nobles knew who they were. Instead she nodded.
“Yes, Romarec, I think that will help me become more disciplined. What times do you think I should work for you?”
“I…” Romarec studied the altar cloth, running it through her hands. “What are these symbols?” she asked.
Yseult shook her head. “Mama tells me what to embroider, by the count. She’ll give me a starting point, but she won’t explain. She told me that it would make me concentrate more, that I was getting distracted and letting the colors and shapes guide my hands and not the pattern, itself.”
Romarec shook her head. The last foot of cloth she frowned at. “ This? She thinks this must be taken out? Child, your mother never could decide from which side of her mouth she should blow! I can see the difference, with my eyes six inches from the cloth, but on an altar at five yards, white on white, it’s not going to show at all. Howsoever, your Lady Mother is sure to ask and inspect. So, come meet my new girls, pick this out and I will expect you here from nine in the morning every day. You will have elevenses with us and eat dinner with the castle staff and work until three in the afternoon.”
“And then?”
“Thusly, Master Johannsen will still see you at four for your riding lesson, and we will inform Mistress Virgilia that your tutoring will be in the evening.”
Yseult nodded, relieved to be free of the hot, boring solar and out of her mother’s sole company.
How awful! I never felt like this about Mama, before. But there were always maids with us!
She picked out the slightly sloppy stitches, wondering why Guelf was in Gervais and what the war news from Pendleton was.
Maybe Guelf brought a letter from Huon? Or one from Odard! Dispatches? Or mischief? Mischief! What a word for high treason. What will happen to us?
She tried to settle the gnawing worm of anxiety in her stomach by ignoring it, forcing her hands not to twitch. She wasn’t very successful. Some time later as she carefully taught Martha how to do a stretch stitch so the cuffs would stand up to rough handling she suddenly wondered:
Jesus’ wounds! Should I tell the Regent my uncle is here? What if he ran away? No, he’ d never run from a fight… But, what is he doing here? What should I do? Odard! Huon! Where are you? I need your help!
At three, her dilemma still unresolved, she raced up the stairs and back corridors to her own apartment, two rooms in the west tower’s third story; the light was always a little dim here, because this low the windows were all narrow slits, but space was always at a premium in a castle. The passageways seemed very empty and bare without the men who’d marched east with the host to Pendleton; it made you realize how the vassals and their menies doing garrison duty made up so much of its usual population. With only the families of the permanent staff and the remnant of older men and boys too young to take the field she felt like one of a handful of dried peas dropped into a drum.
Her maidservant helped her out of the soft violet cote-hardie and rose linen chemise, then hesitated.
“Is there news from the war, my lady?”
Yseult blinked, and then remembered that the girl had a sweetheart who was a spearman; her previous maid had been her first, and had just left to marry a blacksmith in town.
“No, Hathvisa, there isn’t. I’ll tell you if I hear anything, though.”
“Thank you, my lady. The riding habit?”
“Yes, please.”
She pulled on a riding tunic, then the heavy brown pleated wool split skirt, and shrugged into the short tight jacket. She rejoiced in the relative freedom of movement the riding habit gave her as she stamped into her boots and snatched up the hard leather riding hat. Racing down the stairs she was tempted to stop at the little prie-dieu just inside the door of the castle chapel her mother had set up to the Immaculate Conception and St. Bernadette.
Later, when I get back! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll ask my saint and see if she can help me figure out what to do!
Master Johannsen was waiting for her in the courtyard, holding the reins of her spirited little bay palfrey, Iomedea. Yseult shook her head at his offer of a leg up, swung into the saddle and then followed him out into the pasture north of the town that the castle also used as a training and tilting ground. That was empty too, none of the tall coursers or destriers whose hoofprints still marked the green turf, the stands that were put up for a tourney gone except for the anchor-points.
The lesson concentrated on defensive and aggressive moves that an unarmed woman, mounted, could use when under attack. With her new understanding of her danger from her mother’s actions, Yseult wondered at the content of her lesson since January. They finished with his usual command.
“Ride now, for an hour, practicing your canter and trot.”
Another hour of freedom from the solar was precious to her.
I might not be horse-mad like some girls, she thought. But I’ll take a horse over alone with Mama right now, any day! And I don’t even have to take an escort, with men so short.
She finished off her workout by taking the bridle path northeast along 99E, up to the tangle of vines and quick growing sumac, poplar and hemlock and sapling oak that was rapidly obliterating the burned-out site of old Woodburn. Her father and later her mother had supervised the stripping and destruction of the deserted town. She could just remember watching the foresters fire the controlled burn when she was five, and the quickgrowing trees planted for fuel and coppice were already fifteen or twenty feet tall in this moist mild climate.
She circled north on the edge of the raw young forest. Only the castle folk used South Boones Ferry Road, so she shook the reins and galloped over the familiar winding path, spurring Iomedea around the bend into Parr. A man stepped into the path and snatched at the bay’s bridle. Yseult gasped but there was no time to be afraid, or to think. Horsemaster Johannsen’s voice rang in her head.
“Wait for it, wait… four, three, two…”
Iomedea reared and crow-hopped, obedient to the signals she sent. She raised her quirt…
Thee may not need it, little Mistress, she heard Johannsen say in her mind, But nonetheless, I’ll be teaching thee a few maneuvers. The mare’s a nice girl and will learn well, and it never hurts to know.
Even as she brought the quirt down, cutting at the ragged man, her eyes met his. He started, dodged the whip and jumped back into the trees. Yseult gasped and set Iomedea forward at a hard gallop, her heart pounding.
I didn’t think I would need a groom here! On my own land! Who was that? she wondered. I thought I knew him, just for an instant… I’d better tell the guard captain right away.
Anxiety and fear rode with her as she hurried back to town at a trot. She pulled up at the edge of the built-up area; Gervais wasn’t big enough to rate a city wall. A Tinerant caravan was setting up as she did, their barrel- shaped house-wagons grouped in a square and a wild music of violins and guitars sounding; the ragged, gaudy figures made extravagant bows… one of them still juggling cups and daggers and apples while he did. A storyteller was declaiming to an audience of village youngsters and youths: “Know, O Prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars…”
She threaded her way through the crowds, not presuming too much on deference; she was a lady, but a very young one. Early evening, just as the sun set, was her favorite time in Gervais; everybody was in a good mood and thronging the streets between the shingled brick and half-timber houses and workshops, calling greetings and laughing. Hooves clattered on brick or asphalt paving.
Then a chill. A detachment of men-at-arms in the black armor of the Protector’s Guard lounged in front of the Chinese Hand Inn, drinking beer and munching on bread and bowls of sweet-and-sour chicken. They whistled and wolf-called as she rode by, laughing at her glare and elevated nose. An under-officer came out of the inn with a wineglass in one hand and a chicken leg in the other to snarl at them: “Show some manners there, you dogs! Can’t you see that’s a lady?”
Doubtless they were the escort for some courier. Yseult arrived back at the castle with her cheeks flushed by more than good exercise.
As she dismounted in the stables, her uncle Guelf Mortimer strode in, calling for his groom. He saw her.
“Where’ve you been, brat? Your mother’s that worried about you! Go to her right now!”
