Margery crouched in front of the fireplace, skirts tucked back to avoid the flames, and raked coals out onto the hearth. She’d pushed the shutters open this morning to let a breeze in but even at this hour sweat beaded on her brow and stuck her chemise to her skin.
Their gray tabby cat jumped up onto the windowsill and mewed plaintively.
“Not today, Sir Humphrey.” Margery grabbed the iron tongs and carefully set her grate on top of the coals. “I’ll have a bit of scrap for you tonight.”
Her tabby meowed with a kittenish squeak that belied the short work he made of barn rats, and lifted his mittened white foot to clean.
“Nay. Say it’s not so.” She slid back and stood, shaking the dust off her skirts. Glancing at the bed by the hearth, she saw that Mother was awake. “You hear that, Mother? Sir Humphrey is telling us about his adventures.”
Her mother’s lips moved, but only grunts came out.
“Aye. That was what I told him.” The coals would do well enough for the pottage she needed to cook. While it bubbled, she’d have time to get the rusks mixed up. She ruffled the cat’s fur as she went to the table by the window. “Next you’ll be saying that you met King Edward himself.”
Sir Humphrey squeaked and lifted his head, scenting the air. His ears turned back, and he looked around, pupils darkening. A moment later, the sound reached Margery’s less acute hearing.
Messy, frantic footsteps ran toward the cottage. “Margery!” Her brother’s voice cracked in the middle of her name. “Margery! Margery!”
She dropped the handle of the pot she’d been about to lift and ran to the door. “Hugh?”
As she opened the door, the ten-year-old ran around the pig pen and darted into the farmyard directly in front of the house. The goose hissed at him, wings flapping in agitation. Hugh paid it no heed, skidding to a halt in front of Margery.
He held his cap clenched in one fist. “There’s a snail coming through the forest.”
Margery’s blood went cold as if a shadow had passed over the cottage. “How big?”
“Bigger than John Farmer’s prize bull.” His kerchief hung askew about his neck and he wiped his forehead with the back of his arm leaving a stain on the madder red fabric. “Goodman Hopkin’s gone to tell the manor house.”
“Tell me you didn’t see it.” A snail had taken out the church in the town one over from theirs. That one had been a monster taller than a man and had left an iridescent acrid path that burned the plants it passed over down to the ground.
“From behind. I’m not stupid. And no, I didn’t step on its trail.” Hugh waved his cap in the direction of the manor. “C’mon. If we hurry, we can see Lord Strange ride out.”
“Nay, we’ll not be doing that.” Margery wiped the sweat from her palms on her apron. Her brother wanted to be a squire for their lord more than anything and that wasn’t for the likes of them. Maybe if her mother hadn’t been forced to retire as she had begun dropping things, Hugh might have been a page. But a squire? Those cossetted posts were for the sons of the nobility who thought that being tasked with polishing armor was a hardship. “Then you’ll be wanting to follow him to watch him fight the snail and then you’ll want to stay for driving it into the pit and then—”
“Just watching him ride out.” His blue eyes were huge in his head. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? He has a new horse. It’s a dapple grey.”
She looked at the sky, considering the hour. “There’s chores to be done.”
“I got the eggs already.” He backed away from her and grabbed the egg basket he’d set in the shadows of the hen house. “Here. I was going to bring them in but—Can I go, please? He’ll ride out soon and I’ll miss it!”
She took the basket and sighed at him because he’d be dragging around the house and sighing lavishly all day if she didn’t give in. “Fine. But to the manor and back, do you hear me? If he can’t turn the snail, there’s no telling where that beast will go next.”
Hugh scoffed with all the scorn of the very young. “Of course, he’ll slay it.”
“Be that as it may, you come straight back here.”
He scrambled off, vaulting over their fence instead of going around it. “Thank yoooooooooou!”
Snorting, Margery went back inside. She’d talk to the stable master up at the manor house to see if there was a spot for Hugh there. He’d never be a squire, but going into service might scratch some of that itch.
The house was a three bay, but she knew it so well that there was no need to wait for her eyes to adjust as she crossed the wooden threshold. But she did so that she could see her mother. Five years ago, her mother had been the housekeeper at the manor. The little tremor in her hand kept getting worse until Lord Strange—in a show of kindness—had settled her mother on this farm as thanks for service.
Or rather, it had been meant as a kindness. As security. Thirty years, she’d been the housekeeper at the big manor and now she had a house with a dirt floor.
