Grimenna Read online

  “Yes, it’s a small village,” Bessil said, tossing her blankets to her. “I bet you are the talk of it, riding away with Master Yulin.”

  Bessil helped tuck her in by the fire, showing her where there was a broom and a bucket of water in case there should ever be a fire started in the middle of the night. She then went to the back door that lead onto the street and let in a black stray cat that jumped up on the table and looked at Paiva with wide, blinking eyes. Bessil locked and bolted the door behind it.

  “This is Horrigs,” Bessil said. “He chases the rats.”

  Bessil bid her goodnight then and trundled out of the kitchen with a sigh, weary of her day’s work. Paiva watched the cat saunter his way to the fire where he sat on his haunches and blinked at her with wide yellow eyes. His tail twitched, then he threw himself into a long stretch, clearly more interested in the luxuries of the kitchen than in eating rats.

  Paiva considered the course her life was taking. After the initial shock of the upheaval in finding herself far from home and alone aside from Bessil, she settled on not being unhappy about it. She focused on the good things that were all about her — she thought of her parents asleep in the little house beneath the pasture, of the stories she would tell them when she would be united with them again. Her father’s happy smile, her mother’s proud eyes. She would be the only girl in Birchloam who ever helped to cook the Lord his supper. She imagined her friends begging to hear of the things she had seen; she imagined how for weeks they would have visitors come to their farm to hear her tales. With that happy thought she succumbed to sleep, too tired to think any longer.

  Chapter 6

  She woke to Bessil blundering into the kitchen, the door swinging open and straining against its hinges. Bessil stomped down the stairs, rubbing sleep from her eyes and mumbling incoherently beneath her breath. The first thing she did was find Horrigs and chase him outside, then she swung her bulk towards the hearth and began throwing wood on the fire to get the ovens hot for the day.

  “Come on girlie,” she said to Paiva, who blinked disconcertingly into the gray light that filtered into the kitchen. Paiva woke with a sense of confusion, taking a moment to settle her wits and assure herself she was meant to be where she was and there was no mistake. Then she rose and began to help Bessil sort out the fire. Seeing that Paiva understood the concept of making fire hot, Bessil fetched herself a cup of watery ale and sat for a moment at the work table to drink it and liven herself.

  “I’ll expect you to get the fires hot before I come in from now on,” she grumbled and then shoved a finger in her ear to clean it out. “I like efficiency in my kitchen, and seeing as you’ll be sleeping here for a while yet we might as well find a use for you. Get the fire hot then open the flues on the ovens, boil some water, and there you have it.” She then inspected her finger and frowned at it, and Paiva wondered what it was she had dislodged from the innards of her own ear. Bessil wiped it away on her apron, swallowed her ale and then went about preparing for the day. Paiva changed from her nightshift into her homespun dress and received a battered apron from Bessil on her return from the storeroom.

  Soon the maids began arriving, each rubbing sleep from their eyes and yawning. Half-asleep, they went about their chores, eating their own hurried bowls of gruel before preparing the morning’s meal for the rest of the Keep.

  Paiva found the maids to have the same edge to them as everyone else she had encountered in the lowlands. They scrutinized her and threw her dirty looks, unwelcoming and mistrustful. They did not offer her any help and avoided speaking to her. She grew tired of their cool manners and opted not to talk to any one of them regardless of whether they showed interest in her or not. The only maid that was glad of her company was Dorta, a small freckled girl with mousy hair and a wiry frame. She was younger than Paiva, who would see her nineteenth year that coming summer. Dorta was shy and impressionable, terrified of Bessil, and in desperate want of a friend. Whether or not Bessil was aware of this Paiva did not know, but they found themselves paired together in scrubbing pots, peeling vegetables and most other chores.

