Chapter Five #2
Apparently reassured I wasn’t about to launch any kind of crazy scene once I got inside—I would have to have been truly insane to do so—he began to escort me down the main hall.
I noticed that all of our former companions had left us and were no doubt following their mounts to another part of the courtyard where presumably the stables were located.
The guards on either side of the entrance clicked their heels and gave the Lord an extended arm salute, which he returned, and then we began to walk down the wide entryway.
A man, who must have been a courtier, appeared from a side door to run along beside him, and the Faery lord spoke to him in his language, obviously issuing orders.
He bowed several times, obsequiously, and hurried ahead of us to open the doors that led up to a set of curving stairs on the side of the corridor.
I was getting the impression that he was an important lord and must be close to the king.
He was still holding my hand and took me right up the steps to the next floor and through another set of double doors.
Inside was a large bedroom, richly furnished and carpeted.
Because it was so warm outside, the windows were open, blowing in a fresh, floral scented breeze.
Two more courtiers had come in behind us, giving me a curious look as I lagged behind, unwilling to go into such a magnificent room.
I’d have liked to pull him back out in the hallway, but finally, the Lord released my hand and sat down with a weary sigh in a beautiful, brocade armchair by the fireplace.
Immediately, servants swarmed around him, soon divesting him of his boots and coat, and then peeling down his stockings. When they started in on his shirt. I could see that they would soon have him completely stripped, and I stood up, trying to decide what I should do and where I could go.
As more servants were running in to set up a big tub, others were bringing in steaming buckets of water, and I realized they were preparing him a bath. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed.
The Faery lord was still giving instructions in a languid sounding voice, all in his own language, of course, which was unintelligible to me, but sounded a little like the Gaelic language.
And then the servants descended on me. Thankfully, they only seemed intent on ushering me out of the room into an adjoining one, accessed by an inner door on the side of the bed chamber.
“His Grace will be with you shortly,” one of them said to me in a heavily accented Northumbrian dialect.
“Oh no, please don’t bother His Grace on my account. Will you just please tell the Faery lord where I am though? He’ll wonder what happened to me.”
“King Fionn knows where you are, because he told us to take you here. To wash the human smell away.”
“I…what? King Fionn? Are you saying that man in there—the man I just left—is the king?” I had never come so close to passing out before in my life.
The servant nodded at me with a supercilious air. “Of course, he’s the king. Who else would he be?”
Who else indeed? I was too shocked to say more, and when they began to strip off my clothing, even though I repeatedly told them it was unnecessary, I didn’t even struggle.
It would have been to no avail anyway, and soon they had me stripped completely naked and dunked me down into a tin bathtub.
They had filled it with steaming water and bath salts that smelled like cardamon—bright, crisp and slightly citrusy with a minty edge.
Had they all been men I would have tried to fight them off as they scrubbed me with their cloths and brushes and washed my hair not once but twice, nearly drowning me in the process.
But most of them were Fae women, strong and beautiful, and they stripped off their own blouses to avoid getting them wet as they scrubbed me.
I was surrounded by their beautiful, large breasts, and it was all terribly embarrassing, though they didn’t seem to mind or even notice that it bothered me.
When they were finally satisfied, they took me out and dried me off, and I sat wrapped only in those drying cloths by a low burning fire, as they brought in trays of food for me to eat and set it all up on a small table near the fireplace, complete with a bottle of wine.
The plate was made of fine porcelain, and the goblet and utensils were made of silver. I was not used to such finery.
One of the women held up a velvet robe to me in a lovely shade of blue and spoke to me then, in my own language, though heavily accented.
“His Grace, King Fionn, asked me to tell you that he’s finishing his supper and then retiring for the night.
He suggests you eat your supper and then do the same. ”
Fionn—I was still trying to pronounce it the same as she had done in my head—“Fee-own,” but fast and run all together—when the same woman sat down behind me and began to lightly oil and brush my hair.
“No, please. I can do that,” I said, but she simply smiled and kept on doing what she’d started out to do.
“Such lovely hair,” she said, and poured a bit more sweet-smelling oil in her hands.
She was massaging that into my scalp and taming the curls I could see hanging down across my shoulders.
Frankly, it simply felt way too good to keep asking her to stop.
When she finished, she handed me a hand mirror and what I saw there was like something out of a dream.
My face was no longer my own. A complete stranger looked back out of the mirror at me, his mouth a round “O” of surprise.
I touched the exquisite face of this stranger to see if I could feel it, and of course, I could.
He was me. I pulled at my skin to see if it were some kind of mask but only hurt myself needlessly and stopped again.
Instantly, I remembered the looks of shock on the faces of the soldiers after we came through the portal and King Fionn saying, “The men are amazed by the way you look since you passed through the portal…you look different now.”
They had been amazed? It was nothing as to the way I was feeling. I stared into the mirror so long that the Faery woman eventually got up, said, “Good evening, sir,” and walked out the door.
I might have sat there all night, looking in the mirror, like poor Narcissus, cursed by a Roman goddess to be so entranced with his own reflection in a pool that he stared at himself until he died.
Except the door to my room opened a few minutes later, startling me as male courtiers came in, carrying trays.
They stood on either side of me as I put down the hand mirror, offering me food that smelled incredible, though I could see no meat at all, nor fish either.
There were warm quiches with chunks of creamy yellow cheese, and slices of warm, fresh bread, dripping with butter.
There were vegetables too, several kinds of them, prepared with skill and care—some were sauteed in oil, some were boiled in water and butter, and a few were prepared with a cream sauce that was beyond delicious.
I ate so much of that sauce that it made my stomach hurt.
Perhaps I should have been too shocked and overwhelmed to eat, but I was young and starving, and I fell on the food right away.
In fact, I ate way too much and drank an entire goblet of the most delicious wine I’d ever had.
And then I filled my glass again. It was said that Faeries ate goblin fruit and made their wines from it.
Once a human tasted goblin fruit, people said no other fruit or wine would ever do again. I began to believe it must be true.
There were plenty of old stories about humans taken by Faeries and making the mistake of eating or drinking something they were given, and then never being able to leave again.
I wondered for a fleeting moment if I believed that, and if I did, should I refrain from eating any more food or drink offered to me.
But I was far too hungry for that. And after the day I’d had, and what I’d seen in the last few hours, I seriously needed to drink.
When I had eaten my fill and drank much more than was good for me, I decided I might as well take Fionn’s example and go to bed.
There was nothing else to do anyway but sit and brood over my “misfortune.” But it was silly to consider that while I was sitting in this beautiful room, full of delicious food and wine.
It was not a hardship. Avoiding the hand mirror again like it was a venomous snake, I climbed into bed, sunk into the soft mattress and pulled the padded, satin coverlet over me.
The wine soon did its job, and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.