All the Painted Stars, page 14
Lily laughed. ‘I can see why.’
‘He’ll be back soon enough,’ Mabel said. ‘I expect his return in the next few days, if not sooner.’
There was a slight wistfulness in her tone that Jo didn’t miss. It was such an unbidden thing that it made Jo’s heart ache; she forgot, sequestered as she was in the keep, that not everyone married for titles and power. It made a pain flare in her chest to know that she would likely never speak of her own husband in such a soft way.
‘You sound as if you miss him very much,’ she said, aware that she was talking out of turn.
Mabel gave a coy smile, as if caught doing something she should not.
‘I do,’ she admitted. ‘I am eager for his return. It is very odd without him here.’
Silence fell as they ate. It was some time before Mabel spoke again.
‘Not to pry,’ she said, ‘but I have noticed you appear to be travelling light, Johanna. I can fetch a spare dress for you if you need one, I am sure I have some that are suitable.’
‘Thank you,’ Jo said, chewing on a mouthful of gamey meat. ‘That is very—’ She hesitated. ‘How did you know my name?’
Mabel gave no pause at all as she handed the heel of the bread to the baby to gnaw on.
‘I heard William say it earlier.’
Jo froze. She was sure that Lily hadn’t used her name – certainly not where Mabel could overhear. But Lily was not as cautious as she was, and it could have easily slipped her mind. Or, more likely, she had not even realised the danger of giving Jo’s true name in the first place. Lily was so engrossed in her meal – and making faces at the baby – that she hadn’t noticed.
‘I see,’ Jo said, a little stiffly.
‘I apologise,’ Mabel added, quickly. ‘I should have asked, but with the state I found you in I did not want to pry.’
Jo immediately felt guilty.
‘It is quite all right,’ she said, determined to push the anxiety from her mind. ‘But … do, call me Jo. I much prefer it, and—’ She paused. It was safer to be called Jo, when anyone who knew her as Johanna de Foucart would be sure to question her involvement with William Dale. ‘And—’
‘Of course,’ Mabel said, before Jo could attempt to further explain herself. She shot a quick look towards Lily. ‘I understand.’
Jo blinked. ‘Thank you.’
Mabel gave her a smile, before standing. ‘I will see to this,’ she said, gesturing at their empty plates. ‘Harry?’
The pair cleared the table then headed back outside. Jo suspected that Mabel had left to give them some much-needed space, and again couldn’t help but wonder why she was being so kind. She voiced her fears to Lily as they sat at the table after Matilda and Nora had gone to play in the yard.
‘You fear that she is being too kind?’ Lily said, aghast. ‘Jo, I had never thought you would be so suspicious of someone.’
‘I am not suspicious,’ Jo began, ignoring the snort of disbelief that escaped Lily’s mouth. ‘Just … we are strangers to her and her family! And she has been so good to us …’
Lily’s expression softened. She reached out, taking Jo’s arm.
‘Kindness is not unusual,’ she said, softly. ‘I hate that you think it is, Jo.’
Jo wanted to argue. She wanted to deny it – insist that her fears were founded in more than just her own troubled past. Jo was still sure Lily hadn’t called her by her full name.
She fiddled with the sleeves of her gown. She tried to relax, attempting to force her limbs to loosen. It was futile, her head racing, her ears still ringing with the sound the man had made when she’d run her blade into his side.
She relented, twisting around, desperate for some familiarity – for some comfort.
‘Lily—’
‘Jo …’
They’d spoken at once. Lily, of course, spoke right over her.
‘Oh, come here—’
Lily slung an arm around Jo’s shoulder. She winced as she did – she must have pulled one of her injuries – but she didn’t relent or back away. Jo stiffened, but Lily was not letting go, and her closeness was as irresistible as the heat of the summer sun.
Jo melted into her, leaning her head against her shoulder with a long sigh.
‘What happened to the woman who has been running her family’s keep for years, and single-handedly organised and hosted a tournament all while juggling the opinions of a dozen suitors?’ Lily said.
‘She stabbed a man in the dark.’ Jo sniffed.
