She spoke flatly, in a low voice, but without anger. It surprised her. She didn’t feel angry, just impatient for him to leave. Let him look around and see how humbly they lived and then be gone. She had to wake Gillam soon and give him some supper, or he’d not want to go to sleep until late. And she had planned to work on a quilt tonight, fine meticulous work after Gillam had gone to sleep. The last quilt she’d made carefully, she’d traded for a ham. This one, if she were fortunate, might get her a piglet. She wanted to sit by the fire tonight, hunched over her work, sewing carefully, and think about how she would build a pen for the pig and feed him garden waste and take him to the beach to scavenge. She wanted Pell to be gone. Once he’d been a future full of golden dreams and promises. Now he was a past that stung whenever she thought of him. She didn’t want to look at him and wonder how it might have gone if he’d truly been the man she’d thought he was. She wanted to be alone and dreaming about her own plans, the plans that she could make real.
“All I wanted was a chance to do what I wanted to do, to do things I enjoyed doing. To make a try for the life I should have had before it was all ruined. Is that so much to ask?” He stopped talking abruptly, taking a sharp breath. Then he said, as if promising something to himself, “Things are going to be different.” He clipped his words off as if she were the one who had hurt him. He added firmly, “And now, we’re done talking about it.”
His words struck her dumb. He spoke as if he had authority over her. A wave of dread rose up in her, followed by a pitiful hope that sickened her. She suddenly knew that he intended to stay. Right now. From now on.
Why?
Gillam stirred on the bed and opened his eyes. For a moment, his big dark eyes, so like his father’s, were full of dreams still. Then he blinked and focused his gaze on the stranger. “Mama?” he asked with some trepidation.
“It’s all right, Gillam. I’m right here.”
He crawled quickly across the bed to her, and she scooped him up in her arms. He hugged her tight around her neck, tucking his face into her shoulder.
“And I’m here, too, boy.” Pell spoke with a heartiness that did not ring true to her. “Your papa. Come here and let me look at you.”
In response, the boy tightened his grip on her neck. He didn’t look up at Pell. The man’s face darkened. “Give him time. He’s never seen you before. He doesn’t know you,” she pointed out.
“I said we were done talking about that,” he replied abruptly. He came toward her. “Let me see the boy.”
She didn’t think about it but backed away toward the door. “Give him some time to get used to your being here,” she countered. It wasn’t a direct refusal. Once she had adored Pell’s assertiveness and how he made decisions for them. It had seemed manly and sheltering. Now she found herself remembering how quickly he’d move to anger when his will was thwarted. Hilia’s advice to her suddenly came to mind.
“Let me see him.” He insisted as he advanced on her. His voice became contemptuous. “You’ve made him into a timid little mouse. When I was his age, I wasn’t afraid to stand and face a man and offer my hand. What sort of sniveling whelp are you raising under my name? What sort of a mama’s little titmouse is he?”
She recognized the mockery in his voice as he aimed his words at Gillam. If he hoped to rouse the boy to defy him, he failed. Gillam only clutched more tightly at her neck. She held her ground until Pell was almost an arm’s length away and then, despite her resolve, backed up. “Let me calm him. You don’t want his first memory of you to be that you frightened him.”
“First memory, last memory, what does it matter? Let’s see this boy that bears my name. Can he stand up to something that frightens him? Is there anything of me in him at all? Will. Look at me. Come to me. Right now.”
She had not seen the cat underfoot. He must have been right behind her. She didn’t feel her foot tread on him, but she must have, for suddenly, with a furious yowl and a spattering of hisses, the tomcat exploded from the floor. He leaped into the air between them and then clawed his way up Pell, literally running up his face and then leaping from his head into the low rafters. There he crouched, yowling and growling low as he lashed his abused tail back and forth.
