Chapter 20 #2
Feeling distinctly unsettled, Olly was grateful for the sudden appearance of a gaggle of women, all keen to be introduced to the earl’s bride.
He made awkward introductions as best he could before leaving Agnes with them – but not before giving her the brief nod he had always given to his co-conspirators in these sorts of situations: will you be all right?
Agnes had given him a small but confident smile, and he had left her to it.
The night was long, the room dim and smoky.
Ash, for his part, appeared to be doing a fair job in his new role: he spoke to the right people on mundane topics like taxes and crop yield and weather.
He never looked like he was enjoying himself, and Olly was sure those he spoke to could see that, but at least he was not shouting at anyone.
Not yet, anyway. Ash’s latest conversational partner – a man named Roland wearing a feathered hat that Olly immediately envied – was certainly doing his best to rile him.
‘What are you still doing down here?’ he said, after Ash had greeted him. ‘You should be bedding your lovely new wife.’
Ash’s face twitched. ‘I have work to do as well, Roland, as you well know.’
‘Begetting heirs is work, boy! A much more pleasant kind of work, too.’
Ash’s expression had settled into a pained grimace. Olly quickly stepped forwards.
‘And who is this?’ Roland said, noticing him at last. ‘I do not believe we have met, although you and your brother are always showing up with strays.’
‘This is Oliver,’ Ash said, with a relieved sigh. ‘He is to be a new fixture at Dunlyn. I’ve known him since we were both troublesome boys. I intend to elevate him, once I can work out what role he deserves to be elevated to.’
Roland guffawed. ‘Quite right, too. When I first came into my house I immediately sent word to my friend in Norfolk. Richard, I said, you get your arse here and be my marshal or there shall be Hell to pay. He was only too happy to, of course. It pays to have those close to you be your friends. No one is better suited to lend you their hand when you need it most. Or’ – Roland gave Olly a conspiratorial look – ‘to tell you when you are being an unreasonable bastard.’
‘I tell him that often enough.’ Olly laughed.
‘Good! I am sure he needs it. Regardless …’ Roland turned back to Ash. ‘Ash, I’ve been meaning to find you all night. I need to talk to you. Let me fetch us some drinks and find us somewhere quieter …’
As Roland hurried after a servant with a jug of beer, Ash turned to Olly.
‘I suspect Roland will desire to talk in private,’ he said. ‘I can ask if you may stay, but …’
‘No, no, this is earl business,’ Olly said, laughing as Ash scowled. ‘Terribly dull. I can amuse myself with Agnes until you are done, I’m sure.’
‘A keen idea,’ Ash agreed. ‘I certainly do not want her to be cornered by …’ He paused. He peered around. ‘Where is Agnes?’
Olly, too, turned. He had assumed she was with the group of women he had left her with. But now her tightly wound crown of burning red hair was nowhere to be seen.
‘Shit,’ Ash muttered. ‘I should look for her …’
‘I can look for her,’ Olly said. ‘You need to be playing at earl, not chasing lost brides.’
‘Very well.’ Ash sighed. ‘Come and tell me if you cannot find her. I can invent some sort of emergency to get away.’
‘Losing your wife does not count as an emergency?’
Ash said nothing, merely shoved him away as Roland appeared with a serving girl carrying a jug of wine. He gave him a playful swat, low on his back where Roland couldn’t see, then returned to the throng of people.
Agnes really did appear to be gone. She wasn’t at the side of the hall, nor was she caught in conversation with anybody.
Even Sara did not know where she was. Olly felt a little guilty for not having realised Agnes was no longer with them.
The previous day she really had seemed distressed, and while neither she nor Ash had specified the form her distress took, it was clear that she had been left feeling fragile.
She had probably returned to her chambers. On his way towards the staircase, hurrying down the quieter servants’ corridor, he heard a little thud from the buttery.
He hesitated. ‘Agnes?’
Silence. Then, so quiet he almost didn’t catch it: ‘Oliver?’
‘Yes, it’s me. We quite lost you …’ A breath. ‘Are you well?’
More silence. Then the sound of a bolt being slid across. The door opened, just a crack. Taking the invitation, Olly slid inside.
Agnes was sitting back down on an upturned crate, looking utterly miserable. Olly locked the door and hurried towards her,
‘What in God’s name is the matter?’
She stared at the cracked stones in the floor.
‘Do you need to return to your room?’ Olly asked. ‘Or I can fetch you something to drink?’
‘I just need … time. To breathe.’
Olly lowered himself to the floor beside her, sitting a careful distance away.
