The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles Page 0,41

“Why would the children be alone? Where were the parents?”

The wind caught at her cloak, pulling her hood low on her shoulders. “You know how it is,” she called to him. “But both parents are needed to work the fields. It’s the only way they can break even. The taxes are becoming heavier each quarter.”

“Don’t let my father hear you.”

She ducked her head as they rode beneath a low tree branch. “I think it is hard for you to understand them.”

“Harder for me than you?”

“They love their children, Philip, but they take greater risks. They have to.”

He reined his horse in at the muddy road running into Buxton. “So much smoke! It burns my eyes.”

Her eyes were already watering as large ashes drifted down, dusting their cloaks and horses’ manes. “Look,” she coughed and pointed, “Mary waits for us there.”

It was a long afternoon as Lady Eton and Cordaella tended the surviving children while Philip painstakingly recorded all of the details gathered from interviewing the neighbors and describing the particulars. Inside one of the cottages that had escaped the fire, Lady Eton worked, her skirts knotted out of the way. Ash marked her forehead and chin, sweat dampening the front of her plain brown gown. “I doubt any of them shall last the night,” she said, standing slowly up, rubbing her back where it ached.

Cordaella finished swathing one child’s spine, gently applying the smelly poultice to puckered skin. “Infection is already setting in.”

“Elisabeth never did come down.” Mary found a stool and sat down on it, rinsing her hands in the bucket of water. “I wish his lordship were here to see this. He doesn’t understand these people. He doesn’t know how they suffer.” She struggled to dry her hands, fighting the trembling in them. “It makes me so angry,” she said, “but how can you blame them? They are poor—they work hard. They do not deserve what they get, or should I say, they do not get what they deserve?” She stared at one of the pallets. “God help me,” she murmured. “That one has already died.”

“I would like to say it was carelessness that killed them. But they were left because the mothers had no other option. So different from the castle, isn’t it?”

“Someone other than a five-year old should have been with them. A five-year-old! She was still just a baby herself.” Lady Eton’s voice thinned with frustration. “Yet I grew up in Bakewell, eleven miles down the road. I know how it is, Cordaella, I was once like them.” The sky cracked with thunder, followed by splinters of yellow-white lightning. “The system…” she said, shaking her head, “it doesn’t want to change. I ought to know that. I was lucky to have married out of Bakewell, to have been considered by the Earl. If my father had not had money of his own…” she said with a shrug. “What good does talk do? It would be better to find Philip. He will need the name and age of the child for the castle’s report.”

The room felt oppressively close after Mary had gone; storm clouds turning the afternoon prematurely dark, the odor of burned wood and skin lingering in the croft. Elisabeth crossed over the threshold, the hem of her riding houppelande lifted high from the dirty floor. “It smells terrible in here,” she said.

Cordaella had no patience left. “Then go back outside.”

Elisabeth ignored her, bending over to inspect one of the pallets. “How did the fire start? And who is this?”

“Hainey’s little boy. And he just died. Mary went to tell your brother.”

“He’s dead?” Elisabeth said, pulling back in horror. She moved quickly to the next pallet. “And whose little girl is this?”

“I think she is the blacksmith’s daughter. Cecily.”

Elisabeth glanced at Cordaella. “Is this typical of the cottages?”

“For the most part.”

“Was your croft like this?”

“No, ours was smaller.”

“Smaller?”

“Aye.” Cordaella intentionally answered with the Scottish word. She didn’t like Elisabeth’s questions. This wasn’t an appropriate time. “Our croft only had one room.”

“But what about your animals?” Elisabeth held her velvet burgundy sleeves and carefully sat down on the stool Lady Eton had earlier used.

“At first we only had a goat. Later Papa traded furs for a cow.”

“But in the winter, you didn’t leave the cow outside, did you?”

Softly, Cordaella said, “No, they came inside.”

“With you?”

“With us.”

Elisabeth rose again, saying nothing else. She stepped across the bucket to a third pallet near the corner. “This child does not breathe easily.” She leaned over the boy to listen