Emerald House Rising, page 13
Liselle threw her a significant look. “The cinnamon, please?” she said to the cook.
“I’ll grind it out,” the cook said, still not entirely appeased. “I’ll not have you fosterlings wasting it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Liselle said patiently. “And you can hardly complain about waste for the fosterlings when it’s the lady of the keep who’s drinking the tea.” When the cook limped away, Liselle spoke in an undertone to Jena. “There is some trouble about the baby. I’m going up to her room now. Did you come down to break your fast? They set out bread and beer in the Great Hall for people who wish to eat. I’ll meet you there after I’ve brought the tray.”
One of the pages obligingly directed Jena to the door leading directly from the buttery into the Great Hall. It was a huge chamber, over one hundred feet long and graced with three fireplaces. Corbels soared upward, bracing the timber framework that cantilevered out from the walls, supporting the ceiling. Jena blinked at the light pouring in from glass windows, set high above the doorways lining the inner ward.
Four trestle tables had been set with platters of bread and tankards. Some fifteen or twenty people sat at these, eating and talking. They sat with no particular attention to rank that Jena could see; apparently the first meal of the day at the Duone Keep was a casual affair for those who chose to take it. Jena took a half loaf of bread from one of the platters and found a seat at a corner of one of the tables. The man seated across from her broke off a conversation with the boy beside him to pass her a tankard of beer. “Good morning,” he said, smiling.
“Good morning,” she replied cautiously, accepting the tankard, but he immediately resumed talking with his companion (something about fighting with quarterstaffs), to her secret relief. She ate and drank slowly. The bread, made with manchet, a finer grade of flour than she usually ate, tasted very good, but she found herself wishing for a plateful of porridge instead, her usual breakfast. As she reached for the pitcher to refill her tankard with more beer, she saw Liselle walking toward her table, and so she slid over to make room.
Liselle sat down on the end of the bench with a sigh. “Is there any bread left? I’m famished.” Jena passed a platter to her, and Liselle helped herself to a loaf. “They came pounding on my door before even the larks were up.”
“Who did?”
“Lady Elladine, for one. Lady Kestrienne sent her, I think, because she heard me say once—” She broke off, glancing at the man and boy seated across from them, and took a bite of her bread.
Understanding the look, Jena resigned herself to having to wait yet longer to learn more. At that moment, however, their companions chose to leave the table. A servant came by to clear their tankards and flick bread crumbs off the table surface into a bowl. As he moved on, Jena asked, “She heard you say what?”
“That I helped deliver two of my younger sisters.”
“Really?”
“Mother never had much trouble having babies. Goodness knows she’s had enough practice: I have nine brothers and sisters. And I know something about herbs, too, and that helps. But …” Liselle moodily crushed the edge of her loaf into a small pile of crumbs.
“But you’ve never had to face anything quite like this before?” Jena asked gently.
“No.” Liselle bit her lip. “At least the keep has a good midwife; I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want to be entirely responsible. How much do you know about how babies are born?”
“Not much,” Jena admitted. “I know it hurts, and there’s blood.” She stopped herself, remembering she needed to hold on to possibilities that were true, yet would keep the baby safe. “But despite all that, women go on having them.”
“Maybe only because they don’t have any choice,” Liselle said gloomily.
“Please, Liselle, what’s wrong?”
Liselle lowered her voice. “Lady Duone is bleeding slowly, but she’s not in labor. The midwife says it’s because there might be something wrong with the placenta, the part where the mother and the baby are attached. It might be growing over the opening of the womb where the baby is supposed to come out. If it grows over all the way, Lady Duone will bleed to death when she goes into labor, because there’s nowhere for the baby to go. And then the baby will die, too.”
Jena took a deep breath, trying to keep a strong grip on her reactions. Now she understood what she had to do, even if she didn’t entirely know how. “You said if? The midwife isn’t sure?”
“No. But anyway, Lady Duone will have to stay in bed until the baby’s born. If it’s born.”
“Don’t say that,” Jena said quickly.
After a moment, Liselle nodded slowly. “You’re right, I suppose. Although I don’t know if it makes any difference.”
