“And you know Cham, who loves to sit and drink here more hours than he works in a day. Well, he was the one fool enough to stand and say that the old man had little enough, and most of what he had, he’d already left to Pell’s bastard son after Pell abandoned the boy and his mother.

  “Well, turns out Pell and Meddalee had never seen fit to tell Meddalee’s father that bit of news. When her father started shouting at them both, saying he wouldn’t be grandfather to fortuneless bastards, she started weeping and squawking that it wouldn’t be like that, that Pell had come back to Cogsbay to fix things for them. And Rosemary?”

  He cleared his throat and then said into her waiting silence, “That bastard as much as said, before everyone here, that he didn’t believe that one was really his.” The innkeeper tipped his head toward Gillam as if to be certain she understood his roundabout reference to her son. “When anyone who saw Pell grow up knows that the boy is an image of him when he was a lad.” Then he looked down at his big hands on the edge of the table for a few moments. Perhaps he expected Rosemary to be shocked at the news. Or shamed. She was neither. His words confused her. She had been so sure that Gillam was why Pell had returned, that her boy was what he wanted.

  She took a spoonful of the cooling chowder. Not even the taste of the warm rich chowder could chase the bitterness from her mouth. She met Tamman’s gaze. “Pell’s lies are none of my doing,” she said quietly.

  “More like what has been done to you,” the innkeeper conceded. He looked at the fire, allowing her a few moments of quiet in which to eat.

  “Thank you for telling me all this,” she said at last. She had not asked him why, but he heard her question.

  Tamman shifted on the bench. “Could be trouble is coming for you. That Meddalee is one determined woman. I’ve known her since she was a girl. Her parents used to send her here, clear across the bay, for her to stay with her cousins for the harvest. Rumor was that even then, they couldn’t handle her. She’s always been willful. She doesn’t seem to care what Pell is, only that she thinks he ought to be hers, even if he slaps her, even if he’s already got a son. Eda alone knows what Meddalee might do if she came out to your home. Be wary.”

  “If she wants Pell, she’s welcome to him.”

  The innkeeper shook his blunt head. “Rosemary, you aren’t hearing me. Her father was furious with her. Said that he wouldn’t let Pell come back, that Pell was a penniless cad who would use her and leave her with a bastard just as he did to you. Morrany is a wealthy man, across the bay. Owns two ships and three warehouses. He wants his daughter to marry well, someone with property for his grandchildren to inherit, alongside his own wealth. Pell can’t offer that. His father’s debts are such that when he goes, there won’t be two pence for his widow to rub together. His grandfather didn’t have much; Soader gave the cottage to your lad, and his little house here in town went to clear his debts after he was gone. Eda bless the man, he was a good soul and shared what he had while he was alive. Everyone in the village knew that he slipped Pell’s mother money whenever she asked; without him helping her, Pell’s father would have beggared them long ago. And when Soader was gone, well, there wasn’t anything left.

  “So, think, girl. Your boy owns the only bit of land that might be an inheritance for Pell. Meddalee’s a determined woman. What would she have to do to make that cottage and land Pell’s?”

  She furrowed her brow at him. The words came slowly. “Kill me? Kill . . .” She roved her glance over Gillam, unable to speak the words aloud.

  Tamman nodded. “Now you understand.” He looked away from her. “They sat together, away from the fire but close to the back door. I made more than one trip out to the garbage heap last night, dumping dregs and garbage. I overheard things, Rosemary.” He looked at her directly. “Pell was talking, saying that he could fix it, that before summer was over, he’d have a place of his own and be free to marry her.”

  Gillam had finished his food and was looking with unabashed interest at hers. She slid the half-full bowl across the table to him. Suddenly her hunger was gone; fear filled her belly. What had Pell been shouting as he came down the hill? That she had stolen his inheritance? She tried to think as Pell would. He’d come back home to them and tried to make them believe it was good. Tried to get her to trust him. If it had worked, what would he have done next? Get rid of her first. A tumble down the cliff, or perhaps he would say the cow had trampled her. And then, well, a month or so later, tragedy would strike him again. His boy would die “of a cough” in his sleep. Or fall from the cliffs. Or wander off into the fens, never to be seen again. And the cottage would pass to him.