Pell held his scratched face with both hands and cursed shrilly through his fingers Obtusely, Gillam had popped up his head at the cat explosion and now giggled wildly at the big man squeaking through his peekaboo fingers. Rosemary’s breath caught and she choked back a fear-strangled giggle of her own. Pell dropped his hands from his face. “It’s not funny!” he roared at them both.
Gillam turned astonished eyes on his mother. Rosemary managed to keep her expression calm. “See,” she told the child. “You don’t need to be afraid of Pell.”
In response to her remark, the boy gazed at his father, staring intently at the long stripe of red that crossed the top of his cheek above his beard. Fear had left him to be replaced by fascination.
“Where’d that damned beast come from?” Pell demanded. He dabbed at his face with his fingers, scowled at the blood, and then peered up into the dim space above the rafters. Marmalade had already vanished into the shadows. He was probably outside by now, having left via the eaves.
“Hilia gave him to me. He keeps rats out of the cottage and away from the chicken yard.” She tried to keep her voice calm for Gillam’s sake. The boy was now peering at his father with curiosity. There was tension in his little body, and she knew from experience that he would either dissolve into wails or decide to explore the situation, depending on what happened in the next few moments. She desperately wanted him to stay calm.
“Hilia? Hilia Borse? Everyone knows her family is Wit tainted. They do the beast magic in their home. They talk to animals. You let her put an animal into this house? Are you mad?”
She bounced Gillam a time or two, then set him down on the taller stool at the table. There were only two places to sit; she wondered if Pell had noticed that. As if Pell were any other inconvenient visitor, she decided she would simply go on with her routine. She pulled the simmering pot of soup back from the fire and crouched down to ladle a portion into Gillam’s shallow bowl. “You know who Hilia is,” she said, trying not to sound confrontational. “She has been my best friend since we were girls.”
“Yes, I know who she is! And I know what she is! Everyone in the village knows her family has the Wit. Her mother talks to sheep!”
She sighed, blew on Gillam’s soup to cool it a bit, and then set it on the table. Gillam grinned happily. The stranger in the house was eclipsed by the prospect of hot food. The boy was always hungry. His constant hunger both pleased her and frightened her. He would eat and grow strong, as long as she had food to feed him. From the mantel shelf, she took down half a loaf of bread wrapped in a clean cloth. She broke off a piece for him and set it beside his bowl with a spoon. “Eat nicely,” she warned the boy.
She marked how Pell was eyeing the food. She clenched her jaw. She wasn’t going to offer him any. Let him ask, if he had the nerve. She ignored his interest in the food as she filled her own bowl. “No one knows for certain the family is Witted,” she pointed out. “And if they are, well, no ill has ever come of them having that magic that I know. The wool from their flock is the best in Buck Duchy. They are respected in town. Hilia and her husband have always been kind to me. And Marmalade is my cat.”
“And for all you know, he could be her Wit beast, spying on you from dawn to dusk. I wouldn’t allow a Wit beast in my house. Don’t you care about your own child? Don’t you fear he’ll be tainted with that magic?’
She took her bowl, a spoon, and another piece of the bread to the table. She sat down with her back to him and stirred the soup thoughtfully. Potato and cabbage and onion. Sometimes she dreamed of meat. Rich brown broth with hunks of beef in it. Greasy pork cooked on skewers. Don’t think about what you don’t have. She spoke over her shoulder. “The Wit is not contagious. You are born with it or you don’t have it. I think if you could just go get that magic for yourself, a lot of people who look down on Witted ones would have gone out and done it by now. I think half the hatred of the Witted is jealousy, pure and simple.” She took a spoonful of her soup and a bite of her bread.
Pell made a sound between derision and disbelief. “That’s what they’d have you believe,” he said in a thick voice. “But if you’d seen half of what I’ve seen, you’d know better.”
She had to turn to look back at him. That was when she discovered that he had taken the remaining chunk of the loaf and was dipping it into the soup pot and eating it. She knew a flash of anger. She put her eyes back on her