Jena considered for a moment. She had a lot to learn about manipulating possibilities. Simply refusing to consider what might go wrong, she suspected, would not make unhappy events go away. She would need to talk with Kestrienne about that. “I don’t mean we should try to ignore the worst, exactly,” she amended, “but I think it’s important Lady Duone should be at least able to hope everything will go well.”
“She has had some luck already. Lady Duone’s maid told me about it: usually Lady Duone rises before dawn, but she hadn’t even gotten out of bed this morning when Lady Kestrienne burst into her room for some reason or another, as bold as you please. Usually Lady Kestrienne doesn’t rise until just before noonday dinner.”
Jena suddenly knew Lady Kestrienne habitually rose much earlier, but kept that fact a secret so she could practice magic in the early morning hours if she wished to without anyone the wiser.
“Anyway, she began chattering at Lady Duone about a needlework pattern or bread recipe or something ridiculous like that, before Lady Duone was barely awake. And then suddenly Lady Kestrienne spotted some blood on the hem of the gown Lady Duone had worn the night before. Lady Duone hadn’t noticed it at all. She’d undressed in the dark last night and thrown it over the chest at the foot of her bed, and her maid hadn’t had a chance to put it away.
“So Lady Kestrienne told her don’t move and sent for the midwife and for me. It’s a wonderful stroke of fortune she did, because the midwife said if Lady Duone had gotten up as usual, she might have started bleeding in earnest.”
Jena hid her smile. “Yes, very good fortune, indeed.”
“At least Lady Duone won’t have to worry about managing the keep. Lady Kestrienne will take over doing that, of course.”
“It must be a tremendous job,” Jena said, thinking of her own household.
“Yes, it is, but Lady Kestrienne did it for years, you know. Her brother, Lord Tersat Duone, was widowed quite young, and there was no one else to do it until his son married.” Liselle laughed. “Now, Lady Duone is an excellent housekeeper, but I’ll wager you that within a week Lady Kestrienne will have every servant in the place both so charmed and so terrorized that every room in this keep will be cleaner than it’s been in years. And she’s canny enough that she’ll be sure to visit Lady Duone every day with some questions—just enough to make Lady Duone feel she’s still needed and in charge even if she’s in bed, but not enough to make her feel she has to worry at all that the keep might come tumbling down around our ears.”
Jena smiled, pleased to have an opportunity to learn a little more about her mentor. “You like her, don’t you? Lady Kestrienne, I mean?”
“Oh, yes, everyone does. Some think she’s just a harmless biddy, and when it suits her she’ll let them believe it, but don’t ever let her fool you. She has a trick of sizing a person up in an instant, and although she’s very kindhearted, she has a mind that’s sharp as a razor.”
Liselle took another bite of bread and washed it down with beer. “Anyway, I really think I need some more herbs. If they aren’t in the dispensary, do you want to walk down with me to town? There’s an apothecary I can speak with, and you might be able to get some shoes.”
Jena hadn’t even realized there was a town. “Do you know if there’s a jeweler or goldsmith? One who might let me borrow or rent time with some equipment?”
Liselle shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I remember Lady Duone asking Lord Duone if he could bring one of her brooches with him when he went to Tenaway, to get the clasp repaired.”
“Ah, well.” Jena sighed. “Is there a papermaker? I need to start working on some designs.”
“You can buy paper; one of the shopkeepers trades downriver for it.”
Besides, a trip to town would keep her out of Lord Duone’s way a little longer. “That’s a start, at least. Yes, I’d be pleased to join you.”
They stayed in the town most of the morning. Liselle consulted with the apothecary, who had a small supply of the herbs she needed. Jena bought a slate, paper, and wax to begin work on a model, and she had the cobbler measure her feet for new shoes. They ate meat pies bought from the baker’s street stand for their noonday meal and then walked back up to Duone Keep.
