Mastiff (37 page)

Farmer shook his head. “It’s no good. The boy’s gone.”

The three of us flinched, as if we were on the same string.

“The new people—that’s all the slavers I talked to called them, the new people—left early today. It was clear the captain of the rest of the train thought they were crazy, but the two women insisted, and they had the right to leave. They were in charge of the new people. They took guards and a few slaves with them, including a boy of the right age,” Farmer whispered. “They all came from Arenaver.”

Another large bell chimed.

“The main gate’s closed,” Tunstall said.

“Lads, Beka has to get cleaned up,” Sabine told them. “She’ll attract more attention from our hosts, and we don’t want that. We’ll talk later.”

“Tomorrow,” Tunstall said firmly. “They won’t let us go once the gate is closed. Tonight will be a chance to ask questions while folk eat and drink.”

“There’s an herb garden in back of the kitchens,” Farmer said. “Let’s meet there once the household is at morning prayers.” He looked at our faces. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Everyone is required to go. Let’s meet, and say we didn’t know we were expected at their worship.”

The men left us then, letting Lewyth into the room. “Hurry, Beka,” she said, taking me by the arm. “The maid will bring the uniform down to the bathhouse!”

I ordered Achoo to stay before Lewyth half pushed, half pulled me through the ladies’ solar, along the hall, and down yet another stairway. “I can walk on my own, my lady,” I said, gently tugging my arm from her hold.

“Oh, forgive me! It’s just that you don’t know the countess! If any of us are late to a meal, it’s ten strokes with the switch on the backs of our legs,” she explained. “If we’re wrinkled or our hair is mussed, it’s another ten strokes. My mother says she trains perfect ladies, but
I
think she just beats the spirit out of us.”

The air had gotten hotter and damper as we went further down. The door at the bottom landing was decorated with the familiar image of the Gentle Mother, a woman with her hands outstretched, a veil over her hair, her eye cast downward, her robe strained over a swollen belly. A jar, sheaves of wheat, and clusters of grapes lay around her. Lewyth bowed and opened the door. I bowed, too, since it is always a good idea to show respect to any god.

The steam that flowed over us was perfumed with lavender, which I do not like. Bath attendants came toward me with outstretched hands. “A maid will bring a fresh uniform for her,” Lewyth told them. “She has to be in the hall in time for the supper bell!”

The attendants nodded.

“I’ll see you at table, Beka!” Lewyth told me. Then she was gone, and the attendants were stripping my clothes and insignia, with its companion Dog tag, away. One of them yelped when she found the spiked strap in my braid. Save for that, they were silent and accomplished. Those women had me, including my hair, soaped and scrubbed and into the cold pool faster than I could have done it myself. At least I managed to climb out on my own as a slave rushed in with my clean uniform, spread it on a bench, and ran off before I could give her a coin. The bath women dried me and slipped my insignia and tag around my neck. One cleaned my nails while two dried much of my hair before they combed it out and re-braided it.

As they worked on me, I asked, “Did any of you deal with the lad called No-Skin?”

Three pairs of hands went still. Then, slowly, one mot, then another, took up the combing again. The other one got back to work on my hands, hesitant at first.

“He may have brought some of the oils and soaps we use on the ladies down here,” one of the mots said. She was behind me, dealing with my hair, so I could not see her face. “Quiet lad.”

“Very quiet,” said the other mot with a comb.

“Not even five,” the one who cleaned my nails added.

“What did he look like?” I asked them.

“Big for his age,” said the one who knew how old he was. “He said he was four, and he was more than three feet tall, like a lord’s son! Brown skin, like one of those southerners from Barzun. Black hair.”

“Dyed,” said the one who’d spoken first. “I could feel it was dyed.”

“Underfed. Scared of everything,” the second woman who combed my hair told me. “Everyone knew they were forbidden to whip him—that was enough to get us all talking—but he said there were other things they could do to hurt him.”

“Enough. He’s gone, and that’s all there is to that,” the first woman who combed my hair ordered. “We’ll never see him again and this one needs to get upstairs.” Hurriedly they coiled my damp braid and fixed it to my head with hairpins.

I was allowed to dress myself. Sabine had sent what was needful with that clean uniform, I suspected. I’d donned my loincloth and breast band and was about to pick up my tunic when the laundry maid presented me with a long-sleeved, thin silk shirt.

