“What other potions?” he asked immediately.
I smiled, already sorry I’d mentioned it. “Nothing you need right now. But a healing salve—that I’ve got up in my room. I know you don’t think I can help you, but I can.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be in the stables. Twenty minutes.”
I scurried up to my room, careful once I was near my quarters because I didn’t want to encounter Greta, and ran back down to the stables as quickly as I could. Roderick was waiting for me and, to my surprise, Kent was with him.
“You didn’t believe me!” I exclaimed to Roderick. “You had to go off and find Kent to ask him if I could be trusted!”
“No, I was just coming in from my afternoon ride,” Kent said. “I wanted to know why he was loitering here, looking so worried.”
Roderick was grinning. “I said, ‘Yon Halsing wench, eh, is she be studying the blacker arts?’” He croaked this out in a perfect north-county accent. We all dissolved into laughter. “ ‘Be she about to poison me, eh lad, were I to give over me blood into her hands?’ ”
“I could, too,” I informed him. “A few dayig seeds ground up into powder—”
“If you had any,” Kent said.
“I kept them all. Any good witch would.”
“Well, and we’ve only your uncle’s word that they’re poison,” Roderick said with a shrug. “I’m not so all convinced that he wasn’t making a game of us.”
“And are you the one who’s going to test his story?” I demanded. “Not today, anyway. Now, unbutton your shirt again.”
While Roderick was so engaged, I glanced over at Kent. “I really won’t kill him,” I said somewhat tartly. “You don’t have to stand guard.”
The young lord looked sheepish. “No, I thought perhaps—I myself stand in need of a little doctoring. I thought you might be willing to give me some ointment as well.”
I opened my eyes wide. “You? You got hurt? Doing what?”
“Much the same thing Roderick was doing,” he admitted.
Roderick was now stripped to the waist. His long, lean torso sported a few old scars, trophies of similar encounters in the past, and he smelled faintly of leather and sweat. I was suddenly aware of him as a seminude man standing not two feet away from me, but he seemed completely unself-conscious. I opened the satchel I had carried down with me and busied myself poking among the bottles and vials.
“You were practicing swordplay?” I said, my voice a little gruff.
“With Roderick here, no less,” Kent said. “I thought my lofty status would protect me from actual blows, but I miscalculated the brutality of the career swordsman.”
“You told me not to spare you,” Roderick said. “Had I known you wanted to be treated as a baby after all—”
“Spell ‘Auburn’!” Kent challenged him, cuffing Roderick on his uninjured arm. “Spell out Corie’s name!”
As Roderick recited the correct letters, I suddenly remembered their bargain on our trip. Roderick would teach Kent the crossbow, and the lord would teach the guardsman how to read. Apparently they had decided to expand into swordfighting as well. I was glad, somehow, to learn that they were adhering to their promises.
By this time, I had composed myself and pulled out a vial of antiseptic and a medium-size jar of dark red salve. “This will not feel entirely pleasant,” I said to Roderick, wetting a clean cloth with the antiseptic. As I touched the medicated cloth to his shoulder, I saw all the muscles of his chest tighten in response, holding their coiled protest while the cleanser worked away at the skin. The sticky smell of sweat was even stronger.
“It was poison, after all,” he said somewhat faintly. “But I had hoped it would not be quite so painful.”
I wiped the rag once more across the cut, then laid it aside. “But the salve will feel very good,” I promised. “It even has a nice smell.”
With a businesslike air, I dipped my finger in the cream and smeared it carefully across the wound. His flesh felt slightly hot to my touch—perhaps the beginnings of infection in the cut.
“You’ll need to apply this twice a day for three or four days,” I said. “I’ve brought you a spare jar.”
Roderick flexed his arm muscles and looked surprised. “It does feel better,” he said. “How can it work so fast?”
“Something in there that numbs the skin,” I said. “It doesn’t mean you’re healed yet. It’s just that you don’t feel it.”
