The Highwayman

32

Trinkets and Revelations Any feelings of levity Bransen held about his exploits and the frustration he was causing to Laird Prydae were lost the next day when, out in the courtyard of Chapel Pryd, he saw the results of that frustration. Soldiers were everywhere, it seemed, moving about the streets and banging on the doors. The Stork overheard one conversation along the roadside not far away.

"What do you know of him?" the soldier roared, and he grabbed a young woman by the front of her simple tunic and lifted her up to tiptoes. "You'd be smart to tell me all!"

"I know nothing, me lord," the woman cried.

"You haven't met this Highwayman?"

"No, me lord. Please let me go. Ye're hurting me poor neck."

The soldier roughly shoved her back, and she stumbled and nearly fell. She ran off, crying, while the warrior moved along to the nearest door and began banging on it.

Anger welled inside Bransen, and it was all he could do to suppress his urge to don his black outfit and have a word with that man and all the others.

The Stork bit his lip and forced himself to calm down. The laird was angry and his soldiers were bullying some folks, but it was nothing serious, he told himself. A smile wound its way onto the Stork's crooked face, and suddenly he found that he was thrilled that he was so troubling the powers of Pryd Holding, and even those beyond. He used the recollection of Prince Yeslnik's face to block out the image of the frightened young woman. Yes, that was a pleasing memory.

Bransen vowed to himself that he would step up his pace, that he would infuriate Laird Prydae beyond reason. How far could he push it? he wondered. How long would he have to go to force the laird to make concessions to him? He fantasized about that, about being called to a meeting wherein Prydae offered his surrender. Wouldn't he be a hero to the common folk then! And wouldn't Cadayle love him all the more?

That last thought brought a frown to him. Was it him she loved? Bransen? Or was it someone else entirely, the mysterious rogue named the Highwayman?

It was all too confusing, and so Bransen let go of the troubling questions and fears and focused instead on the kiss. He could still feel Cadayle's warmth; it had taken him through a night of wonderful dreams. There was nothing about her that wasn't perfect in his eyes. Her face, her soft skin, her softer lips. The feel of her against him, the sound of her voice, her gentle touch.

All of it stayed with him as he finished his chores that day-a day in which he kept glancing to the west, willing the sun to hurry and sink behind the horizon. For in the night, he would see her again. She couldn't deny her excitement as she noted his approach. She had known that the mysterious Highwayman would come out to her this night. She had seen his face after their kiss and had heard the sincerity in his voice. Even with all that, however, Cadayle couldn't help but doubt, and fear, that he would not return. That fear, above everything else, revealed to her the truth behind her jumbled thoughts. For she was indeed afraid that he would not come to her this night, and if that fear was realized, it would be a painful thing.

But the Highwayman did not disappoint. He approached the field behind Cadayle's house with a visible spring in his step, and Cadayle knew that he had seen her long before she was aware of him.

He danced up before her, dipped a quick and polite bow, and produced a small sack from behind his back, handing it to her.

"You and your mother will eat well this week," he said with that mischievous grin of his, one made more mysterious by the fact that he wore a mask above that toothy grin, and one that Cadayle was beginning to see in her mind long after the man had gone.

Cadayle fished about in the sack, discovering an assortment of meat and fruit and bread. She hid her excitement and her smile, and she wasn't really surprised. Almost every night, the Highwayman came to her bearing gifts, from the mundane, like the food, to the fabulous necklace she still wore upon her delicate neck.

When she looked up, she noted that he was staring at that necklace. "They've posted no reward," she said, bringing a hand up to it.

"They will soon enough," he assured her. "Their searches around Pryd Town have brought them nothing but the enmity of the peasants. Their frustrations will lead them to try to turn commoner against commoner because there are simply too many of you for the noblemen and their few warriors to inspect or to control, if it ever came to that."

That last line hit her hard. "Do not speak of such things," she said.

"It is a reality the lairds understand well."

"Please do not speak of it," Cadayle said again.

"If the common folk rose up-"

"Then many of them would be slaughtered," Cadayle interrupted. "Whether the lairds fall or not would be of little consequence to a man killed in the street. And I would rather live under the press of Laird Prydae than bury my ma in trying to defeat him. What we've got is not perfect, but it's what we've got, and nothing more."

The Highwayman paused, then started to say, "But," then just paused again and seemed to shrug it all away.

"They will post a reward soon enough," he did say.

Cadayle wanted to reply that she hoped it would be a long time before Laird Prydae did so, but she held her thoughts to herself. She liked wearing the necklace-more than she understood at that moment. It made her feel pretty. It made her feel, for just a few moments of conscious delusion, rich and powerful.

And it made her feel, most of all, as if this mysterious stranger, this hero who had saved her and her mother, this good man who was trying to help the lot of the always-overlooked rabble of Pryd, cared for her. Cadayle wasn't even sure how she felt about the Highwayman. Did she love him? She hadn't even seen him without his mask!