“For under the tunic, mistress,” she said quietly. She had not been one of those talking to me earlier. Now, as I handled the shirt, she and the bath attendants watched me. I wonder if they knew they’d each raised a shoulder, as if they expected me to strike one of them.

I wanted to refuse, but I remembered the tunics of the ladies-in-waiting. Despite the warming weather, all wore long sleeves. “Pox and murrain on these canting god-struck nobles,” I muttered, and I slid the silk shirt over my head and arms. Through it I could see the mots smile at each other, as if mayhap they agreed with me. I also stole a glimpse at their ankles. All wore an iron fetter. I did not doubt that they would be punished, just like the ladies, if I resisted the countess’s will any further.

How could such a harsh mistress follow any goddess of womanly kindness?

As I donned my clothes, I asked, “Mistresses, how long have you been slaves?”

They looked at one another. Finally the oldest of them said, “Long enough that to hear myself called mistress makes me want to laugh.” She was not even smiling. She continued to speak. “My father gave me to the count instead of the tax, the year of the blight on our wheat.” I recognized her voice. She had been the one to say how frightened Gareth had been.

“And you?” I asked one of the others.

“You have no business asking these things of us,
Dog
,” she said, all scorn. She was that first speaker, the one who’d recognized the hair dye. “And if you are late, it is us that’ll get the whip for being too slow. Come visit out in the main court once the music begins. That’s when the day’s stripes are dealt out.”

I said no more, but donned the rest of my clothes and held out my hands for my gear. The attendants had cleaned my leather and metal so the metal shone and the leather gleamed. My boots looked near as good as the day I had bought them.

My knives, my arm guards, my baton, none of them were on my belt, only my pouches. Even the knives hidden in my boots were missing. Only my smallest eating knife remained to me. “Where are my weapons?” I asked. “I had a few of them. And my dirty tunic, I need that.”

“Weapons will be sharpened, oiled, and taken to your room with your clothes,” the oldest attendant said. “Only nobles may carry weapons to supper. Your blades are safe. Under the count’s law, a slave with a killing blade is skinned with it. Your dirty uniform will be cleaned and returned to you before prayers in the morning.”

“You’re done,” the one who told me about the slaves’ penalties snapped. “Go.”

I confess, I spent a bit of the king’s coin giving each of them a copper noble. The king could spare it. Besides, I had saved all that money during those nights in the marsh, with no inns to put up at, and no meals to buy.

At last I ran up the stairs to the ground-floor landing. To my relief, Pounce was there.
It will be more amusing to sit with you
, he said as we passed through the door.
Though Achoo would not think so
.

The cats seemed to like you
, I told him as we walked down a short hall lined with expensive tapestries.

They are well enough
, Pounce said.
But I wish to stay with you. Your temper is rising
.

I have never been in so noble, or so wealthy, or so nasty a house before
, I replied.
I’m not accustomed to the way things are done
.

You are a commoner
, Pounce said flatly.
You do not get a choice about being accustomed, and if you are not more careful, you will not be given many more chances to
practice
being accustomed
.

We could see people moving beyond the archway ahead, and tables. We had found the great hall. A wave of noise struck us.

You’re right
, I admitted, hanging my head.
I will try harder
.

Which is more important, your pride or that boy?
Pounce wanted to know.

I will do more than try
, I told him crossly.
Leave me be. Can’t you tell when I’m downhearted?

You will never end in the slave cages, Beka
, Pounce said as we entered the dining hall.
Not you, not your family. You’re safe
.

Yet even the king’s son was not. How just was that?

The sight before me made me want to run back to the marsh. Slaves and servants, one fettered and wearing cheap tunics, the other clothed in colored and embroidered fabrics, ran to and fro. They were setting bowls, platters, and pitchers on the long tables that had been placed in rows down the length of the hall. Those who were already seated did not eat. Instead they talked to their neighbors or waited, looking around them. The dais now supported a long table covered in white linen. Branches of candles burned there. Those of us below the dais would make do with the torches on the walls.

Prince Baird’s men-at-arms were seated already, their uniform tunics as clean as could be expected for coves, most of whom had been hunting all day. I frowned when I saw Tunstall among them. Farmer sat across from Tunstall and the men-at-arms with an older cove and a younger one. They had the look of scribes or mages.