  She looked at her boy spooning up mouthfuls of thick, rich chowder. A slow, cold anger rose in her. She’d been a fool. So blind. Gillam was the most precious thing in her life and she thought Pell had come back to take him from her.

  He’d come back to destroy him. She thought suddenly of his knife. A gift. A very sharp knife. She suddenly knew who had given it to him.

  “Will you be safe, Rosemary?”

  The innkeeper’s words called her gaze back to him. “I will,” she said. Pell would not. Time to finish what she had left undone. She set her two coins on the edge of the table, but Tamman shook his head.

  “Not this time, my dear. It’s been too long since you patronized my place. And your coming here today saved me a hike around the cliffs to your cottage. Now. Where is Pell? Did he come home last night?”

  She shook her head slowly and chose her words. “He never came into the cottage. I don’t know where he is now.” It was almost a truth. He had never reached the cottage door. And right now, he might have recovered and be on his way here. Or still lying behind the cow byre.

  But the innkeeper only nodded as if that confirmed his guess. “Last night, Meddalee Morrany’s father dragged her out of here. She was kicking and spitting and shrieking and trying her claws on his face. Pell stood and shouted that she was a woman grown, that her father had no right to force her to go home, but Morrany had the captain and the mate of one of his ships with him, and Pell daren’t start a fight with any one of them, let alone three. He said, woman or no, she was acting like a spoiled child and so he would treat her. So, after a noisy shouting match outside, her father took her down to his ship. Said he was taking her back across the bay in the morning and that Pell would stay away if he knew what was good for him. But Pell’s never known what was good for him. So I suspected that he’d follow and try to steal her back.” Tamman nodded to himself and stood slowly. “Pell was pretty drunk when he left here. I didn’t think he’d make it as far as your cottage even if he headed that way.”

  “He didn’t,” she said quietly. “Maybe he’s sleeping it off somewhere. Maybe he went to his father’s house.”

  “Or maybe he’s looking for a way to get across the bay. Meddalee’s father’s boat is still tied up to the docks, waiting for the tide to be right. He might even be down there trying to weasel his way back into her father’s favor.”

  “Maybe.” But she knew Pell better than Tamman did. Perhaps at first, run off by Meddalee’s father, he’d simply come home to her cottage as a place where he could go. But that wasn’t what he’d intended this morning. He’d come back to the cottage, thinking to get rid of his inconvenient son. He’d come to kill Gillam. The cat had been right. And knowing that changed everything.

  Everything.

  The cat was right. She’d been a fool. Resolution as cold as iron stiffened her spine. She smiled at Tamman, a small cat’s smile. “Well. We’ve errands to do, Gillam and I. Thank you for the chowder, Tamman, and for the warning. And you are right. It has been far too long since we’ve dropped in. Sometimes I forget that I do have friends.”

  And enemies. Sometimes she forgot that she might have enemies.

  She looked at Gillam. “Is that better? Shall we go now?”

  He nodded emphatically.

  “The market stalls will be opening soon. Shall we go have a look?”

  The boy’s eyes flew wide. A trip to market was a rare thing for both of them. They lived mostly by barter and seldom used coin. He nodded avidly, and she bid Tamman farewell. Outside, the wind was blustering, but the rain had ceased. The clouds were being pushed aside from a bright blue sky.

  The market in the little town was a tiny one, not more than a dozen shops and stalls and half of them seasonal. She was able to buy a short coil of sturdy line, a long slender boning knife, and then, because there was so little left of her money and life, she now knew, was an uncertain thing, a little packet of honey drops for the boy. He’d never had candy before and could scarcely bear to put even one of the bright-colored drops into his mouth. When she finally persuaded him to try a pale green one and saw his face light with surprise at the taste of honey and mint, she folded the packet up tight and put it into the bag. “Later, you can have more,” she promised him, her mind full of possible plans.

