Chapter 7 Back to the Feast Celebrating Gretsella’s Arrival in the Capital
Back to the Feast Celebrating Gretsella’s Arrival in the Capital
Most people at Gretsella’s welcome feast were focusing on eating or flirting, oblivious to the fact that they were being invisibly monitored by the guest of honor.
Janet was strumming her lute and not jesting even slightly.
No one was overtly plotting to overthrow the king.
One man was calling him a birdbrained fop, which Gretsella couldn’t entirely disagree with.
She dropped a spider into the man’s soup anyway and then noticed whom he was speaking with: all hateful six or so feet of Sir Harold, wantonly flaunting his jawline with a buxom young woman on his knee.
Gretsella dropped a lit candle down his tunic and, for a few moments, observed with great relish his hopping around and shrieking before she continued on toward the back of the hall.
She didn’t find anything interesting until she got all the way to the back near the door, where a sad-looking man was skulking in the shadows like a witch at a wedding.
He was holding a shield and wore a sword at his hip, and he looked as if he’d just come in out of the rain, but no one seemed to be taking the slightest notice of him.
Gretsella re-visibilized herself. The knight—she assumed he must be a knight—barely jumped, which Gretsella found very annoying but also thought was to the fellow’s credit.
“Hello, Grandmother,” he said after a moment. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t see you there.”
“That’s because I was lurking invisibly,” Gretsella said.
She thought that she liked this knight. He had a smooth, dark complexion; his nails were neat and his braids tidy; and his voice was pleasant and low.
Also, he was polite. If Gretsella was forced to speak to men, she preferred to speak to polite ones.
“So that I could eavesdrop and drop a lit candle down Sir Harold’s tunic. ”
“Oh,” the knight said, and smiled, then quickly tried to pretend he wasn’t smiling. “Why were you doing that, Grandmother?”
“He’s been very inconsiderate to Bradley,” Gretsella said. “And his jawline annoys me.”
The knight, at the mention of Bradley’s name, had gone a bit goggle-eyed. “You know King Bradley?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s my son.”
“Oh,” he said. “You must be so proud, Grandmother. He’s such a lovely, kind”—he stopped and cleared his throat—“I mean, you must be very proud to be the mother of a king.”
“Not particularly,” she said. “There’s nothing so very impressive about being a king.
All you have to do is wait for your father to die, which happens to everyone, eventually.
I was much prouder of Bradley when he was working as a hairdresser.
Not everyone can cut hair like Bradley. It’s an art form, you know.
” She felt, for a moment, as if she might sound a little ridiculous, but she swiftly drowned that thought in the deep bucket of her own self-confidence.
“I’m sure you’re right, Grandmother,” the knight said. “I certainly wouldn’t trust myself to cut anyone’s hair. They’d be lucky to come away with both ears still attached.”
“You seem sensible,” Gretsella said. “What’s your name, and why are you all wet?”
“George,” George said. “And I just arrived back. I’ve been riding for hours.”
“And you came here instead of changing your clothes?” Gretsella asked, and watched as Sir George’s eyes went straight to Bradley at the other end of the room before darting away again. “Ah. I see,” Gretsella said.
Gretsella thought that Sir George looked uncomfortable, though she found it somewhat difficult to tell: Men very rarely looked comfortable in her presence. “I’d never presume, Grandmother. And, in any case, he’ll never notice me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Gretsella said, casting a critical eye over George’s person.
He was attractive enough, she supposed, as the menfolk went.
He was also very neat and well-dressed, a characteristic that she often found greatly lacking in the men of her own village.
The only point against him was what appeared to be a butter stain on his blue brocade vest. “Bradley struggles to completely ignore anything in trousers for longer than about five minutes.”
George looked more uncomfortable than ever. “I think that he might be able to completely ignore me, Grandmother,” he said, and then took a deep breath. “Just before I was born, my father evicted an old woman who lived in a cottage on his property.”
“Ah,” Gretsella said. “Did she turn up at your christening?”
“She did,” said the gloomy Sir George. “My godmother had already gifted me with courage and strength in battle, so the old woman cursed me with never being noticed by anyone who mattered, and always turning up at any important function with a visible stain on my clothing.”
Gretsella, despite her general admiration for a well-executed curse, couldn’t help a sympathetic wince. “That would explain the butter on your vest, then.”
