Songs of Love & Death (21 page)

The other two minstrels were less impressive to Timbal. The apprentice, Saria, did little more than tune instruments, sing choruses, and flirt wildly. Chrissock, Lord Just’s resident minstrel, was an older man with a deep bass voice. He performed with a variety of drums, and specialized in the oldest tales, recited exactly as they had been handed down through the years. Some evenings, Timbal could barely stay awake through his long recitals of ancient battles and who had died and how. He twisted his pronunciation and used words that she didn’t understand and sometimes she wondered why any of it mattered anymore. But sometimes he told tales of brave warriors that were as stirring as any romance that Azen had ever sung. And for those, she sat as close to his dais as she could get, hugging her knees and watching him perform with awe.

It was while she was enraptured one evening that she chanced to glance over at Azen. The minstrel was behind Chrissock and to one side. He had been
supplementing Chrissock’s percussion with his harp, but had broken a string and stepped away from the music to make his repair. He was finished now and was waiting easily to take his own turn performing. And while he was waiting, he was watching Timbal.

At first, she thought it was only chance that their eyes had met. She put her gaze back on Chrissock. The toes of her blue boots tapped in time with his telling. A sideways glance at Azen found him still watching her, a half smile on his face. Her toes lost the time and she glanced down at her feet, confused. Half a chorus later, she dared to look up at Azen again. This time he nodded to her and smiled. A blush flamed her face; she could not say why. He had done no more than smile at her. She put her eyes back on Chrissock and kept them there, desperately willing her heart to stop pounding and hoping her scarlet cheeks would cool.

When the song finally ended and she dared to glance in his direction, he was gone. She plummeted abruptly into disappointment, though she could not have said what she had anticipated. When she looked over her shoulder, she found him. He was standing before Lady Lucent’s chair, his head inclined to hear her whispered request. An instant later, she dismissed him with a conspiratorial smile and he returned to his place on the minstrel’s dais. Chrissock played another song, this one obviously for the children of the keep. It was the tale of an old man who lived up a steep flight of stairs and had a succession of late-night visitors. It required the children to stamp and clap the rhythm back to him, and Chrissock gradually increased the tempo of the old man running up and hopping down the steps until it all dissolved into an impossible cacophony of stamping and shouting children. He bowed off the stage, surrendering it to Azen.

Timbal lowered her eyes and watched her boots as he sang. His first song was a melancholy tale of love gone awry, with the maiden choosing wealth over fondness and regretting it evermore. His second song was the old one about the miller’s daughter floating notes down the river to her true love. His
third song was one he had sung before. The refrain mentioned his true love’s raven hair, tiny hands, and deep blue eyes. She closed her eyes to listen to it, but was jolted out of her reverie. For in the last stanza, he sang not of her blue eyes, but of her blue boots. She lifted her gaze, shocked, but his face was calm, his eyes on his patron as he sang. If anyone else had noticed the change in lyrics, they did not react. She wondered if she had imagined it.

Azen sang two more songs before a signal from Lady Lucent declared the evening’s entertainment over. The minstrel rose from his seat and stepped away from his harp, lightly leaping down to advance on his patron and bid her good night. Timbal rose with the other maids and servants of the keep and followed them out of the hall into the warm evening. Light still lingered though it was fading fast. Tomorrow’s work meant another early morning for her. She went up to her room to get her ewer, and then strolled down to the well to fill it. She hummed as she went, the refrain of Azen’s last song still ringing in her head.

Gretcha was at the well before her, filling her own ewer. Timbal waited while she scooped handfuls of water to splash her face and finally to drink before eventually handing the bucket over to Timbal. The housemaid silently watched her lowering the bucket into the well. Timbal did not know her well, and was shocked by the note of resentment in her voice when the older girl spoke to her.

“Don’t let him make a fool of you, missy.”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?” The bucket plashed into the water.

