his wild-eyed startlement and bashed the straggle of vine from his neck. As the wrack slithered off him, he swept a frantic glance over the muddy yard but saw no tracks left by rustled livestock.
Broad daylight revealed only the pruned canes of the roses and the crude prints left by Kerelie’s pattens.
When the dry cow and the ox raised their horned heads in the field, his glare confounded to befuddlement. The animals were as they should be: routinely turned out to pasture and chewing their cuds behind the shut gate. They had not moved by themselves from the barn, any more than a garden turned over its frost-wilted rows and laid down leaf mulch by itself.
More, the broken handle on the well’s crank had been fixed, a skilled task Uncle Fiath bequeathed to his heirs by neglect.
‘Fiends plague!’ Tarens swore. No mischievous iyat visited mankind with the untoward kindness of miracles.
Thoughtful, the huge crofter padded between the mercury gleam of the puddles. Oblivious to the cold nip to bare feet, he entered the barn and paused, impatient while his sight adjusted to the dusty gloom. The fragrance told him the stalls had been mucked. The mangers also were forked with fresh hay. More, the ox harness hung set to rights on the hook, freshly oiled, and for the Light’s sake, who bothered? Even the buckles were polished! Beside the whetstone’s damp wheel, the missing butcher’s knife showed the argent shine of a whetted edge.
Footsteps at his back, and a prim swish of skirts prompted Tarens to task his sister, ‘The vagabond did this?’
‘Had you listened and not belted off with the poker, I would have suggested as much.’ Kerelie sighed. ‘He must have trailed us back here on foot.’ Her hateful cooking abandoned for gossip, she sniffed. ‘Or else he snuck into the wagon. The empty bird crates were loosely stacked, and nobody tidied the tarp.’
‘He’s accomplished all this?’ Tarens capped his amazed gesture with a chuckle of flat disbelief. ‘One starved little wretch? Merciful Maker! The man would’ve laboured all night!’
‘In the dark,’ added Kerelie, uneasy and shaken. ‘See for yourself. The candle stubs in the lanterns weren’t touched.’
Sure enough, the horn lamp had never been lit. No spent reek of oil and charred pine bespoke the foolhardy use of a cresset.
Tarens scratched at his stubbled chin. ‘Done us ten favours, we owe him that much.’
‘Don’t be daft!’ Kerelie snapped. ‘We can’t possibly keep him!’ Since her brother would argue, she slapped him down first. ‘I don’t care how hard the miserable wretch works. Another mouth to feed through the winter will strain us nigh onto breaking. We can’t meet the croft tax on inheritance, besides. And why should a rootless man swipe the best knife from our kitchen only for sharpening? The fellow might be quite ruthlessly mad! Touched by Darkness itself and hell-bent on slitting our throats as we slept.’
The firm line of Tarens’s sealed lips gave a twitch. His blue eyes widened and glinted. Sparked into sudden, inexplicable merriness, he stifled the laughter that would only fan his sister’s volatile fury. She looked apt, as things stood, to make a quick snatch for his poker and brain him. Ever the sort to enjoy taunting fate, he outfaced her stormy reproof. ‘I don’t think it’s our necks the bloke means to cut.’
Kerelie flounced. Heated enough to pummel the fool who played her for a dreaming idiot, she glanced over her shoulder just barely in time. Her large jaw dropped. ‘You!’ she exploded, burned red with embarrassment for her feckless outburst of unkindness.
In fact, the small fellow her words had reviled crept in silently, right behind her.
Evidently, the knife had been borrowed to shave. The barbarous straggle of beard was razed off, and the matted tangles trimmed from his raven hair. The loose ends were neatly tied up with twine, snipped from one of the lengths that had strung the tomato vines. Cleaned of wild growth and masking dirt, the features revealed showed a man in his prime, taut cheek-bones and brow line distinctively angled and nowhere ill-bred or unpleasing.
Inquisitive, piercing, his vivid green eyes surveyed Kerelie’s blanched surprise. The intensity of that fixed stare ruffled her skin into gooseflesh.
Then the vagrant glanced down, disconcerted as she.
Kerelie recovered her rattled wits. Like her brother, she noticed the man’s roughened hands. His chapped knuckles cracked from the setting of his snares, he cradled a brace of limp woodcock and a fat winter hare, hung by the hind legs from another filched string.
Then Tarens gripped Kerelie’s shoulder and gently steered her aside. ‘Sister, I believe we’re blocking his way.’
The beggarman smiled, an expression so honest with contrite apology that Kerelie gasped, lost for breath.
Quick to seize advantage, the elusive creature slipped past, light of step as a thief, or a ghost. He crouched by the sharpening wheel, hefted the knife, and industriously started to dress out his game.
‘The man will have breakfast,’ Tarens said, calm.
‘We still can’t upkeep him!’ Kerelie whispered, remorseful for the tight-fisted need to hoard their dwindled resources.
‘We’ll discuss that,’ Tarens temporized. ‘Inside.’ The cold numbed his unshod feet, and coatless, his unlaced shirt made him shiver. Time enough later to broach the matter of coins: the gifted silvers left stacked by his pillow added up to a threefold repayment, though he feared the sweet little cache had been stolen.
As though the wary thought had been spoken, the beggarman stiffened. Though the distressed reaction was swiftly curbed, the subtlety did not escape Tarens’s notice.
Recognition followed, as both men locked eyes. Then the vagabond drew an offended breath. He laid aside his half-gutted hare and gently set down the knife. Deliberate, he wiped his blood-smeared fingers clean on a twist of dry straw. Then he stood. Reproachful, his attention on Tarens’s broad features, he cocked his head to one side.
The large-boned crofter was swept by raw chills. Raked over like prey by a raptor’s inspection, Tarens tightened his grip on the poker.
But the beggarman only dug into the patch pocket stitched to his threadbare breeches. He fished out a creased paper. The unfolded sheet was offered to Tarens, distinct in respect for the threat of cold iron poised yet for a defensive strike.
Muscled enough from the plough to break oak, the blond crofter towered above him.
‘What does the note say?’ prompted Kerelie.
Tarens risked a look downwards. The inked scrawl was the brewer’s, and the words a receipt for three silvers, paid labour, with the outstanding promise for a pint of beer at the Candle Mark Tavern.
The supplicant hand was a beggar’s, the broken nails rimmed black with dirt. But the courtesy was not commonplace that tucked Tarens’s fingers over the written proof, then emphatically shoved off his fist with the voucher nestled inside.
Crisp as any statement, the stranger’s stung pride.
Shown an astringent reproof to strip skin, Tarens gaped, as awkward with shame as the sister caught aback before him.
Then the pause broke to the whiff of smoke wafted on the morning breeze.
‘Breakfast!’
