Read Online The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats - Free Book Online

playing dolls last month?”
    I laugh and tug my hem. “Papa, don’t be daft!”
    â€œBy God, but you are her image.” He mutters it, hoarse, as if she left us yesterday and his knees are raw from vigil.
    I hold my breath and will him to say more. Anything. To tell me her favorite flowers. Whether she liked sweets. What she might have thought of this place, of what he goes to do today.
    â€œWell, we’d best be off,” my father finally says, and yet again all my willing comes to naught.
    Even though the castle is a stone’s throw from our door, my father has hired horses so that we might arrive as befits our new station. We ride up Castle Street toward the King’s Gate, and we’re just crossing the weed-choked castle ditch when my mouth falls open.
    The castle wall that faces the town is not made of the same purple-banded stone as the town walls or the rest of the castle. It’s made of sturdy wooden palisades limewashed and stained to ape the stone. The wall still rises so sheer and high it hurts my neck to look at the top, but I held Caernarvon to be a great massive pillar of stone, solid as an anvil and mighty as a saint’s resolve.
    The castle is not as it seems.
    The sentries at the King’s Gate nod us through. Inside, the purple-banded parts form a meandering, drunken shell that’s still webbed with scaffolding and awash in mud.
    Edgeley and its greening yardlands are a world away, like something from a nursery story.
    My father dismounts before a wooden hall that’s ochered a deep red, and I do likewise. It’s not made of purple-banded stone, but at least it makes no pretense of being something it’s not.
    A man with a falcon-sharp face and a heavy gold chain about his shoulders beckons my father to the front of the hall. My father squeezes my elbow and departs, so I slump on a bench and cinch my arms over my belly. No one sits next to me. As other burgesses take seats, I catch sight of Emmaline de Coucy and her parents across the aisle.
    Emmaline is wearing a gown of the red Flanders finespun that nearly got Nicholas amerced and landed me unjustly in Court Baron. She lifts a cheerful hand when she sees me.
    I face forward.
    Even petting my mother’s vellet does not cheer me. Seeing that finespun on Emmaline’s back puts me in mind of my stolen altar cloth, which puts me in mind of Alice and Agnes and how far away they are. How far away Edgeley is.
    My father places his hand on a wood-bound book held out by the gold-shouldered man and swears to maintain the privileges of Caernarvon and conduct the town’s business thoroughly and a lot of other things I pay little heed to because I’m too busy wishing the castle were more like it should be and wondering who’s noticing me since I’m wearing my mother’s gown and hating Emmaline for her sleek, effortless plaits while mine look hagstirred from the buffeting wind off the strait.
    The gathered burgesses abruptly raise a cheer. My father clasps wrists with the gold-shouldered man, then steps into a crowd of burgesses who all clap him on the back or clasp his wrist or both.
    Good. It’s done.
    I rise and shake out my gown. There’s a clammy skin of sweat over my whole body. My hair is heavy and damp on my neck.
    Something seizes my arm. My father, and he’s grinning like a well-fed monk.
    â€œOh, sweeting, it’s set and sealed! I couldn’t be happier!”
    I could. If a runner brought word that my uncle Roger was dead and we could go home to Edgeley. If I had that dratted gown of finespun on Emmaline’s back, which is rightfully mine. If I had a mouthful of wine.
    â€œIt was lovely, Papa,” I lie. “Where are the horses?”
    My father beams down on me. “It’s not over, sweeting. Whenever they swear in a new man, they must check that the town’s liberties haven’t been encroached upon, so we must walk the boundary