Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [76]
“Yes, for now,” he answered, apparently finding this other, if temporary, lodging more acceptable. “Come, dy Gura, I’ll show you and your men to your quarters. You will wish to see to your horses, of course.”
“Yes, my lord. Thank you.” Ferda gave Ista a parting salute and followed Arhys back down the stairs.
Ista entered the chamber past the lady-in-waiting, who had paused to hold the door open for her. The woman smiled and bobbed a curtsey.
Ista felt an immediate sense of ease from having come at last to what were obviously a woman’s private quarters. A softened light filtered through elaborate lattices at the narrow windows on the far wall. Wall hangings, and vases of cut flowers, brightened the austere whitewashed angles. A door, closed, gave interior access to some adjoining chamber, and Ista wondered if it was Arhys’s. The walls were crowded with chests, variously carved, inlaid, or ironbound; Cattilara’s women whisked away piles of clothing and other evidences of disorder, and set a feather-stuffed cushion on one such trunk for Ista to rest upon. Ista glanced through the lattices, which gave a view onto the roof of another inner court, and settled her aching body down gingerly.
“What a pleasant room,” Ista remarked, to allay Lady Cattilara’s obvious awkwardness at having her refuge so suddenly invaded.
Cattilara smiled in gratitude. “My household is anxious to honor you at our table, but I thought perhaps you would wish to wash and rest, first.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ista fervently.
The acolyte ducked a curtsey at the castle’s chatelaine, and said firmly, “And it please you, lady, the royina should have her dressings changed as well.”
Cattilara blinked. “You are injured? My lord did not say, in his letter . . .”
“Some minor scrapes. But yes, wash and rest, before all.” Ista had no intention of neglecting her hurts. Her son Teidez had died, it was said, of an unattended injury upon his leg scarcely worse than a scratch, which had taken a febrile infection. Ista suspected complicating factors beyond the natural; prayers the boy had certainly had poured upon him, but they had gone unanswered.
Lady Cattilara cast off her moment of discomfort in a flurry of activity, ordering her ladies and her maids to these practicalities. Tea and dried fruit and bread were offered, basins and a hip bath trundled in, and water carried up; the acolyte and Cattilara’s women tended not only Ista’s body but washed her hair as well. By the time these welcome ablutions were concluded, and Ista rewrapped in borrowed robes, her hostess was quite cheerful again.
Under her direction, the ladies carried in armloads of garments for Ista’s inspection, and Cattilara opened her jewel cases.
“My lord said you had lost all your belongings to the Jokonans,” Cattilara said breathlessly. “I beg you to accept whatever of mine may please you.”
“As my journey was intended as a pilgrimage, I actually carried but little, and so it was but little loss,” said Ista. “The gods spared me my men; all else may be repaired.”
“It sounded a terrible ordeal,” said Cattilara. She had gasped in consternation when the acolyte had uncovered the admittedly ugly lesions on Ista’s knees.
“The Jokonans had it worse, in the end, thanks to your lord and his men.”
Cattilara glowed with pleasure at this oblique commendation of the march. “Is he not fine? I fell madly in love with him from the first moment I saw him, riding into the gates of Oby with my father one autumn day. My father is the march of Oby—the greatest fortress in Caribastos, bar the provincar’s own seat.”
Ista’s lips quirked. “I grant you, Lord Arhys on horseback makes a most striking first impression.”
Cattilara burbled on, “He looked so splendid, but so sad. His first wife had died in childbed, oh, years before, when his little daughter Liviana was born, and it was said he did not look at other women after her. I was but fourteen. My father said I was too young, and it was only a girl’s infatuation, but I proved him wrong. Three years did I campaign with my father for my lord’s favor, and