"Oh, no," she whispered. "Please, please, please tell me they didn't talk the king into trying on the clothes first?"
"No." Aubrey helped Gilda up into the wagon. "The king's clothes are still waiting to be delivered to him. At least, what the weavers say are the king's clothes. We know better, don't we, Mistress Mara?" He grunted as he climbed up into the wagon.
Gilda sobbed, leaning into Aubrey. The cloak's hood fell back enough to show her glistening, tear-swollen face. Merrigan gasped when she saw the red mark of a hand on her friend's cheek.
"Who hit you?" she snapped, and turned to Aubrey.
"The weaver woman." Gilda sniffled and flung herself from Aubrey to Merrigan. "Oh, Mistress Mara, you were so right. How can I ever thank you?"
"Right about what?"
"Well, that odious woman was so furious when she came in to dress me and I wouldn't take off my underclothes and exchange them for the ones she claimed she had brought for me. I kept feeling for them on the rod where she said they were hanging, but they just weren't there. She tried to rip my underclothes off me. She was so angry, and she laughed at me for being a prude and a coward. She said I was being a silly little girl, because we were both women and then—well, I tried to explain that I was afraid there were people who wouldn't see the clothes and I didn't want to be embarrassed, and then she got really nasty!"
"As if she wasn't before," Aubrey said, a growl adding masculine music to his voice. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. "I arrived just as she knocked Gilda to the floor and was trying to tear her clothes off. She said some vile things about it being too late to start using her brain. I honestly thought she would shift into some vile beast. She already seemed to be foaming at the mouth." He sighed and turned to the platform, where the four apprentices carrying the curtained enclosure had come to a stop in the middle, and a hush rippled through the waiting throng. "We can only hope that Master Gilbrick at least had the sense to wear underclothes too, despite what the villainous weaver told him."
"Oh, Aubrey, what if ..." Gilda looked like she might burst into sobs again.
Aubrey met Merrigan's eyes, then he leaped off the wagon and fought his way through the crowd to the platform. He yanked off his outer coat as he went.
The curtain fell when Aubrey was a good twenty feet from the platform. Gilbrick spread his arms wide, turning slowly to display every inch to the waiting crowd, a wide, beaming smile contorting his face into something almost childish and pure in his delight.
Gilda let out a scream and hid her face against Merrigan's shoulder.
The crowd fell so utterly silent, the snorting and stamping of the horses in the stables beyond the warehouse came loudly through the night air.
Merrigan looked, from curiosity, the aching need to know and prove to herself what kind of fool Gilbrick had become. She was both relieved and disappointed.
The weaver had indeed talked the merchant into discarding the long linen shirt that even the upper ranks used for underclothes and sleeping. Gilbrick's legs and arms and chest were bare, bony in some spots, sagging in others, and an odd fish belly white. Merrigan supposed all older men came to look like that.
Chapter Fourteen
However, Gilbrick had retained a combination of loincloth and swaddling that encompassed his hips and went halfway between hips and knees. Merrigan couldn't see much more than that in the few seconds it took for Aubrey to leap at the platform, catch hold of the edge, vault up, and fling his coat around his former employer's middle. He snatched up the fallen curtains and pulled them up around Gilbrick as the impact of their two bodies colliding sent the merchant to his knees.
"You're not wearing anything!" Aubrey shouted, before Gilbrick could recover enough to shout the rebuke visible on his face. "There are no clothes, no magical cloth! You're not wearing anything at all."
"He's not worthy of his place," one of the apprentices holding the now-empty framework cried. A second young man joined in, but no one else. They pointed at Aubrey and laughed, but their laughter choked off under the glares of the other two apprentices.
"They always disliked Aubrey," Gilda whispered.
"They're bigger fools than the others standing there," Merrigan whispered back.
"Mistress Mara, please, tell me the truth. Is my father—"
"He's wearing nothing but that diaper and the curtains Aubrey threw at him."
Gilda whimpered, but managed not to burst into tears again.
Other voices cried out from the crowd, insisting the clothes were glorious, and Aubrey was a fool for claiming nothing was there. They died out just as quickly as they had risen up.
"Do you see anything?" Aubrey shouted, turning to the children in the wagon.
"He's got nuttin' on but a diaper!" a boy cried out with glee. Several of his friends joined in, then others, until all the children had spoken.
Gilbrick's face went so pasty white, he seemed to glow in the encroaching darkness. Even the torches set up to illuminate the grand display faded under the onslaught of embarrassed, then cruel laughter that trickled across the wide courtyard, then grew stronger, until it was a crashing wave. Aubrey wrapped the curtains further around Gilbrick and gestured for the other apprentices. They surrounded their master and escorted him into the shelter of his warehouse.
Merrigan went with Gilda simply because the girl begged her. They were delayed for a while that