“You heard me.” Gretcha was already turning away from her. “Don’t pretend to be stupid. The minstrel Azen. Yesterday, he asked me if I knew your name. I told him yes, that you were named ‘Trouble.’ And his name is the same for you. He’s toying with you. Don’t take him seriously. Surely your mother taught you that minstrels are never to be trusted? He’ll flirt with anyone, of course, and sleep with any girl who opens her legs to him after a few sweet words from that golden tongue. Enjoy it, if that’s the sort of girl you are. But don’t expect it to come to more than that. He’s Lady Lucent’s minstrel, and everyone who’s worked here more than a season knows that. But you’re new. So I thought I’d warn you. Just to be kind.”

“Thank you,” Timbal faltered, though the girl’s tone had been anything but kind. Gretcha made no response but turned and sauntered away, her filled ewer in hand.

As Timbal hauled the bucket up, to drink, and wash her face and then fill her own ewer, she wondered. Did Gretcha think that what she had said was a kind warning? Timbal doubted it. There had been jealousy in her voice, or something like it. Something nasty and vengeful. She wondered if somehow
she’d made an enemy at Timberrock, but could think of nothing she’d done to Gretcha.

Nothing save draw Azen’s attention.

He’d asked Gretcha what her name was. That meant he’d noticed her as more than a face in the crowd. She smiled to herself. He might be Trouble, but she doubted he was trouble she couldn’t handle. She wondered if he’d been ‘Trouble’ to other serving girls and then nodded to herself.

Was that it? Had the minstrel once been attentive to the housemaid? Or was he truly, as Gretcha had accused him, a pastime for Lady Lucent? Lord Just’s legs were withered. Timbal wondered if that meant his other lower parts were useless. She had heard of highborn ladies and lords that did not keep their marriage vows but dabbled where they would. She thought again of how the lady summoned and then dismissed the minstrel, and wondered if she summoned and dismissed him for other duties as well. Were they secretly lovers, joined at the heart? She imagined the minstrel clasping the lady to his breast and kissing her. A strange thrill shot through her, one tinged with envy. Oh, she was being stupid! To have thought for one instant that she could have caught the eye, let alone the heart, of a handsome young minstrel like Azen! Of course he would be at his patron’s beck and call, performing whatever services she wished of him. Everyone knew that minstrels never truly gave their hearts. What had she been thinking? She filled her ewer and carried it back to her room.

Yet that night, despite her best efforts to clear her thoughts of him, she fell asleep still humming the refrain, with “blue boots” where “blue eyes” should have been. And the dream she had of him awoke her long before dawn, and did not allow her to easily fall asleep again.

Her love for him was like poison ivy, she thought. She rose early and went to her work, resolved not to allow her thoughts to touch on him. But they did. And with every touch of her mind, her infatuation spread and enflamed her. Infatuation, she told herself sternly. A silly little girl’s wild dream of a handsome and popular older man. What was wrong with her? He was the least eligible of the men in the keep. All he could do for her was break her heart, or get her pregnant if she were foolish enough to dally with him. Set him out of your thoughts and get about your work, girl!

So she told herself sternly and to absolutely no avail. Useless to recall that she knew next to nothing about him, and that what she did know indicated than any sensible girl would avoid him. He was a minstrel, and possibly the Lady Lucent’s lover. He had no fixed home, no income other than the largesse of his listeners, and probably few possessions other than the clothes on his back and his harp. The only thing she could share with him was trouble.

She was scrubbing the big iron stew pot when he came into the kitchen yard. It was the biggest pot the keep owned, and it was seldom empty. Once she was finished with it, it would be filled with water, onions, turnips, carrots, and a tough haunch from an old milk cow. It would cook for a day, and for the next week or so, more vegetables and pieces of meat would be tossed in to replace most of what was ladled out to the serving folk. Sometimes the soup kettle would go a month without a scrubbing out. And when it was finally time for a cleaning, it had to be rolled out of the kitchen onto the flagged court, where the lucky cleaner of the pot might spend half the morning scraping and scouring to get all the scorched scraps out of it.

Timbal had tied back her hair and covered her head with a rag. She’d turned the pot on its side and was on her hands and knees, with her head and shoulders inside the kettle, scraping away. Two small dogs had appeared from somewhere. Tails wagging, they awaited every handful of scraped-off debris, cheerfully snapping and snarling at each other to see who would claim it. In the midst of one of their yap fests, she heard her name in a questioning tone. “Yes?” she replied as she backed hastily out of the pot.

