“Who is that?” asked Clive.
“Fellow called Loppy,” said his brother around a mouth full of nails. “Says he’s the cellarer. Ast me all kinds of questions about our mama, up there at Wilderbrook.” He spat nails into his hand and jingled them nervously. “I told him we left her young, and that was a long time ago, and we didn’t know what she’d been up to since we left. When he ast about where all we went on those Port Lord ships, I told him we warn’t allowed to talk about where we went or what we stowed for fear of pirates and any of us talked about it got our tongues chopped out.”
Clive considered this prying person to have taken an unwarranted interest in them, not liking the idea. “When you think we ought to go?”
“Oh, long about dusk I guess.” Willum swiveled his shoulders one at a time, stretching before bending to his task once more. “After supper, when nobody’ll be lookin’ for us for a while.”
They went on with their work, the stalls slowly forming under their hands, enough of them for a considerable number of horses, Willum thought. More than this place looked like it needed, which was interesting. Where was all this new business going to come from? Somebody had to be figuring on increased traffic coming from somewhere, going somewhere else. Such as, perhaps, traffic between Ghastain and Woldsgard, once Woldsgard was taken over by the duchess and passed on to the king, if that was what all those soldiers were off to see to.
As the sun dropped over the hill, they stowed their tools and headed for the door, only to stop on the threshold, Willum muttering under his breath.
“Whatsay?” asked Clive from behind him.
“There he is! I be dinged.”
“Who is?”
“Loppy. On a horse, trottin’ off purty as pie, same direction the wagons went. Now that’s a puzzle. Do we head out now, like we planned, or do we wait until he gets back and see what he tells to who?”
“Or maybe stop his telling anybody.”
Willum puckered his forehead and thought hard. “If Precious Wind was here, she’d say accurate information is usual more important than what’s it . . . I allus forget. Arbitroosy what?”
“Ar-bi-tra-ry ex-er-cise of un-neces-sary belli-cos-it-y,” chanted Clive in march tempo.
“How’d you remember that?”
“Her and Bear, they both say it all the time.”
“Well, and they do, that’s right. So, we just wait and see what happens when that Loppy gets back.”
“We could, but Nettie says that woman’s coming. The one from Altamont. Prob’ly better she don’t lay eyes on us two so soon again, so stayin’ or leavin’, either one is what you might call troublesome.”
“She never laid eyes on Nettie. Nettie was in the carriage with Precious Wind, and she had her curtain down on her side. Far’s I know, she never saw the traveler man, either.”
“And what’s he doin?”
William laughed. “He’s got out his dye pots, makin’ napkins for Benjobz. Napkins with the royal crest on ’em, case some of those from Ghastain choose to spend the night. I swear, that Abasio could sell feathers to a goose.”
“Well then, it’s only you ’n’ me better find somethin’ to take us away from here from after supper ’til she’s gone.”
They decided on fishing. The upper reaches of the Wells were known as fishable waters, so Timmer and Hout took off after work, loudly announcing they were going fishing, giving Nettie something to complain of in the kitchen over her supper. “You’d think all the time they’ve spent, out there on the ocean, goin’ here and goin’ there, they’d have had their fill of fish!”
“How’d you do with the room for the lady?” asked Benjobz, interrupting her tirade.
“Clean as a new knife,” said Nellie with unfeigned pride. “All the closets dusted out, the mattress turned and fluffed and made up with those special sheets and new pillows. I got the spiders cleared out and six mouse holes boarded over after I talked Hout into lending me his tools.” Each time Nellie spoke, she felt deep in her innards a quiver of expectation that somebody would ask her a question she couldn’t answer. So far, she’d followed Precious Wind’s advice: talk too much about too little for anybody to be much interested. “I put the flowers in the vases you gave me,” she remarked, going on to list the dozen or so types of bloom both by their common name and what her grandmother had once called them, ending the panegyric with a final encomium: “They make the place smell real nice.”
Benjobz looked wistful. “Every time she stops here, I hope she’ll be satisfied, but it ha’n’t happ’nt yet.”
“Where’s Loppy?” asked one of the stablemen. “He owes me a pint.”
“Said he had to see about some new kegs,” Benjobz answered. “He gets ’em from old Whistle Snigg, him with the cooperage up the hill there toward the abbey. Told me he’d be back tomorrow.”
Nettie helped with the washing up, checked the duchess’s room one more time, and went out to the barn where she and her “cousins” had been sleeping in the loft, said cousins having headed upriver with great ado and furor before returning silently through the woods. Nettie gave them a sack of food she’d salvaged from leftovers in the kitchen.
“Now what?” she asked as they chewed their way through their makeshift supper.
“Now we wait until Loppy gets back, and you hang around inside there to see who he tells about whatever he has to tell.”
They rested in the hay, Clive taking first watch. He woke the other two when the duchess arrived, close on to midnight, and Nettie, still fully dressed, slipped over to the kitchen, where the cook, just roused and in her wrapper, was in a temper.
“She’ll have a bit of roast chicken,” the cook growled. “She’ll have some fresh greens and a bit of fruit. In the middle of the
