gated bar in the corner, away from the entering travelers, and said, “Bess isn’t here. I sent her up to Mapple’s farm to get a brace of rabbits.”
“She’s upstairs. I seen her at the window.”
Tom sighed and wished his cousin knew better how to hide. He said, “You can’t keep doing this. She’s here of her own accord.”
“It ain’t right.”
“It wasn’t right abusing her for years and driving her off midwinter, when you were laid up drunk and she had nothing to eat but horsemeat and old black bread.”
Tom advanced when he said it, berating himself again for failing to help Bess sooner and physically inclined to hammer out his conscience.
“I’m turning a new leaf,” Lem said. “But it’s a hard thing when my own nephew treats me like an enemy. I won’t hurt her anymore.”
“Anymore,” Tom said, to mark the underlying fact.
Lem narrowed his eyes, which were tiny to begin with, and said, “I’ll fetch her down myself.”
Tom opened the bar and poured his uncle half a tankard of cider. Half a tankard too much.
“Thankee,” Lem said, giving him a smile that was, despite his fetid teeth, sweetly reminiscent of Tom’s mother. “Though it won’t help business serving half cups of drink.”
“You’re welcome that it’s free,” Tom said. “Set right here while I go and greet the guests.”
They were two men and a woman, dusty and gregarious. It was already late morning and they were the first travelers of the day, an unusual thing for spring when the road was clear to ride, but understandable in light of the continuing Maimer attacks. Tom crossed the room with his tavern-keeper’s smile. He introduced himself and shook their hands, encouraging them to sit and apologizing that he needed to run upstairs.
“I won’t be a minute,” he said. “Make yourselves at home.”
“Many do,” Lem said, tankard to his mouth so he echoed in the pewter.
Tom hastened upstairs, wary of leaving his uncle unchaperoned and suddenly unsure whether he had relocked the bar. Straight to Bess’s door, which was shut. He knocked and entered. The room was naturally lit and sparsely furnished, with enough dried flowers on the wall to make it both feminine and morbid. Bess hid in a shadow just beyond the window, waiting in the hope that Lemuel would leave.
She started when Tom entered, lighting her cheek with sun and looking pretty in her cap and blue-striped skirt. She clasped her hands tight for self-reassurance.
“I’m sorry, Tom,” she said and stared at him beseechingly, seemingly embarrassed and afraid to disappoint him.
Tom loved his cousin dearly, and he found it as strange to play the role of her protector—she was twenty years old, only seven years younger than himself—as he did to play elder to his middle-aged uncle. But he was far too annoyed to shelter her today.
“You’re needed downstairs,” he said.
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Neither do I, but he’s your father.”
She flushed but it was spirit more than weakness that inflamed her. He could tell because he often had the same flush himself.
“This can’t go on,” Tom said.
“You wouldn’t send me back!”
“What’s the difference if he’s here every day?” But seeing how it panicked her, he added, “You can stay. Send him off and get to work. It’s why you’re living here, remember.”
He left her there to follow him down—he’d give her half a minute—and paused to calm his temper when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He twisted on the handrail and pulled until it creaked, wanting it to hold, expecting it to break. He peeked at Lem and the travelers from the kitchen doorway, found them just as he had left them, and jogged outside to check the boiling copper. Another bee stung his neck; they were furious today. He still had time before the wort needed straining, so he left it once more and went to stabilize the house.
Lem and Bess stood at the bar, bound in intimate whispers, while his cousin poured drinks and placed them on a tray. Tom passed them and continued up front to see the guests.
“I’ve had your company before,” he told the oldest of the group, a man with thinning hair and frizzy gray eyebrows. “Last July, if I remember right. Mr. Hoopworth the banker.”
“A trip on urgent business,” Mr. Hoopworth replied. “Prodigious memory you have!”
“A tavern keep’s memory,” the second man said. He was delicately formed but confidently voiced, dandified with ruffles on his collar and his cuffs.
“It helps to warm a welcome,” Tom answered with a nod.