The Silent Songbird (Hagenheim #7)(15)

As they approached, the woman looked them up and down. “What are your names?”

“I am Mildred and this is Eva. She doesn’t speak.”

“She won’t speak, or she can’t speak?”

“She cannot speak.”

Mistress Alice looked sharply at Evangeline’s face. “She is young and tall and strong. She can work in the fields. Mildred, you can churn butter with the milkmaids for now.”

Muriel opened her mouth as if to speak, glancing at Evangeline out of the corner of her eye, but she pursed her lips instead, a wrinkle forming above the bridge of her nose.

Soon the two were separated, and another maidservant was taking her to the fields. “Can you understand me when I speak to you?”

Evangeline nodded.

“My name is Nicola. I’m sorry you are being sent to the fields. It’s harder than working in the house, but they stop work in the mid-afternoon so no one faints from the heat.”

Truthfully, she could hardly wait to begin working out in the warm sunshine with all the other peasants. Perhaps she could make her home here, fall in love with a peasant—preferably Westley—“miraculously” regain her voice, and live out her life in the lovely village of Glynval.

“You traveled with Westley and the other men. Did you think he was handsome?”

Evangeline nodded.

“He and Sabina—that’s the miller’s daughter—are nearly betrothed. Everyone expects them to marry, at least. More’s the pity, because I don’t think she’s worthy of him. But they are the wealthiest family in Glynval, besides Westley’s.”

Westley’s family was wealthy? Eva’s heart sank.

“Here’s your new worker, Reeve Folsham,” Nicola said to the man standing at the edge of the field. “Her name is Eva, and she is mute.”

“Mute?” The man looked almost insulted.

“She understands what you say but she doesn’t speak. Farewell, Eva.” Nicola turned and walked back toward the manor house.

Reeve Folsham stared at her. Finally, he frowned and handed her a tool with a long wooden handle and a curved, almost circular blade on the end. The man’s skin was dark and leathery, like a horse’s saddle. He seemed about Lord Shiveley’s age, but his hair was entirely white and his shoulders were wide and muscular.

“What are you waiting for? You can start cutting over there.”

A swath of standing grain—perhaps wheat—stretched out to her right, and straight ahead several women bent forward as they used the strange instrument to slice through the stalks. As if by magic, the stalks of grain would fall to the ground in perfect flat swaths.

It looked easy, so Evangeline stepped to the edge of the standing grain, bent, and swung her blade across the bottom of the stalks.

A few stalks bent and broke, but most only waved their heads at her.

She huffed out a breath, blowing a strand of hair that had fallen across her eye. The reeve was watching her. She drew back the instrument, clenching her teeth, and swung with all her might.

The handle slipped out of her grasp and went flying in the direction of the reeve.

Evangeline covered her mouth with her hands as Reeve Folsham leapt to the side when the blade sliced through his tunic.

Evangeline stepped toward him, her stomach twisting.

“What kind of evil is this?” he roared at her. “Are you trying to murder me?”





Chapter Six


Evangeline shook her head vehemently. O God, what have I done?

Two men hurried toward them. One of them was Westley.

“What happened?”

“This mute girl tried to kill me.” The reeve lifted his shirt. A long stripe of blood shone across his side.

Evangeline’s knees went weak and her heart pounded sickeningly. Was it a serious injury? A trickle of bright-red blood oozed from one end of the cut.

She pressed her hands to her cheeks as Westley stepped closer, bringing his face to within inches of the wound.

“Oh, Folsham, it’s only a scratch. What are you shouting about? You’ve scared the poor girl nearly to death.”

Westley was looking at her now. Her face tingled and her knees wobbled.

“She slung the scythe at me!” Reeve Folsham waved his arms, still holding up his tunic. “She looked at it as if she’d never seen a scythe in her life, then she slung it at me.”

Evangeline could only shake her head. But even if she could speak, what could she say? How could she explain that she hadn’t meant to do it, that she was indeed completely ignorant of a scythe and how to use it, and it had slipped out of her hands—and flew straight for the reeve’s rather wide body.

“It was just an accident.” Westley smiled, then covered his mouth with his hand as if stifling a laugh.

“She is a menace. Look at me. I’m bleeding. Lord le Wyse, you saw it, did you not?”

Another man standing behind Westley now stepped forward. He was much older than Westley, had darker hair that was beginning to gray, and wore a black leather patch over one eye. He pierced Evangeline with his gaze, then turned to the reeve. “Go on to the house, Folsham. One of the maids can tend to your scratch.”

“Scratch. Hmph. I tell you, she could have killed me.”

It was true. She could have killed him. The breath went out of her and she covered her face. What did I almost do? She breathed in and out as a tear squeezed out of each eye. She kept her eyes covered so no one would see.