Chapter 5 – The Crimes of Lady Pavot
As penance for his overindulgence, Remin was up before dawn.
As soon as his eyes creaked open, he paused just long enough to make sure Ophele showed no sign of insult and then went to empty his belly and stick his head in a basin of cold water.
This treatment was sufficient to get him more or less upright, and he went for a walk by the river with his ever-present shadows trailing behind, letting the frigid air slap him awake.
Recovery was a gradual process. There were a few dangerous moments when he saddled and climbed onto Lancer, lurching as the horse worked out his morning exuberance, and Remin still felt a little green when he dismounted by the kitchen at the back of the cookhouse.
Heavy clouds lowered in the sky and smelled of snow to his nose, and welcome heat billowed out the kitchen door.
“Be a few minutes yet,” barked Wen, without so much as a how-do-you-do. His huge hands moved unerring from skillet to saucepan on the immense stove, and he was red-faced and sweating, with a cloth tied around his bald head to avoid perspiring into breakfast.
“Eggs?” Remin asked queasily as the scents of bacon and tomatoes assaulted him. The icing on a tray of sweetbread looked particularly unappetizing.
“Aye, though from the looks of ye, ye’d do better with a bit of dry toast, Your Grace,” said Wen, with a belly-slapping haw haw haw. His good mood directly correlated with the suffering of those around him. “Never mind, I’ve a cure for ye. Here.”
“What’s in it?” Remin asked doubtfully, eyeing the green-brown sludge.
“Ye’d not thank me if I told ye.”
When Wen said this, it was best to believe him. Remin sipped first, then gulped, his face grim. He had always believed medicine had to be foul-tasting to be effective, in which case this concoction must resurrect the dead.
“You heard Miche came back yesterday?” he asked, setting the cup aside. He hadn’t come to the kitchen just for breakfast.
“Aye, half the town heard, with that circus coming up from the harbor,” Wen agreed, shooting Remin an amused glance.
It had been a bit of a debacle, with all those carriages coming over the river.
“Best watch those girls at the house, or you’ll have trouble.
The laundresses were noising about it when they came to fetch their supper. In my kitchen.”
That was Wen’s real objection. Not that the laundresses were coveting Miche already, but that he had been forced to listen to it.
“Miche wouldn’t trouble them,” Remin said dismissively.
“It’s not about him troubling them,” Wen said, waving a ham-like hand. “But as ye please, Your Grace.”
“He brought a lady back with him, as it happens,” Remin said, segueing carefully into this dangerous subject. “The cook from Aldeburke.”
“Did he now?” Wen began to inflate, like a toad swelling up to warn off enemies.
“Seventy if she’s a day, and trained in Segoile,” Remin said, with an edge to his own voice. He was willing to tolerate Wen’s tantrums to a point. “You’re always saying you need help in the kitchen.”
“Seventy.” Wen snorted and turned away, knife flashing as he sliced fresh bread into thick slabs. “Set in her ways and full of capital notions, I wager.”
“Then you should understand each other perfectly,” Remin retorted.
“And ye won’t have her in your kitchen, even if she has her Segoile seal,” Wen said shrewdly. “Do ye think I’ll change me mind, Your Grace?”
“You could name your price.” It was not the first time Remin had made this offer.
“And I’ve told ye, I’m not fit for a lord’s household.
This suits me,” the cook said, gesturing at the long, narrow kitchen, with its stacks of tin pans and raw wooden shelves.
“No one bothers me. And if they do, I yell at ’em ‘til they go away again. Ye wanted to be a lord, Your Grace, well, ye got what ye wished for, and the blessings of the stars go with ye. I’ll give her a bit of counter, if you want her away from ye. But it won’t solve your troubles.”
Well, he was just exploring options, Remin told himself as he gathered up the large breakfast hamper, along with a jug of Wen’s cure for Juste and Miche.
It was true that he had eaten Azelma’s cooking in Aldeburke for a week, with no ill effect.
But then, he had had one of his knights observing every step of the preparation, from the kitchen to the dining table.
And he was the Duke of Andelin. It was his right to have his food made however he liked by whoever he wanted and delivered in whatever way he preferred.
But as Remin stepped outside to find snow falling, he was reminded again of the impracticality of the situation.
And no, Wen was not likely to change his mind. He did not like people.
Resolutely, Remin shoved this problem away and swung up onto Lancer, pulling the heavy black hood of his cloak over his head. The snow was drifting down in huge, soft flakes like feathers. It looked like the first real blizzard of the season.
