Chapter 7 – The Council of the Well #2
The next house. The next. After an hour, she returned to the tavern to warm herself, the official base of operations, and endured the searing stab of thawing fingers and toes.
Master Tregue, so thoroughly wrapped that only his eyes were showing, was keeping mulled wine and tea hot for the surveyors.
Mionet drank, thawed, and then went back out again, hardly able to believe that she was doing this.
It was not the work of a lady. She should be huddled by a fire somewhere with a hot brick at her feet, and maids tending her, with nothing heavier than needlework to occupy her hands.
None of these people had sworn any oaths of loyalty to Mionet Verr.
She owed them nothing. These were just names scribbled on a bit of paper, sick faces in the doorways, hoarse voices broken by explosive coughs, answering her questions.
But this was what was required to stand at the side of Princess Ophele, Duchess of Andelin.
“Can I help y—is that you, Lady Verr?” said one young man, blessedly healthy, and she dimly recognized the voice.
“Aubin?” she said, surprised. She had never wondered where Sousten Didion’s draftsmen lived.
“Yes, my la—”
“Aubin, I told you I must have quiet!” Another voice interrupted, shouting from some interior room. “You are letting in the chill! My head is splitting and the wretched mice are scampering in the thatch again, bring the broom and bash at them when you come back! The ass end of civilization!”
“Is that Sousten?” Mionet asked, appalled. “Is he fevered?”
“Much less than you’d think, my lady.” Aubin stepped outside and shut the door. “How may I serve?”
Part of the reason for their survey was to find healthy and steady folk to look after their neighbors, so Mionet invited him to the meeting to be held in the tavern later that afternoon, which Sir Tounot had irreverently called the Council of the Well.
It was a sparsely attended council considering the population of the valley, but by the time she got there, Mionet was too cold to care.
Taking a tin mug of mulled wine from the tavern keeper, she went to defrost beside Duchess Andelin, who had removed her gloves and was painfully warming pale hands.
“And Re-remin w-was out in th-this f-for days,” the duchess said through chattering teeth. “Oh, it is t-terrible, thawing. I w-was s-so excited for s-snow and now I never want t-to s-see it again. Davi, go and get s-something hot to drink. I am perfectly f-fine, but you are not well.”
It was true. Mionet could see at a glance that Davi’s cheeks were hectic with fever, and he was shivering more violently than the lady.
As she accepted a chair from Sir Tounot, Mionet felt as if she had strayed into some bizarre dream.
This could not really be happening to her, sitting in this scruffy tavern with these strange people, listening to them work out how they would divide up the town, and who would deliver firewood to each house every morning, and a hundred other details that a noblewoman of Segoile should never even have to contemplate.
There was Wen, bald and enormously fat, glowering as he declared there would be two meals a day, thank ye very much, he’d fed armies on the march under a hail of arrows and wasn’t about to lower himself to toast. Each area of town was assigned to several healthy representatives, and the duchess—who had been sitting at a table and scribbling furiously—produced a list of names for each, along with indications of who was well and who was ill, in a truly terrifying feat of memorization.
“Please do not quarrel,” she said when the argument over Mr. Brestle and Mr. Hengest’s services began to grow heated.
She had not had much to say otherwise; she was mostly listening.
“Why don’t we also keep a list of who is most seriously ill, and who might take it particularly hard?
Like poor Master Sharrenot. I should like extra attention for him, it cannot be good to leave him alone all night, can it? ”
“That is called triage, my lady,” Mr. Hengest said approvingly, and a great deal of fire died out of the discussion.
But Mionet’s eyes caught the anxious movement of Duchess Andelin’s hands, frightened by interjecting herself into an argument, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from admonishing her.
By now it was automatic to say, please keep your hands still, my lady.
Such fidgeting was disgraceful in a grown woman, a barometer of anxiety and ripe for caricature in the salons of Segoile.
Because that was what was most important, of course.
For a moment, the disconnect between her two worlds was so jarring, Mionet had to look away to compose herself.
“Very well,” the duchess said when the conversation began to wind down, looking up through the slit of her muffler with large tawny eyes.
And somehow, they were all listening to her, this slip of a girl who yesterday had to be reminded to speak up.