Last year, she’d started falling.
Margery had come home. They’d lost her wages as a maid but what else was she to do?
She paused by her mother and adjusted her on the bed. Her tremoring had worked her over to the edge of the mattress. “Could you hear that, Mother? There’s a snail, apparently. Hugh has gone to watch Lord Strange ride out, but I told him to come home straight after.”
Her mother’s voice was a whisper-thin shadow of the one that used to shout across the fields at supper time. Margery caught only one piece of her speech. “That boy…horses.”
“He loves them, for certain.” She tugged on the covers. “Do you want to be covered up?”
Her mother shook her head.
“All right, then.” Margery folded them back. “It’s a warm enough day already.”
Patting her mother’s shoulder, she straightened and crossed the room to the table. Sir Humphrey was still sitting on the windowsill and had switched to washing his side. “And you, sir, will you watch Mother whilst I do the cooking?”
The cat stopped washing for a moment and meeped at her.
“Thank you, sir.” At the table, she grabbed the handle of the iron pot and hefted it. “I’m glad I have someone to help with the work.”
Margery’s shoulders ached as she stirred the beer she was brewing. Her mother’s recipe remained in demand, which brought in some extra income. The sun was hot on the back of her neck, and the sweat started an itch under her cap.
Hoofbeats drew her attention out of the yard and across the fields. A lone horse galloped near the tree line. She rose to her feet, basket of damp laundry on the ground beside her.
The horse was riderless. It was dapple gray. It wore an armored chest piece enameled with Lord Strange’s colors.
Margery’s heart turned itself inside out. Hugh had gone to see his lordship ride out. The riderless horse meant something had gone very wrong with the snail. She started to run toward the horse as if she could somehow catch up and grab its reins. Then stopped. What was she doing? She’d never been on a horse in her life. She turned toward the manor and stopped again.
And what would she do when she got there?
She held herself still, hands pressed out and flat like she could hold the world in place as she thought. “Hugh. He’ll be with the lord and that snail and God bless him, he will try to help.”
Grimacing, she turned back to the house. There would be injuries and going empty-handed would be as useless as not going at all. Bursting through the kitchen door, her eyes were still sunblind and cast the interior into grey blue shadows. Meowing, Sir Humphrey darted toward her and nearly tripped Margery. She danced around him, turning to the right where the cupboards were. “Mother! I’m going after Hugh. Sommat’s happened with that snail.”
The cat stood on his hind legs and batted at her skirt.
“Not now, Sir Humphrey. I’ll give you victuals later.” Her heart was slamming against her ribs and her breath burned in her throat. The smooth wood of the cupboard slid under her fingers as she found the knob and yanked it open. “Mother, I’m taking bandages, honey and butter for burns—What else do I need?”
Over her shoulder, her mother croaked a reply but any words in it vanished beneath Margery’s own panicked breath. “Aye. Whiskey. That’s a good thought.”
As she grabbed a rough spun satchel and shoved things in it, her eyes adjusted and the brass of her sewing shears glinted in her mending basket. She grabbed the shears, just in case she needed to cut clothing away from an acid burn. Turning, she lifted the strap of the satchel over her head to rest across her chest.
Her mother was on the floor.
“Lord!” Margery’s heart nearly stopped. Her mother had fallen out of bed…when?
The cat ran halfway to her, still meowing, and looked over his shoulder for all the world as if he were waiting for Margery to follow.
She ran forward, dropping to her knees next to her mother. “I’m so sorry. How—Never mind. Let’s get you up now.”
The covers were twisted, and it seemed clear as anything that the tremors had worked her mother off the bed. Margery pulled the covers away as gently as she could, checking for injuries. Her mother grunted and her thin arms tried to help.
Margery own hands were shaking almost as much as her mother’s out of panic. She had to get her mother off the floor, and she had to get to Hugh. She shoved the blankets into a rough heap beside her.
“All right, Mother, I’m going to roll you onto your back.” What direction had the horse come from? That would be where his lordship had fallen. She eased her mother over, bracing her at shoulders and hips.
Her mother mumbled something, hands jittering as she held them up.
“Aye, we’re getting good at standing you up now.” Margery tried for a smile. Hugh had said he’d seen the snail in the woods which meant that it must be at least a little close to them.
