Read Firethorn for Free Online Page A

We’d take the miller a scant measure to make him think it was all we had, and he’d be sure to cheat us in turn.
    Sometimes in the dark I heard the rhythmic scraping sound of other women grinding, and I wondered if in time I’d be worn smooth enough to fit in, smooth as an old mortar. A mudwoman’s toil never ends and never lasts: clean clothes are dirtied, meals are swallowed, and there are always new weeds in the garden. I remembered the Kingswood, how I’d risen when I pleased—forgetting how restless my sleep had been, and how I’d longed for even the humblest porridge. The tedious chores wore away at me, but I was glad to spare Az the worst of them. She was not as frail as she looked, but there was so much that needed doing. She said we pulled well in the same yoke, and whatever had she done before I came?
    I learned to tell her sons apart. The youngest was called Fleetfoot because he won all the village races. He was still a smooth-cheeked boy, with a deep chest and lean flanks like a gazehound. The second youngest was Ot; he was proud of his new blond beard, roaming out of the house at night to show it to the village girls. I started calling him Wheatbeard and the name was apt, so he kept it. Maken was the eldest still at home and in no hurry to be wed, for girls and widows (and wives, Halm said) were fond of his merry hazel eyes and his wide shoulders, and many had found him a sweet nut come cracking time. I found him unsettling, myself, and it made me shy of him.
    On Peacedays, the one idle day in every tennight, I’d watch the green youth of the village go courting, with their banter and raillery, forthright stares and sly glances. No one looked my way. I’d been fair enough before the Kingswood, I suppose, fair enough for Sire Pava. Now my ribs showed plain as those on a stray dog; my hips had hollows instead of dimpled flesh. When I looked at my face in a basin of water, my cheekbones and chin were too sharp, my eyes too deep and too dark.
    I found I couldn’t sleep under a roof and within walls, next to Az and her boys when they unrolled the pallets at night. I slept under the rowan tree, and even there I rested uneasy. Carnal’s female avatar, that fat voluptuary Desire, sent me dreams, and with them her itch and tickle. Better if she’d come when Sire Pava wanted me; now she was too late. I ate as much as I could, but Az’s sons were hungry, and I never had my fill.

    I saw old friends from the manor on market days and on Peacedays, before the village shrine. Cook was shocked that I was so gaunt, and brought me savories from the manor table. She said Dame Lyra could curdle milk with a look since her miscarriage, and no wonder: Sire Pava had brought his mudwoman right into the manor, and she’d started another bastard with a daughter just off the tit. I dreaded seeing Sire Pava about the village, but he heeded me no more than the dirt he trod underfoot. I didn’t want his notice, but it angered me to know I didn’t trouble his mind in the least, while he troubled mine.
    When I lived in the manor, I thought the villagers dull witted, with their lazy way of talking. They lopped off the end of every word, as if they couldn’t be bothered to pronounce it plainly, and yet they used so many: they dawdled all around a tale when a straight path would have been quicker. But when Az and I would go visiting, words went galloping past and I’d stumble after.
    They said they were living like toads under a harrow since Sire Pava had claimed an extra day of labor every tennight, leaving them only five for their own fields. They said Steward was always watching, prying. Nothing was beneath his notice; he’d skin a flea for its hide and tallow.
    And some went on to say that although the old Dame had been too meddlesome by far with her herbs and potions—being something of a canny-woman, after all—and too strict to wink at even a little hole in a