“Are you Clothilde?” he said, though his words, stretched through thick accent and boyish mumbling, sounded more like, “Art tha Clatil?”
Clo, who had not spoken to anyone but her father in many months, said nothing. The boy smelled like a swineherd, and his boots, mud-and muck-covered, suggested the same.
The boy dropped the pack he was carrying.
“If th’art Clatil,” he said, his lip still curling, “thy father said I’d find a lass with all the beauty of th’ stars and sun here beneath th’ tallest pine, but”—he paused and ran his eyes over her again—“th’art but a nipper as spindle-shanked as I’ve ever seen.”
Clo still said nothing, but her hands, at the mention of her father, trembled slightly. She curled her fingers into her palms to hide her agitation. The boy noticed her small fists and laughed.
“If th’art Clatil, thy father has given me a silver coin for a letter and a parcel to deliver. So”—he removed and held aloft a square of paper—“art tha Clatil?”
Clo’s eyes narrowed and settled on the note pinched between the boy’s long, dirt-stained fingers.
“Clatil? Clatil? Art tha Clatil?” The boy waved the letter back and forth above Clo’s head. She grabbed for it. The boy, laughing again, moved it swiftly out of her reach.
“Ah. Th’art Clatil. Hold, and I’ll read it.” The boy moved the paper to the end of his nose and narrowed his eyes at it. He huffed, then squinted, and huffed again, and finally murmured out, “Me-yiy dee-arrrrre-esss-teeeee seee-lllow—”
“Give it here.” Clo jumped and snatched the letter from the boy’s grasp. She scanned the text anxiously. It was in her father’s hand, but scrawled and smudged—not written with his usual care. Inkblots bloomed over and obscured some of the text.
“Canst tha read?” The boy was incredulous.
“Of course I can read.” The text swam in front of her.
He gawped at her. “How did tha come to learn? How did a lass like tha come to learn?”
“My father taught me,” she murmured. Of course he had taught her. He’d held her at the table on his knees while she traced the letters with her small fingers and learned their sounds—C-L-O, yes, lambkin, that’s your name. He’d made sure—when he could—she’d even had books to practice with—Try this sentence now. Yes, of course she knew how to read.
Clo shook the letter as though to loosen the distraction and tried to steady herself enough to focus on the words. My dearest Clo, the letter began.
The boy watched, bemused. “So th’art a spindle-shanked and a clever lass. I’ve not met a lass who could read, and most lasses do li’l more’n scrub pots an’ do stitchin’—”
“Stop talking, will you?” The boy’s garbled chatter muddled her brain. She shook the letter again.
Clo read and reread the letter, cursing the ink smudges and rubbing her thumb at them as if she could erase the splotches and leave the text beneath. Of its sense, she only understood forgive and canvas and travel alone. And save me.
The garden of dread that had been growing all day twisted again, the blossom hot at the back of her throat. She swallowed. ———n—save me. Can save me? Cannot save me? Which was it?
“Where is my father?” She spun to face the boy. “Where is he?”
“Th’ last I saw him, he was crouchin’ in th’ pens, like he was a sow rootin’ in th’ straw. And he grabbed me like this”—here the boy hauled at his own collar—“when I come in, and he said I’m t’ have a silver coin for safe deliverment of this”—he pointed to the letter in Clo’s hands—“and this.” Here the boy, kneeling and untying his sack, lifted a bundle, which he dropped at Clo’s feet.
It was her father’s cloak wrapped and knotted around a heavy parcel.
Kneeling in the leaf litter, Clo worked at the blue woolen knots. The words crouchin’ in th’ pens made her fingers shake so she could not loosen the fabric; the wool, pulled too tight, did not want to give way.
“He said I’m to take from th’ lass some wood’n matter. Hast tha got wood’n matter? It’s for th’ payment. ‘Be sure,’ he says, ‘to take the wood’n matter.’”
Clo, desperately trying to open the parcel, did not look up. The boy was speaking nonsense.
“Wood’n matter. I’m to take it back or—or tha’ll not get this.” The boy wrenched the cloak-wrapped parcel from Clo’s hands.
“I have no wood!” Clo tried to grab the parcel back.
“Woooood”—the boy stretched his mouth grotesquely around the words—“aaaaan maaaaaaattteeer. He says tha’ll be carryin’ it, and I’m t’ have it.” The boy hesitated. “It’s for my payment. Mine.”
“Look.” Clo stretched out her arms. “I have no wood. No-thing wood. I have my clothes. And”—she gestured to her small sack—“some turnips. And… ah.” Understanding came with unease. Why had her father promised this? Didn’t he need it for his work? Clo hastened to the bag of turnips and things. “Here.” Pushing the turnips aside, she lifted the wilted bundles of garden weeds from her sack and handed them reluctantly to the boy. She did not like to give these away; she had grown them for her father.
“Wot’s that, then?”
“Your wooden matter.”
The boy looked skeptically at the shaggy plants. “’S not.”
“I promise you. If my father promised it, this woad and madder is exactly what you are meant to have—it’s worth… several coins if you sell it at the market. Now return that package to me.”
The boy tossed her the cloak-wrapped lump and, relieved of his burden, turned to go. But he took only a few strides in the direction of the town before he stopped.
“Is’t true wot they say on him?”
“Is what true?” Kneeling over the parcel, Clo kept working on the knotted cloak. What village gossip had this muck-boy overheard? That her father scraped the night soil? That he had three entire limbs in the grave?
“Well, th’ cook, he said he knew thy father soon as he saw him arrive at th’ house offerin’ his service. Recognized him right away.”
Clo kept her gaze on the bundle. Her father had been recognized? Still, this was no cause for panic.
“That’s right. Th’ cook, right away, he said, ‘That’s th’ thief did steal from my last master.’ He told the steward, ‘You watch him; he’s a chiseler and a thief.’ An’ wouldn’t tha know, there has been a theft. Just today th’ house is all a-tumble with it. Jewels missing out of th’ lady’s chamber.” The boy, raising an eyebrow at the parcel Clo was still trying to open, paused to gauge her reaction, but if he saw how her lip trembled or how her hands grew still at the word thief, he did not let on.
“My father’s no jewel thief.” Clo chose her words carefully.
“Well, and here’s th’ thing. The lady’s maid, she argued with th’ cook. She said she knew him, too! ‘That’s no thief,’ she said. She knew him when she was a girl, she said. ‘A famous dra’tsman, he is,’ she told th’ cook. ‘Painted all th’ lords n’ ladies. Lived in th’ great house. Painted my mother, too,’ she said, ‘even though she was just a washerwoman, God rest her soul, and he painted a wee one for me, too.’ And she’d had a locket, even, and she showed it to us, and lo if there weren’t a tiny biddy there, lookin’ so red-cheeked and lively she were almost breathin’.”