“Good luck, Scurvyhead.” The man raised one hand in farewell and walked on his way.
Chapter 11
Duncan thought it should be harder to get a job at the castle than it was. On Jimmy’s command he left Wildfire tethered within a stall in the large stables. Then, Jimmy escorted him to the aptly named Gardener—John Gardener, so he was told, but everyone called the man by his surname so as not to get him mixed up with all the other Johns in the castle, including the cook, the horse master, and half the stable boys.
Gardener was a middle-aged man with a bushy mustache and a marked dislike for sheepskin wigs. “You want to be an under-gardener then, Scurvyhead?” he asked as he eyed Duncan suspiciously.
“So long as it’ll keep me busy, yes,” said Duncan. He didn’t need the job, so he saw no reason not to be perfectly honest.
Gardener grunted. “You’ll have to sleep in one of the sheds, for there’s no room for you in the servants’ dorms. Gilly came from home every day.”
“That’s fine,” Duncan replied, and he was secretly glad. Privacy meant less possibility of someone discovering what lay beneath the sheepskin.
“Fine. You can start by weeding out the flowerbeds in the north courtyard.”
Duncan realized that the man meant for him to start immediately. “What about my horse?” he asked.
“Horse?”
“He has a horse,” Jimmy interjected helpfully. “We’ve left him in one of the stable stalls, but we’d need the stable-master’s permission to keep him there.”
Gardener waved them away. “Go talk to him. After that, the flowerbeds, Scurvyhead. Consider it your test—I’ll check on you later this afternoon. If you do a terrible job or take too long, you can forget about working here.”
“Yes, sir,” said Duncan, thankful that he had something to occupy his time for the afternoon at the very least.
Jimmy led him to the stable-master, from whom they procured permission to keep Wildfire in one of the smaller stalls in the back. Then, he left Duncan to return to his own chores.
The white horse was chewing on some straw when Duncan came upon him. “They’ve given me the job, provided I can prove I’m capable of it,” he reported, “and they’ve agreed to let you stay in the stables, but in one of the back stalls.”
Wildfire glanced up and down the aisle and said nothing. A couple of stable boys exited a stall halfway down the row and turned the opposite direction.
“Right,” said Duncan, understanding his horse’s silence perfectly. “Let’s get you settled and get that pack off your back.”
He led him to an appropriate stall at the back in an empty row. “What are we going to do with all this stuff?” he asked as he pulled a bulky, canvas-covered pack from behind the saddle. It was his suit of armor, all nicely fitted together for compact transportation. “We can’t very well leave it in here with you, can we?”
“We’ll hide it outside the city,” said Wildfire, and he kept wary eyes on the aisle beyond the stall door. “We probably won’t need it, and you’d certainly never put it on in the king’s stable, unless you wanted to get caught and punished for impersonating a knight.”
“It was your scheme, not mine,” Duncan muttered.
“Oh, sure. Blame the talking horse.”
“Are you in a bad mood?” he inquired. “We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. I can look for work elsewhere.”
Wildfire snorted. “This is fine. You’ve got the job already, so there’s no point in finding another.”
“You’re the one who wanted to come to Midd,” he pointed out.
“You’re the one with fifty rogues chasing after his head,” Wildfire retorted. “We don’t have a lot of choices in where we can hide. It’s fine,” he added emphatically. “You know I’m not keen on stables, but I’m sure you’ll do your very best to see that I get good food and daily exercise.”
“Of course,” said Duncan. “Haven’t I always taken good care of you?”
The white horse nipped at his wig. He ducked out of the way just in time. Wildfire sometimes had these moody streaks, he’d come to learn over the past couple years. He could try to cajole him out of them, but usually the best course of action was just to let him stew for a while.
“Your saddle’s off now, and I’ve got a bed of flowers to weed. Just let me get you some water, and then I’ll be on my way.” He fulfilled this last errand quickly and retreated.
