same for you. He’s toying with you. Don’t take him seriously. Surely your mother taught you that minstrels are never to be trusted? He’ll flirt with anyone, of course, and sleep with any girl who opens her legs to him after a few sweet words from that golden tongue. Enjoy it, if that’s the sort of girl you are. But don’t expect it to come to more than that. He’s Lady Lucent’s minstrel, and everyone who’s worked here more than a season knows that. But you’re new. So I thought I’d warn you. Just to be kind.”
“Thank you,” Timbal faltered, though the girl’s tone had been anything but kind. Gretcha made no response but turned and sauntered away, her filled ewer in hand.
As Timbal hauled the bucket up, to drink, and wash her face and then fill her own ewer, she wondered. Did Gretcha think that what she had said was a kind warning? Timbal doubted it. There had been jealousy in her voice, or something like it. Something nasty and vengeful. She wondered if somehow she’d made an enemy at Timberrock, but could think of nothing she’d done to Gretcha.
Nothing save draw Azen’s attention.
He’d asked Gretcha what her name was. That meant he’d noticed her as more than a face in the crowd. She smiled to herself. He might be Trouble, but she doubted he was trouble she couldn’t handle. She wondered if he’d been ‘Trouble’ to other serving girls and then nodded to herself.
Was that it? Had the minstrel once been attentive to the housemaid? Or was he truly, as Gretcha had accused him, a pastime for Lady Lucent? Lord Just’s legs were withered. Timbal wondered if that meant his other lower parts were useless. She had heard of highborn ladies and lords that did not keep their marriage vows but dabbled where they would. She thought again of how the lady summoned and then dismissed the minstrel, and wondered if she summoned and dismissed him for other duties as well. Were they secretly lovers, joined at the heart? She imagined the minstrel clasping the lady to his breast and kissing her. A strange thrill shot through her, one tinged with envy. Oh, she was being stupid! To have thought for one instant that she could have caught the eye, let alone the heart, of a handsome young minstrel like Azen! Of course he would be at his patron’s beck and call, performing whatever services she wished of him. Everyone knew that minstrels never truly gave their hearts. What had she been thinking? She filled her ewer and carried it back to her room.
Yet that night, despite her best efforts to clear her thoughts of him, she fell asleep still humming the refrain, with “blue boots” where “blue eyes” should have been. And the dream she had of him awoke her long before dawn, and did not allow her to easily fall asleep again.
Her love for him was like poison ivy, she thought. She rose early and went to her work, resolved not to allow her thoughts to touch on him. But they did. And with every touch of her mind, her infatuation spread and enflamed her. Infatuation, she told herself sternly. A silly little girl’s wild dream of a handsome and popular older man. What was wrong with her? He was the least eligible of the men in the keep. All he could do for her was break her heart, or get her pregnant if she were foolish enough to dally with him. Set him out of your thoughts and get about your work, girl!
So she told herself sternly and to absolutely no avail. Useless to recall that she knew next to nothing about him, and that what she did know indicated than any sensible girl would avoid him. He was a minstrel, and possibly the Lady Lucent’s lover. He had no fixed home, no income other than the largesse of his listeners, and probably few possessions other than the clothes on his back and his harp. The only thing she could share with him was trouble.
She was scrubbing the big iron stew pot when he came into the kitchen yard. It was the biggest pot the keep owned, and it was seldom empty. Once she was finished with it, it would be filled with water, onions, turnips, carrots, and a tough haunch from an old milk cow. It would cook for a day, and for the next week or so, more vegetables and pieces of meat would be tossed in to replace most of what was ladled out to the serving folk. Sometimes the soup kettle would go a month without a scrubbing out. And when it was finally time for a cleaning, it had to be rolled out of the kitchen onto the flagged court, where the lucky cleaner of the pot might spend half the morning scraping and scouring to get all the scorched scraps out of it.
