The old woman began to tremble violently. “Makes terrible! The monks are tell us of this dogs, these dogs, when we are at the, the monk casta.”
“Monas—” began Vytautas fussily, but she waved a hand at him.
“Yes, yes, with the monks, they tell us stay at Osbra’s, the dogs to protect us. How can people not be so fearend, frighten, if even these big dogs is, are—to dead, to death? Killet, are killet, and their bellies slashet open like fishes! I am frighten to ever leave this casta!” The tiny frame was shaking perceptibly, and she seemed near tears in her terror.
Vytautas seemed alarmed by such extreme emotion, and he stepped close to her and said something in a soothing tone in their own language, and with an arm about her shoulder, took her wrist with his other hand and surreptitiously felt there for the echo of her heartbeat, while darting a look at Molly that was both a warning and an appeal.
But Lady Svajone broke free and tottered forward; she embraced Molly and, as she looked up into Molly’s face, she sighed and visibly relaxed. A smile overspread her face and she said, breathless, “I am happiness that you have come to me, my dear, for happiness that you are safe and also because I am to be safe, to be feel safe, with you near.”
Molly, as was her instinct, put her arms around the little woman and made comforting noises, and indeed the Lietuvan was so small that she seemed a child in Molly’s embrace. At last she stepped back with another sigh. At once Azuolas was beside her again, ready to bear her up if she began to fall.
“It’s happy I am to see yourselves as well,” said Molly, “and it is well that you parted with the masons at the ford. We ourselves went south, and we found . . . some indication that the masons, the same that set out with you, that they were after being killed as well, and by the jaws of this beast, and others as well, nearer to this castle. We were after thinking that you, also—well, that your bread was baked; that yourselves were after perishing with the rest.”
The old woman put her hand out and Azuolas smoothly slipped an arm under it for support. But now that her first panic had passed, she maintained her composure to a great degree.
“Makes terrible,” she said quietly. “They are going them, they are walking them to the house of God, to builden in the house of God. Terrible, terrible.” Again she put a hand to her throat. “I am frighten that it follows you here to this casta. We will be killet, killened, like those at the inn.”
A shadow passed over Molly’s face as the specter of the inn arose again, and Hob himself thought: Margery.
“It’s safe enough that you are here,” said Molly.
“But the people are killet at the inn, what was so safe.”
Molly gestured toward the hall. “Consider how much higher are these walls than the inn’s, and they being thicker as well.”
And with pats and murmured assurances, Molly and Vytautas between them managed to calm the old woman down. Behind them, Gintaras kept a stern and wary eye on the little page Hubert, who stood fidgeting nearby, a bit too close to Lady Svajone for the esquire’s liking.
Presently they took their leave, and continued their slow progress down the hall, and Molly’s party was free to continue.
* * *
WITH A BOW TO MOLLY, Hubert turned and led them up the hall; at the rear came Jack, walking easily with the chest. Toward the front of the hall a curtained alcove led to a turret stairwell. They wound their way up and up. The shallow wedge-shaped treads of stone were worn a bit where others had gone before; all noises were amplified by the stone cylinder the stairway was set in; midway, an arrow slit admitted a fitful stream of cold air.
They came out into a corridor. One side was stone, with windows to the outside; the shutters in these windows shifted and groaned as the bitter wind sought entrance. The hallway was noticeably cooler than the great hall below, with its two fireplaces. Hubert led the way past a sturdy oaken door, stopping before another such. He opened this and stood aside for Molly and Nemain to enter.
This was a solar, a private apartment within the castle. An outer room, and a smaller inner room with a curtained bed-closet. This was of oak, with a feather mattress, sheets, pillows, quilts: Hob marveled at such luxury. Two could sleep in it, secure from drafts and warm by reason of shared body heat. Molly pointed and Jack brought the chest into this room, depositing it with a thump.
