Bravely(26)
“Is every day like this?” Merida asked the girl next to her. The bells had rung to order them to take their evening exercise strolling through the winter gardens. There were no flowers, of course, but it was still handsome in the waning sun. Like the rest of Ardbarrach, the garden was symmetrical and geometric, evergreen yew and holly trimmed into unforgiving knots beside neatly kept paths. Mistress mac Lagan had informed her that each of the girls was meant to walk at a slow, even pace, hands folded, meditating on their roles at Ardbarrach.
“Of course,” the girl replied in a low voice. She slipped on ahead.
It was a very chilly walk. The sun was very nearly gone and the garden was lit by a few torches in protected alcoves. The wind that had battered Merida on her initial approach to Ardbarrach now battered the young women as they strolled; Merida found herself meditating less on her role here and more on how she couldn’t feel her toes.
Merida dawdled until the girl behind her caught up. In her veil and wimple, this girl looked nearly exactly like the girl Merida had already spoken to, and Merida had to study her nose and mouth shape hard to make sure she wasn’t actually talking to the same girl. She asked, conversationally, “So, where are you from?”
“Why?” asked the girl.
Merida wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “Curiosity?”
“This isn’t a time for talking,” the girl replied, giving Merida a look like she might be stupid. “This is a time for meditating.”
“I was meditating on where you might be from,” Merida said, with a light smile. She glanced toward Mistress mac Lagan to be sure they weren’t about to get in trouble.
The girl stared at her with confusion. “What’s wrong with you? Please don’t be disruptive. I’ve been looking forward to this since library.”
Her voice was quite earnest. Maybe there was something wrong with Merida.
“Merida, please step out of line,” Mistress mac Lagan said. “Girls, continue and I will catch up.” As the other young women stepped off in unison, she asked Merida, “Is there a problem?”
Merida wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. She’d encountered plenty of hardship while traveling, and she was used to being places that weren’t exactly to her liking. She liked to think she could put up with quite a bit of discomfort for quite a bit of time, but this had been only a single day and she already felt very out of sorts. She asked, “When is there time to ourselves? Free time, I mean?”
With a gesture, Mistress mac Lagan directed the rest of the girls to file inside the castle, and then touched Merida’s elbow so that Merida walked with her down a separate hallway. There were no tapestries to soften the sound, so her clipped words echoed off the bare, stark walls at Merida. “You just had free time. Did you not enjoy it?”
“I meant free time to do what we’d like. If I wanted to ride, or practice archery, or read.”
“There is a time for riding in three days,” Mistress mac Lagan replied. “Twice a week we strengthen our legs that way. And we already did our reading today, and there will be more reading and reciting tomorrow. And of course there is no archery. You are not a child anymore.” Whatever she saw in Merida’s face made her clarify further. “I understand you are coming from DunBroch; you have been raised differently—children stay children longer in places like that, where it doesn’t matter as much.”
“Doesn’t…matter as much?”
“Yes, in little kingdoms like DunBroch, it is not so important how well you know the customs and how society behaves, because it’s not really a kingdom, it’s just a field with a castle in it. The stakes are different when the castle doesn’t have any power outside of that field. It’s all right, don’t look like that, you’ll catch up here soon enough. Here in Ardbarrach you will put that away and join society as a woman. Do you have any other questions?”
Merida’s cheeks burned, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. Fury. Embarrassment. Was this how everyone saw DunBroch from the outside? She wondered if Hubert was getting a speech like this over in the barracks, too. She wondered if he believed it. “Can I see my brother?”
Brrrronnnng! Brrrronnnng! Brrrronnnng!
“No, that’s the bell for lights out,” Mistress mac Lagan said. She put her head on one side, then, studying Merida, and seemed to decide something. She directed Merida to a narrow window in the middle of the hall. It was just wide enough for an arrow or a fiendishly cold night to fit through. “Look.”
Merida put her cheek to the cold stone of the window’s side and looked out. Outside, a line of page boys filed neatly across the courtyard toward the barracks, silhouettes in the deep blue light. One of them was unmistakably Hubert; she saw the outline of his wild hair.
Merida called, “Hubert!”
The Hubert-silhouette stopped just long enough to peer in her direction. It waved cheerily at her and gave her a thumbs-up, barely visible in the dim space. Then he caught up with the other pages and disappeared into the shadow by the wall.
“Now I trust there will be no further disruption to the schedule tonight,” Mistress mac Lagan said. She didn’t say that shouting out of windows had been allowed only because of the special circumstances, but it was heavily implied. She patted Merida’s shoulder twice. Pat. Pat. Merida understood this was meant to be taken as compassion; she was meant to be grateful.