I turned to Kent, who had rolled up the sleeve of his left arm. His gash was even nastier, perhaps a day old, and rimmed with a crusty red inflammation. “Well, that must hurt,” I observed.
“Enough that I was considering going to Giselda in the morning,” he confessed. Giselda was the motherly old woman who resided in the castle and called herself an apothecary. She had trained in healing in Faelyn Market, but I had spent more than one morning with her, going through her medicines, and I knew that she was a witch woman at heart. There was almost nothing on her shelves that my grandmother did not have at home.
“Well, she would probably do what I’ll do, but since I’m here, let me get you started healing,” I said, treating him just as I had Roderick. First I cleaned the wound—which he took much less stoically than the guardsman, yelping and jerking away from me so that I had to grab his arm to keep him still. Then I smeared it with salve and bid him to let it go to work.
“How exactly did this happen?” I wanted to know. “Fencing?”
“It’s not fencing when you’re using a broadsword,” Kent said. “But I didn’t move quickly enough.”
“I was thinking today. Might be time to go back to practice swords,” Roderick said.
“It is not!” Kent said indignantly. “I haven’t fought with a wooden sword since I was—well, since before I was Corie’s age.”
This was all very interesting. I said to Kent, “I thought you were such a brilliant swordsman. Jaxon said so.”
“He did? I doubt it,” Kent said dryly.
“He did. Right here in these stables. He said you were better than Bryan.”
“Oh. Well. I suppose I am.”
“You’re not bad,” Roderick interposed. “A good man to have in a fight. It’s just I’ve carried a sword almost since I could walk. Trained for it since childhood. I’m bound to be better than a man who’s only played at it.”
“I’ve done more than play—” Kent began.
“And you’ve other skills,” Roderick said swiftly, smiling a little. “It takes all manner of men to run the kingdom.”
Kent looked a little ruffled at that patronizing comment, and I had to hide my smile. “You can roll your sleeve down now,” I told him in as serious a voice as I could muster. “I’ll get you an extra jar of salve, too. You’ll need it more than Roderick.”
Wiping the exasperation from his face, Kent adjusted his sleeve then rotated his wrist back and forth. “It does feel better!” he exclaimed. “Who made this? Your grandmother?”
“I made it,” I said. “Hasn’t anybody been paying attention? I live with a wise woman. I’m her apprentice. I’ll be a wise woman myself in another ten years.”
“She says she knows other magics,” Roderick said. “Potions, she said, but she wouldn’t say what.”
“Potions, is it?” Kent said. Suddenly, who knew how it happened, I was no longer the professional healer with a calm demeanor, but the silly young girl being teased by the neighbor boys. “Can she give a man something to make him sleep?”
“Make him strong?”
“Make him fall in love?”
“All those things,” I said curtly, repacking my satchel and hating both of them. “I can cure his headache and help him remember his dreams. I know how to make the babies come—and I know how to keep the babies from coming, too.”
I stopped abruptly, because all at once talk of babies and falling in love seemed dreadfully embarrassing as I stood unchaperoned in a stable talking to two attractive men. Certainly this would not be on Greta’s sh
ort list of acceptable behavior. Kent looked embarrassed, too, but Roderick was laughing.
“Well, I’ll know who to go to about those pesky babies,” he said. “What other helpful medicines do you have in that little bag?”
“Things you’d best not be asking about,” I said darkly, and baldly turned the subject. “You should both make whatever effort you can to keep your wounds rested in the next few days.”
“That I will,” Roderick said, grinning. “I’ll just tell Kritlin, ‘No sword practice for me, old man, I’ve a little gash on my shoulder.’ He’ll pat my head and set me on the sidelines for sure.”
Kent grimaced. “Not much chance here, either. There’s the ball tonight, and my father expects me to do my part dancing.” He looked over at me with a smile. “You’re only fourteen this year, aren’t you, Corie? Still too young for the balls, I expect. Elisandra didn’t start going until she was fifteen.”