Hob was looking about at the rooms: walls covered with rough white plaster, a small fireplace in the outer room and a somewhat larger one in the inner room, and here came two men in the ubiquitous Blanchefontaine white-on-murrey livery, bearing wood-and-leather-strap cots and simple bedding, for Jack and Hob to use in the outer room. Behind them came two men struggling with a heavy wooden tub lined with cloth and filled with steaming water, which they placed at Molly’s direction in the inner chamber. When they had gone, Nemain closed the door to the inner room, and Hubert was left with Hob and Jack, who threw himself down on one of the cots without any bedding and let out a gusty sigh.
Hubert turned to Hob. “Let me show you where the garderobe may be found, and I pray you tell your mistress, for I will soon be needed elsewhere.”
He led Hob out into the corridor and along to the garderobe, away at the corridor’s end. This privy was down a short hall that led into the east wall of the keep, ending in a turret room that overhung a sheer drop: behind and below the castle ran a small river valley. The page showed Hob the box where straw was kept, to clean himself with.
As they returned along the hall, Hubert halted before a stone basin in a recess. He showed Hob how to work a valve at the end of a pipe that sprang from the back of the recess, like a branch growing through a wall. A gout of water sprang forth into the basin, swirled away into a hole at the bottom; Hob stepped back in astonishment. Hubert laughed. “There’s a tank above and water brought up from the well and down from the roof cisterns to feed it. You may draw water to wash yourself, or to drink.” There was an air of proprietary delight in showing this unsophisticated visitor a feature of castle life, but the young page’s open and friendly manner drew on the unforced camaraderie of boys, and Hob could take no offense.
Drawing Hob by the sleeve away from the recess, Hubert asked, “Do you not have such, in your castles away in Ireland?” and not waiting for an answer, rattled on: “How does it come that two queens travel with so tiny a party? Are they outlawed? Have you come with them from Ireland? What is it like to sail on the water?”
Hob looked desperately along the passage toward the door of Molly’s solar. “I, we . . . ” he stammered. Just then another page, perhaps fifteen years of age, appeared at the end of the corridor.
“Hubert!” he called; he made urgent gestures and turned to go back.
“I pray you will excuse me,” said Hubert, and bowed prettily, and hastened off after his older fellow, leaving Hob to make his way back to the solar.
* * *
SOON AFTER HOB HAD RETURNED, the inner door opened and Molly called Jack in to carry the tub out to the outer room, which he did handily, carrying the full tub that two men had wrestled with, puffing only a little, and spilling only a cup or so. Molly shut the door again after him.
Jack bathed first, washing himself with a soldier’s practical efficiency. He rose, dripping like a dog, and accepted a dry cloth from Hob; he toweled his thick locks with one hand while pointing to the now-cooling water. Hob threw off his clothes and bathed hastily while Jack dressed in livery that Molly had given him. It had been a while since they had had the luxury of bathing, and Hob was surprised to find a faint suggestion of down at his groin. The water began to take on a chill, though, and in any case Jack was now dressed and gesturing for him to hurry.
There was a set of livery for Hob as well, a little large, but serviceable. Over hose of green went an overshirt of watchet-colored wool; to Hob’s delight there was a leather belt dyed a rich blue, with a gilt buckle. Hob had never seen these garments, which presumably Molly had produced from the trunk that Jack carried in; the occasion for the
m had not arisen in his time of traveling with Molly and her troupe.
The door to the inner room creaked open, and Molly came out, and Nemain behind her. Hob stared at them in wonder. Molly had her mass of gray hair coiled up against her neck, and a white veil floated down over it, not really concealing the silvery gleams beneath. One end of the veil ran under her chin and back up, knotted at her temple so that it hung down again as a tassel. Her gown, rather longer and more flowing than currently fashionable, was of a night-blue silk, worked in silver-gray thread that formed a border of the Irish endless-knot design, the coils writhing and crossing all the way around the neckline. Molly’s hips, robust and shapely, were girt about with a white leather zone; from this were slung her ring-pommel dagger in its sheath, her keys, her pouch.
And here behind her was Nemain, gowned in woodland green, boyish hips cinched with a cloth-of-gold zone; her fiery hair, new-washed, had been left uncovered, but bound about with a cloth-of-gold fillet. Hob hardly recognized the mischievous playmate of last summer.
