Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [174]
Galya’s senses were sharp. She spotted Cauvin before he’d cleared the shadows between the path and the yard. An instant later, the loudest sounds were birds chirping in the eaves.
“Galya—” Cauvin began, then remembered his manners. “Mistress Galya? I’m Cauvin. Soldt said I should come here. He said you could fit me with a white-linen shirt. I need a shirt.”
“I can see that, lad.” She beckoned him closer. “You could do with a bath, too, a haircut, and some bitter-root paste before that nose swells. Looks like you lost a fight, lad. Against whom, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Anyone else had asked that question and there’d have been another fight, but Galya disarmed Cauvin before with a grin.
He grinned back as he answered: “The city guard—but it took three of them.”
“You bloody any of them?”
“Mashed a man’s nose and split his upper lip.”
“Well then, you’re a mighty brawler, aren’t you. No wonder that shirt’s done for. You’ve given it a hard life.” The laundress climbed down from her stool. “Follow me.”
The top of Galya’s head didn’t clear the paps on Cauvin’s chest, but her arms, after a lifetime of pounding dirt out of cloth, were nearly as thick as his. Cauvin followed her into a room where jugladen shelves hid the walls, and every beam or rafter was hung with damp linens. Ignoring the linen maze, Galya pointed Cauvin toward the wooden box, while she rummaged among the shelves.
“How do you know Soldt?” she asked with her back to Cauvin.
He sat on the box and thought a moment before answering. “An old, old man sent me to him to learn how to fight.”
“Looks to me as though you’d be better served learning how not to fight!” The laundress found what she was looking for and advanced on Cauvin clutching lengths of frayed, knotted string. “Stand up, lad. Stand tall and strip off what’s left. You can’t expect me to measure you with you slumped over and hung with rags.”
Cauvin went shirtless when he worked, and he’d long since discovered that a few women enjoyed watching him build a wall or smash it down, but they didn’t look at him the way Galya did. She circled him like a cat hunting mice, then hopped up on the box. Her stubby fingers pressed one string end into the base of his neck. She ran her thumb and the string down Cauvin’s spine, clicking her tongue as she went past his waist. He was too surprised to dodge or protest when she knotted in another piece of string and circled it around his hips.
“If your arms were just a little shorter,” Galya said when she was finished knotting, “or your shoulders narrower, then we could do the job simply with four ells of cloth, but you see where skimping’s gotten you.” She lifted the knotwork over Cauvin’s head and pointed at his discarded shirt. “No, you’ll need five lengths, at least. I’ve got the cloth and nothing better to do with my time. I’ll have a shirt for you this time tomorrow, but—sorry, lad—I’ll have to charge you a whole soldat.”
“I hoped—I need—”
“Ah! You’ve somewhere to go before then,” Galya guessed with a grin. “Someone to see? Someone important? Someone beautiful? Well, you might be in luck.” She beckoned Cauvin to follow her through the linen maze at the center of the drying room. “All manner of things get left behind at an inn, you know. Most of ’em wind up down here. I bundle it up now and again and send it down to the Shambles, but it’s been a while—”
They came to a doorway and dim room cluttered with waisthigh—for Galya—heaps of cloth. Cauvin took it for a storage room until he spotted a neatly made bed in one corner. The bed, Cauvin noted, was a marriage bed, big enough for two. His mind began to wander, and he looked for traces of a husband—or maybe a lover—who favored black clothing while Galya attacked the heaps.
“Here,” she said, flinging a wad of pale cloth his way without looking up. “And here.” A wad of dark cloth followed. “Let’s see how you look in those.”
Cauvin shook