by J. V. Jones
* * *
Many hours later, just before the break of dawn, Baralis once more slipped into the queen’s chamber. He had to be especially careful—many castle attendants were up and about, baking bread in the kitchens, milking cows in the dairy, starting fires. He was not too concerned, though, as this last task would not take too long.
He was a little worried when he saw the queen was in exactly the same position as when he had left her, but closer inspection revealed that she was breathing strongly. The memory of the previous evening was playing in his loins, and he had an urge to mount her again, but calculation mastered desire and he willed himself to do what must be done.
He dreaded performing a Searching. He had only done one once before, and the memory still haunted him to this day. He had been a young buck, arrogant in his abilities, way ahead of his peers. Great things were hoped for him—and hadn’t they been proved right? He had a ravening thirst for knowledge and ability. He had been proud, yes, but then, were not all great men proud? Everything he read about he tried, desperate to accomplish and move on, move forward to greater achievements. He had the quickest mind in his class, outpacing and eventually outgrowing his teachers. He’d rushed forward with the speed of a charging boar, the pride of his masters and the envy of his friends.
One day when he was thirteen summers old, he came across a musty, old manuscript in the back of the library. Hands shaking with nervous excitement, he unraveled the fragile parchment. He was at first a little disappointed. It contained the usual instructions—drawing of light and fire, healing colds. Then at the end a ritual called a Searching was mentioned. A Searching, it explained, was a means to tell if a woman was with child.
He read it greedily. Searching had never been mentioned by his teachers; perhaps it was something they could not do, or even better, something they didn’t know of. Eager to attain a skill which he supposed his masters not to have, he slid the manuscript up his sleeve and took it home with him.
Some days later he was ready to try his new ability, but who to try it on? The women in the village would not let him lay his hands upon them. That left his mother, and it was certain she would not be with child. However, having no other choice, he resigned himself to using his mother as a guinea pig.
Early the following morning, he stole into his parents’ bedroom, careful to ensure his father had left for the fields. It was a source of shame to him that his father was a common farmer, but he took solace in the fact that his mother was of better stock: she was a salt merchant’s daughter. He loved his mother deeply and was proud of her obvious good breeding; she was respected in the village and was consulted by the elders on everything from matters of harvest to matchmaking.
Baralis’ mother had awoken when her son came into the room. He turned to leave but she beckoned him in. “Come, Barsi, what do you want?” She wiped the sleep from her eyes and smiled with tender indulgence.
“I was about to try a new skill I learnt,” he muttered guiltily.
His mother made the error of mistaking guilt for modesty. “Barsi, my sweet, this new trick, can you do it while I am awake?” Her face was a picture of love and trust. Baralis momentarily felt misgiving.
“Yes, Mother, but I think I might be better trying it on someone else.”
“Copper pots! What nonsense. Try it on me now—as long as it doesn’t turn my hair green, I don’t mind.” His mother settled herself comfortably amid the pillows and patted the bedside.
“It won’t do you any harm, Mother, it’s a Searching . . . to tell if you are well.” Baralis found the lie easy. It was not the first time he had lied to his mother.
“Well,” she laughed indulgently, “do your worst!”
Baralis laid his hands on his mother’s stomach. He could feel the warmth of her body through the thin fabric of her nightgown. His fingers spread out and he concentrated on the search. The manuscript had warned that it was more a mental than physical exercise, so he focused the fullness of his thoughts on his mother’s belly.
He felt the blood rushing through her veins and the forceful rhythm of her heart. He felt the discharge of juices in her stomach and the gentle push of her intestines. He adjusted his hands lower; he met his mother’s eyes and she gave him a look of encouragement. He found the spot the manuscript spoke of: a fertile redness. Excitement building within him, he explored the muscled embrace that was his mother’s womb.
He detected something: a delicate burgeoning. He was unsure; he searched deeper. His mother’s face was beginning to look worried, but he paid her no mind. His abandon was growing; there was something there, something new and separate. It was wonderful and exhilarating. He wanted to touch the presence with his mind; he dug deeper and his mother let out a cry of pain.