Molly took Hob by the arm. “Hob, a chuisle, do you mind that you told me that your old priest was after teaching you your manners at table?”
“He showed me, Father Athelstan, he showed me somewhat, Mistress, but—”
“You must act my page, lad; do you cut and serve for Nemain and myself, for I have told them that we are two queens, and we in exile, and you and Jack all our retinue, and one must look these Normans in the eye, bold as a badger, else they’ll try to trample you into the earth.” She gave his arm a little squeeze and turned away.
Nemain was eyeing him critically. She reached out, tugged at his overshirt where it was bunched beneath the leather belt, plucked a thread from the shoulder.
“Are we ready, then?” asked Molly.
“A moment, seanmháthair, till I find the garderobe,” said Nemain.
“I can show you,” said Hob.
They walked along the corridor to the garderobe. Hob waited outside, suddenly embarrassed, and surprised at his embarrassment. In the greenwood Nemain would go behind the nearest bush, and talk with him the while, but here things seemed different. Nemain seemed different, and when she emerged he felt strangely awkward with her; quickly he turned and started back.
They came to the fountain, and he showed her where the water came out of the wall. He was a bit disappointed when she was not as impressed as he had been: she had been in castles before, and he had not.
The two walked slowly back along the corridor toward the solar, and Hob asked in a low voice, “Why did Herself tell them she is a queen?”
“It’s a queen that she is in truth, away in Ireland, though her people are scattered, and so am I a queen.”
Hob began to laugh, but his laughter faltered when he saw her face, and trailed away.
“But she is just Mistress Molly!”
“She is Queen Maeve, away in the west of Erin.” Nemain paused a moment. “She’s never the great Queen Maeve, of course, who’s after dying a long time since, but she’s a queen of her own people, and in her own right, and so will I be, my mother being dead as she is, and my father.”
For a moment Hob was too surprised at all this to speak. Life with Molly’s troupe was a constant procession of revelations, and Nemain in particular often left him confused, but this was like suddenly stumbling upon an old Roman road in the midst of thick forest. Questions rose to his lips, so many that his thoughts became too tangled to choose one. Finally: “Who—who was the great Queen Maeve?” he asked plaintively.
“I’m just after telling you, she’s dying a long time since, and there’s many a night we’d hear the storytellers tell of her and her great war, and the boy that’s killing the great hound and taking its place, and didn’t he learn his warcraft from the woman called Shadows, and then he’s growing up and holding off Queen Maeve’s armies—you should ask Herself to tell you of it, I have no gift for it, and here we are and they waiting for us.”
And sure enough here was Molly just coming out of the solar with a page sent up to show them back to the hall, and Jack trailing behind in his new livery. Nemain went to walk with Molly, while Hob, his head whirling a little, fell in beside Jack. The page led them to the turret stairway down to the hall.
The party trooped after the page, down the winding staircase once more, and into the hall, already filled with sound and scent and light: Hob had never seen so many candles and torches in one place. The tables ran lengthwise down the hall, but at the hall’s head, near the great fireplace, was a low dais, one step up, with a large table set crosswise upon it, draped in cloth: here sat Lady Isabeau, the mareschal and castellan Sir Balthasar and his wife, Dame Aline, a handful of lesser Blanchefontaine knights, the castle chaplain, and the castle’s guests.
Dame Aline, somewhat younger than her husband, was a short, sturdily built woman with fair hair beneath a white lace coif, small square hands, a merry giggle. She had a mask of light freckles across her face that on feast days she hid beneath a powder of rice mixed with dried white rose petal: a faint scent of rose hung about her even tonight, when she wore no powder. Her cheeks were full, making Hob think at first of a squirrel with acorns in its cheeks. He thought her plain, especially next to the ivory perfection of Lady Isabeau. As the evening wore on, though, she seemed more appealing to him, by reason of her blithe chatter, her delight in each jest, and above all the contrast she made with the dire ominous bulk of her husband. He sat beside her and cut her meat, as was polite: men cut for women, the younger for the elder, the lesser for the greater. When he had done, she placed her hand on his arm affectionately; she smiled in his face. Her rounded cheek, her easy laugh, lent her a childlike prettiness, and Hob wondered that she had no fear of the sinister castellan, who made even the tough-as-gristle sergeant Ranulf uneasy.
