A Tale of Two Castles

So he wanted to show them the difference, and they didn’t want to see. I touched his cloak over his knee. “I understand.”


We continued on, passing burghers’ homes. A young woman with a broom stepped out of a doorway. As soon as she saw me, she hissed, “Save yourself. Run!” and darted back inside.

I reached up and took the count’s hand. We proceeded past the next house and the next. A cat crossed the street in front of us, its head turned toward the count. Sheeyen trotted along silently.

“Nesspa would have barked.”

The midafternoon bells tolled. The stalls and the throngs began.

“Make way. Ogre and girl.”

“Not captive,” I cried. “New servant at the castle.”

He turned on Sabow Street, which led to the market square. In the square he let my hand go and made purchases—first a string sack, then food and more food: lamb pottage, fish golden with saffron (the rarest spice in the kingdom), boiled eggs, legs of roasted capons, pickled blue carrots, cheese, and bread. How my stomach rumbled.

No one hated him when he opened his purse. People nodded, chatted, thanked him.

My mouth watered. When he stopped the roving marchpane seller, my mouth became almost a fountain. He bought a dozen pieces and paid out two dozen coppers.

With a bulging sack, he started up Daycart Way and resumed his cry of “Make way.” He continued blaring until we reached the wealthy homes again and the crowd had thinned to nothing.

We passed through the town’s south gate and continued on. To the east, the mansioners’ carts caught the light of the setting sun. As we took the north fork, I heard a shout followed by a laugh.

“They’re rehearsing.” And I am in my own mansioner’s tale, I thought, accompanying an ogre to his castle, where the drama will occur.

When we had passed perhaps a quarter mile beyond the fork, with empty, harvested fields to our left and right, the count stopped.

“Your Lordship?”

“Watch. Do not be afraid. Everyone likes this.” Eyes closed, he let Sheeyen’s chain go and raised his arms in a gesture of command, like Zeus in a myth, calling forth lightning. His mouth widened in a silent scream, and his eyes bulged.

I was afraid! Had an arrow struck him from behind? I ran around him. No arrow, but he was clearly in pain. Sheeyen sat on her haunches and howled. I picked up her chain.

He shook from side to side and forward and back, becoming indistinct, a blur of motion—a shrinking blur. He was my height, then smaller, smaller still.





Chapter Fourteen

His Lordship’s arms fell to his sides. The vibrating slowed and stopped. His cloak and tunic hung in heaps and folds over the narrow shoulders of a monkey, an animal I recognized from an illustration in Mother’s only storybook. The monkey was hardly bigger than a fox, his miniature ivory face fringed by coarse orange fur.

He smiled infectiously, showing his teeth and gums. His amber eyes were merry.

I had to smile back.

He removed the count’s clothes and shoes while grinning as if at the silliness of lavish attire, or attire at all. When he emerged, I saw how delicate he was—thin arms, thin legs, and a scrawny chest showing through his frill of fur. All the luxury was in his long bushy tail, which curled up at the end. He stood half erect on his two back legs, with one fisted hand on the ground.

I touched his arm to feel the fur, which was as rough as an otter dog’s coat. As I stroked, a spark passed between us. The monkey threw back his head and panted, laughing, I thought.

Something had to be done with his clothing. I began to fold each item while wondering how I could fit it all into my satchel and then carry it as well as the sack of food.

I rolled his belt and tucked his purse—still heavy despite all the purchases—between his hose and his tunic. Mean-while he bounced on his bare feet, chirping like a bird, adding a screech, a choo, and a sucking sound.

“I wish I spoke monkey language, Your Lordship.” I folded the cloak and added the huge shoes, soles up, to the pile.

The pendant lay on the ground, apart from the rest. I hid it in the toe of a shoe.

Night would fall soon. Were we safe out here, where Two Castles’s thieves might kill us for the pendant and the purse? A monkey who took five minutes to transform back into an ogre would be unable to defend us, and one dog wouldn’t be enough to hold off a gang.

The monkey sat in the road and pulled apart the strings of the sack.

Sheeyen tried to stick her nose in, but I pulled her away.

“Your Lordship, we mustn’t stay here. Robbers and bandits may come.”

He chittered and patted the ground next to himself in a gesture that said as clearly as a word, Sit.

The monkey was a count. I sat.

No. I was human, and he was a monkey.

The road stretched along a low rise. In two trips, tugging Sheeyen along each way, I carried everything down the western slope to a spot low enough, I thought, that we wouldn’t be noticed in the dark. The monkey followed, then sat again, pulling me down next to him. Together, we watched the sunset turn the sky gold and scarlet.

Chirping, he took a packet out of the sack and opened the burlap covering to reveal lamb pottage.

“Sit, Sheeyen,” I said.

Pottage was humble food, but delicious: grain mixed with beans, a chopped onion, a little shredded meat, shaped into a ball, wrapped in a square of linen, simmered with other wrapped packages of carrots, celery, beets. At home we’d eat the pottage and vegetables atop a plate of stale bread with broth spooned over. At the end we’d break off pieces of our plates and devour them, too.

Here there was no broth, but the pottage was moist, with more meat than I was accustomed to. The monkey and I shared it, feeding each other by turn, as people do. He ate daintily but as much as if he were still ogre size. I gave Sheeyen a little at first, too, then ignored her. After a while she lost hope and slept.