The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (15 page)

“Ye do know he’ll likely pocket those five nobles he wrung from ye?”

If the herald did or didn’t, that wasn’t her trouble. She frowned at Culpyn, fiercely. Grumbling, the trader fished in his purse and counted out five small silver coins.

“It’s mercy y’should have on me, Moll, all the troubles I’ve seen.”

“It’s mercy I’m showing ye, Denno,” she said, plucking the nobles from his reluctant grasp. “Have I sent ye to sleep in the stable with yer mules?”

“
One
mule I’ve got to m’name, Moll. That’s how far yon curs’t pirate sunk me, and him never to be found for hanging, they say, on account of foul, secret sorceries and dark conjurations that keep him and his sharkish men hidden from the world.”

She couldn’t care less about such fanciful nonsense. “Any more moaning off ye, Denno, and I’ll have mercy on that mule of yers, and set ye to sleep in a ditch!”

Heaving a sigh, Culpyn poked his spoon into his stew. “Y’be a hard woman, Molly.”

“And don’t ye forget it.”

A raised hand from one of the Pruges traders at their table against the end wall turned her away. She fetched their empty tankards, brought them back to the counter and started filling them with fresh ale.

“See, Moll, y’do me wrong,” said Denno Culpyn, worse than any dog with a bone. “I was only going to say to the young ser that if he do be heading Eaglerock way, he’ll find it slow riding when he’s still leagues from the city gates. The countryside down south be cragged bellyful with folk, on account of Clemen’s upheavals.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Y’know of that?”

Iddo’s hands were big enough to carry three foam-topped tankards, but hers weren’t. She loaded a wooden tray and hefted it. “I’ve heard a thing or two.”

“Iss, m’sweetie Mollykins, but I’ll noddle my pot if ye heard—”

Only a fool collected whispers in the open. “Denno Culpyn, y’feggit, be I look to ye a woman on the snatch for a gossip?”

Leaving him to scrape his stew bowl clean and sputter heart-wounded protests, she served the Pruges traders their ale, gleaned a mite of useful tattle from them, then made sure to seeing her other customers were happy. She threw a few casts of dice at one table, laughing when she lost, offering one free ale to each man for her forfeit, and tarried at another to ask woodsman Rankin how fared his son, caught beneath a falling tree and hobbling yet. She settled an argument between the Bevver brothers, who brawled at the hint of a whisper of a slight, drank the good health of fur-trapper Lange for his wife’s first babe-quickening, and let it be a brave and bonny boy, aye! Forester Lugo pulled out his whittled pipe and cheered the room with reedy music. Feet tapped, hands clapped, and for a time the world’s many woes were drownded.

The door banged open and closed again, quickly. Molly saw who it was and rapped her knuckles on the counter. “Iddo! Phemie’s here. Keep these rascals tidy while her and me talk out back.”

“Moll,” said Phemie, sliding her heavy leather satchel from her shoulder to the kitchen’s worn flagstones. “I’m parched for tea, besom.”

“Besom yerself,” she said, grinning. “T’aint me the wizened old healer woman.”

Phemie wrinkled her nose. “Old is as old does. I be not fifty yet.”

“And ye’ll see that a mort of years afore me, ye will.”

“Tush! And ye call yerself my friend!”

Making the tea, Molly chuckled. “There be pie, if ye want one. Or stew. Help yerself.”

Comfortable in the Pig Whistle’s warm, rich-smelling kitchen, Phemie cast her eye over sleeping Benedikt, gave a pleased nod, then
ladled beef and barley stew into a bowl. Fragrant, meaty steam wafted from the cast-iron pot.

“Busy night.”

“Busy enough,” she agreed, feeling her belly gurgle. “I’ll sleep well, it be sure, once the door’s bolted for the night.”

Phemie wasn’t idly called the best healer in the Marches. “Ye should be eating of yer own stew, Molly,” she said sternly, perched on the edge of a stool. “Yer cheeks be wanting good colour, hen.”

“That’s yer old eyes, playing tricks.”

Phemie’s bowl was half-emptied already. “Cheek me, besom, and that’ll be my old hand playing tricks on yer arse. Ye said ye’d be finding another girl to help out. Where is she?”

“Dancing in the woods with the faeries,” Molly retorted, and dripped honey into Phemie’s mug of tea. “What be the use of finding another girl? She’ll up and dance off with a passing peddler, like that Tossie did. Iddo and me manage, Phemie. Now, did ye bring the tooth posset for Benedikt?”

Phemie swallowed the last of her beef and barley. “I brought ye the posset and a warning. There be spotted tongue in the eastern Marches. Best ye keep an eye on folk coming in from that direction.”