Her mother drew her knees up with her lips compressed together in determination. Margery clasped her upraised hands and planted her feet in front of her mother’s, toes turned out like a dancer’s in an awkward stance that kept her mother from sliding away. She hoisted her up and used the momentum to spin them both, letting her mother drop to sit on the bed.
“Like we’re dancing, aren’t we?”
An inaudible sentence formed on her mother’s lips. Her mother squeezed Margery’s hand, fingers pulsing with her tremors. She drew in a breath as if she were going to yell and exhaled in a quiet puff. “Salt.”
“Salt? Oh, aye. Yes, I can add that to the pottage when—” Snails hated salt. “You’re talking about the snail, aren’t you?”
Her mother gave her a watery smile, patting Margery’s hand in a feather-light tattoo. Her lips moved but the only word that Margery could make out was “Hugh.”
“Let me get you settled first.” She might be able to help her brother, but her mother had a clear need now. “And then I’ll add salt to my bag, not that we’ve much but maybe it’ll be enough to do sommat.”
Her skirt caught on a bramble, jerking Margery to a halt on the path from their house to the manor. She backed up a step to yank it free.
Margery resettled the bag on her shoulder and the hammering of her heart got louder and harder against the walls of her ribs. Off to the side of the path, something gleamed in the sunlight. Too much sunlight, as if trees were missing.
Hurrying forward, Margery cupped her hands and shouted. “Hugh!”
A stink of midden sludge drifted with the breeze. The path the snail had forged had rendered plants to split pea puddles beneath a rainbow of acrid slime. The awful things laid down an acidic slime that burnt through saplings and let them pull their massive shells along after. Leave a snail in place long enough and it could burn through a full-grown oak.
Margery stopped well back from the edge, hand clasped over her nose and mouth.
A jumble of bones lay in the path.
They were too small to be a man’s. Her stomach twisted in cold knots and bile rose in the back of her throat. Margery shook her head. No. She voiced it aloud. “No. Not Hugh.”
The slime would still be acidic until the first rain. She couldn’t get closer to the bones than she was. She walked along the edge of the path, trying to see if there was anything that would say if this were Hugh—vambraces.
On the long thin bones that must have been the wrists, was a metal vambrace that had survived the scorching of the acid burn. Not Hugh.
The squire that had ridden out with his lordship. Somewhere a mother didn’t know that she should be grieving.
“Hugh!” She pushed through the woods, clambering over trunks and around the crowns of fallen trees. “Hugh!”
“Margery!” Ahead, her brother’s treble voice, thick with tears. “Margery, Margery! Help! His lordship is caught under a tree.”
She grabbed a trunk to steady herself. “Hugh! Stay there, I’m coming.”
“Walk softly, girl.” The aristocratic baritone of Lord Strange made her feel the urge to duck her head and curtsy. “The vibrations of your footfalls might draw the snail back.”
She cleared her throat, trying to remember the way she had spoken when she was in service. “Thank you, your lordship. I shall endeavor to do so.”
They were off the path, toward the snail trail. She made her way through the woods, yanking her skirt back from greedy thorns. A downed elm had bent saplings into bowed arches. Amidst the greenery was a shock of madder red. She darted forward and—
Her foot came down on a root. Her ankle rolled over it, pitching Margery toward the snail’s path. She grabbed wildly, one hand catching a branch that bent under her weight.
She dropped her other knee to the ground, clinging to that branch for all she was worth. Her skirt hit the path, lying on the silvery rainbow for a moment before the edges blackened and crumbled in a slow wave toward her.
Margery twisted to drop onto her rump away from the path. She grabbed her skirt with her free hand and held it from her body. Fumbling with her other hand, she fished through the satchel until she found her scissors.
Tongue held between her teeth, she cut the fabric away in rough strokes. A part of her could hear her mother’s voice tsking at the ragged edges and the waste of fabric. God. Her mother. If Margery got an acid burn on her legs who would stay with her mother?
The fabric dropped away. As carefully as she could, Margery got to her feet and let her skirt fall into place. She was turned around and no longer had that bit of dull red to orient to. “Hugh, talk a bit so I can find you.”
“What’ll I talk about?”
Margery rolled her eyes. The one time that her brother wasn’t yammering was when she wanted him to. “Tell me about the snail. What happened?”
“Um…It was real big. His lordship said it was the biggest one he’d ever seen and he reckoned it was so big on account of the wet spring we had or maybe because he’s killed all the other snails around here so this one didn’t have any competition and so it could eat up everything it wanted and get huge.”