  As they worked together, Dorta eagerly divulged her life story, telling Paiva she came from a large family. Her father was a smithy and lived in a little shop in the working quarters, while her brothers were field boys and went to work in the farmlands beyond the walls. Her one sister she adored was the youngest and still no higher than her mother’s apron strings. Paiva in turn told her about Birchloam and her own home. Dorta listened raptly, never before having met someone from the most far-off village. Paiva felt a pang of longing for her home as she described the pastures and the thick birch tree forests. She felt entirely out of place here, enclosed within this beehive of a castle where everyone was walking and talking over each other. She made no mention of Varloga or the reasons why she left it, for Yulin had warned her not to.

  In the days that followed, she and Dorta became inseparable. They were sent into the market with a wooden cart to gather produce and ingredients from the local vendors. Dorta took her under her wing and taught her how to be a serving maid, teaching her how to curtsy properly and what and what not to say when talking to a Highborn. Paiva was sent up into the Great Hall under Dorta’s supervision where she helped to serve and clear the meals they prepared. The first meal she attended to was a supper.

  The Lord Pratermora, Lady Ceitra and Yulin sat at the high table at the far end of the Great Hall, their backs warming in the light of one of the hearths built into every one of the four walls. Joining them at the trestle tables were knights, highborns and other officials. They were all dressed in splendid finery, knights with golden sigils stitched across their chests and long swords at their hips. The highborns sat in tunics and robes that glittered with pendants and sequins, the officials in their designated uniforms. A notary was there with a cap on his head and a long swan feather stuck in it, with a lawyer dressed all in black but for a red cravat about his throat. Dorta had warned her not to gawk, for a serving maid was supposed to have a small presence, moving unnoticed and without bother as the guests went about their business and supper. Paiva could not help but to stare at the ladies accompanying the knights and highborns. She could not imagine how they could support their own dresses, so thick with layers of shimmering silk and blooming veils. Their bodies looked small and trapped within. She gaped at their hair, stacked and curled in towering masses, shimmering with opulent jewels and pins. Their faces had strange colors as well, their cheeks rouged with powder, their eyelids blushed the same color as their dresses. Some even had a small shining jewel pasted to the corners of their eyes or on the peak of their cheeks. Dorta rescued her a few times from her staring, giving her a sharp elbow or a startling whisper as she passed.

  Lady Ceitra was always the finest of the ladies. There was something about her that made her outshine the others, something in her commanding presence that drew all eyes to her. Paiva found it disconcerting when she served her wine or cleared her plates, for Ceitra’s eyes always had a way of looking at her that left her slightly chilled.

  This supper was arranged for a hearing of wrongdoing. After the nobles had eaten guards presented the man whom Paiva had seen tied to the pillar for days in the bailey. His accuser came forward as well: a prominent landowner dressed in a fine tunic with a felt cap on his head. Between clearing dishes and serving wine Paiva was able to hear and see most of the trial.

  The accused man stood hunched and listless before the tables, covered in filth and half-starved. His beard had grown in, hiding his dirty face. The lawyer, who was a relatively young and handsome man, addressed the case: the accused man owed rent and had been evicted from his land. This was not the worst of it, for in a cold vengeance the accused man had burned down the homestead.

  He pleaded not guilty to the arson, though he did admit to being unable to pay his rent. The rent was not as serious an issue; that would only earn the man a small term in prison. The preme
ditated burning of a landlord’s property was more serious.

  “Why would I burn it?” the ragged man said. “Everything I owned was in it. All my tools, my horses… Why would I burn it?”

  “To spite me,” the landowner spat.

  “If I wanted to spite you Master Girt I’d have burned your own house down before I burned mine.”

  “Do you hear the threats he utters?!” cried the landowner to the Lord. The Lord looked to Yulin as if he was suffering a jogging headache. The lawyer handed Lord the ledger he had written up during the course of the hearing and he read it through thoughtfully. He then raised his eyes to the accused man and uttered the words no man would ever want to hear.

  “I find you guilty,” the Lord said. He lowered his head and muttered with Yulin before rising from his seat to depart back to his chambers atop the tower.

