Chapter 14 – Sacred Plantings #5
Remin squeezed Ophele’s hand and held out his arms, rigidly enduring as the men approached to lay their hands on him, firmly enough to carry away a bit of dirt and mud.
The virtue of the earth thus passed from person to person, blessing the work of the year, and they rubbed their hands together as they walked away, lifting their hands to their faces in the gestures of revelation.
Miche and Juste hovered at Remin’s side, watching this most dangerous portion of the ritual.
Bonfires blazed, heating the cobblestones, and Leonin and Davi took their places behind Ophele as Mionet appeared with her cloak and shoes.
“Oh, thank you,” Ophele said, grimacing as she wiggled her dirty toes against the silk lining. “No, I’m warm enough,” she added quickly, waving away her cloak. No point in ruining it.
“I will have it if you change your mind,” Mionet replied, bundling it under one arm and extending her other hand. “Blessings, Your Grace.”
“Blessings on you,” Ophele replied, surprised and pleased. She would have expected Mionet to disdain so earthy a blessing.
“Blessings, my lady!” piped Elodie’s voice, and Ophele turned to find her loyal pagegirl obediently waiting to be invited over, though a few bounces on her heels betrayed her excitement.
“I shall give you a good one,” Ophele replied happily, holding out her arms in invitation and transferring a mighty benediction as Elodie flung her arms around her waist. The girl hardly needed help to grow; Elodie already bid fair to outstrip Ophele herself. “Will you be helping with the gardens?”
“Yes, I’ll help Aunt Lisset, since Mama kills everything and Pirot’s scared of slugs,” Elodie answered as Ophele offered a blessing to her long-suffering little brother.
“I’m scared of slugs, too,” Ophele whispered to the boy, and won a gap-toothed grin.
Gradually, she was parted from Remin, as the town’s men gathered around him and the women clustered around her, hands pressing her hands, her arms, her shoulders, even sinking into her hair. If dirt was the blessing, that was surely where it lay most heavily.
The crowd only swelled as the sun rose, streaming down Eugene Street and the newly named North Gate Road, filling the wide, paved space before the gate.
A few times Leonin ordered them back when too many people pressed close, but Ophele knew so many of them, she could not feel afraid.
Mistress Tregue and Mistress Roscout came together to introduce the cobbler’s wife, Mistress Hebbett, who had arrived with five children at the Gellege Bridge, presented her letter of invitation, and demanded that her husband come take charge of his children at once.
It took an impressive woman to bring five children halfway across the Empire by herself. And a special girl to bring a little boy all the way from Nandre, Ophele thought, as she spotted Amalie in the crowd. The two survivors of Nandre were hanging back, uncertain whether they were welcome.
“Oh, Amalie, come here,” Ophele said, holding out her hands.
The girl was nearly as scrawny as Ophele had been at her age, reared in the backslope, rocky soil of the mountains, and both she and her brother still hadn’t recovered from their ordeal.
Laying her hand on the girl’s forehead, Ophele thought, grow, and wondered if it would do anything.
“Thank you, m’lady,” the girl said shyly, ducking her head. “Could you—for my brother, too?”
“Of course I will. Iskerren?” Ophele bent her head to look at the boy, clinging to his sister’s back with his face hidden in her shoulder.
Roughly half the time, he refused to emerge, but this time he peeked up at Ophele and allowed her to pick him up.
They were all so small, these children, she thought unhappily, hugging him hard to bless him thoroughly.
“He talked a bit yesterday,” Amalie said, patting his foot. “Didn’t you, Iske?”
“Sometimes you just don’t feel like talking,” Ophele replied sympathetically. “But you must be sure to eat and eat, so you can get strong like His—oh, I know. My lord!” she called, turning toward the crowd of men. “Your Grace!”
He was easy to spot; Remin towered head and shoulders over everyone else around him, and came promptly, bending down to have a look at Iskerren.
“Perhaps he might have a double blessing,” Ophele said hopefully, tickling the little boy’s side until he finally peeked up at Remin with solemn blue eyes. “Will you go to His Grace?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Iskerren after a moment, perfectly clear, and Remin picked him up with an unusually soft expression, settling the boy into the crook of his arm.
“Well, you must be a grand big fellow,” he said, patting the little back. “We’ll give you a good coat of dirt, and mind that you tell the ladies it’s sacred. The best boys are always a little grubby.”
“’Mallie says knights have to wash their hands before supper,” Iskerren objected, winning chuckles from the listening men.
“You can be as dirty as you like until then.”
Amalie was almost beside herself as she listened, her hands clasped together.
“Thank you so much, m’lady,” she said, hugging herself. “Oh, he hardly ever talks.”
“No, it’s nothing at all. Bless you,” Ophele added to another of the village women, who solemnly ran her hands over Ophele’s arms and then transferred her palms to her forehead, her lips moving in silent prayer. “Are you and Iskerren still staying with Mistress Gevenin?”
“Yes, m’lady, she was so good, taking us in,” Amalie said earnestly.
“Though…she says I’m old enough to earn my keep, and she can look after Iskerren.
I don’t like bothering, but if it isn’t impertinent…
do you suppose I might help at the big house?