Sir George didn’t even bother to look down at himself to see. “Is it butter this time?” he asked. “Last time it was red wine. I don’t even drink red wine.”
“It’s a very tidy little curse, if her goal was to keep you from cloaking yourself in glory,” Gretsella said. “How does this not-being-noticed bit work? If I introduced you to Bradley, would he look right through you?”
“No,” George said. “He just wouldn’t take very much notice of me.
With the old king, I had to be introduced to him three times before he could remember my name.
The only thing that seems to make a difference is if I do something very valorous right in front of someone important and then get introduced to them a few minutes after, but even then, it’s not a sure thing, really. ”
“Hmm,” Gretsella said. “Interesting.” Then she said, “Come with me, Sir George. I’m going to introduce you to someone.”
If Sir George was disappointed when she led him directly to Janet, who was still strumming disconsolately on her lute, he didn’t show it. He bowed to her very politely. Then Gretsella said, “Janet, I’d like you to write a nice song about Sir George.”
Janet perked up a little as George began to look as if he’d just realized what a mistake he’d made. “What kind of song?”
“About the quest he was just on,” Gretsella said. “Tell her, George.”
George squirmed. “It was a very juvenile red dragon,” he said.
“A dragon?” Janet asked, perking up even more. “Tell me all about it.”
Gretsella left them to it and made her way back to the head of the table to sit next to Bradley, who was currently being flirted with by a maiden fair. Bradley was very politely fending her off, and seemed relieved to have a distraction when Janet began to sing a song.
Brave, brave Sir George
Who always does his best,
Returned from slaying dragons now,
With butter on his vest!
A handsome knight, one must admit,
A hero bold and true,
His blood runs redder than the scales
Of the dragon that he slew!
It wasn’t, in Gretsella’s opinion, a very good song, but she granted that it was better than she might have expected Janet to come up with on such short notice.
George was hiding his face in his hands.
Bradley was listening to the song with great evident interest. “Did one of my knights really slay a dragon?” he asked.
“I don’t think that we have a Sir George here, do we? ”
“Of course you do,” Gretsella said. “I was just speaking to him. I’ll introduce him to you.
” Then, before Bradley could ask any more questions, she trotted over to where George was trying to blend into a tapestry of a boar hunt, grabbed him firmly by the elbow, and dragged him across the room to pay his respects to his king.
This, at least, he did very nicely, with a graceful bow and a very reverent-sounding “Your Majesty” before he peeped up at Bradley through his long lashes.
Bradley was visibly interested. “Come sit by me,” he said, “and tell me about your adventures, Sir George.”
Sir George obeyed, and gave Gretsella a somewhat wild-eyed look as he sat down. Gretsella winked at him. Then she poured herself a glass of wine in honor of a job well done.
By the time she returned to her room, Gretsella was perhaps a bit less steady on her feet than her dearest friends and closest companions might normally expect, as well as significantly more cheerful than anyone who knew her would find right or natural.
Her toadaphone was perched atop the bedpost. She cooed at it.
“Hello, you lovely, warty thing! Who’s a good toad? You are! A very good toad indeed!”
The toad took a deep breath, just like toads usually don’t. Then it said, “All hail Bradley the Destroyer, who will bring about the end of the kingdom!”
Gretsella frowned. “Oh, shut up,” she said. “Toads shouldn’t talk.” Then she put the toad into a hatbox, put the lid on the hatbox, put the hatbox out on the window ledge, and briskly slammed the window shut. “And let that be a lesson to you,” she said. Then she went to bed.
The next morning, after an unrestful night of sleep in the too-soft feather bed, Gretsella retrieved her toad from the windowsill, ate a large bowl of pease porridge that she scooped for herself out of a vat intended for the palace staff, and headed off to look for Lady Cordelia, the former mistress of the robes.
She didn’t find Lady Cordelia immediately. When she went to the address that Herman had provided for her, the servant girl told her that Lady Cordelia wasn’t in.
“I see,” Gretsella said. “I’ll just wait here.” Then she sat down directly on the steps.
The maid looked uncomfortable. “But you can’t just sit there, madam.”
“Oh, I assure you that I can,” Gretsella said. “I’m very comfortable. I would be very sad to leave, really, when this is the coolest and smoothest step that I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting on.”