The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [67]
“Here!” Neb yelled. “Stop it right now!”
The startled boys spun around just as he charged, slapping both of them, grabbing Clae by the shirt. “What would Mam say?” Neb growled. “To see you acting like this?”
Clae wilted. He slumped, stared at the ground, and made no answer. Coryn turned and raced off, disappearing among the storage sheds. Neb gave his brother one last shake and let him go. “Two against one,” Neb said, “and both of you bigger.”
“I’m sorry.” Clae mumbled, looked at Ynedd, then mumbled a little louder. “I’m sorry.” With one last glance at his brother he took a few steps away. When Neb didn’t respond, Clae turned and ran after Coryn.
Ynedd leaned against the wall and went on crying so hard that, Neb supposed, he might not even realize that his tormentors had fled. He knelt on one knee in front of the boy, then pulled an ink-stained rag out of his brigga pocket.
“Here, here,” Neb said. “Come along, my lord. Wipe your face and blow your nose.”
Gulping for breath, Ynedd took the rag and followed orders. “It’s my hair,” he stammered. “They keep mocking my hair.”
“Indeed? Then perhaps we should cut it. I’ve got my pen knife with me, and I just sharpened it. Shall we have those curls off?”
Ynedd nodded and turned his back—and the offending curls—toward Neb. The pen knife’s sharp but short blade could cut only one curl at a time, a process that must have cost the lordling a good many pulls and pains. Yet he never whimpered once as they came free and fell to the cobbles. With his hair short he looked a good bit older as well as more comfortable.
“There,” Neb said at last. “That’s better, a nice clean fit under a pot helm.”
Ynedd reached up to feel the cut edges, then kicked a clump of curl with the toe of his boot. “My thanks, good scribe,” he said. “Truly. You saved me.”
“You’re welcome,” Neb said. “I’ll take the cut-off hair and put it out for the birds. They’ll use it in their nests.”
With a smile for the thought, Ynedd trotted off in the opposite direction to the one the bigger boys had taken. Neb set his pen knife back in its little sheath, then picked up the curls. He straightened up and turned around to find Midda, Branna’s servant, standing and watching him. At her feet lay a big bundle of dirty laundry, tied up in a sheet.
“That was nicely done, scribe,” Midda said.
“Were you watching the whole thing?” Neb said.
“I heard our little lord shrieking and was coming to see what was wrong, but you got in before me and did such a splendid job that well, think I, no use in interrupting.” She poked at the bundle with one foot. “I’d best be taking this out. The other women are already at the stream.”
“Here, I’ll carry it for you.”
The stream ran across the long meadow out behind the dun’s hill. The laundry party had set up in the shade of two willows. Servants knelt on the bank and rubbed soap into wet clothes or pounded out dirt with rocks. Already out on the grass lay a good many clean dresses and shirts, spread out to dry. Lady Branna was sitting with her back against one of the trees and singing to keep the lasses amused while they worked, though her song, an old folk ballad about the Civil Wars, seemed an odd choice, dealing as it did with treachery and murder. Midda called out to her, and Branna broke off the song in mid-verse.
“Here’s the last of the shirts, my lady,” Midda said. “The warband’s filthy lot.”
The servants all groaned aloud and put down their work for a moment’s rest. Midda took the bundle from Neb and trotted forward to dump it onto the grassy bank of the stream. Branna got up, stretching her arms above her head and tossing back her long blonde hair. The sight of her standing by the stream—Neb suddenly found his breath gone, felt himself turn cold. For a maddened moment he wanted to rush forward and grab her, to haul her back from the brink to safety. But she’s not in any danger, he told himself. The blasted stream’s no more than three feet deep!
Fortunately no one