susanna hoisted it on her hip and bore it away down the slope of the garden, and through the deep arch in the town wall, to spread it out on the bushes and the smooth plane of grass that faced almost due south to the sun. Rannilt cleared away the tub and mopped the floor, and went in to tend the fire and set the salt beef simmering for dinner.
Here quiet and alone, she was suddenly so full of her pain on Liliwin’s account that her eyes spilled abrupt tears into the pot, and once the flow began she could not dam it. She groped blindly about the kitchen, working by touch, and shedding helpless tears for the first man who had caught her fancy, and the first who had ever fancied her.
Absorbed into her misery, she did not hear Susanna come quietly into the doorway behind her, and halt there at gaze, watching the fumbling hands feeling their way, and the half-blind eyes still streaming.
‘In God’s name, girl, what is it with you now?’
Rannilt started and turned guiltily, stammering that it was nothing, that she was sorry, that she was getting on with her work, but Susanna cut her off sharply:
‘It is not nothing! I’m sick of seeing you thus moping and useless. You’ve been limp as a sick kitten this two days past, and I know why. You have that miserable little thief on your mind?I know! I know he wound about you with his soft voice and his creeping ways, I’ve watched you. Must you be fool enough to fret over a guilty wretch the like of that?’
She was not angry; she was never angry. She sounded impatient, even exasperated, but still contemptuously kind, and her voice was level and controlled as ever. Rannilt swallowed the choking residue of tears, shook the mist from her eyes, and began to be very busy with her pots and pans, looking hurriedly about her for a distraction which would turn attention from herself at any cost. ‘It came over me just for a minute: I’m past it now. Why, you’ve got your feet and the hem of your gown wet,’ she exclaimed, seizing gratefully on the first thing that offered. ‘You should change your shoes.’
Susanna shrugged the diversion scornfully aside. ‘Never mind my wet feet. The river’s up a little, I was not noticing until I went too near the edge, leaning to hang a shirt on the bushes. What of your wet eyes? That’s more to the point. Oh, fool girl, you’re wasting your fancy! This is a common rogue of the roads, with many a smaller deed of the kind behind him, and he’ll get nothing but his due in the noose that’s waiting for him. Get sense, and put him out of your mind.’
‘He is not a rogue,’ said Rannilt, despairingly brave. ‘He did not do it, I know it, I know him, he could not. It isn’t in him to do violence. And I do fret for him, I can’t help it.’
‘So I see,’ said Susanna resignedly. ‘So I’ve seen ever since they ran him to ground. I tire of him and of you. I want you in your wits again. God’s truth, must I carry this household on my back without even your small help?’ She gnawed a thoughtful lip, and demanded abruptly: ‘Will it cure you if I let you go see for yourself that the tumbler is alive and whole, and out of our reach for a while, more’s the pity? Yes, and likely to worm his way out of even this tangle in the end!’
She had spoken magical words. Rannilt was staring up at her dry-eyed, bright as a candle-flame. ‘See? See him? You mean I could go there?’
‘You have legs,’ said Susanna tartly. ‘It’s no distance. They don’t close their gates against anyone. You may even come back in your right senses, when you see how little store he sets by you, while you’re breaking your fool heart for him. You may get to know him for what he is, and the better for you. Yes, go. Go, and be done with it! This once I’ll manage without you. Let Daniel’s wife start making herself useful. Good practice for her.’
‘You mean it?’ whispered Rannilt, stricken by such generosity. ‘I may go? But who will see to the broth here, and the meat?’
‘I will. I have often enough, God knows! I tell you, go, go quickly, before I change my mind, stay away all day long, if that will send you back cured. I can very well do without you this once. But wash your face, girl, and comb your hair, and do yourself and us credit. You can take some of those oat-cakes in a basket, if you wish, and whatever scraps were left from yesterday. If he felled my father,’ said Susanna roughly, turning away to pick up the ladle and stir the pot simmering on the hob, ‘there’s worse waiting for him in the end, no need to grudge him a mouthful while he is man alive.’ She looked back over a straight shoulder at Rannilt, who still hovered in a daze. ‘Go and visit your minstrel, I mean it, you have leave. I doubt if he even remembers your face! Go and learn sense.’
Lost in wonder, and only half believing in such mercies, Rannilt washed her face and tidied her tangle of dark hair with trembling hands, seized a basket and filled it with whatever morsels were brusquely shoved her way, and went out through the hall like a child walking in its sleep. It was wholly by chance that Margery was coming down the stairs, with a pile of discarded garments on her arm. She marked the small, furtive figure flitting past below, and in surprised goodwill, since this waif was alien and lonely here as she was, asked: ‘Where are you sent off to in such a hurry, child?’
Rannilt halted submissively, and looked up into Margery’s rounded, fresh countenance. ‘Mistress Susanna gave me leave. I’m going to the abbey, to take this provision to Liliwin.’ The name, so profoundly significant to her, meant nothing to Margery. ‘The minstrel. The one they say struck down Master Walter. But I’m sure he did not! She said I may go, see for myself how he’s faring?because I was crying
‘
‘I remember him,’ said Margery. ‘A little man, very young. They’re sure he’s the guilty one, and you are sure he is not?’ Her blue eyes were demure. She hunted through the pile of garments on her arm, and very faintly and fleetingly she smiled. ‘He was not too well clothed, I recall. There is a cotte here that was my husband’s some years ago, and a capuchon. The little man could wear them, I think. Take them with you. It would be a pity to waste them. And charity is approved of in Heaven, even to sinners.’
She sorted them out gravely, a good dark-blue coat outgrown while it was still barely patched, and a much- mended caped hood in russet brown. ‘Take them! They’re of no use here.’ None, except for the satisfaction it gave her to despatch them to the insignificant soul condemned by every member of her new family. It was her gesture of independence.
Rannilt, every moment more dazed, took the offerings and tucked them into her basket, made a mute reverence, and fled before this unprecedented and hardly credible vein of good will should run out, and food, clothing, holiday and all fall to ruin round her.
Susanna cooked, served, scoured and went about her circumscribed realm with a somewhat grim smile on her
