In the stables, I’d met Lord Richard and Lord Edward: Naughty Ned. Of the two, Ned was the more interesting. Robert and Richard were both sticks, nice sticks, but sticks all the same, dry and twiggy and given to crepitant stretching when they dismounted, every bone making its own little complaint. Ned was full of the juices of life, wild and rideaway, with lips that fairly dripped honey, even to those in the stable. They had not lied about him. He did have his ladies, no better, as cook said, than they ought to be, a new one every few days or weeks. They were not doxies, really. They were widows mostly, women of a certain class who took only noble lovers and accepted “presents” rather than payment, living from invitation to invitation.
Everyone talked about Robert’s demand that Ned get himself married. Ned said no, and Robert said yes, and it had been that way for a while. Even Lady Janet had put her voice to work on him, explaining how people were needed to work the estate and how it was everyone’s responsibility to produce children.
Ned only laughed. He’d stand in the stableyard, telling the head groom about it, saying he scattered his seed far enough, it wasn’t his fault it didn’t grow. Scattered among the tares, muttered the chaplain, giving him long penances when he confessed. I was outside, praying. I could not confess, for I did not trust the priest as I had Father Raymond. He might well tell on me.
I asked about Giles. Sure enough, he had returned—one of the men-at-arms knew of him—but had gone away again when he found Westfaire mounded with roses. That night I wept, wondering where he might be and how I might find him and whether I dared have the boots take me to him. He could be anywhere in the world. He could be married. I was afraid to find out.
It was a time, a few foolish weeks, during which I returned to the sureties of childhood.
It stopped abruptly one day when the cook asked me, “Havoc, how long have you been here, now? Five weeks or more? And not stepped foot in the chapel for mass yet or gone to confession.…”
Five weeks. Surely not. And yet when I counted up, it was true. I had been there five weeks. My mouth dropped open in sudden realization.
I had, using Aunt Lovage’s word, “flowered” only two weeks before Jaybee had attacked me. I had not “flowered” since. Aunt Lovage talked that way when she was a little drunk. Which, come to think of it, was better than the other aunts who hadn’t talked of it at all. It hadn’t mattered that they hadn’t told me however. What I hadn’t learned in the stable or from Doll, I’d learned in school, in the twentieth, about things like this.
Things like this. Things like probably being pregnant. I wanted to howl, couldn’t howl, not with the cook there, bustling about, not in that soapy, hot-watery place, all grease and yeasty smelling. I wanted a howling place, a place of my own.
Evening went, and I went with it, mounted on my old friend, Horse, and with Grumpkin on my shoulder. I went back to Westfaire by the light of the moon, determined to get inside those roses. I remembered the water gate, where the lake ran into the moat. I remembered a time Martin and some of the other men had gone to clean it out, and Havoc had tagged along. They had gone under the stone bridge which stood at the shoreline and through a gate into the moat itself. Roses, so I thought, could not grow on water.
By the light of the moon, I went out into the lake, then waded up to my neck, holding Grumpkin on the folded cloak above my head, my shirt making slithery motions around my thighs. Nothing but roses on the shore, piled into pinnacles and towers, massive ramparts and flowery battlements, roses and more roses. But in the water, nothing. I saw the shape of the bridge, covered with thorny green. Below the bridge, roses draped down to the very surface of the lake, but behind those canes was a gaping hole where the water flowed in. I waded, pushing the canes aside with padded hands. Under the bridge, only water and the soft lop lop lop of it against the curving mossy sides where it flowed. At the inside end was an iron grating, like the portcullis above. That was to prevent people bringing boats into the moat from the lake. I had no key, but the bars were far enough apart that I could slip between them.
Which I did, scratching myself on the rusty iron and discomfiting Grumkin a little. I stroked him while he growled and clung to me, as though I were a tree. There were slippery steps leading up to the little door in the corner of the wall. I went up, and through, and came out dripping wet in Westfaire.
So strange a place. Surrounded by darkness. Only
