Chapter Twelve The Princesses and the Peas
Chapter Twelve
The Princesses and the Peas
Angelique unlocked a small door at the back of the Great Hall with one key among dozens on a ring.
A stinging pain jabbed at my foot every time I took a step. I couldn’t remember how I’d hurt it. I limped along after her into a windowless passage lit by smoky sconces.
“The sanctity of the Great Hall?” I asked. “What was that about?”
“Our lion is hundreds of years old and considers himself the keeper of our ancient traditions.” Angelique rolled her eyes. “He’s written some fantastically boring book explaining them. You weren’t supposed to be in the hall at all. I’m only allowed in myself on a technicality.”
I wondered how many of these “traditions” there were and how easy it would be to violate them by accident. It would probably be a good idea to find a copy of that book, however dull it might be.
We climbed up a short flight of steps, and I made the mistake of grabbing for the banister with my injured arm. I swore under my breath and jerked it back.
“The chirurgeon will see to your arm. And the rest of your injuries,” Angelique said, looking over my various cuts and bruises. “After that, perhaps a bath?”
“The very suggestion,” I replied, “makes me want to kiss you.”
She laughed merrily. “Surely you don’t mean that.”
“I think you underestimate just how desperately I want a bath.”
“Then that was rather forward of you,” she said, smiling as she gazed at me through half-lidded eyes. “Not to mention verging on scandalous.”
Oh, dear. I hadn’t intended to be suggestive.
My doomed flirtation with Sam had been bad enough without my also attracting the interest of…
who was this, exactly? The keys suggested an upper servant of some kind.
“Er, are you the chatelaine here? Will I be consulting with you about the wedding arrangements?”
“Something like that,” she said. “I’m Gervase’s older sister.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I didn’t know the king had a sister.” She hadn’t been on the list of names I’d had to memorize during my lessons. And in Jack’s story of the attacks on the royal family, she’d gone entirely unmentioned.
“You’re not alone in that.” Her smile didn’t drop. “No one but Gervase ever seems to remember I exist. We had different mothers, and mine produced no male heirs, so hardly counted.”
“A surplus stepdaughter? I know how that goes.”
I took a moment to study her. I could see the resemblance to the king, now that I was looking for it.
In her features, that narrow face and jutting nose had settled into something more harmonious.
Perhaps that was the contribution of her disregarded mother.
In all honesty, Angelique was a bit more to my taste than King Gervase.
I still wouldn’t have been leaping with joy if I’d been forced into an arranged marriage with her.
But I might not have been quite so disgruntled about my fate.
She studied me right back, with a look that felt like it was piercing through every last one of my secrets.
Definitely more to my taste.
Oh, dear.
I lurched away, breaking our gaze, and pain shot through my foot again as my weight fell on it. It didn’t feel like an injury; more like a rock in my shoe. “Hold on for a second.”
When I slipped the shoe off my foot and upended it, a pea rolled out. I brushed at my clothes, and a few more peas escaped from where they’d hidden in the folds and pleats of my skirt, dropping to the floor with faint, dull tinks. I’d probably be shedding them for days.
I sighed. “Wonderful. If any of these end up in my mattress, it’ll keep me awake all night.” And I’d so been looking forward to a comfortable bed.
“Really?” Angelique tilted her head, intrigued.
I nodded. “Sensitive skin.”
“What a remarkable coincidence—it’s the same for me. Any lump in the bedding might as well be a boulder.”
“What were the peas for, anyway?”
My shoe back on, we made our way through the passage. The noises of a castle drifting from afternoon to evening echoed through the hall: the rhythmic clank of a blacksmith pounding on an anvil, the baying of dogs longing to be released from their kennel, a snatch of drunken song.
“The peas are another of the lion’s strange notions,” Angelique said as she ushered me through an archway. “He has some kind of fixation on the king’s huntsmen. I’m not clear on the details, but he’s convinced they’re hiding something.”
“I can’t think what gave it away. The masks, perhaps?”
Angelique chuckled. “Nothing gets past our lion. Anyway, he’s been devising tests to prove his claims.”
“And the peas were supposed to show…?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“What does the king think of all this?”