Beside Lady Isabeau was a seat left vacant for Sir Jehan, Sieur de Blanchefontaine. Sir Jehan was still somewhere out in the howling blizzard with a small hunting party, and from the distracted air with which Lady Isabeau continually looked away down the hall toward the entrance, Hob guessed there was some concern for his safety.
Molly and Nemain were shown to seats at this table, and Hob to a bench behind it, set along the eastern wall, where the pages serving at table waited in a row, watching carefully to see if they might be wanted to fill a cup, cut meat, bring towel and water that their patrons might clean their hands between courses. One was the fifteen-year-old, whose name proved to be Giles. The little page Hubert was there as well, and attached himself to Hob, for which Hob was grateful, for his memory of procedure was quite sketchy. He confided as much to Hubert, explaining that they had been long on the road, and he feared that he might shame himself and his ladies by a misstep in his serving.
“Would you like me to guide you in attending your ladies?” asked Hubert, the thought of himself as a guide to his new and somewhat older friend plainly appealing to him.
“But yes, if it please you,” said Hob, dredging up some Norman courtesies from Father Athelstan’s lessons.
Hubert indicated that Hob should follow his example. From a sideboard the page took a little ewer of water and a small shallow basin. He took a cloth from a pile of them and spread it on his shoulder. Then he went up to Lady Isabeau, gave a little bow, and held the basin out before her. She put her hands over the basin and Hubert poured water sparingly over them, catching the overflow in the basin. Deftly placing the ewer in the partially filled basin, he whisked the cloth from his shoulder and held it out for Lady Isabeau to dry her hands. With another little bow, he retreated a few paces before turning round.
“Now you—quickly, your ladies are waiting,” said Hubert, turning Hob toward the sideboard where a pile of towels, a set of ewers and basins, stood waiting. Hob took up ewer, basin, cloth, and went to Molly first. It was more awkward than it seemed, pouring just so much, contriving not to let the cloth droop into the basin, struggling with the feeling that Nemain was laughing at him in her thoughts, and perhaps the rest of
the company was as well. When he came to serve her he dared not look her in the face for fear of being mocked, or made to laugh; instead he kept his eyes cast down, concentrating on the task.
For a while thereafter Hob was caught up in the whirl of attending Molly and Nemain: a white broth of coneys demanded the setting out of silver spoons and the cutting of sops, small pieces of bread for dipping; fresh trenchers were needed as bowls and tureens of turnips, salted olives, frumenty, fritters, and forcemeat in a galantine made their way from the kitchen, with great joints of boar and venison that must be transferred, portion by portion, to Molly’s plate or Nemain’s. Hob would arrive at the table right after the server had placed a platter smoking with big cuts of meat on it, draw his belt knife with his right hand, grasp a chunk of the boar or venison with his left hand, and hack it free. Then quickly onto one of the plates with the portion, and there cut it further into pieces small enough for Molly or Nemain to eat with her fingers, or from the point of a knife.
Some of these table duties he knew from Father Athelstan’s instruction, some he guessed from the circumstances, but much of what he did was prompted by hissed instructions and nudges from Hubert. By the end of the dinner Hob felt a real affection for the little page, who seemed only concerned with helping him.
From the pages’ bench Hob had a view past the high table, to the long hall beyond; at the central table, a few yards down the hall, he could see Jack, sitting with Ranulf and the crew that had escorted them to the castle: Roger, Olivier, the soldier called Goscelin or Joscelin, and the others. Hob could hear everything that was said at the high table, but the noise from the long tables down the hall came to him only as a confused rumble.
Beyond Ranulf’s squad was a section of table occupied by a group of perhaps a dozen men: dour, fair men with light eyes, bearded, two with long drooping mustachios. Hob had seen them before, at the monastery: Lady Svajone’s Lietuvan grooms and wagoners and servants. Like the two esquires, they kept to themselves: taciturn men, isolated in any case by their inability to understand the language spoken around them.
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