A Tale of Two Castles

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—”

“If not the wall walk or the cellars, he would hide in a donjon, where food is plentiful.”

“Your Highness,” Sir Misyur said, “two maids are circling the wall walk this very moment. Four menservants—”

I coughed. Both of them turned.

“His Majesty requests you.” I curtsied.

She let her skirt go and waved her hand. “Requests which of us? No need to bow, Ehlodie.”

I straightened. “You, Your Highness. He instructed me to bring a breakfast for you.” I held out the tray.

“But I’m not hungry, and I’m helping! We’re finding Jonty Um.” Her huge eyes filled, reminding me of blue-yolked poached eggs.

How wicked I was to have such a thought!

“I’m coming.” Her hair bounced below her cap as she leaped off the dais. “My father would not like to know I jumped.”

I smiled. “I won’t tell.”

The king’s first words were addressed to me. “Half an hour is not long for a king to wait for his command to be obeyed. How lucky I am to be a king.”

Instantly Princess Renn said, “La! I came as soon as I was told.”

I flushed. She turned to face me. Under pretense of taking the tray, she mouthed, I’m sorry.

Perhaps he did worse to her than he did to servants.

She placed the tray on the table. “I’m sure the cook was slow, Father, not Ehlodie.”

“The girl has a name? A name in three syllables?”

This made me as angry as anything else he’d done.

“Yes, Father. Ehlodie.”

“How grand of her. Come here, girl.”

I moved a little closer.

He frowned. “Has she come near, Renn? Do you believe she has approached me?”

“No, Father.” She murmured. “Perhaps she is afraid.”

“Of me? Come, girl. I won’t spit at you again.”

Not comforting, but I advanced and stopped a few inches from him.

“Most mansioners paint their faces, if I am not mistaken. Extend your face, girl.”

I put my face forward and dug my nails into my palms.

“You don’t mind my finger in your jam, do you, dear?”

“No, Father.”

He dipped his forefinger in. I closed my eyes. He might accidentally or purposely poke one of them out.

“One sister is pretty. . . .” His finger rubbed jam into my left cheek and stroked it across the left half of my lips. “And the other is not.” After a moment he smeared something warm on my right cheek and across the right half of my lips.

I licked my upper lip on the right. The brown sauce.

“Mustn’t.” He applied the sauce again. “Ah. Stand away so my daughter may see.”

I opened my eyes.

“Is she not improved?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “You would have benefitted from my assistance yesterday, girl. Now perform the piece again.”

Shamed tears flooded my eyes. Do not cry, I thought, or he will be glad. I blinked them away and reenacted the scene. I did it well, too, to spite the king and please his daughter.