“Barsi, stop!” Her beautiful face was contorted with agony.
He panicked and tried to withdraw as quickly as possible, but as he drew back, he dragged something out with him. He felt a shifting, a dislodging and then the tear of flesh. Terrified, he removed his hands. His mother was screaming hysterically and she doubled up in pain, clutching her stomach. Baralis noticed the quick flare of blood on the sheets. The screams! He could not bear her agonized screams! He didn’t know what to do. He could not leave her alone to call for help. Spasms racked his mother’s body and the blood flowed like a river, soaking the white sheets with its bright gaudiness.
“Mother, please stop, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, please stop.” Tears of panic coursed down his cheeks. “Mother. I’m sorry.” He hugged her to him, heedless of the blood. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, his voice a frightened whisper.
He held his mother as she bled to death. It took only minutes, but to Baralis it seemed like an eternity, as he felt the strength and life wane from her beloved body.
Baralis stirred himself from his recollection. That was then, many years ago, when he had been young and green. He was a master himself now. There would be no mistakes caused by inexperience. He now understood that to have tried such a mental task when only a boy was pure stupidity. He’d barely known what “being with child” meant, and had only the whisperings of adolescence as his guide to how children were conceived.
Baralis realized he was taking a risk performing a Searching on the queen, but he had to know—conception was at the best of times a chance event. He dared not think of what he would do if his seed had not found favor. Part of him was aware it might be far too early to tell, but the other part of him suspected that he would be able to discern a tiny change, and that would be enough.
He bent over the body of the queen and placed his hands on her stomach. He knew straight away that the fabric of her elaborate court gown was too heavy. He lifted her skirts once more and was surprised to see he had forgotten to replace her undergarments. It was just as well, really, he thought, as they were uncommonly bulky, too.
More experienced he may have been than when he was thirteen, but he wished his hands were still youthful. It was a strain to spread his fingers full-out upon her belly, and he bit his lip in pain; he could not allow his own discomfort to interfere with the endeavor. He found the right place straight away; he was no novice now.
He began the Searching. It was so familiar, the cloistered warmth of the organs, the pulsing redness of the blood vessels, the heat of the liver. He proceeded with filigree fineness, deep within the queen’s body and deeper within her womb. He felt the intricate tanglings of muscle and tendon, felt the sensuous curve of the ovaries. And then he perceived something, barely discernible, hardly there, a gentle ripple on a pond, a pulsing other. A life minutely separate and distinguishable from that of the queen. Scarcely a life at all, more a glimmering suggestion . . . but it was there.
Elated, he made no quick move to withdraw—with infinite slowness and patience he removed himself. Drawing away with a surgeon’s skill. Just as he left, he felt the other presence assert itself: a dark pressure.
Baralis withdrew. There had been something in that last instant of
contact which gave him cause to be wary, but his misgivings were eaten up and forgotten by the joy of his success.
He removed his hands from the queen and straightened her dress. She moaned lightly, but he was not concerned—she would not wake for several hours. Time for him to leave. With a light tread he moved toward the door and unbolted it. One last pause to admire his handiwork and then he was off, back to his chambers, barely casting a shadow in the thin light of dawn.
One
“No, you’re wrong there, Bodger. Take it from me, young women ain’t the best for tumblin’. Yes, they look good on the outside, all fair and smooth, but when it comes to a good rollickin’, you can’t beat an old nag.” Grift swigged his ale and smiled merrily at his companion.
“Well, Grift, I can’t say that you’re right. I mean, I’d rather have a tumble any day with the buxom Karri than old widow Harpit.”
“Personally, Bodger, I wouldn’t say no to either of them!” Both men laughed loudly, banging their jugs of ale on the table as was the custom of the castle guards. “Hey there, you boy, what’s your name? Come here and let me have a look at you.” Jack stepped forward, and Grift made a show of looking him up and down. “Cat got your tongue, boy?”
“No, sir. My name is Jack.”