If there’s work that needs doing? I don’t mean to be rude,” she added quickly, under the gimlet eyes of Mionet.
“I’m not fussy, I can scrub and clean or anything. ”
“Well, I’m sure there is,” Ophele replied, after a quick consultation of several mental lists. “I’ll speak with Adelan. Maybe there will be room in the kitchen, can you cook?”
“A bit. Well, tea and toast,” Amalie admitted. “But I can learn, m’lady.”
“I’m sure there’s something we can do,” Ophele promised, though she did have a few qualms about handing the girl over to Azelma’s tyranny. A Segoile-trained cook was particular and domineering, but as Azelma herself said, there was no easy life.
And wouldn’t Azelma like to train up a few cooks to capital standards?
They would need more cooks anyway, as well as pastry chefs and butchers and bakers and everything else, and one day Remin’s knights would have their own households, too.
One day, Tresingale might have its own cuisine, and its own school of cookery, and its own accreditations, and even better food than the Empire—
“Blessings, Your Grace,” said Isilde, Auber’s pretty sweetheart, and Ophele snapped back to the present, offering her hands.
“Bless you,” she said, smiling. Ever since she had learned that Auber meant to propose, she had regarded Isilde as something like a prospective sister, or maybe cousin, but definitely a future fellow sufferer of noble etiquette. “How are you? Where is Vinzetin?”
Isilde’s son was usually somewhere in line of sight; he was of that breed of boy that was simultaneously accident-prone and indestructible.
“Over being blessed by His Grace,” Isilde said wryly, nodding to an area of the crowd where Remin was currently being swarmed with small boys, and Auber was presenting Vinzetin for the duke’s approval. “Sometimes I think the stars brought me here just to unite them.”
She said it with a smile, but there was a look in her eyes that smote Ophele with guilt. She had been the one to tell everyone that Auber had asked Remin’s permission to propose, and they had all been so terribly happy and excited, but now it had been two months and Isilde must be so hurt.
“But of course, Auber is very fond of you,” Ophele said sympathetically. “There is nothing wrong, I hope?”
“How could I say so?” Isilde replied. “When he is so good to us both, and really he needn’t trouble himself at all.”
“He ought to at least trouble himself to make up his mind, the great lummox,” said Amise Conbour, who had been standing nearby. She had no reverence at all for her brother-in-law.
“Please don’t fuss at him for it, I am sure he has his reasons,” Isilde replied, with a glance in Auber’s direction that wounded Ophele’s tender heart.
“Well, if he can’t make up his mind, there’s no reason you can’t change yours,” Lisset Conbour pointed out. “What about that nice young guardsman who came to call?”
“Oh, no, but you love Auber, don’t you?” Ophele asked, dismayed as Isilde looked away. She had been looking forward to having another lady in the valley to invite to tea, and sewing, and shopping…
“Sometimes love is not the trouble,” Mionet said wisely, which was probably true, but so very sad.
“Isn’t Auber going to propose to Isilde?” Ophele demanded later, when she and Remin finally returned home. They had both had to stand in the courtyard and get doused with buckets of steaming water before they could go inside.
“I don’t know,” Remin replied, looking taken aback. “He didn’t already?”
“No, and Isilde is unhappy, and there’s a guardsman that’s coming and bothering her, and Amise and Lisset are telling her to go ahead and invite him to supper if Auber can’t make up his mind,” Ophele replied severely. “What if he steals her away?”
“I would say it’s her business if she goes, and it’s not up to us either way, wife,” Remin replied, seated opposite Ophele in their large bathtub and patiently washing her feet.
“But what could he be thinking, when they love each other? He was so upset when she and Vinzetin were sick. And Isilde would be a lady and everything,” she said, disappointed.
“I am not going to encourage him to propose to her just because you want another friend to go about town with,” Remin replied, amused. But his face quickly sobered. “And to be fair, he might have good reasons, for the present. It mightn’t be about her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am not going to speak for him,” Remin said firmly. “Nor should you. I would just guess—if it were me, perhaps I might wait a few months, before I tied her to me.”
Ophele considered this, her brow furrowed. Then her eyes flew open.
“Because of the Emperor?” she asked. “Because of what might happen after we go to Segoile, if he wants to do something dreadful? And so there might be danger, because Auber is your friend? And if he had married Isilde, and he was punished—”
“Stars, I will never say another word in front of you.” Remin pinched her toes and gave them a shake. “No. It’s enough that he has his reasons, wife, and don’t you go interfering. People have to sort these things out themselves.”
“I wasn’t going to. And we’re leaving, anyway,” Ophele replied, grieved.
“But it seems a shame to let them flounder about and be unhappy when a few words might put things right. Won’t you warn him, at least?
Isilde thinks that maybe she isn’t good enough for him after all.
Wouldn’t you want someone to tell you, if I was troubled and you didn’t know? ”
“I wonder that you can say that to my face, when you have Miche informing on me.” Remin reached out a long arm to drag her into his lap, settling her comfortably against his chest. “We will see Auber for supper tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do.”
“We might have a new kitchen girl to help,” Ophele remembered, and told him about Amalie as he gently washed the last of the Tresingale dirt from her body, their final scattering of seeds before they left home.