Something Red (23 page)

They walked along the corridor to the garderobe. Hob waited outside, suddenly embarrassed, and surprised at his embarrassment. In the greenwood Nemain would go behind the nearest bush, and talk with him the while, but here things seemed different.
Nemain
seemed different, and when she emerged he felt strangely awkward with her; quickly he turned and started back.

They came to the fountain, and he showed her where the water came out of the wall. He was a bit disappointed when she was not as impressed as he had been: she had been in castles before, and he had not.

The two walked slowly back along the corridor toward the solar, and Hob asked in a low voice, “Why did Herself tell them she is a queen?”

“It’s a queen that she is in truth, away in Ireland, though her people are scattered, and so am I a queen.”

Hob began to laugh, but his laughter faltered when he saw her face, and trailed away.

“But she is just Mistress Molly!”

“She is Queen Maeve, away in the west of Erin.” Nemain paused a moment. “She’s never the great Queen Maeve, of course, who’s after dying a long time since, but she’s a queen of her own people, and in her own right, and so will I be, my mother being dead as she is, and my father.”

For a moment Hob was too surprised at all this to speak. Life with Molly’s troupe was a constant procession of revelations, and Nemain in particular often left him confused, but this was like suddenly stumbling upon an old Roman road in the midst of thick forest. Questions rose to his lips, so many that his thoughts became too tangled to choose one. Finally: “Who—who was the great Queen Maeve?” he asked plaintively.

“I’m just after telling you, she’s dying a long time since, and there’s many a night we’d hear the storytellers tell of her and her great war, and the boy that’s killing the great hound and taking its place, and didn’t he learn his warcraft from the woman called Shadows, and then he’s growing up and holding off Queen Maeve’s armies—you should ask Herself to tell you of it, I have no gift for it, and here we are and they waiting for us.”

And sure enough here was Molly just coming out of the solar with a page sent up to show them back to the hall, and Jack trailing behind in his new livery. Nemain went to walk with Molly, while Hob, his head whirling a little, fell in beside Jack. The page led them to the turret stairway down to the hall.

The party trooped after the page, down the winding staircase
once more, and into the hall, already filled with sound and scent and light: Hob had never seen so many candles and torches in one place. The tables ran lengthwise down the hall, but at the hall’s head, near the great fireplace, was a low dais, one step up, with a large table set crosswise upon it, draped in cloth: here sat Lady Isabeau, the mareschal and castellan Sir Balthasar and his wife, Dame Aline, a handful of lesser Blanchefontaine knights, the castle chaplain, and the castle’s guests.

Dame Aline, somewhat younger than her husband, was a short, sturdily built woman with fair hair beneath a white lace coif, small square hands, a merry giggle. She had a mask of light freckles across her face that on feast days she hid beneath a powder of rice mixed with dried white rose petal: a faint scent of rose hung about her even tonight, when she wore no powder. Her cheeks were full, making Hob think at first of a squirrel with acorns in its cheeks. He thought her plain, especially next to the ivory perfection of Lady Isabeau. As the evening wore on, though, she seemed more appealing to him, by reason of her blithe chatter, her delight in each jest, and above all the contrast she made with the dire ominous bulk of her husband. He sat beside her and cut her meat, as was polite: men cut for women, the younger for the elder, the lesser for the greater. When he had done, she placed her hand on his arm affectionately; she smiled in his face. Her rounded cheek, her easy laugh, lent her a childlike prettiness, and Hob wondered that she had no fear of the sinister castellan, who made even the tough-as-gristle sergeant Ranulf uneasy.

Beside Lady Isabeau was a seat left vacant for Sir Jehan, Sieur de Blanchefontaine. Sir Jehan was still somewhere out in the howling blizzard with a small hunting party, and from the distracted air with which Lady Isabeau continually looked away down the hall toward the entrance, Hob guessed there was some concern for his safety.

Molly and Nemain were shown to seats at this table, and Hob to a bench behind it, set along the eastern wall, where the pages serving at table waited in a row, watching carefully to see if they might be wanted
to fill a cup, cut meat, bring towel and water that their patrons might clean their hands between courses. One was the fifteen-year-old, whose name proved to be Giles. The little page Hubert was there as well, and attached himself to Hob, for which Hob was grateful, for his memory of procedure was quite sketchy. He confided as much to Hubert, explaining that they had been long on the road, and he feared that he might shame himself and his ladies by a misstep in his serving.

