Sir George obeyed, and gave Gretsella a somewhat wild-eyed look as he sat down. Gretsella winked at him. Then she poured herself a glass of wine in honor of a job well done.
By the time she returned to her room, Gretsella was perhaps a bit less steady on her feet than her dearest friends and closest companions might normally expect, as well as significantly more cheerful than anyone who knew her would findright or natural. Her toadaphone was perched atop the bedpost. She cooed at it. “Hello, you lovely, warty thing!Who’sa good toad?Youare! A very good toad indeed!”
The toad took a deep breath, just like toads usually don’t. Then it said, “All hail Bradley the Destroyer, who will bring about the end of the kingdom!”
Gretsella frowned. “Oh,shut up,” she said. “Toads shouldn’ttalk.” Then she put the toad into a hatbox, put the lid on the hatbox, put the hatbox out on the window ledge, and briskly slammed the window shut. “Andlet that be a lesson to you,” she said. Then she went to bed.
The next morning, after an unrestful night of sleep in the too-soft feather bed, Gretsella retrieved her toad from the windowsill, ate a large bowl of pease porridge that she scooped for herself out of a vat intended for the palace staff, and headed off to look for Lady Cordelia, the former mistress of the robes.
She didn’t find Lady Cordelia immediately. When she went to the address that Herman had provided for her, the servant girl told her that Lady Cordelia wasn’t in.
“I see,” Gretsella said. “I’ll just wait here.” Then she sat down directly on the steps.
The maid looked uncomfortable. “But you can’t just sitthere, madam.”
“Oh, I assure you that I can,” Gretsella said. “I’m very comfortable. I would be very sad to leave, really, when this is the coolest and smoothest step that I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting on.”
The maid hovered there for a moment, as if she were afruit fly and Gretsella an aging banana. Then she vanished back into the house. After a minute or so, she reappeared. “Lady Cordelia will see you now, madam.”
“It’s very kind of her to be so accommodating, considering that she isn’t at home,” Gretsella said. The maid shot her a look that strongly suggested she didn’t find Gretsellanearlyas full of wit and verve as Gretsella found herself. Then she led Gretsella inside.
Lady Cordelia was sitting in an armchair in her sitting room, working on a piece of embroidery that she set aside when Gretsella entered the room. She was, as far as Gretsella could see, a middle-aged woman of average height and weight, with hair neither short nor long and eyes neither dull nor piercing. For all that, she was alady; the way she was dressed could really only be described with dismal adjectives likesoberandrespectable, words that Gretsella could proudly claim had never once been cast in her direction. In fact, Lady Cordelia’s aura of extreme soberness and respectability was the only remarkable thing about her. If there were ever a hair out of place on Lady Cordelia, Gretsella assumed that the good lady would have it marched to the back of her head and shot as a warning to the other hairs.
Gretsella eyed Lady Cordelia. Lady Cordelia eyed her back. Cordelia was the first to crack. “Can I help you?”
“You can, in fact,” Gretsella said. “I want you to work for my son. He needs a housekeeper.”
Lady Cordelia raised her eyebrows, which were the kind of eyebrows that looked like they’d been clipped out of aneyebrow catalog and glued on. “I believe that you may have the wrong address,” she said. “I am the daughter of abaronet.”
“Congratulations,” Gretsella said, “though I can’t say that I consider being the relative of anymanto be a particular accomplishment, speaking as the mother of a king.”
They eyed each other some more.
“Which king is that?” Lady Cordelia finally asked.
“The current one,” Gretsella said.
“Oh,him,” Lady Cordelia said. “The one with the hair.”
“That isn’t the sort of tone most people around here take when talking about their king,” Gretsella said. “But yes, the silly one with the hair, who right now is the only king that you’ve got.”
“I feel as if I can take any tone that I like toward the man, considering the fact that it was I who stole away the orphaned prince and brought him to your doorstep about eighteen years ago,” Lady Cordelia said. “Before I was the mistress of the robes, I was the young prince’s nurse, and the closest the poor little nameless thing had to a mother. His christening was delayed by his mother’s death, you know, so he had no name at all until you took him in. I knew that his great-uncle was fairly likely to have him killed, and I don’t approve of the murder of babies. He was also very busily beheading any servants whom he suspected of having loyalty to his great-nephew, which I also thought ought to be stopped. I wrote several notes revealing Bradley’s true identity and sent them to loyal friends both here and abroad. Then I told the former king that the young prince was to be raised as a commoner,knowing nothing of his true identity, but that if he didn’t stop killing people and immediately give me a new position at court, the baby would be sent at once to Joymany to be raised with all titles and honors until the time came for him to reclaim his throne. I am socially acquainted with Lord Brigandale and had heard a tale or two from him about the troublesome local witch. I chose you to watch over the prince because I knew that a witch of Brigandale would have no foolish political entanglements of her own and thus would preserve a potential future king from forming any connections that would cause trouble for me if he did eventually reclaim the throne.” She paused. “Also, it’s very traditional to leave a royal infant to be raised by a witch. I like to respect the old ways, when practical.”
The eyeing reached a fever pitch.
“Can you prove any of that?” Gretsella asked after a moment.
“Yes,” Lady Cordelia said. “I have hidden away a lock of Bradley’s hair, his receiving blanket, and a pressed rhododendron that I plucked from your garden on the day I left him on your doorstep next to the milk. Might I compliment you on your rhododendrons, by the way? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’d won several prizes.”
This time, when they eyed each other, it was an eyeing of mutual understanding.
Lady Cordelia gestured toward an empty chair. “Won’t you sit?”
Despite not being a witch herself, Lady Cordelia turnedout to be a hag of the highest order. The respectable blue-and-white sitting room rang out with the sound of their cackling. After they had successfully caricatured and resoundingly criticized every current member of Bradley’s household staff, Gretsella returned the topic of their conversation to Cordelia’s employment.
“We need someonesensiblefor the job, and you seem like the most sensible person I’ve met around here yet,” Gretsella said. “It doesn’t matter to me whether or not you think that Bradley should be king. I don’t think he should be king either, but that doesn’t mean I think the palace and the whole kingdom should be allowed to fall to pieces because poor Bradley isn’t smart enough to figure out how to deal with them without having gone through any kind of apprenticeship program for kingdom management.”
“You would think that if, as a society, we’re to accept farm boys taking over all the complex levers of power that control the government upon the recommendation of a bunch of prophetic forest creatures, we would also institute some sort of civics training program for them to go through upon their arrival,” Lady Cordelia said. “Fortheirsakes as much as our own.”
