A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [112]
“Now, lambkin,” Maudda said. “You’ll go riding soon enough. Your da’s the lord, you see, and we all must do what he says. The gods made him a lord, and we—”
“Horseshit!” She stamped her foot. “But I’ll be good if you say so.”
With a sigh and a watery smile, Maudda held out her arms, and Beclya ran to her. I’ve got to get the poor old dear some help, Pertyc told himself. He had this thought with the same tedious regularity with which he first enlisted young nursemaids, then watched them retreat.
“Maudda, I wanted your advice on somewhat,” he said aloud. “I’ve been thinking about my son. Do you think my cousin would take it amiss if I rode to his dun and fetched Adraegyn home for the winter?”
“Ah. You’ve been hearing them rumors of trouble, then.”
“Ye gods, do you know everything?”
“Everything what matters, my lord.”
“Please, Da, go get him,” Beclya put in. “I miss Draego.”
“No doubt you do,” Pertyc said. “I think it might be best all round if he came home. I can train him myself, if it comes to that.”
“Da?” Beclya broke in. “I want to go with you.”
“You can’t, my sweet. Young ladies don’t go riding round the countryside like silver daggers.”
“I want to go!”
“I said you can’t.”
“I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what your dumb gods say, either. I don’t want to be a lady. I want to go riding. I want to go with you when you get Draego.” With a shriek she threw herself down on the floor and began to kick.
“If I may be so bold, my lord?” Maudda pitched her voice loud over the general noise. “Do get out and leave her to me.”
Pertyc fled the field. He was beginning to wish that he’d done what his wife wanted and let her take his daughter away with her. He’d refused only out of a stubborn honor. He could only thank the gods for making Adraegyn a reasonable and fairly human being.
“Now, you know who does have a little cottage,” Samwna said thoughtfully. “Wersyn the merchant. He had it built for his mother, you see, when she was widowed, but the poor lady passed to the Otherlands just this spring. No surprise, truly, because she was seventy winters if she was a day old. She always said sixty-four, but hah! you can tell those things, good sir. But anyway, it’s a nice stout little place with a big hearth.”
“Does it have a bit of land around it?”
“Oh, it does, because she liked her flowers and suchlike. Besides, it had to be a good stone’s throw away from Wersyn’s house. Moligga—that’s his wife—put her foot down about that, and I can’t say I blame her, because old Bwdda was the nosy type, always lifting the lids of her daughter-in-law’s pots, if you take my meaning, good sir.”
Nevyn began to remember why he normally avoided small rural towns.
On the other hand, the cottage turned out to be both suitable and cheap, and he rented it immediately, then spent the rest of the day unpacking and settling in. On the morrow, he decided that while he’d keep his riding horse, the mule would only be a nuisance. Samwna, that font of all local information, told him to try selling it to a farmer called Nalyn.
“He lives out near Lord Pertyc’s dun. He married the farm, you see, or I should say, it still belongs to poor dear Myna—she was widowed so young, poor thing, and her with two daughters to raise on her own—but now one of the daughters is married, Lidyan, that is, and it’s good for them to have a man to work the fields again, I must say, so it’s Nalyn’s farm in a way, like.”
Nevyn made his escape at last and rode out, with the mule on a tether rope, and found the farm. When Nevyn dismounted near the shabby thatched roundhouse, he could hear someone yelling inside. A man’s voice, thick with rage, drifted out, followed by the sound of a woman weeping and pleading. Ye gods, he thought, does this Nalyn beat his poor wife? A second woman’s voice yelled back, cracking in a string of curses. A young heavyset man came stalking out of the house. Just as he