Chapter 9 – Small Blessings
…so pleased that we shall meet! Do you know, I think it is exactly what Laud needs.
Last year all he could talk about was how much he wanted peace and quiet, and if you ask me, it was the worst thing for him.
Grumbling all day and up all hours of the night, as if he couldn’t sleep for all the rest. I tell you, he has been a new man ever since we got Remin’s letter asking us to host you for the season.
This was putting the best possible face on a terrible and likely dangerous imposition. Ophele sat back to appreciate that bit of Duchess Ereguil’s letter, marveling.
We sent people straightaway to begin readying our estate at Mimosa.
It’s a lovely place, named for trees imported from Ereguil, with flowers like pink silk floss.
I must beg your pardon for a little bit of presumption; I am sure the Princess Ophele will have any number of tailors, jewelers, and shoemakers assaulting each other for the privilege of draping her, but as time is short, I judge it good to give them a little notice.
By the time you arrive, half the bloodbath will be over.
That is to say, as I am sure you are concerned about very many things: my dear, you may show up on our doorstep in your morning gown and slippers, and we will be ready to receive you.
But there is yet winter before us, and you ought not let worry for the season to come spoil the one that is upon you.
I shall hope for many more letters from you, sending me tidings of Tresingale, and do make them long ones!
We were both so pleased to hear of your doings.
You know how Remin is, his letters are like a report on the progress of the current Andelin campaign, and he never even mentioned the tourney at all.
Laud read that page over three times at least. He is dreadfully proud of Remin, but of course they are men, and too bull-headed to ever just say so to each other.
Be assured, every morsel of gossip is devoured with relish, so be a dear and send us a feast.
Well, where to begin?
The days after solstice night had been filled with many solemn rituals, from the funerals for all those dead in the past year to the swearing of fealty to Remin and Ophele, performed with all due ceremony in the solar.
Every morning for a week, the new arrivals to the valley dutifully made their way up to the manor to kneel before the Duke and Duchess of Andelin and swear their oaths: loyalty in exchange for protection, and trust given for trust.
Those oaths were painful. Ophele felt a hypocrite, accepting them right after she had watched the dead burn on pyres, people that she had failed to protect, and she knew Remin felt even worse.
But there was also nowhere to go but forward, and that was the promise she and Remin made to each other, as the new water clock in the market square tolled the year 827: to try and do better.
But she certainly wasn’t going to commit any of that to paper.
Ophele tapped her quill thoughtfully and dipped it into her inkpot, forming each letter with painstaking care.
This was the first bit of news that she was willing to share: Master Forgess had kept his word, and the moment the town was declared free of the fever, his journeyman had come trotting up to the manor to make a formal request for an audience with the duchess.
“Why would you want to speak to him?” Remin wanted to know when she told him about it, his eyebrows mobilizing for a frown.
“I want to learn to write better,” she said, with a frown of her own. She was still working through her grammar textbook, which only seemed to add weight to the necessity. “There’s so much I don’t know…”
“Juste isn’t keeping you busy enough?”
“He is, but I want to learn from them both,” she said firmly. “And I want to learn what everyone else has already thought of. I’m tired of trying to…to solve problems that other people have already solved. Do you know what I mean?”
This had happened with the devil maps and with the supply problems during the plague and too many other times to count, where Ophele had struggled with problems whose solutions already existed.
She wanted to know them with a hunger that kept her awake at night, her mind ticking over, hungry and relentless.
Remin considered her for a moment and then bent to kiss the top of her head, as if he could see exactly where the trouble was.
“Yes, I do,” he replied, with some reluctance. “Tell me when you are going to meet him.”
When the meeting was arranged, she dutifully told him, without the least idea that he meant to turn up for the audience and proceed to crush Master Forgess through the floorboards with the power of his glare.
Perhaps it was good that Ophele was incapable of holding a grudge. Remin was fully prepared to carry one for both of them.
Indeed, Master Forgess never knew how close he was to annihilation, for he arrived with a copy of her work on the devils that was so thoroughly corrected, it was almost impossible to read the original text.
