looked like was more kind of afraid, or worried maybe. She had shut me up the quickest way she knowed.
“Talk like that is apt to make people change their minds about you, Koli,” she says, “and wish you ill where they wished you well. You be quiet now, and listen to me. One more word out of you and I’ll put it to the vote again.”
“It should go to the vote again now,” Mardew said. But Catrin didn’t give that no heed, nor seem to hear it. She was talking just to me. Looking just at me, and not ever taking her eyes off of mine.
“When a man or a woman has done a bad thing,” she says, “but there’s reason to forgive some part of it – like that they’re young, or they done it by accident, or not properly meaning it – then we got another way than hanging them. We take their name away from them and we push them out of gates. We don’t have no more to do with them after that. They can’t ever come inside again, or talk with any of ours, or be within a bowshot of the fence, else the death they was spared will come down on them right then and there.
“That’s what we’re offering you, Koli. You’re to be a Woodsmith no longer, but a faceless man, and make your way in the world as best you can. Alone, and a long way from here. You go away tonight. You never come back. If you agree, then that’s an end of it. No harm is going to come to your mother or your sisters. I’ll watch over them and make sure of it. You got my word.
“That’s the one way. The other way is this. Four gallows on the gather-ground. You up there first, with a gag on your mouth in case you’re wondering, so you won’t be hurling no accusations at nobody. Jemiu and Mull and Athen going right after you, for the taint of what you done. And everyone will cry, and many will speak against it, but Ramparts will carry it, don’t you doubt. The Count and Seal will approve it, for to do other would be going against our will and they’d fear to do that in case our punishment fall on them next.”
Her eyes was on mine all this time, driving the words into me. I thought I seen that fear in her again, though I know that don’t seem likely when she was trying so hard to put fear into me.
And she done that well enough. I was all filled up with terror at that picture she drawed inside my head, of them I loved most in the world brung to a rope’s end on account of me. I would do anything I could to stop that. Of course I would. If the choice was to put the rope on my own neck and tighten it, I would of done it. I think I would.
But that wasn’t the choice she offered.
The others all went away, one by one, excepting only Fer and Catrin. Perliu wagged his finger at me as he went. “I hope you’ll learn a lesson from this, Koli Makewell,” he said. “I hope you’ll do better in times to come.” I wondered at them words. What times did he think would come for me when I was throwed out of gates to fend alone. I wondered how much of what had passed he understood, and how much had just flowed around him like a stream around a stone.
Catrin give me a bundle. It was the same bundle I took from the mill, only she had put some bread and dried mutton in there alongside of the few clothes I brung. She give me a waterskin too, a length of rope with a tight braid, a short knife and a compass. It was a good compass, that Wardo Hammer had made and put inside a little case of iron with its own lid to it.
All this while, Fer stood by with the bolt gun, ready to shoot me down if I run. She had already pointed it at me, so it had choosed me as a target and would follow me as far as was needed. I wasn’t going to run, not after what Catrin said, but I could see why they wouldn’t want to give me the chance.
I wasn’t crying no more. I was sort of numbed to what was