The Breath of Peace Read Free Page B

eyes on the pot.
    â€˜William? You – you did feed the hens, didn’t you? You did shut them in?’
    He made no reply. She thought at first he was angry with her, and felt irritated with him for being so petty – after all, it was his fault she’d had such a scare, he shouldn’t have been hanging about in the hedge playing the fool. Madeleine glared at him in frustration. And then some instinct took her past her first assumptions through to the reality. Her eyes widened.
    â€˜You haven’t fed them at all, have you? You forgot all about them. You haven’t shut them in!’
    Still he did not look at her, but he felt the force of her gaze on him like wind and fire, just as clear and honest and direct as her brother’s eyes, and just as capable of the most fiery indignation. William recognized a moment of truth when it came towards him. He abandoned the self-protective lie half formed in his mind. But his mouth went dry.
    â€˜I was scared to tell you,’ he admitted, his voice so low she could hardly make out the words. She stared at him in disbelief, then whirled about, snatched up the half loaf from the table, struggled her pattens back onto her feet; then the door slammed behind her as she disappeared out into the night once more.
    William fetched the bowls and spoons for their supper, wondered whether to follow her but thought better of it, and sat down by the fire he had made, to wait miserably for her return. She was gone longer than throwing bread into the henhouse and bolting its door could have taken. It came as no surprise when she flung open the door and stood there leaning on one hand against the frame as she pulled off her clogs, the corpses of two hens dangling reproachfully by their feet from her other hand. She spared her husband no glance, but stalked through into the scullery and hung the birds on a rafter nail to be dealt with in the morning.
    She came back in silence then to the fireside, stopping at the table to pick up their bowls. She set one down on the hearth, stirring the pot, then ladling barely warm stew into first one bowl, which she thrust in her husband’s direction with neither a word nor a look, then the other, with which she retreated to the far side of their table.
    William received his bowl from her humbly. Never had he felt less like eating, though he’d been hungry enough an hour before. He dared not refuse the food, dared not even raise his eyes to her or thank her when she gave him the dish. He took it, and in silence they ate the tepid stew with the little white discs of congealed fat barely melted. William felt sick at the sight of it, but he ate it. When they were finished, he took her bowl along with his through to the room on the back of the house that did for storage and scullery and preparation space, scooped some water out of the tubful that stood near the door, swilled one bowl into the other, swilled the second bowl round, then opened the window and flung the swill-water into the night. That would have to do until morning. Some grease left on the bowls and spoons wouldn’t hurt; they could be scoured along with the pot the next day.
    He left them on the table there and returned with slow reluctance into their living room. He had a strip of hide cut for a belt, and wanted to make holes in it for the buckle. He took it, along with the spike to make the holes and a stool from the table, to the fireside where his wife sat in angry silence thinking about hens. The spike was too blunt. One end hurt his hand as he tried to push it through, the other end slipped and punctured the palm of his other hand, though it had completely failed to make more than a mark on the leather. He swore and sucked the bruised and bleeding place, while Madeleine watched him moodily, too cross with him even to point out he’d do better with the bradawl than a simple spike. She thought he ought to know that anyway.
    Some evenings, as they sat by their