Lily snorted. ‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘In that case it is reasonable for her to not be herself.’
‘What in God’s name will become of me?’ Jo muttered.
Lily squeezed her tighter. ‘I cannot say,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps you can decide that yourself, for once.’
It was meant to be reassuring. But now, under the roof of a stranger, it felt far too large a task. Besides, what decision was there for Jo to make? She would ensure Lily found a physician and return to the keep. Within a few weeks, she would be married.
She didn’t voice that out loud, knowing that it wouldn’t help. It would only leave Lily feeling inadequate, and frustrated with Jo’s acceptance of the life Lily had rejected.
She sniffed against Lily’s shoulder.
‘Perhaps.’
Chapter 12
Lily could have laid her head upon the table and fallen asleep instead of moving on again. She could not believe their luck at being discovered by someone who had seen fit to treat them well, and as she peered around the little home she felt surprisingly safe. She was exhausted, and while she’d been fiercely hungry the food they had eaten had settled poorly in her stomach. Her chest was horribly tight beneath her gambeson. Every time she breathed – which was becoming more of an effort – there was a sharp, stabbing pain in her side that she was doing her best to ignore.
It was another worry she was refusing to heap upon Jo, and part of her resented how accurate Jo’s worrying had been. She needed help.
She really had been close to falling asleep when Jo spoke, jerking her awake.
‘We are being watched.’
Lily sniffed and opened her eyes. Staring at them from a few yards away was an enormous orange cat. It narrowed its yellow eyes at her. It did not move.
‘So we are.’
Lily sat up properly with a yawn. The movement made her chest twinge, but Jo was still peering at the cat and didn’t appear to have noticed. Lily extended a hand towards it, making the little sounds that she had used to lure the cats in her father’s keep.
The cat stood and turned its back on her, walking away. Jo burst out laughing.
‘I do not think he wishes to be your friend,’ she said.
‘Don’t mind Gilbert.’
They both turned. Mabel had appeared in the door to the yard, flushed from work.
‘He’s a foul little man,’ she continued, as Gilbert stalked past her legs and outside. ‘But he’s part of the family. He’s supposed to keep the rats out of the barley, not that he seems to know that. Now …’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘What can I do for you?’
Jo quickly got to her feet. They needed to move on.
‘Thank you for your hospitality, Mabel. But we really must be leaving. We left our horses in the woods and I must take William to a physician. Which is the closest town?’
‘Oh—’ Mabel seemed surprised. ‘The closest is Astmere, but there’s a good man in the next town over. I would not recommend the ride, though. It is not a short journey.’
‘I am not sure we have much choice,’ Jo said. ‘William must be seen to.’
‘True enough,’ Mabel said. ‘But please, stay here. I can fetch the physician myself, and William will not be forced to travel.’
Jo glanced at Lily. Lily could tell that she was nervous: that this was another kindness she didn’t trust.
‘We couldn’t force ourselves upon you like that …’ Jo began.
‘You would hardly be forcing yourselves,’ Mabel countered, ‘if I have invited you to stay.’
Jo’s resolve was faltering. Not, Lily could tell, because Mabel had convinced her, but because she was struggling to say no to this person who wielded power over her. She glanced again at Lily, then straightened her shoulders.
‘Thank you, Mabel, truly,’ she said, ‘but we really must move on.’
Mabel’s face was unreadable, but she nodded anyway, moving aside so Jo and Lily could make their way outside.
In the middle of the brewery yard, a delivery of empty barrels had just arrived. As they passed, Harry pulled a barrel from the pile. His grip was loose, and before he or anyone else had realised what was happening, he slipped.
Lily didn’t think, just leapt forwards, grabbing the barrel just in time to prevent it from crushing him. It should have been an easy weight – she’d often helped in the kitchens, and weeks of training with sword, shield, and lance had strengthened her arms thrice-fold. But it was too much, pain flaring in her chest, squeezing around her lungs.
She dropped the barrel at her feet with a groan, coughing as she fell to her knees beside it. Spots popped in her vision as she struggled to breathe. There was a pressure on her back. A hand.
