Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [29]
Again she shook her head, and walked away from me, her back very straight. The rest of the day she stayed away from me, and when she entered the kitchen the next morning, she had another maid with her. And all the mornings after.
I was more alone than ever before, alone in the palace nested inside the teeming city nested inside the vast village nested inside the circle of fields and plain and hills and mountains. Winter gave way to the sharp freshness of early spring. I had been at court for six months, scrubbing and boiling and ironing and dyeing and hauling. And I might have gone on like that forever, except that the prince’s wedding, once again, changed all.
11
“MORE WATER! More water, boy!”
I had hauled water since dawn, until my shoulders felt as if they would fall off, and it was now almost dusk, and still Joan Campford wanted more water. The open courtyard of the laundry chambers seemed a solid mass of rushing women, skirts hiked up to keep them off the wet stone floor.
“More water! We need more water!”
Pots boiled, cloths flapped in a fitful wind, and I had never been so tired in my life. To make it all worse, spring had given way to a sudden, unseasonably late cold. Water I hauled from the river to the boiling vats was near freezing, the courtyard fiery near the boiling pots, and the roofed ironing chambers steaming like wet wood on a new fire. I was always too cold, too hot, too achingly weary.
“More water!”
“I can’t bring any more water! ”
Words I hadn’t even known I was going to say: anguished words. Joan Campford stopped and looked at me, really looked. Her broad red face softened. “Aye, ye’ve done good work, boy. Did ye get anything to eat today?”
“No.”
“Go to the hall and eat. We can manage without ye for a bit.”
“Thank you!”
I stumbled through the corridors to the servants’ hall, which was even more frenzied than the laundry.
Prince Rupert’s bride, Princess Isabelle, had arrived two days ago from her own queendom beyond the northern mountains. She brought with her an enormous train of soldiers, servants, courtiers, ladies. They all must be fed, housed, waited on, and their cloth—bed linen, towels, garments, horse blankets—kept clean. Naturally, I had seen none of the strangers, who did not visit the laundry. But all meals for our own servants had been suspended as all the kitchens raced to keep up with feeding Princess Isabelle’s retinue and entertaining her court. Everyone else snatched scraps of food as we could, and kept working. Nor had I been able to sleep in the servants’ kitchen. I’d lain on my old pallet with the apprentices, and hoped I was too exhausted for dreams that might make me cry out in what passed for sleep.
By now, I wished the royal couple in the country of the Dead.
But this madness would go on only two days more. Tomorrow was the wedding, and the next day Princess Isabelle would take her new consort back to her own queendom. The laundresses gossiped that the princess’s mother was dying, and very soon Princess Isabelle would be Queen Isabelle. It was a good alliance for Prince Rupert, even if his bride was a full six years older than he. Meanwhile, tonight was a great masque, which had required that endless bolts of cloth not only be ironed but also that they be dyed yellow, the color of the princess’s court. That had proved a messy business. My hands, face, hair were streaked with yellow. Even my feet had ended up bright yellow.
The servants’ kitchen was frantic with dinner preparations. Maggie, her fair hair greasy and falling around a face smudged with flour, scowled at me. “Roger! Why are you here?”
“I’m starving.”
“Why are you yellow?”
“Dye.”
“Why are you swaying like that?”
“I’m exhausted.”
“We’re all exhausted.” But her tone softened, sounding almost as she had in the days before I had mentioned Soulvine Moor and so lost her prickly friendship. She snatched a meat pie from a table and thrust it at me. “Here. Don’t tell—these are for Her Plainness’s table.”
“Is the princess very plain, then?”
“I didn’t say that—no, I didn’t. Now go away, can’t you