A group of helpful stable boys pointed him to the north courtyard and then sniggered at his wig when he turned his back. Duncan had grown so accustomed to this treatment that he barely even registered the sound.
The castle grounds had an interesting variance in grooming: some areas were immaculate, and others were overgrown with every weed imaginable. Duncan surveyed the flowerbeds in the north courtyard and happily placed them in the latter category. Then, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work.
He had always considered weeding to be a very calming activity. No one came to bother him. He was left to his own thoughts, the rich loam between his fingers as he pulled and thinned his way down the long strand of earth that stretched along the edge of the courtyard. The pile of weeds grew into a trail behind him as he worked along the flowerbed.
Unlike Dame Groach’s poisonous garden, it was fairly obvious which plants were supposed to be here. Duncan sorted the weeds by type as he went: the dandelions were edible, and either he or Wildfire would enjoy them later, but there were also hawkweeds, several varieties of grass, and a few fledgling thistle plants in the mix. His grooming endeavors left behind a bed of flowering bulbs and some anemic-looking ground-creepers that would thrive now that they were separated from the choking weeds.
He was buried up to his elbows in a particularly aggressive patch of crabgrass right next to the castle when a curious voice behind him said, “Hello, there.”
Duncan turned, the sun in his eyes and sweat on his brow. To his great astonishment, Princess Bellinda stood next to the flower bed, shaded from the sun by a dainty parasol that she twirled coyly in her hands. He looked around in confusion, expecting to see that she had been talking to someone else, but there was no one.
“Hello,” he said nervously. The youngest princess of Meridiana was even more beautiful up close than he had realized from his far-off view, but her presence made him uncomfortable. It was one thing to admire a lovely face from afar, but quite another to have her standing directly next to him as though she had every intention of holding a conversation with him. Duncan was wary of being singled out in such a manner.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” she asked politely.
He wiped one hand across his forehead. “That’s right,” he said.
Briefly she scrutinized him, but that quizzical expression shifted into a smile so quickly that he thought he might have imagined it. “Are you Gilly’s replacement, then? That was quick. Alberta only ran him off yesterday.”
“That’s right,” he said again.
“I thought you were one of the other under-gardeners,” Princess Bellinda continued in a light voice, and then she laughed prettily. “To be honest, I thought maybe one of them had lost a bet or something, and that his fellows had made him work in a wig. The servants always seem to have such games going on. Did you lose a bet?” she added kindly.
“No,” said Duncan.
“Oh.” She seemed to be taken aback by his blunt response. “Then why do you… I’m sorry. That’s terribly rude of me, isn’t it?”
Duncan plastered on his idiot smile and told her his customary lie. “I have terrible dandruff, so bad that people took to calling me Scurvyhead. I wear a wig to cover it up.”
“I see,” Princess Bellinda said. “It must be very hot to work in.”
It was. Even though it was only early summer, the afternoon sun beat down on his head. The gold beneath his wig was hot to the touch, and the back of his neck was slick with sweat from a combination of heat and work. Even so, he redoubled his smile and said, “I’m used
to it.”
He thought it might be awkward if he just returned to his weeding—commoners were supposed to pander to royalty, he thought, and he didn’t want to give offense by turning his back on the princess. However, he also recalled that his predecessor in this job had been sacked for stopping his work merely to gaze at Princess Bellinda. There was no telling what sort of trouble Duncan would get into if he was caught actually speaking with her.
Bellinda’s attention was already wandering up and down the rows of flower beds, though, her stare disinterested and the parasol turning in her hands. Duncan thought it safe to weed again.
“You’re doing a good job,” she commended him a moment later.
“Thank you,” he said without looking up.
“Why did you leave that weed back there?” she asked, and she pointed further up the row where a short, leafy plant stood in the middle of a newly weeded patch of loam.
Duncan glanced that way before returning to the crabgrass. “That’s a pot marigold,” he said. “I was going to ask Gardener if there was an unused crock or something that I could transplant it to.”
