"Yet all signs say thou didst." Rowley's face hardened. "Unless thou hast a witness to say he saw thee without thy bow as he saw the deer fall, I must needs hold thee—"
"Yet there was!" Laughn shrilled. "Such an one did see me so!"
Rowley paused, scowling. "Who did?"
"Stane did!"
Rowley sat, eyes widening at Laughn's audacity. Stane had been found dead by a keeper about the same time that another had discovered the slain deer and had caught Laughn. The young man had been a short distance from both, lying near a rock that fitted the dent in his head. To all appearances he had tripped and fallen. Rowley had sent a guardsman back for the body; he had found it stiffened. "Thou knowest Stane lieth dead."
"Naetheless, he did see me even as he let fly the arrow! 'Twas Stane slew the deer, not I! I did not wish to speak ill of the dead, but thou dost leave me no choice!"
"Ill indeed." Rowley's eyes narrowed. "Thou art, then, the last to see Stane alive. Methinks thou mayest know more of his death than thou speakest!"
"I do not!" Laughn fairly screamed, straining against the guards' grasp, raising his bound hands. "I call him to witness!
Stane, come! For if thou didst, thou wouldst bear witness that I am innocent!"
This blasphemy was too much even for Rowley. "Thou dost lie, vile murderer! I would Stane could stand here, for—"
He broke off at the look of absolute terror that came into Laughn's eyes, and turned to follow his gaze.
There, dimly seen in the gloaming, but there quite clearly, was a wisp of smoke in the form of a man, a young man in smock and leggins with a raw bloody dent in his forehead.
"Stane," Rowley whispered.
He doth lie, said Stane's voice inside their minds. He slew the deer; I did see it. And for that, he slew me. Then he half buried the rock, so that it would seem my own clumsiness had slain me.
Laughn screamed, then screamed again and again, thrashing against the hold of the white-faced soldiers while Stane's ghost faded, as though the sound of Laughn's howling were shredding the shade and dispersing it. Then Laughn's voice cut off short, eyes bulging as he stared at the place where Stane's shade had been, before he slumped, unconscious.
The tinker wore a three-day beard and an assemblage of clothes that seemed to be made up of equal parts of tatter and grime. The boy beside him was a little better off; his face was unwashed instead of unshaven. Both of them were hung about with pots and pans that jangled and clattered as they walked. Of course, the alert eye could have seen that under the rags they were both well-fed and well-muscled, and the tinker, at least, seemed to be unwholesomely happy about the whole thing. He ambled into the village with his thumbs hooked around pot handles, whistling.
The boy, on the other hand, looked rather glum about it all. He glowered up at his father. "Do you have to be so happy about the whole thing, Papa?"
"What good would it do being sour?"
"If anybody you knew saw you, they might think you were glad to get away from Mother."
"Never! Well, no, I have to amend that—I'd rather not have her around when I lose my temper." Rod grinned. "But I always do enjoy getting away from Their Majesties and the court for a little while. There's this tremendous sense of… freedom."
"Freedom." Magnus jangled his pots and glowered at the grime in his homespun tunic. "This is freedom?"
"Son, I've been meaning to tell you—freedom and luxury are not the same thing. In fact, they don't even go together, most of the time." Rod stepped into the center of the village common and shrugged off his load. It fell with a jangle and a clatter, and he called out,
Magnus winced. "You've done better, Papa."
"Well, what do you expect for improvisation? Besides, who made you a critic?"
"You did," Magnus said instantly. "At least that's what you said the last time I didn't want to do my homework."
"I know—every educated man should be a critic," Rod replied, sighing, "and if you're not willing to learn, you have no right to criticize. An unkind cut, my boy, an unkind cut."
"I thought we were talking about education, not steak."
"Are you still beefing? Try to simmer down—here comes a customer."
"Ho, tinker! I've waited long for thee!" The housewife was broad and plump, with a pleasant round face and a small cauldron that had a long jagged crack. She swung it up into Rod's hands. "For months I have cooked in a crockery pot!"
"Eh, I should have come sooner." Rod's voice moved into a country dialect. "'Twill cost thee a penny, missus."
The woman's face clouded. "I've no coin to spare, tinker." She reached for the cauldron.
"That being so, we're a-hungered," Rod said quickly. "Can ye spare us a bowl of stew with a taste of meat?"
The woman beamed. "I've a bit of dried beef on the shelf yet." She frowned down at the odd noise the boy made, then shrugged and turned back to his father. "Still, I cannot stew it without a pot."
"Why, then, a mun mend it quickly." Rod sat down tailor fashion, pulled out a knife and a stick, and began shaving tinder. "Fetch a few sticks, lad, like a good 'un."
"Pretend, anyway—right?" Magnus muttered, before he turned away to hunt for kindling.
A few other wives came up as Rod laid the fire. One had a pot with a bad dent, but the others had only interest. "What news, tinker?"
Rod always had wanted to be a journalist. "Naught that's so new as all that. The Abbot hath declared the Church of Gramarye to be separate from the Church of Rome."
A housewife frowned. "How can he do that?"
"He doth ope his mouth and speak." Rod shaved a curl of wood.
"Can we not hear Mass, then?"
"Rumor saith that the Abbot himself doth so, every day."
The first housewife knit her brow. "Then what matters it?"
Rod shrugged. "Little enough, I would say." Privately, he was appalled that the peasants took the news so blandly. "Yet what know I of the Church? 'Tis a priest must say." He looked up as Magnus came up with an armload of broken branches. "Ah, that's good enough, lad."
Magnus sat down with his bundle of sticks, trying not to look at the erstwhile customer who was running toward the only building with a wooden roof. It also had a small steeple.
"Now, when I can find one who hath a brother or son in the monastery," Rod said easily, "I can find the truth or falsehood of this rumor." He struck a spark into the tinder and blew it into a glowing coal, carefully leaving enough silence for a villager to volunteer a comment. When no one did, he sighed inwardly and said, "Other than that, there's small enough news. Twas a storm in the north, off the Romanov coast, and a fisherman swore he saw a mermaid singing in the midst of the lightning."
The housewives gasped and exclaimed to one another, and Rod started feeding kindling into the glowing coal. Flames licked up.
"What had the fisherman been drinking, Papa?" Magnus asked, and the women turned toward him, startled.
Rod swung a backhanded slap at Magnus's head, but Magnus ducked it lazily. "Go along with 'ee, now! Hast no respect for thine elders?"
"Not so harsh," a housewife protested. "I've known mine husband to see odd sights when he's been a-drinking."