Cadayle looked at him then, carefully, and what she did know was that she was glad, truly glad, that he apparently cared for her.

"Are all the people feeling your generosity?" she asked. "Or just a few, like me and my mother?"

"All the people? I would be busy indeed in even trying to visit the homes of half! I share what I can and do not distinguish among the people-well, except for you, of course. For you, I always save the best that I find."

Cadayle was certain that she was blushing fiercely, and she lowered her gaze.

"The laird must be seeking you."

"With all of his men," the Highwayman answered.

Cadayle looked up at him with concern. "If he catches you, he will kill you horribly."

The Highwayman shrugged. "I have killed no man who did not deserve it, nor have I taken anything that did not rightfully belong to the people."

Cadayle's hand went back to the necklace.

"Well, the lairds should not so hoard the wealth, then," said the Highwayman. "They live in splendor, while all else suffer in squalor."

"They are the chosen of God."

The Highwayman snorted and Cadayle took a reflexive step back, not quite understanding what it was about her last statement that had irked him. Was it the concept relating to the lairds, or the concept of God? At that moment, Cadayle began to understand just how shallow her growing feelings for this man truly might be.

"Are you of the Church of Blessed Abelle?" she asked.

He seemed surprised. "Well, no…" The answer was less than definitive in tone.

"A Samhaist?"

"Never that!"

Cadayle looked at him curiously, hiding her great relief. She certainly had no love for Bernivvigar and his horrible followers. Her mother had never told her anything good at all about the Samhaists, and though neither had she overtly attacked Bernivvigar in her remarks to Cadayle, her voice when speaking of the man or his religion had always been tight, as if holding back visceral hatred. Cadayle had gotten that impression, at least.

"Do not think me a godless man," the Highwayman stated, drawing her from her contemplations. "I see good in much of what the brothers of Abelle attempt to accomplish, and many of their actions are wrought of generosity. But there is more to the world than they know, I am certain, and so I do not limit myself to the beliefs they present."

"You know better than the Church?"

The Highwayman shrugged in that confident way of his.

Cadayle let it go at that.

They talked some more, about nothing in particular, and nothing of any real importance, and Cadayle soon began to understand that the Highwayman was just stalling, stretching out the conversation in the hope of…

He was nervous.

So was she.

Her mother began to call for her, and she glanced back at her house, then turned to her masked suitor. "I must be going," she said suddenly, and she came forward and offered him another kiss, thinking to make it just a quick peck.

But he caught her and he held her, held them pressed together, and for a long and wonderful moment, Cadayle didn't try to wriggle away.

She skipped all the way home, like a little girl dancing in the sunshine after a spring thundershower. Thoughts of Cadayle followed Bransen as he made his way across Pryd Town. Once again this night, many of Laird Prydae's soldiers were about, as well as tax collectors moving from house to house and pestering the peasants. Bransen was in no mood for violence that night, no mood for catching one of those money-grubbers in a dark corner and striping him of his ill-gotten coin and foodstuffs.

He did veer from his course at one point, however, when he noted firelight far to the east. He headed toward the campfire out of the main town, moving through a copse of trees and then across a small field to a second copse.

Several men sat around the fire, over which a pig was roasting. They were vagabonds, Bransen knew, dispossessed by the many battles and the weight of their disappointment. All had wild beards and all were incredibly dirty. These were the outcasts of Pryd Holding, the forgotten men wandering the shadows at the edges of the civilized town. Bransen had seen many such men, perhaps some of these very ones, at Chapel Pryd, coming in to beg for food or magical gemstone relief from their maladies.

Bransen crouched just outside the radius of the firelight and listened, his smile widening as he came to understand that they were talking about him and the inconvenience he was causing Laird Prydae.

"Bah, good enough for Laird Prydae, I say," one roughly grumbled, and he tore a piece of meat from the bone and popped it into his mouth.

"Tired I am of fighting," said another. "Watched three of me friends fall to the swords of Ethelbert. Three's enough."

"Three's too many," another agreed.

"Well, I'm not seeing how this Highwayman's to help us from having that number go up," the first came back. "Nor am I seeing how he's to stop meself from going back to the south at Laird Prydae's bidding."

"But ye're not for crying over Prydae's money losses, now are ye?" said the second, and they all laughed.

"Laird Prydae can afford the losses," Bransen heard himself saying; and without even thinking of it, the Highwayman rose and stepped into the firelight. How the men scrambled! One even drew out a small knife and waved it ominously in Bransen's direction.

"Hold, I pray you," the Highwayman said. "I come not as any foe but simply as another traveler this night."

"Ye're him!" one of the men cried.

Bransen shrugged.

"Ye're the one stealing everything," the first said.

"Not everything and not for myself, of course," Bransen replied. "Laird Prydae has more than enough food and coin, I know, and so I am merely helping him to distribute his goods to those in need."

The men all looked at each other, and the one with the knife lowered it and put it away.