“Does it flower?”
“When it gets bigger, yes. Looks kind of like a daisy, but it’s yellow-orange.”
“And you can recognize it just like that?”
“My mother used to grow it. The wavy leaves are distinctive enough.”
He worked through this whole exchange and wondered how long Princess Bellinda would inquire after the one plant he had seen fit to spare from pulling. She paused, though, as if in thought.
“Is it a useful plant?” she asked after that curious moment.
Duncan sat back on his heels and looked up at her with a frown. “Useful how?”
“Is it used for medicines, or something like that?”
He thought back several years to his interactions with his mother, who had grown a whole bed of pot marigolds in the plot right next to their farmhouse. “You can eat it,” he said at last. “A tincture of pot marigold will clean scrapes and cuts and guard them from infection. The flowers can make a dye as well.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” she remarked, impressed.
Duncan felt a blush rise on his face. “Not really,” he said gruffly, and he turned back to the flower bed in embarrassment.
Whatever response Princess Bellinda might have made was cut off by a bellow from further down the courtyard. “Scurvyhead! What were you thinking, leaving all these weeds strewn out like this?” Gardener had entered through the side gate and surveyed the straggling pile of weeds with a sneer on his face.
Princess Bellinda primly stepped back, as though to be unobtrusive. Duncan stood, and an apology tumbled from his mouth. “I’m sorry, sir. I was going to come back through and gather them up when I’d finished.”
The head gardener had not bothered to look for Duncan before yelling his censure. His eyes now focused first on his new underling, and then on the demure figure behind him. His face turned a mottled shade of purple as he hurried forward.
“Your Highness,” he said breathlessly, and he bowed before Princess Bellinda. “This halfwit Scurvyhead hasn’t affronted you, I hope?”
“Not at all, Gardener,” said Princess Bellinda. “He was even kind enough to save me a plant when I asked him to.” To Duncan’s astonishment, she pointed to the pot marigold several feet down the plot. “Do you have a spare jar he can use to transplant it for me, or shall I go see if the kitchen has one for him?”
Gardener glanced between Princess Bellinda and the leafy stalk. “Now what would your Highness want with a weed like that?” he asked in a genial voice.
“It’s a pot marigold,” she retorted. “They’re very useful plants, didn’t you know?”
He took a closer look at the leaves, glanced dubiously again at the princess, and then turned malevolent eyes on Duncan. “Fetch a pot from the first greenhouse, Scurvyhead,” he commanded belligerently. “No, don’t go through the gate—that’ll take you the long way around. The archway there cuts directly to the back gardens and the greenhouses. Don’t keep Princess Bellinda waiting!”
With some relief Duncan exited the scene. He couldn’t imagine that Princess Bellinda would stand around waiting for the little pot marigold’s transplant. In fact, he hoped she would be gone by the time he got back. He didn’t know how to interact with royalty.
The first greenhouse, he assumed, was the nearest in a row that extended back from the east wing of the castle. Duncan entered and located several planting pots within. He chose one of a suitable size along with the appropriate tools to make a transplant and returned the way he came.
As he neared the archway back into the north courtyard, to his dismay, he saw that Princess Bellinda was still present, parasol in hand and disinterest on her face as she watched Gardener gather together Duncan’s piles of weeds—including his dandelions, he noticed morosely. He slowed his pace in annoyance.
Suddenly, “Bella!” an unseen woman snapped severely. “What on earth are you doing out there?”
Princess Bellinda started and turned toward the castle. Duncan surmised that the speaker was looking out through one of the windows there, just near the archway.
“Alberta!” said Princess Bellinda cheerfully. “I’m just walking around the gardens.”
“Get inside this instant!” Princess Alberta ordered her. “You’re going to ruin your complexion!”
“I brought a parasol with me,” Bellinda protested, and she brandished that object.
Princess Alberta was not in the least placated. “I don’t care! Get inside! The last thing we need is you out distracting the servants from their work, again!”
