A servant helped Toby strip off her clothes. While Ailsa lay upon the bed and continued her musings about their alleged royal relations, Toby went to the smaller adjoining room and stood inside the great iron tub as the servant poured buckets of warm water over her body to rinse off the sweat. Scraping off the excess water, she then doused herself in rosewater before drying off and dressing in a surcoat of emerald damask, set with a scoop-necked collar of white satin and embroidered in gold thread. Her luscious hair was braided, left to drape over one shoulder. Ailsa got off the bed and danced around her as the servant put the finishing touches on her hair.
“Do you suppose Dragonblade will marry?” she asked.
Toby sighed heavily. “Ailsa, if you call him that one more time….”
Ailsa kissed her cheek and hugged her neck, careful not to ruin the hair. “Sir Tate, I mean. Would it not be fancy if he married you? You could live at Harbottle Castle.”
“He will not marry me. He was married, once, so I was told.”
“Where is his wife?”
“I heard that she died.”
Ailsa looked sad as only a child can. “He must miss her, do you suppose?” From downstairs, they heard the front door bang open, a signal that their father had returned home. Multiple voices indicated guests and Ailsa began to jump up and down. “They are here, they are here!”
“I shall greet them,” Toby leapt off the stool with the servant still fussing with her hair. “Go and see to Mother, Ailsa. Make sure she is tended to before you join our guests.”
Ailsa protested. Toby took her by the hand and led her to the door of her mother’s bower. The old woman, hearing their voices, called out.
“Toby!”
It was a bellow, a barely recognizable word. Toby, knowing by the tone that her mother’s mood was not good, bade Ailsa to stay outside. It would not have been healthy for the child to go in. With a breath for courage, she ventured into the dark, musty bower.
It was like a chamber of horrors, a dusty, smelly, cluttered mess. Rats hid beneath the bed, waiting for the scraps of food that the invalid woman would drop. Judith Cartingdon had been a lovely woman once. But ten years of bad health, the inability to walk and the near-inability to speak, had turned her into a caricature of her former self. When Toby came near the bed, Judith picked up her good arm and hit her daughter in the shoulder.
“Where have you been?” she slurred. “I have been calling for you. Why did you not answer me?”
“We have guests for dinner, mother,” Toby didn’t rub her shoulder; she would not let her mother see that she had hurt her. “I had to see to supper.”
Judith slapped her hand on the bed, drool running down the left side her face. “Supper for me, do you hear? Bring it to me now!”
Toby didn’t argue with her; she didn’t want to be near her mother, much less engaged in a futile conversation with her. She turned around to leave the room when Judith picked up a small pewter bowl and threw it at her, striking her on the top of her left shoulder. It stung deeply, but still, Toby didn’t let on. She continued out of the room.
Ailsa was standing by the door, wide-eyed. “Bring her supper,” Toby finally took the time, out of her mother’s sight, to rub her back. “Make sure all of the plates are removed this time. And do not get too close. Her mood is foul this eve.”
“She hit you again?”
Toby didn’t answer her; the back-rubbing was enough. Smoothing her dress and saying a silent prayer that the meal downstairs progressed without incident, she descended the stairs into the hall below.
Sparks from the hearth had caught some of the rushes in the hall on fire; consequently, the hall was smokier than usual. Toby entered the room, curtsying to the men whose attention turned to her.
“Good eve, Father,” she said. Then she looked at Tate. “My lord.”
“Ah, Toby,” her father greeted her, his normal chalice of wine in hand. “I was showing Sir Tate our humble farm.”
Tate stood near the fire; there had been a slight mist outside and he raked his fingers through his hair to dry it in the heat. His eyes lingered on Toby in her emerald surcoat.
“This farm is anything but humble,” he said. “The size and structure is impressive.”
“You may thank me for the size and my daughter for the structure,” Balin said. “Were it not for Toby, this would still be but a mediocre working farm, struggling to support a village.”
More wine and ale were brought to the table. Tate had been accompanied by his entourage of men; the knights stood and drank their ale while the men at arms stood on either side of the front door in a defensive position. The squire sat on a small stool near the hearth, drying his thin body out.
“It is good to see a community that can support itself,” Tate said. “There is so much poverty in the north that the peasants resort to stealing and begging to live. I have had a good deal of trouble with it on my lands.”
Toby moved to pour herself some mulled wine. “Do you also not think, my lord, that the wars of the crown have created such poverty?”
“They do.”
