Magic Can Be Murder

Page 17

"Mother!" Nola cried. "What are you doing up there?"
Still laughing, her mother said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time. But I do believe Modig is stuck."
How the old man and his cane had gotten up a tree, Nola didn't even ask. Nor did he volunteer the information, though he did tell about the time he and some of the other young men of the king's army had treed a bear.
Eventually they got him down. The two playmates who had previously abandoned them came back to offer encouragement and suggestions, as did several other of the townschildren. Modig, it turned out, had become very popular with the children, with all the stories he had to offer of times gone by and traveling to different lands. He challenged Nola to a cane-dueling contest, and Nola, who was frantic to talk to her mother alone, was relieved when her mother told him, "Women's talk," and took Nola's arm and led her away.
"Is everything all right?" Nola demanded as they walked toward the tavern.
"With me?" her mother asked, as though the question was an odd one. "Fine. How about you?"
Nola ignored the matter of her twisted ankle and her broken heart. "I managed to empty the bucket before anyone saw the spell," she said.
"Yes," her mother said.
"And the authorities know it was Kirwyn who killed his father."
"Yes," her mother said.
"The sad part is that I never realized Brinna was involved, that she'd helped Kirwyn. She took some of Innis's money away to make everyone think an intruder had killed lnnis for his wealth, when it was really Kirwyn, to keep him from remarrying." Nola took a deep breath. "And then Kirwyn killed Brinna."
Her mother gave her hand a comforting pat. "Yes," she said.
Peeved that her mother didn't seem more surprised - or interested - Nola asked, "Is there anything you'd like co know about where I've been or what I've been doing?" She chumped her walking stick - though  as soon as she did, she remembered it was something Modig had a tendency to do. But she wanted co make sure her mother noticed she'd been hurt, though she couldn't see how her mother had missed it, especially since Modig had wanted a cane duel.
Her mother didn't ask about Nola's ankle. She asked, "So why did you let that good-looking young man go?"
Nola stopped walking. "What good-looking young man?" she demanded, knowing that her mother couldn't mean what it sounded as chough she meant.
But she did. "Pendaran's man: Galvin. That Sergeant Halig wouldn't have been bad, either - not in a pinch - but Galvin was obviously smitten with you."
Nola had trouble getting her mouth to work. "What - How - " She had to take a steadying breath. "How do you know about this?"
The question obviously amazed her mother. "From watching you."
"What?"
"Shhh." Her mother glanced around to make sure Nola wasn't attracting people's attention. She tugged on her arm to get her walking again. "You have co be more careful, dear," she said.
"What do you mean, watching me?" Nola demanded.
"Well, what do you think?" her mother countered. "You left your hairbrush."
Nola yanked her arm out of her mother's grip and clapped her hands over her hair. "You've been  spying on me? You've been watching me while I haven't known it?"
As if that wasn't bad enough, her mother acted as though Nola was dull-witted. "Well, you should have guessed."
Nola supposed she should have, given that her mother was the one who had taught her to bespell water. "Don't ever do that again," Nola said.
"All right." Her mother agreed so amiably that Nola knew she would always do exactly what she felt like doing.
But there was no more time for talking, for they had reached the tavern, the Witch's Stew, and Nola knew they couldn't have this conversation in public. She still didn't know what her mother had been up to in her absence - besides dropping pig bladders from tree branches to soak unsuspecting passersby - but, all in all, it would undoubtedly be best to leave Saint Erim Turi as quickly as possible. "Gather your things," Nola told her, walking around the barrel-filled wagon that was parked out front. "We're leaving."
"But I like this place," her mother protested as Nola opened the door.
"Mother...," Nola said. But then she stopped, for sitting at one of the tables were Galvin and Halig.
Still, for the moment they hadn't seen her. Better yet, they hadn't seen her mother, whom they would recognize - or think they recognized.
Edris the tavern keeper was just coming up from the cellar, where the barrels of beer and wine were stored, and this would have been fine but for one thing: Accompanying her were the blackberry farmer and his wife, from Low Beck.