Liselle went off to confer with the midwife, leaving Jena to her own devices. She had no wish to get impressed into service doing the usual afternoon needlework with Lady Duone’s ladies, and so she cloistered herself in her room, curled up on the cool stone window seat, sketching rough studies on the slate. A girdle buckle would be best, she decided after several hours of concentrated drawing. Yes, a buckle, without enameling. Jena didn’t mind detailed goldwork but preferred emphasizing color in the jewels rather than the setting. She wished for one of her father’s sketches of Lady Vianne’s parure set. Had the stones for the girdle been rose or round cut? Had he used the single or double S-shape to connect the links? In the middle of a furious scribble, she heard a bell and dropped her slate pencil with a start.
Supper. There was no help for it; she would have to face Lord Duone and the rest of the household eventually. Reluctantly, she set aside her work and left her room, steeling herself for an ordeal.
The trestle tables in the Great Hall had been set up in the shape of a staple. Liselle, standing with the other fosterlings along one of the side tables, saw Jena when she entered and beckoned her over. “Hsst, Jena! Come and sit here beside me.” Jena slipped into the spot beside her, and the other fosterling girls jostled aside to give her room, like so many complacent cows.
“Why is everyone still standing?” Jena asked low in Liselle’s ear.
“They’re waiting for Lady Duone—oh, well, for Lord Duone, I suppose.”
“Wait, Liselle,” said Jena, craning her neck and looking down the table. “I can’t sit here, it’s above the salt.”
“Too late,” said Liselle, her hand on Jena’s arm. The castellan walked forward from the eastern door, followed by Lord Duone with Lady Kestrienne on his arm. As Lord Duone and Lady Kestrienne took their places at the head table, the castellan knocked sharply on the stone floor three times with the butt of his staff, and then, with a rumble of scraping benches and a rustle of clothes, everyone seated themselves. A rush of servants carrying bowls and serving platters streamed out from the kitchen; others came from the buttery, carrying wine. “Don’t worry; no one will know,” Liselle assured Jena.
And in truth, no one would know she was seated above her social station, Jena reflected, not with the clothes she wore.
“So Lady Kestrienne heads the board tonight,” said a short, cheerful-looking girl with a rather long nose, sitting across from Jena and Liselle. “That’s one in the eye for Lady Lenette, anyway.”
“Oh, hush,” someone else reproved in a shocked whisper. “You mustn’t speak so, with Lady Duone so ill.”
“Mustn’t I?” The first speaker winked at Jena and Liselle. “I think Lady Duone would say the same, if anyone could make her admit it.”
“Who is Lady Lenette?” Jena asked, as a servant offered a bowl of rosewater and a napkin.
“A cousin of Lady Duone, who’s said to envy Lady Duone’s place more than a little,” the girl said, flicking rosewater from her fingers and drying them on a napkin offered by another servant. She lifted an eyebrow at Jena. “I beg your pardon, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of your company before,” she said, looking pointedly at Liselle.
Liselle made some rapid introductions, too quickly for Jena to be sure which name went with which face, although she caught the name of the girl sitting across from them, Cestilline. “You can’t say Lady Lenette has ever had any encouragement from Lord Duone,” Liselle went on, tweaking slices of roast duck from a platter to her plate.
“No?” Cestilline’s tone indicated polite disbelief.
Liselle shook her head decidedly. “Certainly not. Why, he sat with Lady Duone almost the whole day; it drove the ladies attending to her to distraction.”
“He’s only worried about his heir,” someone observed impatiently.
“Lady Lenette would be glad to provide another,” the dark-haired woman on the other side of Liselle remarked, and two or three of the fosterlings giggled.
Liselle scowled. “I don’t think he would want to take another lady very quickly, should the worst happen.”
“Certainly not as quickly as your father did when your mother died, Phellia,” Cestilline added pointedly. The dark-haired woman’s gaze dropped to her plate.
“Of course he’s concerned about his heir, as he should be,” Liselle went on. “I heard him say he intends to stay here now with her until the baby is born, rather than leaving for the city. But he also truly cares about his lady. He held her hand all day long, even when she slept.”
“He makes himself ridiculous before his men,” Phellia muttered, not entirely quelled. Jena wondered if she favored the hopes of the thwarted Lady Lenette.
