spiral staircase of the donjon tower. “Everyone is putting state aside and doing what they can.”
Their mother and sister-in-law were off making appearances where they told the truth about what Martin Thurston did, which was why she’d been set to shepherd and chaperone the girls. It had already started producing results that the High Queen was pleased with. None of them were getting much rest; the girls were still moving a bit stiffly, even after being able to rest on the railcars for the last two days of their headlong trip from the Wild Lands. The troubadours were already fitting it into the songs.
Shawonda groaned and made as if to rub herself rather indelicately. “Those Dunedain are made of iron,” she said.
“They’re very hardy warriors,” Yseult agreed; she didn’t add anything about their morals or, for most of them, their religion.
“They’re cool,” Janie added. “I want to be one! Don’t you, Shawonda?”
Shawonda looked a little troubled. “I’ve always loved the books, the Histories they call them. It was like being in the books to travel with the Dunedain. But… and I don’t know if I want to be a soldier. It was wonderful what the Hiril Astrid did, but…”
She shuddered. “The fight was so horrible. And I saw her die. It was awful, and she did it to save little Lawrence, or even Juliet, and it was so brave but… terrible.”
Be fair about the Rangers, Yseult told herself. Some of them are good Catholics. Besides which, that was a glorious and knightly deed that Lady Astrid did, the rescue and the way she put herself in the way of the bolt. We all die soon or late, but Lady Astrid’s name will live while honor’s praise is sung, and God loves those who imitate Christ by sacrifice, even if they don’t know Him. I will pray for her; surely she’s in Purgatory.
“Well, they’re not all knights-errant,” Yseult said aloud.
She’d had a few romantic dreams about Mithrilwood herself; most girls did, for a little while at least, and some young noblemen. The old grudges had died away over her lifetime.
“There aren’t any Ranger peasants,” she went on. “But they have. .. oh, troubadours, bards they call them, and armorers, and healers, and craftsfolk. And they own ranches, and hunt and do forestry, and have houses in towns, and things like that, so some of them look after their properties.”
They came to the chambers that had been turned over to the Thurston family; the set above were for Juliet Thurston and her son. She’d noticed how strained relations still were between Mrs. Thurston and her daughter-in- law, largely smoothed over by the grandson. That this suite was theirs alone was a mark of favor given how crowded Castle Goldendale was, even if it did mean the two girls were sleeping on truckle beds in this sitting room.
It was a pleasant enough chamber, shaped like a wedge of pie since it was in a circular tower, with plastered walls painted in hunting scenes. The location also made it easy to guard. There was no way in except through the outer gate, the keep gate, and then a guarded portal at the base. None of the windows were big enough for even a very small and lithe assassin to climb through.
The staff had set out a cold collation for them; regular dining in Hall had gone by the board, with everything upset by the mobilization. She’d heard someone grumble that they were all grazing like a herd, wherever they found a moment.
“Oh, good,” Shawonda said. “I’m starved, but in weather like this a regular cooked meal makes you feel so logy and stuffed afterwards.”
Yseult flipped off the white linen cloth. “Let’s eat!” the sisters said in chorus, and took off the covers.
There was sliced ham, roast quail, potatoes done with garlic and herbs, a salad of roasted peppers and sweet Walla Walla onions and cauliflower dressed with oil and vinegar, another of greenstuffs, along with good manchet bread and a big apricot tart with cream. The girls waited while she said grace, then ate with what she recognized as good manners of a very old-fashioned sort, and enthusiasm.
Janie grinned and rubbed her hands after she’d loaded her plate. Yseult poured them all a glass of white wine. Janie paused and looked at hers a little dubiously.
“Am I allowed to drink wine?” she said.
“Well, some,” Yseult said, surprised again.
Wine was what you drank with food, unless you had beer, which was slightly plebian. This wasn’t anything special, just ordinary drinkable wine decanted from a cask to a carafe and sent up from the kitchens.
I knew they were from a different country, but it’s like they’re from a different time. I knew Boise clung to the old ways, but I didn’t expect so much.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I’m sort of young?” Janie said.
“You’re what… eleven?” Yseult said.
“Since June.”
“Well, I started drinking wine when I came out of the nursery.. . when I was six. Watered at first, of course. But don’t worry, I won’t let you get drunk!”
Janie nodded a little dubiously, sipped, made an interested sound but switched to the cool water instead.
“And it’s exciting to be in a real castle,” she said. “Pass the mustard, please… A castle with knights and everything! It looks just the way I imagined!”
Shawonda nodded and jointed one of the little birds, a little more restrained as befitted a maiden in her mid- teens.
“It’s really interesting. But I don’t want to have a banquet and everything all the time, not yet at least,” she said.
Yseult blinked as she broke a piece of bread and buttered it.
What’s odd or special about a castle? And castles are where knights live. Well, and manors. It’s no more strange than finding a horse in a stable or a monk in an abbey.
“We don’t have banquets all the time,” she said instead. “Well, it’s a little different at Court, naturally they keep more state than anyone else and entertain more, and this is a royal castle. But normally we… ordinary Associate nobles and our retainers… just eat in Hall, you know.”
“What’s that mean?” Janie asked.
Yseult blinked again, forced to think how to explain something she’d taken for granted all her life.
“Well, in Hall… you’ve seen the Hall here?”
Shawonda nodded. “The great big building with the dais at one end and that marvelous huge fireplace and the stained-glass windows down one side and the tapestries? And the lovely coffered ceiling.”
Janie nodded. “Yes, we saw that when we came here. Mathilda… I mean, the High Queen… met us and gave a sort of speech, and there were a lot of people. But wouldn’t that be for banquets? It’s awful big for just a dining room.”
“You don’t have Halls?”
“Not like that,” Shawonda said. “I mean, the capitol building in Boise has a big place where they have meetings, and sometimes special dinners. If you have dinner in a Hall, isn’t that a banquet?”
“Well, no, it’s used for banquets too, but those are special occasions. Banquets are different, it’s mostly guests then, sometimes everyone’s a noble. But a Great Hall has to be big because all the Castle people eat there, except some of the extra troops if there’s a call-up, and it’s where you have dances and things, and music and performers and maybe mystery plays, and a lord may sit in judgment there for his manor court or the Court Baron, and you play games in winter or sew there at times in the summer if the solar gets too stuffy. A Hall will be a bit smaller in a manor house than a castle but it’s the same thing really.”
“ Everybody in a Castle or a manor eats in the hall?” Janie said.
“Most days. The family and any noble guests at the head table, and then the Associate retainers, and then the commons down below the salt, from the highest-ranking servants down to the stable hands and that sort. We don’t all eat the same food, of course, or use the same tableware, but one reason common people want to serve in a castle is that they eat better than what they would get at home in their family’s cottage.”
Shawonda returned to the subject. “So you eat in this Great Hall place every day?”
“Not every day, especially not breakfast or luncheon, sometimes a lord will eat en famille with his wife and children or a few select guests in a solar or ladybower, but it’s… well, people will think you’re odd and, ummm, sort of… what was the old word… antisocial if you do that all the time. It’s good lordship to sit at meat with your folk.
