Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [72]
But I learned much.
I wore my cloak, hood pulled low over the yellow dye on my face, and sat quietly in alcoves, pretending to wait for someone. In courtyards, pretending to weed spring beds. At docks, where barges held downriver by the siege were once again arriving with their loads of goods for the palace. In the guardroom of the Green army. Even in the laundry, where Joan Campford gave me more yellow dye and treated me with a confused deference that upset us both. “I never thought my laundress boy would be fool to the queen,” she said, shaking her head. “Now get away with ye.”
At dusk, as the lanterns and candles were being lit in the palace, I made my way back to the queen’s rooms, bracing myself for punishment for absenting myself. That was when I learned the most astonishing thing of all: There would be no punishment. The queen had not called for me, had not asked after me, had not even missed me. The presence chamber was empty except for the guards. In the outer chamber were no courtiers, only a little knot of the queen’s ladies, sewing with a sobriety and earnestness totally foreign to all of them except Lady Margaret. With her sat Lady Sarah Morton, Lady Jane Sedley, two others. And Lady Cecilia, who did not greet me, but whose eyes had lost none of their fright since this morning. No such fright, however, twisted the face of the wanton Lady Jane. She wore a small, sly smile as she stitched away on a chair cushion, or what was supposed to be a chair cushion. Lady Jane, like Cecilia, was no needlewoman.
“Fool,” Lady Sarah said to me, “what news?”
“It is nightfall,” I said in my role as fool.
“I know that, idiot!”
“Then if you know, you don’t need ‘new.’”
“No silly wordplay! Are the savage soldiers still in the palace or have they gone back to their camp?”
“Well, one is certainly here,” Lady Jane breathed, and rolled her eyes at the closed door to the privy chamber.
I said, “Savage is as savage says.”
“He knows nothing,” said Lady Jane, her voice full of disgust. “He’s a fool, Sarah.”
Lady Margaret said, “That’s enough nasty chatter.” The others ignored her.
Lady Sarah said, “The fool has eyes! And while we’re stuck here, on guard—”
“Aye,” I said, “I have I’s, and you have you’s, and they have theirs! Alas!”
“He knows nothing,” Lady Jane repeated, and turned her back on me.
She was wrong. I had learned much in my afternoon of prowling. No secret passages, but much else. I knew that Lord Solek’s younger and handsomer soldiers had walked through the castle, learning it well but also making themselves agreeable. They had given away food—of which their army, on the move, could not have had very much. They had offered help. They had gestured admiration for much, and looted nothing. In the narrow ring of the city, to which shopkeepers were returning, the savages had bought items, paying in gold. Outside the palace, savages had helped carry the Blue dead to burial grounds, whenever grieving kin had permitted them to do so.
“Well, they aren’t so bad,” reported the villagers and merchants loyal to Queen Caroline. “Not as bad as some.”
“Their gold’s as good as any.”
“They can fight,” said a young Green guard, not without admiration.
“Good discipline.”
“Fair dealing, at least so far ...”
I saw a serving woman gaze after a tall young savage, and her admiration was not for his fighting or his gold.
But the queen’s ladies, stuck all afternoon in the outer chamber, knew nothing of all this. They sewed and they speculated, equally badly. Cecilia’s eyes were round with fright. When the outer door swung open, she jumped, gave a little cry, and pricked her finger.
Lord Robert strode in, dirt and sweat and blood on his clothing. His boots rang on the stone floor as he made straight for the privy chamber.
Lady Margaret, the ranking lady-in-waiting, leapt up and said, “Lord Robert!”
He neither looked at her nor broke stride.
“My lord!” she said desperately. “You