‘Is there any way I can help?’
She shook her head, lips tight.
‘Is it the banquet? The heat?’
‘It is me,’ she spat.
‘You?’
‘It is … my illness from the other day. I thought I was recovered, but …’ She sighed, frowning. ‘Clearly not.’
‘If you are feeling unwell, you should return to bed. I do not want you vomiting all over the floor.’
‘It is not that sort of illness.’
Olly knew at once what she meant. The grip of one’s own mind, the horrors it could conjure through the simple act of existing. The previous day she had slipped into one of these fits, and today it had returned, snarling and striking like a beast freed from a cage.
He knew that feeling far too well. It was sibling to the feeling he’d been burying in his own chest: the heave of jealousy and the fear of being left.
He thought, again, of how he had to hate her.
How by all rights he should. But she was so curled in on herself in a way he had never seen before, so vulnerable.
She had done so much for them: allowing the relationship, whatever her feelings on the matter.
He could not hate her. Even had she not been like this – scared and frantic and hidden in the buttery – he could not hate her.
He reached out across the cold floor and took her hand. She did not react, but she did not let go either.
A thought struck him. It was not a new thought, but it was growing more certain.
Agnes had been seeing the dressmaker when the fit had begun, and afterwards – when they had retired together outside – she’d been wearing …
well. She had been wearing men’s clothes, along with the strange garment that flattened her breasts.
Olly had listened. He’d watched. He told her of the captive poet’s warrior women, and gauged her response: interest, not horror.
When they’d run into that lord in the woods and he’d assumed she was a man, she hadn’t been offended.
It had almost been the opposite: she’d taken it in her stride.
When Ash had given her a man’s name, she’d enjoyed it.
He’d suspected, then. It was why he’d used that name again as they danced.
She was like Pepper. He was almost certain of it.
He’d seen but not experienced that pain, that sense of wrongness: he’d helped Pepper dress properly and cut his hair, spinning tales about a hereditary line of late bloomers to explain his hairless chin.
He’d been there for Pepper’s first bloods, hiding all trace as best he could.
Through all of it, Pepper had been Pepper. There was nothing else he could have been. He remained the too-skinny, too-clever lad who played the fiddle like the devil and could charm a horse into allowing itself to be stolen.
There was no real way to ask, not without insulting her if he was wrong. But he had to try.
He plucked at the fabric of her dress, pooled around her.
‘Is it because of this?’ he asked.
The look Agnes gave him was a mix of horror and surprise. ‘What did Ash tell you?’
So Ash knows. Olly tucked that thought away.
‘Nothing,’ he said aloud. ‘Truly, nothing.’
Agnes examined him disbelievingly. And then she heaved a sigh, wrapping her arms around herself, digging her nails into her arms.
‘It’s … it is wrong. It feels wrong,’ she said.
‘Wrong?’
‘I can hardly describe it. It is like I can feel my skin. Like it does not fit. It is …’ She wrung her hands. Olly found himself tracking the movement. ‘I feel so aware. Of my body, my clothes, all of it. I want to step out of myself.’
‘How can I help?’
Agnes glanced at him. ‘What?’
‘You are distressed. How can I help?’
‘You cannot. I simply must … wait. Until it passes.’
‘Could you change clothes?’
Agnes sniffed. ‘Oh, of course, I shall change into the tunic and breeches I have hidden in here.’
‘Take mine.’
‘What?’
‘Take mine. You are clearly distressed, and I do not want you to have some sort of fit.’
Agnes’s mouth hung open. And then, despite everything, she burst into laughter.
‘What?’ Olly insisted. ‘I am being serious!’
‘You are not.’
‘I am. Truly, that dress is very fetching, I do believe the colour would match my eyes quite beautifully.’
‘Oliver—’ She could barely breathe, now.
‘And it would be such a shame for it to go to waste. At least on me it would go some way to serving its purpose.’
‘Which is?’ Agnes choked.
‘Delighting and seducing the earl, then ending up in a heap on the floor of his chambers this evening.’
Agnes cackled, bruising her eyes with the heels of her hands to stop the tears that were streaming down her face.
‘We cannot.’
Olly grinned, leaning his elbow on the crate she was perched on.
He hadn’t been bluffing – had she agreed to his absurd plan, he would have thrown off his doublet and donned her gown.
It would not have been the first time he’d worn a dress, after all.
But the point had never been to truly swap clothes – just to shock her enough that the panic subsided.
It was a method he’d used countless times before: with friends, with fellow thieves, even with the people he robbed from. Most of the time, it worked.