by Beverley, Jo
And when she lowered her wrist from her face, she realized that Azen was staring straight at her. As their eyes met, perhaps a small smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. Not a mockery, but his pleasure at her response to his song. His eyes had said the same, and she had dropped her gaze back onto the potatoes she was slicing, confused and embarrassed to be noticed by him. Long minutes later, she lifted her eyes again, and was relieved to find the minstrel singing directly to Lady Lucent, as if she were the only listener in his world. Timbal managed to sit through the rest of his performance without letting her emotional responses to his songs be too obvious. Surely it wasn’t appropriate for her to weep like a child at a simple song. A tender-hearted lady might break down at such a thing, but not a kitchen maid.
When evening was deep and the minstrel announced with regret that he must give his voice a rest, Lady Lucent spoke softly to Lord Just, and the man beckoned the minstrel forward. A little purse of red fabric tied with a gold cord appeared on the table at the lord’s elbow. His lady might have readied it and passed it to him; Timbal hadn’t seen. The minstrel thanked them both profusely, sweeping a low bow to the lord and going down on one knee to kiss the lady’s hand. Timbal, relatively new to such goings-on, watched curiously; so this was how things were done in a keep! She wondered if she had blundered into a special performance on her first evening here or if this was a nightly occurrence. The minstrel rose gracefully from his obeisance and made his way out of the room. She looked up at him from her seat on the floor as he passed close by her. He looked down at her. And winked.
Or blinked, perhaps. He was gone and she was left wondering what, if anything, she had seen. The conclusion of the minstrel’s performance had signaled the end of socializing in the hall. All around her, people were packing up their work. On the dais, the queen was bidding good evening to the aristocratic couple who were currently visiting at the keep, while the four stout men who carried the king’s pole chair were standing by to await his orders to move him. Timbal gathered up her empty bucket, her knife, and her basin of cut potatoes, and carried them back to the kitchen. Her bundle was still in the corner where she had left it. She gathered it up and waited until the cook had a free moment, and then asked him, “Please, sir, where may I sleep tonight?”
He scowled briefly, and for one terrifying moment, she wondered if he remembered that earlier that day he’d offered her room and board in return for her labor in the kitchen. Then he said, “Out that door, to the left, up the wooden stairs two flights. I think there’s a room or two empty up there. Whatever’s left in the room, you can use. If it’s empty, well, manage as well as you can tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see who can spare what. Good night, girl.”
She’d found an empty room, as he suggested, and was fortunate that it had a mattress stuffed with rather musty straw, and a simple but well-made table, and even a basin and ewer. That night, she’d taken the time to draw wash water for herself, but had slept on the mattress as it was.
In the days since then, Cook had learned her name, and she’d freshened the mattress with clean straw, and been given a rag rug and some empty sacking that had become curtains for the small window in the room. Most of the other kitchen help kept their shutters closed, winter and summer, but Timbal judged the fresh air worth the nuisance of flies in the day and mosquitoes at night. Her extra apron and servant’s robe hung on a hook at night, her shoes beneath them. Her personal clothing hung on a separate hook, with the blue boots her father had bought for her arranged neatly beneath them. She knew they would not last forever, and so she wore them only on her days off and when she wasn’t working in the kitchen.
There was little enough left of her former life; she’d make the boots and the memory of her father presenting them to her last as long as they could. They’d been tinkers while he was alive, and fairly good at that. Her mother had left them years ago, but she and her father had managed well enough, moving from town to town to find enough trade to keep them busy. Some months had been fat ones, with meat in the cook pot or a meal at an inn, and some months had been hard, with little more than mushrooms, roadside greens, and the occasional trout from a stream. But they had been happy, and more rare still, known they were happy with their simple life. Each night when they made their beds, her father reminded her to thank gentle Eda, goddess of the fields and farms, for her kindness to them.
In one town, they’d done exceptionally well, mending all the pots at a rich man’s manor. At the next town, her father had bought her a soft shawl of gray wool, and the pair of blue boots. The boots were well made, cut trimly to her foot, and came almost to her knee. They were an indulgence and she knew it, especially the rich blue dye that the cobbler had applied to the leather, just for her. She’d hugged her father tight when he’d given them to her, and he’d told her they were no less than she deserved for being the best daughter a man could ask.
A month later, she was an orphan. Even now, when she thought about it, the events jumbled in her mind. The robbers had come to their campfire one night, brandishing clubs and an ugly knife. Coward that she was, when her father shouted at her to “Run, run!” she’d obeyed him. She fled and climbed a tree in the darkness and clung there, shaking and weeping silently until dawn grayed the sky. Then she’d crept back to their campsite, or tried to. It was noon before she found her way back to the road, and thence to where they had camped. The wagon and team, the tools of her father’s trade, their clothes and supplies, all were gone. Her father lay as they had left him, his face battered and his arm broken with the bone jutting out. It had made her feel queasy even to look at it, but she had sternly mastered her horror and fear. Her father’s life had depended on her and she knew it.
