Chapter Two #2
Ellice looked her niece over, critically. “You seem well enough to me,” she said. “And before you go begging for more clothing or other foolish trinkets, know that I have nothing for you. You will make do with what you have.”
“We have nothing.”
Ellice eyed her niece, snorting rudely after a moment, before turning her gaze to Isadora. “And you?” she said, eyeing the child. “You had better mend that stocking before nightfall or there will be consequences.”
Isadora cowered as Courtly spoke up. “Auntie, she will have it done,” she said, rather firmly. “You need not threaten her.”
Ellice looked at Courtly, her eyes narrowing. “You accuse me of threatening her?”
“You just did.”
Ellice didn’t like being questioned in the least. She lived at Kennington and ruled it with an iron fist, verbally abusing cringing servants. Her eldest niece was questioning that omnipotent power and that did not set well with her.
“Your mother,” she finally snorted. “You look and act just like her. She did not know when to control her mouth, either.”
Courtly didn’t want to back down from the woman but she had no desire to fight with her, either.
There was something very petulant and wicked about Ellice at times, something Courtly didn’t want to tangle with.
It would only come to no good end, mostly hers.
Therefore, she lowered her gaze and turned back to her sewing.
“Thank you for providing us with shelter tonight, Auntie,” she said politely. “If we could have some soap sent to us so that we may wash the smoke smell away, we would be grateful.”
“I have no soap for you.”
Courtly didn’t acknowledge the nasty retort. “Then we will see you this evening at sup. Good day, Auntie.”
She was essentially dismissing her aunt but doing in the nicest possible way.
It was gaining the upper hand without obviously gaining it.
Everyone in the room knew she was sending the woman on her way.
Ellice frowned at her niece. She rather liked verbally sparring, even if she didn’t like insolence, and was somewhat disappointed that Courtly had backed down. It frustrated her.
“Courtly Love,” she scoffed as she turned away. “It is a foolish name. I told my brother it was a foolish name when you were born but your mother insisted. She said it was the embodiment of what a true lady should be; chaste and virtuous. What a foolish, foolish woman your mother was.”
She was muttering as she turned for the door, heading out of the room without even shutting the ornately carved door panel of darkly stained oak. As the woman wandered down the corridor, Isadora leapt up from the bed and slammed the door, throwing the bolt.
“I do not want to stay here tonight!” she declared again. “Auntie is an evil witch!”
In spite of her tense expression, Courtly broke down into giggles. “Mayhap we shall not have to,” she said. “Mayhap Papa is, even now, scouring the outskirts of Kennington for a place to stay. I am sure he does not wish to remain here as much as we don’t.”
Isadora remained by the door, listening to the corridor outside. She hissed. “I can still hear her,” she said, frowning. “She is telling the servants not to bring us any soap!”
Courtly sighed heavily, shaking her head. “I shall speak with Papa,” she said. “Not to worry. We shall have what we need. In fact, we should make a list of all we lost. Will you do that, Issie? Make a list?”
She proposed the list to distract her sister and the ruse worked. Isadora was flighty, and a bit dramatic, but she was also very intelligent. She nodded eagerly and came away from the door.
“I shall think of everything we had,” she said. Then, her expression saddened. “I lost my pink, silk dress.”
“And I lost my red brocade.”
Isadora nodded, ticking off the contents of her bag in her head.
She had been schooled by the monks at St. Mary’s Church in the village of Trelystan when she had been younger, mostly because she had demanded of Kellen that she learn to read and write.
With Courtly away fostering at the time, Kellen had been unable to deny his lonely, youngest daughter and took her to the monks at the church, whereupon they undertook the task of teaching the seven-year-old to write with the lure of much coinage donated by Kellen.
Four days a week, Kellen would take his daughter to the church and the monks would teach her how to read and write.
Isadora, extremely bright, learned quickly and stopped going to the church after a year.
At that point, Kellen should have sent her away to foster with her sister but found he simply couldn’t bear to do it.
His daughters reminded him of his wife, and he missed her greatly, so shortly after Isadora stopped going to the church, Kellen recalled Courtly from Prudhoe Castle.
The older sister returned, reunited with her younger sibling, and Kellen proceeded to continue the girls’ education himself.
The results were that the girls learned mathematics, military tactics, some literature, and military history.
Kellen imparted upon them what he knew, that being mostly things that only knights would know from their schooling and fostering.
Therefore, the girls were quite educated as a page or squire would be, and Courtly conveyed what she had learned at Prudhoe, so Isadora wasn’t too one-sided.
She could sew and sing, and knew how to run a household.
But she liked mathematics and writing much better.
“I need parchment and quill!” Isadora announced as she hunted around the ill-furnished room. “What shall I use to write?”
Courtly glanced around. “I am not sure there would be anything here,” she said. “Make a list in your mind and then we shall write it down later. For now, think on everything we had. That is a good start.”
Isadora was already busy with her mental list. She began rattling off the contents of her satchel, counting the lost pieces on her fingers, and then prompting Courtly to do the same.
As Courtly stitched the hummingbird and listed off the possessions she had lost, Isadora committed what she could to memory.
When she began speaking of her pink, silk dress and how she was determined to have another one made, Courtly’s thoughts drifted to the red brocade she had lost and how she would not be able to wear it at the feast that night.
All she would be able to wear for Sir Maximus was the smoke-stenched, dark green wool that she currently wore. It was all she had in the world.
So much for making an elegant impression on a man she realized that she wanted very much to impress.