Spotted tongue? Curse it. “Have ye told Lord Wido?”

“Word be sent,” said Phemie. With her stew bowl empty, she blew on the tea to cool it for drinking. “To him and Lord Bayard, for Harcia. T’aint so dire yet. I’ve caught three men with it, none so bad the knife was needed. But ye do recall the last time the spot paid us a visit.”

She surely did. Nigh on thirty Marcher folk with their tongues sliced out of their mouths. Four had been children, ruined for life.
Traders
. They brought more than spices and ivory and fine fabrics from foreign lands, they did.

“I’ll see Iddo looks at every new tongue till ye say the danger’s passed.” She pulled a face. “But folk won’t be pleased.”

“Then I’ll have old Gadifer drop his jaw and wag his stump at them who complain till they see reason,” said Phemie. “Or do y’want the Pig Whistle burned to the ground like the lords burned the Jangling Bell for letting spotted tongue go by?”

“No!” Molly snatched up Phemie’s used bowl and spoon and stowed them in the big oak tub for washing, later. “Flap yer lips on that misery, would ye? When Bamfry hanged himself for seeing his doughty Bell a bonfire?”

“Bamfry were a weak-kneed gromble,” snapped Phemie. “And that yer not. Ye’ve lost a sight more than Bamfry ever did and here ye be, proud and strong and thriving.”

Molly sniffed. Her friend’s kind words touched her, but she was never one for being mawkish. “So ye brought me a remedy for Benedikt’s teething, and news I ain’t pleased to hear. What else?”

Knowing when to leave well alone, Phemie hoisted her leather satchel onto the big kitchen bench and hauled out the pills and powders and possets a good inn kept to hand for the comfort and succour of its guests. Molly stowed them with care in her doctoring chest, locked it again, then handed over the six nobles good innkeeping cost her.

“Will ye stay the night?” she asked, as Phemie packed up her satchel. “There always be room for ye.”

“Can’t,” said Phemie, regretful. “I be on my way to a first birthing at Deep Pond. The goatman’s wife, with twins, poor soul. She’s skinny as a lizard through the hips, so I’m like to be kept there nigh on a week. That’s if the birthing don’t kill her. Send word to me there if you see a spotted tongue.”

Two men came into the Pig Whistle as Phemie went on her way. Torbyn Groat, one of Lord Bayard’s riding men, charged with keeping peace along the Marches’ roads. The other was Lord Jacott’s farm steward, Hamelen, come in as he’d said he would. Heart thumping a little harder, Molly caught Iddo’s eye. Unhurried, he collected four empty tankards and joined her behind the counter.

“Trouble?” he said, his voice low.

Oh, she did love Iddo. He was her man of oak, her iron spine. “Spotted tongue, Phemie says. Coming in from the east.”

No need to say more. Iddo put the tankards on the counter and made his way to the newcomers, genial and unbending. She couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw the men startle, then let him look into their open mouths.

“Spotted tongue?” said Denno Culpyn, frowning. “That be curs’t news, Moll. I’m clean, I swear, but so y’don’t have to ask…”

Coming close, she inspected his open mouth. “Clean as a whistle. I be obliged, Denno.”

Iddo was coming back, Torbyn at his heels. Hamelen had settled near the door, in place of the Bevver brothers. They must have tumbled home while she was in the kitchen with Phemie.

“Ser,” she greeted Torbyn. “Peace to ye, and welcome. Tell Iddo what ye be after and he’ll see ye well supped. And can I make known to ye the good trader Denno Culpyn, come back to us after many adventures? Denno be full of a pirate tale, so he is, and eager to tell it.”

She’d raised her voice on that, loud enough to stir the interest of the tables nearest the counter. As men turned their way, in the mood for a rolic, she cocked a hinting eyebrow at the trader.

“A pirate tale, aye!” Culpyn said, leaping up from his stool. “Tell me, friends! Have ever y’met a man what can swear t’ye true he’s three times faced the pirate king Baldassare and lived to tell of it?”

And that was that. Not even Lugo’s piping made for better entertainment. Leaving Culpyn to his energetic mummery, and Iddo to tend Torbyn and the bar, she fetched a mutton pie from the kitchen, where Benedikt slept on, drew a fresh tankard of ale and carried both to the table by the door.

“Molly,” said Hamelen. He’d pulled a dice-pouch from his belt and was clacking the carved and painted horn squares between his scarred, nimble fingers.

She put down the ale and pie. “Good eve, Hamelen. How goes Lord Jacott in these tumbled times?”

“His lordship goes well,” said Hamelen, tossing the dice aside. “Though the times, they do be tumbled.”