“If it pleases his lady, how does that hurt them? Or you?” Liselle retorted.
They all glanced furtively up at the head table, where Lord Duone sat, toying with his food. Lady Kestrienne leaned over to speak to him and seemed to be urging him to take some fritters onto his plate; he shook his head.
Jena turned her attention back to her plate as the fosterlings gossiped. The bantering made her feel homesick and ill at ease. How different the quiet suppers she was accustomed to taking with her father seemed from this crowded, splendid meal. Well, not always so quiet, actually: some of Collas’ gemcutting apprentices had bickered terribly at the table over the years. Jena smiled to herself and then sighed. Collas must be missing her dreadfully tonight, even if he did know where she was. Would Arikan be keeping him company? She hoped so. It made her desperately sad to think of her father eating all alone.
She had just reached for a flagon to refill her wine cup, when she felt something, another fluctuation in magic, and put the flagon down hastily before she dropped it. Lady Duone again?
No, she decided finally, after an anxious moment or two. They are still safe, and resting. What she had sensed this morning when they had been in danger had felt close and agonizingly sharp, like the stab of an icy stiletto. This, now, too, was cold. But it was at once both bigger and more distant, as if she heard the sea thundering in her ears, and the sound made her remember faintly the inexorable tug of an ocean wave, rushing her away from shore. Jena took a deep breath. The possibility ripple she had felt was powerful, she felt sure, but it had not touched her very directly. She fumbled for the pouch holding her stone in her sleeve and glanced up at the head table.
Lady Kestrienne’s face was the color of ashes. Even at that distance, Jena could tell she was drawing in labored breaths, clutching at the rim of her plate. No one at the head table had noticed yet. You must go to her, something inside Jena told her after a moment of stunned disbelief. She has felt it, too, and although you escape the brunt of it, she will drown in it. You must help her as she helped you this morning.
She looked around wildly. I can’t just walk up to her without everyone seeing. How can I get her out of here?
Afterward, Jena never could quite reconstruct the paths of the three pages and two dogs or even say exactly what caused them to collide. Suffice it to say that when the din had died down, no one could have glimpsed Lady Kestrienne’s pallor under the gravy, wine, and beer dripping from her brow to her toes. Jena sat in rigid horror as a hush fell over the Great Hall.
Uh, maybe I overdid it.
Lord Duone, shocked out of his self-preoccupation, bent over Lady Kestrienne. His voice was clearly audible in the silence. “Aunt, are you all right? You haven’t been burned?”
To Jena’s relief, Lady Kestrienne answered him, albeit in a shaky voice, “I … I am unhurt. I think.” She tried to stand up, but fell back upon her seat. “Although I fear my dignity is shredded.” Another page, gobbling with consternation, stepped forward, feebly waving a towel. The cloth was laughably small for so grave a situation. “Perhaps if one of the fosterlings could help me to my chamber …”
Hearing her cue, Jena leaped to her feet and hurried forward, snatching towels from dumbstruck pages as she went. “I will assist her, my lord,” she murmured, and helped Lady Kestrienne to rise, soggily. Under the guise of wiping her face and hands with one of the towels, she rotated Lady Kestrienne’s talisman ring on her finger so the stone faced the palm, and closed the older woman’s fingers over it. Lady Kestrienne’s knuckles turned white, but Jena saw, with relief, that a tinge of color was creeping back to her face. “Here, lean on my arm, my lady.” They left the Great Hall slowly, with Lady Kestrienne leaning on her with every step. Jena dimly sensed a groundswell of servants hastening toward the head table to set it to rights.
As soon as they were outside and around a corner of the building, Lady Kestrienne stopped to lean against one of the walls. “You felt it?” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Yes. Not nearly as much as you.”
“Thank you for getting me out of there.” Lady Kestrienne smiled faintly. “I owe you too much to quarrel with your methods, although I doubt I’ll ever wear this gown again.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Not important. Not as important as this.” She turned her face blindly up to the sky.
“What is it? Do you know?”
“I am not sure,” the answer came slowly. “But it’s big. Oh, yes, it’s very big.”