“Gervase thinks the keeper of our ancient traditions has lost his mind. He won’t refuse to set the tests, though. It was already causing talk that he took twelve masked strangers into his service. He can’t afford to alienate the court any further.”
“He can’t?” It was hard to imagine my stepmother caring if she alienated the whole of Skalla. “Why not?”
Angelique paused. Her gaze flicked around the empty corridor, as if to make sure we were alone, before alighting back on me.
“He’s scarcely been king for two months. The troops are more loyal to their barons than to him. And the times are…tense.” Her mouth tightened into a thin hard line. “Watch your step while you’re here, wedding planner. And if you ever feel the need to flee, let me know. I might be able to help.”
She turned on her heel and strode onward. I followed, wondering exactly what kind of snakes’ nest my stepmother had shoved me into.
When we reached the chirurgeon’s surgery, it proved to be an untidy chamber deep in the bowels of the castle, reeking with horrible odors.
The chirurgeon himself was a white-haired man with dirt crusted under his fingernails.
He didn’t bother to wash his hands before examining me.
I disliked him immediately, and the feeling soon became mutual.
He diagnosed my arm as sprained rather than broken and bound it competently enough.
The haircut he offered was quick, rough, and uneven, but it still came as a relief since, after everything that had happened, my hair reached below my waist and was impossibly tangled, not to mention matted with pumpkin debris.
It had become so heavy that I felt like I was floating with it gone.
But then, the chirurgeon took offense when I refused a poultice for the scratches on my shoulders.
When I sniffed it, it smelled distinctly of pig dung.
Since I likewise turned down the offered courses of leeches, laxatives, and purgatives, we fell into an argument while Angelique looked on with amusement.
“You,” he snapped, “are a silly cow who’s going to choke on her excess bile!”
“I’ll take my chances with that rather than bleed, shit, and vomit myself to death under your tender care.” I had a vague notion my responses might be a bit out of character for a handmaiden, but I couldn’t bring myself to stay silent. Very little offends me like subpar medical practice.
“If the two of you are done quarreling,” Angelique said drily, “might I ask for another treatment?”
The chirurgeon recovered the tattered shreds of his dignity and turned to Angelique with a much more solicitous air.
“How have your headaches been lately, my dear?” he asked.
“Not so bad as they sometimes are,” she replied. “I’ve nearly recovered from yesterday’s.”
He nodded and examined her skull for a few minutes before smearing a paste on her forehead that smelled of garlic and wormwood.
I judged it harmless, though it was also completely useless.
But I had to clench my jaw to keep from objecting when he applied a leech to her inner elbow.
She wasn’t my patient. At least he hadn’t attempted to drill a hole in her head.
He waited until the paste grew crusty, then rinsed it off and told her if she came again the next day, he would prepare a lozenge. I shuddered to think what might be in it.
“Have you suffered from headaches long?” I asked when we were back out in the hall.
“Since I was a child. Some days I can’t get out of bed.” She shrugged. “The chirurgeon does what he can, but nothing works well.”
“Where does it originate?” I couldn’t help myself. “What part of the head, I mean. And are they ever accompanied by nausea or distorted vision? Or by sensitivity to light and sound?”
“What an odd little duckling you are,” she said. “How did a handmaiden come by such strong opinions about medicine?”
I’d been right—I was being too assertive about this.
I’d have to be more careful. “My parents were…” I hesitated.
What made the most sense for the persona I’d created?
Very few nobles become doctors, even the kind of minor noble who’d be chosen as a handmaiden.
The chirurgeon certainly hadn’t struck me as being among the aristocracy.
“They were interested in such matters,” I said. “Patrons of the local academy.”
“How fascinating.” She stopped before a stout wooden door and unlocked it with a key from her ring. “Here we are. The women’s wing. We’ll see about that bath and then find you a bed. One without any peas in the mattress.”
I hoped a warm bath could be arranged, but I sorely needed any bath at all, even a cold one. And a bit of soap would be better for my injuries than pig dung.
“By the way,” I said as I stepped through the door, “why exactly do you have a ‘women’s wing’?”