Nola took a quick step backward, dragging her mother with her.
Her mother gave a little yelp of surprise. "Galvin and Halig!" She turned to Nola as the two men looked up. "So you did tell them where co find you." She told the men, "I was just saying to Nola she could do worse than either one of you."
The men exchanged a startled look. And - oh, yes - Nola could tell they definitely recognized her mother.
Meanwhile, Edris was just recognizing her, was just smiling and saying, "Welcome back, Nol - "
But by then the blackberry farmer's wife had looked to see what was happening. "You!" she said. Then she saw Nola's mother. "And you!"
Her mother threw her hands up co cover her face. "Surely you have us mistaken for someone else," she said, starting to back up. "Come, Nola."
But by then it was too late. The farmer's wife turned to Galvin and Halig. "It's them! The ones you were sent to arrest."
Chapter Seventeen
AFTER ALL SHE'D been through? She and her mother were going to get arrested for something that wasn't their fault?
Halig spoke. "We were sent to question," he corrected the woman.
Nola tried to judge Galvin's expression, which seemed less friendly than the sergeant's.
He's probably weighing the likelihood of running into the same madwoman in two subsequent and supposedly unrelated matters, Nola thought. He looked, she was relieved to see, as though he had taken no lasting hurt from Kirwyn's attack.
Of course, he didn't recognize her without Brinna's form. He could hardly stand to look at her in her true face. His gaze slid right off her and back to the complaining woman, who was now explaining to Edris, "We hired those two women to pick berries..." Her husband for some reason was shaking his head, but the woman only got louder. "But they broke a fine jug of ours and walked off with a bushel basket of berries."
A basket of berries?
"It is them," the woman insisted.
"It's not," the man mumbled.
"I recognize them." She pointed at Nola and her mother. "Thieves," she said. "I remember you because you waited in the yard while I prepared a fine lunch for your midday meal. I felt sorry for you, so we took you on even though you looked dishonest. But you hardly worked at all, so that halfway through the morning when my husband went to check if all was well with you, you'd broken the water jug he left you and stolen off with the lunch anda whole basketful of blackberries."
The false accusations stung. "That's not true," Nola said.
"It's not them," the husband murmured. What was this uncharacteristic meekness? Then Nola realized: He didn't want trouble; he didn't want anyone looking too closely at the story he had told his wife.
And to think how much time I spent worrying about him! Nola thought. Big-talking coward who knows he can fool his wife but doesn't want to take on the authorities or be face-to-face with the accused.
"I reported it to the town magistrate," the woman said in a self-satisfied tone, as though that was proof of guilt. "And these men have been sent to arrest you, you lazy, good-for-nothing thieves."
Surely Galvin wouldn't believe this, Nola assured herself.
But, then, why shouldn't he?
Still, so far neither Galvin nor Halig had reacted. They were just watching and listening.
"We didn't break that jug," Nola told them. "And we cook no basket of berries." They don't know it's you, she told herself. They wouldn't know to be on the lookout for lies. All she'd ever done was lie to them, and now the truth sounded false to her ears. To the woman, she said, "We didn't even eat your stingy little lunch, because we had to run away to be rid of your groping husband."
The woman gave a cry of disbelief that anyone could say such a thing. "We've been bringing blackberries here for the blackberry wine for eleven years," she said. "And nobody yet has called us liars. Edris, tell how you know us."
"I...," Edris said, then tactfully finished, "wouldn't call any of you liars. "
Finally Galvin was getting to his feet, and the woman from Low Beck, obviously unsatisfied with Edris's answer, pointed at Nola and her mother and said, "1'hese women took advantage of our hospitality."
Galvin barely glanced at Nola, which surely was a bad sign. "You hired these two women to work for you picking berries?" he asked the woman.
"Yes, and they broke - "
"And you paid them before they did the work?"
"Yes, Well, I made them lunch."
