For Love of Evil by Piers Anthony Page B

in.
     
    Her vehemence evidently convinced the pursuers, for the sounds of the hounds departed. The woman remained for some time at the door, perhaps watching to make sure they were not lingering. Then she returned to the living chamber.
     
    "Very well, boy, they're gone," she said. "Now get up and tell me why they want you so bad."
     
    Parry climbed out and shook off the straw. "You lied for me," he said.
     
    "A villain hag can't afford integrity," she said."But you're no serf. Honor means something to you."
     
    "How can you be sure of that?"
     
    "I worked for years as bondswoman to the Lady of the Manor, minding her children till they came of age. I can spot the manner at a glance, and I got a good glance at you."
     
    Parry grimaced. He had stood before her naked.
     
    "You had no calluses and not much dirt, and your posture was that of no peasant. When you spoke, you had the inflection of education. And you were being chased. They don't chase dispossessed serfs; who cares about them? They chase those who are dangerous to them: the lords and their leading servants. A lord would have honor, a servant maybe not. When you kept your word and came back, I knew you were no servant."
     
    "Maybe I just wanted shelter for the night."
     
    "At a hovel like this? With company like me?" She laughed, a hideous cackle. "You'd go to an inn and talk the serving wench into your bed for the night."
     
    Parry had to smile. "If I had the money." But as he spoke, the word wench brought about a chain of thought that brought him quickly low. The crusade sergeant had called Jolie a wench, and then-
     
    "Say, lad, I didn't mean to insult you," the woman said. "I just meant-"
     
    Parry realized that his horror of the memory had shown on his face. "My-my wife!"
     
    "Oh, I shouldn't have joked about a wench! I'm sorry, lad."
     
    "They took her to-to rape, and when I tried to save her, the sword-she was the most beautiful woman of the region, with hair like honey and eyes like tourmaline, and-"
     
    "The Lady Jolie!" she exclaimed. "She who married the Sorcerer's son!"
     
    "The same," he said, startled.
     
    "And you are that son!" she concluded triumphantly. "The one who picked out a villain girl and made her the loveliest creature of all France! Now I know you!"
     
    "Now you know me," he agreed heavily. "Are you sorry you helped me?"
     
    "I'm glad I helped you! I have no truck with magic, but your father's a good man."
     
    "He's dead, too."
     
    "Yes, he would be the first they would kill, and you the second. He brought good weather to the region, so our crops prospered, our village as well as yours. I never heard a tale of either of you wronging a villain."
     
    "Villains are people, too."
     
    "Not that any lord knows of! I gave the best years of my life to mine, and raised his children right, and I thought he would take care of me when they were grown. But he married me to a field bondsman and forgot me, and the grown children never looked at me again. I was just lucky my husband was a decent man, so I got by."
     
    Parry realized that the Lord of her Manor might have rewarded her in his fashion, by giving her a decent man for a husband in her retirement. But it did not seem expedient to argue that case at the moment.
     
    "Then my husband got the fever," she continued. "I prayed for him, day and night. I used our last coins to buy holy candles to burn to our Savior, that my husband might live. But the Lord Jesus let him die, and now I am alone, and winter coming."
     
    So she remained a Christian, but a disaffected one. That was why she was willing to swear falsely by Jesus' name. "The .Lord Jesus does not seem to have his eye on southern France at the moment," he said wryly.
     
    "And this crusade is a pot of sheep manure," she continued. "They're out to get the Albigenses, who are good folk, and they're laying waste the countryside while they go about it. I wish they'd stayed at home!"
     
    "So do I!" he agreed.
     
    "I did