“I’ll grind it out,” the cook said, still not entirely appeased. “I’ll not have you fosterlings wasting it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Liselle said patiently. “And you can hardly complain about waste for the fosterlings when it’s the lady of the keep who’s drinking the tea.” When the cook limped away, Liselle spoke in an undertone to Jena. “There is some trouble about the baby. I’m going up to her room now. Did you come down to break your fast? They set out bread and beer in the Great Hall for people who wish to eat. I’ll meet you there after I’ve brought the tray.”
One of the pages obligingly directed Jena to the door leading directly from the buttery into the Great Hall. It was a huge chamber, over one hundred feet long and graced with three fireplaces. Corbels soared upward, bracing the timber framework that cantilevered out from the walls, supporting the ceiling. Jena blinked at the light pouring in from glass windows, set high above the doorways lining the inner ward.
Four trestle tables had been set with platters of bread and tankards. Some fifteen or twenty people sat at these, eating and talking. They sat with no particular attention to rank that Jena could see; apparently the first meal of the day at the Duone Keep was a casual affair for those who chose to take it. Jena took a half loaf of bread from one of the platters and found a seat at a corner of one of the tables. The man seated across from her broke off a conversation with the boy beside him to pass her a tankard of beer. “Good morning,” he said, smiling.
“Good morning,” she replied cautiously, accepting the tankard, but he immediately resumed talking with his companion (something about fighting with quarterstaffs), to her secret relief. She ate and drank slowly. The bread, made with manchet, a finer grade of flour than she usually ate, tasted very good, but she found herself wishing for a plateful of porridge instead, her usual breakfast. As she reached for the pitcher to refill her tankard with more beer, she saw Liselle walking toward her table, and so she slid over to make room.
Liselle sat down on the end of the bench with a sigh. “Is there any bread left? I’m famished.” Jena passed a platter to her, and Liselle helped herself to a loaf. “They came pounding on my door before even the larks were up.”
“Who did?”
“Lady Elladine, for one. Lady Kestrienne sent her, I think, because she heard me say once—” She broke off, glancing at the man and boy seated across from them, and took a bite of her bread.
Understanding the look, Jena resigned herself to having to wait yet longer to learn more. At that moment, however, their companions chose to leave the table. A servant came by to clear their tankards and flick bread crumbs off the table surface into a bowl. As he moved on, Jena asked, “She heard you say what?”
“That I helped deliver two of my younger sisters.”
“Really?”
“Mother never had much trouble having babies. Goodness knows she’s had enough practice: I have nine brothers and sisters. And I know something about herbs, too, and that helps. But …” Liselle moodily crushed the edge of her loaf into a small pile of crumbs.
“But you’ve never had to face anything quite like this before?” Jena asked gently.
“No.” Liselle bit her lip. “At least the keep has a good midwife; I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want to be entirely responsible. How much do you know about how babies are born?”
“Not much,” Jena admitted. “I know it hurts, and there’s blood.” She stopped herself, remembering she needed to hold on to possibilities that were true, yet would keep the baby safe. “But despite all that, women go on having them.”
“Maybe only because they don’t have any choice,” Liselle said gloomily.
“Please, Liselle, what’s wrong?”
Liselle lowered her voice. “Lady Duone is bleeding slowly, but she’s not in labor. The midwife says it’s because there might be something wrong with the placenta, the part where the mother and the baby are attached. It might be growing over the opening of the womb where the baby is supposed to come out. If it grows over all the way, Lady Duone will bleed to death when she goes into labor, because there’s nowhere for the baby to go. And then the baby will die, too.”
Jena took a deep breath, trying to keep a strong grip on her reactions. Now she understood what she had to do, even if she didn’t entirely know how. “You said if? The midwife isn’t sure?”
“No. But anyway, Lady Duone will have to stay in bed until the baby’s born. If it’s born.”
“Don’t say that,” Jena said quickly.
After a moment, Liselle nodded slowly. “You’re right, I suppose. Although I don’t know if it makes any difference.”
