The Gold Falcon - Katharine Kerr [38]
“We don’t, Your Grace,” Neb said.
“Ah. I was afraid of that. Well, the next time I go to Cengarn, you’ll come with me, and I’ll give you some coin to buy what we need. We’ve received the king’s yearly bounty. The messengers rode in not long before you turned up.” Cadryc stood up and yelled across the hall to Gerran, who was eating with the warband. “Gerro, I need a couple of men to take a letter to Cengarn.”
Over the next few days, life in the dun centered around two things: waiting for the gwerbret’s answer and storing the taxes. Grain had to be milled into flour or parched for winter porridge and the brewing of ale; hogs, rabbits, and chickens needed to be sorted out and housed until their eventual slaughtering. Cheeses and butter to be kept cool, fruit dried, beef smoked or pickled—the early taxes provided the dun’s food supply for more than half a year. Lady Galla and Lady Branna put on old shabby dresses and worked alongside the cook and servants. Raised in a town, and a large one at that, Neb had never quite realized that outside of the rich provinces in the heart of Deverry, the noble-born were in their own way farm folk, much closer to the life of the land than craftsmen were.
During the day Neb saw Branna often as she went about her work and he, his. At times they had the chance to say a few words together, but at meals and in the evening, they sat at opposite sides of the hall, she with the noble-born, he with the servants. He would nurse a scant tankard of ale and watch her, sitting demurely beside her aunt at the honor table while Salamander earned his keep. So that the entire great hall could see and hear him, the gerthddyn stood on a table, telling tales punctuated with songs and juggling, performing little tricks such as pulling scarves out of thin air or plucking eggs from the hair of a passing servant. At times, when her aunt was engrossed in Salamander’s performance, Neb would catch Branna looking across the great hall to watch him, not the gerthddyn. Yet when the tales ended, the two ladies and their maidservants would retire to the women’s hall upstairs, closed to all men but the tieryn and the aged chamberlain.
One evening, as Neb was going upstairs, he met Branna face-to-face at a turning of the spiral staircase. She was carrying a candle lantern, and at the sight of him she stopped, smiling. Neb suddenly found that he couldn’t remember her name—worse yet, he wanted to call her by some other name, but he couldn’t remember that one either. Fortunately he could address her by her title alone.
“Good evening, my lady,” he said.
“Good evening, Goodman Neb.” She paused, as if waiting for him to speak, then continued. “I’m going out to the cookhouse. We’re dyeing some thread, and we need a bit of salt for a mordant.”
“Where’s your maidservant?”
“Off somewhere. By the time I find her, I can fetch it myself.” She hesitated, then smiled and stepped down past him. “I’d best be on my way.”
Neb smiled and bowed, then stood and watched her go, until it dawned on him that he might have asked her if he could escort her. Running after her now would only make him look a fool. He hurried up to his chamber and threw open the shutter at the window. By leaning out at a dangerous angle he could just see the cookhouse and Branna, walking across the ward with her lantern held high. The candle’s dim glow wrapped her round like a cloak of gold, or so he saw it. In a few moments she came back out with the lantern in one hand and a bowl in the other. Neb waited till she’d gone inside and he could see her no longer before he left the window.
That night he had another dream about the young woman called the most beautiful lass in all Deverry. Once again she was sitting in the rough, smoky great hall, and once again he heard a male voice speaking though he could see no one but the