Odard didn't always have time for Huon and me, but he was
nice
when he did.
She sniffled quietly, and winced.
Here it comes,
she thought,
wait for it . . . wait . . . five, four, three, two . . .
Mary Liu reached for her scissors, silk sleeve rustling. A quiet snip and a quick snap.
“Ysi! Daydreaming again! What have you done so far?”
Yseult swung around and lifted the heavy weight of the altar cloth she had been embroidering before it slid to the gleaming wood floor. She brought it over to her mother, sitting between two south-facing windows. As she gave it over she snuck a quick look at the narrow face under the widow's wimple. They were alike in some ways; her mother had fair hair too, though graying now, and blue eyes. But the bones of her face were much sharper, and Yseult
hoped
she would never have that look of settled discontent.
Her heart sank.
Mama's been on edge since the letters arrived from Boise.
Yseult watched nervously as her mother slid the embroidered cloth through her fingers. Mary's moods had been unpredictable since Odard left; it paid to bet on the side of strictness, especially for her only daughter.
Yseult swallowed as Mary's fingers stopped at the section she'd been working on so desultorily this morning and yesterday.
“This is as bad as your stitches when you were five! You need to pay attention, Yseult. You
are
fifteen. I was a married lady by the time I was sixteen! And
much
better with my needle. A
King's
daughter had to set an example, back when we were in the Society.”
If you were a
King's
daughter, why aren't you a Princess?
Yseult gulped back the words, surprised that she'd dared to think them in her mother's face.
Lady Phillipa told me that was just a fantasy of yours. That it didn't mean the same thing in the Society and you weren't a King's daughter, anyway.
She clenched her teeth as her mother pushed the heavy cloth onto the table with a quick nervous gesture and walked a few steps towards the fireplace and back.
“Hand!” she demanded.
Yseult gasped, but held out her right hand, palm up. No good ever came of whining or trying to get out of her punishments. Her left hand grasped her parting gift from Brother Odard. A two-sided medal with St. Bernadette of Lourdes on one side and the Immaculate Conception on the other that hung on a fine gold chain around her neck.
Her right hand trembled and she couldn't stop two tears sliding down her cheeks as she waited for the ruler to snap against her tender palm.
“Crying!” exclaimed Mary, contempt and dismissal in her voice. “Here.”
She thrust the heavy linen back into Yseult's arms. “Pick it out, from here to here. Then put it away for now. I won't have slovenly work on the altar of the Lord. You can . . .”
A scratch on the solar door interrupted her tirade. She turned and Yseult drew in a quick, shuddering breath of relief, rapidly and neatly folding the cloth.
“Romarec, what is it?”
“My lady, your brother begs an audience.”
Yseult looked at the matronly housekeeper in some surprise. The last she'd heard, Uncle Guelf was leading the Gervais
menie
in battle out in Pendleton.
What's
he
doing back in Gervais?
She began to sidle towards the servants' door; strict, hard-handed Uncle Guelf ranked low on her list of people to welcome.
“Certainly. Send him up and do you take this child of mine with you,” said Mary, a tight smile on her face. “She is to work on her sewing with you until the altar cloth embroidery is good enough for me.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Goodwife Romarec bobbed a curtsy, met Yseult's eyes and made a very small hand gesture to her and held the door open. As she shut the door behind them, Yseult sighed, her palm tingling where the ruler had not hit. Romarec instructed the waiting page to bring Lord Guelf up and waved Yseult towards the door to the servants' hall.
“Come, young Mistress,” she said. “What's amiss?”
Yseult gave the housekeeper a rather watery smile. “Mama's so annoyed and angry all the time, these days. I know the Regent said we all have to do our part in this war, but I wish I could do my part staying with Aedelia Kozlow or Jehane Smitts.”
Romarec led her down the servants' corridor, frowning.
“You wouldn't be allowed. Not with the Regent as angry as she is with your mother over the Sutterdown assassins. It took some months for the news to percolate down, but that's why each family has withdrawn their maidens and none have offered you a spot.”
