"What's your name?" she asked, happy to have someone willing to carry on a friendly conversation.
"I'm Shamed. And I know who you are, already. Everyone does, my Lady." He left her.
She held out the broccoli and gave a little squeal when Bramble lipped it from her hand, almost sucking in her fingers with it. As he munched she reached out tentatively and touched his quivering neck.
"Gaylor says I'm a dirty animal," Repentance whispered to the beast as she moved her hand around and scratched his forehead. "In truth I'd rather live in the barn than the palace. I'd rather live with the dumb animals who can't tell the difference between an overlord and a lowborn."
Yaks, she quickly decided, would be better company than overlords, on any trail in the swamp. Better than lowborns, too, for that matter. Bramble was calm and kind and he listened to everything she said, staring at her with his big round eyes. Even when she told him about how she often thought dangerous things in her heart, he didn't judge her. "But sometimes those things slip out of my mouth before I can snatch them back," she whispered. "Like when I yelled at the king. I never plan such things." The yak lowered his shaggy head and offered a sympathetic grunt.
"And this time I really need to plan," she said. "But whichever way I look at it, I'm doomed. If the king finds out I've been talking to the prince and I haven't told him about it, he'll banish me, or worse. But if I tell him the prince is threatening him, and the prince finds out I told …." She sighed and leaned her forehead against Bramble's neck.
Repentance was still worried when Generosity woke her the following morning.
She let the maid's chatter fly by without paying attention. But it did little good for her to worry over what the prince and Providence had planned for her. If the prince was determined to kill the king, she couldn't do anything about it. She had only one hope. She might as well focus on trying to keep the king calm and alive and let the rest of it go.
And if Providence did turn out to be real? All she ever got from him was a frown. So she might as well let him go, too. She didn't need to bother with him at all. She would make her own way.
"And Merit has been eyes-only for Favor ever since." Generosity's words broke into her thoughts.
"Why would she be eyes-only for him? Why should slaves bother falling in love? They can't button."
"Of course they can button. What's to stop them? Especially since the king owns them both. He's always willing to have his slaves button. Says they make better workers when they're happy. And he never sells one button mate without the other."
Repentance turned this over in her mind.
"What if they don't belong to the same owner?"
Generosity blushed. "It's still possible. One owner has to be willing to buy the other slave, is all. And the other owner has to be willing to sell. It happens."
Repentance studied her maid's pink face. "You're in love?"
"Not in love." She shook her head, but she quickly followed her denial with a smile. "However, there is a mighty handsome farmer who's been coming around the last couple of months."
Repentance jerked a little, and her heart did a little stutter-step. Generosity was in love with Sober?
And why not? He was handsome. And Generosity was pretty and sweet.
The knowledge that Generosity was eyes-only for Sober, or heading that way, did nothing to dampen Repentance's excitement at the thought of seeing him at noon. Generosity could button him for all she cared. She only wanted him for a friend.
She hummed her way through the morning's workload, but put on a sad face at the lunch table.
"What ails you, child?" Cook asked as she slid a potato cake onto her plate. "You've not said a word since you sat down."
Repentance liked the cook. Spare with words and generous with food, she seemed to enjoy her job. She'd failed at the buttoning, as had every other woman on the mountain. Well, almost every one, anyway. Provocation had come up as a baby. Her parents had escaped from their village. They'd been quickly recaptured and hanged for runners.
"It's not like you to not greet me in my own kitchen, child," Cook scolded.
"I'm sorry," Repentance said. "I'm not feeling well today." She was determined to stay for the servants' lunch so she could see Sober, and that meant she wouldn't be going to Skoch's lecture that day.
"I hope," Skoch said from his seat across from her, "that your illness will not deprive me of your company in the schoolroom this afternoon."
He hadn't said anything about her behavior the day before. Still, she didn't like him. He reminded her of a slug—no backbone. No convictions. He believed in Providence but not really. He thought it was wrong to keep slaves, but he'd never say so in front of another overlord. She tried to glare at him but one look at his pink face and shy eyes drove the meanness out of her. Hating a weak person, even if he was an overlord, wasn't all that much fun. "I'm afraid I won't be able to make it today," she said. "I'm not feeling well enough. I hope you'll excuse me."
"Rest and get well, then," he said. "And I, since I shall have no students, shall visit the market."
"No students?" Provocation asked. "Where are the young princes today?"
"They no longer attend school with me in the afternoons. Their father is hiring another tutor."
Provocation lifted an eyebrow. "How long has this been in effect, and why wasn't I notified?"
Skoch turned bright red and began his stammering. "I believe Monday was their last d-d-day."
"Monday," she said fixing a glare on Repentance. "That would be the day you started. What did you do? Call them warthogs?"
Repentance stared guiltily at her potato cakes.
"She did no s-s-such thing," Skoch stammered out in her defense. "They refused to sit in the s-s-same room with her. She d-d-didn't say a word."
"We'll see what the king has to say about this. That's what." Provocation muttered.
"No!" Repentance dropped her potato cake. "Please don't say anything." The less the king knew about what the prince was doing, the better.
