The Wicked and the Just Read Free Page A

of a place to rest my cart-rattled bones, and I come upon the hall. Salvo is already asleep before the hearth, where a girl about my size is raking the coals. She’s dressed in unbecoming gray wool that has been patched and repatched with tight, careful seams.
    The servant, like as not. And I am the lady of the house. Like my mother once, at Edgeley.
    I wave a hand at the girl and say, “Fetch me some wine.”
    Rather than leaping up and skittering toward the kitchen, the girl regards me so fiercely that my belly seizes up. Her eyes are dark as currants and unblinking as a bird’s.
    I stiffen from jaw to fists. “You will bring the wine. Then you will beg my pardon.”
    The servants at Edgeley would never have dared to so much as raise their eyes to me.
    And this girl is fighting a smirk.
    â€œI am the lady of this house,” I say in small, bitten-off words, “and you are dismissed from it. As of right now. Be gone!”
    I wait for her to cower and plead, but she merely looks at me as steadily as a saint. At length she returns to raking.
    â€œDid you not hear me?” I wrench the grate rake from her hand and haul her to her feet. “You will leave at once!”
    The girl’s expression hardens. For a long moment she does naught, neither word nor deed, and I’m about to prod her with the rake when she turns on her heel and marches toward the rear of the house.
    I’m looking for a place to hang the rake when the girl returns with Mistress Tipley, and the crone is bristling like a sopping cat. “Gwenhwyfar is going nowhere. Now give her the grate rake and let her get on with her work.”
    â€œShe’s ill-mannered,” I reply, “and unfit for this house.”
    â€œWhat’s unfit for this house?” my father asks as he plods into the hall and tugs at his gloves.
    â€œHer.” I level a finger at the girl as she studies her bare feet.
    My father runs a hand through his hair. “Cecily, please. We’re all weary. Let it lie.”
    I sharpen my voice. “I’ll not have her in this house.”
    My father sighs. “If it’ll make you feel better, sweeting, mayhap—”
    â€œMy lord, begging your pardon,” Mistress Tipley cuts in, “but if you dismiss Gwenhwyfar, you may as well dismiss me, too.”
    I turn on my father like a whipcrack. “She’s lying! She cannot leave!”
    Mistress Tipley draws herself up straight. “I’ve breathed town air much longer than a year and a day, so I can come and go as I see fit. I’m here for wages, and with the borough’s leave. If this arrangement doesn’t suit you, my lord, I’ll gather my things and be gone by first light on the morrow.”
    My father blinks. “Christ, no. Mistress Tipley, please. Let’s not be rash. Of course Gwen—Gwinny—of course this servant shall stay. And so shall you. And
no more
”—my father gives me a warning look—“will be said of it.”
    The girl, Gwinny, slices a triumphant look at me as Mistress Tipley hands her the tool. Then she kneels once again and begins to rake around Salvo in long, taunting strokes.
    I sulk on the bottom step of the stairs. I will see that crone Tipley on the street by midsummer. Her and her precious Gwinny. No one makes a fool of Cecily d’Edgeley and gets away clear.

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    A KNIGHT and his daughter, she said. No mistress.
    More fool I, to have thanked God for small blessings too early.
    No mistress, and new English might be bearable. No sniping. No accusations of familiarity with the master.
    No insistence that I live in this town. In this house.
    But what I get is worse again, and from a girl no older than I who stands there hands on hips, eyes narrow, brazen as a cold-water drench. As if this is her house already. Her grate to be raked. Hers from splinter to beam.
    Wait for the master to slap her senseless. But he does not.
    Expected a