“I’ll take it up to her if you want,” said Nettie. “At least I’m dressed.” And, in Nettie’s opinion, they didn’t need a fuss over cookery with the Duchess of Altamont.
When the tray had been prepared, Nettie carried it up to the room she had cleaned and rapped on the door. When no one answered, she went in, unloaded the tray upon the table, went out, and closed the door behind her. It was strange the duchess was nowhere in evidence. She could have been in the privy, of course. Even duchesses probably had to go to the privy sometimes. And strange she was here alone! The word was she went nowhere without that big man on his black horse and half a dozen armed men or more.
She returned the tray to the kitchen, waited for a time to see if the duchess would show up, then took herself back to the barn, where she found Clive sound asleep and Willum on watch from a kind of crow’s nest he’d created across two rafters near the round window at the peak of the barn gable. Without bothering him, she rolled herself in her blankets and went to sleep.
Just before dawn, Loppy returned, the clip-clop of his horse’s hooves clearly audible in the early morning stillness, loud enough to rouse Nettie and Clive.
“Strange thing last night,” said Clive when Willum climbed down from the rafter top.
“What?” asked a voice from behind them. Abasio!
“You’re a sneaky one,” muttered Clive. “You finished with your napkins?”
“Finished and paid and ready to leave in the next two minutes. Told Benjobz I had to go on up to the abbey, where I’ve got an order for special draperies for the abbot’s own audience room. Now, what was the strange thing last night?”
“Not too long after the duchess got here, here she came out in fronta the barn, ’cross that stretch of paddock there, ’mongst the trees. Big old owl up in that tree. She stands there, starin’ at the owl; the owl takes off. I never saw her come back.”
“I did,” said Willum. “I saw her standin’ out there, like some kinna statue. I saw the owl, too. It came back and flew down into the woods where she was standin’. It was still too dark for me to see into the trees, but I saw her come stampin’ out of the woods in a fury, back into the inn.”
Nettie shivered. “That’s why she wasn’t in her room when I took her dinner.”
Clive muttered, “Whadduh you think happen to the owl? Foolin’ with owls is bad luck, Ma allus said.”
“That woman’s so much evil luck, ordinary bad luck would turn tail and run,” said Nettie on her way out the door with Abasio, who headed for his wagon.
She stopped at the pump behind the inn to wash her face and smooth her hair, an unnecessary neatening, for the kitchen was completely empty, the fire burned to a few embers. Nettie listened for voices, heard them, and went to stand behind the dining room door where Loppy and Benjobz were punctuating their conversation with the clink of glasses.
“I know what the duchess said, but naa, naa, it’s just the four of ’em,” Loppy declared. “Five, f’you count the dyer and his wagon, but there he goes now, so he’s a half day or more behin’ ’em. I got a good look inside his wagon, too, and there’s nothin’ there but his stuff: cloth and dyes and all. It’s just like the big driver told us. There’s no women there, and the wagons an’t carryin’ nothin’ but house stuff.”
“She’ll want to know,” said Benjobz. “First thing she got here, that was the question. Had we seen anybody headed for the abbey. Who and what was going there.”
“What’d she care? The abbey shoun’t be on her mind. Way I hear it, whas on her mind’s the kingdom. She’s gonna take it from King Gahls an’ her mama. Mebbe give it to her brother. Share it, more likely! Or keep it for herself.”
“Shhh,” Benjobz hissed. “Anybody hears you, you’ll have your head on the block! And he’s her half brother.”
“Half brother. Ha. Two boys, one girl, the queen’s got, and I’ve seed Duke Hulix, and the Duchess of Altamont, and I’ve seed Prince Rancid, and ever’ one of them with the same nose, the same jaw, and I’ve even seed Queen Mirami, ridin’ in a carriage, and there wuz her chamberlain grinnin’, with the same nose and jaw as on all three. You’re the only one hearin’ me say that, and if you’re plannin’ on turnin’ me in to King Gahls as a spy for the Sea King you’ll get turned right back!”
“You don’t know she’s working for the Sea King.”
“Well, if not him I’d like to know who. Stands to reason; the Sea King wants all the seaside lands held by his people, don’t he?”
“He’s got the whole ocean! Hasn’t been a ship cross the sea in years.”
“Which is just the way he wants it, so I hear.”
Benjobz growled in his throat. Nettie slipped out of the place and back to the barn, seeing Abasio’s wagon already some distance up the Wilderbrook road.
Willum and Clive had dismantled their crow’s nest at the gable. Within a few moments, with the sun barely showing above the eastern tree line, the two of them and Nettie rode southward, inside the edge of the forest, staying hidden and away from the road until they had rounded the ridge and knew they could not be seen from either the inn or the King’s Road itself.
“They’ll know which way we went,” said Nettie when they had achieved the road. “They knew where we were headed.”
“We didn’t make any secret of it,” said Clive with an evil grin. “And just to reduce suspicion, I left a thank-you note for Benjobz nailed to that last stall. I
