Chapter 1 – A Tale of Wolves #7
“No, it’s all right,” she said, guiltily aware that he must think she had a fine kit like most noblewomen, with shears with gilded roses on the handles, like Lisabe’s, or the beautiful heartwood box that held Lady Hurrell’s embroidery silk. “It just needs a needle and thread, I think. ”
“Duchess Ereguil has some of my mother’s things, now that I think of it.” Remin kissed the top of her head. “She said she was holding them for my wife. I’ll send for them.”
Well, she would have to learn to sew now.
The next day, before she was supposed to tutor Jacot in the cookhouse, Ophele hurried over to Sir Edemir’s offices in the storehouse. Lord Edemir of Trecht, really; second son to the Count of Trecht, but both he and Sir Tounot preferred to style themselves as knights.
“My lady?” he asked as she appeared in the doorway.
“Sir Edemir.” Ophele bobbed her head nervously.
She felt she knew him a little better, now that he and Sir Justenin had begun lingering over tales of the Tower and its theories of learning at supper, and making her wish there had been hours, days even, for such talk.
But here, he might as well have had LORD TRECHT inscribed upon his noble brow. “I…I was wondering…”
His force of secretaries had expanded from two to eight, and all of them were staring at her.
“If…if I wanted books for myself, could I have them?” She made herself say, reddening and hating it.
She was sure that Remin’s wife could ask for whatever she wanted, and she could just imagine how Lady Hurrell would say it, with all the icy command of an empress.
It only made her feel foolish by comparison.
“Of course.” Sir Edemir took her elbow to nudge her into the hallway and shut the office door behind him, closing away all those staring eyes. “But why wouldn’t you just ask Rem, my lady?”
“I want it to be a surprise. Could you keep it a secret?”
“What books would you like?”
“Books on sewing, please.” Ophele was so relieved, she didn’t notice that he had made no promises. “His Grace just got some things for me from Mr. Guian, and I would like to practice, and I wanted to see what’s…in fashion. If anything’s changed. In sewing.”
It was a plausible lie told very poorly; Lady Hurrell had received periodicals on embroidery. Fortunately, Remin’s knights knew that she was a terrible speaker and expected her to be clumsy. And even if the books he got were a little advanced for a beginner, surely she could still learn from them .
“I see,” Sir Edemir said, his broad, stolid face softening. “Is it for Rem’s birthday? I think I can get books for you in time.”
Oh, stars.
“Yes,” she said, through numb lips. “I heard his birthday was soon. What was the date, exactly?”
“November twenty-third.”
“His twenty-fifth birthday.” Ophele nodded as if she had known the whole time. “We ought to have a feast, oughtn’t we? And gifts? And pudding. Oh, I’ll have to talk to Master Wen, after everything he did for my birthday…”
“If you want to make him something, just tell me what you need,” said the knight, looking at her with mingled amusement and sympathy. “You want to sew something for him?”
“Oh. Um, yes.” Her eyes slid sideways. “Maybe some silk? White? And silk thread. Mr. Guian only has cotton in his store. Oh, and Remin needs more clothes. I don’t suppose someone has his measurements?”
With every word she was floundering deeper into the quagmire; the situation had spiraled wildly out of her control.
It was September now, she had less than three months until his birthday.
And now she had to make something for him.
Could she learn to sew by then? What clothes did men wear?
What was appropriate for a gift? He had a few nice jerkins and doublets that he set aside for special occasions, when he had to be the Duke of Andelin, but other than the fact that he had something called a doublet and something called a jerkin, she knew absolutely nothing about what he needed.
And after he had worked so hard to learn about her, too.
Ophele spent the next few days sneaking off whenever Remin’s back was turned to speak to Mr. Hengest, Mr. Guian, Sir Miche, and Master Wen, who pitched an absolute fit when asked to produce another pudding.
“It’s not for me!” Ophele cried, backing toward the kitchen door. “It’s His Grace’s birthday! In November! He likes hazelnut, I asked!”
“Do ye realize how many people are in this bleeding camp now?” the cook demanded, his butcher knife descending in huge, unerring arcs. It was amazing how he could neatly dismember a buck without even looking at it. “And you’d have me take hours of me precious time for a single blasted pudding? ”
“I’ll help,” she offered. “I can peel potatoes, or turn the spit, or anything else you need, if you show me—”
“You’re a duchess!” he roared. “The Duchess of Andelin turning a spit? It’d be the shame of me life, I won’t have it, I tell ye!”
