The Black Prince: Part I (33 page)

“Well then. I’ll have my grandson bring it around before supper.”

“Oh.” Lissa had been in the shop for an hour at least but she still felt off balance. “Alright.”

Those shrewd eyes were back on hers. “Those who support you will support you regardless, child. And those who don’t…don’t need a reason. They haven’t so far and, believe me, they never will. So be true to yourself. You’re not responsible for their deathbed regrets, anyway. Only for your own.”

And with that, Lissa found herself out on the street again.

S
he walked home deep in thought.

Through the dairy market, and down Silver Street, and then left down King’s Cross to Gold Street. The two competing guilds of jewelers liked to each pretend that the other didn’t exist, and King’s Cross itself, for all the name implied, was a dismal little alley. Narrow townhouses pressed in side by side, their overhanging second stories meeting in the middle to form a series of arches that blocked out the light. Like walking under a bridge.

Most were strange houses, abutting one another, but some connected two halves of the same house: galleries, with small, indistinct faces peering out at her from behind the glass. Watching the world go by as they darned, or spun. Lissa thought it must be dreadfully inconvenient, going up one set of stairs, crossing the gallery and then going down another set of stairs just to get from one half of the house to the other. And it couldn’t be safe, could it? To be suspended in the air like that?

With Gold Street the sun returned and with it, people. Even as preoccupied as she was, Lissa felt an internal release. Of the bottled tension that, she supposed, came to all women in dark and depopulated places. Even such small places as alleys. Barghast was supposed to be safe. And for the most part, it was. But things still happened.

At night, but in the day, too. To men, and to women. The city watch couldn’t be everywhere at once and Lissa knew well that if a woman was assaulted in a dark alley the first question wasn’t who assaulted her but why she’d been so foolish as to find herself in a dark alley in the first place. Rapists, came the dour thought, apparently had free run of the world so it was up to their potential victims to sequester themselves.

She was crossing now, out of the merchant’s quarter and into one of the city’s residential districts. One populated, due to its location, mostly by merchants but also by some of Barghast’s wealthier artisans. Artisans who could afford to live separately from their shops and, in some cases, apprentices and journeymen. Whereas most fullers, blacksmiths, cabinetmakers and the like lived above their shops or simply bedded down on cots inside of them.

A small potter’s shop specializing in red glazes had its window down for business and a small group had gathered, examining that day’s wares. One of the last shops before the quarter became entirely residential, it catered mostly to surrounding residents. Who could afford to spend the price of three pairs of shoes on a cruet for olive oil. Lissa didn’t think that, however rich she became, she’d ever grow so foolish but one never knew.

A face in the crowd turned, and she smiled in greeting.

The face quickly turned back.

She should enjoy it, she told herself. She was someone now. Before, no one had ever shunned her because no one had known she was alive. Even to the men she’d lain with, she’d been invisible.

She walked on.

Eventually, mercifully, she arrived home.

The Hamels’ home would have been a palace beyond imagining in the village of her childhood but here it was just one house among many. A wall surrounded the property, a good eighteen hands and built from solid stone. High enough to provide privacy and to keep all but the most determined intruders out. A wood gate stood open. It was almost never closed. At least not in daytime.

It, like the shutters on the house itself, had been painted a light blue. The color was common in Barghast, being made from an equally common local mineral. Lumps of it were mined from the mountains and then ground down into a powder that could be mixed with egg yolks. Coarsely ground, it produced a dark blue. Finely ground, it produced the lighter blue that Goodwife Hamel had chosen.

Lissa stepped through the gate, feeling like she’d entered a sanctuary. The cobbles of the small courtyard were still icy, but one of the sons must have been dispatched to spread sand. To the right of the house, sharing space with one of its two great chimneys, were the ovens and beside them the wood shed. Behind the house, the wall also enclosed the kitchen garden where Goodwife Hamel grew much of the family’s produce. Herbs, too, for various infusions and healing tinctures. Everything was well tended, laid out in neat rows bisected by paths laid with crushed stone. A far cry from the tangled mass of her mother’s garden, small and choked with weeds.

To the left, built into the house itself, were the stables. The family owned a small carriage, which was rarely used, and a cart. Two horses ate placidly from feed bags, their heads extended over their stall doors into the yard. Usually, Master Hamel and his sons walked to work.

The spinning room sat above the stables, a large and open space that also housed Goodwife Hamel’s sewing and embroidery supplies. Lissa had been invited in for mulled wine, the other afternoon, to keep Goodwife Hamel company and to watch the snow fall. Goodwife Hamel, who, oddly, seemed to regard her as something of a long lost daughter. She was always giving Lissa advice, on everything. As Lissa’s own mother had been too overworked to spare any of her children much individual attention, she found Goodwife Hamel’s interest…confusing. She wasn’t really certain how to react. But, she had to confess, if only to herself, that she enjoyed it just the same.

Goodwife Hamel, perhaps the one woman in Barghast not intimidated by Hart.

Small rooms, originally intended to house younger children, now belonged to the family’s serving girl and to Master Hamel, for keeping his accounts. There was a lock on the door. Master Hamel’s sons, wisely, were housed in the far wing. Although Cassie, the serving girl, seemed dour and as uninterested in them as they in her.

All for the best, Lissa supposed.

The house itself was an enormous thing, with three wings extending from the body and a pitched and gabled roof. Isla’s rooms were in the back wing, looking out over the garden. The first floor was made of stone and the second timbered. The roof was slate. Diamond paned windows glinted in the light, windows that could be pushed open on hinges to let in fresh air and then latched and shuttered in bad weather.