“Now that is what I’d call an uncommon name!” Both men erupted once more into raucous laughter. “Jack boy, bring us more ale, and none of that watered-down pond filler.”
Jack left the servants’ hall and went in search of ale. It wasn’t his job to serve guards with beer, but then neither was scrubbing the huge, tiled kitchen floor, and he did that, too. He didn’t relish having to see the cellar steward, as Willock had cuffed him around the ears many a time. He hurried down the stone passageways. It was drawing late and he would be due in the kitchens soon.
Some minutes later, Jack returned with a quart of foaming ale. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that Willock was not in the beer cellar, and he had been seen to by his assistant. Pruner had informed him with a wink that Willock was off sowing his wild oats. Jack was not entirely sure what this meant, but imagined it was some part of the brewing process.
“It was definitely Lord Maybor,” Bodger was saying as Jack entered the hall. “I saw him with my own eyes. Thick as thieves they were, he and Lord Baralis, talking fast and furious. Course when they saw me, you should have seen ’em scramble. Faster than women from the middens.”
“Well, well, well,” said Grift with a telling raise of his eyebrows. “Who would have guessed that? Everyone knows that Maybor and Baralis can’t stand the sight of each other, why I never seen them exchange a civil word. Are you sure it was them?”
“I’m not blind, Grift. It was both of them, in the gardens behind the private hedges, as close as a pair of nuns on a pilgrimage.”
“Well, I’ll be a flummoxed ferret!”
“If the codpiece fits, Grift,” chirped Bodger gleefully.
Grift noticed Jack’s presence. “Talking of codpieces, here’s a boy so young, he hasn’t got anything to put in one!” This struck Bodger as so hilarious he fell off his chair with laughter.
Grift took this chance, while Bodger was recovering, to haul himself off his bench and pull Jack to one side. “What did you just hear of what me and Bodger were saying, boy?” The guard squeezed Jack’s arm and fixed him with a watery gaze.
Jack was well versed in the intrigues of the castle and knew the safest thing to say. “Sir, I heard nothing save for some remark about a codpiece.” Grift’s fingers ground painfully into his flesh, his voice was low and threatening.
“For your sake, boy, I hope you’re speaking the truth. If I was to find out you’re lying to me, boy, I’d make you very sorry.” Grift gave Jack’s arm one final squeeze and twist and let it go. “Very sorry, indeed, boy. Now get you off.”
Grift turned to his companion and carried on as if the nasty little scene had not occurred. “You see, Bodger, an older woman is like an overripe peach: bruised and wrinkled on the outside, but sweet and juicy within.” Jack hastily gathered up the empty jug of ale and ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the kitchen.
Things were not going well for him today. Master baker Frallit was in the sort of black mood that made his normal demeanor seem almost pleasant by comparison. It should have been Tilly’s job to scrub the large baking slabs clean, but Tilly had a way with Frallit, and one smile of her plump, wet lips ensured she would do no dirty work. Of all the things he had to do, Jack hated scrubbing the huge stone slabs the worst. They had to be scoured with a noxious mixture of soda and lye; the lye burnt into his hands causing blisters, and sometimes his skin peeled off. He then had to carry the unwieldy slabs, which were almost as heavy as he himself, into the kitchen yard to be washed off.
He dreaded carrying the huge stones, for they were brittle, and if dropped would shatter into a hundred pieces. The baking slabs were Frallit’s pride and joy; he swore they baked him a superior loaf, claiming the dull and weighty stone prevented the bread from baking too fast. Jack had recently found out the penalty for shattering one of the master baker’s precious cooking slabs.
Several weeks back, Frallit, who had been drinking heavily all day, had discovered one of his slabs missing. He’d wasted no time in confronting Jack, whom he found hiding amongst the pots and pans in the cook’s side of the kitchen. “You feeble-witted moron,” Frallit had cried, dragging him from his hiding place by his hair. “Do you know what you have done, boy? Do you?” It was obvious to Jack the master baker did not expect a reply. Frallit made to cuff him round the ears, but Jack dodged skillfully and the master baker was left slapping air. Looking back on the incident now, Jack realized the dodge had been a major mistake. Frallit would have probably given him a sound thrashing and left it at that, but what the master baker hated more than anything was being made to look a fool—and in front of the sly but succulent Tilly, no less. The man’s rage was terrifying and culminated with him pulling a fistful of Jack’s hair out.
