Tiphaine extended an arm and index finger at her: "You were not! Not, not!"
Delia curled her tongue around the asparagus, bit the stalk in half with a flash of white teeth, gathered the pieces into her mouth without using her fingers and then slowly licked her lips, keeping up the innocent stare in the process.
"God, that has got to be the most lascivious thing I've ever seen!" Tiphaine shook her head, slightly dazed. "Anyway, back then you could get fresh fruit out of season, even if you were just an ordinary person; I remember my mother buying peaches and grapes and things at Christmas. Now I'm rich and I can't have cherries until June. Not even the Lord Protector and the Consort could."
The seamstress finished pulling on her own tunics; for riding, the longer undertunic was split, with a flap that could be buttoned over to close it when on the ground. That and the leggings were the respectable female's solution to riding astride, though some Associate-rank women wore men's clothing for the purpose and a few used a sidesaddle, which was the only way you could back a horse and wear a cotte-hardi at the same time. Lady Sandra's opinion of that was short and pungent, and she'd outright forbidden them at court, with the Protector's backing because sidesaddles weren't period. Of course, cotte-hardis weren't eleventh century either, more like fourteenth, but they'd become firmly established before Norman Arminger noticed.
Against fashion, even tyrants struggle in vain, she thought.
"So," Delia said, putting on her own belt, which had a knife with a legal four-inch blade, the universal tool of the countryside. "If Lady Sandra's sinister and evil but really sort of nice, what's the Lord Protector like?"
The smile died on Tiphaine's face. Wordlessly she extended her hand, palm up, then slowly curled the fingers into crooked predator talons that quivered with the tension in her tendons and strong wrist.
Delia swallowed, silent for a moment. "It's sort of hard to remember sometimes that you're: one of: them."
"Them?" Tiphaine asked.
"The castle-folk-Association people."
Who, we both know very well, aren't too popular with a lot of commoners, Tiphaine thought.
She didn't answer, but instead took a moment to put on her hat, the usual rolled-edge affair with a long palm-broad tail of black silk down one side, and Lady Sandra's livery badge of the Virgin and the Dragon at the front in silver. Today she turned the tail up under her chin and pinned it on the other side, which would keep it from flying away completely in a high wind or a gallop.
Tiphaine's mouth quirked when she spoke. "You should have thought about that before you asked me to take a look at your embroidered underwear, sweetie. I might have been cruel as well as evil, you know, and you'd have been stuck with me regardless."
"I didn't think so." Delia's spirit bubbled back. "And it was you or Keith, the bailiff's son; his dad had been dropping these awful, heavy hints and Keith wouldn't go away, and my dad's scared of them, they're the bailiffs, after all. And he has pimples and crooked teeth and bad breath and he's mean and his father's worse, and oh, God, he's boring!"
She picked up her own Chinese-style straw hat and mimed throwing up in it. "Besides being a guy."
"Well, I don't have halitosis or pimples, and: " They kissed.
After a moment Delia sighed. "I don't like having to hide, though. We wouldn't have had to do that before the Change, would we?"
Tiphaine laughed grimly. "OK, someday I'll have to tell you about being the 'Designated Homo-Loser-Goat' in Grade Nine at Binnsmead Middle School, 1997-8. I wanted the world to end-and then it did!"
The excursion party was forming up in the courtyard when Tiphaine and Delia came down; Rudi, Mathilda, two men-at-arms and four mounted cross-bowmen, and a varlet with the two packhorses that carried picnic panniers, fishing rods and her lute, spare clothing in case it got cold: The rest of the midmorning bustle of the castle was well underway, the noisiest part of that being Sir Ruffin leading most of the garrison in full battle kit on circuits that involved running up the inner stairs to the top of the wall and around and down and up again, over and over, clash and clatter and clank. Ruffin waved to her as he passed, face streaming sweat; the rest kept their heads down and concentrated grimly on putting one foot ahead of another, panting like bellows:
At least none of them are falling down and puking now, she thought. Although two had quit over the past month, and been replaced with farm-boy recruits, both of whom were shaping well despite some-unstated-trouble with their families.
"I was out to Hag Lake myself once before," Mathilda burbled to Rudi. "We went sailing; it's real pretty. My dad says it has the best spring trout fishing anywhere near here, too."
Rudi nodded. "Is it called Hag Lake after the Wise One?" he asked.
Mathilda frowned. "I'm not sure," she said. "I don't think so, not here."
Tiphaine grinned to herself. It had been named Henry Hagg Lake, after a politician, when the stream was dammed back in the seventies; of course, that was before she'd been born. God alone knew what local folklore would make of it eventually, back-filling from the suggestive name with a legend; Lady Sandra called it mythogenesis.
"They say-" Delia began.
It was a good idea of Lady Sandra's to get the brat away from Castle Todenangst or Portland, though. And away from the Holy Father; it's painfully obvious Rud just never learned to watch his mouth. That was amazing in itself, if you'd been brought up in the Household. I'd hate to see him get -
Then she stopped for an instant, surprised. You know, that's the truth. I would hate to see the Mackenzie brat get hurt. How odd.
Master, lead your Hunt tonight
Bathed in the Lady's silver light
Earth, Air, Fire and Water
Ride in Your train Rudi whistled rather than sang as they rode; it was a hymn to the Horned Lord, so it might not be too tactful to use the verses here where they followed a face of God they thought jealous. Mathilda, who didn't know the words, whistled along with him as she caught the tune; Delia, who did, joined in. Then they all started to do counterpoint, topping each other until they were laughing too hard to go on.
It was easy to laugh, on a bright morning like this, with the sun breaking off on polished metal and bright on dyed cloth as pennants snapped, and he had a good little Arab under him-though nothing like Epona of course-one of a pair Mathilda's mother had brought out last week in a brief whirlwind visit:
Matti's still happy with it, he thought. And I miss Mom and home so much. He squared his shoulders. Well, you're a warrior of the Clan. Act like it!
They rode northward down towards Carpenter Creek from the castle gate, along a dirt road that ran through sloping orchards of pear and peach, plum, nectarine, cherry and apple. All were in some stage of their blossom-time now, in a froth of pink and white, drenching the mild spring air until they were almost giddy with the scent and the buzzing of countless bees, and petals drifted over them like snow with every gust of wind. The crimson clover beneath the trees was in blossom too, and the grassy verges by the side of the road were thick with wildflowers, the daffodils fading but camas bright blue, chicory the darker color of the eastern sky at sunset; taller bracts of henbit reddish purple, all thick with hummingbirds and sphinx moths feeding on nectar.
Birds of all kinds swarmed, familiar friends from Dun Juniper; a red-tailed hawk watching them pass from the branch of a roadside tree, the majesty of a bald eagle wheeling high overhead, jays calling raucously from the bright new leaves of the cottonwoods and alders and bigleaf maples beside the stream, pintail ducks on the spring-swollen waters that tumbled down from the low mountains to the west:
They turned upstream, in a clopping of hooves and clink of horse harness, creaking of saddle leather and the rhythmic rustling chink of chain mail, the bright morning sun casting their long shadows ahead of them. Past the orchards the field on their left was plowed and harrowed dirt, raked every two feet with furrows where a team was planting quartered potatoes, along with dollops of fertilizer. That was familiar from home too, and the oxcart full of the seed stock and another bigger one of stable-muck, and even the cauldron bubbling over a fire.