Page 77 of Those Fatal Flowers

“N-no, wait…!” Margery stammers. I shake my head tosilence her. Hugh and Charles deposit me in her place as if I weigh nothing, and Thomas slams the pillory closed with a sickeningthunk,trapping me inside.

“This,” he hisses coldly in my ear, his voice no louder than a whisper, “is for biting me.”

A whole slew of thoughts rush forward, and it takes all my strength not to shriek the worst of them at the crowd. Instead, I seethe silently, vowing not to give them the satisfaction of seeing me fight back.

“Let this show us that no one, not even a princess, is above our laws,” Mistress Bailie says soberly, as if she’s imparting a great lesson to the villagers. In actuality, it’s a warning. I find Elyoner’s and Margaret’s shocked faces in the crowd. Wenefrid pushes her way forward to stand beside them, but Cora remains where she is in the back.

“It’s not a woman’s place to talk back to her betrothed. A few hours in the pillory will help Lady Thelia learn this lesson.”

A pounding echoes in my ears as Agnes’s voice draws my focus back to her.Monsters are made, not born,Will said. Trapped in the blaze of Agnes’s vicious grin, I see that he’s right: If my son’s sex doesn’t inherently condemn him, then Agnes’s doesn’t absolve her. The suffering wrought by men is easier to spot—it’s razed villages, stolen land, and violated bodies. But such obvious violence wouldn’t be possible without a quieter brutality, the kind Agnes excels at, to clear the way for it.

How many nymphs survived a god’s assault only to fall prey once more to the misplaced wrath of his wife? And the punishments rendered by goddesses were just as cruel. Wasn’t mine?

The crowd lingers in the square for a while, delighting inthe entertainment my imprisonment provides. My cheeks burn beneath their taunts, but I won’t give them any more ofa spectacle. The quickest way to end this is for them to grow bored, and so I do my best to make it clear that the exciting part has passed. Inside, though, I rage. I commit the most gleeful faces to memory, imagining how they’ll look when our song takes hold, when I slide our sacrificial blade across their throats.

Slowly but surely, people lose interest in my stoic frame gracing the pillory. Their days beckon them away, though the Bible study group remains. Young Rose runs home to fetch a bucket so she can ladle water to my lips, while Jane, Alis, Elyoner, Wenefrid, Margaret, and Liz form a circle around me, as if to shield my pathetic form from any lingering gawkers. Through the gap between Jane and Elyoner, I see Thomas find Cora, but then the women draw closer together, and the space that contains Cora and my captor disappears. Why is Cora with him, after what we’ve just been through? Only now do the corners of my eyes grow damp. With my hands bound, I can’t wipe the tears away, and so they fall to the wooden platform floor. My only choice is to trust her, but her absence still makes my chest ache. It’s a different pain from the soft cramping that makes my legs tremble beneath my skirts, but it hurts just as badly.

“Where’s Margery?” I croak, straining my head as far as I can to my right to try to catch sight of her. I barely move it before my cheek brushes against the rough wooden board that locks it in place, my limp right hand blocking my peripheral vision. “Is she all right?”

“Emme took her and Jeremie back home,” Wenefrid explains, gingerly brushing a lock of my hair behind my ear.

“What the Bailies did to her is appalling.” Margaret’s words whistle over the gap where one of her teeth is missing.

Elizabeth nods. “How could they, after Margery has worked so hard to keep their house in order?”

“What will she do now?” Rose asks, delicately lifting a cup of water to my mouth. I drink it gratefully, and she brings me another.

Without the extra money she earns working for the Bailies, Margery will likely need to find herself a new husband, although the public shaming she just endured will effectively scare away the more decent men, if they exist here at all. No one wants to say this out loud, so we all fall silent.

“You don’t have to wait here with me,” I say eventually. “Who knows how long the Bailies will keep me here.”

Alis, usually so soft-spoken, surprises me with an astonished laugh. “Of course we do, Lady Thelia! You gave us all gifts. It could have been any one of us in her place. The fact you were willing to stand up for her…” She trails off, searching for the right words.

“Well, it just means you’d be willing to defend any one of us,” Wenefrid adds slowly, and Alis nods.

“Especially since none of us were particularly kind to you after Will disappeared…” Rose says, and the other women shuffle back and forth on their feet uncomfortably.

“I hold no grudges,” I whisper softly. “Cora is your friend—”

“So you forgive us?” Rose interjects. She’s so young, she can’t contain her excitement. It makes it hard not to smile, even though my body still aches from last night, from being locked in this position.

“I do,” I say, and the other women grin to one another. With the matter settled, all there is left to do is wait for my release.

Thomas doesn’t return to free me until the sun is nearly three-quarters of its way across the sky. When he does, Rose helps me stand, and Wenefrid puts her hands on my shoulders to steady me. No one acknowledges the Bailie man, and he senses the anger roiling beneath our collective surfaces.While the women are distracted with me, fussing and making sure that I’m all right, Thomas slinks off to the tavern.

“Good riddance.” Margaret spits at the ground in his direction once he is out of sight.

The women all murmur in agreement. Elyoner slides up beside me, looking concerned.

“You can’t go back there tonight. It would give Mistress Bailie too much pleasure.”

Emme, who returned with Jeremie to the square about an hour after helping Margery rest, suggests that we all retire to her house. “I’ll fetch Margery. She’ll be awake by now, and we can spend the evening together.”

I can’t help but smile a bit. An evening away from the Bailie home sounds like exactly the blessing I need.

While Emme collects Margery, Margaret and Wenefrid set to stoking the hearth to prepare supper. They barely finish adding scraps of meat, vermin of some sort, to a large iron pot before a series of rapid knocks distracts us from our conversation. I peer up at the door. Has Thomas come for me? Emme pushes herself to her feet to open it, but before she can, Cora bursts inside and slams the door closed behind her. She gasps for air; her eyes are wild.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you…” she says between breaths. “Thomas—”

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