“Have ye good news for me, Hamelen? It’s sorrowed I’d be if I had to buy the Pig Whistle’s mutton elsewhere.”

Lord Jacott’s farm steward winked. “Have a seat, Molly. We can natter mutton and geese and duck while I feast on yer pie.”

“–
and there the curs’t young barnacle stood, I tell ye, black as moonless night and thrice more the danger, even though he be scarce old enough to grow his beard! And if I dared ye to tell me what happened next, ye never could. So I’ll tell ye free and easy, so I will. Friends, best y’pin back yer ears and believe every word…
”

Hamelen snorted into his tankard. “Now there be a rascal.”

“And a rogue,” she agreed. With a swift slip and slide of her fingers, she plucked a sealed letter from her apron-pocket and passed it to him, sleight-handed. “But harmless.”

The letter vanished inside his workman’s wool doublet. “Another ten dressed chickens, yes?”

She smiled. “And five more I’ll pay for, Hamelen. And three geese and six duck. Yer last pigeons were scrawny. I’ll hold till summer for
the next. And I’ll have three sides of mutton. Not too fatty, mind. Now, what news from Clemen? Be the naughty whispers true?”

“True enough,” said Hamelen, who traded Lord Jacott’s farm produce… and other things on the side. “Clemen’s council tried to keep it secret but servants talk, and a lordling from Harcia rattled roundabout coin in the right places. B’aint a man-at-arms in Clemen be paid so much not a one would hold out his hand for more.”

Molly felt her belly tighten. So. Rumour had it right. Duke Harald was dead. And his duchess. And his son. All slain beneath their own roof where they’d thought to be safe. A terrible business, surely, whether the duke was loved or not.

“Be there a new duke?”

Digging into his pie, Hamelen shrugged. “There be a man claiming so, by right of Berold’s blood.”

Ah. That would be Duke Harald’s bastard cousin. Roric. A sure recipe for mischief, him, not being pure of birth. If other claims were shouted, trouble would soon follow.

“Lord Jacott,” she said, her heart thudding. “Does he sniff ructions in Clemen?”

“He do look a mite put out more than usual,” Hamelen admitted. “He be called south to Eaglerock castle, and court. Lord Wido too. It’s fast they’ll be riding, no fanfare.” A swift, sharp look. “But that b’aint Pig Whistle gossip, Molly.”

As if she needed telling. She knew which news to sell, and which to hold close. “Do they look to stay here, passing through?”

Another shrug. “Stay or fresh themselves. The lords and their high stewards will say which, not me.”

“
Have ye heard it told that yon beardless barnacle, Baldassare, would dance a man over a ship’s side sooner than ask a ransom for his life? Well, friends, if y’heard it, I be here to tell ye, t’aint no lie! Didn’t I see that young demon dance a good man to his death, with these eyes in m’own head?
”

Culpyn’s wild tale had caught the imagination of every man in the room. Even the traders from Pruges, who must have pirate tales of their own, seemed amused. Molly leaned closer to Hamelen, not wanting to shout above the cries and urgings for the trader to go on, go on, what dread thing happened next?

“And what be the news from Harcia? Ructioned Clemen’ll see them dancing, for sure.”

“Like a jester’s dogs,” said Hamelen, leaning close from his side. “But word is Aimery be holding off, for now. Still bruised from that killing business with his heir, he is, and not eager for more strife.”

And that was wise of Harcia’s duke, to see how the winds in Clemen blew. “So, Hamelen. Have you met him, this bastard Duke Roric?”

Hamelen swallowed ale. Belched. “No.”

Neither had she, but she knew a little of him. Sharp with a sword but kindly, it was said. Phemie had stitched him once, after a skirmish with Harcia’s Marcher men-at-arms out past Bollard’s Marsh. Nasty business, that. Seven men and their horses lost. Harcia’s Lord Egbert should’ve known better than to stand sword on that boggy ground. Them who escaped the skirmish said Harald’s bastard cousin retreated soon after, so no more Harcians would perish for their feggit lord.

“Clemen wants this Roric, do they?”

“Eaglerock wants him.”

And in Clemen, the lords of Eaglerock were kings. Or nearly.

“—
does he look like? Why, black as night, didn’t I tell ye? And muscled like a hunting cat all the way from Agribia. Gold hoops in his ears, a ruby set in his nose, here, and emeralds braided into his hair. And his eyes, his eyes, green as the Sea of Sorrows where he plies his curs’t trade. Friends, if y’asked me, I’d swear his mother was a soul-eater
.”

“Lord Jacott,” Molly said, as her belly tightened again. “Does he stomach this bastard?”

Tankard empty, pie eaten, Lord Jacott’s farm steward picked up his dice then stood. “I need to piss.”