Feeds them poison. That’s what we did at home, and I’d hated it. But Master Dess might make a mistake! He might even make a mistake on purpose!
I hurried to the stables, guessing that I had ten more minutes at least before Master Jak would be ready.
Master Dess stood crooning in a horse stall just beyond the big aisle. I approached, and he beckoned me in with him. Master Gise, the head groom, entered behind me with a bucket.
“Another mouse.” He handed the bucket to Master Dess. “Who is she?” Meaning me.
“A lass from Lahnt. His Lordship took her in.”
As the bucket passed between them, I saw a frantic mouse scrambling at the bottom, trying to climb out.
Master Dess reached for it.
He would have his pick of common poisons. Farm folk knew them all: frogbane, tasty false cinnamon, ground boar tusk, apple-pit powder, and the many poisonous mushrooms.
Albin had schooled me in the more exotic poisons that appeared in mansioners’ tales, such as murder milk. I knew the poisons that killed quick and the ones that killed slow, those that caused fever or stomach pain or sleep. It had amused Albin to school a child in such gruesome arts.
The mouse stilled in Master Dess’s hand.
Let it be His Lordship, I prayed.
Master Dess looked into the mouse’s eyes, then shook his head.
Now he would kill it. I snatched it from him and began to run out of the stable with the squirming creature. I’d saved this one, but how many had already died? Had Count Jonty Um been among them?
I was halfway to the door. What would I do with the mouse?
It answered by wriggling out of my hand. I lunged, but it raced into a stall. I gazed after it and fought back tears.
“Honey . . . Girl . . .” Master Dess came to me. “I wasn’t going to kill the poor mouse.”
“You weren’t?” I felt shaky with relief.
Master Gise walked toward us. “His Lordship doesn’t let us kill mice.”
I should have guessed.
Master Dess touched my shoulder. “Someone will find the mouse again, or not. It wasn’t the count.”
“Have you examined the other animals, Master Dess, not just the mice?”
He nodded. “All the beasts.”
“I’ll see if more mice have been found.” Master Gise started out of the stables.
I guessed I still had a few minutes. “Er . . .”
“Yes, honey?”
“The night we arrived in Two Castles . . . you heard someone outside the king’s castle, do you remember?”
“That was you, girl? Why didn’t you speak out?”
“Um . . . you sounded angry. I—”
“I was angry, honey! After your coin was stolen, a thief took one of my cows, a good cow I had for five years.”
“Have you gotten her back?”
“Not yet.” His voice was as grim as it had been then.
“I’m sorry.” A mystery solved. But the stolen cow was unsolved for Master Dess.
I left the stables.
In the kitchen Master Jak was spooning sauce over the leek pie. He made room for it on a tray that was as heaped with food as the king’s breakfast tray had been. “You are prompt to the minute, Ehlodie. Hurry. No doubt his royal gluttony is impatient.”
As I passed behind the screen to the great hall, my nose caught a faint but biting odor.
Master Thiel sat cross-legged on the floor before one of the fireplaces. The source of the stink, a glue pot, rested on the hearth, and he held together two pieces of a broken bowl.
Master Thiel. Always where least expected.
A glue jar and his satchel lay at his elbow, the satchel bulging with the tools of a plate mender’s trade. He was a plate mender?
I surveyed the great hall. The sleeping pallets had been stacked, and the dinner tables were not yet set up. A manservant crisscrossed the hall, strewing rushes from a burlap sack. Seated on a low stool on the dais, Sir Misyur hunched over a writing board on his lap. He dipped his quill pen in ink and scribbled something on a sheet of parchment.
Looming above him, the princess balled the cloth of her skirt with both hands. “Have they checked the wall walk again, Misyur?” Her voice careened up and down the scale. “Have they combed the cellars?”
I should have gone straight to her, but instead I went to Master Thiel. When I reached his side, I crouched and whispered, “Where is your cat, Pardine?”
He smiled, and I almost lost my balance. “Pardine is rented today to a burgher’s wife whose own cat recently died.” His expression became serious. “Did you think I’d bring Pardine here after yesterday’s calamity?”
I blushed. “No, of course not.”
“I came to help, but Sir Misyur said all is well in hand, so I decided to mend a dish or two. Even lords need their plates mended from time to time.”
I nodded and backed away to the middle of the room, not tripping over my feet purely by accident.
“Misyur,” the princess said, “why are you writing when—”
Sir Misyur craned his head up toward her, a tic pulsing at the corner of his eye. “I am recording where the search has been made, what has been found, where—”