“Yes, I’ll help Aunt Lisset, since Mama kills everything and Pirot’s scared of slugs,” Elodie answered as Ophele offered a blessing to her long-suffering little brother.
“I’m scared of slugs, too,” Ophele whispered to the boy, and won a gap-toothed grin.
Gradually, she was parted from Remin, as the town’s men gathered around him and the women clustered around her, hands pressing her hands, her arms, her shoulders, even sinkinginto her hair. If dirt was the blessing, that was surely where it lay most heavily.
The crowd only swelled as the sun rose, streaming down Eugene Street and the newly named North Gate Road, filling the wide, paved space before the gate. A few times Leonin ordered them back when too many people pressed close, but Ophele knew so many of them, she could not feel afraid. Mistress Tregue and Mistress Roscout came together to introduce the cobbler’s wife, Mistress Hebbett, who had arrived with five children at the Gellege Bridge, presented her letter of invitation, and demanded that her husband come take charge ofhischildren at once.
It took an impressive woman to bring five children halfway across the Empire by herself. And a special girl to bring a little boy all the way from Nandre, Ophele thought, as she spotted Amalie in the crowd. The two survivors of Nandre were hanging back, uncertain whether they were welcome.
“Oh, Amalie, come here,” Ophele said, holding out her hands. The girl was nearly as scrawny as Ophele had been at her age, reared in the backslope, rocky soil of the mountains, and both she and her brother still hadn’t recovered from their ordeal. Laying her hand on the girl’s forehead, Ophele thought,grow,and wondered if it would do anything.
“Thank you, m’lady,” the girl said shyly, ducking her head. “Could you—for my brother, too?”
“Of course I will. Iskerren?” Ophele bent her head to look at the boy, clinging to his sister’s back with his face hidden in her shoulder. Roughly half the time, he refused to emerge, but this time he peeked up at Ophele and allowed her to pick him up. They were all sosmall,these children, she thought unhappily, hugging him hard to bless him thoroughly.
“He talked a bit yesterday,” Amalie said, patting his foot. “Didn’t you, Iske?”
“Sometimes you just don’t feel like talking,” Ophele replied sympathetically. “But you must be sure to eat and eat, so you can get strong like His—oh, I know. My lord!” she called, turning toward the crowd of men. “Your Grace!”
He was easy to spot; Remin towered head and shoulders over everyone else around him, and came promptly, bending down to have a look at Iskerren.
“Perhaps he might have a double blessing,” Ophele said hopefully, tickling the little boy’s side until he finally peeked up at Remin with solemn blue eyes. “Will you go to His Grace?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Iskerren after a moment, perfectly clear, and Remin picked him up with an unusually soft expression, settling the boy into the crook of his arm.
“Well, you must be a grand big fellow,” he said, patting the little back. “We’ll give you a good coat of dirt, and mind that you tell the ladies it’s sacred. The best boys are always a little grubby.”
“’Mallie says knights have to wash their hands before supper,” Iskerren objected, winning chuckles from the listening men.
“You can be as dirty as you like until then.”
Amalie was almost beside herself as she listened, her hands clasped together.
“Thank you so much, m’lady,” she said, hugging herself. “Oh, he hardly ever talks.”
“No, it’s nothing at all. Bless you,” Ophele added to another of the village women, who solemnly ran her hands over Ophele’s arms and then transferred her palms to her forehead, her lips moving in silent prayer. “Are you and Iskerren still staying with Mistress Gevenin?”
“Yes, m’lady, she was so good, taking us in,” Amalie said earnestly. “Though…she says I’m old enough to earn my keep,and she can look after Iskerren. I don’t like bothering, but if it isn’t impertinent…do you suppose I might help at the big house? If there’s work that needs doing? I don’t mean to be rude,” she added quickly, under the gimlet eyes of Mionet. “I’m not fussy, I can scrub and clean or anything.”
“Well, I’m sure there is,” Ophele replied, after a quick consultation of several mental lists. “I’ll speak with Adelan. Maybe there will be room in the kitchen, can you cook?”
“A bit. Well, tea and toast,” Amalie admitted. “But I can learn, m’lady.”
“I’m sure there’s something we can do,” Ophele promised, though she did have a few qualms about handing the girl over to Azelma’s tyranny. A Segoile-trained cook was particular and domineering, but as Azelma herself said, there was no easy life.
And wouldn’t Azelma like to train up a few cooks to capital standards? They would need more cooks anyway, as well as pastry chefs and butchers and bakers and everything else, and one day Remin’s knights would have their own households, too. One day, Tresingale might have its own cuisine, and itsownschool of cookery, and its own accreditations, and evenbetterfood than the Empire—
“Blessings, Your Grace,” said Isilde, Auber’s pretty sweetheart, and Ophele snapped back to the present, offering her hands.
“Bless you,” she said, smiling. Ever since she had learned that Auber meant to propose, she had regarded Isilde as something like a prospective sister, or maybe cousin, but definitely a future fellow sufferer of noble etiquette. “How are you? Where is Vinzetin?”
Isilde’s son was usually somewhere in line of sight; he was of that breed of boy that was simultaneously accident-prone and indestructible.
“Over being blessed by His Grace,” Isilde said wryly, nodding to an area of the crowd where Remin was currently being swarmed with small boys, and Auber was presenting Vinzetin for the duke’s approval. “Sometimes I think the stars brought me here just to unite them.”
She said it with a smile, but there was a look in her eyes that smote Ophele with guilt. She had been the one to tell everyone that Auber had asked Remin’s permission to propose, and they had all been so terribly happy and excited, but now it had been two months and Isilde must be so hurt.
“But of course, Auber is very fond ofyou,”Ophele said sympathetically. “There is nothing wrong, I hope?”
