Free Death and the Lady by Judith Tarr Page A

westward by a turning of the road or by the lure of the trees.
We were a formidable enough town by then, with the palisade that Messire Arnaud
had built before he died, and no gate open but on the northward side.
    Francha broke out of my arms. My Perrin, always the first to
leap on anything that was new, bolted gleefully in Francha’s wake. Half a
breath more and they were all gone, the babies in their pen beginning to howl,
and the reapers nearest pausing, some straightening to stare.
    If I thought anything, I thought it later. That the Death
was not so long gone. That the roads were full of wolves, two-legged nearly all
of them, and deadly dangerous. That the Wood held things more deadly than any wolf,
if even a tithe of the tales were true.
    As I ran I thought of Perrin, and of Francha. I could have
caught them easily, a season ago. Now the stitch caught me before I had run a
furlong, doubled me up and made me curse. I ran in spite of it, but hobbling.
    I could see well enough. There was only one figure on the
Wood’s edge, standing very still before the onslaught of children.
    It was a woman. I did not know how I knew that. It was all
in shapeless brown, hooded and faceless. It did not frighten our young at all.
They had seen the Death. This was but a curiosity, a traveler on the road that
no one traveled, a new thing to run after and shrill at and squabble over.
    As the children parted like a flock of sheep and streamed
around it, the figure bent. It straightened with one of the children in its
arms. Francha, white and silent Francha who never spoke, who fled even from
those she knew, clinging to this stranger as if she would never let go.
    The reapers were leaving their reaping. Some moved slowly,
weary or wary. Others came as fast as they were able. We trusted nothing in
these days, but Sency had been quiet since the spring, when the Comte’s man
came to take our men away. Our woods protected us, and our prayers, too.
    Still I was the first but for the children to come to the
stranger. Her hood was deep but the light was on her. I saw a pale face, and
big eyes in it, staring at me.
    I said the first thing that came into my head. “Greetings to
you, stranger, and God’s blessing on you.”
    She made a sound that might have been laughter or a sob. But
she said clearly enough, “Greetings and blessing, in God’s name.” She had a
lady’s voice, and a lady’s accent, too, with a lilt in it that made me think of
birds.
    “Where are you from? Do you carry the sickness?”
    The lady did not move at all. I was the one who started and
spun about.
    Mère Adele was noble born herself, though she never made
much of it; she was as outspoken to the lord bishop as she was to any of us.
She stood behind me now, hands on her ample hips, and fixed the stranger with a
hard eye. “Well? Are you dumb, then?”
    “Not mute,” the lady said in her soft voice, “nor enemy
either. I have no sickness in me.”
    “And how may we be sure of that?”
    I sucked in a breath.
    The lady spoke before I could, as sweetly as ever, and
patient, with Francha’s head buried in the hollow of her shoulder. I had been
thinking that she might be a nun fled from her convent. If she was, I thought I
knew why. No bride of the lord Christ would carry a man’s child in her belly,
swelling it under the coarse brown robe.
    “You can never be certain,” she said to Mère Adele, “not of
a stranger; not in these times. I will take no more from you than a loaf, of
your charity, and your blessing if you will give it.”
    “The loaf you may have,” said Mere Adele. “The blessing I’ll
have to think on. If you fancy a bed for the night, there’s straw in plenty to
make one, and a reaper’s dinner if you see fit to earn it.”
    “Even,” the lady asked, “unblessed?”
    Mere Adele was enjoying herself: I could see the glint in
her eye. “Earn your dinner,” she said, “and you’ll get your blessing with it.”
    The lady bent her head, as