Confused, I glanced over my shoulder at the beautiful space one more time before following the woman out of the room.
“This isamazing,” I groaned as I sank down into the piping hot water and let it sting until my skin acclimated to the temperature.
After her mysterious words earlier, Andrivete had led me through the winding hallways of the castle and into what looked like a cavern carved directly into the mountain. It was there that she revealed a hot spring and I practically melted at the sight.
Back in Cameliard the maids had to heat up the water for baths bucket by bucket and by the time the wooden tub in my chambers was filled the water had long since cooled.
I hadn’t complained because they worked so hard so that I could bathe—something that I realized I could do from a place of privilege because when I asked Brenna about her bathing habits she told me she usually washed from a bucket with a cloth.
But now as I sank up to my chin in hot water, I realized that, out of everything from the future that I missed, soaking in blazing water was the thing I missed the most.
“It is Camelot’s best kept secret,” Andrivete told me as she sank down into the water next to me, clearly unafraid of being naked in front of a near-stranger like me.
There were several other women soaking in the spring several feet away, chatting as they helped each other wash their hair and in the distance I could hear the rough rumble of men’s voices.
Andrivete had explained that when the hot spring had been discovered by Merlin over ten years ago that Arthur had gone to work excavating the cave and they had carved out two spaces for both men and women to bathe.
Everyone in Castle Camelot used the spring to bathe—sometimes multiple times a day—which made complete sense as to why every person who passed us by in the corridors seemed cleaner than anyone I had ever met since coming to the past.
“Turn and I will wash your hair,” Andrivete directed as she poured a clear solution of something into her palm.
I did as directed, remembering Brenna explaining when she had washed my hair that they used something called soapwort to cleanse hair.
“How does the water stay so clean?” I asked, lifting a palmful of the steaming liquid up to look at it.
As I stared, it started to ripple and move as if I had blown on it and I dropped my hand into the bath before Andrivete could see.
“It is a very slow moving stream that leads back into the mountain,” Andrivete explained as she dug her nails into my scalp and I nearly moaned from how good it felt.
It had been so long since I had felt truly clean that all of my earlier morose thoughts about my current predicament faded away and I just leaned against the side of the pool and enjoyed myself.
“Dip your head under the water,” Andrivete instructed after a while and I complied, swishing my fingers through my much lighter feeling curls.
When I came back up, sputtering but feeling better than before, I turned to squint at Andrivete in the dim candlelight.
“Do you want me to wash yours?” I asked, gesturing to Andrivete’s straight brown hair that was slicked back out of her face.
But Andrivete just shook her head. “You are my queen. As such, I can wash your hair, your majesty, but you may not wash mine.”
I wanted to point out how silly that sounded when we were literally sitting in a communal bath naked together, but instead I just kept my thoughts to myself.
After a while of soaking and listening to Andrivete quietly wash herself, I couldn’t help but ask, “Camelot doesn’t work like everywhere else, does it?”
Andrivete’s expression remained neutral—I was pretty sure she could rival Bedivere in that department if she tried hard enough—before she shrugged her thin shoulders. “At Camelot’s conception it was entirely unique, your majesty. When I came here as a young girl I was even surprised by how blurred the lines between the rulers and the people were. It is not uncommon for his majesty or my husband to venture out into the fields to help with the harvest or put up the framing for new cottages.”
“But I still can’t wash your hair?”
Gold eyes sparkled with a mirth that didn’t match the frown pulling down on her lips. “At the end of the day, your majesty, you are still my queen and the queen of Arthur who is said to be the king of kings. That holds considerable weight.”
“Even if I wanted you to treat me like you do everyone else? Or call me by my given name?” I asked, pushing.
Andrivete nodded solemnly. “That is the way of things, your majesty, though I am surprised by your desire for such things. Much of what I have heard about Cameliard tells me that you should value all of the pomp that comes with being royalty. You are indeed a strange woman.”
Well, that comes with being a regular-ass woman from the 21st century and not really a medieval princess,I said silently to myself while telling Andrivete out loud: “My father always valued such unique thoughts from me as I was his only child.”
Andrivete looked as if she didn’t believe a word coming out of my mouth, but seemed to choose not to push it as she stood up in the water. “Come, let us get you dried off and dressed so that your people may see you looking like the queen you are rather than a bedraggled urchin.”
“You are a very blunt woman,” I told her, frowning at her as she handed me what looked like a linen sheet to dry myself off with. “Has anyone ever told you that?”
