Lost Innocents (A Servant of the Crown Mystery Book 3) by Denise Domning Read Free Book Online Page B

it.
    Johnnie paid no heed to either clerk or cook. Instead, making a cooing sound, he lifted a hand as if intending to touch one of the angry patches on Amelyn's face. Yet seeking to retrieve her hood with one hand, the leper caught the idiot's arm with the other, trying to forestall his touch at the same time. She looked up at Faucon. Her eyes were a crystalline blue beneath the arch of her dark brows.
    "Meg's wrong. I swear he didn't touch me," she vowed, then turned her gaze on the youth. "Nay, Johnnie, I will not allow this. If you touch me, you may grow ill as I have."
    Johnnie relaxed and gently freed his arm from Amelyn's grasp. The youth looked at the dead girl in the leper's lap, then drew his hand down Jessimond's cold cheek. As he did, he raised his gaze to Amelyn, his brows lifted as if in question.
    "She lives no more," she told him, her voice quavering anew. A mother's grief again filled her eyes. "Like your mama, my Jessie has also gone to Heaven to dwell with the angels."
    This provoked a moan from Johnnie, suggesting he wasn't as witless as Meg named him. Once more, the youth stroked Jessimond's face, tears now rolling unheeded down his cheeks. Faucon eyed the odd man's hands. They were of a size with his own.
    "Who is he to you?" he asked Amelyn.
    Before replying, the leper restored her oversized hood to its rightful place, concealing the disease eating her alive. When she looked up at him, all that was exposed of her face was the end of her nose, her chin and jaw, and they were cast in light shadow.
    "Another unwanted child of Wike," she murmured bitterly, then continued in a stronger voice. "He is my half-brother, the son of Meg's sister Martha, who married my father when they were both widows facing their later years."
    Amelyn shook her head. "She was a good woman, Martha. Too good for this hateful place, I say. Look how she welcomed our Lord's gift of a child, one who came long after she thought her womb capable of harboring life. Despite that her son was damaged by coming too early, Martha cherished him so dearly that she turned her back on our custom of leaving infants like Johnnie to die in some distant glade. Indeed, she stood fast, even when all of Wike demanded that she be shed of him.
    Amelyn sighed at that. "Much to my shame, I added my voice to theirs. I warned her that keeping such a babe might lead to more sorrow than joy for both of them. Would that I hadn't been right," she added at a whisper before continuing. "Instead, Martha told us all that the Lord had given her Johnnie and she would raise him, vowing to do so at no cost to any of us."
    Arms crossed, Faucon nodded to show he understood. Many a crippled or halfwit babe ended their short lives in some far-flung or hidden place, especially in communities as small as this one. Trapped in inherited bondage to this place, even the able-bodied among these villeins barely survived each year with lives and limbs intact. They could ill afford to carry the burden of an unproductive mouth. Not that it was much different in wealthier places. Even the grandest of God's holy houses were conservative about how many useless mouths they sheltered.
    "It's one thing to promise that her child will cost them nothing, but another to manage it," Faucon said as Edmund made his way around the well to stand beside him. "I'm surprised more wasn't done to thwart her. What of your father? Did he have no influence over her? What did he think of bearing the cost of a damaged babe?"
    "My sire died before his son was born," she told Faucon, "and Johnnie was his only surviving male heir. Because of that, no one could gainsay Martha. At least, not so early in Johnnie's life, in case we were wrong about him," she added. "But Martha kept her word. She sold every bit of my father's chattel to keep her precious son fed. When there was nothing more to sell, it fell to me to see to our daily meals.
    "If only I hadn't become like this," Amelyn touched her hood to indicate her