Chapter 5 – Knights of the Andelin #2
“It’s better that he leaves now, so as to return before winter,” Remin replied, nudging his horse up the steep road on the riverbank. “Once the snow falls, no one’s getting in or out of the valley.”
“But that means the devils will be gone soon, doesn’t it?” she asked hopefully.
“In a month or so. But we’ll be right on their heels,” he said, glancing with foreboding toward the mountains. “I will find their dens.”
Ophele did not like this idea for many reasons.
She would miss Remin and worry about him and the men who accompanied him, but it seemed a very risky proposition to her, following the devils back into the mountains.
The Berlawes curved northeast for a hundred and fifty miles, an enormous territory to hunt through, and even she had heard about parties stranded there by snowstorms, and glaciers so rotten they sheared away like jagged glass.
If anyone could survive, it would be Remin, but …
She could give him a destination.
Or kill him.
The butterflies in her belly turned at once to lead, a sickening plunge in the pit of her stomach. Because yes, that was a possibility, too. If he believed her, and she was wrong, then he and everyone who went with him might die.
“Where do you want to go?” Remin asked.
“Home, please,” she said, nestling into his warmth. She needed to look at her notes again.
* * *
It was a season of departures. Everywhere Ophele looked, the valley was bustling in a last burst of frantic activity before the long quiet of winter.
Whenever she was in the office, there was an endless stream of incoming reports, and every night Remin and his knights sat down at the supper table and ate like they had been starving for weeks, then fell asleep over their plates.
It was a good omen if the harvest was in before the Feast of the Departed, so Remin had shoved every man into the fields, including himself.
This year, he was determined that all the omens would be good.
Though she had known it was coming, Ophele was still saddened at the departure of her students, bound to the barracks to resume their proper service to their squires and knights.
The dormitories had finally been completed and the boys groaned dismally at the thought of domestic chores, but were very excited to be picking up their swords in addition to their cleaning rags.
“Will you come watch us practice, my lady?” asked Legeriot as they were taking their leave from the cookhouse, with a series of bows, compliments, and scruffy little bouquets that proved they had learned well the lessons of Sir Miche. “I beat Gavrel last time.”
“You kicked me,” Gavrel objected. “Knights don’t kick.”
“Sir Miche did,” Legeriot countered. “Remember? He kicked Sir Picolot in the—”
“I would love to come watch,” Ophele intervened, before the argument could build up steam, though she had mixed feelings about watching boys whack at each other with wooden swords. “But you must promise to be very careful, won’t you? And practice hard. ”
“We will, my lady,” said Denin, with his manliest air. He had just turned twelve and was lording it over the other boys. “We’re going to be Knights of the Andelin one day. Sir Bram said we could, if we earned it.”
The thought of what these boys would have to do to earn such a thing struck her tender heart like a small blade, and as little Valentin approached to make his farewell, Ophele couldn’t help herself. She did what she had been wanting to do from the moment she saw those big brown eyes.
“You must be very careful, too,” she said, bending to embrace the eight year-old.
He only resisted for an instant before his arms crept around her neck, wiry little limbs and hands already roughened from the hard work he did.
How had his mother been able to let him go?
“Mind your teachers,” she said, stroking his brown hair as she looked at the others.
It reminded her of Azelma’s farewell to her, all those months ago. “Be brave, and don’t tell lies.”
After that, nothing would do but for the other boys to be similarly distinguished, though Gavrel and Legeriot hung back for a moment, eying each other, and Denin was shockingly tall up close.
He had only just turned twelve, why was she suddenly looking him in the eye?
Hadn’t he been shorter only a few months ago?
Jacot sidled toward the cookhouse doors as if he were afraid she would capture him next, but Ophele only offered him a smile and a tiny nod. He would continue to come and see her several times a week, at least until the north wall was finished.
The builders wanted to have it done before winter, if only because a good number of them were hoping to leave the valley by then.
Remin was prepared to feed as many as he had to, but soon they were going to have to make the expensive choice between continuing work on the wall versus building something better than tents to endure the coming blizzards.