“Excellent,” Azen replied merrily. “I’ll see you then.” The minstrel swept her a theatrical bow that fluttered his blue summer cloak, and turned away from her.

“I don’t know what you asked me…” she called after him.

He turned around, walking backward away from her. He was smiling. “And yet you agreed? I call that a good sign for me!”

“Agreed to what?” She could not keep the smile from her face, even as she touched the greasy cloth that covered her hair, and wondered suddenly how foolish she had appeared to him, with her rear end sticking out of a soup pot.

“You agreed to walk out with me this evening, after your chores are done. I’ll meet you at the bottom of your stair.” He had not paused in moving away from her. Now he turned and walked rapidly away.

“Don’t you have to sing tonight?” she called after him.

He spun around once, laughing. “Only if you want me to!” he replied. “It’s my night to do as I please,” he added, and then he turned a corner and disappeared behind the milk shed. She stared after him. Her heart was hammering, the kettle scraper in her hand forgotten. What did it mean? For a time she remained crouched on her haunches, staring after him, her task forgotten. Should she go? She had said she would. But she had said “yes” before she knew what he was asking, or even who was speaking to her. She hadn’t really said “yes” at all! Would she have, if she had emerged from the pot and heard what he was asking her? Of course not! She had decided he was not for her. An
instant later, she admitted the truth to herself. Yes. She would have.

And she had.

It seemed Cook gave her every dirty and disgusting task the kitchen offered for the rest of that day. When finally the day’s work was done, she was greasy and sooty and bone weary from scrubbing. Any other night, she would probably have gone straight to her bed. Instead, she hurried down to the women’s bathhouse. She scrubbed herself there and washed tangles and grease from her hair. She wrung out her hair and knotted it up on the back on her head, and hurried back to her room. Unfortunately, Azen was already waiting at the foot of the stairs. He arched his brows in surprise at her dripping hair. “Just a moment!” she assured him, flustered beyond words, and fled up the rickety steps.

She changed hastily out of her servant’s dress and into the only “good” clothes she owned. Her skirt was green with white trim, and her blouse was pale yellow. As she fastened the simple silver hoop earrings that her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, he was very much on her mind. What would he have thought of what she was doing now? Would he have approved of her walking out with a minstrel? For an instant, sadness washed over her that she could not ask his permission or opinion. She wondered what had become of their old cart and team, and if the men who had killed her father had profited from his death. Then she shook her head clear of such thoughts. They had never helped her, not in the days right after his death and certainly not now. She would have to make her own way in the world, and live with her own decisions.

She tore a comb through her dark hair, braided it, and pinned it up, hoping the wet would not be so noticeable. She pulled on her blue boots, took a breath, and left her small room to descend the stairs. Thoughts of her father had driven some of the giddiness from her. If she made any mistake with this man, she reminded herself, she’d have no one to rely on except herself.

She cautioned herself to wariness, but as she came down the steps, Azen was looking up and smiling at her. His dark eyes seemed suddenly a pool that she might drown in. “There you are!” he exclaimed, as if completely surprised by her presence. He lifted a small covered basket from the ground and hung it on one arm while offering her his free one. It seemed only natural to take it, and once she had, she could think of no polite way to let go of it. “I know a place where the night birds sing,” he told her, and off they went.

She did not have to talk much at first, for which she was grateful. He entertained her with an accounting of his day, turning his simple tasks to a tale full of humor and mischief. She could not help but laugh, and for a time, he seemed
to expect no more from her save that she listen and smile at his nonsense.

The place where the night birds sang proved to be a sandy river beach backed by trees, downstream from the footbridge to town. Where the forest met the shore, he found a bleached-out log for them to sit on. The sun was making its lazy journey toward the horizon, sending the forest shadows reaching toward them. His little basket held a large honey cake for them to share and a bottle of wine. He used his sheath knife to pull the cork, doing it badly. “It will never go back in,” he told her gravely. “We’ll have to drink it all here, or waste it.”