She eyed Yseult, but Yseult shook her head. “Mama never said what happened with the Re . . .
Wait!
The Lady Regent was mad at
Mama
because brother Odard saved the life of the Mackenzie and the Wanderer? I mean, I mean, mostly he was trying to keep the Princess safe . . . She's not very easy to keep safe.”
Romarec shot a quick glance up and down the length of the hall before saying softly: “Little Mistress, your mother does you no favors by keeping you ignorant.”
Yseult sniffed and pushed the heavy white cloth into the housekeeper's hands. She pulled out her hankie and wiped her eyes and blew her nose defiantly.
“Sorry, I was afraid I'd drip on that pure cloth. Mama would have had kittensâmore kittens. MamaâMama and Uncle did something, and Odard came back really angry, but I didn't hear what he said to her. She wouldn't tell me, anyway. Sometimes the other maids-in-waiting would tell me things.”
Yseult felt her lip pout out and sucked it back in. Lady Mary had a habit of pinching it if she pouted in front of her. The housekeeper shook her head and hesitated, before opening the door to the large bright room that was the servants' sewing room. Five peasant girls were sitting by the north-facing windows. They looked up and smiled before continuing their work. Romarec spread the altar cloth with its white on white counted cross-stitch over a table in the back. She lowered her voice.
“It's not something I should talk to you about; it's not safe. The Lady Regent was so furious your mother nearly lost her head. Those assassins were sent by a kingdom to the east; Cutters they call them. Your mother and your Uncle Guelf snuck them in, hid them, and gave them money and information. Your mother's goal, as she told me, was the death of the Mackenzie tanist. Rudi Mackenzie, their Chief's son. But it all went wrong, and the Princess Mathilda and Lord Odard were put in mortal peril as well.”
Yseult froze, the room going dark around her. Sparks of light starred the blackness and she swayed, clumsily thrusting a hand out for balance. Romarec's scolding sounded distant through the sea-surf roaring in her ears. Something hit the back of her legs and she sat abruptly on a hard chair. A glass was thrust in her hands and that distant voice ordered her: “Sip!”
Yseult felt her teeth begin to chatter and clenched her jaw.
I won't be weak!
She sipped, nearly coughed at the fiery-sweet taste of the herbed apricot brandy in the flask and looked up, her sight clearing. Romarec's concerned eyes met hers. She nodded and sipped again.
“My mother endangered the
Princess
?” she whispered, incredulous. “That would be
treason
, and not petty treason either! Why are any of us still alive?” Her mind made a leap. “Odard! Odard fought for her. She must have begged his life of the Lady Regent.”
Then she waved her hand as Romarec glanced to either side again. “No! No, you are right. Not now. Some other day. Now, I should do what Mama says.”
A frisson of fear ran down her back, a physical sensation like the edge of nausea, and she shuddered. Her appalled understanding of her mother's idiocy made her stomach twist as if she'd eaten green apples, a knowledge as much of the gut as the brain. Fear for herself warred with fear for the whole family; high treason could see them all executed and the lands attainted. And treason was tried before the Court of Star-Chamber, not a jury of your peers. The Lady Regent was not known for being forgiving about anything, much less the life of her only child and heir. Having that child and heir run offâthe rumors were plain it had been without permission, and there had been a rare public loss of temper by the Lady Regentâwouldn't have made her any sweeter about it.
Goodwife Romarec nodded and straightened up, speaking in a normal voice: “Well, my little Mistress, seeing that you have been assigned to sew with me, I'll tell you that I can really use the help. These are five new maids, each as clumsy as a cow with her needle and each one worse than the last, but they're all I have, now the maids-in-waiting are gone, to sew all the clothes that we must provide for the castle. We need to make sure the Christmas distribution is done, and we only have a few months to get through the tasks.”
Yseult smiled. She wished she could hug so lowly a person as the housekeeper. But Lady Mary frowned on what she called Yseult's
familiarity with the lower classes.
