“I see,” Daylily said at last.
Rose Red let out a shuddering breath. Then her hands were over her face, and she crouched at the lady’s feet. “I see,” Daylily said again, peering down at the girl. She drew her dainty slippers back. “Now I too know your secret.”
The crumpled maid gave a sob. “Please, m’lady,” she said. “Please, give me back my veil.”
But Daylily held on to it, running the soft fabric between her fingers. “Swear to me,” she said, her voice hoarse, “that you will serve me.”
“Please, m’lady.”
“Swear it. You will now be my servant and serve me as faithfully as you serve your master. For I know your secret as well as he.” She grimaced as though she must bite out the words. “Swear it, now.”
Rose Red sobbed again, but she sat upright. With unveiled face, she looked up into the face of the baron’s daughter. A tear ran down her cheek. “I swear it, m’lady,” she said.
Then she held out her hand. “Please give me back my veil.”
2
THE GOAT PEN was a dozy place at night. All the Eldest’s goats huddled on one side, their hairy haunches pressed together, long lashes lowered over yellow eyes. Some chewed their cud. Most slept the sleep of the just, for goats, on the whole, are a just lot. The atmosphere was heavy with hay and musk and sleep.
But Beana stood at the far end of the pen, her nose upraised, sniffing.
It bothered her sometimes that she could still catch a whiff of roses now and again, for she knew they were long since gone. They had once blossomed thickly in these parts, however, and perhaps the ghost of their aromas still lingered. Not even the perfumes of a hundred other flowers blossoming in the warm summer climate of Southlands could entirely disguise that memory of beauty.
Beana sought a different scent. Her senses were as tense as her body every night when the moon was new and the sky was black.
For these nights were always the worst.
“I know you’re there,” she muttered. “I know you’re waiting.”
“Waitin’ for what?”
Beana turned and found her girl climbing the fence into the pen. “Rosie!” she exclaimed and trotted up to her. “What are you doing out here so late? You should have been in bed long ago—” She noticed suddenly how the girl was trembling. “Bebo’s crown!” she exclaimed. “You heard it, didn’t you?”
Rose Red sank to the dirty pen floor, wrapping her arms about her knees. “Heard what, Beana?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
“Why, the . . .” Beana shook her horns. “Nothing, girl, nothing. What are you shivering about?”
Then, much to the goat’s surprise, Rose Red put her head down on her knees and burst into tears.
“Sweet Hymlumé! What’s gotten into you?”
Beana put her nose to the girl’s ear, nuzzling and bleating, but the crying ran its full course before Rose Red could gasp out any words. Then she said, “She don’t love him, Beana.”
“Who doesn’t love whom?”
“Lady Daylily. She don’t love my master, not one bit of it.”
“Prince Lionheart?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, she don’t.”
Beana snorted but gently nuzzled the girl again. “Well, child, that’s for them to muddle through, now, isn’t it?”
Rose Red, her face still buried in her knees, shook her head. “I don’t want her to marry him, Beana. She doesn’t even respect him, much less love him.”
“How are you to know her heart, my girl?” Beana said. “That pretty Daylily, she’s an odd one, I’ll grant you. Not someone I’d like to have on my bad side. But that doesn’t mean she can’t love your prince, doesn’t mean she can’t make him a good wife and a good queen.”
Still Rose Red shook her head. “She don’t deserve him, Beana.”
“That’s not for you or me to decide,” said the goat. She knelt down and let the girl wrap her arms around her neck. She felt Rose Red remove her veil so that her tears could flow unchecked into Beana’s rough coat. She felt the girl’s mouth open several times, heard her breath catch as though she was about to speak. But she always closed it again and simply sat there, crying.
Rose Red could not bring herself to say that Daylily had seen her face. Nor could she mention the vow she had sworn at that lady’s feet. So she sat there in the smelly goat pen, crying for shame and frustration.
When at last her tears began to dry, Beana said softly, “We can go back, Rosie.”
“Go back where?”
“To the mountain.” The goat tried to keep the eagerness from her voice but could not disguise all traces of it. “We don’t have to stay here if it is so painful for you. We’d find a way to get by. Sure, you eat well here and people don’t touch you, but all in all, you’re as lonely here as ever you were. And I know you miss the forest.”