Too young for the ball and too much a hoyden for the dinners, I thought but did not say. “Well, do what you can, both of you, to avoid more injury,” I said. “I’ll check on you two later.” And before there could be any more talk of balls, behavior, or babies, I slipped out of the stables and headed back up to my room.
THAT EVENING, I crept down to the ballroom to watch the festivities. There was a long, narrow balcony overhanging one wall of the dance floor. This balcony was only accessible from the servants’ corridors, as the railings were frequently hung with flags, banners, or great ropes of flowers. Elisandra had shown it to me on my very first visit to the castle, when I was six and she was nine and we were both too young to be invited to events. We had stretched out on the floor and peered through the railings for hours, watching the dip and sway of the dancers, the glances between lovers, the indecorous embraces, and the haughty refusals. Although Bryan knew about the balcony, he had never joined us there, but from time to time Kent had sat on the floor and watched with us. In fact, more than once, he and Elisandra had practiced their own dance steps in time to the waltzes played below.
Tonight I sat cross-legged on the floor and watched closely to see who partnered with Bryan. Naturally he was committed to Megan of Tregonia for the first dance, and I studied her with a critical eye. Elisandra had called her insipid, and certainly, against Bryan’s dramatic coloring, she looked pale and nondescript. She was fashionably thin, but to my mind her bare arms looked sticklike, not dainty, and her small face seemed gaunt and woebegone. Even her hair, a struggling brown, looked sick and undernourished.
Still, Bryan smiled at her and bowed most elaborately when the dance ended, and I had every reason to hate her.
I minded less when he danced with Elisandra, dressed tonight in a forest green that made her dark hair preen with luster. They seemed to have less to say to each other than Bryan and Megan, though they were obviously better suited to each other in their style of dancing. They never held each other too close, never missed each others’ cues; they could have been two statues dancing, viewed now from one angle, now from another, caught for an eternity with all the sculptor’s skill.
After that, all the silly girls of the castle and the surrounding countryside did their best to draw Bryan’s attention by placing themselves in strategic spots on the edge of the dance floor, or letting loose their most winsome laughs just as the music ended. I swear I saw blond Lady Doreen bump Marian Grey aside with her hip, to make the younger woman look awkward and ungainly the minute Bryan turned his eyes their way. In any event, Doreen was the one with whom he chose to dance. But I had watched these events in the past; before the night was over, Bryan would have danced with every woman who had a pedigree. His uncle the regent demanded that measure of courtesy from him, and Bryan always observed it. Once I was old enough, he would even dance with me.
When I lost track of Bryan in the throngs, I looked for Elisandra and Kent. I saw them dance together twice, easily, comfortably, laughing at each other’s observations. No one ever seemed to amuse Elisandra quite as much as Kent could—and once in a while, when she was with him, she actually relaxed her usual watchful guard. They had known each other since she was born; neither had ever lived anyplace else. I wondered what it would be like to know someone else so long, so well.
Elisandra was dancing with Dirkson of Tregonia and I had lost track of both Kent and Bryan when I heard a noise at the servant’s door behind me. I spun around on my knees in time to see Kent come through the door with a questioning look on his face. This cleared up the instant he saw me.
“You are here. I thought I saw your little face peering through the rails,” he said. “Are you having fun?”
“Counting the girls Bryan dances with,” I said. “He seems to be enjoying himself.”
“He does like entertaining,” Kent agreed.
“And you? Are you enjoying yourself?” I asked.
He shrugged, and leaned his shoulders against the wall. He was not so tall as Roderick, but in his black formal clothes he looked almost the same height, heavier in the shoulders and more serious in expression. His dark hair had been styled tonight in some approximation of fashion, and all in all he looked rather imposing.
“I know what the purpose is, and I know how to play my part. There are things I prefer doing, but it is not hard, after all, to dance and smile and say polite things.”
“Sometimes it is,” I said, reflecting on my sessions with Greta.
He smiled, and the seriousness vanished from his face. “For you, it seems to be,” he said. “But Greta may civilize you yet.”
