A Tale of Two Castles(34)

“Whatever you . . .” He looked down.

I did, too. Unaware, I’d let my bowl slide to the floor, spilling the onions.

I was sorry, but I didn’t care. I was going to mansion!

If I wasn’t first sent to jail.

Cellarer Bwat’s most prominent feature, his bushy, white eyebrows, stood out from his face. If my pouring went amiss, his watery blue eyes might spring open wide and pop his eyebrows off.

His lips were pinched, his nose a mere button. His head tilted permanently in a listening attitude. He led me out of the kitchen, walking bent from the waist, as if he spoke only to seated people. As I followed, I thought about what to recite.

I could tell the touching tale of Io, who was doomed to roam the world as a heifer. No, not a good choice, to portray a shape-shifted cow in the presence of a shape-shifting ogre.

“Don’t dawdle, girl.”

“My name is Elodie, Cellarer Bwat.”

The vast emptiness of the great hall had been filled. Boards mounted on trestles and placed end to end formed a table that stretched two-thirds the length of the chamber. A shorter trestle table had been erected on the dais, with the three chairs drawn up to it. Benches flanked the chairs. Neither table had yet been covered with cloth, and the bare, pocked wood looked shabby.

The walls were hung with linen panels, freshly dyed, colors bright. A scene of feasting spread across the outer wall. The diners could pretend the fabric an improving reflection, their persons made beautiful or handsome as they raised tumblers, fed one another, laughed, or sang.

On the opposite wall, the hangings depicted an animal parade led by a lion, ending with a mouse. In the middle I spied a large golden dog, a monkey, a beaver, a boar, and many more. Some of them I suspected of being fantastical: a creature with an endless neck, a striped horse, an awkward beast with a lump on its back as big as a wheelbarrow. I wondered if one was the high eena Masteress Meenore said I’d heard when I’d passed the menagerie.

Among all the animals there was not a single cat.

Servants were placing trestles for side tables. Cellarer Bwat took me to the end of the long table just below the dais, where a wine bottle, a pitcher of water, a goblet, and two tumblers had been placed. On the floor stood a beer barrel with a spigot screwed into its side.

In an urgent, loud whisper, Cellarer Bwat said, “You will uncork the wine with a sharp twist of the wrist.” He demonstrated in the air, then gave me the bottle.

What tale should I perform?

I held the bottle in my left hand, the cork in my right, then twisted. Half the cork remained in the bottle.

Cellarer Bwat sighed and called in an even louder whisper for another bottle. “Pull while you twist.”

Should I recite the speech of a young siren, newly arrived on her rock, before she has lured her first mariner to his death? It was moving and right for my years.

Cellarer Bwat said, “You will pass the open bottle below the noses, first of His Highness, then of His Lordship, an inch below their noses, no closer, no farther, so they may smell the wine. Do not pass the bottle under the princess’s nose.”

“Why not, Cellarer Bwat?”

“Her upper lip will grow. Wine has that effect on ladies.”

The inner ward door opened. Cellarer Bwat fell to his knees with a crack that must have hurt. He tugged me into a curtsy.

“Stay down,” he hissed.

I raised my head to see who’d entered. Cellarer Bwat pushed it down. I had only a moment to take in a tall, paunchy man with shoulders pulled back, wearing a bright red cloak.

The voice was familiar, in a lower register than the one I knew, but just as prone to soaring and plummeting. The speaker could only be the king. “I had hardly awakened when the loveliest breakfast arrived at my door. Scalded milk with honey, neither too hot nor too cold.” His voice rose half an octave. “Perfect! Accompanied by two scones, and they were warm, too!”

A retelling of every morsel of his breakfast followed, while Cellarer Bwat and I knelt. From the corner of my eye, I saw the other servants kneeling, too. My neck cramped.

“Now I’m hoping it will be possible to secure a slice of ginger cake on this pretty dish.” Porcelain rattled. He’d opened His Lordship’s plate cabinet.

“Certainly, Your Highness.” A servant must have taken the plate.

Feet and ankles in leather-soled hose entered the area of floor I could see. “What are you two doing?”

“Bowing to you, Your Highness,” Cellarer Bwat whispered.

“Curtsying to you, Your Highness,” I whispered.

“Before I came in, of course. You may stand.”

We did. My eyes were drawn to the king’s cap, which was set with rubies and emeralds. He wore no crown, but the rubies formed a band, like a crown, with the emeralds dotting the top of his skull.

“I am training her to be a cupbearer. She will serve you and His Lordship and your daughter this evening.”

The king’s face reminded me of a pigeon’s: no chin, eyes as round as coins, and a down-turned mouth. He and his daughter both had long sloping noses and nothing else alike, lucky for her.

“I see. Excellent. A beginner.” Royal sarcasm. He mounted the dais and sat in the golden chair.

I noticed that his tunic, wine red and embroidered with gold thread at the throat, had an oily stain on the belly and caked food on the sleeve.