  They walked the cliff-top path home again. A quarter of the way back to the cottage, the cat suddenly appeared and trotted along at her heels alongside the boy. “Well, where have you been, Marmalade?” she asked him.

  Rousing the bigger dogs. They sleep later than I thought.

  “Don’t the old wives tell us to let sleeping dogs lie?” she asked him and was rewarded only by a puzzled glance from Gillam. She said nothing to the cat of what she would do and felt no further brush of a feline mind against hers. That was just as well. What she would do, she would do, and it would be her own deed.

  They reached the juncture in the path where a tiny trail wound down the grassy hillside to her cottage. She stood for a short time, looking down on it. Beyond it were the fens, a tapestry of grasses and ferns in a hundred different greens. No smoke rose from her cabin chimney. The cow had taken advantage of the open gate to lead her new calves out. The chickens scratched in the dooryard. All seemed calm.

  Of Pell, there was no sign. He could be in hiding. He could be sleeping in the cabin. He might still be lying in the tall meadow grass behind the byre. She sighed. “I should have been certain of him when I had the chance,” she said to no one. The cat lifted a paw and swiped it across his face, almost as if hiding a smile.

  Gillam started down the path ahead of her. She called him back. She reached into the bag and gave him another honey drop, a yellow one. “You and Marmalade stay right here,” she told him. “Sit down and see how long the candy lasts if you only suck on it.” The novelty of the candy was enough to win her instant obedience. She put the little cloth bag in his hands. “When it’s all gone, try a red one. When it’s all gone, have a pink one. Suck on each one slowly. And wait for me to come back and ask you which one you liked best.” Gillam’s eyes were big as saucers at his good fortune. He found a rock jutting up in the grass by the trail and perched on it, sucking thoughtfully. The cat sat down beside him and curled his tail around his feet.

  Luck.

  “Thank you.” She set her pack down beside them. She took only the rope and the skinning knife and the hatchet. She walked silently down the hill. It was impossible to disguise her approach to the cabin. It was a bare, broad hillside. She carried the bared knife gleaming in her hand.

  She looked for him first in the cabin, but it was still and cold as a dead thing. She searched it well, even climbing up to peer into the loft and then looking under the bed. There was nowhere else in the cabin where a grown man could hide. She went out and about her small farmstead. The chickens scattered as she walked through the scratching, pecking flock but otherwise showed no alarm. The cow was grazing peacefully, her two red calves sleeping together. Pell was not hiding in her stall.

  She glanced up the hillside. Gillam still perched on his rock. She could not see Marmalade. She waved at her son, and he waved back at her. Then, knife in one hand and hatchet in the other, she went behind the cowshed.

  If Eda had blessed her, the man would be dead where he had fallen. But Eda was a goddess of light and life and fertility. One did not pray to her for a convenient death. Pell was not sprawled there. He was gone, and so was his knife.

  And she suddenly saw her error. She lifted her skirts and ran, suddenly sure of her mistake. And as she rounded the byre, she saw Pell striding up to her boy.

  “Well, what’s that you have there, Gillam? Candy? Why don’t you show me?”

  His words just reached her ears. Pell was standing over the boy. “Gillam!” she shouted, a useless warning. What would she tell him to do? Run? He could not outrun a determined man. As Gillam turned, startled at her cry, Pell scooped him up. Scooped him up and began to run with him, up the path to the cliffs.

  She screamed, a useless waste of her breath, and ran. Her heart was pounding so that it filled her ears, and then suddenly she realized that thundering sound was not her heart at all. Hoofbeats. Someone was riding a horse along the cliff trail. She lifted her panicked gaze and saw three mounted men galloping heedlessly on the cliff-side path.

  “Stop him!” she shouted at them, helplessly, hopelessly. “Stop him! He means to kill the boy! Help me, please. Please!”

