A Tale of Two Castles(17)

The walls were hung with painted cloth so faded I couldn’t make out what had once been depicted. Masteress Meenore’s heat had baked the dirt floor as hard as pottery.

If the fireplace was twelve o’clock, eight to ten o’clock was occupied by a high table pushed against the wall. A long bench hid under it. Mother said you could learn a household’s character from its table. I rose and went to this one. The wooden tabletop, which sagged in the middle and was worn and scratched, came up to my chin.

I saw a jug, half a wheel of yellow cheese, two loaves of bread, an orange squash, a small salt bowl, and a big double-handled bowl that held a spoon and a knife. The bowl was common green pottery, the spoon wood, the knife handle wood, too—a poor folks’ bowl, poor folks’ cutlery.

At eleven o’clock along the wall was a heap of large tasseled pillows. The tassels lay in my hand as smoothly as silk. The pillows might have been worth a silver or two if their linen hadn’t been so worn. But though worn, they were unstained. I lifted one to my nose and smelled rosemary.

Across the lair, at three o’clock, stood a double-doored cupboard. I hadn’t been forbidden to open it, so I concluded I was supposed to. The contents were a stack of folded lengths of linen, clean but threadbare; sundry bowls of the same quality as the one on the table; a row of four pottery tumblers; a small pile of cutlery; four sheaves of unused skewers tied with thread; and a little box, which proved to contain knucklebones.

Nothing more. IT might have warned me away from ITs hoard to make me think IT rich, while in truth the hoard was home to a few starving mice. Or IT might be fooling me twice.

Unbidden—unwelcome—a mansioners’ tale came to mind, the tale of Bluebeard. What if the hoard contained the bones of dozens of Masteress Meenore’s assistants?

I stood over the trapdoor. Open it? Run?

I knelt and grasped the iron ring. And there I stayed, uncertain. I wanted to be a dragon’s assistant if I couldn’t be a mansioner for now, and I needed food and a place to sleep.

And IT interested me. And no one feared IT. I stood up.

The trapdoor opened. I jumped back.

IT heaved ITself up onto the floor. “Lodie of Lahnt, if I had found you below, I would have tossed you out. If I had found you napping at the fireplace, I would have tossed you out, too. I want neither a thief nor an assistant who lacks curiosity.”

I returned my cloak to the hook at the door.

“So, what have you learned about your masteress?”

Imitating ITs way of speaking, I said, “I used my powers of induction and deduction to conclude there is an outdoor entrance to the hoard.”

“What else?”

“I cannot tell whether or not you are rich. All depends on what lies under the trapdoor.”

“Well done, Elodie.”

I was Elodie when IT was pleased with me.

“Your home is scrupulously clean.” I may have brought in a louse or two, a flea or three, but none had preceded me.

“Yes. I will tolerate you for the night, but you must bathe in the morning. I will burn your clothes.”

My clothes that Grandmother had worn or Mother and I had made? I rushed to my satchel and hugged it. “I’ll wash everything.”

“Twice. No, thrice. And scrub!”


I nodded, lowering the satchel. IT stretched ITself along the floor, ITs snout near my feet, ITs eyes fixed on me. I yawned.

“You are sleepy.”

O masteress of deduction! I nodded.

“Then tomorrow you may tell me what you observed on your way to me, and tomorrow night, when you are clean, you may sleep on pillows. But now it is the floor for you. I suggest under the table. I am a restless sleeper.”

Don’t crush me! I barricaded my dirty self behind the long bench under the table. The clay floor was even harder than the deck of the cog. I fetched my cloak and my satchel, layered everything for cushioning, and stretched out on my side, back to the wall, my head sticking out beyond the bench, so I could still see into the room.

IT went to the cupboard, then sat on the floor with the box of knucklebones in ITs claws. Hunching over, IT spilled them out. One of the bones, the jack, was yellow, according to custom. The others were their natural ivory. IT tossed the yellow bone into the air, picked up another bone, and caught the yellow one in the same claw, in one deft move. On the next throw, IT picked up two bones.

Oh, Father! Dragons play knucklebones!

Knucklebones was a popular girls’ game. I had played a thousand times. Did this make IT female?

“The dragon claw is as nimble as the human hand, Lodie.”

The knucklebones tip-tapped the floor. My last awake thoughts were: Here I am, full belly, bedded down near a dragon. Father, Mother, you would wring your hands. How lucky I am!





Chapter Ten

I woke once during the night and heard a distant lion’s roar, probably from the menagerie. Or from the town, with the menagerie gate open. Not from Master Sulow, because the mansions were too far away for the roar to carry.

Perhaps the ogre turned into a lion at night and terrorized the town. I moved closer to the bench. The lion would hardly attack a dragon in ITs lair, would he?

Masteress Meenore lay on ITs back. ITs legs, loosely bent at knees and elbows, bobbled in the air, in the manner of a dog completely at ease.

In the morning I awakened to chill and silence. At home in Lahnt, Father used to build up the fire before waking me. He’d kiss my ear or my forehead or my nose, whatever part of me I’d left out of my blanket.