When they were in the stable yard with the cold night air around them Thursey said, "Could you really do that? Witch her?"
"Wish I could!" He grinned at her, scratched his elbow, looked up at the moon, then in at the sleeping animals. When he looked back at Thursey, his eyes were dark and serious. "Well, but the old trollop doesn't know what I can do and what I can't. Maybe she'll have bad dreams."
"SHE'S been sneaking food out of the kitchen!'' Druscilla screamed.
"The pots are dirty and the beds aren't changed and the horses aren't curried!" Delilah bellowed.
"That's not true!" cried Thursey, referring only to the last accusations, for she had taken food out of the kitchen, and she intended to take more.
"And that mare is getting hay!" cried Delilah.
"She has to eat," Thursey screamed back. "She can't haul the dung cart, and all the fodder and food, too, if she doesn't eat!"
"Shut up!" cried Augusta. "Take her to the fields and let her get her food free, you lazy baggage! Tie her in the fields! Now get to your work and let me hear no more!'
Well, the beds were changed, and all the sheets hanging on the line. The pots were scrubbed, and all of the horses as clean as freshly washed babies, and the noon meal cooked besides. Druscilla and Delilah could do the serving of it if they wanted any. Thursey turned away in a flurry of anger, and when they had gone she snatched up a basket and began to pack it with new bread and cheese. Defiantly she slipped in a crock of ale. Then she got a rope on the old mare, climbed astride her, not caring a whit that her skirts were hiked up, and set her heels to the mare so hard the mare plunged ahead with surprise. They galloped across the fields, the mare acting almost coltish she was so delighted to be out on such a day. So was Thursey; they breathed the spring air and set their faces into the wind and neither would have paused from racing over the heavily grassed hills, except they finally got to the place they were headed for.
"Blahhh," said the nannys. They crowded around the mare, giving her friendly nudges and rubbing against her knobby legs. "Bahh, bahh," said the billy, and butted Thursey insistantly when she slid off the mare. The nannys thrust their noses under Thursey's hands and begged to be scratched behind their ears.
Gillie grinned at her and dusted a place for her on the rocks. She tied the mare on a long rope and set the basket down. The breeze came lightly along the hills, and from where they sat they could see the village below them, then on the far hills, the castle rising white. The fields that dropped down below their feet were washed by the wind so the grass went flat in long waves. "The castle always looks so mysterious," she said, awed. "Is it wonderful, living there?"
"It isn't so mysterious when you're there. I'd rather look at it from the hills. It's just—full of people, at least the servants' parts are, crowded and ordinary. Things should be mysterious, but there's nothing mysterious in the palace."
"Should things be mysterious?"
"There's mystery in the hills and in the wind on the grass. And in the stories you like. Isn't life mysterious?"
"My stepmother says life is a weight on our shoulders that we must rise above."
"Old baggage!"
"Gillie!"
"Well isn't she?"
"Yes! Druscilla says life is like a horn of plenty, it won't give anything if you don't squeeze it."
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
"They think I'm grazing the mare," Thursey said as she served out the bread and cheese.
"Well you are." He watched the mare, amused, as she reached as far as she could after grass, ignoring that under her feet. "What did you tell them yesterday?"
"Nothing. I just disappeared. They were all angry, but I don't care. It's too pretty to stay inside."
"Is that the only reason?"
She blushed, then said defiantly, "I could have taken the mare to the pastures on the other side of the village."
"That would have made me sad."
"Yes. You would have missed your dinner."
"I would have missed you," he said, ignoring her teasing. "I could have my dinner from the cooks at the palace now that I can stable the goats there. The queen herself has given orders that I be fed. But I prefer your cooking."
"And prefer me to steal for you."
His face turned pink at that. "Would you rather not, then?"
"If I would rather not, then I wouldn't," she said tartly. "I do it because I like to."
He broke the last piece of bread and poured the ale out equally. "Tomorrow I will ask the cook for a dinner, and you shall be my guest."
"What will we have? Roasted quails and ducklings? Salmon eggs and jellied trout and truffle in wine? Currant cakes and China tea and cream?"
"You shall have," Gillie said, "the king's bread and goat milk."
"The magical goat milk?"
"The same."
"Will it make me beautiful?"
"It cannot. You are already that."
She looked down, flushed, then hurried away to fix the mare's halter.
She would never tell Gillie, but in the night she had dreamed of him; for the three nights since Gillie had come walking down the high road, she had not dreamed of Cinderella stories nor princes, not silks nor silver saddles. She had dreamed of Gillie, of the windy hills and Gillies warm hand on her own.
He settled back against the hillside and grinned, and began to entertain her with stories of the nobles of the palace, of their foibles and foolishnesses. His sleeves were rolled back and his strong brown arms showed a scar and his hands the roughness of hard work. His eyes, when he did not look at Thursey, looked far down the valley and across at the palace as if he were seeing many things. He made her laugh with his stories, and shocked her sometimes, for she had never thought the nobles of the king's palace could be so foolish.
"How do you know so much about the palace and what goes on in it?"
"Because the servants tell me. Servants take their greatest pleasure in gossip. It's an art and a balm for their own miseries."
"Was it like that when you herded the goats on the Isle of Carthemas?"
"It was after the king's company came. Before that there was only me and my family and the healers. I liked it better that way."
"Then why did you come with the goats clear to Gies castle?"
"Because the king needed me—he is my king after all, in spite of the isolation we lived in. And the prince —the prince needed the goat milk very much."
"Will he be well for the ball? How can anyone be sure?"
"He is mending fast," Gillie said. "The prince will dance at the ball."
"It would be nice for him. He has been away a long time, the people of Gies are anxious to see him."
"Why should they be?"
"Why, he's the prince, Gillie! He'll be king someday!" She was shocked at Gillie. "He was only a boy when the summer palace was attacked and he and the queen were captured, and he nearly died. He was just barely twelve. They wouldn't even recognize him now. They want to see what he is like—maybe what kind of king he'll be."
Gillie gave her a strange penetrating look. "Perhaps the prince should see what the village is like . . . and if he wants the job."
Gillie was very outspoken. She wondered if he talked so boldly in the castle. Maybe his forwardness came from living too long on Carthemas, removed from the rest of the kingdom. "Why wouldn't he want to rule Gies?"
"I don't know. Would you?"
"I wouldn't know how, I don't think."
"Maybe the prince doesn't either. Or maybe he regrets the loss of his freedom."
"But who is more free than a king?"
"A good king is beholden to his subjects. Only a bad king makes free to do as he pleases." Then he grinned at her. "There was a ballad last night. They let the servants stand at the door to the great hall and listen. It was the kind of story you are fond of—you are like her, Thursey. Like Catskin. You have the stepsisters, and a stepmother as grisly as any of those . . ."