“I will be here tomorrow at noon to take your reports and update our lists, and mind, if you cannot come yourself, please send someone in your stead. His Grace always says everyone’s job is no one’s job.
If you cannot do something, please find someone to do it for you. ”
She sounded impressively steady as she bade them all farewell, but as Mr. Hengest approached to talk about those ill at the manor, the lady looked very small and pale.
There had been no time for this discussion before the meeting.
Reluctantly, Mionet moved away from the fire to stand beside her, offering a gloved hand.
By the stars, she was earning the lady’s good opinion.
“There’s no need to worry,” Mr. Hengest said reassuringly.
“I looked in on all of them. His Grace is the worst, but he’ll bounce back quickly so long as he stays still and rests.
His fever is very high. Juste is with him, but I expect he’ll have to take to his own bed tomorrow.
It is a cruel sickness this year, I will not lie to you. ”
“But—they will be all right?” Duchess Andelin whispered, her fingers tightening on Mionet’s.
“Aye, my lady. Sleep, tonic, and porridge, that’s all. My only fear is that Rem will try to be out and about too soon, and as long as he’s coughing, he must be indoors. That goes for everyone. Your man Adelan also seemed inclined to leave his bed. You’ll have to make them mind.”
“I will,” she promised, her face resolute.
“And both of you look after yourselves,” he added, looking at both women to impress his seriousness upon them.
“It bears repeating. Dress warmly, wash your hands often, and cover your face, especially when you’re tending the sick.
Stop and warm up if you’re cold, don’t just endure it.
I’ll tell you true, lady, I don’t know how you’d fare if you caught this sickness.
My experience is with soldiers. I am worried for the little ones, and our older folk. ”
And with this ominous remark, they adjourned, and Mionet wearily allowed Davi to boost her onto Brambles. It had been such an endless, weary day, she barely felt the cold, and if someone had offered her transport to Segoile, she would have been tempted to fall at their feet weeping.
But she did not let that thought show even in her eyes. She was here, she had just endured one of the longest days of her life, and she was going to make a bosom friend of Princess Ophele, Duchess of Andelin, if it killed them both.
“You don’t have to come out again tomorrow, Lady Verr,” said Duchess Andelin when they had finally returned to the manor. With most of the builders and all of the servants sick, the manor was cold, dark, and silent, their breaths puffing white even inside.
“Nonsense,” said Mionet, trying to sound cheerful.
The day had been grueling, but it was not a total loss.
She had waited a long time to take this next step forward, to gauge the moment properly, and she thought the time was right.
“My place is at your side, my lady. And I hope you will call me Mionet.”
And then she sneezed.
* * *
It was colder upstairs than it was outside.
“Justenin! What are you doing here?!” Ophele cried, appalled when she climbed the stairs and found Remin’s faithful knight outside the door of the bedchamber, clutching his sword and shivering violently. “Oh, you look dreadful! Davi, help me—”
“I am q-quite all r-right, my lady,” Justenin said through his teeth, but allowed himself to be steered toward the solar. His face was bloodless.
“I’ll make up a fire,” said Davi, trying to sound as if he wasn’t just as miserable. “Takes more’n this to freeze the Coldest Knight, eh?”
“Here, sit down,” Ophele ordered, bundling Juste up in her own pink lap blanket.
There was the trouble: the window overlooking the balcony had been left open, with a bitter breeze whistling through and icicles dangling off the sill.
“Oh, how could they! Who was working outside today? Sousten would have their backsides, if he weren’t so sick—”
Fruitlessly, she yanked at the window, thinking of all Davi’s worst curses. It had frozen in place, so it must have been open for some time. Why would anyone open it in the first place?
“Here, let me, my lady,” said Davi, reaching over her head to slam the window shut. And then he paused, eye narrowing as he peered out into the swirling snow. “Why don’t you look in on His Grace?” he suggested, turning the lock on the window. “I’ll thaw Juste and then fetch supper directly.”
“Warm yourself up before you go,” Ophele warned.
She did not see the look the two men exchanged behind her, or the flick of Davi’s fingers against a broken lock.
It was warmer in the bedchamber, at least. The fire was still roaring, and there was a basin of water and a chair on Remin’s side of the bed. Genon had told her repeatedly to let Remin sleep, but even as she tiptoed nearer, the huge figure in the bed stirred.
“Wife?”