She’d given him water and tried to ease his pain, and then flagged down a passing teamster. Hastily she’d gathered the few scattered belongings left to them and bundled them into her blanket. The teamster had given them a ride back to the town they’d just left. An innkeeper had given them a room and called the town guard, who had decided that it was a matter for the King’s Patrol. The Patrol arrived two days after her father had died. They’d given her sympathy and money for a gravedigger, promised to keep an eye out for her team and wagon, noted her name, and then left her to her own devices. The innkeeper had let her work off her debt, and offered to keep her on as a tavern girl. His daughter Gissel had shown her great kindness and likewise begged her to stay on, but Timbal could not bear to stay in the tiny room where she had watched her father die. The same day that her debt was settled, she’d bundled her few possessions into her blanket and set off, following the river road upstream.
She’d regretted that decision more than once before she found the kindly cook at Timberrock Keep. The hardships of the road and the dangers of being female and traveling alone had convinced her that any job that offered her shelter was better than venturing out again. So she’d become a kitchen girl.
She’d never imagined that one day she would live in a keep. Lord Just was well thought of, and a good steward of his lands and people. Lady Lucent was lovely and gracious, as a lady should be. Minstrels played for them every night, and Lady Lucent loved to entertain visiting nobility. She was a decade younger than her lord, and as able as he was crippled. Despite his misfortune, her lord was a kindly man who seemed pleased to see her dancing with other partners and eating heartily while he himself picked at his food. All the servants spoke well of Lord Just, and mourned the fall that had crippled him. They said less of Lady Lucent, but none of it was ill. Timbal decided it was probably because Lord Just had been their lord and master since he was a young man, and so their fondness for him was deeper than what they felt for the woman he had married.
As days turned to weeks, she found she shared the local sentiment. The lord was a kindly man, and even if he never noticed her personally, his easygoing and generous nature meant that his servants lived better than most servants did. As witness her two days off every month! And her being welcome to come into the hall e
very evening and listen to the minstrels perform. It was a good life for a girl who had been homeless and alone but a few weeks before, and she did not forget to thank the goddess for providing it. She lacked for nothing.
Usually on her days off, she chose to walk into the nearby town, sometimes to treat herself to a meal not of her own cooking at the tavern. But on the day that Azen knocked not just on her soles but her soul, she decided that she would, perhaps, return early to the keep for his evening performance.
Azen was not the only minstrel at Timberrock, but he was obviously the lady’s favorite. Timbal had heard the tale of his life, for Gretcha, one of the housemaids, was fond of bragging of all she knew of the great folk and their affairs. She did not deign to speak to lowly kitchen help such as Timbal, but if Timbal were near, Gretcha seemed to take every opportunity to air loudly her special knowledge. Gretcha had come with Lady Lucent from her family home, and had served as a maid in the lady’s household since she was a child. And thus Timbal knew that Azen had grown up near Lady Lucent’s family home and had been her playmate in her childhood. He was himself the third son of a minor noble. There had been no inheritance share for him, but he had not minded. Instead, he had taken up the minstrel way and spent most of his winters at Timberrock Keep, playing for his old friend and her husband.
The other two minstrels were less impressive to Timbal. The apprentice, Saria, did little more than tune instruments, sing choruses, and flirt wildly. Chrissock, Lord Just’s resident minstrel, was an older man with a deep bass voice. He performed with a variety of drums, and specialized in the oldest tales, recited exactly as they had been handed down through the years. Some evenings, Timbal could barely stay awake through his long recitals of ancient battles and who had died and how. He twisted his pronunciation and used words that she didn’t understand and sometimes she wondered why any of it mattered anymore. But sometimes he told tales of brave warriors that were as stirring as any romance that Azen had ever sung. And for those, she sat as close to his dais as she could get, hugging her knees and watching him perform with awe.
It was while she was enraptured one evening that she chanced to glance over at Azen. The minstrel was behind Chrissock and to one side. He had been supplementing Chrissock’s percussion with his harp, but had broken a string and stepped away from the music to make his repair. He was finished now and was waiting easily to take his own turn performing. And while he was waiting, he was watching Timbal.
At first, she thought it was only chance that their eyes had met. She put her gaze back on Chrissock. The toes of her blue boots tapped in time with his telling. A sideways glance at Azen found him still watching her, a half smile on his face. Her toes lost the time and she glanced down at her feet, confused. Half a chorus later, she dared to look up at Azen again. This time he nodded to her and smiled. A blush flamed her face; she could not say why. He had done no more than smile at her. She put her eyes back on Chrissock and kept them there, desperately willing her heart to stop pounding and hoping her scarlet cheeks would cool.
When the song finally ended and she dared to glance in his direction, he was gone. She plummeted abruptly into disappointment, though she could not have said what she had anticipated. When she looked over her shoulder, she found him. He was standing before Lady Lucent’s chair, his head inclined to hear her whispered request. An instant later, she dismissed him with a conspiratorial smile and he returned to his place on the minstrel’s dais. Chrissock played another song, this one obviously for the children of the keep. It was the tale of an old man who lived up a steep flight of stairs and had a succession of late-night visitors. It required the children to stamp and clap the rhythm back to him, and Chrissock gradually increased the tempo of the old man running up and hopping down the steps until it all dissolved into an impossible cacophony of stamping and shouting children. He bowed off the stage, surrendering it to Azen.