"I most certainly shall. He has the right to know what goes on in his own palace."
Piggetty, jiggetty, light the fuse.
Paggetty, jaggetty, close eyes and choose.
This or that? Both ways I lose.
That children's sing-song rattles in my head.
One man is deadly. The other will be dead.
~Repentance Atwater, Mountain Journal
Chapter 19
The others left, and Repentance, worrying about Provocation stirring up trouble but not being able to do one cursed thing about it, moved over to the high-backed wing chair in front of the kitchen fire. She took a book from her pocket and opened it, pretending to read. She wasn't reading, though. She was praying—her foot falling upon the well-worn path, irrespective of her recent decision to disregard Providence. She was praying that the king would leave the prince alone.
Cook put a cup of hot wine on the table at her elbow. "Good for the gray mood," she said.
Repentance reached into her pocket and pulled out her three gray buttons. They felt cool and smooth in her hand. She stirred them in her palm. She was used to gray moods.
Ensconced in the big chair in the dim, back corner of the kitchen, she heard the kitchen door swish open behind her. Several people entered, laughing and talking.
She heard Sober's voice among the crowd. "Cook! Friday is my second favorite day of the week. Your potato cakes are unmatched on the mountain."
His voice drove out all thought of the king and the prince.
She remembered his earnest face at the slave market. And his comical expression on Monday, when he winked at her.
"What's your first favorite day, then?" Cook asked Sober.
"Monday of course, when you slip me a mug of your onion and potato soup to take in the vegetable wagon with me."
Several people laughed.
Repentance started to rise from her chair to join the others at the table.
"Good t
hing the palace uses so many potatoes, then." It was Generosity's voice. "And you have to come twice a week."
Why she did it, Repentance didn't know, but she settled back into the chair so she wouldn't be seen. She had a vague idea that she needed to listen for a minute to see how Sober would answer Generosity.
Maybe he would button Generosity and live at the palace.
Her heart beat with a funny little stutter again.
No, it didn't.
She was being silly. She could never button—she was the king's concubine—and Sober and Generosity would make a good match.
A young man spoke next. "Unfortunate for you that you aren't required on Wednesdays, though. Cook's pork pie would spoil you for any other meal."
"We'll have to talk Cook into buying more vegetables so he can come up Wednesdays, too," Generosity said, with what sounded like a flirty tone.
"I'd like to come more, anyway," Sober said. "I have a friend who lives here now. I'd like to come visit her."
Repentance flushed with pleasure. He was her friend. She'd never had friends.
"And who might this friend be?" a man asked.
"The new maid. She's from my village."
Plates and silverware scraped and clanked.
"We have no new maids," Cook said.
"You do. I saw her Monday."
"I think I'd know. Only fresh belly I've had to feed for quite some time is Master's new concubine. Oh ... she's sitting right—"
"This was no concubine," Sober said. "She was in the washroom scrubbing suncloths."
Several people laughed.
"That'd be the new concubine," Generosity said. "She's a bold one. Scolded the king for killing his button mate. Called him a warthog. To his face. I do not jest."
Cook said, "She's sitting—"
"The king killed his button mate?" Sober asked.
"The new concubine thought he was in his two-hundred-and-fiftieth year," said a male voice.
More laughter.
Repentance shrank down in her chair, her cheeks burning.
A woman said, "And he let her off easy. For punishment all she has to do is to wash the suncloths on the fifth floor. But that's enough to bring the fine Lady Arrogance—erm, I mean Lady Repentance—down a rung or two on the ladder of self-importance."
Repentance stiffened in her chair.
"That's enough," Cook said.
"She's not arrogant," Generosity said. "And she'll get all those suncloths washed, too. You watch. She's a tough one, is the king's new concubine."
"Repentance is the king's whore?" Sober asked in a dazed voice.
"Hush," Cook said. "She's a slave same as you and me. We don't get to choose our duties."
"But she's different from most," Sober said. "She did have a choice. She chose to come up the mountain."
"How did she do that?" Generosity asked.
"She refused to button."
Still more laughter.
"She was promised to me, and she refused me at the ceremony."
"She never, Sober Marsh," Generosity said. "Lady Repentance is too smart. And you're too handsome. You'll have to come up with a better story if you want to have a joke on us."
"Well, either Lady Repentance is not as smart as you think, or I am not as handsome," Sober said with a bitter laugh.
Repentance squeezed the buttons she held as if she were squeezing the life out of him. You are not as handsome, Sober Marsh.
"No jest, Sober?" Generosity asked.
"Hush now," Cook said. "You don't know what you're about. She didn't choose her job. She's the king's possession like the rest of us. Next one to speak a word about that child loses his lunch."
Repentance rose. "Thank you, Cook," she said, "but I don't need you to make excuses for me."
A collective gasp rose from the servants.
Repentance continued speaking to Cook, "Sober is right. I turned him down. It stings him, but the wound will heal in time, I'm sure."
She walked out the door, her head high and her back straight.
But inside, in the privacy of her own chest, her heart trembled.
