In the days since then, Cook had learned her name, and she’d freshened the mattress with clean straw, and been given a rag rug and some empty sacking that had become curtains for the small window in the room. Most of the other kitchen help kept their shutters closed, winter and summer, but Timbal judged the fresh air worth the nuisance of flies in the day and mosquitoes at night. Her extra apron and servant’s robe hung on a hook at night, her shoes beneath them. Her personal clothing hung on a separate hook, with the blue boots her father had bought for her arranged neatly beneath them. She knew they would not last forever, and so she wore them only on her days off and when she wasn’t working in the kitchen.
There was little enough left of her former life; she’d make the boots and the memory of her father presenting them to her last as long as they could. They’d been tinkers while he was alive, and fairly good at that. Her mother had left them years ago, but she and her father had managed well enough, moving from town to town to find enough trade to keep them busy. Some months had been fat ones, with meat in the cook pot or a meal at an inn, and some months had been hard, with little more than mushrooms, roadside greens, and the occasional trout from a stream. But they had been happy, and more rare still, known they were happy with their simple life. Each night when they made their beds, her father reminded her to thank gentle Eda, goddess of the fields and farms, for her kindness to them.
In one town, they’d done exceptionally well, mending all the pots at a rich man’s manor. At the next town, her father had bought her a soft shawl of gray wool, and the pair of blue boots. The boots were well made, cut trimly to her foot, and came almost to her knee. They were an indulgence and she knew it, especially the rich blue dye that the cobbler had applied to the leather, just for her. She’d hugged her father tight when he’d given them to her, and he’d told her they were no less than she deserved for being the best daughter a man could ask.
A month later, she was an orphan. Even now, when she thought about it, the events jumbled in her mind. The robbers had come to their campfire one night, brandishing clubs and an ugly knife. Coward that she was, when her father shouted at her to “Run, run!” she’d obeyed him. She fled and climbed a tree in the darkness and clung there, shaking and weeping silently until dawn grayed the sky. Then she’d crept back to their campsite, or tried to. It was noon before she found her way back to the road, and thence to where they had camped. The wagon and team, the tools of her father’s trade, their clothes and supplies, all were gone. Her father lay as they had left him, his face battered and his arm broken with the bone jutting out. It had made her feel queasy evento look at it, but she had sternly mastered her horror and fear. Her father’s life had depended on her and she knew it.
She’d given him water and tried to ease his pain, and then flagged down a passing teamster. Hastily she’d gathered the few scattered belongings left to them and bundled them into her blanket. The teamster had given them a ride back to the town they’d just left. An innkeeper had given them a room and called the town guard, who had decided that it was a matter for the King’s Patrol. The Patrol arrived two days after her father had died. They’d given her sympathy and money for a gravedigger, promised to keep an eye out for her team and wagon, noted her name, and then left her to her own devices. The innkeeper had let her work off her debt, and offered to keep her on as a tavern girl. His daughter Gissel had shown her great kindness and likewise begged her to stay on, but Timbal could not bear to stay in the tiny room where she had watched her father die. The same day that her debt was settled, she’d bundled her few possessions into her blanket and set off, following the river road upstream.
She’d regretted that decision more than once before she found the kindly cook at Timberrock Keep. The hardships of the road and the dangers of being female and traveling alone had convinced her that any job that offered her shelter was better than venturing out again. So she’d become a kitchen girl.
She’d never imagined that one day she would live in a keep. Lord Just was well thought of, and a good steward of his lands and people. Lady Lucent was lovely and gracious, as a lady should be. Minstrels played for them every night, and Lady Lucent loved to entertain visiting nobility. She was a decade younger than her lord, and as able as he was crippled. Despite his misfortune, her lord was a kindly man who seemed pleased to see her dancing with other partners and eating heartily while he himself picked at his food. All the servants spoke well of Lord Just, and mourned the fall that had crippled him. They said less of Lady Lucent, but none of it was ill. Timbal decided it was probably because Lord Just had been their lord and master since he was a young man, and sotheir fondness for him was deeper than what they felt for the woman he had married.
As days turned to weeks, she found she shared the local sentiment. The lord was a kindly man, and even if he never noticed her personally, his easygoing and generous nature meant that his servants lived better than most servants did. As witness her two days off every month! And her being welcome to come into the hall every evening and listen to the minstrels perform. It was a good life for a girl who had been homeless and alone but a few weeks before, and she did not forget to thank the goddess for providing it. She lacked for nothing.
Usually on her days off, she chose to walk into the nearby town, sometimes to treat herself to a meal not of her own cooking at the tavern. But on the day that Azen knocked not just on her soles but her soul, she decided that she would, perhaps, return early to the keep for his evening performance.
Azen was not the only minstrel at Timberrock, but he was obviously the lady’s favorite. Timbal had heard the tale of his life, for Gretcha, one of the housemaids, was fond of bragging of all she knew of the great folk and their affairs. She did not deign to speak to lowly kitchen help such as Timbal, but if Timbal were near, Gretcha seemed to take every opportunity to air loudly her special knowledge. Gretcha had come with Lady Lucent from her family home, and had served as a maid in the lady’s household since she was a child. And thus Timbal knew that Azen had grown up near Lady Lucent’s family home and had been her playmate in her childhood. He was himself the third son of a minor noble. There had been no inheritance share for him, but he had not minded. Instead, he had taken up the minstrel way and spent most of his winters at Timberrock Keep, playing for his old friend and her husband.
The other two minstrels were less impressive to Timbal. The apprentice, Saria, did little more than tune instruments, sing choruses, and flirt wildly. Chrissock, Lord Just’s resident minstrel, was an older man with a deep bass voice. He performed with a variety of drums, and specialized in the oldest tales, recited exactly as they had been handed down through the years. Some evenings, Timbal could barely stay awake through his long recitals of ancient battles and who had died and how. He twisted his pronunciation and used words that she didn’t understand and sometimes she wondered why any of it mattered anymore. But sometimes he told tales of brave warriors that were as stirring as any romance that Azen had ever sung. And for those, she sat as close to his dais as she could get, hugging her knees and watching him perform with awe.
It was while she was enraptured one evening that she chanced to glance over at Azen. The minstrel was behind Chrissock and to one side. He had beensupplementing Chrissock’s percussion with his harp, but had broken a string and stepped away from the music to make his repair. He was finished now and was waiting easily to take his own turn performing. And while he was waiting, he was watching Timbal.
At first, she thought it was only chance that their eyes had met. She put her gaze back on Chrissock. The toes of her blue boots tapped in time with his telling. A sideways glance at Azen found him still watching her, a half smile on his face. Her toes lost the time and she glanced down at her feet, confused. Half a chorus later, she dared to look up at Azen again. This time he nodded to her and smiled. A blush flamed her face; she could not say why. He had done no more than smile at her. She put her eyes back on Chrissock and kept them there, desperately willing her heart to stop pounding and hoping her scarlet cheeks would cool.