The Bride and the Ashen Knight novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Greywold

At the gate of half-burned Greywold the villagers throw ash at the new lord, and when a stone meant for him hits Sigrid, his torn shirt shows a back covered in lines she can read.

Greywold looked like two countries sewn together by a bad tailor.

The road ran through the gate at dawn, and on my left the land was black.

Black fields, black stumps of trees, black rubble where barns had stood, all of it flat under a pale sky.

On my right the hills were green.

Sheep on the slope, a stream running clear, smoke from kitchen chimneys.

"The line was the river," Garrick said beside me.

He sat his horse.

"We burned west of it. We kept the east."

"We," I said.

"I."

He did not look at the black.

I did not look at him looking.

Behind us, Bess rode a mule and talked without stopping.

She was my maid, twenty-four, round-faced and curly-haired, and she had begged to come the second she heard.

"Nobody else would have you, Highness," she had said, packing my silks. "So I will."

I had never loved anyone more than I loved her at that moment.

At the keep gate stood a short square woman in a floury apron, with her arms crossed.

She had iron-grey hair under a cap and a face that had no patience for princes.

"That's Nan Kettlewell," Garrick said. "She's run the house since I was eighteen."

"Is she going to like me?"

"She likes no one the first week. After that she feeds them."

Nan looked at my wedding silk, which had picked up the dust of the road to the knees.

She looked at my braid.

She looked at the grey iron ring on Garrick's hand.

"You're taller than I was told," she said.

I was nearly six feet tall in my boots, and a size eighteen besides.

"I'm told I take up room," I said.

Nan grunted.

"There's soup," she said, and turned and went in.

Garrick made a quiet sound beside me that was almost a laugh.

We had been in the yard for five minutes when the first handful of ash hit him in the chest.

It came out of the crowd at the gate.

There were thirty people, perhaps forty, standing in the road in the thin morning light.

Most were women in patched aprons, with children on their hips.

A man in a leather coat held a sack, and he threw another handful, and it stuck to Garrick's coat.

"Lord of ash!" someone shouted.

"Where's our mill?"

"My daughter was born in that barn!"

Garrick got down from his horse.

He did not wipe the ash from his coat.

"Ashby," he said to me quietly.

"I moved them to the east bank the week before. No one died."

"They still lost every house."

"Garrick."

"They have a right."

He took one step toward the crowd.

I got down from my own horse and picked up the shovel leaning against the gate post.

It was heavy and old, with a split handle.

"Bess," I said, "go and find us tea for forty."

"Highness?"

"For all forty."

She stared at me and then ran.

I walked past my husband, in a wedding gown the color of cream, and started shoveling the ash off the road.

I do not know what I meant to do.

I only knew that if I stood there I would have to watch him take it.

The crowd stopped shouting.

A woman at the front, big-armed with a baby on her hip, said, "What's she doing?"

"Cleaning your road," said Nan from the kitchen door. "Somebody has to."

A stone hit the gate post two feet from my head.

I did not see who threw it.

I only saw Garrick turn, faster than a man that size should move.

The next thing I knew, he had both arms around me and his back to the crowd.

The second stone hit him between the shoulder blades.

I heard the thump of it against his coat.

I heard him grunt.

And I heard the seam give.

His shirt tore from the collar to the belt in one long rip, and the coat fell open at the back.

"Garrick," I said.

I was pressed against his chest, and I could not see.

"Stay behind me," he said.

"Garrick, your shirt."

"I know."

The crowd had gone quiet.

I turned my head under his arm.

Nan had come down the steps with a face like a closed door.

"That's enough," she said to the road.

"The lord's wife has asked for tea, and anyone who wants tea can come in."

"Anyone who wants to throw things can go home."

They shuffled, muttering.

Garrick let go of me slowly.

He turned his shoulder to the wall, but not fast enough.

I saw his back.

I will remember it until I die.

The grey covered every inch of it, from his neck to his belt.

The rows were so close and so fine they looked like a printed page.

There were hundreds of lines.

They went across his shoulder blades and down both sides of his spine, in tiny ridged letters, row after row.

And I could read them.

I could read them as easily as the letters my father sent.

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