The Silent Songbird (Hagenheim #7)(37)

“You are very generous to say so.” Evangeline picked up her full bucket and carried it to the door of the barn.

When Nicola finished the fourth cow, she took up two of the buckets and Evangeline picked up Nicola’s other one, and they walked toward the kitchen. Even if she was a lot slower than Nicola, her chest filled with air at the bucket full of milk in her hand.

The sun was just brightening the sky. Halfway to the kitchen, Evangeline saw Sabina coming toward them. Just behind Sabina strode Reeve Folsham and Westley, heading toward the fields.

“Nicola and Eva! Up and working so early this morning,” Sabina exclaimed, breaking the hush of the semidarkness.

“What are you doing up so early, Sabina?” Nicola asked her.

Sabina smiled, looking up at the sky. “My father sent me to borrow some eggs.”

Just as Sabina reached them, she stuck out her foot and tripped Evangeline.

Evangeline stumbled and cried out, struggling to hang on to the milk and not fall on her face. She landed on her knees on the hard ground. Milk sloshed from the buckets, but she managed to keep them upright.

Reeve Folsham was suddenly at her side, Westley hurrying to her other side. Together they helped her to her feet as she kept hold of the buckets.

“Are you hurt?” Westley asked her.

“No.” She hid her grimace of pain as she put her weight on her knee.

“Are you injured?” Sabina pretended to look concerned as she leaned close to Evangeline’s face. “That looked like a hard fall.”

Evangeline drew herself up and ignored her.

Reeve Folsham stared.

Sabina faced him. “You may have noticed that Eva screamed and spoke. It seems she can talk after all. Isn’t that right, Eva? I’m sure everyone will be so pleased that you can talk.”

Nicola was giving her a look of sympathy, and Evangeline felt rather than saw the others staring at her. She hurried on toward the house.

She blinked back tears—more of rage at Sabina than of pain in her knee, which was slowly fading.

Sabina was determined to have Westley for herself. Well, let her have him. Westley thought she was the lowest liar now that she had accused his best friend of trying to kill him, and Evangeline was practically betrothed to Lord Shiveley. Westley would probably turn her over to him when he found out Evangeline’s true identity.

Once in the kitchen, Golda instructed her to pour one of the buckets of milk into a large pottery bowl on her worktable. Evangeline struggled to lift the bucket high enough. She bit her lip and concentrated on not spilling it. Finally, she had emptied every drop into the bowl.

“There is less than usual in these buckets,” Golda said. “Did you spill it?”

“I spilled a little.”

The head cook looked startled at hearing Evangeline speak.

“She fell,” Nicola supplied behind her. “But it was because Sabina tripped her. Eva saved most of the milk.”

Golda stared at them both for a few seconds. “Very well. Take the rest of the milk to the dairy and start churning.”

Evangeline followed Nicola with the remaining buckets to a small stone building at the edge of the woods behind the castle and to the east of the kitchen. There were no windows and one lit torch to light their way down some stone steps.

“Have you ever churned butter?”

“No.”

“It isn’t difficult.” Nicola set down her buckets in a corner of the room, which was quite cool belowground. The dungeon at Berkhamsted Castle must feel about the same.

Evangeline set her bucket beside it, then watched as Nicola picked up another bucket sitting on the opposite side of the room.

“We don’t use the fresh milk. We use the milk from the previous milking, which was last night.”

“Why?”

“I don’t exactly know. Maybe to give the butter a slightly sour flavor.” Nicola approached a large square barrel that lay on its side and had a hole in the top. “So you pour the milk into here.” She poured in the milk—a bucket and a half—and closed up the hole. Then she poured the other bucket and a half in a second churn—an upright one on the floor—and Evangeline sat and used the wooden paddle to agitate the creamy milk inside while Nicola turned a handle on the side of the barrel-like churn. They occasionally switched places, as their arms grew tired of the repetitive motion.

Evangeline had to wrap her hands in some discarded cheese-cloths to keep the wooden handles from chafing her blistered hands as badly.

“Don’t your hands hurt?” Nicola asked when she saw the bloody mess on the palms of Evangeline’s hands.

“Not as much anymore.”

“You should be careful they don’t become septic. You should ask for some of Lady le Wyse’s salve she uses on wounds.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Evangeline had something else on her mind—the fact that Westley, or someone else, could turn her over to Lord Shiveley’s or King Richard’s men. And if that happened and Evangeline did find herself in that man’s power, she wanted to be able to defend herself against him.

“Nicola?”

“Yes?” Nicola calmly rotated the handle on the butter churn. She was quite pretty, with her pale-blue eyes and blonde hair pulled back in a single braid.

“How would I go about learning archery and sword fighting and knife throwing? Is there someone who might teach me?”