Free The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats Page A

leave, do you? There are fleeces to roll and wool to comb. They must be ready for the Saint Margaret’s market.”
    I’m already up the greenway and almost in the street when I hear her holler for Gwinny to come take the paddle, and by then it’s too late. She’ll never find me in the crowd.
    Emmaline waits at the gate. A knot of people I don’t recognize stand with her. The man has Emmaline’s flax-colored hair. The women are veiled, but one has a sharp face like a wolfhound, and she curls her lip at me and smirks.
    â€œOh, Cecily, I hope you don’t mind,” Emmaline says. “My brother and his wife and our cousin would come with us. And our maids, of course. It’s too nice out to keep the servants inside all day.”
    The maids are elegant girls in plain wimples who stand like statues at a proper distance, hands folded, chins tucked. They hold baskets that smell faintly of bread.
    â€œDo you not have a maid?” Emmaline asks, peering over both my shoulders. “We can wait for her.”
    â€œHer?” snickers the wolfhound. “A
novi
with a maid? Hardly.”
    â€œNow, cousin, don’t be unkind,” Emmaline says cheerfully to the wolfhound. “Cecily cannot help it if she’s new to the Principality. Not everyone has the good fortune to grow up here.”
    I breathe deep and harness all my hating. I’m to be pleasant to Emmaline de Coucy, and that means not taking her wretched cousin down a peg.
    â€œAs a matter of fact, I do have a maid,” I reply, just short of haughtily. “She’s poorly today. I bade her stay abed.”
    Emmaline is all concern. “Summer chills are the worst. We’ll pray for her health. Shall we go, then?”
    I nod. Best get it over with. I trudge like a penitent a pace behind them, just in front of the maids.
    Without the walls, big spans of green open up. Naught but plots of summer-bright crops stretching out for leagues, all endowed to burgesses. Emmaline directs us across the mill bridge and tells us to follow the river.
    Emmaline’s brother is called William, and he is tall and long-limbed with a friendly, crooked smile. He inclines his head politely and asks, “How do you find Caernarvon?”
    â€œWe found it same as anyone, I reckon,” I reply, a little bewildered. “The road from Chester that runs along the water.”
    The wolfhound snorts. “Lackwit. Any fool knows how you
find
it. He means how do you
like
it?”
    My whole face is hot and scorchy. I would give anything short of my immortal soul to reply to this viper as she deserves, but I’m to be pleasant to Emmaline de Coucy.
    I turn away from Emmaline’s wretched cousin. To William I choke, “Fine. I like it fine.”
    William smiles lazily and paws my shoulder like a mother cat. “Don’t mind Elizabeth. She’s living proof that girls should never learn to read.”
    William’s wife is called Aline. She narrows her eyes at me and then makes a show of taking William’s elbow. Then she glances at Cousin Evilbeth and they trade cruel smiles.
    â€œWe’re almost there.” Emmaline points at a dark smudge ahead. “Look, where those willows are thick.”
    I hurry ahead of the others. Aline says something to Evilbeth as I brush past, and they both giggle.
    Let the hens cackle. I would put my feet in the water.
    It’s shady beneath the willows, dapply-cool. The river moves slowly here and murmurs over round rocks. Even the air feels lighter, and there’s a breeze.
    All at once I’m back at Edgeley, splashing in the creek that turned the mill-wheel and held tiny silver fish that girls could catch in their handkerchiefs if they had patience enough.
    It’s just like home.
    Then I see them.
    Across the stream, half a dozen ragged men in homespun are gathered close like sheep in a storm, their heads bent together.
    I freeze.
    They’re deep in