Bellinda made an unhappy face, but she moved toward the archway nonetheless. She caught sight of Duncan and stopped. “Oh, hello,” she said pleasantly.
“Bella!” Alberta’s voice snapped again.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” the younger princess replied, and she disappeared into the nearest door. Duncan was glad to see her leave, and even gladder that he hadn’t been in the courtyard when Princess Alberta had chosen to look out that direction. He might not need this job, but he didn’t need to get run out of the castle, either.
He carried his supplies out to where Gardener stood. “I’ve got the pot,” he told him.
Gardener gruffly gestured to the scrubby little pot marigold. “Get to work, then,” he commanded. He watched over Duncan’s shoulder through the entire process and grunted from time to time, though he never said a word. Not until the little plant was snug in its new home did he speak, and grudgingly so.
“You seem to know what you’re doing. Give it to me, and I’ll see that Princess Bellinda gets it—though what she wants with a pot marigold, I don’t understand. There’s a whole field of them just beyond the castle walls.”
If Duncan had known that little detail, he might have tossed the marigold in with all the other weeds. Its lone presence had reminded him of former days and given him that odd little desire to spare it. What Princess Bellinda wanted with it, he could not fathom either.
“Finish cleaning up these weeds,” Gardener directed him. “After that, I’ll show you where you can sleep.”
“So I have the job?” Duncan asked.
“For now,” the man replied ominously.
Chapter 12
Three weeks passed with no great incident. Duncan arose early each morning, secured his sheepskin wig atop his head, and then spent the day weeding and digging and mulching and clipping. He was allowed an hour every afternoon to take Wildfire out for some exercise, but only if he worked until after sundown every evening.
The days were long and hard, but he relished the work. The castle grounds sprawled out for acres, and only Gardener and ten underlings including Duncan tended to it. There was always something to do, some plant to nurture or some bed to weed. Three large greenhouses provided new experiences for Duncan: alongside the annual seedlings within lay exotic plants brought back from excursions over
seas, from the New World and the Far East, species he had never encountered before. Some were gifts to King Edwin from foreign dignitaries and required very particular care. Others the king himself had ordered brought, for whatever purpose. One area of the third greenhouse was dedicated to a small cluster of citrus bushes, as well as various exotic herbs and spices. Duncan liked that corner best of all, with its pleasant smells, but the plants there were for Gardener’s tending alone.
Wildfire tolerated the stables, but he did get fidgety if Duncan was at all late for their afternoon ride. Most days they headed to the west of the castle, away from Midd. About a mile off lay the ruins of an old abbey, long abandoned and crumbling on a hill above a mossy pond. The immediate area was overgrown with a profusion of herbs and flowers. In accordance with Wildfire’s instruction, Duncan had hidden his armor and the little bottle of goldwater in a hollow beneath the roots of a gnarled old tree. He checked periodically to make certain these items were safe, but Wildfire assured him that no one would find them. No one came out to the old ruins anymore, and they wouldn’t know where to look for the armor if they did.
Between work and his daily jaunts with Wildfire, his life fell into a comfortable rhythm. In the evenings, after he received his apportioned meal of bread and soup from the kitchen, he retired to his little shed with only a small stubby candle for light. The castle was stingy about their candles, and servants were only given such remnants for their own use, so Duncan took care not to squander his. He typically went right to bed.
He got along fairly well with most of the other servants, all of whom called him Scurvyhead with cheerful smiles on their faces. Gardener didn’t much care for him, but Duncan didn’t mind, because the man’s method of showing his dislike was to give Duncan more work than his fair share. The head cook seemed suspicious of him as well, but for no apparent reason other than that he thought Duncan’s appearance was unseemly for a castle servant. He had spoken to him about acquiring a new wig, but Duncan had bluntly answered that it would take more money than he would earn in a year, and Cook had kept silent on the subject ever since. That didn’t stop him from glaring every time he caught sight of the under-gardener, though.
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 13