Jena considered for a moment. She had a lot to learn about manipulating possibilities. Simply refusing to consider what might go wrong, she suspected, would not make unhappy events go away. She would need to talk with Kestrienne about that. “I don’t mean we should try to ignore the worst, exactly,” she amended, “but I think it’s important Lady Duone should be at least able to hope everything will go well.”
“She has had some luck already. Lady Duone’s maid told me about it: usually Lady Duone rises before dawn, but she hadn’t even gotten out of bed this morning when Lady Kestrienne burst into her room for some reason or another, as bold as you please. Usually Lady Kestrienne doesn’t rise until just before noonday dinner.”
Jena suddenly knew Lady Kestrienne habitually rose much earlier, but kept that fact a secret so she could practice magic in the early morning hours if she wished to without anyone the wiser.
“Anyway, she began chattering at Lady Duone about a needlework pattern or bread recipe or something ridiculous like that, before Lady Duone was barely awake. And then suddenly Lady Kestrienne spotted some blood on the hem of the gown Lady Duone had worn the night before. Lady Duone hadn’t noticed it at all. She’d undressed in the dark last night and thrown it over the chest at the foot of her bed, and her maid hadn’t had a chance to put it away.
“So Lady Kestrienne told her don’t move and sent for the midwife and for me. It’s a wonderful stroke of fortune she did, because the midwife said if Lady Duone had gotten up as usual, she might have started bleeding in earnest.”
Jena hid her smile. “Yes, very good fortune, indeed.”
“At least Lady Duone won’t have to worry about managing the keep. Lady Kestrienne will take over doing that, of course.”
“It must be a tremendous job,” Jena said, thinking of her own household.
“Yes, it is, but Lady Kestrienne did it for years, you know. Her brother, Lord Tersat Duone, was widowed quite young, and there was no one else to do it until his son married.” Liselle laughed. “Now, Lady Duone is an excellent housekeeper, but I’ll wager you that within a week Lady Kestrienne will have every servant in the place both so charmed and so terrorized that every room in this keep will be cleaner than it’s been in years. And she’s canny enough that she’ll be sure to visit Lady Duone every day with some questions—just enough to make Lady Duone feel she’s still needed and in charge even if she’s in bed, but not enough to make her feel she has to worry at all that the keep might come tumbling down around our ears.”
Jena smiled, pleased to have an opportunity to learn a little more about her mentor. “You like her, don’t you? Lady Kestrienne, I mean?”
“Oh, yes, everyone does. Some think she’s just a harmless biddy, and when it suits her she’ll let them believe it, but don’t ever let her fool you. She has a trick of sizing a person up in an instant, and although she’s very kindhearted, she has a mind that’s sharp as a razor.”
Liselle took another bite of bread and washed it down with beer. “Anyway, I really think I need some more herbs. If they aren’t in the dispensary, do you want to walk down with me to town? There’s an apothecary I can speak with, and you might be able to get some shoes.”
Jena hadn’t even realized there was a town. “Do you know if there’s a jeweler or goldsmith? One who might let me borrow or rent time with some equipment?”
Liselle shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. I remember Lady Duone asking Lord Duone if he could bring one of her brooches with him when he went to Tenaway, to get the clasp repaired.”
“Ah, well.” Jena sighed. “Is there a papermaker? I need to start working on some designs.”
“You can buy paper; one of the shopkeepers trades downriver for it.”
Besides, a trip to town would keep her out of Lord Duone’s way a little longer. “That’s a start, at least. Yes, I’d be pleased to join you.”
They stayed in the town most of the morning. Liselle consulted with the apothecary, who had a small supply of the herbs she needed. Jena bought a slate, paper, and wax to begin work on a model, and she had the cobbler measure her feet for new shoes. They ate meat pies bought from the baker’s street stand for their noonday meal and then walked back up to Duone Keep.
