Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [18]
“The cook asked me to carry this to you, mistress,” I said. It was impossible to bow with the tray; I might drop it. “As your page.”
“You are not my page!” she said, so fiercely that the serving woman started. Mistress Conyers said, “Leave us, Alice.”
The woman went swiftly, closing the door behind her. The room was spare but clean, and the wide bed looked comfortable, its hangings fresh and colorful. A table, two chairs, and a bright fire in the hearth, banishing damp and chill. I had no idea where I would sleep tonight. I set the tray on the table and then stood awkwardly, my hands dangling at my sides, not sure what to do next. I needn’t have worried; Mistress Conyers took charge of the situation.
“I don’t know what you are,” she said, “witch or charlatan or scoundrel. I don’t know how you know the things you said about my husband, or why you were with those men who wrecked . . . who wrecked . . .”
She turned her face away, but in a moment had regained control of herself. “I don’t know if you talked to my dead James or not. He—”
“I did talk with him! And he said he loves you very much!”
I was no better than Hartah, exploiting her grief.
She continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “—was a good man, the best of men, and I don’t need you to tell me either that he loved me or that his soul resides now in a better place than this. I want you to go, boy. Innocent or guilty, witch or not, I want you out of my sight. I cannot stand to look at you. Go.”
“Where will I go? I have no family, and I’m only eleven years—”
“You are not.” She stared at my chin, with its downy covering of hair, and at my Adam’s apple—things she had not seen in the dim light of the cabin. My lie had come back to prove me a liar.
I cried, “But I have no place to go! No people, no trade, no money—”
“Is that what you want from me? Money?”
Mistake, mistake.
“I’ll give you money,” she said contemptuously. “Then go.”
“If you give me money, mistress, it will be stolen from me at the first inn I stop at, or by the first ruffians who pass me alone on the road. And what will I do when it’s gone? Please, mistress, from compassion—”
“The same compassion you showed my husband and his crew?”
“It was not me!”
She studied me. Perhaps she thought my desperation, too, was an act. But always before, I had had the protection of Hartah’s big fists, even if they were sometimes turned against me. I had had his ready knife, his connections with other scoundrels like him, his knowledge of cheating and lying, counterfeiting and stealing. This pampered lady with her superior virtue—what did she know of the life I’d been forced to lead? Her money and her birth kept her safe. At that moment, I almost hated her.
She said, “I do believe it was not you who wrecked our ship, and with it our fortunes. But nonetheless, I still don’t want to look at you.”
“Then find me a job on one of your estates, some humble job where you will never see me!”
She laughed, a sound so bitter that I was startled. “You don’t listen, do you, Roger? Your uncle’s wreckers have taken everything I have. If I am not careful, I will be as poor as you. There is no estate.”
“But . . . I don’t understand . . .”
She rose, poured herself a glass of wine from the tray, and retreated to stand with her back to the fire. It threw her face into shadow. Her fair hair, washed now and curling under her cap, made a halo around her unseen features.
“You are very young,” she said, her voice quiet now, and weary. “And I can see that you have not lived much in the great world. My husband is—was—the fourth son of a minor baron. His brothers inherited such ‘estates’ as there were. James had his own way to make in the world, and he invested everything he had in the Frances Ormund. Our cargo from Benilles and Tenwarthanal, plus the passage money from a nobleman we were carrying to The Queendom, would have let us rent a house somewhere, buy another ship, finance another voyage. Now I am ruined.”
“But the cargo . . . I saw the chests