Timbal had tied back her hair and covered her head with a rag. She’d turned the pot on its side and was on her hands and knees, with her head and shoulders inside the kettle, scraping away. Two small dogs had appeared from somewhere. Tails wagging, they awaited every handful of scraped-off debris, cheerfully snapping and snarling at each other to see who would claim it. In the midst of one of their yap fests, she heard her name in a questioning tone. “Yes?” she replied as she backed hastily out of the pot.
“Excellent,” Azen replied merrily. “I’ll see you then.” The minstrel swept her a theatrical bow that fluttered his blue summer cloak, and turned away from her.
“I don’t know what you asked me…” she called after him.
He turned around, walking backward away from her. He was smiling. “And yet you agreed? I call that a good sign for me!”
“Agreed to what?” She could not keep the smile from her face, even as she touched the greasy cloth that covered her hair, and wondered suddenly how foolish she had appeared to him, with her rear end sticking out of a soup pot.
“You agreed to walk out with me this evening, after your chores are done. I’ll meet you at the bottom of your stair.” He had not paused in moving away from her. Now he turned and walked rapidly away.
“Don’t you have to sing tonight?” she called after him.
He spun around once, laughing. “Only if you want me to!” he replied. “It’s my night to do as I please,” he added, and then he turned a corner and disappeared behind the milk shed. She stared after him. Her heart was hammering, the kettle scraper in her hand forgotten. What did it mean? For a time she remained crouched on her haunches, staring after him, her task forgotten. Should she go? She had said she would. But she had said “yes” before she knew what he was asking, or even who was speaking to her. She hadn’t really said “yes” at all! Would she have, if she had emerged from the pot and heard what he was asking her? Of course not! She had decided he was not for her. Aninstant later, she admitted the truth to herself. Yes. She would have.
And she had.
It seemed Cook gave her every dirty and disgusting task the kitchen offered for the rest of that day. When finally the day’s work was done, she was greasy and sooty and bone weary from scrubbing. Any other night, she would probably have gone straight to her bed. Instead, she hurried down to the women’s bathhouse. She scrubbed herself there and washed tangles and grease from her hair. She wrung out her hair and knotted it up on the back on her head, and hurried back to her room. Unfortunately, Azen was already waiting at the foot of the stairs. He arched his brows in surprise at her dripping hair. “Just a moment!” she assured him, flustered beyond words, and fled up the rickety steps.
She changed hastily out of her servant’s dress and into the only “good” clothes she owned. Her skirt was green with white trim, and her blouse was pale yellow. As she fastened the simple silver hoop earrings that her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday, he was very much on her mind. What would he have thought of what she was doing now? Would he have approved of her walking out with a minstrel? For an instant, sadness washed over her that she could not ask his permission or opinion. She wondered what had become of their old cart and team, and if the men who had killed her father had profited from his death. Then she shook her head clear of such thoughts. They had never helped her, not in the days right after his death and certainly not now. She would have to make her own way in the world, and live with her own decisions.
She tore a comb through her dark hair, braided it, and pinned it up, hoping the wet would not be so noticeable. She pulled on her blue boots, took a breath, and left her small room to descend the stairs. Thoughts of her father had driven some of the giddiness from her. If she made any mistake with this man, she reminded herself, she’d have no one to rely on except herself.
She cautioned herself to wariness, but as she came down the steps, Azen was looking up and smiling at her. His dark eyes seemed suddenly a pool that she might drown in. “There you are!” he exclaimed, as if completely surprised by her presence. He lifted a small covered basket from the ground and hung it on one arm while offering her his free one. It seemed only natural to take it, and once she had, she could think of no polite way to let go of it. “I know a place where the night birds sing,” he told her, and off they went.
She did not have to talk much at first, for which she was grateful. He entertained her with an accounting of his day, turning his simple tasks to a tale full of humor and mischief. She could not help but laugh, and for a time, he seemedto expect no more from her save that she listen and smile at his nonsense.
The place where the night birds sang proved to be a sandy river beach backed by trees, downstream from the footbridge to town. Where the forest met the shore, he found a bleached-out log for them to sit on. The sun was