Liselle went off to confer with the midwife, leaving Jena to her own devices. She had no wish to get impressed into service doing the usual afternoon needlework with Lady Duone’s ladies, and so she cloistered herself in her room, curled up on the cool stone window seat, sketching rough studies on the slate. A girdle buckle would be best, she decided after several hours of concentrated drawing. Yes, a buckle, without enameling. Jena didn’t mind detailed goldwork but preferred emphasizing color in the jewels rather than the setting. She wished for one of her father’s sketches of Lady Vianne’s parure set. Had the stones for the girdle been rose or round cut? Had he used the single or double S-shape to connect the links? In the middle of a furious scribble, she heard a bell and dropped her slate pencil with a start.
Supper. There was no help for it; she would have to face Lord Duone and the rest of the household eventually. Reluctantly, she set aside her work and left her room, steeling herself for an ordeal.
The trestle tables in the Great Hall had been set up in the shape of a staple. Liselle, standing with the other fosterlings along one of the side tables, saw Jena when she entered and beckoned her over. “Hsst, Jena! Come and sit here beside me.” Jena slipped into the spot beside her, and the other fosterling girls jostled aside to give her room, like so many complacent cows.
“Why is everyone still standing?” Jena asked low in Liselle’s ear.
“They’re waiting for Lady Duone—oh, well, for Lord Duone, I suppose.”
“Wait, Liselle,” said Jena, craning her neck and looking down the table. “I can’t sit here, it’s above the salt.”
“Too late,” said Liselle, her hand on Jena’s arm. The castellan walked forward from the eastern door, followed by Lord Duone with Lady Kestrienne on his arm. As Lord Duone and Lady Kestrienne took their places at the head table, the castellan knocked sharply on the stone floor three times with the butt of his staff, and then, with a rumble of scraping benches and a rustle of clothes, everyone seated themselves. A rush of servants carrying bowls and serving platters streamed out from the kitchen; others came from the buttery, carrying wine. “Don’t worry; no one will know,” Liselle assured Jena.
And in truth, no one would know she was seated above her social station, Jena reflected, not with the clothes she wore.
“So Lady Kestrienne heads the board tonight,” said a short, cheerful-looking girl with a rather long nose, sitting across from Jena and Liselle. “That’s one in the eye for Lady Lenette, anyway.”
“Oh, hush,” someone else reproved in a shocked whisper. “You mustn’t speak so, with Lady Duone so ill.”
“Mustn’t I?” The first speaker winked at Jena and Liselle. “I think Lady Duone would say the same, if anyone could make her admit it.”
“Who is Lady Lenette?” Jena asked, as a servant offered a bowl of rosewater and a napkin.
“A cousin of Lady Duone, who’s said to envy Lady Duone’s place more than a little,” the girl said, flicking rosewater from her fingers and drying them on a napkin offered by another servant. She lifted an eyebrow at Jena. “I beg your pardon, I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of your company before,” she said, looking pointedly at Liselle.
Liselle made some rapid introductions, too quickly for Jena to be sure which name went with which face, although she caught the name of the girl sitting across from them, Cestilline. “You can’t say Lady Lenette has ever had any encouragement from Lord Duone,” Liselle went on, tweaking slices of roast duck from a platter to her plate.
“No?” Cestilline’s tone indicated polite disbelief.
Liselle shook her head decidedly. “Certainly not. Why, he sat with Lady Duone almost the whole day; it drove the ladies attending to her to distraction.”
“He’s only worried about his heir,” someone observed impatiently.
“Lady Lenette would be glad to provide another,” the dark-haired woman on the other side of Liselle remarked, and two or three of the fosterlings giggled.
Liselle scowled. “I don’t think he would want to take another lady very quickly, should the worst happen.”
“Certainly not as quickly as your father did when your mother died, Phellia,” Cestilline added pointedly. The dark-haired woman’s gaze dropped to her plate.
“Of course he’s concerned about his heir, as he should be,” Liselle went on. “I heard him say he intends to stay here now with her until the baby is born, rather than leaving for the city. But he also truly cares about his lady. He held her hand all day long, even when she slept.”
“He makes himself ridiculous before his men,” Phellia muttered, not entirely quelled. Jena wondered if she favored the hopes of the thwarted Lady Lenette.
“If it pleases his lady, how does that hurt them? Or you?” Liselle retorted.
