The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats

“She could not have gotten without the walls on her own.”
    My father underestimates Nessy’s ability to get places she isn’t supposed to be.
    But by sundown, we’ve knocked on every door and searched every empty lot and outbuilding. Mistress Glover is all but raving and Master Glover quietly sits on the threshold drinking claret. There’s nary a sign of a lost baby anywhere in Caernarvon. It’s as though she’s vanished from God’s green earth.
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    Nessy Glover is still missing. Hue and cry has been raised, but a formal search of the town by the constable himself and both bailiffs has turned up nothing.
    Today they’re dredging the castle ditch and both millponds.
    The town is so tense, I nearly forego supervising Mistress Tipley’s marketing. Men mutter in doorways and women don’t tarry long at the well. Even children move about quietly. No frantic patter of feet and no shouting in street or yard. I breathe easier when we’re safely home.
    I search our rearyard for the fifth time, Salvo limping at my heels. Mayhap an impish golden head will pop out from behind the rain barrel, chortling nonsense baby words and oblivious to the panic she’s caused.
    No luck.
    Around midday, Ned turns up on my doorstep. I’ve been changing the linen and my hair is in a state. I start frantically smoothing stray tendrils behind my ears, but he says, “I beg your pardon, demoiselle, but today I’ve come for your father. We must question the Welshry.” He’s slapping a sturdy blackthorn cudgel against his palm.
    â€œBut why?” I’m still fighting my hair into some kind of order and covertly biting my lips to redden them. “My father says Nessy couldn’t have gotten without the walls.”
    â€œUnless one of those—people—abducted her,” Ned replies with a tight, forced smile. “So we must, er, question them.”
    God only knows why anyone would want to steal a baby, troublesome creatures that they are. But I don’t tell Ned this. Instead I bid him Godspeed and try to enjoy the back of him when I see him and my father off.
    Caernarvon is still as a graveyard. Usually the streets are bustling and the gate is crowded, but the serjeants have closed the murage trestle and only burgesses may pass.
    I know not what else to do, so I take a loaf of sweet bread to Mistress Glover’s house. One of her sons silently shows me to the hall. The whole room is packed with women and the trestle is loaded with stews, cakes, and even a haunch of mutton studded with cloves. Mistress Glover sits ashen and dry-eyed at the hearth, her flock of sun-browned children arrayed like quiet dolls at her feet.
    I stay as long as I can bear, then escape home.
    My father isn’t back from questioning the Welshry till long past curfew. I’m dozing before the banked hearth, but I leap up to hear the news when I hear him banging down the corridor.
    Just one look at him and my heart sinks. They’ve not found her. Not even a trace.
    My father is muddy to the knees and his forearms are badly scraped. He tosses a blackthorn cudgel into a corner and curtly bids me go to bed.
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    Dim, but growing louder every moment, is a clacking of clappers and the echoey thudding of drums. I make it to High Street in time to see a scruffy Welshman being rattle-and-drummed toward the castle by a crowd of raging townspeople. The bailiffs ride grim-faced and the Welshman must stagger behind them since he’s tethered by the wrists to their horses, but he’s hollering his innocence with every stumbling step.
    At supper, my father is in high spirits and answers my question ere I can even ask it.
    â€œBlack Reese of Trecastell,” my father tells me. “A vile brute of a highwayman who haunts the king’s road to Chester, but he’ll hang for the abduction and like as not murder of Nessy Glover.”
    â€œLike as not?” I ask hopefully.