She picked her way through the bramble, veering a little to the right as she went, away from the snail trail.
“But see, I’m thinking that maybe this is the same snail that went through John Farmer’s place and got his prize pumpkins because just hay and trees wouldn’t be enough to make it this big. Or maybe it’s the one that took Wybert’s prize cow because meat would have to make it bigger than pumpkin, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not sure, Hugh. Perhaps.” The trees rustled in the quiet and through the green she saw that shock of red again. “I see you!”
The red shifted and became an arm. Hugh turned and shoved the branch aside. He had dirt smeared across his upturned nose mingled with blood from a cut over his brow.
He darted toward her, starting to cry. Margery’s heart seized as she scrambled the last few feet to her brother. He slammed into her and buried his face, sobbing on her chest.
She swallowed the tightness in her throat. “There now, I’m here.”
He wiped his face with his sleeve, only smearing the dirt more. “I’m sorry. I know you said to come straight home but…but I just wanted to see.”
She squeezed him again and set him back from her. “That’s for another time. Where’s his lordship?”
“Here.” He led her back to the tree and there, lying on the ground was John le Strange, 2nd Baron Strange of Knockyn. His helm was off, leaving his dark curls matted against his forehead with sweat.
The problem was clear enough. It wasn’t just that the tree had caught him, it was that the armor he wore kept him from being able to wriggle free. The enameled full plates were proof against a snail’s acid but slowed the wearer down. This was not a problem when fighting a snail but was when trying to escape a tree.
Margery knelt on the ground next to him. She folded her hands in her lap as if he’d walked into the room while she was laying a fire. She kept her voice low. “Do you think your leg is broken, Lord Strange?”
What would they do if it was? She shoved that thought aside for a later worry.
“I can wiggle my toes, but I am simply unable to get out and unfortunately the buckles are not currently accessible.”
“Shall I see if I can lift it enough for you to slide out.”
He scoffed and dropped back to the dirt. “A slip of girl like you cannot lift an entire tree.”
“No…” She kept her tone light as she looked around for a stout branch to use as a lever. “But I only have to move the top a little.”
A long, slender shaft lay on the ground. It had been painted the blue of Lord Strange’s colors. Shoving branches aside, Margery picked it up and the cool weight startled her. Iron. The tip of it had the sharpened blade of a snail spear.
She slid the end of the spear through the gap beneath the trunk. Hoisting, she tried to lift it as if she were hefting her mother from the floor. The tree barely shifted as the tip of the snail spear bit into the earth on the other side of the tree.
“I told you.” Lord Strange’s head flopped back against the ground. “One of you shall have to run for the manor house and ask them for help.”
Grimacing, she pulled it out and looked for something to give it some purchase. Did he even remember her from her time in service there? She found a broad rock and slipped the snail spear under the tree again so that its tip rested on the flat surface. “One more attempt and then I shall go but I do not like to leave you here.”
Lord Strange raised himself on his elbows. “It will not work.”
“Yes it will.” Hugh darted forward and grabbed the spear below Margery’s hands. “My sister can do anything.”
She ignored her brother’s bluster, bending her knees and gripping the spear shaft with both hands. “On three. One, two, three.”
She heaved with Hugh and the tree made a sound as if it were falling all over again.
“Oh!” Lord Strange scrabbled backward, drawing his knee up so his foot cleared the tree. “You did it!”
The falling sound continued. Margery let the tree drop and straightened. Ahead of her, there was too much light coming through the canopy of the trees. “Hugh. Go to the manor house. Right now.”
It had a moat and eggshell paths. The snail wouldn’t get past those.
“Wh—” For a wonder, he stopped talking as another tree fell, closer to them.
“Go.” Margery tightened her grip on the snail spear with one hand. “Now.”
“But what about—“
Channeling her mother, she gave the coldest stare she had ever delivered. “I said now.”
For a wonder, he went. Bobbing and weaving through the trees toward the manor house. Hopefully he would get reinforcements. Hopefully he would be safe.
She dug the butt of the snail spear into the ground and offered her other hand to Lord Strange. “Come on, let’s get you up.”
Ignoring her hand, he put weight on the foot that had been under the tree. Face paling, he dropped back to his knee. “It is—I cannot.”
Another tree crashed and now she could see the massive thing. The sweeping spirals of its stone grey shell had the polish of fine granite shot through with striations of rose. Were it not terrifying, it would have been beautiful.
