The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats Page B

gate. I fling the bread at Mistress Tipley and fly toward the clamor.
    Just within the gate is Mistress Glover—hugging Nessy!
    Townspeople crowd around, cheering, blessing the baby, patting both Glovers as they hug and squeeze their errant child. I can barely see Nessy through the welter of arms and bodies, but her cheeks are pink and she’s squealing merrily just as I remember.
    I grin big as market day. God is merciful to sinners.
    Nearby, three serjeants form a well-armed ring around an elderly couple, who cringe and glance about uncertainly. One of the serjeants clears his throat and says, “Master Glover?”
    Mistress Glover looks up over Nessy’s blond head. Her eyes are streaming and cold like a wolf’s. “They’ll hang with Black Reese.”
    I frown. If Nessy is safe, surely the burgesses will let Black Reese go.
    The old woman says something in Welsh angled like a question. Her voice is a panicky stutter. The old man chimes in with a protest, calm but desperate. But the serjeants pay them no mind and jerk them toward the gatehouse.
    Nessy appeared in my rearyard and tore up my garden. No one marched me off to be hanged when I brought her home.
    I press close to Mistress Glover. “Mayhap we should ask them how they came to have Nessy.”
    â€œThey
took
my Nessy,” Mistress Glover growls. “When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”
    â€œLook at her,” I insist. “Nessy has been gone a fortnight and there’s not a scratch on her. It wouldn’t be right to hang them with no cause. What if they
helped
Nessy?”
    Mistress Glover looks down at her pink, healthy child for a long moment, then nods reluctantly. The elderly couple are manhandled before her and both begin a frantic chatter in Welsh.
    â€œSpeak properly!” Mistress Glover shrieks, and both of them cringe and fall silent and gesture with gnarled hands.
    â€œI don’t think they can,” I say into the quiet that’s descended.
    â€œThen they hang!”
    Mistress Tipley pushes to my elbow and bobs her head to Mistress Glover. “They’re saying they found the baby eating turnips in their garden. They live all the way out in Llanrug and none of their neighbors recognized her. They had no idea she belonged within the walls or they would have brought her sooner. They beg you to show mercy.”
    I stare openmouthed at Mistress Tipley. She can understand Welsh!
    â€œNessy looks well fed,” Mistress Tipley adds, “and look how clean her face and feet are.”
    Mistress Glover scrubs at her wet cheeks. “Oh, you lot deal with them!” And she turns on her heel and bustles up High Street with Nessy peeking over her shoulder.
    I turn a pleading gaze on Master Glover while Mistress Tipley glowers at him, hands on hips, and at length he bids the serjeants to release the couple. The two poor souls lean on each other, faint with relief, then fly through the city gate as if the Adversary is seeking them.
    If it had been my baby returned hale and plump, all but back from the dead, I would have at least thanked the people who fed and tended her.
    Even if they were Welsh.

    Â 
    Â 

    I T’S all over the Welshry. Gwladys and Cadwallon of Llanrug were as good as dead, accosted at the city gate with the baby they’d been wringing their hands over. The baby they’d been tending with the last of their milk and borrowed oatbread.
    The
honesti
baby that castle English have been threshing the Welshry to find.
    Gwladys and Cadwallon of Llanrug were as good as dead, sent to their fate by naught less than my foolish belief that English would celebrate the baby’s safe return more than they’d demand vengeance for her disappearance.
    But Gwladys and Cadwallon were spared because of an English girl who spoke for them brassy as you please right before castle English who would have strung them up then and there.
    Mayhap they helped Nessy, she