“Oh, fuck, I have screwed this up,” he said, and put his head in his hands.
The reality of the death of his mother and father was just starting to strike Gavin. He cared for his brother, and he’d been more interested in supporting him-he, who seldom if ever needed support. But things began to seep in around the edges…
“Pater, too?” he asked.
Gabriel raised his head. His eyes were oddly swollen, and Gavin had a flash of the last time he’d seen Gabriel like this-when he and Aneas and Agrain had ambushed Gabriel and beaten him to a pulp. A long time ago.
Then, he’d spat defiance through his tears.
Now, he shook his head. “I don’t know.” He met Gavin’s eyes. “Damn it, Gavin, you have no sight in the aethereal. You have no idea. It’s like a dream. Nothing is clear unless you make it clear, and if you exert your will to make it clear, you may be changing it.”
He paused. “Oh, merde.” He was recovering-Gavin could see the wheels turning. He was just comprehending, himself. He loved his father-a tough, crafty man who-
As if he’d been punched, Gavin went down on one knee.
Gabriel put his arms around his brother. “Turn about is fair play,” he said into his brother’s hair. But then he was crying again.
“Damn you,” he muttered, struggling visibly for his self-control. But he failed.
Then they both cried together.
For no apparent reason, Nell found herself being a woman, not a military page. Well-there was a reason-there was a baby.
He had healthy lungs and a determined air of survival, and wanted everyone to know it. Big, tough men quailed at his cries.
Small, tough women did not. So Nell joined Petite Mouline, Ser Bertran’s page, and a handful of other women tending the baby, while some of the company’s best, and hardest-working men-Toby, for example, and Robin-cowered in corners and made extravagant excuses and furiously polished armour. Bad Tom busied himself setting a watch.
Blanche led the women. She clearly knew more about babies than the others, and they had no matrons or mothers to guide them.
Blanche had something of the captain’s gift. As the hours wore on, Nell began to suspect that Blanche knew little more about babies than she did herself, but she had solid notions of cleanliness and a determined, confident air.
When the bells of the parish church rang twelve, the baby went to sleep like the extinguishing of a candle.
Throughout the barn, men muttered, sighed, and fell instantly asleep themselves.
Just after the bell rang for one o’clock, Blanche finished tidying up the birthing room and smiled gratefully at Nell, who had stayed with her when all the others had gone to sleep. The nun-everyone said she was a nun, despite her clothes-sat by the Queen, but she did not speak or move-she was eerily like a statue of the Virgin, and Blanche knew, in some instinctive way, that she was guarding the Queen, or the baby, or both.
She was, however, useless for the normal work, and there was an unholy amount of blood, mucus, and a thick black sludge emitted by the baby that was more disgusting than anything she’d faced in five solid years as a palace laundress.
Blanche piled all the foul linen in one horrible pack, and wrapped it in burlap, and was saddened to note the state of her own kirtle-a grey, shapeless beggar’s garment to start with, it was now quite foul. Blanche, who always prided herself on her clean, neat prettiness, was a little surprised at her own state.
Nell, who seemed a sensible, smart lass even if she did dress like a man, was now falling asleep every time she stopped moving.
“Go sleep,” Blanche said in her laundry command voice. “You’ve been a hero.”
Nell grinned. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “I did some fighting today.”
Blanche hadn’t noticed that the other girl was wounded, but she had a nasty gash on her left forearm and another, already closed but black as pitch, on her ankle.
“The other bastard’s hilt,” Nell said.
Blanche sighed and tore the cleanest strip from her shift-one of her own shifts worn under the beggar’s kirtle. She regretted it, but Nell was the closest thing she had to a friend in the lunatic asylum into which she felt she’d fallen. And Nell-another competent, hard-working girl-had the big cauldron boiling, having fed it a succession of small branches brought by guilty-looking young men. Including one tall fellow who kept smiling at Nell even through the chaos of the evening.
Blanche scooped some boiling water and made a quick, hot poultice as her mother had taught her and started to clean the wound. “Saints, sweetie, that’s open. It’ll go red and sick.” Blanche took a deep breath to steady herself. “I should stitch it closed,” she said.
Nell looked at her. “You know how?” she asked.
Blanche frowned. “I’ve seen it done,” she said. “And I’m a fine sewer by trade-none better.”
“Boil the thread and fire the needle,” Nell said. “I seen that part in Morea.”
Three minutes later, it was done. Nell looked at the neat, even stitches with something like reverence.
Blanche also looked pleased. “Never sewn flesh afore,” she said. “Yech. What a day. That boy-your husband?” she asked.
Nell laughed. “Lover,” she said. “I want to be a knight, like Sauce, not a baby maker.”
Blanche gave a little cough. Her shock must have shown. Nell shrugged. “In the company, you do what you like as long as you don’t make waves. I never been treated like I am here. Almost like I was a man.”
Blanche grinned. “I don’t want to be treated like a man,” she said, and giggled despite her fatigue.
Nell managed a giggle, too. “Not like that, silly,” she said. Then shrugged, no doubt thinking of Oak Pew. “Unless that’s what suits you. All the captain cares about is work and fighting. There really ain’t no other rules.”
“Aren’t any other rules,” Blanche said. She smiled in apology. “Sorry, my ma was a daemon for words. Don’t you have any women-no offence-in this company?”
Nell shrugged. “There’s some. You meet Sukey?”
Blanche nodded. “Dark hair-brought all the sheets.”
“She couldn’t stay because she’s in charge of everyone’s billets. Like an officer. Her mother’s the head woman of the whole company. Course, her mother’s a sorceress, too. And a seamstress.” Nell sat back. “Mag does near everything. She knows all the songs, too.” She looked down at her arm, which Blanche was patting with a hot, wet rag.
Blanche took a strip of clean, dry linen, looked at it critically, and put it down to wash her hands.
“You have a boy?” Nell asked.
“No,” Blanche admitted.
“No boy?” Nell asked. It seemed terrible to her.
Blanche smiled. “I’m no better than I ought to be, as my mother would say with a sniff. I’ve had a few boys. But at the palace, it makes trouble if you do aught more than flirt with staff, and out in the streets-” She pursed her lips. “There’s a host of apprentices would like to have me. But I’m not ready to be caught.” She laughed.
She wrapped Nell’s arm quickly, and a little too tight.
“Where are you going to sleep?” Nell asked.
“Right here, on the floor,” Blanche said. She began putting the filthy linen into the nice clean boiling water, as if she was the lowest laundry girl back at the palace.
Nell shook her head. “We have straw pallets and blankets and all proper-”
Blanche laughed at the idea that a straw pallet and a blanket was proper.
“Come sleep wi’ my lance. I’ll see you right. In the morning, Sukey will assign you somewhere.”
Blanche nodded. “I’m the Queen’s laundress,” she said. “I don’t really need to be assigned.”
Nell looked as if she might say more, but Diccon chose that moment to poke his head in.
Blanche was appalled at how casually these people dealt with the Queen. But she saw her new friend’s face light up.