The flesh of the snail’s body was a deep tanned leather, shading to the warm buff of buckskin. A gash seeped blue blood down the heavy muscle of its neck. The snail’s eyestalks waved as it searched its surroundings. The smaller tentacles below them pulsed and flexed like rabbit ears.
They could not hear, but they could feel vibrations through those tentacles and where their body slid across the ground. Its path bent, curving toward the fading sound of her brother’s footsteps. Margery stepped up onto the downed tree and ran along its length, using the snail spear for balance. When she was a goodly distance from the baron she jumped down.
“Hey!” She stomped her feet, trying to draw the snail’s attention toward her.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Trying to draw it away from you. Or can you walk without attracting it?” She cleared her throat suddenly remembering that she was talking to a nobleman and not her brother. “If that pleases your lordship.”
He barked a laugh of astonishment but at least he stopped arguing with her.
The snail was still turning toward her brother—the smaller prey. Margery gave up trying to draw it away and ran after the thing, staying wide of its trail.
“Good God, girl. Come back. You’ll get yourself killed.”
She didn’t have to kill it. She only had to annoy it enough for it to turn toward her, away from Hugh. A garden snail seemed slow but scaled up to the size of a monster, it could match pace with a man. It could catch up with a boy.
Coming up even with it, a miasma of sweet acidity made her cough. She thrust the spear into the snail’s side.
The point met more resistance than she expected, like a knife sliding into a side of mutton. The snail flinched away and she yanked the spear free. Blue blood oozed down its skin. She drove the spear in again, harder this time.
The snail turned toward her, pulling the spear out of her grasp.
Margery stumbled back and the remnants of her skirt caught on a bramble. She tried to jerk free and her sleeve snarled on another thorn.
“HEY!” Lord Strange pounded his fists on the ground. “HEY!”
The vibrations and sound did nothing to attract it. Its tentacles stretched scenting her and the eyestalks stayed fixed on her.
She ripped free. In a frantic scramble, she pushed through the underbrush away from the snail. Behind her, she could hear the steady slide of its foot across the forest floor. She couldn’t go back the way she’d come—that would lead it straight toward his lordship. She had to lead it away from Hugh.
She turned, pushing through the underbrush. Branches snarled in her hair. The snail came on, pushing down the small undergrowth and leaving behind its iridescent trail. Wincing, she yanked out a clump of her hair. Ahead, the trees opened up a little and sunlight poured into the forest. If she could just run, she could get away from it.
Ducking under the thorny bramble, Margery pushed forward towards the sunlight.
And froze on the edge of the snail trail.
She had gotten turned around and run toward it. She was boxed in.
If she ran fast enough, maybe she could circle around the snail and still lead it away from Lord Strange. Margery spun.
The snail was so close that she could see the wrinkles on its skin. She bent and snatched up a stick. Darting sideways, she jabbed at the snail with the stick.
The wood blackened and dissolved against the ooze.
Her heart was frantic against the insides of her chest. Wood would just disintegrate. She knew that. It’s how snails could move through a forest. She needed metal—the scissors in her bag. Keeping one eye on the snail, she swung her satchel around and dug into it. The rough pot of honey. Pouch of salt. Bandages.
No metal from the shears. Incongruously, all she could think about was how mad her mother would be that she’d lost the scissors. As if that mattered with a giant snail chasing her down. Margery danced sideways along the snail trail, stumbling over downed branches.
If she had more salt, maybe she could draw a line that would disrupt its movement. Or…or she could make it think there was more salt than there was. She opened her bag and pulled out the pot of honey that she’d brought for no reason since the baron’s injuries weren’t burns, but it would make a branch sticky.
She dipped the branch into the honey, then into the salt.
Praying to the Lord God above, she jabbed the snail with the salted branch. The branch sank into the snail’s flesh like a hot knife into butter. It reared back, tentacles contracting in pain against its face.
Margery grabbed another branch and dipped it into the honey. Hands shaking, she coated it with honey and salt and drove the branch into the snail’s face.
It jerked back, contracting into its shell.
Margery took the opening and dashed past it. Clambering over branches and through underbrush, she ran as much as she could, away from the snail, away from his lordship, away from Hugh. If it chased her, then the others were safe. If it didn’t… She slowed so that the vibrations of her footfalls would not get too far away and chanced a glance over her shoulder.