Galvin glanced back at Nola with his customary unreadable expression. He asked the woman, "So they were to work all day picking berries in exchange for lunch."
"Well, the morning was half gone before they even showed up at my doorstep, begging."
"But you just said your husband went to check on them halfway through the morning."
For the first time, Nola thought maybe Galvin wasn't as disinterested as he acted. She glanced at Halig, who was still sitting at their table, looking as though he was enjoying this.
The woman flapped her hand in a nervous, dismissive gesture. "I didn't mean exactly midmorning."
"I see," Galvin said. He looked at the man, "Do you agree with all your wife has said - barring, of course, the exactness of midmorning?"
The farmer shuffled his feet. "They said they'd work, and they didn't." A definite shift from "It's not them."
Once more Galvin turned his attention to Nola. "But you say the man tried to force his attention on you. And that you don't know anything about the broken jug."
"I said we didn't break the jug," Nola corrected him. "He himself dropped the jug when I kicked him to get away from him."
Galvin looked at her foot, at the walking stick she held. "That would be before you injured yourself?" he observed, just as the woman was sputtering, "That's absurd."
Nola nodded to indicate Galvin was right: She had hurt her ankle after kicking the former. And surely he must be thinking of Brinna now, remembering her injured leg, remembering...
Galvin held up a hand to command silence from the farmers wife. "And what do you say?" he asked Nola's mother.
"None of us liked the way he was looking at our Nola," her mother said.
"Look at her!" the woman protested. "She's a skinny little nothing! My husband would have nothing to do with her."
Far from being upset that she had talked out of turn, Galvin asked pensively, "So, you're saying he might have forced his attention on her if she was ... more attractive?"
Galvin's turning the woman's own words on herself was a relief to Nola, but the comment still stung.
"No!" the woman said. She jabbed her elbow at her husband. "Tell him."
But before the man could tell anything, Nola cook a chance, for she had nothing to lose. She said, "The sister-in-law was attractive. You might ask her."
The man's jaw worked a bit before he could get out a single, strangled "I...," and then gave up.
His wife looked ac him in horror.
Galvin studied the man appraisingly, then asked Nola, "Where did you kick him?"
"Left knee," Nola said.
Again he evaluated her injured leg, which, standing face-to-face, would have been the one she was most likely to use to kick someone's left leg. But instead of pressing her, he asked the man, "Care to show us your left knee?"
"It was all a misunderstanding," the farmer said.
His wife's expression of horror seemed to be set.
Galvin kept pressing. "But you told the magistrate. It's against the law to lodge false complaints with the magistrate."
"I'm sorry," the man said. "It wasn't exactly a false complaint - "
"Ah, exactly, again," Galvin said.
"It was a misunderstanding," the man repeated lamely. "And it was my wife who reported it."
His wife gave him a good hard kick on the same knee Nola had kicked the previous week. "That," she said, "you will pay for. A good, long time you will pay for it." She stamped out of the tavern.
"Speaking of paying...," Galvin said, and nothing more until the man drew a few coins from his pocket, which he placed in Nola's mother's hand.
Galvin made a show of looking, then said, as though surprised, "Hmm." He glanced at Halig, who shook his head dubiously. The farmer hastily added more.
"See you don't lodge another misunderstanding with the magistrate," Galvin warned him.
"No," the man assured him, obviously relieved that he was being let off easily. "Thank you. I won't." He fled after his wife, though his back must have scraped the wall in his attempt to stay clear of Nola.
Edris, beaming, told Nola and her mother, "Good for you! But I don't dare lose them as providers of blackberries for our wine. Let me just try to smooth things over."
Sergeant Halig drained the last of his drink. "I'll stand around and intimidate them a bit, shall 1?" he asked Galvin. But as he passed Nola's mother, who was trying to balance the coins on her fingertips, he smiled, nodded, and asked, "Feeling better, Mary?"
"Than what?" she asked. And while he paused over that, she added, "And my name is Cleopatra."