She started from the beginning, the pilgrimage south on the Valley Road, taking turns with Trey as their stories intersected. Every so often, Dahilla interjected a question or Ricard a comment, but otherwise they sat enchanted. An hour passed. The plates had long since been emptied both of meat pies then fried dough by the time Gildmane finished with their arrival at Herbstfield.
The old Guard captain grinned through his grisly beard, put an arm around his wife, “She’s outdone her old man, hasn’t she, dear? I could die tomorrow, satisfied.”
“Don’t make japes like that!” Dahilla answered, cupping her belly like she was trying to protect—a child…an unborn infant, it hit Jael unprepared.
The words escaped her mouth, “You’re having a baby?”
“There’s a lot to tell you, both good and bad,” her mother said. She caressed her womb, almost cooed, “Yes, you’re going to have a baby brother or sister.”
Leonhardt forced a smile while inside felt as if being drawn and quartered. It disgusted her, the thought that he father would conceive with her abuser, subject another child to the horrors—yet this woman was not the mother she’d fled; she was the one who abandoned her, the one Jael prayed for years would return. And now that she had, it tore the scars open. The ever present message, “It’s all your fault he doesn’t love me anymore. I should have smothered you in your swaddling. We’d be happy but for you!”
Was it true? she asked herself, vaguely aware of the surrounding congratulatory noise—the captain covering for her silence—as her mind relived those of the parts of her story she and Trey chose to omit. “Ugly slut!”. She recoiled, tried to take refuge in those parts she and Trey acknowledged openly and realized her acts of valor caused nothing more than unrest and death. “We’d be happy but for you!” Jael shivered.
Ricard rose to feed more kindling to the hearth.
“Jael, are you alright?” Leonhardt heard her name amongst the noise. It was Dahilla, reaching across the table to touch her daughter’s arm. “What’s wrong? You look so somber.”
“It’s for the deacon,” Trey answered for her.
“Heavens, then you’ve heard?”
“We stopped at the chapel on the way here. The new vicar let us know that Gavin passed this autumn. Jael told me they were close.”
Dahilla’s touch traced to her daughter’s hand, took it into her own. The callouses chafed her delicate skin. “Ox arms!,” thought Leonhardt on reflex as her mother spoke, “I’m so sorry you had to learn it that way. I was just about to tell you myself, but—oh it’s horrible, isn’t it? First it’s Gavin, and then it’s robbers.”
Jael slipped free from her mother’s possession, directed attention toward her father, said, “That’s right, you promised you tell us what happened.”
Ricard ambled from the hearth to his seat. “‘Twas nothing truly, just a few men come into town disguised as peddlers. Had an ox wagon and everything like they were wanting to buy some of my crop before winter set in. Weren’t even baron’s men; more like tan, skinny southerners from God’s Grasp. Whatever they were, they pulled out knives soon as I turned my back. If Zach here hadn’t been watching from the field, that would have been that.”
“All I did was shout,” said Zach, looking like an overripe peach.
Leonhardt interjected, “But that scar—”
The old Guard captain laughed, “Just a nick one of them gave me. A lucky cut, caught me soon as I turned back around. I guess I’m not as quick as I used to be.”
Jael smelled something rotten. It was obvious some portion of the story wasn’t being told. Obvious, guilt panged at the hypocrisy. If it was apparent to her, then certainly they knew that she too was withholding. And so her questions stayed lodged in her throat.
Trey, however, suffered no such conflict of conscience. “Come now, you said they attacked you with knives and not a single stab wound?”
“It’s true,” Zach asserted. “I saw the whole thing.”
“How close were you?”
The goatherd glowered, “Close enough.”
“That’s what I thought,” replied Gildmane, rolling his eyes to Dahilla. “My lady?”
She glanced at her husband who, smiling, shrugged and nodded. “I’m afraid I didn’t see it myself. I was busy with mending our winter garments.” She glanced again at Ricard. “Sir Trey, I don’t understand. Why all these questions?”
“He thinks we’re liars,” said Zach, reddening. Jael felt her face flush hot as well.
The captain scoffed, “Liars? Lady Leonhardt seems perfectly honest to me, and I know better than to assume malice when ignorance will suffice.”
“Son of a—”
“I’ll tell something else I don’t believe,” Gildmane cut him off, focused now on Ricard. “I don’t think for a moment that robbers would bother with this poor farmhouse, let alone that wound. What delivered it truly?”
“An assassin’s sabre,” the old Guard confessed, glad to be discovered. “One of them long, heavy ones they like in the south. Slow. ‘Twere a messer or falchion, I’d have lost my head. But I wasn’t lying either. They had knives as well.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“Someplace else,” shrugged Ricard, but his face betrayed excitement. “I expect they’ll be coming back.”
Trey’s mien turned to stone. “They escaped?….Thank you for your hospitality. My apologies for the sudden departure, but it’s time we get going.”
“Now? Already? But—” Jael felt as though the world was inverting. Every fiber of being that had been screaming to leave now begged her to stay. Her father was in danger, her mother sane and carrying her first and only sibling, and Zach—she couldn’t stand the shame of abandoning him this way. Her tone turned petulant as an obstinate child’s. “But I want to stay. You said the day was mine to spend, and
