Hawiz made a dissatisfied noise. Elesbed found herself getting sleepy. It did not seem that the duchess was going to die. She curled up small behind the tapestry while the candles in the chamber were extinguished one by one. The stone was cold and hard there, but her nights had been cold and hard in the ruined farm. A stirring at the edge of the tapestry brought her heart into her mouth, and then a cat poked its head in to inspect her.
In Elesbed’s experience, cats lived in the cowshed and ate mice; she didn’t know what this cat was doing in this fine house. It was very fat and yellow with stripes. The cat stepped on her foot, then her leg. Then it settled under her arm, as warm as the fire, its whole body rumbling softly. It didn’t bite.
Elesbed whispered, “What are you doing, cat?”
The cat didn’t even open its eyes. Perhaps it liked to sleep behind this tapestry and had decided she could sleep there too.
Sometime later Elesbed woke because the fire had gone out and the room was cold. The yellow cat sat upright next to her, growling deep in its throat.
“Are you possessed?” Elesbed whispered, and then she thought of a worse thing. “You’ll wake up the room and I’ll be in such trouble.”
Outside her tapestry, she heard a scraped footstep on the floor, and smelt gusts of the same smell that had filled the farm the night the brigands came. The smell of blood.
Elesbed froze. But the cat darted out, hissing, ears laid flat back on its head. Elesbed could not let a cat be braver than her; she leaped out too, swallowing a scream.
A lady stood in the room, facing the duchess’s great bed. She was tall and beautiful and firelit, although the fire had gone out, and she dragged a bloody sword on the floor behind her. Her throat had been cut and the blood rained down and dyed her rose-colored gown red. Her mouth gabbled but no sound came. She reached out pleading hands and turned in a desperate circle. Without thinking, Elesbed darted between the bloody lady and the duchess. “No!” she cried.
The cat hissed and swiped the air and Elesbed blinked and realized there was no one there. Just the shapes that the lady’s phantom light had left in her tired eyes.
There was an explosion of movement; the great bed like a wooden box swung open.
“What in God’s name—?” said Hawiz just as the duchess said, “Elesbed—”
But neither of them could finish. The room was suddenly choked with people: the maids-of-honor with the guard right behind, everyone confused, looking for danger. Elesbed ducked, trying not to be stepped on. Someone kicked her anyway and she bit back a yelp.
The duchess said something sharply in French that Elesbed didn’t understand. A few of the people shook their heads or nodded and they began to clear the room again. Perhaps Elesbed could slip out too, and that way the duchess would not be angry that she’d slept behind the tapestry. The cat squirmed up to her shoulder, where it sat, its tail curled around Elesbed’s neck, claws dug into her new gown.
Elesbed gave up trying to pry it off and crept toward the door.
“Elesbed,” said the duchess. “No, come back, for heaven’s sake—were you sleeping behind the tapestry? It’s all right, someone should have looked after you. We’ll find you a pallet; Hawiz will rekindle the fire, and you may sleep on the hearth.”
Elesbed found herself saying, “It wasn’t nothing. There was a lady with a cut throat. The cat knew it. It was anaon. One that died badly. My mother said those are the worst, and they have powers. The cat saw her and I saw her.”
The duchess and Hawiz exchanged glances. But all the duchess said was, “It was very brave of you to come and defend me. You and the cat.” The cat flexed her paws, sending prickles of pain through Elesbed’s shoulder. Her tail remained wrapped possessively around Elesbed’s neck. “In the meantime we are all tired, and some things are better discussed in daylight.”
Elesbed nodded vigorous agreement.
Hawiz rebuilt the fire and added a few logs crosswise so that the flames leaped high. Then she laid out a pallet beside it for Elesbed, whose eyelids were getting heavy.
As she lay in the flickering light, the cat curled beside her on the blanket, Elesbed heard the smile in the duchess’s voice. “I think you have a friend now. What will you call her?”
Elesbed blinked. “It’s a cat, Highness.”
“But will you give her a name?”
Elesbed was puzzled. “A name?”
“You are called Elesbed.”
“Yes, but—it’s a cat.” Her sleepy brain didn’t understand. She blinked her eyes open to see the duchess lying on her back in the deep dark of her great paneled bed. The duchess said, “You can give her a name. My palfrey is called Jonquil, for the flower.”
Elesbed thought she would like a name for the cat. Something nice and soft the way the cat was. “Butter,” said Elesbed. “I shall call her Butter.” And she stroked the yellow fur.
Elesbed wondered what her mamm would think if she told her she’d heard a duchess laughing. “It’s a fine name.”
When Elesbed went to sleep, she was smiling too, for the first timesince the brigands came. Butter rumbled against her chest. But Elesbed’s last sight was not of the duchess. It was of Hawiz, awake, sitting by the newly leaping flames, keeping watch over the duchess during the darkest part of the night.
They rode back to Nantes on one of those days when the sky played coy with the sun. The stranger from Brocéliande was still insensible, borne tidily in a cart, well wrapped, with people to watch over him.