That was old-fashioned thinking, of course. Nowadays nobles
knew
who they were. Instead she nodded.
“Yes, Romarec, I think that will help me become more disciplined. What times do you think I should work for you?”
“I . . .” Romarec studied the altar cloth, running it through her hands. “What are these symbols?” she asked.
Yseult shook her head. “Mama tells me what to embroider, by the count. She'll give me a starting point, but she won't explain. She told me that it would make me concentrate more, that I was getting distracted and letting the colors and shapes guide my hands and not the pattern, itself.”
Romarec shook her head. The last foot of cloth she frowned at. “
This?
She thinks
this
must be taken out? Child, your mother never could decide from which side of her mouth she should blow!
I
can see the difference, with my eyes six inches from the cloth, but on an altar at five yards, white on white, it's not going to show at all. Howsoever, your Lady Mother is sure to ask and inspect. So, come meet my new girls, pick this out and I will expect you here from nine in the morning every day. You will have elevenses with us and eat dinner with the castle staff and work until three in the afternoon.”
“And then?”
“Thusly, Master Johannsen will still see you at four for your riding lesson, and we will inform Mistress Virgilia that your tutoring will be in the evening.”
Yseult nodded, relieved to be free of the hot, boring solar and out of her mother's sole company.
How awful! I never felt like this about Mama, before. But there were always maids with us!
She picked out the slightly sloppy stitches, wondering why Guelf was in Gervais and what the war news from Pendleton was.
Maybe Guelf brought a letter from Huon? Or one from Odard! Dispatches? Or mischief? Mischief! What a word for high treason. What will happen to us?
She tried to settle the gnawing worm of anxiety in her stomach by ignoring it, forcing her hands not to twitch. She wasn't very successful. Some time later as she carefully taught Martha how to do a stretch stitch so the cuffs would stand up to rough handling she suddenly wondered:
Jesus' wounds! Should I tell the Regent my uncle is here? What if he ran away? No, he' d never run from a fight . . . But, what
is
he doing here? What should I do? Odard! Huon! Where are you? I need your help!
At three, her dilemma still unresolved, she raced up the stairs and back corridors to her own apartment, two rooms in the west tower's third story; the light was always a little dim here, because this low the windows were all narrow slits, but space was always at a premium in a castle. The passageways seemed very empty and bare without the men who'd marched east with the host to Pendleton; it made you realize how the vassals and their
menies
doing garrison duty made up so much of its usual population. With only the families of the permanent staff and the remnant of older men and boys too young to take the field she felt like one of a handful of dried peas dropped into a drum.
Her maidservant helped her out of the soft violet cote-hardie and rose linen chemise, then hesitated.
“Is there news from the war, my lady?”
Yseult blinked, and then remembered that the girl had a sweetheart who was a spearman; her previous maid had been her first, and had just left to marry a blacksmith in town.
“No, Hathvisa, there isn't. I'll tell you if I hear anything, though.”
“Thank you, my lady. The riding habit?”
“Yes, please.”
She pulled on a riding tunic, then the heavy brown pleated wool split skirt, and shrugged into the short tight jacket. She rejoiced in the relative freedom of movement the riding habit gave her as she stamped into her boots and snatched up the hard leather riding hat. Racing down the stairs she was tempted to stop at the little prie-dieu just inside the door of the castle chapel her mother had set up to the Immaculate Conception and St. Bernadette.
Later, when I get back! That's what I'll do! I'll ask my saint and see if she can help me figure out what to do!
Master Johannsen was waiting for her in the courtyard, holding the reins of her spirited little bay palfrey, Iomedea. Yseult shook her head at his offer of a leg up, swung into the saddle and then followed him out into the pasture north of the town that the castle also used as a training and tilting ground. That was empty too, none of the tall coursers or destriers whose hoofprints still marked the green turf, the stands that were put up for a tourney gone except for the anchor-points.