Remembrance

Within ten minutes the whole household was in chaos and, easily, Meg escaped through the shouting people. Twice she saw men looking about as though they were searching for her, but she had an advantage in that she looked like every other village woman.

Meg traveled all that night, moving in the opposite direction of home. If she were caught, she did not want her captors to have any idea of the direction of the farm.

On the second day she was walking past a stables when she heard two men wearing the arms of John Hadley asking for a woman of her description, accusing her of thievery. There was a reward offered for her that was at least twice the value of the silver candlestick. To hear the men tell it, Meg had stolen half of all that his lordship possessed. Meg knew that her time alive was limited—if she did not do something. No one could turn aside from the huge reward offered.

What would Callie’s princesses do? she thought since that had worked before. She would disguise herself, was the immediate answer.

Two hours later, Meg was gone and in her place was a crippled old woman with only one arm, with blackened teeth and a limp that made walking very slow. To keep people from coming too close to her, she filled her pockets with fish so old the cats wouldn’t touch them. Wherever she walked she cleared a wide path; children threw clumps of mud at her and told her to get away from them.

She tried her best to stay off the roads, but it was hard going traveling across fields and through woods with heavy underbrush. At the end of the first week two Hadley knights stopped her and started to ask her questions, but Meg’s fear was so real and her supplications for mercy were so exaggerated that they could get nothing out of her. Her hysteria combined with her smell was enough to make them sick. They left her to her walking, muttering that she was crazy.

Being so vile that people would not get near her made getting food difficult, so Meg spent the last three days of her journey without food.

When, at long, long last, after close to a month’s absence, she arrived home, at the sight of her beloved farm, she collapsed on the doorway.

Will was the first to see her. He came running from the barn, swooped her into his arms and carried her into the house.

“You will hurt your back,” Meg managed to murmur.

“You’re as light as the day I married you,” he said, his voice thick with tears he was trying not to shed.

“I stink,” she whispered.

“You smell of roses and nothing more,” he said as he carefully laid her on the bed.

No one in her family asked where Meg had been. They were all too glad for her to be back to ask any questions. Talis made Callie tell a story that had Meg captured by gypsies, but due to her heroic nature and her superior wisdom, she had escaped and come back to her family.

Although Meg never told anyone the truth, after that day she was a changed woman. In a way she listened to Will less, but she also listened to him more, listened to what he was not saying. She now knew that he was aware that the children’s lives were in danger, and instead of being the naive little wife who knew nothing, she worked with him in protecting them.

But Meg also knew that the future of the children was very important. She was not going to allow that evil woman to deprive the children of what was their birthright. When she told Will she was going to hire a teacher for the children, he started to argue with her, but he took one look at her face and gave in. “I will find someone,” he said and she knew he would.

Will always kept his word. He found Nigel Cabot in a ditch beside the road. When Nigel got drunk he stood in the front of the town and gave pretty speeches to try to earn more drinks. His clothes, despite the fact that they were worn ragged and filthy, were the clothes of a gentleman; his speech was like the boy Edward’s. One of the things he bragged about was that he had been a tutor in several noble households.

When the town got tired of his cadging drinks, tired of his arrogant ways, they threw him out. Picking him up by the scruff of the neck, Will lifted him from a gutter filled with mud and various animal manures.

“Can you read?” Will asked and had to shake the man to get him to answer.

“Of course I can read. I’m no country lout who uses paper only to wipe his—”

“I don’t care about the country folk. I want you to teach my son and daughter to read.”

Nigel’s eyes opened wide. He had a keen sense of humor and to see this stolid country farmer asking him—him!—to teach his stupid, ignorant children their ABCs made him forget the muck on his face. Hauling himself up to his full height

, making a valiant effort not to reel about on his feet, he said, “And shall I teach them to count too?” At that he thumped his foot on the ground as though he were a horse that had been taught tricks, implying that Will’s children were of the same intelligence as a horse.

Will, for all his country background, was intimidated by no man, be he king or scholar. “I will make a bargain with you,” he said. “If my children are clever enough to learn all that you can teach them, as fast as you can teach them, then you will give up the drink.”

After a moment’s stupefaction, Nigel put his head back and roared with laughter. The reason he had lost so many good positions and had not been able to secure references for other positions was that he told the parents the truth about how utterly stupid their sons were. He’d once told a duke that a monkey could more easily be taught to read than his son.

So now here was this farmer offering him a challenge of learning. Nigel had no hope of finding intelligence in a farmhouse, but he did hope for a few free meals. He accepted Will’s challenge and after he met Callie and Talis, he never took another drink. He was too busy to drink, for those two children’s hunger for knowledge was inexhaustible.

23

Sixteen Years After Birth

1587

What do you know of babies?” Talis asked haughtily.