  Did they even hear her breathless cries? She kept running and became aware of a tawny little shape that was leaping after Pell, catching at his legs and then falling back and racing after him again. Gillam had found his voice and was roaring with terror even as he clutched his bag of sweets. And Pell was getting ever closer to the cliff tops.

  The three men all but rode him down. She cried out in horror as Pell flung her son at them and tried to run even as the men abandoned the stamping horses to chase after him. Gillam struck the ground hard and rolled away from them, and then lay, sprawled and still in the early spring sunlight.

  “Gillam,” she shrieked and ran to him. The horses, spooked by her cries, wheeled and ran back the way they had come. She cared nothing for them or for the struggling men by the cliff’s edge. She reached her boy and scooped him up.

  “Gillam, Gillam, are you all right?” she cried. She sank to the earth and gathered his little body into her arms. He seemed so small.

  He took a shuddering breath and then sobbed out, “I wost my candy! I dwopped my candy!”

  In her joy, she laughed aloud, and then, because of the hurt in his eyes that she laughed at his tragedy, she felt in the grass and came up with the little cloth sack. “No, you didn’t lose them. See, here they are and just fine. Just fine.”

  He’s gone now.

  Marmalade had found them. He clambered into her lap with Gillam, and he hugged the cat tightly.

  “Gone?” she asked in wonder. “Gone where?”

  Gillam spoke the cat’s thought aloud. “The bigger dogs chased him over the cliff’s edge.” He glanced back toward the returning men and observed sourly, “They took too long to get here. They were nearly too late.”

  She let him keep the bag of candy and told him he might look at the new calves as long as he wanted if he sat on the top of the fence and did not go near them. The cat followed her as she walked toward the cottage. The three men were standing uncomfortably by the door. The oldest man leaned on a younger companion. “You are welcome to come in,” she said quietly as she walked through them and into her cottage. They followed her, awkward and silent. “Sit down,” she invited the older man. His face was grayish with sorrow. He sat on her chair heavily and then lowered his face into his hands.

  “I thought I knew him,” he said quietly. “Three years he worked for me and courted my daughter. I thought I knew him. Never imagined he could do what he did.”

  “Pell ran off the cliff himself,” one of the other men suddenly declared. “It was none of your doing, sir. He could have stood and explained himself and come back to town with us to tell his story to the council. He’s the one that ran right off the cliff. If the tide had been in, he might have survived. But not that fall onto the rocks.”

  “It’s as much as he deserved,” the older man said quietly. “After what he did to my daughter. My pretty little Meddalee, flighty as a butterfly. She was thoughtless and willful true, but sweet Eda, she never deserved what he did to her.”

  “You’re Meddalee’s father?” Rosemary asked him quietly. She kept to herself her opinion of what Meddalee might deserve.

  “He is.” One of the other men answered for him. “And that bastard Pell killed his daughter last night. Must have crept on board and gone right to her room. Guess he thought that if he couldn’t have her, no one would! When we went to wake her this morning, her own father found her there in her bed. Face all slashed to ribbons and her throat cut, neat as pie.”

  Light as a leaf, Marmalade floated to the sunny windowsill. He sank his claws deep into the wooden sill, stretched, and then sat. He lifted his paw to his mouth and began to wash.

  “Shut up, Bell,” barked the other man, and the talker fell silent. Meddalee’s father groaned and hid his face deeper in his hands. “My little girl, my Meddalee,” he murmured. Rosemary stared silently at her cat.

  “Are you all right, miss?” the other man asked her. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  She found her voice. She felt oddly calm as she gave them what he needed. “He threatened me. And came at me with that knife. It was a fancy one, made from Chalcedean steel, he said. He kept it sharp as a razor. But I think it was my boy he wanted to kill.”

  “Crazy,” the first man muttered. “Man would have to be crazy to want to kill his own son.”

  She nodded silently.

  “We should get back to town,” the man named Bell suggested. “We need to tell the council what happened. And see to poor Meddalee.” He looked suddenly at Rosemary. “You seen what happened, didn’t you? How he broke from us and run right off the cliff?”