The snail hadn’t followed her.
Its massive shell was still facing away from her, unmoving.
Margery stopped and stared at the massive motionless spiral. From the shell, the great trunk of the snail lay on the ground and seemed to be collapsing in on itself. Breath still fast and shallow, she crept back towards it. Glancing to the side, she spotted his lordship on one knee in the brush.
He stared open mouthed at the snail and slowly turned his gaze to her. “You…you killed it. How? All I can ever do is turn them.”
“You’ve killed four, at least according to Hugh.”
He shook his head. “I’ve driven them to a trap where we can bombard them with a catapult but I’ve never killed one by myself. Certainly not with just a stick. So again, I ask…how?”
“Salt.” She swallowed, joints turning to jelly, and sank to her knees. “It was my mother’s suggestion.”
The windows were still shut against the first of the autumn chill and the light of the fire cast flickering shadows across Mother’s face that made it hard to tell her expression.
“Come now, Mother. Take another bite.” She held the spoon out. “His lordship sent venison down, isn’t that nice? Think of us, having venison like the fancy people in the manor house.”
Her mouth opened a little. Feeling a disproportionate amount of triumph, Margery tipped the spoonful of minced venison in porridge into her mother’s mouth. The venison had been among the useful gifts they’d been sent from the manor house after the snail incident. The fine snail shell combs were delicately shaped and shimmered in the light. The sight had turned her stomach. The dress of fine green linen was so beautiful and soft and impractical that she’d wrapped it in an old sheet and folded it into a chest until she could figure out what to do with it.
Curled up on the bed by her hip, Sir Humphrey lifted his head. He stared at the door and blinked his golden eyes, then made a soft trill.
“Nay, you’re not getting any of this now.” Though in truth, her mother wouldn’t finish it and she’d give the remains to the cat. “Mother, what do you think we ought to do for Michealmas? I was thinking about baking a—”
Hoofbeats sounded outside their cottage. A moment later, Hugh yelled. “Margery!”
Margery paused with the spoon tucked into the bowl of venison and porridge. Stay to try to get more food into her mother or go out and leave her mother unfed?
“Margery!” Hugh burst into the cottage bringing a splash of sunlight as the door swung wide. “Margery, his lordship is here!”
They had not seen him since the snail incident. He could wait a few more moments. “I’m feeding Mother.” She held up the spoonful. “Another bite?”
Mother’s eyes flicked toward the door and she pinched her lips together.
The light shifted and with it the soft sound of spurs clinking on the stone threshold. “Forgive the interruption.”
Margery held the spoon out helplessly but her mother stared only at the door where the baron stood. Frustrated screaming lay beneath the surface of Margery’s skin. She set the spoon back in the bowl and, holding both in her hands, rose to face the baron with a neutral smile appropriate for the person who controlled the land her house was on.
The white of his collar made every piece of fabric in her home dingy and gray. His oiled beard made her plait of hair rough and blowsy. He stood with his weight on one leg and surveyed the rough-hewn beams of the ceiling with the dried herbs hanging from beneath the thatch.
She dipped into a curtsy as if she still worked in the manor house. “Good afternoon, your grace.”
“Rise, please. Really.” He stepped farther into the cottage, shining boots landing on their hard packed earth floor with an uneven gait. He rested a hand on Hugh’s shoulder. “How are you getting on, lad?”
Hugh pulled at his forelock and ducked an awkward bow. “Very well, your lordship sir.”
“Good. Good.” Sir John hesitated, looking around their single room with the ladder to a shallow loft and the pot bubbling over the fire. “I…I came to thank you—both of you—for saving my life.”
“It was our honor and our duty, your lordship.” Margery clutched the earthen bowl until her fingers whitened. The snail had been so close. “You are up and about, I am happy to see.”
He looked down, frowning, his weight canted onto the leg that had not been trapped. “Yes. Were it not for your—“
Behind her, Sir Humphrey meowed and her mother muttered something below the edge of hearing. Margery turned away from his lordship, bending down to smile at her mother. “That’s right, Mother. His lordship has come all the way from the manor house to pay his respects. We’re honored indeed.” With the light streaming in from outside, the small smile on her mother’s face was apparent. To her. To someone who had not spent hours with her, all that would be apparent were the constant tremors and wiggles of her body. Margery turned back, ready to defend against the pity that she knew would be there. “She knows you’re here, sir. It can be hard to hear her sometimes, but she’s happy to see you.”