Timbal lowered her eyes and watched her boots as he sang. His first song was a melancholy tale of love gone awry, with the maiden choosing wealth over fondness and regretting it evermore. His second song was the old one about the miller’s daughter floating notes down the river to her true love. His third song was one he had sung before. The refrain mentioned his true love’s raven hair, tiny hands, and deep blue eyes. She closed her eyes to listen to it, but was jolted out of her reverie. For in the last stanza, he sang not of her blue eyes, but of her blue boots. She lifted her gaze, shocked, but his face was calm, his eyes on his patron as he sang. If anyone else had noticed the change in lyrics, they did not react. She wondered if she had imagined it.
Azen sang two more songs before a signal from Lady Lucent declared the evening’s entertainment over. The minstrel rose from his seat and stepped away from his harp, lightly leaping down to advance on his patron and bid her good night. Timbal rose with the other maids and servants of the keep and followed them out of the hall into the warm evening. Light still lingered though it was fading fast. Tomorrow’s work meant another early morning for her. She went up to her room to get her ewer, and then strolled down to the well to fill it. She hummed as she went, the refrain of Azen’s last song still ringing in her head.
Gretcha was at the well before her, filling her own ewer. Timbal waited while she scooped handfuls of water to splash her face and finally to drink before eventually handing the bucket over to Timbal. The housemaid silently watched her lowering the bucket into the well. Timbal did not know her well, and was shocked by the note of resentment in her voice when the older girl spoke to her.
“Don’t let him make a fool of you, missy.”
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” The bucket plashed into the water.
“You heard me.” Gretcha was already turning away from her. “Don’t pretend to be stupid. The minstrel Azen. Yesterday, he asked me if I knew your name. I told him yes, that you were named ‘Trouble.’ And his name is the same for you. He’s toying with you. Don’t take him seriously. Surely your mother taught you that minstrels are never to be trusted? He’ll flirt with anyone, of course, and sleep with any girl who opens her legs to him after a few sweet words from that golden tongue. Enjoy it, if that’s the sort of girl you are. But don’t expect it to come to more than that. He’s Lady Lucent’s minstrel, and everyone who’s worked here more than a season knows that. But you’re new. So I thought I’d warn you. Just to be kind.”
“Thank you,” Timbal faltered, though the girl’s tone had been anything but kind. Gretcha made no response but turned and sauntered away, her filled ewer in hand.
As Timbal hauled the bucket up, to drink, and wash her face and then fill her own ewer, she wondered. Did Gretcha think that what she had said was a kind warning? Timbal doubted it. There had been jealousy in her voice, or something like it. Something nasty and vengeful. She wondered if somehow she’d made an enemy at Timberrock, but could think of nothing she’d done to Gretcha.
Nothing save draw Azen’s attention.
He’d asked Gretcha what her name was. That meant he’d noticed her as more than a face in the crowd. She smiled to herself. He might be Trouble, but she doubted he was trouble she couldn’t handle. She wondered if he’d been ‘Trouble’ to other serving girls and then nodded to herself.
Was that it? Had the minstrel once been attentive to the housemaid? Or was he truly, as Gretcha had accused him, a pastime for Lady Lucent? Lord Just’s legs were withered. Timbal wondered if that meant his other lower parts were useless. She had heard of highborn ladies and lords that did not keep their marriage vows but dabbled where they would. She thought again of how the lady summoned and then dismissed the minstrel, and wondered if she summoned and dismissed him for other duties as well. Were they secretly lovers, joined at the heart? She imagined the minstrel clasping the lady to his breast and kissing her. A strange thrill shot through her, one tinged with envy. Oh, she was being stupid! To have thought for one instant that she could have caught the eye, let alone the heart, of a handsome young minstrel like Azen! Of course he would be a
t his patron’s beck and call, performing whatever services she wished of him. Everyone knew that minstrels never truly gave their hearts. What had she been thinking? She filled her ewer and carried it back to her room.
Yet that night, despite her best efforts to clear her thoughts of him, she fell asleep still humming the refrain, with “blue boots” where “blue eyes” should have been. And the dream she had of him awoke her long before dawn, and did not allow her to easily fall asleep again.
Her love for him was like poison ivy, she thought. She rose early and went to her work, resolved not to allow her thoughts to touch on him. But they did. And with every touch of her mind, her infatuation spread and enflamed her. Infatuation, she told herself sternly. A silly little girl’s wild dream of a handsome and popular older man. What was wrong with her? He was the least eligible of the men in the keep. All he could do for her was break her heart, or get her pregnant if she were foolish enough to dally with him. Set him out of your thoughts and get about your work, girl!
So she told herself sternly and to absolutely no avail. Useless to recall that she knew next to nothing about him, and that what she did know indicated that any sensible girl would avoid him. He was a minstrel, and possibly the Lady Lucent’s lover. He had no fixed home, no income other than the largesse of his listeners, and probably few possessions other than the clothes on his back and his harp. The only thing she could share with him was trouble.
