I was about to advise the man to go back up the stair and ask for another, but at that moment the cavalier looked at me and spoke. “You, there! Give me your blanket!”
I gave him a cold look. “I’m not your servant,” I said.
“Listen, Butcher-boy,” the cavalier said. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re a man who let himself be captured without a fight,” I said. “What more need I know?”
The man gave a roar and a stamp of fury. “Are you calling me a coward?” he said. “Why, if you were a gentleman, I’d—”
“Surrender?” I suggested.
The cavalier raised a hand—I knew not whether the man intended a blow or was merely making a gesture in aid of some rhetorical point—but I had suffered enough insult for the day. From Sir Basil, out of prudence, I was obliged to endure abuse, but from this fellow not at all.
I tossed my blanket over the other’s head, and while the cavalier struggled free, I punched the man full on the jaw, hard enough to send him unconscious to the floor.
“A foul blow!” said Slope-Shoulder. “That was—”
At that instant the door to the dungeon boomed shut, and complete darkness claimed the room. I ducked to pull my blanket free, and sensed the breeze of a fist passing over my head. I rose from the floor and jostled Slope-Shoulder back on his heels, then swung my own fist in a swooping backhand arc and caught the cavalier on the side of the head. Slope-Shoulder made a muffled noise and stumbled away, and I pursued, shoving and punching alternately, until I heard the cavalier’s boot come up against the slop tub, a sound that sparked an idea in my mind.
I ducked, seized an ankle, and jerked it from the floor. Slope-Shoulder gave a shout and fell with a great splash into the slop tub. We captives had been locked in the cellar for three days, the tub hadn’t been emptied in all that time, and it was very full.
I grabbed the other foot as it flailed near, and I turned the cavalier over and bore down with my weight, driving him face-first into the tub. The sounds of splashing, flailing, and bubbling filled the air, and a horrid stench rolled into the room. I endured the stink and bore down until I felt Slope-Shoulder weaken, and then I hauled the man out, coughing and sobbing.
I adjusted my blanket over my shoulders and stepped away from the horrid mess. My heart thundered in my chest, and hot fury raged in my veins. I felt I could thrash the whole room.
“Does anyone else want to learn how to breathe piss?” I said in a loud voice. There was no reply.
I went to a far wall and made my bed between two of Lord Utterback’s servants. As I wrapped myself in my blanket, one of the footmen reached out and touched my arm. “I shall bite thee by the ear, my brave!” he said with great approval. “That was well done, bawcock. Those robustious younkers needed a taking-down.”
Which, I thought, was the first pleasant thing any of my fellow servants had said to me.
I settled down to rest, my overcoat pillowed beneath my head, and once my fury faded, I remembered the woman by the sward, and the intent way she had looked at me, and I felt a quiet shimmer along my nerves, a memory of the thrill I had felt when first I saw her gazing at me. I wondered who she was, for if she was in the camp at all, and unmolested, she had to belong to some outlaw. Perhaps to Sir Basil himself, for she seemed so far above all the others that she might well be the consort of their chieftain.
Or, I thought, perhaps she was not Sir Basil’s wife or concubine, but his daughter. The protection of his swift dirk would account for her being alone, and unmolested, and so bold in the way she stared at strangers.
For a moment, before dreams took me, I invented a charming romance, that of the captive and the bandit’s daughter, and how that story might lead to love and freedom.
When I woke in the morning, I seemed to hear the singing of a mandola.
That day, I saw her again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I adjusted myself in the marble trough, and raised a palmful of water to scrub my itching whiskers. More than anything but freedom, I would have delighted in a razor, to shave my week-old beard along with the vermin that lived in it. I leaned backward to duck my scalp, scrubbed at it, then sat up and shook the water from my hair. I turned to the rose-colored marble nymph and spoke again.
“It is droll to see the young gentlemen labor,” I said. “Cutting vegetables, churning butter, boiling laundry, hauling the slop tub up the stairs and emptying it into the stream. They are poor cottiers indeed, but the bandits take joy in whipping them about their tasks, and Dorinda is even more fierce with her ladle! Their fine clothes are going to ruin, they are overrun by an army of lice and fleas, and they know not how to dress their hair. Sad they seem, and much reduced. . . .
“Look you, mistress,” said I as I looked at the little goddess in earnest, “for here they set out, forty of them, to follow their lord in a great adventure, to overthrow a monarch and grow rich from the spoils of war, and they find themselves bested by a gang of low ruffians almost before they can set out. Half Stayne’s army ran away at the first shot, and the rest, now captive, make up a village of the worst workingmen in all Duisland!” I laughed. “The world turned upside down! The cavaliers labor while the robbers parade up and down in their finery! It would amuse you, should you ever peer out from your grotto to view the fine green world.”
The statue spoke no reply, but her playful smile seemed a reply to all possible questions.
It had been three days since I had first explored the old nymphaeum, and since then I’d returned every day. I’d cleaned weeds and ooze from the trough, and turned it into my own tub, where daily I bathed and rid myself of fleas. Daily I chatted with the rose-pink goddess as if she were my oldest playmate, and told her all the news of the camp, and all that occupied my mind. She was the most perfect audience imaginable, and listened to my talk and my complaints, my conceits and my jests, with all the tolerance in the world—and even approval, if the smile was anything to judge by.
I braced myself against the trough and pushed myself upright, the water cascading from my shoulders. I carefully sat on the edge of the trough, and clapped my thighs with my hands. “It is not Fork-Beard that concerns me, mistress,” I said, “but Sir Basil. Each day he has sought me out. He wishes to talk—talk about his services in King Stilwell’s wars, and his knighthood won on the field, and the injustices he has endured. He talks about war and women and poetry, about Mallio in its Rawlings translation, and about the plays that were seen in Selford in the days of his youth. He talks about his brave part in the Wars of the Ghouls, and all his quarrels with his neighbors, and the challenges he issued and on what grounds—for his knowledge of the common law comes from the fact that he was always being taken to court by his neighbors, or the other way around, usually for fighting.” I looked over my shoulder at the goddess. “I begin to believe the jury found him guilty not because they thought he’d committed the crime, but to rid themselves of a troublesome neighbor.”