“Would you like me to guide you in attending your ladies?” asked Hubert, the thought of himself as a guide to his new and somewhat older friend plainly appealing to him.

“But yes, if it please you,” said Hob, dredging up some Norman courtesies from Father Athelstan’s lessons.

Hubert indicated that Hob should follow his example. From a sideboard the page took a little ewer of water and a small shallow basin. He took a cloth from a pile of them and spread it on his shoulder. Then he went up to Lady Isabeau, gave a little bow, and held the basin out before her. She put her hands over the basin and Hubert poured water sparingly over them, catching the overflow in the basin. Deftly placing the ewer in the partially filled basin, he whisked the cloth from his shoulder and held it out for Lady Isabeau to dry her hands. With another little bow, he retreated a few paces before turning round.

“Now you—quickly, your ladies are waiting,” said Hubert, turning Hob toward the sideboard where a pile of towels, a set of ewers and basins, stood waiting. Hob took up ewer, basin, cloth, and went to Molly first. It was more awkward than it seemed, pouring just so much, contriving not to let the cloth droop into the basin, struggling with the feeling that Nemain was laughing at him in her thoughts, and perhaps the rest of the company was as well. When he came to serve her he dared not look her in the face for fear of being mocked, or made to laugh; instead he kept his eyes cast down, concentrating on the task.

For a while thereafter Hob was caught up in the whirl of attending
Molly and Nemain: a white broth of coneys demanded the setting out of silver spoons and the cutting of sops, small pieces of bread for dipping; fresh trenchers were needed as bowls and tureens of turnips, salted olives, frumenty, fritters, and forcemeat in a galantine made their way from the kitchen, with great joints of boar and venison that must be transferred, portion by portion, to Molly’s plate or Nemain’s. Hob would arrive at the table right after the server had placed a platter smoking with big cuts of meat on it, draw his belt knife with his right hand, grasp a chunk of the boar or venison with his left hand, and hack it free. Then quickly onto one of the plates with the portion, and there cut it further into pieces small enough for Molly or Nemain to eat with her fingers, or from the point of a knife.

Some of these table duties he knew from Father Athelstan’s instruction, some he guessed from the circumstances, but much of what he did was prompted by hissed instructions and nudges from Hubert. By the end of the dinner Hob felt a real affection for the little page, who seemed only concerned with helping him.

From the pages’ bench Hob had a view past the high table, to the long hall beyond; at the central table, a few yards down the hall, he could see Jack, sitting with Ranulf and the crew that had escorted them to the castle: Roger, Olivier, the soldier called Goscelin or Joscelin, and the others. Hob could hear everything that was said at the high table, but the noise from the long tables down the hall came to him only as a confused rumble.

Beyond Ranulf’s squad was a section of table occupied by a group of perhaps a dozen men: dour, fair men with light eyes, bearded, two with long drooping mustachios. Hob had seen them before, at the monastery: Lady Svajone’s Lietuvan grooms and wagoners and servants. Like the two esquires, they kept to themselves: taciturn men, isolated in any case by their inability to understand the language spoken around them.

A nudge from Hubert sent Hob hurrying to the pitcher of wine nearest Molly, to refill the goblet that sat before her. Then he filled Nemain’s; his former playmate turned a blank look upon him, which somehow—a slight crinkling at the corners of her eyes, a quirk at the side of her mouth?—managed to convey a cool amusement at the situation.

A short while later Lady Svajone entered the hall from a turret stairwell, supported between Gintaras and Azuolas. Slowly she made her way to the high table. Doctor Vytautas, trailing behind, paused by the grooms’ table. The Lietuvans all stood out of respect for him. There was one who seemed to function as a sort of foreman; Vytautas put his hand on his shoulder and motioned the others to sit. Vytautas spoke to the foreman, leaning close to speak in his ear, the man nodding, tugging at his mustache. The doctor clapped him on the shoulder; the foreman bowed; Vytautas resumed his progress toward the high table.

The high table was furnished with chairs, unlike the benches that lined the lower tables, and the esquires settled their tiny charge in a chair. Azuolas took the one to her left. Soon Vytautas sat down close at her right hand, while Gintaras stood behind her chair. The three men thus encircled her and kept her from being jostled, while Azuolas served as her page, cutting her food and filling her goblet with wine.