‘Lily …’
Jo’s voice was low – a whisper only for her, her true name.
She wanted to wave Jo away, to tell her she was fine, but the breath – and so the words – would not come. Her lungs burnt as she took deep sucking breaths that collapsed in on themselves before she could find relief in them.
All she could do was fight it, keeping her eyes shut, trying to breathe around the pain. Finally, the fit subsided, and she slumped in exhaustion against Jo’s side.
After a moment, something wooden was pressed into her hands. She opened her eyes. A mug of water.
‘Drink,’ Mabel commanded. ‘We need to get you seen to.’
At first, Jo maintained her resolve that they would ride into town to find the physician themselves, fetching their horses and things. But when Lily attempted to mount Broga, she couldn’t even make it into the saddle. She leant against the horse’s neck taking shallow, difficult breaths.
Mabel commandeered the horses into the family’s stable and Jo and Lily back into the house, sending Harry to fetch the physician. Before he left, Mabel grabbed him, muttering something that Lily didn’t catch into his ear.
Once she had seen to everything, Mabel joined them inside. She had a set expression on her face, then gestured for them both to sit at the long kitchen bench. For a long while, she said nothing, bustling about in the kitchen fetching three rough-hewn mugs and a pitcher of fresh ale.
Mabel handed one to Lily, filled it, then sat opposite her with Nora in her lap.
‘William,’ she said at last. ‘I told Harry to be vague with the physician. I did not tell him why. Let him think you are a runaway, or a thief, or a man escaping the law. I do not care. I care that you receive the best treatment you can. So. I am asking you, not accusing, or seeking to harm you … is there anything you must tell me before he arrives?’
Lily blinked at her. ‘What? I do not—’
‘You are hurt. Badly.’ Mabel drummed her fingers on the table, and her sure expression slipped. She looked as if each word was a question; one she wasn’t sure how to voice. ‘I am no expert, but I would wager you’ve at least one broken rib. When the physician arrives, he will want to examine you. He will want to examine your chest.’ Mabel gave her a long, pointed look. ‘William. Is there anything you must tell me before he does that?’
Oh. Lily suddenly understood what she was asking. She was still William, here. She had forgotten. No wonder Mabel was concerned: the physician would arrive expecting to examine a young man, and instead find her. The disguise would fail immediately.
At Lily’s silence, Mabel handed Nora to Jo, who took her with a look of abject fear, before turning back to Lily.
‘Let me tell you of a woman I used to know. Lived down the way—’ Mabel gestured with her head. ‘Her name was Sibyl. She was the best midwife for miles. The other women used to tell us how a countess rode for a full day in the back of a hay cart – in labour, mind you – so Sibyl could see to her.
‘When Sibyl died the village wept. Half of us had been brought into the world by her and the other half had been assisted by her. We went to lay her out; my mother, two of her friends, and me. I was still a child, really, but I knew her. Everyone did.
‘It was my first laying out. It was like Mother had been waiting for the right one, so I’d learn how important it was. I watched as they began to strip her down, right down, and then—’
At this, Mabel paused. She looked thoughtful, choosing her best words.
‘Let’s just say she had a few extra parts that none of us knew of. Not the sort of parts one would associate with midwifery. Not at that end of the process, anyway.
‘These women – my mother, too – agreed as one. No one would know. We cleaned her body, wrapped her in a shroud, and then in her bed sheet. The next day we buried her in the grave beside her husband. None of us told anyone. I don’t even know if Mother told Father. She spoke to me, after, on the way home. She told me she knew I’d known what I’d seen, and that I wasn’t to breathe a word of it. That Sibyl had been a good friend, and a good midwife, and she had done what she had to do. That it didn’t matter.
‘I didn’t understand, then. She did what she had to do. But I listened to my mother, and kept it close.
‘I realised, later, what Mother meant. It was different, of course, and I was a grown woman by then.’ She stopped – caught herself – and laughed self-effacingly. ‘Barely a grown woman. Sibyl stuck with me. And when I saw you, in your ill-fitting men’s clothes, I wondered if your story was not unlike hers.’