His face was stricken. It was not pity, but regret. He limped across the room, rolling his weight oddly across his right leg. “Dear God—I had not put together that our old housekeeper was your mother.” He stopped and looked around the room again, gaze dropping to the earthen floor. “I asked them to settle her with one of the nicer farms.”
“We’ve been very well settled here.” Margery could practically hear her mother hissing that it was not proper to turn her back on the baron, but she did it anyway to set the bowl on the worktable. “The farm has provided for our needs and we’ve not had any wants.”
He knelt, bracing himself on the edge of Mother’s bed, with his right leg stretched out to the side as if the knee didn’t bend correctly. He spoke to her mother and that made a warm lump block Margery’s throat. “My dear lady, I must tell you how very brave your children are and I should expect nothing less. I remember when I was a boy and you got between me and that dog.” His lordship waited, looking at her mother for some response, then turned to find Margery and so missed the effort her mother made to reach for his hand. He missed the smile in the crinkle at the corner of her eyes.
Margery stepped forward, keeping her gaze on her mother instead of the nobleman kneeling on her floor. Someone would have to brush the dirt out of his breeches tonight. She smoothed her skirt, the wool rough beneath her fingers. “She’s happy that you remember.”
He looked back, clearly seeing only the tremoring, but said, “I’m glad of that.”
Then the baron pushed himself up, dragging the right leg under him.
Sir John limped to Hugh and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Watch your mother a moment while I step out to speak to your sister.”
With his rolling stride, he went to the door and beckoned her outside. She cast a look at her mother who was not too close to the edge of the bed to be left for a moment. Sir Humphrey settled down on her mother’s hips, folding his paws under him.
Blinking, Margery stepped into the sunlight of their small farmyard. Three horses were there. A small white palfrey with his lordship’s colors draped beneath its saddle, a dun gelding with the stablemaster sitting astride it, and a small gray mare with only a halter.
Sir John stopped in the yard with his hands on his hips and stared at the horses. He sighed and turned to her. “I have misjudged many things very badly and I ask your forgiveness.” He gestured at the house. “I knew that your mother had the palsy but when last I saw her it was only that she spilled things when she poured them. It was only…”
“Only five years ago.” Margery crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself.
“Well, now that I know, we’ll bring your mother back to the manor so she can have better care. There is a room that she can have and my physician can help in the looking after her.”
Margery swallowed, looking at the house. Would her mother even want that? The small cottage was her own, and in the manor where she had spent so many years in service, she would have constant reminders of what she used to be. But also, the offer of a physician… It had been a week or more since Margery had been able to get a full meal into her mother. Would a physician help or make her final days miserable with trying to keep her alive? Wetting her lips, Margery stared at the doorway into the dark interior and caught the movement of her brother who was trying to pretend not to eavesdrop.
“I think…I think we can manage here and I should not like to move her. Would you, instead—if it is not too much of an imposition—would you consider a place for my brother in service?”
“This is not a case of ‘or.’ You do not have to choose.” He held up a hand. “You have given me a tool to finally kill the snails instead of merely turning them. It is not only my own life that I owe to you but that of my subjects and the lives of people on neighboring lands and across the kingdom. Perhaps even the continent. And I…I have given you a shack with a dirt floor, a gown of no possible use, and…well. I was going to give you a horse. Do you ride?”
“I do not, sir.”
He snorted and looked up at the stablemaster on the dun gelding. “You did try to tell me.” A rueful half smile formed on his face. “He told me that donkey would be more useful. Was he right?”
She bit her lips and looked down at the straw and gooseshit of the yard. A donkey could be hitched to a cart. She could have the farm lads haul goods to and from market. It would bray and frighten intruders and protect the goats. “Yes sir.”
“But you won’t need a donkey if you come back to live in the manor house.” He hesitated again. “I have been told that you used to be in service at the house?”
“I was an upper maid, yes sir.” She kept her hands at her sides and her gaze cast down in the posture she had been taught. She was determined to decline the move to the manor house but with noblemen, sometimes deferring until they forgot was enough. “I need to ask my mother what she prefers and…and conversations are not swift, I am afraid.”
“I understand.” He scratched the back of his neck and then turned to look into the house. “Hugh! Come out here, boy.”
Her brother might have sprung wings and flown he arrived so quickly in the yard. “Yes, sir?”
