Maze of Moonlight, Gael Baudino [ebook reader screen TXT] 📗

this, Lake? Saint Blaise is a good distance away, and it's a big city. Quite a change from Furze Hamlet. Are you sure you don't want something closer and . . . smaller? Saint Brigid is only two days' ride form here. It's a nice little town—”

But he broke off at the sight of Lake's tense, frightened face. The farmer was shaking his head violently: short, abrupt swings as though he were palsied. “I'm sure, m'lord. I think it's for tha best. An' it ha' better be Saint Blaise, too.”

“All right.” Paul gave a last look at the window. Maybe someday he would see Jehan riding up the road from the lowlands, perhaps clad in armor won in some far-off battle, a spear in his hand and the delMari griffin and silver star on his shield. “Maybe it will indeed be for the best.” He shrugged, mustered his little grin. “After all, anything is possible. There are only differing degrees of probability.”

Lake started.

Paul watched him understandingly. Compassion. The Elves had always spoken of compassion. It was an old way, a good way, and he would hold to it. “I'll help you, Lake. Martin is due to return to Saint Blaise in the spring, and Vanessa can go with him. Mayor Matthew has his pretensions, but if I send him a letter telling him to find her a good position where she can learn an honorable trade, he'll do it.”

Lake rose and bowed. “Thankee, m'lord. We're deeply obliged to you.”

Paul offered his hand, smiled at Lake's grip. They could not acknowledge one another—Lake himself perhaps did not even know—but it was good that what bare traces of the old blood were left in the world could touch in friendship. “You tell Vanessa that she'll be well taken care of, Lake. Ha-ha! You tell her that she has adventures—yes, adventures!—ahead of her.”

“Thankee, m'lord. I wi'.” And bowing again, Lake went to the door. Nicholas, unctuous and official, had been waiting for him, and the steward escorted the farmer along the hall, down the stairs, and out of the castle.

Pondering, Paul examined his hand. A touch. It was not much, but it would have to do.

Lies. And it was getting to be so dark!

***

“Black bread?” David's voice, faint with horror, echoed off the walls of the kitchen.

“With beans in it.” Pytor nodded.

“Beans?”

“Beans.”

“Dear God.” The chef of Aurverelle passed a hand over his face. “But he can't possibly want to eat that! It's . . . it's not . . .”

“Not noble,” Pytor prompted.

“Yes. Exactly.”

Pytor shrugged. It was Christopher who gave the orders in Aurverelle, not the seneschal, not the bailiff, nor, for that matter, the chef. “It is now.”

“And those . . . rags he's wearing.”

These days, the kitchen was not a busy place, for the castle possessed less than one third of its usual population and therefore, the sound of snickering from one of the kitchen boys who was stirring a pot was loud in the silence.

But it was Baron Christopher who was being snickered at, and black bread or no, David whirled and clouted the lad on the back of the head. The boy resumed his stirring attentively. David glared at him, then turned back to Pytor. “Rags!”

“Raffalda would not allow the baron to go about in rages, Master Chef,” said Pytor, though he himself had unconsciously come to think of Christopher's garb as such. “His clothes are simply of black and brown. He prefers it that way.”

“But . . . where's his style?”

“In black bread, at present.”

David sniffed. “It's inedible.”

Pytor cleared his throat: a deep rumble. “Are you telling me, Master Chef, that one who trained under the great Taillevent himself is incapable of making a decent loaf of black bread?”

The chef shook his head. “You have to understand, Master Seneschal. This bread he wants. It's something . . . else. It's full of . . .”

“Beans.”

“Well, yes. Beans. But not just beans. It's rye and spelt and barley and brank, the coarsest of flours, with only enough wheat in it to keep it from turning into a rock. Peasants are fit to eat it, but not anybody of any decency.”

Pytor, a peasant—and an escaped slave—who had eaten black bread with beans and worse in it, said nothing. One had to be a little tolerant of David. And, these days, of Christopher, too.

“And peasants are . . . well . . . they're just different,” David went on. “They can make a meal of thorns and acorns if they want. Black bread is nothing to them. It's actually good for them. But the baron . . .”

Muttering inwardly at the chef's casual bigotry, Pytor tried to be diplomatic. “My good chef, the baron had more than his fill of thorns and acorns during his journey home, and he told me that a little black bread will not hurt him.” Baron Christopher, of course, had said nothing of the sort: he gave orders, not explanations. “Besides, he fears that the noble food you customarily prepare for him might prove to be too rich so soon after his illness. Therefore, now that he can finally keep down something beyond gruel, he wants black bread. And he will, of course, look forward to eating your delicacies as soon as he is ready.”

David glared. “Black bread?”

The Russian sighed. “With beans.”

Another voice cackled, then shouted. “Lots of beans!” Startled, Pytor and David whirled to see Christopher and Jerome standing in the doorway. Christopher's hands were balled into fists, and he raised them up above his head as he leaped down the three steps to the flagstone floor, sending the kitchen boys running in fear. “Handfuls of beans! Buckets of beans! Bushels of beans!”

“Dear God,” David whispered. “He's mad.”

“And a little heap under the stairs!”

Pytor's eyes narrowed at the chef. “Master is as sane as you or I,” he murmured in his deep basso. “Another disloyal word like that, Master Chef, and I will have you put in irons.”

“Beans!” said Christopher as he snatched a dry