Henri shook his head. “She sounds like me in my heart, only I’m too old to give voice to such thoughts. And I am not fool enough to go and ask the korriganed for help. If they are even alive, in their hills.”
Anne rounded on him with unaccountable anger, white threads tangling between her fingers. “Doyoublame me for leaving? What choice do I have? Is it better to be conquered? Do you not think I’d have found another way if there was one?Do you think I want this?” She broke off, already regretting her loss of control. Vivid in her memory was the night of her proxy-wedding, all those impersonal eyes. She bent over the mess of her work, not daring to let them see her face.
“No, little sister,” said Henri, after a pause. He sounded kind, and tired. “I know you don’t. And I know you’d walk through hellfire for the rest of us. You just haven’t noticed how much the rest of us don’t want you to have to. I’ll go and find Isabeau.”
Elesbed had thought at first, quailing inwardly, that they had put her to live in the kitchen as punishment. But no, she soon realized, it was because, as Hawiz told the cook, that it was best the child learn a skill. And the kitchen was full of food and smelt nice and the cook had a face like a ripe apple.
“Come, child, you’re skinny as a cricket,” she said. “We shall begin with supper and a sleep.”
Elesbed ate to bursting. The kitchen delighted her, with its steams and good smells. The kitchen delighted Butter too, who instantly fought a duel with the other kitchen cat, both of them yowling while everyone cheered and Elesbed hopped from foot to foot with anxiety. Butter emerged triumphant, and the other cat fled the field. Butter proceeded to kill three mice and then went to the hearth and sat expectantly. The cook gave her a saucer of cream while Elesbed wept over the cat’s scratches. “It’s all right, they’ll tolerate each other now,” said the cook comfortably. “And your fine lady is a mouser if I ever saw one. She is welcome, and so are you.”
Elesbed slept on her pallet of fresh straw until the kitchen stirred for the watch, the dark hour of the night. She woke to the sound of gossiping, as the kitchen staff sat together near the fire, passing a bottle back and forth. One said, “It is true, then? The lady touched a unicorn?”
“Yes. I had it from her guard. She cut a lock of its hair.”
“That happy, virtuous lady. Bless her, and damn the French to hell. They shan’t have her.”
The whole castle was full of intriguing sounds. Laughter, someone singing. The stairs upward from the kitchen tempted her, and her full belly had made her brave. “We ought to go exploring,” she whispered to her cat.
No one saw her when she got up and slipped away, and the cat ran up the stairs ahead and pounced at shadows. Or perhaps on unseen mice.
The scale of the castle dizzied her. Elesbed hid behind coffers and draperies and in the shadows along walls and watched in fascination as people talked their incomprehensible French and drank and laughed and put their heads together and whispered and sometimes played games with cards or sang songs.
She came at length to a room that was empty of people but full of furnishings. Butter ran ahead and darted behind a vast great box, elaborately carved. Next moment, someone shrieked.
Elesbed peered over the top and saw a girl upon a cushion, with tears all over her face.
The girl scrambled to her feet. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“Elesbed,” said Elesbed, after a pause. “Who are you?”
The girl drew herself up haughtily and rubbed her running nose. “I am Isabeau of Brittany.”
“Oh,” said Elesbed, pleased. “You are the duchess’s sister.”
“You are a disrespectful villein. Go away. Your cat is very disrespectful too.” Butter had twined herself around the other girl’s legs and was purring loudly.
Elesbed said, “Why are you crying?”
“I wasn’t crying! Ducal heirs don’t cry.”
Elesbed considered. “Is a ducal heir like a princess? Princesses cry in stories,” she said. “Iseult wept for a year and a day when her lover, Tristan, went away.”
“Oh—” said the other girl and dropped hard onto the cushion. “My sister is going to get married and leave us.”
It took Elesbed a moment, so far away were the casual words “my sister” from her image of the duchess of Brittany. “Yes?” she said doubtfully. “But everyone gets married and goes away. All girls, at least. And he might give her a necklace and a sheep. Won’t she like that?”
Isabeau threw her a look of tolerant scorn. “My sister’s husband will give her castles and lands and jewels and destriers.”
Elesbed didn’t know what a destrier was. “That is even better.”
“But I shall never see my sister again,” said Isabeau and began to cry once more, stormily, burying her face in her arms.
Elesbed sat beside her on the cushion. “Do you mean to sling yourself off a tower in a fit of despair?”
Isabeau blinked and looked at her sideways, tears forgotten in astonishment. “How would that help?”
“I don’t know,” Elesbed confessed. “Princesses do it in stories.”
