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Bara was familiar with fortune's fickle whims. One could even say she was born at the bosom of Lady Luck, and torn away by ill winds, if one bothered to say anything about her at all. Not now, at least, the forgotten child of a disgraced house she barely remembered and the good people in the square had never known.
She'd been in Troskowitz for days.
It had been quiet for days, too. The pillory was empty, even the tavern across the way oddly muted, like a shroud had been cast over it. The folk came, the folk drank, the folk went home. Her stomach remained a ravenous thing. Patience, she whispered, hand drifting to her belly as if that could stop it from consuming itself. Pressure sharpened the ache. That was new.
She had a groschen to her name, tucked up against her breast, a secret. She had considered long before now making the short but exhausting trek down to the trader's for a bit of bread — Betty at the tavern would beat her with a broom before she let Bara cross her threshold — but she, despite everything, wasn't that desperate yet. She held, instead, the sort of calm she'd imagined men about to hang felt. At least, she had thought that years ago, before she'd seen a single hanging.
To a one, they'd pissed themselves before, and shat themselves after. That was unlikely, in her case, unless a fever took her.
Two young men lurched into the square.
It was still early, but they were already drunk, from what little she could see of them with the pillory in the way. No. Not drunk, as the first and then the second stumbled into proper view. They just dragged themselves like they'd been whipped for hours. The one in the lead, slightly taller and brown-haired, was in considerably better shape, even so. His friend — she couldn't tell what color his hair had been. Perhaps blond, if she squinted past the muck. He looked wretched, and his eyes were the only bit of color in his face behind the pallor and the dirt both, but as he glanced tiredly around the square —gaze sliding right over Bara, of course — she saw they were a pale blue.
The other man stopped at the entrance to the tavern, gesturing to his friend. Bara prided herself on her observation, if little else, and she recognized the hardened lines of muscle, built up over years, though recently over-stretched by starvation, or a fever, perhaps. Whoever these two were, they weren't always beggars. The straggler perked up when he saw the tavern sign, throwing his shoulders back and striding in with all the cockiness of someone who wasn't covered in shit.
Bara couldn't see much from her spot of the moment, but she could hear plenty. Quiet, for the moment, but as the afternoon lengthened and more people piled into the tavern, the tension in her limbs grew and grew. Something was about to happen. It started with Betty, snapping something she didn't quite catch, then men yelling; an argument that rose and rose until at last someone threw the first punch and the brawl was on. She inched to the right and leaned, rewarded with a decent view of the melee spilling further into the yard and threatening the street. As she suspected, the two strangers were in the middle of it, along with the baliff's boy and his friends, and she was surprised to find the brown-haired fellow was holding his own. He knocked out Vuytek with a feint followed by a jab to the temple, before his attention was drawn to his friend, surrounded by three of the locals. He waded in without hesitation.
She watched, fascinated. Even if nothing came of it — and she had a feeling something would — this was the first entertainment she'd had in a while, and it was free. She did wince when fists connected, she wasn't heartless. But no blades or clubs had come out yet, and someone had dragged Vuytek out of the way, so there wasn't too much danger.
Maybe they'd end up in the pillory? She didn't envy anyone in that position, but it would draw a crowd. A crowd she could use right about now.
Her hopes were answered by the pounding of feet to her left, as the Rathaus next door finally caught the scent of troublemaking. Bailiff Thrush and his guards stormed in, dragging the brown-haired stranger off of Svatya and pinning him to the ground. He went limp immediately, but the other man kept struggling until he was dazed by a cuff to the head.
Oh, she had to hear this. She rose from her beggar's kneel, bones creaking. She was lucky— they only protested due to her age. An older woman would have broken something, meatless joints grinding her to dust as a pestle in the mortar. She crossed behind the pillory, careful not to draw the attention of the guards. God knew they ignored her, as usual. More fortune.
Settling down again on the green grass between the platform and the tavern wall, she was in the perfect position to overhear the Bailiff scolding Svatya. His ire, cutting and burning in equal measure, lay in the belief that his son had been defeated too neatly.
Bara's lips quirked. She'd known many people of a kind with Bailiff Thrush, knew the only escape was literal.
Svatya, for his part, spared the strangers a harsher punishment, proclaiming loudly that it wasn't their fault. Perhaps he had been knocked about more than she thought, or he simply admired their prowess, but Thrush sighed and relented, sentencing them to a day in the pillory and dragging his son home by the ear.
Svatya hid his grin as the Bailiff marched him away, but Bara saw. Bara saw a lot of things.
Ah, to still have parents to rebel against.
Bara remained, watching unabashed as the strangers were divested of all but their smallclothes and clapped into the pillory. Brown-Hair — and she was more and more convinced that he had a story far beyond her knowing — cooperated; his friend sneered, but quieted down with roll of his sky-blue eyes at a glare from his friend, and a firm shake from the guard who had to handle him.
Word spread. A crowd, a blessed crowd, formed. Bara put on her most pathetic look and winced internally at every rotten vegetable thrown at the pair even as groschen fell into her hands. It lasted until the sun kissed the horizon goodnight and even Vuytek, who had been particularly vicious with his taunts and produce once he'd come round, wandered home.
Bara waited until the last door shut and she could hear the crickets down at the pond by the butcher's. She waited still, until she was certain no one else would come, then she pressed her hand to her breast where her lucky groschen had laid quietly and blessedly this whole time, a hard, cold reminder of luck's changing winds. The rest were in her pouch, which she used as a lumpy pillow once she had curled up in the grass right where she had been. She'd be up before dawn anyhow, as soon as the first movement came from the pillory.
She had to thank them, after all.