“And the rule is, everyone helps. Everyoneworks.” She pointed toward the door where the boy had exited. “Ifor keeps the goats.” She pointed at the simple lad. “Tomos fetches the water and helps mop and sweep. Mother Morris—” that was the crone—“does the mending and the wash. Widow Jones—” the older woman in the black shawl, still rather pretty even for her age—“has cooked most of the meals you’ve scoffed at, and is the one who fixed your clothing. Dovey, Mrs. Van der Welle, oversees our housekeeping, among half a dozen other duties, and Evans, with one arm, does the work of three men. So you—” she advanced until the spade nearly poked his nose—“can empty. Your own. Chamber pot.”
“You needn’t take my nose off.” Pen put on his most affected drawl. It was all he could offer in self-defense. “And what do you do, besides bark orders and menace people with gardening implements?”
Her eyes flared and he wondered, for a suspended moment, if she were going to strike him. No oneeverstruck him.
No, that felt distinctly untrue. He’d been walloped in Newport several times already. He had the sense he’d been manhandled quite a bit as a youth—the torments felt dim, far away, but deeply entrenched. But no one now dared strike him because—because—he was someone important, devil take it. He didnotempty chamber pots. He looked down his nose and waited for her to capitulate.
The widow came forward and placed her arms on Gwen’s shoulders. “Gwen looks after us all, and earns the coin that feeds us,” she said softly. “Gwenbach, you needn’t harp tonight if you don’t wish it. It’s been a trying day already, and a fair drive to Greenfield.”
“’Tis not so far.” Her shoulders slumped. “And it’s a small gathering. Lady Vaughn only wants me to play for a family dinner. Though I admit, with what our Mathry is going through, I have no wish to look upon the smug face of Calvin Vaughn.”
She froze as she said this, and turned a wide, dreadful stare on Pen. The hairs on his neck lifted again. Was he supposed to know these names?
“You might take me,” Pen said, doing his best to hide the desperation in his voice. “Someone might know me. Though it doesn’t seem I’m from here.” No one had recognized him, though he’d wandered town about the better part of a day. Was no one looking for him? Didn’t he matter to someone?
The change in Gwen was alarming. He hated that frightened, hunted look. He wanted the soft woman who had wrapped hisribs and laid her lovely hand on his forehead. His chest hurt, his cracked ribs making it hard to breathe.
“I’ll go tonight. Alone. We need the coin.” She turned away. “It’s time we had meat for a meal, and Tomos needs new boots.”
The simpleton stuck out a foot clad in rags and leather, barely cobbled together. “Llopan,” he said.
Bloody hell. Whatwasthis place? The roof needed mending, they had to forage for food, and they couldn’t even buy the boy boots.
He didn’t care about the others, but why was Gwen here, seemingly in charge of this collection of tatterdemalions? A woman that beautiful could simply lift a finger and point to the man she wanted to provide for her. And the lucky fool would eagerly hand over life, name, and fortune for the gift of her body, her promise to be buxom at bed and board.
Not Pen. He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want to be here. He’d take to his heels as soon as he bloody well could.
But in the meantime, he wanted to do something that would make Gwen’s shoulders slump less. Take away the lines of worry between those clear, soul-searching eyes.
He squared his shoulders, marched back to his room, pinched his nose, and scooped up his chamber pot.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Pen emerged from the necessary house to find it was indeed raining with a passion. Puddles formed in the courtyard and churned up mud in the gardens. He couldn’t see beyond the woods that hedged the property, couldn’t even make out the tower of St. Woolos, though it wasn’t far away.
The one-armed man was in one of the outbuildings, cleaning a large wooden vat. The small building reeked of yeast and hops. Pen’s stomach growled. He wanted grog, but beer would do. He was not at all in favor of Gwen’s edict that she would dry him out.
“Wise to hide out here,” Pen said, watching the man work. He seemed surprisingly able for having a maimed leg and but one arm. Most men who came back marred from the wars were left begging in the streets, not at all guaranteed a pension for their service.
How did he know this?
“The women are all a-flutter over that Jewish man who was beaten,” Pen went on, trying to drown out the unpleasant emptiness in his head. “You’d think they never knew men to disagree.”
He meant to establish a manly rapport, two sane fellows looking upon the foibles of women and scratching their heads,following age-old custom. Instead, the man swung about, poured a bucket of water into the vat, and resumed scrubbing.
“We don’t see many Jews in Newport,” he answered. “They mostly stay in Merthyr Tydfil. They don’t mix, but they’ve never been hated here. Not like theSaesonhate them.”
Saesmeant English, Pen gathered. He was as much an outsider, a stranger, as the Jewish man. Did Evans, too, hate the English? Pen prickled as the man looked him over, with no change in expression, then returned to his work.
Pen was used to regard from other men. Envy, if not admiration. He knew that much.
“Gwen is frightened,” he blurted out.
“Thatshe is,” the man affirmed. He lifted a rake in his hand and scrubbed the sides of the vat with it, scratching out the dried residue of malt. “Miss Gwenllian,” he said, with emphasis on themiss, “has made St. Sefin’s a refuge for those of us as don’t have a place to go. She gives us shelter and food and the dignity of supporting ourselves. But she found out she don’t own the place. SomeSaisowns it. And she fears he’ll come any moment to turn us out.”
Turn us out. Gwen’s exact words. So shedidfear someone.
“Well, if it’s this man’s property, he’s at liberty to do what he likes with it,” Pen reasoned. “That’s simply the law.”
