Harvest A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

boundaries before. It’s not surprising, then, that so many of our wives and daughters widened their eyes in envy, hoped to feel the weight of it between their fingers, and wondered what their chances were of wearing it themselves.
    The village men were not so taken by the cloth. They noticed it, of course, and how it added a becoming color to the scene. They could imagine making use of it, laid out in the hidden corner of some field, far from their wives. But, as men will, they were assessing her by standards other than her clothes. They surveyed her, hoof, horn and tail. And then they surveyed her two men. What they saw was someone who might happily infect their dreams, a wide-hipped woman who was enthralling to behold in ways they never could explain and all the more so for not being beautiful or statuesque but rather someone within reach, and someone who was defiantly—and irresistibly—proud. She held up her head, flared her nostrils in disdain, pursed her lips, and did not even dip her gaze as she was helped by Mr. Quill beyond the province of her broken home. She’d be, they thought, more than thirty years of age and so it was unlikely (and preferable, of course) that either of the men was her husband. The elder was already gray and balding, her father possibly, though any facial likeness was obscured by beard; the other was a man at least ten years younger than the woman, but equally as black-haired as her. A brother, then. This was a family. And it was safe to say the daughter of the housewas still available, despite her age. She was a widow, possibly, with all that implies: she would be seasoned and experienced; she would have an unslaked thirst for company. In a village such as ours, where women die before the men, there are plenty of my neighbors who will have seen at once a tempting opportunity. While the women might have cast her as a subject of their kindom or a partner for their sons and might have nieced and cousined her, glad to have their breeding stock enlarged by some black hair, the men there will have chambered her and nested her the moment that she showed herself. Surely that could hardly count as sin. The local women were like land—fenced in, assigned and spoken for, the freehold of their fathers, then their husbands, then their sons. You could not cross their boundaries, or step beyond your portion. But this one, this incomer, was no better than any other wild quarry on common ground. Like any pigeon, any hare, she was fair game.
    Still, the written law should be obeyed. Our Master Kent, who had yet to show his presence and authority, mounted Willowjack again and brought her forward until he reached the clearing by the den, where the three newcomers and Mr. Quill were standing like skittles, not uttering a word. I sympathize with Master Kent and what he chose to do. He understood that something out of reason had occurred and something out of reason had to put an end to it.
    “Put those aside,” he said, indicating the two longbows. “This is not a place for ruff …” He would have called them ruffians had not the woman widened her eyes at him. “This is not a place for rough manners,” he resumed.
    She laughed. “Those are the only manners we’ve seen since we arrived,” she said. “What shame is it that you shake sticks at us?”
    “I’m not shaking any sticks at you,” the master said. “Nor shall I do so. But you two, sirs”—he pointed at the woman’s men—“must pay for dining out last night on fowl that don’t belong to you … we’ve seenthe picked-clean bones … by contemplating better manners in the pillory. Let’s say one week. And let your offending bows be put underfoot and snapped in two. And each of you should have your head shaven, to mark you out as … well, suspicious travelers.”
    One week, disarmed and bald? A modest punishment. And one which by happy chance would keep the woman on our land and separated from her men for long enough for every