Chapter 7: The Reeve's Court

They tried me under the oak on the green at dawn, with my wrists tied and my back raw under my shirt.

Osgar Gaunt sat on a chair carried out from the church, in his green cloak, with a clerk at his elbow.

The whole village stood around us in a half ring.

Edith stood at the front with a bandage on her scalp.

Hild stood next to her with her jaw out.

"The charge is arson," Osgar said gently. "A barn burned, a house scorched, a family nearly lost. I take no pleasure in it."

"You take some," I said.

"Silence, lodger."

"I'd like to hear your witnesses."

He gestured, and three of Ranulf's men came forward.

They were the same three I had thrown in the stream.

They stood together, shifting, and none of them would look at Edith.

"I saw him by the barn with a lamp," the first said.

"Me too," said the second.

"He had a cloak just that color," said the third.

"It's the only brown cloak in Thornwick," Osgar said. "I think that settles it."

"It settles who brought the lamp," Merewyn Tyas said. "It doesn't settle who lit the thatch."

Everyone turned.

She stood at the edge of the crowd with her sleeves rolled and a smear of soot still across her cheek.

She looked like she had not slept.

"Mistress Tyas," Osgar said, in his warmest voice. "You're not a witness."

"I'm the alehouse keeper. I shut up at moonrise and walk the yard to latch the gate."

"I saw a bay horse tied behind the Cobb hedge."

"A bay horse."

"The one with the white blaze. Ranulf's."

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