“Can you read?”
Her brother’s mouth hung open and he looked to her. Where would he have learned to read? He swallowed. “Um…no sir. Margery can though.”
“Only a little.” She had learned her letters when she’d thought that she might stay in service and some day run a household.
The baron grunted. “Hm. Well, I should like to send you to study with the monks for a year—if I might?” He glanced at Margery. “I am aware enough to know that his absence would create a labor shortage for you. If you decide to stay here, I shall send a man to take his place and help.”
“Sir…” Margery trailed off, not sure how to explain how useless reading would be. Figures, that would be of some use, but reading? Where would Hugh even get a book to read? “As much as we appreciate your fine gifts, we are simple people.”
“You are clever people. Hugh kept his head about him and stayed by my side at great risk to himself. He followed my every instruction and…” His gaze went distant and haunted for a moment. He swallowed, rims of his eyes reddened as he turned back to look at her brother. “And I would like him to be able to read because I find myself in need of a squire. You’ll need to start as a page, of course. Should you like that?”
Hugh gawked at him. Mouth forming the beginning of sentences all of which were probably wildly inappropriate. Margery put a hand on her brother’s shoulder, ready to intercede when he swallowed and said, “I would be honored your lordship.”
He grinned and ruffled Hugh’s hair. “Then to the monks it is, and no doodling in the margins, do you hear me?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.” Her brother’s face looked as if it would split in two from the force of his grin.
The joy on his face was nothing she could deny and yet… “And after, sir?” She lifted her gaze and stared the baron square in the face as if she could stop the inexorable onslaught of his well-meaning generosity. “After he is too old to be a squire? We are not a noble household. What will he be suited for after he has been your squire?”
He stared at her and then said slowly. “He’ll be a knight.” Lord Strange shifted his weight slowly to face her. “I am aware that I am daft at sending gifts to—I know what to send to a lady but not to a—not to someone I’m not courting. I am, however, very good at understanding what it means to be a knight. Your brother will be trained and then have a set of skills that any lord would be happy to have.”
“In warfare.”
“Well…yes.” He looked around the small yard and the barnyard animals. “Will this life be easier or safer?”
Beside her, Hugh was leaning forward on his toes. He was biting his lips the way he did when their mother had told him to shut his mouth and give her quiet. Margery’s heart twisted in her chest, wishing she could ask her mother for advice.
And there it was… Her mother would tell him to go. Her mother would be happy that he was rising in station. Who was to say that Hugh wouldn’t stay here to be a farmer and then be struck down by the palsy later. Who was to say that a snail wouldn’t come and ransack their land. Who was she to stand between her brother and what he so clearly wanted to do?
She was only afraid of being alone.
Margery turned to her little brother. “All I’ll say then is that when you learn to write, you had best write to tell us about your adventures.”
The air rushed out of her brother and he hopped into the air with a grin.
Lord Strange laughed and clapped her little brother on the shoulder, then looked at the house where her mother lay abed. “And you’ll come to the manor?”
“No. Thank you. We’ll stay here though I’ll be grateful for any help.” Margery straightened her shoulders, smiling at her brother. “Now, let’s go inside and tell Mother. She’ll be that happy to hear about it.”
He ran as if his boots had wings. She followed only a little more slowly, not wanting to make his lordship run with that leg. On the threshold, her eyes took time to adjust and she could hear the babbling stream of speech from her brother.
“—and then after I’ve been a page then I get to be a squire and then after that I’m going to be a knight! And I’m going to have a fine horse and maybe two because I’ll have a squire myself someday and he’ll need a horse. I might have three.”
Laughing, Margery crossed the room to her mother’s bed, where the fire made dancing shadows across her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung a little open as it did when she slept.
But she was not sleeping.
Resting her hand on her brother’s shoulder, Margery raised her voice. “You hear that, Mother? Next you know he’ll be meeting King Edward.”
Her mother’s tremors were still. Dread and sunlight in equal measure lay before her. Margery squeezed her brother’s shoulder. “And you, young man, you make sure to tell everyone you meet that it was your mother that figured out how to defeat the snails.”
Snails crept through the forest and changed everything in their path. And later, after the rains fell and washed away the acid, there was a new path winding through the woods, brighter than it ought to be.
(Editors’ Note: “Marginalia” is read by Erika Ensign on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 56A.)
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© 2024 Mary Robinette Kowal
