He reached across the sack of food and pressed my hand. Had he become a monkey because he liked me, and the monkey would show the feeling more clearly than the ogre could? A lump grew in my throat. Love lay back in Lahnt with my family and Albin. Goodwife Celeste seemed to like me, but she’d as much as told me to stay away. Masteress Meenore appeared to like or dislike me according to my usefulness.
After a moment he let my hand go and fed me a chunk of bread, which, more than the saffron, told me how it might feel to be rich. If you were rich, you could chew this bread without paying attention to how sweet and tangy it was. You wouldn’t close your eyes as I was closing mine and savor each bite, because you could have more whenever you liked.
I returned to my questions. How long could he remain an animal? Forever, if he liked? Or for only a few hours? Did he have to stay shifted awhile before he could switch back? If he changed into, for example, a rabbit or an owl, did other rabbits or owls know he wasn’t really one of them? Did he choose the sort of animal he would change into, or did it choose him?
Question everything. Could he get stuck inside an animal? Could magic force him into a shape and keep him in it?
“Is it strange to be yourself again after you’ve been a monkey?”
When the sack was almost flat, he drew out the small packet and opened it. Marchpane! I made out the shapes—strawberries, roses, tiny apples, daisies.
“May I sample one?” I heard awe in my voice.
He twittered. I took that as consent. If he’d snatched the packet away, I’d have taken that as consent as well and snatched it back.
I picked a rose and nibbled it. Oh, heaven. Father! I’m eating marchpane that no one stepped on.
I held the remainder of the rose out to the monkey, who took it and gave me an apple. Soon we finished the marchpane between us. Despite his ogre’s appetite, he let me have most of it. When all was gone, he lay back and stared up at the stars.
“Can you find the constellations?” I lay back, too. “They’re all from mansioners’ tales, you know.” I pointed as I spoke. “There’s Cupid as a cherub and Thisbe’s apple and Zeus’s lightning rod.”
The monkey chittered.
I let out a long breath. “Your Lordship, I came here to become a mansioner, and I will still be one someday.”
He panted softly, perhaps chuckling at my ambition.
“I will be. Albin says I have a gift, and he mansioned everywhere, before counts and kings, although not King Grenville or you.” I was off, telling a monkey about Albin and Mother and Father and Lahnt and the geese, telling him more than I’d told Masteress Meenore, despite ITs endless curiosity.
When my life’s story ran out, I just watched the stars and smelled the earth around us until, not meaning to, I fell asleep.
When I woke, I smelled stone and saw darkness. Terrified, half asleep, I raised my arms. My fingers encountered only air. Ah. I had not been entombed. My fingers discovered that I lay on a pallet bed. A woolen blanket covered me from neck to toe. No, three blankets. My nose and ears were cold, but the rest of me was cozy warm. Whoever put me here—the monkey? the ogre? a servant?—had considered my comfort.
My eyes adjusted to the dark. I found my satchel a few inches from my head. Nearby, someone snored a barrel-chested snore. A woman’s voice mumbled from a dream.
The room was vast, vaulted, Count Jonty Um’s great hall, no doubt. I hadn’t been in a castle since I was a baby, when Mother and Father presented me to the earl of Lahnt, but Albin had performed in castles. I had his descriptions to draw on. Although each castle was unique, he said, they resembled one another, like cousins in the castle family.
In the dimness, I surmised I lay among the servants’ pallets, with my pallet in the middle of the group. The best places clustered close to the hearth, where a few embers still glowed. Against the opposite wall, another hearth also smoldered. High above us, slitted windows made a dotted line near the ceiling. From my low vantage point, I saw small squares of blue-black sky.
There would be lower, larger windows, too, recessed into the wall of the inner ward, the courtyard at the heart of the castle, but I couldn’t see them from here.
My mind refused to return to sleep. The pallet next to mine might be occupied by His Lordship’s enemy, the dog thief and poacher. Or the snorer might be the one. Or the mumbler. In some neglected castle nook, Nesspa might be whining and gnawing at the bars of a cage.
What better time than now to look for him?
I rose to my knees and found that I had been sleeping in my cloak. At the foot of the pallet, my shoes pointed away from me. I pulled them on, stood, and threaded my way between the sleepers.
As I walked, the rushes scattered across the floor swished, but no one stirred. I sniffed the air. The rushes had been strewn with bay leaves. How rich! How like a castle!