"Sit down, then," said the first of the group. "Take some food with us and tell us yer tale."

Bransen did take a seat on one of the fallen logs that formed the seats in their camp, and he did take a chunk of the offered meat. He didn't tell them any tales, however, and he just answered their barrage of questions with grunts and shrugs. To him, it was enough to simply enjoy the company, and he couldn't deny that he didn't mind at all the expressions of admiration, even awe, that were aimed his way. Again, the Book of Jhest's warnings about the failings of pride came to him, but he easily pushed them away.

For it all seemed like an innocent encounter of little importance, and so what matter if he indulged himself a bit by basking in their admiration? But then one of the men asked, in all seriousness, "Are ye looking for hire ons, then, Mister Highwayman? Are ye needing some strong men to help ye with yer work?"

The others all grunted and nodded and began whispering excitedly among themselves, but Bransen was too taken with the question to even begin to listen to those side conversations. This was a possibility he hadn't foreseen, and one that he found hard to dismiss. Could he form a band and lead it? Could he take these ragtag men, and so many others just like them who loitered about Pryd Town, and turn them into a formidable force?

He didn't know, and before he could explore it more seriously with some questions of his hosts, he noted something else, something that one of the men was holding: a skinning knife with a dull white bone handle.

"May I see your knife?" Bransen asked, holding out a hand.

"What?" the man replied, and he followed Bransen's gaze to the implement, then brought it up. "What, this?" He handed it over. "An old one and not much to see, but holding a fine edge, don't ye doubt!"

Bransen took the blade, thinking how much it resembled the one Garibond had always used back at the lake. That thought amused him, until he rolled the knife over and noted a stain on its handle, just below the blade, and a nick in the blade itself. Bransen froze, his eyes going wide. There could not be a second knife like this one, with such a similar stain and nick.

Bransen stared at it, remembering the many times he had seen this very blade, this exact knife, in Garibond's hand. He could picture his father putting it to use to cut the tasty flesh from a bass or trout; he could see it as clearly as if he were watching it then and there.

"Where did you get this?" the Highwayman asked, his tone changing dramatically.

He could tell that the vagabond caught the seriousness of that voice when the man stuttered, "W-what? That old thing? Had it all me life. Me da, he give it to me, he did."

Bransen turned a scowl upon the man. "I know this knife," he said. "And it was not your father's."

"Oh, ye're m-meaning the knife," the man stammered in a ridiculous correction. "No, no, the knife's not from me da. Found it, I did, years ago."

"Where?"

"Well, I'm not for remembering."

Bransen's sword seemed to leap into his hand, and he leveled it at the trembling man. One of the others screamed, a second shouted for him to be at ease.

"Come from the lake," the frightened vagabond stammered.

"From a house near the lake, you mean. The house of Garibond Womak."

The man shook his head and stuttered a few incomprehensible sounds.

"Aye, it was old Garibond's house," said another of the group. "I knew that one, Garibond Womak, and as good a man as ever I knew, he was."

Bransen lowered the sword. "Was?"

"Aye, Garibond once lived in the very house where come that knife."

"Where is he now?"

"Garbond Womak?" The man shrugged. "He's dead, from all I heard, and so he must be. Many went to the house and took what was there."

Bransen's eyes flashed with sudden anger.

"Aye, that's the way of it," another of the group insisted. "So many have so little. When one's dying, we're not to let his belongings go to waste."

"Garibond is not dead!" Bransen insisted.

"Then he's been gone a lot of years, and so it's the same," the man with the knife argued back.

Bransen shook his head. None of it made any sense to him. Garibond couldn't be dead. What had Brother Reandu said? That he had moved south…But Bransen remembered, too, that Brother Reandu would not meet his eyes. And Bransen thought of his last visit to the houses on the lake, of the strangers he had seen there, fishing and going about their business as if that was their home.

A fit of trembling began at the base of Bransen's spine and worked its way steadily up. Garibond dead? The thought hammered at him, for never had he even considered such a thing. Garibond was the foundation of all his life; and for ten years, Bransen had held fast the fantasy of going back to him, of showing him that his son was all right, after all.

"What more do you know?" he demanded of the group.

"I know that ye're holding me knife."

"Garibond's knife," Bransen corrected with a growl that told them the issue was not up for debate. But he noted the expressions coming at him from all the men, and most of those looks registered disappointment. They had invited him in to dine with them, though they rarely had enough to eat, he knew. They had offered to join with him.

They thought him a hero of the common folk.

Bransen tossed the knife down before the man. "Garibond is not dead," he said. "And when I find him, I ask that you return his knife."

"Bah, it's me own now," the man said defiantly, and he scooped up the blade. "Had it for ten years!"

The words nearly floored Bransen, and he staggered back as if struck, then turned on his heel and rushed out of the trees and across the field, running fast for Chapel Pryd, running away from the horrible thoughts that were dancing in his mind.

But they followed him, every step.