  “To the woods then,” Yulin said and went to throw a long iron in the hearth behind him. The accused man straightened then and a wave of fear spread over his face.

  “No … please!” he shouted as guards came forward and seized him. He began to scream as Yulin turned the iron in the coals, watching it grow red hot. He drew it from the flames and strode towards the man, the glowing brand smoking. The man writhed as he had his hand pressed flat in a wooden press, a guard holding him still by a wrenching handful of hair. Paiva and Dorta both fled into the refuge of the kitchen before they could witness the horrible scorching of flesh.

  Bessil was at the work table kneading a mound of dough, humming to herself as the man screamed. The other maids went about their chores as if there was nothing amiss and they were not all listening to the sound of a man’s life being thrown away.

  “Why can’t he go to prison, why was he not given a choice?” she asked Dorta as they brought dishes to the sink.

  “I suppose the prisons are full,” Dorta shrugged. “There are enough mouths to feed around here.”

  — «» —

  Paiva began writing to her parents shortly after, telling them of everything she had seen and describing the meals that Bessil cooked without divulging any secret recipes. She gave them to Bessil to post, who in turn brought Paiva the letters her parents sent in return. Each one she waited for eagerly always disappointed her in some way, for none of them were an invitation to come back home. So she bided her time in the kitchens, working hard during the day and spending long hours in the night trying to befriend Horrigs who remained too aloof for any want of real companionship.

  The only other friends she made were the urchins that sat huddled outside the kitchen in the filthy streets waiting for scraps of food. She was under strict orders from Bessil to keep the door to the streets firmly locked at night for fear they would invade her kitchens. They changed from day to day — sometimes there were more, sometimes less, all huddled in a row along the street across from the kitchen door beneath their rags of clothes. They opened their hands to passerby and waited anxiously for the moment the kitchen doors would open and scraps would be tossed to them.

  There was an old blind woman who could not work and had no one to take care of her. There was a toothless widow who had spent many hard years in the Quarrytown pit before her Wilderman husband had died and set her free. She was then left without a station and without work, but she said she would rather beg than to go back to the pit. Paiva was kind to them and even Bessil, who cursed them up and down, didn’t mind Paiva leaving extra scraps out for them. But Paiva was diligent to never upset Bessil. She always made sure by the time the maids began filing in bleary-eyed in the morning that the fires were hot and roaring, the floor swept and hot tea and gruel ready for their breakfast. The days began to warm as spring blossomed into early summer and the kitchens became hotter and stuffier. Bessil seemed to like Paiva’s sleeping arrangement and never bothered to find her other quarters.

  One morning, Paiva rose in the first blush of dawn to chase Horrigs out onto the street with the broom when she was startled by the blasting call of a horn. She stepped out into the street curiously, wondering what the noise was all about. She asked the urchins what was going on and the toothless widow gave her a gummy smile.

  “Wildermen,” she said. Paiva’s heart lurched.

  “Coming back with a trophy,” another urchin said. As the horn continued to blast Paiva hurried back inside, her heart surging with hope, for perhaps the head they were bringing back was that of Varloga’s. Perhaps then she could leave this place and return to her home.

  — «» —

  Bessil trundled in with an exasperated look, knocking her maids out of the way as she muttered to herself and went to the cellars. Dorta came to sit next to Paiva with her breakfast and Paiva asked her about the horns.

  “Wildermen,” Dorta said. “There are Wildermen coming down the river.”

  “Down the river?” Paiva asked.

  “That’s how they come when they have a Folka head. It’s the only way they have to cross the Panderbank, on a stonecutter’s barge.” Paiva felt it on the tip of her tongue to tell her otherwise but thought better of it. “Bessil’s all upset about it. It means the great hall will be packed tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “For the Pardoning. The Lord will be presented with the Wilderman’s trophy, and if he deems it worthy of being mounted on his wall in the chamber atop the Keep, the Wilderman will be granted his pardon. If not, he will be sent back to the woods to try again — or die, whichever comes first. But tonight they will eat and drink among civilized men again and the Lord will be happy to see a dead Folka. It is the best of entertainment, hearing the Wildermen tell the tale of their hunt and stories from the woods, where no one goes but them.”