She ran down the hall, chased by the memory of their ugly laughter. It seemed that no matter where she went, people would laugh at her and hate her. She wasn't one of the servants—she was lifted above them by her position. But she wasn't an overlord, either. To the overlords she was no better than a yak.
She was nothing.
She fit nowhere.
Sober's words cut her more than all the others. She thought he had forgiven her. She thought he was her friend. His bitter words swirled through her mind like so much fog, dampening her spirits and choking her with gray hopelessness. Once in the safety of her room, she collapsed on her bed in tears.
After a time, the tears washed away the dark, moldy feeling of despair that had seeped into her heart. She dried her face on her blanket.
Sober was nothing to her. She'd never loved him. She didn't care what he thought of her.
But he was her only link to home. The only one who knew what growing up in Hot Springs was like. And he had pronounced that ancient blessing at the slave market. And his face ….
She sat up. She would just have to get him out of her mind.
Taking her parchment pad from her smock pocket she sat in the chair by the windows where the sunlight streamed into the room. She would write a poem. She looked around her room, thinking.
A glint of gold winked at her from the cityscape carved into the wall across from her. She rose to investigate. It was the gold roof of the palace, shining in the sun. She looked over the city, which spread below the palace in ever-widening semi-circles. Several blocks from the palace was the slave market with its frozen fountain in the square. And its swing frame. She leaned closer. There were even little bodies on the frame. Little, naked, slave bodies. A sob broke out of her. How dare they? How dare they make the murder of slaves into art?
She stormed into the bathing room and got a glass of water, then she flicked drops onto the wall and used the handle of her hairbrush to gouge at the carving until the bodies disappeared into lumps of mottled ice.
Standing back, she studied the effect. Surely no one would notice. It was only a small part of a great big map of the city of Harthill.
A map of the city ... she searched the wall carefully. A few blocks from the slave market was a tall building with a red and orange flag at that top. Lord Carrull's house stood as she remembered it, bordered on the front by a main street and on the side by an alley. The map was accurate, then. Maybe she wouldn't always be a slave. One day she might run. She'd wait until Comfort and the boys were brought up. She'd talk the king into buying them. Please, Providence, let him live that long. And then they would leave. All of them together.
She closed her eyes and pictured the cityscape in her head trying to map out a route from the palace to the city wall.
She woke to the sound of Generosity opening the wardrobe door. The slant of the sun told her it was late afternoon. She'd fallen asleep on the floor, trying to memorize the map on her wall.
She quickly slipped her parchment book into her pocket. "I was lying in a patch of sunshine, and I fell asleep."
"Yes, my Lady."
For the first time since Repentance had come to the palace, the maid was silent as she worked. She bathed Repentance, and dressed her with hardly a word. By the time Generosity got to her hair, Repentance had had enough of her sulking.
They had been talking and laughing about her behind her back. She was the one who should be mad.
"What is it, Generosity?" Repentance asked. "Do you intend to never speak to me again? Are you thinking to punish me for refusing to button your handsome farmer?"
"No, my Lady. Not that. It's never my place to punish you."
"But you'd like to."
"Not at all. I don't have an opinion on the matter. I'm sure you had your reasons for turning Sober down and taking him away from his family."
"If you have no
opinion, why do you refuse to speak to me?" And why did she feel a need to mention that Repentance had deprived Sober of his family?
"I thought you might be angry with me."
"I am and I should be. You all laughed about my thinking the king was so old."
Generosity hung her head. "I am sorry, my Lady. I didn't mean anything by what I said. We didn't know you were there. We weren't trying to hurt you. None of us."
"Lady Arrogance is a nickname given to one you like, then?"
"Biased fancies herself to have a sharp, wit," Generosity whispered. "I'm sorry, you heard that. None of them really think you're arrogant."
"Like it or not, we have to see each other every day. We might as well speak to one another. I forgive you for laughing at me. And ... thank you for sticking up for me with Biased."
"Oh, my Lady, I'm that happy that you have forgiven. I was thinking about how hard it would be if you were the kind to hold a grudge, but I was sure that you weren't. The others said there would be no living with you, but Sober said—"
"I forgive you. But I never said I forgave Sober. I don't ever want you to speak the name of Sober Marsh to me again. Please. I don't care to think any more about your handsome farmer."
Generosity blushed. "If you were to ask my opinion, I'd say he's not my handsome farmer. I do believe the reason he was so shocked and upset to find out you are the king's concubine is that he is still, in his own heart, anyway, very much your handsome farmer, my Lady."
Repentance scoffed. "But then, I didn't ask your opinion on the matter. A good thing, too, for you are not seeing clearly. You've gotten used to seeing Merit and Favor eyes-only for one another, and now you think you're seeing the same devotion everywhere."
"Time may bear me out, my Lady. I'm content to wait and see."
Sunday, after lunch, she was walking to the schoolroom, looking at her feet, lost in thought. Sober would be delivering his potatoes and Cook would slip him a mug of soup, but he wouldn't be eating lunch at the palace, anyway. He'd not be eating with Generosity. Not that Repentance cared who he ate with.
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