CHAPTER NINE #2
After a large exhale to steel myself, I turned and lowered my hood in one swift motion, prepared to address the shopkeep…
but no one was present. I shifted my gaze across the establishment, trying to locate a living soul.
Instead, I was greeted by warmth and the mouthwatering smell of baking bread.
The wooden coffers lining both walls were stacked with an assortment of pastries, cakes, pies, and every variety of loaf imaginable.
I did my best to ignore the growing ache in my stomach.
I stepped deeper into the building, my boots scuffing against the straw-scattered stone floor.
Aside from the display window facing the street, the rest of the shutters had been opened, and natural light diffused the candlelit atmosphere weakly.
There was a staircase in the back of the shop and a small mahogany door behind the counter.
The shuffling of feet overhead coaxed my attention upwards, and I bit my bottom lip.
This was an uncharted degree of madness, even when compared to the risks I’d taken lately, yet I found myself crossing the bakery’s floor and gripping the railing for additional support as I ascended stairs I had little business ascending.
“We need more bread for the feast,” I practiced under my breath.
Idiocy. Why would I be the one to retrieve it?
I tried again: “I was passing by and the smell—I just had to come inside!”
Yes, during one of my frequent unguarded strolls through the village! Perhaps the life-threatening curiosity that had recently possessed me had also rendered me inept.
By the time I reached the landing, I knew I was going to have to rely on the fact that I needn’t explain myself to anyone. The splintered door I met was slightly ajar, and the buzzing sensation within my center was all-consuming as I pushed it open.
“Did you forget something?” The auburn-haired woman paused the pouring of a vial down her child’s throat to address me, but the moment our eyes connected, she nearly dropped what she held. When her attention diverted to the long pale-blonde braid draped over my breast, her breath visibly hitched.
I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Are you the baker?” I stepped further into her home, quickly assessing my surroundings.
I’d never been in a citizen’s dwelling before, but I’d imagined it to be a bit…
roomier. Still, despite the lack of space, it was cozy.
A fire blazed in the hearth, illuminating the room in a hazy glow.
Opposite the hearth, the sun had only just risen enough to spill through a singular, rounded window, casting shadows across the sparse furniture before me.
Only a dining table with three chairs, an empty desk, and a bench supporting a small girl occupied the area, and yet the shop below was well-furnished and stocked to the brim.
“P-princess?” The woman’s voice broke as she pocketed the vial and fell to her knees, head bowed. “Your Highness, if you could find it in your heart to forgive me. I was late opening the bakery, but we are of course available for your every need.”
Her hair was disheveled, and her brown apron dirty.
I looked instead to the young girl propped up on the bench she knelt beside.
The sleeping child did not look well. The blush of a fever marred her pallid complexion, and she breathed laboriously.
Some of the tonic she’d been given dripped from the corner of her mouth in a long streak of silver.
Her dark red, straw-like hair was just as disheveled as her mother’s.
I ignored the strange squeezing of my heart and repeated myself. “Are you the baker?”
The woman glanced upward in my direction. Her features were soft, yet worry lines betrayed her apparent youth. She appeared distraught, and I imagined that without whatever stress had befallen her, she might be considered beautiful.
“I—I am. My husband, he…” She choked back a sob, her hand reaching until she found the child’s. “F-forgive me, Your Highness.” She steadied herself with a breath before continuing. “I am Phinara Umfrey, at your and your family’s obedience. Did you need additional goods for the feast? We have—”
“Umfrey?” I must have misheard her.
“Yes, Your Highness,” she said, eyebrows inclining towards one another.
“As in Vicar Umfrey?”
Phinara’s free hand clasped her mouth. I saw her throat constrict with a swallow, as though she’d nearly been sick.
I inwardly chastised myself. The last few days had been relentless, and Blondie referring to Vicar as a baker had slipped my mind entirely.
I took a step forward, motioning beside her daughter.
“Please, sit.” It felt awkward inviting the woman to take a seat in her own home, but I feared she might have stayed on her knees for the duration of my intrusion otherwise.
“Thank you,” Phinara said, only worsening my discomfort. After situating herself beside the girl, her emerald green eyes locked with mine. “Yes, Vicar Umfrey was my husband. But I assure you, I am more than capable of assuming his duties.”