Doctor Vytautas told her something in their own language, gesturing toward the Lietuvan wagoners’ table. Hob could just hear them through the din. To his ears their language sounded like water in a brook: stones clicking against one another, then the rushing of water. The old woman began to toy with her food with no enthusiasm. She sipped at the wine, while first Vytautas, and then Azuolas, offered her a morsel of this or that designed to tempt her. Occasionally she would nibble at one of these dainties.

Beside the four Lietuvans sat the chevalier Estienne de Tancarville, a knight from Normandy, traveling to Scotland and partaking of Sir Jehan’s hospitality rather longer than he had expected, as the drifts
piled up on the roads. On either side of the table were arranged the elderly Sir Archibald and his wife, Dame Florymonde; four junior castle knights, Sir Tancred and his brother Sir Alain, a second Sir Alain, very short and broad, and the laconic Sir Walter: these carried themselves with the unconscious arrogance of the Norman. Across from Sir Walter sat Father Baudoin: young, sour, dry-lipped.

From time to time a page was able to divert one of the dishes being removed from the table; the boys shared from these generous leavings. As busy as Hob was, he found time at intervals to nibble at the pastries and trenchersful of odds and ends that Giles or Hubert had secured for the pages’ use. As the meal went on, and dishes multiplied and the general confusion of serving increased, more and more treasures found their way to the pages’ bench. After a while Hob felt as though he had eaten a full meal.

The hall occupied a central position in the keep. Corridors wrapped around it, and it occupied this level and ran up through the next floor, so that the ceilings were doubly high. Hob, his eye running around the walls, past the embroidered hangings, the sconces for the torches, the shields of the household knights with their colorful blazons, noticed a balcony, perhaps twelve feet across, and shielded from view by a carved wooden screen.

“What might that be?” he asked.

“Oh, that—that’s where the musicians play, visiting musicians; it’s when my lord holds feast on the holy days, they’re grand to hear,” said Hubert.

“Can you see them?”

“Not very well,” said Hubert. “But they can see through the screen, and play when my lord signals to them.”

At this point two of the other pages, Drogo and Bernard, appeared with a new prize just cleared from the high table, a half-full bowl of blankmanger, a kind of thick custard: chicken and rice pounded to a
paste, boiled in almond milk, sweetened with sugar. The boys dipped sops into the mixture, and Hob found himself so absorbed in the swirl of taste that Hubert again had to nudge him to attend Molly and Nemain.

He was hastily cleaning some unknown sauce from his fingers with a napkin, dabbing at his lips, and when he looked up from his task here came Hubert again, grinning, having smoothly intercepted a barely tasted dish of hare in civey and a small loaf of some bread, lighter and softer than Hob had ever seen. He broke it open; steam escaped from the gap, and the interior was white and smooth. It was the first time Hob had ever seen white bread, though he had heard of it from Father Athelstan. He had just taken a bite, charmed by the texture and taste, when he became aware of a commotion, and he paused, his mouth full.

There was a disturbance at the end of the hall, by the screen that hid the entrance. Lady Isabeau’s head came up sharply and she craned to see. The men scattered here and there as guards, who still wore their weapons though they sat at various tables, some eating, now rose smoothly and moved toward the screen, converging on the doorway, reinforcing those who were formally on watch at the entrance. Sir Balthasar had paused, a piece of thick crust halfway to his lips, unheeded, the crust dripping a sauce golden with saffron onto the layered cloths that covered the table. But a moment later bursts of laughter and cries of greeting dispelled the tension, and around the end of the screen strode Sir Jehan, tall and rangy, grinning toothily, and soaked in blood from shoulder to shin.

CHAPTER 14

T
HE
S
IEUR DE
B
LANCHEFONTAINE
stalked up the hall, trailed by five huge dogs, their coarse fur oatmeal-colored where it was not spattered and stained with red. As he advanced the knight shed his cloak; it must once have been a deep blue, but now was mostly crimson. A page scurrying behind gathered it up, soiling his own livery as he did so. Sir Jehan reached the dais with a light leaping step, pulled off gauntlets stiff with gore and a fur hat soaked with melting snow, and tossed them toward the pages behind the high table. The page beside Hubert caught them. Sir Jehan kissed his wife’s hand and then her cheek, murmured something to her, and turned to the company.