“It’s snowing!” Ophele exclaimed as soon as he arrived back home, appearing at the top of the landing in a simple blue morning gown. “Are you feeling all right? I was worried last night.”
“I saw it,” Remin said dryly, shaking his cloak outside the front door before he stepped inside. “I’m well enough, I’m sorry I troubled you, wife. It looks like a blizzard. Have you seen Miche and Juste about?”
“Yes, they’re both in the solar. Shall we have breakfast together?” she asked, brightening.
The prospect also pleased Remin. Usually, he and Ophele took breakfast alone, at first because Ophele was not ready to face a cookhouse full of people first thing in the morning, and then because they could hardly invite guests into their bedchamber.
But it was pleasant to see Juste and Miche shuffling through the door of the solar and offering greetings to Ophele, even if they were still squinting and green.
Lady Verr was also there, but only because it would have been a gross insult to exclude her.
“I’ll do that, my lord,” said Juste, plucking the hamper from Remin’s hand to set the table.
“Have you ever seen a blizzard, Lady Verr?” Ophele asked, watching the huge flakes falling through the windows with delight.
“Not a blizzard, Your Grace,” Lady Verr replied. “We sometimes had snow on my father’s estate, but rarely more than a flurry. Will there be so much more here?”
“A great deal more,” said Juste, as Miche and Remin nodded their agreement.
All three men were eating cautiously, making a trial of bread before attempting anything crazy, like bacon.
“The clouds come up against the mountains and then linger. We will not fare too badly on this hilltop, but it will be up to the eaves of the cottages in town.”
“A pity there weren’t any sledges in Aldeburke, or I would have taken those, too,” remarked Miche. “There’s a few put by in the storehouse, but with so many folk in town, we’re like to need more. Or maybe we ought to just dig out Eugene Street, for common travel.”
“We’ll need the market road and the barracks road cleared, too,” Remin said. He was not calling it Goose Road. “It’ll be heavy work.”
“That’s why the stars gave you soldiers,” Miche said placidly.
It was pleasant, and homey, to be sitting safe and warm inside the house as the snow fell, listening to Miche tease Ophele and talking about other men shoveling snow.
But however intoxicated he might have been the night before, Remin had not forgotten any part of their conversations, and he knew that many of his people were not tucked away, safe and warm by a fire.
“Some of the Third will stay here,” he said. He had forgotten all about his iffy stomach and was heaping eggs, bacon, and fried tomatoes onto a thick slice of bread. “But the rest are going to Isigne and Selgin to see what has become of Huber and the folk of those villages.”
“Who will go with them?” There was a warning glint in Juste’s eyes.
“Not I,” Remin said equably. He didn’t miss the relief in Ophele’s face.
He still thought he was right to have gone to the Berlawes—who could say what might have happened if he had not—but he could not justify leaving now.
Unless the new devils were entirely unlike any other devils seen in the valley to this point, the only risk to the men would be the weather.
And his duty was to get an heir, above all else.
It was not exactly a hardship. Under the table, he nudged Ophele’s slipper with his foot and saw a secret smile curve her lips, though she granted him only the slightest glance through her eyelashes before she went back to her stewed apples. She was teasing him.
“I’ll do it, unless you’ve someone else in mind,” Miche said, as if he hadn’t already been on the road for two months. “I shall be your Master of Snow, Rem. I hardly know myself without a shovel in my hand.”
“It would be good of you, thank you, Miche,” Remin replied, and devoured the last of his breakfast in several large bites. “I’ll come to the barracks myself later today. We’d already been planning to send someone after Huber. It’ll be easier with sledges.”
“I’ll be about town this morning and then at the storehouse. My lady, I will come here for your lessons, if you prefer,” Juste added for Ophele’s benefit. “The storm smells like a bad one.”
“Can he really smell it?” Ophele wanted to know as Remin steered her down the hall to their bedchamber after breakfast, leaving the clearing up to the servants. “The storm?”
“He is usually right,” Remin admitted. “He grew up in the mountains, so his weather-sense is better than most.”
And it was a convenient excuse to linger indoors.
Though they both had important work, Remin was conscientious in his duties and shut the door of the bedchamber behind them, stooping to catch Ophele up and toss her over one shoulder, purely for the pleasure of hearing her squeal. One of her slippers fell off.
“Are you going to make amends for last night?” she inquired as he carried her across the room.