“I’m not worried about the bakery.” I inhaled deeply and lifted my chin, preparing to inquire after Bjorn, when the meaning behind her words collided with my chest. I swallowed in a fruitless attempt to evade the coppery taste flooding my mouth. “You said Vicar Umfrey was your husband?”
Phinara closed her eyes, and a single tear fled down her cheek. Her voice held a nearly imperceptible waver as she confirmed, “My husband is dead, Your Highness.”
“The matter has been resolved…”
My father’s words sounded as if he were beside me.
Had Bjorn been here to deliver the news?
But why send the King’s Scholar, of all people?
My thoughts, overwhelmed by the beating of my heart, muddled together.
I couldn’t look at her, but the ground beneath my feet seemed so very far away.
Distant, unreachable, nails biting half-moons into my palm so that I might fight off the tidal wave of dissociation threatening to topple me.
A creeping panic I would not claim, for answers were so very near, if only I could reach out and seize them.
I found my voice, though I hardly recognized it as my own.
“Who told you that?” I forced out.
Phinara’s mouth closed at once, inviting a welcome irritation I latched onto.
“Let’s try another one, then. What business does the King’s Scholar have with you?”
Her grip visibly tightened around her child’s hand. I wanted to press her, to demand the information I had very little time to obtain, but I muted my desire in the face of her fragile appearance. Instead, I waited, emulating the demeanor I imagined a person with patience might have.
But she didn’t speak. Her faraway eyes lingered on my own, the empty gaze of a woman calculating how to free herself from my inquiry.
“Answer my question,” I finally said, slipping into the tone of a royal not often denied. “Now.”
Phinara scooted to the edge of the bench, attention breaking from mine and scattering about the room. Her breath came in shallow hitches. “H-he was delivering medicine. My daughter, she’s sick. She’s been sick. Scholar Bjorn, he said he could help her.”
I licked my lips and gazed starward. I did not have time to play games.
“Bjorn Elvadir is the King’s Scholar,” I said, eyes narrowing into slits. “Not a physician, nor an herbalist. He has no business healing your child. Do not lie to me.”
“Please,” Phinara cried, standing from her seated position only to kneel before me.
With forehead and palms pressed into the ground, she managed to speak around her sobs.
“We tried! The physician, a-and the herbalist… for months, we did what they asked of us. We sold everything we had to pay for their remedies, but she only grew weaker.”
The unconscious child stirred momentarily but did not open her eyes.
I lowered myself, crouching down so that Phinara and I were on the same level. I placed my index finger beneath her chin and slowly lifted until we were eye-to-eye. With our gazes once again locked, I retracted my hand.
“What was Scholar Bjorn capable of that they were not?” I kept my tone even, the way Father did when he questioned us. Apparently, I wasn’t as proficient at the art of intimidation, because her lips pressed together tightly, tear-stained cheeks wobbling with the effort.
I could have threatened her, but the emotion pressing against my chest uncomfortably prompted a different approach. I leaned forward, shifting slightly so that my lips aligned with her ear. The weight of the secret forced my voice down to barely more than a whisper.
“I know Vicar crossed the Threshold.”
Phinara’s inhale was sharp. She pushed away from me, attention flitting to a piece of parchment near the stove that I hadn’t noticed before.
I stood with immediacy, and when her movements mirrored mine, I lunged. We nearly collided, but I managed to clasp the scrap. As she outstretched her arm, I held my hand out of reach, expression severe.
“Do not forget yourself,” I warned.
“Please,” she said for the second time, her voice threatening to crack. But I stood my ground, and she yielded easily to my glower, wilting into herself.
I took a healthy step back, adding to our distance as I peered down at the crumpled parchment in my hand.
For Astrid
Cross if necessary
All my love, V
I stared for too long at the untidy scrawl, repeating the senseless words in my head.
“He crossed for her. For Astrid,” I said, motioning to the sleeping child. “Scholar Bjorn couldn’t do anything himself—but he knew someone who could?”
Phinara held out her hand, and the look on her face compelled me to relinquish the note. The possessive way she clutched it to her chest, as if ensuring its protection against me, evoked a disgusting feeling I would try to bathe away later. She did not speak.
“You sought Scholar Bjorn out for help,” I said aloud, trying to piece the events together.