Page 36 of The Silent Songbird

She heard the rumbling of cart wheels and some far-off men’s voices. As the sounds came closer, Evangeline looked up from her monotonous carding.

Reeve Folsham was walking alongside a cart loaded high with large barrels. She’d seen such barrels filled with ale in the buttery below the ground floor of the castle. Two oxen were pulling the loaded cart, and Reeve Folsham was talking with another man.

Ignoring the chatter between Sabina and Cecily, Evangeline watched as the cart and men drew closer, leaving the dirt ruts to veer off the road toward the back of the castle. She kept her eyes down, only glancing up briefly so the reeve would not see her looking at him.

The ox closest to the reeve seemed to step in a hole and stumble. The cart leaned precariously to one side. The rope holding the second tier of barrels snapped. The top barrels slowly tipped, falling toward Reeve Folsham’s head.

Evangeline gasped and leapt from her stool, throwing down her brushes.

She ran at the reeve, who was still talking. He turned his head and met her eye just as she collided with his shoulder, throwing him off balance. He stumbled backward.

One of the barrels hit her in the back of the leg, knocking her down.

The reeve grabbed her under the arms and snatched her out ofthe way as a second barrel rolled off the first one and hit the ground where she had just fallen.

Four barrels lay on the ground, one of them smashed and leaking ale. The other man had run around the other side of the cart and halted the oxen.

A man ran toward the reeve. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt! Get these barrels back on the cart! Move those oxen! Don’t just stand there gaping.”

Reeve Folsham rubbed a hand down his face, staring first at the cart and barrels, then at Evangeline.

“Well then, girlie. You have redeemed yourself now, I trow.”

She couldn’t help smiling, even though her leg ached where the barrel grazed her.

“Not hurt, are you?”

Evangeline shook her head.

The other man called out, and the reeve went to help him load the barrels back on the cart.

She walked with a slight limp back to her stool to resume her work.

“Well done, Eva,” Nicola said. “You saved Reeve Folsham from a grievous injury.”

“Yes, after injuring him with the scythe, it was the least she could do.” Sabina laughed. “Oh, I’m only jesting, Nicola. You don’t have to glare at me like that.”

Evangeline was back to carding. She peeked at Nicola out of the corner of her eye and smiled. Nicola smiled back.

On Sunday Evangeline made her way to the church with the rest of the servants and villagers. Muriel was not speaking to her, Evangelinehad a long bruise on the back of her lower leg, and the blisters on her hands were bloody and oozing again. But as she considered the previous week, she could be thankful that Westley was alive and well and that no one had been seriously injured when the ale barrels fell.

As she trudged up the slight hill, her mind kept going to what the king was thinking of her, what Lord Shiveley was doing at this moment to try to find her, and her lie to Westley and everyone else that she was mute and a poor, abused servant. By the time she reached the church, her shoulders were heavy and she kept her head down and eyes on the floor.

Everyone was reverent and quiet. The priest and the small choir of boys began the plainsong hymn. Some people sang along. Evangeline tried to follow them. She didn’t know the words, so she simply listened. The second hymn she recognized as one of the psalms.

On Sundays, Evangeline always tried to meditate on her own sins from the past week, so she stood thinking:Lying. Deceiving. But, God, I had to do it to escape Lord Shiveley. Hating Sabina. Imagining throwing Sabina in the river. Forgive me, God. Disobeying the king of the land.

But somehow she did not imagine God holding against her the fact that she did not want to give herself to the Earl of Shiveley.

During the priest’s homily, he spoke a message of “love your neighbor.” Several minutes into it, he quoted the verse from the Bible, “ ‘There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ ”

This was good news to Evangeline, now that she was a lowly servant, at least in the eyes of everyone in Glynval. But then the priest went on to talk about lying and deceiving spirits “who will say anything to get what they want.”

I’m sorry. Evangeline squeezed her eyes tightly shut.Forgive me, God.

But the more her mind replayed all her sins, particularly the sinof falsehood and deception, the more she wished she could confess them and somehow get atonement.