Wondering how I could fit among them when they were so snugly bracketed by other coves, I gave the hall another look and realized the pain of the night before me. All of the castle’s women, from the ladies-in-waiting on down to the lowliest of the serving maids, sat at the line of tables closest to the wall where I was. Half of another table, the next one, was also filling with mots, young and old. The remaining two and a half tables sat only coves.

I took a deep breath. I’d never seen anything like it.

Beka, take it with grace
, Pounce told me silently.
All of it. Remember you are here as Gershom’s representative. Do him proud
.

He must have known I was about to walk away. I released the breath I was holding.
But, Pounce, this is crackbrained
, I told him in the same manner.
How do they expect folk to
understand each other if they’re separated when they aren’t rushing about their work?

They aren’t expected to understand one another
, he replied.
The women will learn to flirt over a friend’s shoulder, instead of close. The men will see the women as distant and unknowable. Their friends will be only men. The women will see men as strong and unknowable. Their friends will be only women
.

The thought of Tunstall and Farmer, or Holborn, or Rosto, or even Lord Gershom, as strong and unknowable made me choke on a laugh. I held it back somehow. From the corner of my eye I could see Lady Lewyth bustling my way.

“Beka, wonderful, you’re here! I’ll show you where to sit,” she said, leading me along the row of benches closest to the wall. “I’d hoped to put you with your lady, but the countess has placed her on the dais, as a dinner partner for the prince.”

Thank you, Goddess, I thought. Surely it
was
the Great Mother Goddess who was in charge of seating arrangements. I loved sitting with my lady, but nothing short of chaining me to a plow dragged by a bull would have gotten me onto that dais.

“You’re here,” Lewyth said, pointing to an empty seat on a bench. “The countess chose this place for you, not me. I’m sorry.” She rushed back to her place among the ladies-in-waiting, up at the head of the table.

I wasn’t certain why she had apologized until I had seated myself and inspected my setting. It was for one person only. My trencher was a round of bread, not the length that was set between every pair of diners—all of the other diners. If she had written me a note the countess could not have made her wishes clearer. She did not want me to corrupt her Gentle Mothering household with my talk.

“You may as well come up,” I told Pounce, who was under the bench, leaning against my boots. “I’m going to be alone here.” He leaped up on the empty length of bench at my right.

The mot a yard away on my right, a skinny thing who smelled of herbs, glanced over her shoulder at Pounce and me, then looked away hurriedly. I wanted to thump the back of her coiled, pinned, and veiled head, but I thought of Lord Gershom and behaved.

No, the truth is that I would never have done any such thing. My shyness has gotten much better since I was a Puppy, but mostly when I’m in uniform and acting as a Dog, or on my home streets. Socially, when there’s no work to do, I am as miserable as if I were standing before Sir Tullus on my first day at magistrate’s court. Lady Aeldra had done me a favor, making it plain I was out of favor with her. No one would be my supper partner, trying to find something we could talk about while I stammered like a goat, and other folk wouldn’t be gathered around as they did at other castles, asking me questions about the capital.

Suddenly everyone was getting to their feet. The nobles were walking to their places on the dais. I noted that the count’s chair was no higher than the prince’s, though all the others were two inches shorter. Prince Baird sat on his right, and Lady Sabine sat on the prince’s right.

On the countess’s left was a cove in his mid-thirties, brown-haired and sharp-nosed, with a rounded chin and a thin mouth. He wore a brown tunic with white embroideries and a great gold chain with some kind of yellow gem at intervals between the links. Lady Baylisa sat on his left, dressed in ice blue with a white veil over her hair. Her supper partner would be the other cove. I put his age at thirty, with no reason to think I was wrong, after winning last year’s competition at age-guessing in all the Corus districts. Plainly he and the older cove were related. They had the same brown hair combed straight back, the same brown eyes, and the same sharp nose. This one’s chin was slightly cleft, and his mouth was even thinner than the other one’s. He wore dark green. There was some kind of embroidery on his collar and cuffs, but the thread was dark, so it was impossible to see. He wore a large gem on a gold chain, one I recognized right away. It was a fire opal, smoothed and set still in its native stone. Its colors flashed in the light. When a slave tried to pour wine into his cup, he put his hand over it and shook his head, saying something to her. That’s when I saw his ring, another stone set in gold on his index finger. It was too dark for me to tell what it was.