“It heals slowly, alas,” he sighed. “Another sign of age.”
Almost at once, Terisa found that she liked the Domne. The relaxed way he talked put her at ease, made her feel more welcome than any elaborate speech or feast; made her feel at home. “My lord,” she said impulsively because she didn’t have any other words for her gratitude, “I’m very glad to be here.”
“ ‘My lord’?” the Domne returned humorously. “I hope not. The last time a woman insisted on calling me ‘my lord,’ I had to marry her to make her stop.”
Smiling, Terisa asked, “What should I call you?”
“ ‘Da,’ ” he answered without hesitation. “It’s probably presumptuous of me, but I like it. My sons refuse, of course. Another benefit of sons – they keep me humble. In the name of my dignity. If I have any – which I doubt, sitting here half crippled because I wasn’t able to get out of the way of a pig. But the rest of my family won’t call me anything else.”
“Da,” she murmured experimentally. It had a nice sound. She had never called her own father anything except Father.
“Thank you,” said the Domne as if she had done him a favor.
“Come, Terisa.” Quiss put an arm on Terisa’s shoulders again. “If I let you stay, he’ll keep you talking until lunchtime. That’s a ‘benefit of sons’ he doesn’t mention. When they were small, he always had someone to listen to him. They taught him bad habits. Any daughter with sense in her head would have known better.”
The Domne nodded gravely. “We can talk later, Terisa, when you’ve had a chance to rest and refresh yourself.
“If you find Geraden,” he added to Quiss, “tell him I want to see him. I refuse to be ignored all morning merely because Ruesha wants to play.”
“Yes, Da,” Quiss replied in a tone of gently mocking subservience. With her arm, she took Terisa out of the room.
Almost immediately, they encountered a serving girl in the hall. Quiss instructed her to bring hot water for a bath, then to fetch Geraden for the Domne. The girl bobbed an acknowledgment, and Quiss and Terisa walked on.
The house was big – bigger than Terisa had realized. Behind its wide front, it seemed to sprawl for a considerable distance. Beyond the room where the Domne sat, the windows were open, letting light and spring air into the hall, and she found that she could see the grain in the polished hardwood of the floor, the fitted planks of the walls. Here she realized for herself how strong the odor of the dungeon was on her – realized it because everything around her smelled of soap, beeswax, and old resin. Years of wear and polish had brought out a glow from the floorboards down the center of the hall, and that warmer hue seemed to mark the way ahead like a path, a way of making sure that no one got lost.
Quiss took her past a door that stood slightly ajar. As they crossed the opening, a plaintive voice called out, “Quiss! In the name of decency!” The tone of the appeal was both lugubrious and funny. “I’m dying.”
“And about time, too,” muttered Quiss without stopping – or letting Terisa pause.
“Who was that?” Terisa asked in surprise.
Then she was surprised even further to see Quiss’ entire face turn red.
“Stead. One of the sons Da seems to value so highly. He hasn’t had a woman since a tinker broke his collarbone, and he wants me to bed him. As soon as he learns you’re here, he’ll get the same idea about you.
“Take my advice,” Quiss continued primly. “Have nothing to do with him. He’s the only one of the Domne’s sons who has no sense at all. Personally, I won’t even let the serving girls go in his room. A groom and one of the shearers are taking care of him.”
Terisa made an effort to keep from laughing. “What does he think he can do – with a broken collarbone?”
Quiss stopped in the hall and gave Terisa the full force of her bright blue eyes. Softly, she said, “You must not have much experience with men. It isn’t what he thinks he can do. It’s what he thinks you can do.”
Her expression, however, suggested that she wasn’t listening to herself – that her own thoughts had gone in a different direction. She had become grave, almost somber; perplexity knotted her brows. “Before yesterday,” she murmured, “none of us knew you existed. Then Geraden arrived out of nowhere, breathing fire about a possible attack and at the same time acting like all the heart and hope had been beaten out of him. He said he left a woman behind who was probably being tortured because she was his friend. Now that I see you, it seems astonishing how little he actually told us about you.
“He never mentioned that you could have any man you wanted.”
Terisa bit back an impulse to ask, Is that really what you think? She wanted to believe that she was pretty; and Quiss’ opinion seemed to have tremendous value. But Tholden’s wife obviously wanted to get reassurance, not give it. She wanted to believe that Geraden wouldn’t be hurt anymore. Deliberately, Terisa put her questions aside.
“They put me in the dungeon,” she said, “because I wouldn’t tell them where he was. He rescued me when my old life was going nowhere. He’s risked himself for me any number of times. He even tried to fight the High King’s Monomach for me once.” Quiss was impressed; but Terisa didn’t stop. “He’s the only reason I’m alive – the only reason I’m here. Even if I didn’t like him so much, I wouldn’t be interested in anybody else.”
Certainly not Stead, who sounded suspiciously like Master Eremis.
That was what Quiss wanted to hear. She didn’t smile – apparently, she rarely smiled when she was happy – but warmth shone from her. “Then I’ll stop worrying about him and leave him to you. If anybody can get him out of the pig wallow he’s in, you can.”
Briskly, she moved Terisa again in the direction of a bath.
Three turns, two doorways, and another long hall brought them to a bedroom with a low, flat cot that contrasted strangely with the rest of the furnishings: the heavy armchairs and the sturdy washstand. “This is Artagel’s room,” Quiss explained. “It’s relatively private, but I can get you a softer bed if his cot is too hard. I don’t know how he sleeps on it. Sometimes I think he may actually be as tough as he thinks he is.”
“I’ll try it and let you know,” said Terisa. The bed in her former apartment had had the firmest mattress she could find.
“The advantage,” Quiss went on, “is that you get your own bathroom.” She pointed at the other door to the room. “Why don’t you get started? There’s water – and the hot water should be here in a minute. I’ll go find you some clothes.”
Terisa agreed gratefully. As soon as Tholden’s wife left, she closed the bedroom door, pulled off her boots, and went into the bathroom.
It had no running water – apparently the Care of Domne didn’t know as much about plumbing as Orison did – but clay pipes had been set in the floor to carry bathwater and waste away. Which explained, now that she thought about it, why she hadn’t seen water, not to mention sewage, standing in the ditches alongside Houseldon’s streets: underground drains. And that perception, in turn, made her laugh softly at herself. Her time in Orison, and Elega’s attempt on the reservoir, had taught her some strange lessons. The woman she used to be would never have noticed plumbing or drains unless they didn’t work.
As Quiss had said, however, there was water, plenty of it in a vat beside the wooden bathtub.
Instead of filling the tub right away, however, Terisa went back into the bedroom, sat down on Artagel’s hard cot, closed her eyes, and tried to absorb the fact that she was here and safe; that she had finally made her way to a place where she could feel the sun’s warmth in the wood of the wall beside the bed, and where the people around her were moved by simple things like family and friendship and wool, rather than by treachery, ambition, and revenge.