The Hamels’ solar extended over the front door, which was enclosed by a porch with carved columns. The large, central window had been thrown wide and Goodwife Hamel was leaning out, beating a carpet. “You were gone long enough,” she called out. “I was beginning to worry. Wonder if I should send Tad after you.”

The unfortunate Tad was troweling lime into the garderobe pits. He was the youngest of the Hamels’ five sons. Seeing Lissa, he waved.

Too young yet to train at the forge, he spent his afternoons helping his mother. Mornings were for lessons. He was of an age with the duke’s son, which meant that he wouldn’t be old enough to join his father for another few years. Years which, in Tad’s opinion, couldn’t speed fast enough. He hated being, as he put it, one of the girls.

“Will the master be by this evening?”

No one was quite sure how to refer to Hart. Who, when he came, was welcomed and largely ignored. He was pleasant enough, but made it clear as well that his business was his own.

“I don’t know.”

Goodwife Hamel smiled at a particularly satisfying puff of dust. “Jorja is in the kitchen with Cassie, peeling potatoes.” Jorja was Lissa’s maid, and had been a welcome addition to the household. If Jorja had expected to care only for Lissa, and not peel potatoes, she’d never said. But Goodwife Hamel put everyone to work.

“Come up and have some elderflower tea?”

With the invitation shouted for the entire quarter to hear, Lissa could scarcely refuse. Letting herself in, she crossed the foyer and climbed the main stairs. The front door was a huge, thick, banded thing. Left open most times during the day, it was both locked and barred at night. The home of a rich man was ever the target of thieves.

The staircase wall was paneled in more of the same walnut from which the stairs themselves had been carved, age darkened to almost black. It smelled of wax. It was dark, too. Barghast’s architects were a defense-minded group and thus most houses had few windows on the ground floor.

Reaching the landing, she was met by Goodwife Hamel.

“You should wear green.”

“I’d look like Robin of the Hood.”

The other woman turned, and Lissa followed her into the spinning room. It was a bright and cheerful place. She sat on the bench near the south-facing window and, a moment later, Lissa sat too. It felt strange. Like she was pretending.

“You should show more skin, too. You look like a nun.”

Lissa blushed. She found the comparison oddly complimentary. “Hart…doesn’t like it when I do that.”

Goodwife Hamel sniffed. She was a fat woman, but swift. The red-dyed flax of her gown stretched over her girth. She had, evidently, been even fatter before she became a mother. And her husband had found her irresistible.

And still did. Lissa had seen how they looked at each other. And how, when he thought no one was looking, Master Hamel pinched her broad behind and made her giggle.

“It’s your wardrobe, not his. If he’s so opinionated about gowns then maybe he should start wearing them.”

For the second time that day, completely unexpectedly, Lissa burst out laughing. It had been a long time since she’d laughed. Really laughed. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

“Goodwife Hamel—”

“We’ve had this discussion.” The other woman raised a hand. “Thomasina.”

“I…it just feels strange,” Lissa finished lamely.

“You’re a free woman now.”

“But I’m not….”
Used to that idea yet.
“I’m not married. I don’t have my own household.”

“You’re part of our household,” Thomasina said firmly. “And marriage, believe me, isn’t everything. It doesn’t secure a man’s affections, nor prevent one from ending up starving in the hedgerows.” The tea arrived. She accepted a cup from Cassie and sipped thoughtfully. The silence was companionable, and pleasant. She set the cup down beside her and resettled her bulk before continuing. “But we’ve no intention of turning you out.”

Lissa smiled, just the smallest turning of the lips.

“I always wanted a daughter. And if you were my daughter, I’d tell you the same thing: take love where you find it. No man can offer everything and some women are more apt than others to fall in love with men who can’t offer certain things. The life of anyone at court, or anyone connected to anyone at court, isn’t easy. All intrigue and stupidity, and worse. That’s the row you hoe and if you’d fallen in love with a baker, you’d be hoeing a different and equally painful row. But you’d choose it just the same, I’d wager.”

“He might marry someone else.”

“He might.” Thomasina finished her tea. Lissa poured her a second cup. Cassie knew better than to take the kettle back downstairs with her, and it rested on a spare roof tile on the floor.

“Marriage for those of his class isn’t about love. It’s a duty, like any other. Look at Gideon the Conqueror: he loved the same woman most of his life, but couldn’t marry her. And she a noblewoman. But from the wrong family. He needed an alliance that would knit the kingdom together, not force it apart.”

Lissa hadn’t known this, of course. Hadn’t known much more about the man who united Morven than his name until quite recently. But she was learning. All the time learning. And soon she’d go from sounding out labels to reading books. Actual books. Master Hamel, being a rich man, owned a full twelve. In Lissa’s home village, the only book had been owned by the burgermeister and that some sort of treatise on religion.

“So what did you find at the store today?”

Lissa told her.

“You should dab rosewater on your nipples.”

Lissa blushed furiously, although she shouldn’t. What were nipples to her? Her landlady routinely talked to her like she’d never seen a man before. Clothed or unclothed.

“I…okay.”

“Makes them nice and perky.”

Maybe it was the fact that she was discussing sex with a mother figure. With her mother figure. When it came to matters of the flesh, though, Thomasina had no shame. She’d also suggested, in the short time since Lissa’s arrival, tickling Hart’s manhood with her tongue and feeding him walnuts. Lissa could only imagine what Hart would think, were he privy to these conversations. Did
any
man realize how debauched women were?

She would have preferred Jorja to be a bit more debauched. Jorja’s only comment so far, on the subject of Hart, had been that he was frightening. Followed by wondering, aloud, how Lissa stood having him touch her. Followed, again, by her feeling aggrieved at her own tactlessness and leaving the room.

“How are your lessons going?”