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hairpins, but my throat is choked up as if I’ve swallowed too big a bite of pie.
    â€œI could really use a mug of your strongest,” Nicholas says, clasping my father’s wrist, “but first let’s set this lot to their labor.” He gestures to a group of ragged men hovering like locusts at the corner of the house among the crowd of laden mules. “I hired them without the walls. Will they understand a word I say?”
    My father shrugs. “Usually there’s one or two who will.”
    â€œVery well.” Nicholas bawls at them, as if they’re hard of hearing. “Unload the mules. Put things where my lord of Edgeley”—Nicholas claps my father’s shoulder—“bids you. A penny per man when you’ve finished.”
    One of the laborers steps forward and speaks in tongue-pull to the others. I freeze right there in the yard with Nicholas’s arm still about my waist.
    It’s
him.
The one who
looks
at me.
    Of course he’d be a Welshman. I should have marked him by his stabley manners and his scruffy gray tunic that’s laced all crooked, revealing far too much in the way of dirty collarbone.
    I ought to bid Nicholas knock his front teeth in, just on principle.
    But Nicholas is already halfway inside, telling my father of the journey and the river crossings and an inn in Chester where the girls did some shocking things. I turn and follow ere
he
has a chance to look at me.
    My father sits at the trestle table with Nicholas and laughs and brags and hears the news, so it’s my task to tell the laborers what goes where. In my own house and with two armed men present, the laborers wouldn’t dare try to murder me. But I’m on my guard nonetheless.
    I don’t look at the men. I look at what each is bearing, then point with sweeping gestures and use small words so mayhap they’ll understand. Hall. Kitchen. Abovestairs. Workroom. They nod and duck out and do as they’re told. Like dogs.
    Dogs do not murder.
    The laborers heave and haul and tote from midmorning well into the afternoon. They sweat like oxen and they’re twice as filthy, but by sunset our little house actually looks like a house. There are cooking pots and fireplace tongs and linens and saints be praised, my bed is finally here and strung together.
    As soon as one of the men brings up my coffer, I carefully lay our altar cloth within, next to a bunch of dried flowers from Edgeley’s garden and my mother’s handkerchief, the one she pressed to my bleeding palm when I tried to imitate her slicing bread on a trestle I could barely see over.
    When the mules are unloaded, the laborers look and smell like an army of pigs. One poor wretch has jammed his thumb so badly it’s turning purple. They line up in the gutter while
he
hovers at the front door, waiting to be paid. Like as not he’s looking at me even now, but I’m stringing my embroidery frame in the workroom and ignoring him for the beast he is.
    And I can ignore pretty well.
    Apparently my father can, too, for it’s quite a while ere he groans up from the trestle and clumps outside while pouring coins into his hand. He sifts through them, then drops a halfpenny far above each sweaty palm. By the time my father gets to the one who
looks,
there’s a lot of grumbling down the filthy line.
    â€œBeg pardon.” His English is singsonged by the tongue-pull. “A penny was promised us for this work.”
    â€œYou were promised nothing of the sort,” my father replies. “Half a penny is more than you deserve, so get gone lest you’d have the Watch on your backsides.”
    I come to the window in time to see a shadow of rage move across the boy’s stubbly jaw. Half a penny might be more than they deserve, but I’d be wroth too were I denied what was promised me.
    But he only grunts something in tongue-pull to his mangy fellows and they troop down Shire Hall Street in a