Ordinarily, Ophele would have been happy to offer her own hands wherever they were most needed, be it the wall or the harvest or the dormitories of the barracks, but she was hard at her own task, wading through hundreds of interviews until the letters jittered before her eyes.
Initially, Remin was pleased by the success of his gambit.
This was safe work that kept her indoors and was both useful and interesting.
But now he was taking the quill from her fingers almost every night and grumbling about eyestrain.
It was far preferable to the other strain on her eyes.
Sewing.
If Lady Verr hadn’t already been on the way, Ophele would have wallowed in her papers from morning til night.
She hated sewing. She was so far behind, she didn’t know how she could ever catch up, and Remin’s birthday was only two months away.
She wanted so badly to give him something she had made herself, if only to prove that she could fulfill this simple, minimal requirement of a noblewoman.
“Show me again,” she told Elodie, watching avidly as the girl demonstrated various stitches. As promised, she had brought her sampler, a little square of linen with dotted marks to show where the stitches should go. But not, to Ophele’s despair, how they got there.
“Blanket stitch, hem stitch, chain stitch, whip stitch,” Elodie chanted in her piping voice, her small silver needle flying. She knew a number of sewing songs that had at least taught Ophele the names of the stitches. “Mellie sews an odd stitch, a back stitch, a cross stitch…”
“And one to bless the stars…” Ophele warbled tunelessly along, with no more idea of notes than stitches.
Her own sampler, which she tried to hide from the stars as well as everyone else, was decidedly rumpled and bloodstained from multiple pricks to her fingers. “Is your family coming to the feast?”
“I think so, Mama said we might,” the girl said happily.
Remin had just issued his invitation to the permanent residents of the valley, and the new farmers had been vacillating.
“Last year we stayed home ’cause Papa said His Lordship always set his table with other people’s food, and Mama said he shouldn’t say that, and then Papa said fine, we just won’t go. ”
Ophele blinked. “The Count of Engleberg?”
“Uh-huh. Lady Engleberg wasn’t nice either, she was old and mean and always had a face like—” Elodie scrunched her face in demonstration, an expression that implied she had just eaten something sour. “One time Auntie Lisset didn’t curtsy, and she got scolded.”
That meant Amise was Elodie’s mother. Amise Conbour. Ophele filed this knowledge away.
“Scolded?” she echoed .
“Uh-huh. You show your lady respect and how she didn’t curtsy right, and like that. Mama was soooooo mad…”
Well. Maybe that was why Auber’s relations hadn’t wanted anything to do with their new duchess.
Ophele frowned, picking at her stitches.
That was never the sort of lady she wanted to be.
But thinking of her mother’s effortless graces and perfect manners, she was painfully aware how short of the mark she fell.
And there was Sir Leonin’s shadow lying over the doorstep, listening as his duchess interrogated a child about sewing and noble courtesies.
Ophele had yet to reconcile herself to her guards.
At least she had finally stopped tripping over them, but she didn’t think she could ever accept having them follow her everywhere she went, witness to every awkward, clumsy moment of her life.
It seemed so unnecessary. This was Tresingale. No one wanted to hurt her.
Well, no person.
There was an unnamed road that stretched from the market to the barracks that she had reason to frequent of late, with wide stretches of grassy fields on either side that currently hosted an absolutely enormous flock of geese.
Ophele had felt vaguely sorry for the creatures when Mosquito Pond was filled in, but their numbers had been steadily increasing ever since, and now she approached them with trepidation, wondering at the goose-y thoughts that lay behind those button-black eyes.
She knew less of geese than she did of horses.
And they were butting up very close to the road.
“My lady,” said Sir Davi suddenly, as they were heading to the market the next day, where Ophele was meant to consult Master Ffloce about the ceremonies for the Feast of the Departed. “Stop walking, please.”
Ophele froze.
On her left, there was a low, sinister hiss. Two large geese stalked forward with their wings partially outspread, which surely could not be a good thing. Behind her, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Leonin.” Sir Davi’s voice sounded strangled. “You’ll hold them off?”
“I doubt I will have your finesse with the creatures, but it seems we have no choice,” the other man replied acidly. His sword slid free of its sheath with a snick of steel. “Go. My lady, please cover your head.”