“Turn me into Megan of Tregonia,” I scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“No, I doubt you’ll ever be entirely tame,” he said. “I wait for the day you turn the entire castle upside down through some passionate and ill-advised action. Elisandra says it will never happen, but I’m certain that it will.”
I could not imagine how such a conversation might ever have transpired; it made me feel peculiar to think of it. “How is your arm?” I asked, to change the subject. “Is it bothering you?”
He shook it twice. “A little. That was the excuse I gave my father, anyway, when I pleaded for a break from the dancing. He can’t decide whether to be pleased or angry that I’m studying the sword on my own, so he can’t tell how annoyed to be that I’ve hurt myself. But he permitted me to take a rest. So I came to look for you.”
“I’m glad you’re teaching Roderick to write,” I said. “I would guess he’s a quick learner. He’s country-smart. I see it all the time in the village. Boys who don’t have a chance to get real tutoring but who manage to learn things all the same. Girls, too.”
Kent nodded. “He learns fast. Kritlin thinks highly of him, I know. I think with a little education Roderick could rise quickly through the guards’ ranks and be captain someday.”
Kritlin had been captain of the guard ever since I could remember. Kent’s father trusted him absolutely and even invited him to the dinner table from time to time, when more exalted guests were not at hand. To rise to such a position would be an honor indeed for a young man from Veledore.
Before I had thought of a reply, the orchestra segued into a lively waltz. “Oh, I love this song!” I exclaimed.
“So do I,” Kent said, holding out his hand. “Dance with me.”
I had done it often when I was first learning my steps: Kent would partner first my sister, then me, and I too had always been at ease with him. But we were alone on the high balcony, no Elisandra nearby to critique my performance, and I was suddenly shy.
“You should rest your arm while you have the chance,” I said in a reproving voice. “I’m not one of the court ladies you have to impress.”
“You’re one of the court ladies I wish to dance with,” he said, still extending his hand. “Come! Show me you haven’t forgotten your steps.”
I shook my head. “You’ll be missed at the ball,” I said.
He dropped his hand and swept his dark coat back from his hips as though about to sit on the floor. “Ver
y well, then—”
“Don’t!” I said sharply, and he froze in mid-bend. “The floor’s dirty,” I explained to his look of surprise. “Look—I’ve got smudges all over my gown.”
Slowly he straightened, watching me all the while. “I won’t stay if you don’t want me to,” he said.
“I didn’t say that,” I said, enunciating clearly. “I said the floor is dirty and you’ll be missed at the ball. Did I say I wanted you to go?”
He smiled. “Then dance with me,” he repeated.
Silly to be embarrassed about dancing with a man I had danced with a hundred times in my life. I jumped to my feet and held out my arms. “Oh, very well, then!” I exclaimed. “I’ll dance!”
He twirled me into his arms, and we romped up and down the narrow confines of the balcony with great energy. I was laughing so hard that all my embarrassment melted away, and once or twice I thought I might skid across the floor, tilt over the railing and go wheeling down onto the heads of the dancers below. We made it through the piece without serious mishap, however, and when the music ended, Kent bowed over my hand with a flourish.
“Thank you for the dance, kind lady,” he said.
I curtsied, having practiced this art for three days running. “You’re most welcome, gentle sir.”
He kissed my hand with great flair, bowing again as he did so. I giggled and pulled my fingers free.
“I guess Bryan’s not the only one who flirts with the court ladies,” I said.
“Ah, but I only flirt with some,” he said solemnly.
I waved my hands to encourage him toward the door. “Well, time to go back to those others, then,” I said. “Your father will really begin wondering where you are.”
He turned toward the door, but lingered on the threshold, seeming to want to say more. “You should not let just anyone kiss your hand, you know,” he said, the mock seriousness still in his voice. “Greta will tell you that. And definitely no kissing anywhere off the dance floor—in the gardens, for instance, or in empty hallways when no one else is near.”