It seemed to Jack that his hair was always a target. It was as if Frallit was determined to make all his apprentices as bald as himself. Jack had once woken to find that his head had been shorn like a sheep. Tilly threw the chestnut locks onto the fire and informed him that Frallit had ordered the chop because he suspected lice. Jack’s hair got the only revenge it could: it grew back with irritating quickness.
In fact, growing in general was starting to become quite a problem. Not a week went by without some evidence of his alarming increase in height. His breeches caused him no end of embarrassment; four months ago they’d rested discreetly about his ankles, now they were threatening to expose his shins. And such horrifyingly white and skinny shins they were! He was convinced that everyone in the kitchens had noticed the pitiful expanse of flesh.
Being a practical boy, he’d decided to make himself another more flattering pair. Unfortunately needlework was a skill that required patience not desperation, and new breeches became an unattainable dream. So now he was reduced to the unauspicious step of wearing his current ones low. They hung limply around his hips, secured by a length of coarse twine. Jack had sent many a desperate prayer to Borc, begging that the twine in question didn’t give way in the presence of anyone important—especially women.
His height was becoming more and more of a problem: for one thing, his growth upward bore no relation to his growth outward, and Jack had the strong suspicion he now possessed the physique of a broom handle. Of course, the worst thing was that he had started to outgrow his superiors. He was a head above Tilly and an ear above Frallit. The master baker had started to treat Jack’s height as a personal affront, and could often be heard muttering words to the effect that a tall boy would never a decent baker make.
Jack’s main duty as baker’s boy was to ensure the fire under the huge baking oven did not go out. The oven was the size of a small room, and it was where all the bread for the hundreds of courtiers and servants who lived in the castle was baked early every
morning.
Frallit prided himself on baking fresh each day, and to this end he had to wake at five each morning to supervise the baking. The massive stone oven had to be kept going through the night, every night, for if it was left to go out, the oven would take one full day to fire up to the temperature required for baking. So it was Jack’s job to watch the oven at night.
Every hour Jack would open the stone grate at the bottom of the huge structure and feed the fire within. He didn’t mind the chore at all. He became accustomed to grabbing his sleep in one-hour intervals, and during winter, when the kitchen was bitterly cold, he would fall asleep close to the oven, his thin body pressed against the warm stone.
Sometimes, in the delicious time between waking and sleeping, Jack could imagine his mother was still alive. In the last months of her illness, his mother’s body had felt as hot as the baking oven. Deep within her breast there was a source of heat that destroyed her more surely than any flame. Jack remembered the feel of her body pressed against his—her bones were as light and brittle as stale bread. Such terrible frailty, he couldn’t bear to think of it. And, for the most part, with a day full of hauling sacks of flour from the granary and buckets from the well, of scraping the oven free of cinders and keeping the yeast from turning bad, he managed to keep the ache of losing her at the back of his mind.
Jack found he had a talent for calculating the quantities of flour, yeast, and water required to make the different bread doughs required each day; he could even reckon faster than the master baker himself. He was wise enough to conceal his talents, though. Frallit was a man who guarded his expertise jealously.
Recently Frallit had allowed him the privilege of shaping the dough. “You must knead the dough like it were a virgin’s breast,” he would say. “Lightly at first, barely a caress, then firmer once it relents.” The master baker could be almost lyrical after one cup of ale; it was the second cup that turned him sour.
Shaping the dough was a step up for Jack, it signaled that he would soon be accepted as an apprentice baker. Once he was a fully fledged apprentice, his future at the castle would be secured. Until then he was at the mercy of those who were above him, and in the competitive hierarchy of castle servants that meant everyone.