“Then…I won’t shame you!” she exclaimed, trying desperately to apply some logic in this kitchen of madness. “If you make pudding, I’ll…I’ll be a proper duchess! I’ll stop calling you Master Wen! So…there!”
She didn’t know what she was saying. She just felt that somehow, when placed between his deeply-held prejudice against dessert and his strict notions about what behavior was acceptable in a duchess, somehow the solution to the equation was pudding.
She didn’t understand his arithmetic, but she was learning to apply it.
“Ye go to Edemir.” Master Wen…Wen pointed his butcher knife at her. Blood dripped off the blade. “Ye go yourself and ye ask for your blasted hazelnuts! And vanilla beans! And sugar! And a dozen chickens because now we need eggs!”
“I will!” she shouted back. Her heart was thumping wildly. “And I want clotted cream! For the hazelnut pudding!”
“Then get me some bloody cinnamon!”
“I don’t like cinnamon!”
“Well then, we’ll leave it off your slice, Your Majesty.” Wen dragged the words out in such soaring, epic sarcasm that Ophele thought her grandchildren would still feel the sting. “And may ye have the pleasure of it because it will be me final pudding, so you’ll have it and be damned!”
“I will not, because it will be delicious!” she shouted, fully in the spirit of the thing now, and even slammed the kitchen door on the way out.
Outside, Ophele collapsed into giggles, covering her mouth with both hands. She had never yelled at anyone before in her life.
* * *
Remin had told Ophele about the upcoming tourney, if not all the reasons it was being held. But it wasn’t long before she discovered some of them for herself.
Really, there were so many changes in the valley, it was hard to keep up.
Auber’s folk were barely moved in before they were out in the fields, preparing to bring in the wheat.
Ophele told herself that they were working so hard, of course they wouldn’t have time to socialize, and it would be rude to trouble them, even though they almost assuredly would know how to work a needle.
Merchants. Builders. Tanners. Potters. Candlemakers.
Even a weaver, a relation of Sir Ortaire’s who would be making use of the year’s shearing.
Genon Hengest was already waging a cold war with a new herbalist who had moved in by the east gate, and though Ophele’s instinct was to kick out anyone who upset a man she had come to like very much, Remin said sternly that they couldn’t play favorites until the new herbalist actually poisoned someone.
Almost every day brought new folk over the river, and Sir Tounot and Sir Bram were run off their feet, keeping up.
It was strange to see so many faces she didn’t know about town, and adding to the chaos was a mass move of soldiers to the barracks.
Those who wished to keep soldiering rather than learning another trade trained every day under the critical eyes of Remin and his men, and the weapons were moved from the storehouse to a new, thick-walled armory.
The arrival of specialists meant the original settlers of the valley were moving from the roles they had adopted by necessity to their chosen professions. It was a milestone Ophele noted in her mental history of Tresingale, and far more significant than the valley’s first parasol.
The only thing that troubled Ophele was that there didn’t seem to be a place for her.
“Could I go with you? Just to watch,” she asked Remin one afternoon as she helped him don his armor. It was very interesting, how it fit together.
“No, wife, I’m sorry.” He tilted her chin up and kissed her. “I wouldn’t mind if it was just the other knights, but fighting men can’t be worried about the presence of a lady. A man needs to be able to swear when he gets hit in the face.”
“Is there something else I can do?” she asked, trying to hide her disappointment.
It wasn’t that she wanted to be in his pocket every moment of the day, but lately, with so many workers arriving, there didn’t seem to be any occupation for her unskilled hands.
Soon, even her little school would close .
“Soon,” Remin said encouragingly. “There will be some matters of scholarship that could use your attention.”
As if she were any kind of scholar. Ophele felt another pang of conscience, that he thought so highly of her when she was nothing special at all.
She never would have predicted that Remin’s high opinion would make her nearly as anxious as those dreadful days when he thought her nothing but a nuisance.
“All right?” he asked softly, his big hands stroking her cheeks, and Ophele smiled unwillingly, swaying into him.
His touch made her forget all about matters of scholarship.
His head bent and he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her again, until the sunlight paused in its path across the floor of the cottage and everything in the world faded but the feeling of his firm lips stroking over hers.
It was some time before Remin finally pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, his fingers caressing the back of her neck.