‘Oh.’ Lily wasn’t sure what else she could say.
Mabel reached out across the table, taking Lily’s hand.
‘You gave me a name, and I will call you by that name. I believe that’s right. You know who you are, and I trust you to tell me who that person is. But not everyone may see it that way, and while the physician is a good man, I cannot guess at how he may treat you. If you want—’ She stopped, frowning, then began again. ‘If you need to take on a woman’s name and woman’s dress while he is here, then I understand, and I will help you. And afterwards, once he is gone, you can be William again. If that is what you need.’
Lily realised what Mabel was saying. The idea of taking on another name – of your own name not really being yours – was an entirely foreign concept to her, one she could not understand. But one that she could sympathise with. For her, William had just been a costume to pull off and on. The Knight of Stars was a tool, like her shield or her sword or lance. He was a convenient way to achieve her goals.
When she was alone, she was Lily once more. When she and Jo had talked and laughed, sharing wine and bread in the tent that by all rights belonged to William Dale, the man himself was no more than a shadow. He didn’t exist. It didn’t sound as if it had been that way for Sibyl. She was Sibyl, all the way down, all the way through to her bones.
‘William is just … a mask,’ Lily said, finally. ‘I took on the name as a disguise, so I could—’
She paused. Mabel didn’t need to know the details of her flight from her father’s keep or her misguided attempt to save Jo. And, if Lily had gauged Mabel correctly, she wouldn’t push for those details either.
‘So I could achieve what would have been blocked to me as a woman,’ she finished, vaguely. ‘Lily is my name. That is what you can call me. But—’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you. For telling me. It feels like a relief.’ She looked up across the table. ‘To know that there are others who are … different.’
‘Are you different?’
Lily glanced at Jo, still awkwardly holding little baby Nora. Mabel spotted the movement. Her eyebrows raised as Lily quickly fixed her gaze back.
‘Sometimes I fear I do not fit,’ Lily said.
Mabel didn’t say anything for a moment, merely topped up Lily’s mug.
‘No one fits,’ she said at last. ‘Not in the way we want to, at least. But we find our own places. We carve them ourselves, in the work we do, in the people we love. Sybil did it. I did it.’ She patted Lily’s hand. Her skin was rough. ‘I’d wager you can do it, too.’
Lily took the full mug with a thankful smile. She looked at Jo again. Nora was now asleep in her arms, and Jo was sitting stiff and straight-backed, looking utterly alarmed.
‘I hope I can.’
‘And when the physician arrives, I’ll tell him I’ve a young woman named Lily injured and in need of help in my home? And that will not be a lie?’
Lily shook her head. ‘It will not.’
‘All right. Let’s find you a place to rest while we wait.’
It was late by the time Harry returned, joined by the physician. Mabel allowed them use of the family bedroom, shooing out the younger children, where Lily found herself subject to the physician’s intense attentions.
He treated her kindly as he examined her cuts and bruises. He unwrapped the bandage around her arm, assessing the wound, before expertly rewrapping it. He prodded at her sides and ribs in a way that made Lily curse, and listened to her chest. He hummed to himself, tutting occasionally. Lily wondered what he could hear that she could not.
When he was finally done, he observed her with a concerned, clinical gaze.
‘You are very unwell,’ he said. ‘Truthfully, I am quite amazed you are even able to sit up and talk. Most of your injuries are superficial, but your ribs are cracked. Your lungs are flooding. I am sure there is bruising and bleeding of the tissue that we cannot see beyond that. It is only for God’s good favour that you are still alive. Do not waste that.’
Lily fell silent, turning pale.
‘You must rest,’ he said, turning aside. ‘Even riding poses too much of a risk.’
‘But—’
‘You cannot argue this, my girl,’ the physician said, expression severe. ‘Sleep, and rest. I will leave something for the pain with Mabel, and I shall return tomorrow with a tincture you must mix and take three times a day. And if I hear you have been attempting to work or ride, I shall strap you down to a bed myself. Do I make myself clear?’
