probably find some kind of work in a big city like that. But the journey would be hard. Sleeping by the road with little more than her shawl to cover them, eating what they could find. There were dangerous men on the road; there always were and always had been. They might do worse to her and her son than Pell would even imagine. Bad as Pell was, there was worse out there. And Gillam was his only son. He wouldn’t hurt him. She’d face him and see what came next.
Her washing tub was in the front yard, full of dirty water. The scatter of feathers in the front yard was a grim warning. With a sinking heart, she saw the long, shining feathers of a rooster’s tail among them. “Picky-pick,” she whispered to herself. Her hatchet was sunk deep into the stump where she split kindling. Feathers were trapped around the embedded blade. As she opened the door, the smell of scorched meat greeted her. The carcass of a bird was on the spit over the fire with Pell crouching nearby. Feathers were everywhere.
“What have you done?” she demanded in a stricken voice, but she knew. He’d killed the rooster and with him, every generation of birds to come. He hadn’t even salvaged the feathers.
Pell turned round to smile up at her with his disarming grin. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cooking dinner for us. Thought I’d show you that I’m a useful sort to have around the house.”
“You idiot!”
His eyes narrowed, the smile gone. “I’d think you’d show a little gratitude, after you left me here with no breakfast and dirty clothes. I had to wash them out myself. And put them on when they were still wet.”
She’d already seen that. His fine shirt was wrinkled, and the damp still showed in every seam of his trousers. She didn’t care.
“You killed Picky-pick. Without asking me. Without thinking about it at all.”
“Rosemary. Is that what’s troubling you?” A wealth of disbelief in his uttering of her name, and then he smiled indulgently as he explained it to her. “It wasn’t a hen, but a rooster. Doesn’t lay eggs, Rosie. I have no idea why you were wasting feed on him.”
“So he could father a batch of chicks! So we could raise extra chickens this summer for meat next winter, you idiot!”
The bed was a rumpled mess. She twitched a blanket flat and set Gillam down on it. He stirred and sat up. He looked around sleepily, and then took in the scorched carcass. “Cook meat?” he asked hopefully.
Pell had been glaring at her. He turned to the boy when he spoke. “There. You see. The boy needs meat. I told you so. A father has to take care of his son, and that’s all I’m trying to do. If it’s so important to you, I can get another rooster for you. Later. But tonight, little Will gets to eat his fill of nice roast chicken. Right, son?”
He smiled at her boy. It seemed a false smile to her, but the boy was taken in. Gillam nodded eagerly and bounced on the bed.
She stared at her smiling son, suddenly so like his father. Some terrible being inside her wanted to tell Gillam that it was Picky-pick on the fire, the rooster he’d seen raised from a chick and named himself, wanted to make her son dissolve in howls of sorrow. Perhaps that would chase the smug smile from Pell’s face. Perhaps that would keep her son’s heart as hers alone. But a stronger part of her could not do that to her boy. Soon enough, when there was no crowing in the morning, the boy would realize the bird was gone. Then was soon enough for him to mourn. And dead, the bird might as well be eaten as not.
She gritted her teeth and silently cleaned the feathers from the room, trying to gather what she could of them. She’d thought that if Picky sired enough chicks, there might have been not just meat for the winter, but feathers for stuffing a small comforter. All gone in an idiot’s impulse. And he’d expected her to thank him for destroying a year’s work! The idiot. She watched him crouched by the fire, turning the spit this way and that. Gillam had come to crouch beside him, studying the man as much as the cooking bird. She couldn’t stand it. She took herself outside.
There was worse to discover. In his pursuit of the rooster, Pell had trampled two rows of her garden. The wilted seedlings with their wisps of roots were drying on the disturbed rows. Without much hope, she hoed the earth back into place, pushed the plants back into the soil and gave them a sprinkle of water. The green things lay flat and limp on the wet soil. They would not rise again. And that was another food source gone. The cold wind whipped her hair across her face.
Gillam had stayed in the house watching his father. She hadn’t liked that but could think of no way to lure him away. And it had been easier to tidy up his father’s mess without the toddler at her heels, asking a dozen questions and sometimes undoing half her work as she did it. As she hung up her tools and wiped her hands on her apron, she allowed herself to wonder what her life would have been like if she’d had a husband for the last three years. What if there had been someone who had brought home food, helped to dig the garden, and sometimes watched the child? Would the garden be twice the size it was now? Would the worn thatch of the roof have been completely replaced last year instead of patched? Perhaps, she thought to herself, and then shook her head. Perhaps, but not if Pell were the man involved.
Inside the house, she found them at the table, eating meat that was scorched on the outside and bloody within. “Chimney doesn’t draw right,” Pell excused it. “And the firewood is too small. You need good chunks for coals to cook meat over, not a bunch of little sticks.”
“You used up all my kindling,” she replied. “The pile of larger wood is over in the shelter of the spruce tree, to keep it dry.” Both of her bowls and chairs were in use. It didn’t matter. She didn’t think she could have faced eating Picky anyway. She wondered if she would still wake in the dawn tomorrow without his raucous crowing. Set it aside. Too late to fix it. She just had to go on. His gleaming knife lay on the table beside the butchered bird. He picked it up and sawed on the butchered bird. To her surprise the knife slid through the tough bird as if it were butter. It was only when he put the meat in his mouth that he had to chew and chew. She tried not to take satisfaction in how tough the meat was.
“That must be a sharp knife, to shear through that meat so easily,” she observed, and he started as if she had jabbed him with it. He hastily returned it to his sheath, uncleaned.
“It was a gift,” he said, and then, as if he couldn’t resist the urge to brag, “Chalcedean steel. The best money can buy.”
She made no answer to that. He hadn’t heard the hidden mockery in her comment. The fool hadn’t even known that a grown rooster was not fit for roasting but only the stew pot. How had he managed to live in the village all his life and not know such simple things? How had he kept himself above and apart from the simple work that could have put food on the table? She forced herself to think back through the years. Rory, the carter’s boy, had fancied her once. He’d been a hard worker, but his plain face and callused hands had not charmed her. No. She had fallen to the boy with the soft hair and fine clothes. He was never dirty, she told herself, because he never worked. Did she think he was an idiot for not knowing how to work? What did that make her? How could she have taken up with a man who did no more than smile and be handsome and sing tavern songs well?
She barely stopped him in time when he gathered what was left and began to throw it on the fire. “That will stink if you burn bones in the house. Besides, I can make a soup of the bones and what’s left on them. I have a couple of turnips and an onion . . .” and she glanced at her cupboard to see that was a lie. The turnips were gone.
“You can’t just eat everything you see around here!” she exclaimed angrily. “I have to plan what we use and be sparing of it.”
“Well, if you think I’m going to go hungry while there are chickens running around in the yard, think again. I’m not that helpless. Or foolish.”
A thousand responses came to her mind. But only one clear thought formed. That handsome fool would destroy everything she had built up in the last three years before he was finished here. He would not listen to her. He would do as he pleased with her things. She was speechless. She gathered the rags she had used to clean up his butchering mess and went outside.
She dumped the dirty water from her washtub, rinsed it, and filled it again. She was washing out her cleaning rags when he came out of the house. He was walking softly but she heard him. He came up behind her. “You work so hard,” he said gently. “Rosie, I never meant for you to live like this.”
Simple words in a kind voice. They stabbed her. Three years ago, even two years ago and they would have won her heart.
“It’s work and it has to be done,” she said and hated how her voice was choked with tears.
She started when his hands settled on her shoulders. She twitched but he did not lift them. They were so warm, and he gently squeezed just where her shoulders ached most.