  — «» —

  Bessil came back from the cellars and started yelling orders, very much the captain of her ship. The maids hurried to finish their meals and gather their dishes to be washed, then hustled about gathering ingredients and preparing utensils. There was a light lunch of boiled ham and salted cabbage that the servants came and fetched to bring to their appropriate wards. The maids ate the scraps of their cooking’s, too busy to sit and eat, while Bessil tallied orders. There was lamb stewed in a wine sauce, four cauldrons over the fires simmering with boiling potatoes, and the ovens were stuffed full of breads and pastries. Four geese were plucked and stuck on a spit, while three rows of chickens roasted below them over the same fire. A great bowl of pudding was baked, requiring two maids to each grab a side of the huge dish to stuff in the oven. Bessil sweated like a high-strung horse as she stomped around the kitchen. She could not read or write very well and had committed a hundred recipes to memory, and somehow, she managed them all at the same time. When she was not supervising her maids she went back down in the cellar and returned while single-handedly carrying a barrel of wine or cider on her shoulder. When she lowered it down into the service racks she would help herself to a mug of it, making her cheeks flush very rosy and her voice become all the louder.

  “This is all for the Wildermen?” Paiva flustered to Dorta as they mashed butter into flour for pie crusts.

  “No!” Dorta exclaimed with a light laugh, “For all the highborns and rich men who will come to see them. It’s sport for them, like watching a dog fight or a horse race.”

  “Dorta! Paiva!” Bessil shouted from the ovens. “Go into the bailey and fetch me four dozen eggs, a tankard of vinegar, a roll of cheesecloth, and ginger if there’s any to be found. Then go to the butcher and get him to bring over that pork flank he promised me.”

  Dorta struggled to remember the list but Paiva had an easy time cataloguing it. They headed out to the bailey with their little wooden cart, relishing the cool air that brought relief from the hot, stuffy kitchens.

  They had no trouble fetching all the ingredients but they could not find the butcher. His wife, with her bloody apron and hands, said her husband was out looking at the Folka head in the bailey. She said when he was
back she would send him over with Bessil’s pork flank.

  When they returned to the kitchens and carted the goods in Bessil was screaming at a crying maid who had scorched a meat pie. Bessil looked like a war chief in the fray of a battle. After scolding her soundly Bessil sent the maid with Paiva and Dorta to dress the great hall table.

  — «» —

  By the time the windows had darkened with dusk, Bessil was content that her supper was in order. She cracked open a barrel of cider and let each maid have a mug to drink and some bread to eat. They all fanned themselves exhaustedly and mopped at their necks with their aprons, most finding a place to seat themselves and rest their aching feet before the long ordeal of supper began.

  When it did, every last maid carried a steaming platter of food up into the hall and set it before their assigned places on the table before the noblemen. There was the murmur of exchanged talk and a bard on a lute that strummed a dreary song. Purebred hounds the rich men brought searched the floor with wet noses for scraps, and a juggler juggled anything he could, discarding his colored balls to collect goblets and plates as he made his way along the table. No one minded him very much, for he was not the best of the entertainment to come.

  The Lord Pratermora and the Lady Ceitra were seated at the head of the table. Paiva and Dorta were given the task of standing at the ready, each with a pitcher of wine to refill empty cups and to inform Bessil if platters needed to be restocked. Dorta smirked at Paiva’s wide eyes again as she stared about the colorful array of people.

  “Fancy marrying a nobleman one day, do you?” Dorta whispered discreetly to her.

  “That one in the red vest is very handsome,” Paiva replied. Dorta searched him out and giggled.

  “He’s a knight,” she said. “Be careful if you serve him too much wine, he likes to hide his hands in our skirts. That’s his wife beside him, and she’s quick to catch him.”