They all glanced furtively up at the head table, where Lord Duone sat, toying with his food. Lady Kestrienne leaned over to speak to him and seemed to be urging him to take some fritters onto his plate; he shook his head.
Jena turned her attention back to her plate as the fosterlings gossiped. The bantering made her feel homesick and ill at ease. How different the quiet suppers she was accustomed to taking with her father seemed from this crowded, splendid meal. Well, not always so quiet, actually: some of Collas’ gemcutting apprentices had bickered terribly at the table over the years. Jena smiled to herself and then sighed. Collas must be missing her dreadfully tonight, even if he did know where she was. Would Arikan be keeping him company? She hoped so. It made her desperately sad to think of her father eating all alone.
She had just reached for a flagon to refill her wine cup, when she felt something, another fluctuation in magic, and put the flagon down hastily before she dropped it. Lady Duone again?
No, she decided finally, after an anxious moment or two. They are still safe, and resting. What she had sensed this morning when they had been in danger had felt close and agonizingly sharp, like the stab of an icy stiletto. This, now, too, was cold. But it was at once both bigger and more distant, as if she heard the sea thundering in her ears, and the sound made her remember faintly the inexorable tug of an ocean wave, rushing her away from shore. Jena took a deep breath. The possibility ripple she had felt was powerful, she felt sure, but it had not touched her very directly. She fumbled for the pouch holding her stone in her sleeve and glanced up at the head table.
Lady Kestrienne’s face was the color of ashes. Even at that distance, Jena could tell she was drawing in labored breaths, clutching at the rim of her plate. No one at the head table had noticed yet. You must go to her, something inside Jena told her after a moment of stunned disbelief. She has felt it, too, and although you escape the brunt of it, she will drown in it. You must help her as she helped you this morning.
She looked around wildly. I can’t just walk up to her without everyone seeing. How can I get her out of here?
Afterward, Jena never could quite reconstruct the paths of the three pages and two dogs or even say exactly what caused them to collide. Suffice it to say that when the din had died down, no one could have glimpsed Lady Kestrienne’s pallor under the gravy, wine, and beer dripping from her brow to her toes. Jena sat in rigid horror as a hush fell over the Great Hall.
Uh, maybe I overdid it.
Lord Duone, shocked out of his self-preoccupation, bent over Lady Kestrienne. His voice was clearly audible in the silence. “Aunt, are you all right? You haven’t been burned?”
To Jena’s relief, Lady Kestrienne answered him, albeit in a shaky voice, “I … I am unhurt. I think.” She tried to stand up, but fell back upon her seat. “Although I fear my dignity is shredded.” Another page, gobbling with consternation, stepped forward, feebly waving a towel. The cloth was laughably small for so grave a situation. “Perhaps if one of the fosterlings could help me to my chamber …”
Hearing her cue, Jena leaped to her feet and hurried forward, snatching towels from dumbstruck pages as she went. “I will assist her, my lord,” she murmured, and helped Lady Kestrienne to rise, soggily. Under the guise of wiping her face and hands with one of the towels, she rotated Lady Kestrienne’s talisman ring on her finger so the stone faced the palm, and closed the older woman’s fingers over it. Lady Kestrienne’s knuckles turned white, but Jena saw, with relief, that a tinge of color was creeping back to her face. “Here, lean on my arm, my lady.” They left the Great Hall slowly, with Lady Kestrienne leaning on her with every step. Jena dimly sensed a groundswell of servants hastening toward the head table to set it to rights.
As soon as they were outside and around a corner of the building, Lady Kestrienne stopped to lean against one of the walls. “You felt it?” she said, her voice hoarse.
“Yes. Not nearly as much as you.”
“Thank you for getting me out of there.” Lady Kestrienne smiled faintly. “I owe you too much to quarrel with your methods, although I doubt I’ll ever wear this gown again.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Not important. Not as important as this.” She turned her face blindly up to the sky.
“What is it? Do you know?”
“I am not sure,” the answer came slowly. “But it’s big. Oh, yes, it’s very big.”