“This is what you did wrong,” he informed her, plopping it on the table. “Look, in the first paragraph—”
It was incredibly tactless. It hurt her feelings very much, to listen as he ripped apart a work she had poured her heart into.
But the sight of Remin’s darkening face made her bite her lip and suck in her hurt, if only to save the revered Master’s neck.
And after the first shock, she tried to listen and understand why she was wrong, finally bridging the gap between Edemir and Justenin’s too-brief lessons and the demands of the Tower.
Then she lost herself a bit in all the excitement and started interrogating Master Forgess so enthusiastically, he tottered out of the manor a few hours later looking as if he had been bludgeoned repeatedly about the head.
Her life was so busy now. Saving the seventh day of the week, which Remin insisted should be kept for the stars, her days were filled with lessons from dawn until well after dark.
In the mornings she spoke with Mionet, then learned to dance and essayed her first clumsy pluckings on Tounot’s lute, and in the afternoons Justenin busily crammed all of his eclectic knowledge into her head.
It wasn’t just the basic mathematics, grammar, and oratory that she should already have learned; his was an eclectic course of study that included theology, philosophy, and lengthy discussions on the nature of mankind.
“Do you think people are basically good, or basically evil?” he asked her abruptly one day, between rhetoric and practicing facial expressions in a small mirror.
Ophele blinked.
“I haven’t met enough people to guess,” she said, pondering. “The Will Immanent says we are an experiment. Which people? All people, ever?”
“That would be a difficult thing to quantify,” he agreed, looking amused. “But your answer tells me a good deal about you, my lady. As does your expression. Serenity, if you please. Pretend you are Madam Sanai, contemplating the water.”
He was so tricky. Ophele eyed him as she returned to her mirror, reciting nonsense and trying to look peaceful about it.
All of Remin’s men were clever in their own ways, but Juste was by far the most subtle.
Half the time, it seemed the real lesson was figuring out what the lesson was.
But even as he taught her to observe and analyze the people around her, Ophele coolly turned around and applied the lesson to him.
How did he know about Madam Sanai contemplating water?
It was only natural to apply her learning to the rest of the world.
Even as the last of the fever faded, Remin had left some of the work of the town in her hands, particularly the day-to-day needs of Sir Huber’s survivors.
A cynical person might have thought Amise Conbour, who was becoming the unofficial headwoman of the North Gate, helped with this work to enhance her own status.
But even if that was so—and Ophele didn’t think it was—she was so good at it, Ophele would never have dreamed of replacing her.
“We’re generally short of blankets and spare clothing, m’lady,” Amise reported during one of their regular meetings, squeezed into Ophele’s spare hour at noon.
Remin’s smallfolk felt more comfortable saying such things to Amise when they would hardly say a word to their duchess, much less Princess Ophele Agnephus, Daughter of the Stars.
“I know we have bolts of linen and wool laid by in the storehouse,” Ophele said thoughtfully. “I guess it is hard to ask them to make everything all by themselves at once, when they had to leave it all behind…”
Or to demand that the other common folk make it for them. Ophele did not think it was good to order people to be charitable. But Amise had a solution.
“Well, m’lady, in Engleberg, if a family had a fire or some such, we often got together to help them replace what they had lost,” she suggested.
“There was one poor family that lost everything, even one of their babies, and so the wives got together a few afternoons running to make what was needful, clothes and suchlike. If you’ve cloth to spare, I might see if there are some who’d like to help.
Most of the folk from Isigne and Selgin can scarce rise from their beds. ”
“Yes, and we shall ask the ladies in town too, and the ladies at the baths, I shouldn’t like to leave anyone out,” Ophele said, gently but firmly.
She was sensitive about excluding anyone.
And then she hesitated and gathered her courage.
“And I—do you think it would trouble anyone if I came, too? I am not very good at sewing yet, but I could help with blankets, and I would like to learn, but if anyone would not like it, please tell me directly. I know I am a duchess and the most important thing is to have the clothes and blankets made, so if you have any fear at all—”